Page 1 of What a Highlander’s Got to Do

Chapter One

Newcastle, 1826

It is said that if one listens at doors, one cannot expect to hear something pleasant. Isobel Dounreay Lochlannach knew this to be true—she’d listened at her share of doors in her time—but the maxim came home hard as she paused at Lady Willouby’s parlor door to smooth her skirts before entering for afternoon tea.

It was a trial, this—smoothing one’s skirts, suffering the attentions of Lady Willouby’s hairdresser, attending tea. Wearing dresses. But when one was a guest, it behooved one to make the attempt. At least, that was what Mama said.

Isobel wasn’t sure which was more irritating, going to all the trouble to make that attempt—as her mother had implored her so vociferously to do—or standing here and listening to the ladies in Lady Willouby’s parlor dissecting her character with a fervent venom. Or a combination of the two.

Probably that.

The dress was a tad too tight, the shoes pinched, and the pins in her coif scratched.

That she was in possession of a coif was bad enough. How she wished she was riding now, in her ragged habit with her hair free and flowing behind her in the wild wind . . .

Not that the wind was so very wild in Newcastle.

A mild breeze, at best.

Still, she coveted it. Anything was better than attending a stuffy tea party and being scrutinized and picked apart like a bug by the local gentility.

As though she had prodded them with her thoughts, one of them spoke. “So they left her with you while they gallivant about the countryside?” she said with a sniff, this invisible creature in a sharp, bitter, superior drawl.

“They are hardly gallivanting,” Lady Willouby responded gently. “They’ve gone to visit an ailing aunt.”

“A likely story. No doubt they needed respite from her.”

“Now, Cora.”

“You do have my sympathies,” another, a lady with a nasal condition, tittered.

“Nonsense, Lady Swofford,” Lady Willouby said quite crisply. “She’s been a pleasant surprise.”

“I cannot imagine it,” a third chirped. “I heard she was a hoyden.”

“I, a savage,” another said. This was a voice Isobel didn’t recognize and didn’t care to. “Isn’t it true she blew up Scrabster’s castle?”

“Only the one wing,” Lady Willouby said. “In her defense, he was a traitorous little worm.” The clinking of teacups ensued, and Isobel assumed they were being refilled.

“Still, she was what? Five?”

“Indeed.”

“Can you imagine what she’s since become?”

“As I said. A savage. And she’s heading for the halls of Almack’s. I cannot imagine my Wilfred being interested in such a creature.”

Lady Willouby chuckled. “You might be surprised. She is quite lovely.”

A snort. “Lovely or not, she has no place attending the Season. None of them do.”

“The Duke of Caithness is a peer,” Lady Willouby said reminded them; Isobel could hear the tension in her voice. She was, in all probability, losing her patience. Lady Willouby was a lady in nature as well as in title, unlike the others in her drawing room.

“He’s a Scot,” Lady Swofford hissed, as though she were accusing Uncle Lachlan of having the pox. “Can you imagine? The lot of them, descending on the London Season as though they belong?”

Isobel set her teeth. Such vitriol against her people had always annoyed her, especially coming from the English.

With great delight, she considered the prospect of waltzing into the drawing room and showing them what a savage really looked like. What a pity her mother had refused to let her bring her bow on this heinous journey.