A wheel hit a rut, and the cart pitched sideways. Wanton clung to the seat, hair streaming, bonnet now an ex-bonnet.
A tower of whisky barrels, stacked three high, stood directly in their perilous path.
She was headed (for the first time in her life, mind you) to deathly disaster.
She gasped, torn between horror and the scientific implications of impact velocity on liquid displacement.
“Oh no, not the alcohol! It’s historically significant!”
The rams thundered on, blind to heritage and hospitality alike. Spectators shrieked. A piper dropped his instrument in existential dread. The barrels loomed larger, shining like golden doom.
Wanton yanked the reins with desperate decorum. “Brake, Euclid! Apply friction!”
The cart did not brake. It accelerated.
“Oh dear,” she said with dignified calm. “I appear to be approaching death at an unsociable speed.”
(and she had yet to write chapter two hundred and four of her memoirs).
Just as Wanton had braced herself for academic martyrdom, a giant of a Highlander strode into view, all bronze and motion and inevitability.
Time—always such a punctual companion—stopped to gape.
His hair, a tousled sweep of mahogany touched by sun and rebellion, caught the light like an act of defiance against centuries of English grooming.
His jaw looked carved for issuing decrees—or perhaps for defying them. Those shoulders could have marched with Robert the Bruce, painted blue like some Pictish war god who’d misplaced his trousers.
In short, he embodied every nightmare the Empire had ever had about Scotland—and every temptation Wanton had just discovered she possessed.
Her gaze, as any responsible researcher’s might, traveled downward for the sake of observation.
Past the broad chest, where linen strained with heroic intent.
Past the lean waist, where leather met plaid.
And lower still—
Her eyes became suspiciously moist. Right in front of her—while her cart hurtled toward annihilation—stood an authentic Highlander wearing that most perilous of garments: the kilt.
It was, she decided, both a scandal and a hypothesis.
Too free to be respectable, too functional to be dismissed. A garment so savage in its liberty it seemed to mock every stitch of her own underpinnings.
The wind caught it, and the plaid swayed—half garment, half rebellion.
“Field Observation 7.0,” she muttered, pencilless but sincere. “The Highland kilt represents civilization in retreat. It raises moral and anatomical questions for which no lady is prepared.”
And yet, even as she thought it barbaric, the question ignited behind her eyes—an ancient, treacherous curiosity: What in Darwin’s beard lies beneath those woolen folds?
“Hypothesis 7.1: The Highland kilt conceals the final unsolved mystery of the modern age.”
The rams bellowed, nostrils flaring, eyes wild, hooves skimming the earth with the reckless grace of barroom brawlers on roller skates. The barrels loomed nearer. Death, apparently, refused to pause for lust.
Still, she straightened her posture, one gloved hand attempting to pat rebellious curls into submission, the other tugging frantically at her petticoats. If she was about to perish, she would do so presentably.
Like uncle Barth used to say, “Should Death come calling, offer him a dram—and your better profile.”
Poor Uncle Barth. He’d had a fondness for brandy and a tragic habit of taking his own advice.
