Chapter one
In Which a Cart Runs Wild, a Scholar Runs Late, and a Highlander Runs Out of Patience
The Scottish Highlands, Wanton decided, were a reckless overachievement of nature—so much wild beauty, so little restraint. Civilization, she thought, would do wonders here. Perhaps a proper road. Or trousers.
Mountains jutted into the heavens like unfinished sculptures; mist coiled in their hollows, clinging possessively to every slope; and somewhere, unseen but omnipresent, a piper practiced optimism at full volume.
The air itself felt different—so clean it seemed morally judgmental. It filled her lungs with brisk disapproval and the faint scent of heather, peat, and destiny.
Her conveyance, alas, was less noble.
The rickety cart—‘a fine vehicle for a lady of means and questionable judgment,’ according to the innkeeper who had rented it—was drawn by three rams of famously philosophical temperament. There had been four, but one had read too much Voltaire and demanded liberty.
She had named the other three accordingly. Euclid, the leader, possessed the gaze of a mathematician who had glimpsed the abyss and found it wanting. Plato, at his flank, frequently attempted to chew the cart’s reins, as if testing the theory of forms by mastication. And Diogenes, the smallest, smelled perpetually of rebellion and old shoe.
Together, they trudged up the rocky path, turning their triangular heads toward her in turn, as though judging her choices with ancient eyes.
Wanton, perched on the splintering driver’s seat, sat perfectly upright—bonnet tied beneath her chin like a battle helmet. Thank goodness she’d had the foresight to don reinforced bloomers—a marvel of English engineering, a veritable Hadrian’s Wall. Otherwise, the splinters the size of a Highlander’s thighs would have compromised both her backmatter and her moral standing.
“According to these coordinates,” she announced, turning her map upside-down, “the Glenravish Highland Games should be precisely where that mountain is taking a stubborn stand.”
She snapped the reins gently. The rams ignored her, too busy contemplating the metaphysical purpose of grass.
“I should not like to be late,” she continued, more to herself than to them. “One cannot properly study masculine exertion without witnessing its inaugural gallop.”
Euclid snorted—a sound that combined skepticism with mild contempt.
Field Note One: Highland fauna exhibit a commendable resistance to authority. Possible correlation with national character.
The cart groaned as it crested the ridge, the wheels complaining with every revolution. Wind raced up from the valley, tossing her curls free of their pins.
The heather brushed her gloves and the scent of damp earth rose around her. Somewhere a raven croaked, sounding like a man clearing his conscience.
She smiled to herself. “It’s perfect,” she murmured. “Utterly savage. A most promising site for scientific inquiry.”
Now, the reader may be wondering—as indeed many sensible people do—why a young English woman of scientific persuasion was hurtling toward the Highlands in a cart drawn by existential rams. The answer, like most breakthroughs, lay in the laws of physics.
Since Sir Isaac Newton had made an apple famous, every ambitious scholar longed to contribute a principle of their own: velocity, momentum, mass—those tidy equations that explained why things moved, collided, or occasionally exploded. But Wanton suspected that all those formulae were missing a vital variable.
Testosterone.
She had observed, through rigorous fieldwork (and several regrettable dinner parties), that the presence of male ego appeared to amplify motion to catastrophic levels. Doors slammed harder, voices rose louder, and objects—often furniture—achieved improbable flight.
Hence her personal hypothesis: The Laws of Motion are directly influenced by the quantity of testosterone present in the subject performing them.
And where, she reasoned, could one better test such a theory than at the Highland Games—a festival devoted entirely to male muscle, flying timber, and competitive perspiration?
“Perfect conditions,” she told the rams, who appeared unconvinced. “A living laboratory of torque, tension, and tartan. And perhaps,” she added primly, “proof that ungoverned passion—national or anatomical—always ends in disaster.”
Plato bleated in protest. Diogenes stumbled. Euclid glared over his shoulder, clearly of the opinion that scientific inquiry could go hang.
Wanton consulted her timepiece, a small brass contraption that ticked reproachfully. “The Games commence in—good heavens—fifteen minutes. I must expedite my approach.”
She reached for her whistle, polished to a heroic shine, and raised it to her lips.
“Encouragement through positive acoustics,” she reminded herself. “The foundation of all leadership.”
She blew.
