The first barrel shuddered in warning. Whisky glinted like liquid sunlight.
The highlander, the last bastion between life and death by liquor gave one heroic stride, and slapped his hands on the cart’s reins. The leather groaned. The air vibrated. His muscles flexed in a display so magnificently kinetic that Wanton cried out.
“Yes! Excellent form! Perfect application of torque!” She had indeed come to the right place for her physics study.
He braced his boots in the mud and yanked the reins, thrusting his hips forward with heroic precision. The cart lurched into a circular trajectory dictated by the merciless hand of centripetal force.
(For the uninitiated in physics, this meant they were spinning. Specifically, like a ladle in a punch-bowl, except she was the ladle, the bowl was destiny, and decorum had clearly evaporated with the spirits.)
Wind roared in her ears. The world tilted; her bonnet launched into the stratosphere. One ram bleated what sounded suspiciously like Gaelic profanity.
The leather groaned under strain, the wheels screamed their protest, and just as Wanton was preparing to enter theannals of scientific martyrdom, the Highlander gave one final, magnificent heave.
With a screech of wheels, the cart halted.
She did not.
“Ah! Momentum—my oldest foe!”
Her trajectory resembled that of an academic cherub catapulted by Newton himself. A gasp escaped her throat as she flew, all petticoats and peril, a notebook flapping against her thigh like an overstimulated wing.
The Highlander looked up—eyes widening, arms opening, as if prepared to catch both her and the concept of civilization. Albeit grudgingly.
It is a fact, dear reader, that civilization rarely announces itself, yet always expects to be received as a gift—even when it arrives smelling faintly of goat and poor decisions.
She landed against him with the audible oof of destiny fulfilled. His chest was solid as Pythagoras’s theorem—perfectly constructed, widely admired, and utterly irrefutable.
“Splendid reflexes, sir!” she gasped. “You’ll make an excellent data sample!”
Their bodies met with full impact. Her breasts pressed to his chest, her thighs astride his lap, her lips perilously close to the pulse in his throat.
The rams panted. The world stilled.
Their gazes locked—his, full of storm and stubborn pride; hers, full of inquiry, alarm, and Enlightenment.
Enlightenment blinked first, then fluttered her eyelashes, and—just as she was about to tender her resignation—a whisky barrel exploded behind them with the joyful force of a Highland climax.
Golden liquid erupted into the air, geysering upward, raining down in shimmering droplets that kissed her face, streakedhis jaw, and soaked the already-compromised neckline of her bodice.
Wanton blinked through the downpour. Her breath came in shudders. Her thighs still trembled from the ride. Or the Highlander.
“Fascinating. I’ve just introduced the Highlands to open-bar diplomacy. You can thank me later,” she whispered, and promptly fainted.
Chapter two
In Which a Scholar Invokes Custom, a Highlander Loses Patience, and Everyone Loses Their Sanity
When consciousness returned, it arrived like an unwanted suitor—persistent, warm, and entirely too close.
Wanton opened one eye. A fire crackled in a vast stone hearth, the light licking across antlers and weaponry. The air smelled of peat, rain, and moral disapproval.
A grey-haired woman hovered beside her, bustling and muttering in a language that sounded like English wrestling vowels.
“Am I dead?” Wanton croaked.
The woman snorted. “No, but ye gave the barrels a finer death than they deserved.”
Just then the temperature of the room dropped several moral degrees.
