MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS TO MARRY (The Highland Brides Book 4)

by Elizabeth Essex

  She had not been there, to the magical place of her youth, in quite some time—she had been away, traveling on the Continent for so long, acquiring necessary airs, graces and erudition along with European fashion. And she had been putting off going there for the simple reason that she had wanted her first trip back to her special place to be with Ewan.

  But despite that disappointment, there was something reassuring about the wild ancient hills—something about their vastness that made her feel small and lucky and glad to be alive all at the same time. Privileged, that’s what she was, to live in a place with such raw, natural beauty. She had missed that sense of enduring force when she had gone away. Just like Ewan had.

  After three hours of steady walking, she reached the top, and paused to catch her breath and take in the glorious view.The whole of the day stretched before her like the heather covering the braeside, as far as she could see. Forever—the whole of her future.

  Best not to think about it like that—a task too large to undertake.

  Best concentrate on what she could do today instead of what she couldn’t.

  Greer turned her mind to the task at hand and opened her spyglass to take a long look at the fields on the far south side of the loch, which were, as she had surmised, still ripe with golden barley. So nonsensical to sell such high-yielding, fertile acreage at this point in the season, when the harvest hadn’t yet been taken in. Cameron would be robbing Peter to pay Paul—he would have to buy barley elsewhere if he still hoped to supply Crieff’s distillery.

  And beyond the value of the crop was the fact that the sale of such land would give Dalshee almost total ownership of the loch. The dividing lines between the two estates had traditionally followed the line of the burn across the middle of the loch, but that line would change were the hectares edging the Crieff side sold to Dalshee.

  So what was she missing?

  Were marauding deer a problem? Was there mining in the hills upstream that might foul the burn and the loch?

  Greer swept her gaze up the Crieff side of the glen, looking for some other clue, some reason for Cameron to let such valuable property go, when she saw a thin plume of wood smoke wafting its way skyward from an old shepherd’s bothy.

  Strange. There were no flocks in the glen—they should have been moved to lower pastures by this time of the year.

  She focused her glass more closely on the hut, only to find at the end of her glass was a man. A tall man with a bandage circling his head.

  Her heart kicked hard against her chest in instant recognition—the man injured in the road. Surely it was he.

  But Dewar had said that man had died. So who was this?

  A surge of irrational hope filled her blood like hot whisky. Her brash, rebellious heart had already raced to its own mad conclusion without consulting her mind. But once there, the idea could not be called back—he could be her Ewan.

  Helpful logic leapt into the fray, cataloging the reasons. His body had not yet been recovered. No notice had been put in the newspapers, and no funeral plans had arrived from Crieff. He could be alive.

  Greer could barely see through the glass for her hands shaking—she had to lay atop a boulder to steady herself enough to take a better look.

  He was in his shirtsleeves, leaning against a stone wall beside the bothy. He was tall—at least as tall as the fellow from the road, but leaner, almost thin. The wind blew his linen shirt taut against his arms and shoulders, exposing a lean, wiry frame. But more importantly, his head was wrapped in a linen bandage, and beneath it, his scraggly hair was cropped unevenly, as if he’d gone after it with a pair of hedge shears. Exactly as one might do to rid oneself of the ferocious mat of blood and mud.

  The scraggly beard, too, might be the result of the fact that he would have neither the opportunity nor the need to shave in the primitive setting of the bothy.

  But the inescapable fact that put paid to all her wild hopes was that the moorkeeper Dewar had said that the lad from the road was dead. And prudence warned her not to approach a strange man alone on the moor. He could be dangerous.

  Still, she watched him.

  She watched through the glass as he worked, moving slowly, piling rock upon rock with careful deliberation to settle the heavy stones into place. He propped his forearm on the wall for a moment to survey his handiwork, and then reached back to stretch his back from the laborious heavy work.

  And in that moment, he unfolded himself like a windblown weed opening to the day, and turned his face upward to the autumn sun, closed his eyes and breathed in a long breath of air, as if he knew what it was like to feel suffocated within his own chest.

  Her wounded heart lifted in some strange but sure recognition—this feeling she knew. She, too, had felt near suffocated by her grief. The surety that it was the man from the road eased that ache and relieved her spirits. No matter that he was a stranger, she was inordinately glad to see him. Glad he was well, or at least better. So very, very glad he was not dead.

  He still looked the worse for wear—his face was discolored with splotches of bruising, with dark, livid black eyes that spread across the bridge of his broken nose. He looked a brute.

  A new, more prudent thought intruded—her mama’s warning that good men were seldom beaten for no reason.

  She should return to Dalshee immediately and tell her father and his moorkeeper what she had seen. This fellow might be a squatter upon the land, taking advantage of the bothy to hide.

  But then why was he working so laboriously to improve the wall? It surely could not be a good thing for a man so badly injured to be so alone. He looked tired. And cold. And hungry.

  She resolved to take a closer look, to be sure. To make a better, more reasoned judgment. She would stay safe—she had the dogs and she had her fowling piece, and she would stay on Dalshee land, on her side of the wide burn.

  And honestly, he looked as gentle and lost as a lamb left behind on the moorside—all alone.

  And because she had felt nothing but alone these past few weeks, she could not bear for him to feel that way.

  Greer picked her way carefully down the slope, moving stealthily from cover to cover so as not to draw any attention to herself. She stopped every now and again to re-train her glass—at one point he disappeared into the bothy, and at another he walked stiffly to the edge of the burn, where he slowly knelt on his hands and knees to cup water into his mouth.

  And then like a deer sensing danger, he looked up. And saw her.

  Her breath bottled up so hard in her chest, she could feel her blood pulsing at the hollow of her throat. Her hands went cold and slick where she gripped the spyglass—it was such an unnerving feeling to be spied upon. And worse to be caught spying upon him.

  He stood, and raised his hand in tentative greeting, as if he were as unsure of her as she was of him. His too-big linen shirt flapped like a loose sail in the wind. He looked harmless—vulnerable even. The feeling of pity that welled within was more than she could bear.

  “Hallo,” she called.

  “Hallo,” he answered back, his cautious call carried across the burn and brae by the wind.

  At her side, the wee dog Gent, who had so obediently clung to her for days, lifted his head, and put his nose to the wind to sniff suspiciously, as if he might divine some arcane knowledge of the man from his smell.

  Greer waited for his instinctive animal assessment—for a dog could sense a good man from a bad. Indeed, her papa had often said that he never trusted a man who didn’t like dogs, but he always trusted a dog who didn’t like a man.

  And Gent had definitely made up his mind—the wee dog burst from her side with a bark and tore down the hillside.

  There was nothing she could do but call after him. “Gent, no!” She let out three sharp whistles to call the disobedient animal back. “Come! Come away from there.”

  But the dog ignored her, bounding down the glen, and across the shallow burn toward the bothy, barking madly as he ran, tearing straight
for the big man as if he would tear him to bits.

  “Oh, Gent. No!” Greer grabbed her skirts and her gun, and ran after him.

  Lady Greer Douglas

  Dalshee House

  Perthshire, Scotland

  11 August, 1786

  Dear Greer,

  We have gone out to see some of the sights in the countryside, most notably the Palace of Versailles, and its inspiration, Vaux-le-Vicomte. Nowhere else on earth are Descartes’s words more happily illustrated: “Science should make us the masters and possessors of nature.” Though, I will admit that I rebelled when first reading the great scientist and natural philosopher—being Scots, I can’t agree that man is the sole possessor or complete master over nature. I think instead that there is too much worth and beauty in the wildness of the Earth, and that nature may exist in perfection without man’s interference. I daresay Descartes might have felt so, too, if he had ever seen the view from Glas Maol.

  How I should like to be there now—or actually tomorrow, on the Glorious 12th, when I might be with my grandfather on the moor, hunting up grouse. Alasdair agrees with me, for there is nothing like the beginning of the grouse season to make us miss the Highlands and moorsides of our homeland. And the beauty and wildness that live so companionably side by side there.

  I also daresay that, despite my Scots fondness for wildness, I am becoming more and more educated as a gentleman. My eye begins to discern differently, my ears begin to refine. I have even begun to appreciate art. Under Rory’s superior eye, I have made my first purchase as a collector. We all have—even Archie, who prefers to concentrate his appreciation on books.

  But what I should like more than anything in the midst of all this manicured countryside is a word—a glimpse—of the beautiful wildness of home. Might I ask that of you?

  Yours, EC

  Chapter 9

  The moment the high voice carried across the glen, Dewar’s caution flooded his brain—hide yourself away should anyone come. But he was too far away from the bothy to hide. And she had already seen him.

  And she was only a lass.

  Lass. The word slid seamlessly into his mind like a friend announcing himself at home. How he knew it, he didn’t know. Elusive, that’s what the words were, darting in and out of his brain. Sometimes they were there, and sometimes gone, like strangers who disembarked from a carriage and walked away, never to return.

  But this stranger was here. Standing like a wee figurehead on the opposite side of the burn, with her copper bright hair streaming in the wind like a standard flying atop a castle.

  A lass. A lass with a dog.

  A spaniel. This word he knew the same way he knew lass—without thinking.

  This spaniel dog was hurtling down the braeside, barking like mad as it charged across the burn, splashing and streaking toward him as if it’s wee life depended up it. The animal made the bank and simply hurled its wee, wet, soft and silky self into his arms to lick the very skin off his face with such plaintive whines of intent and entreaty that there was nothing to do but accept the press of adoration.

  He fell to his knees to try and contain the wee beastie, who was gyrating with joy, jumping and turning and curling into his legs as if the animal wanted to become a part of him. As if the dog could not get enough of the rough, joyous contact.

  “Gent!” The lass’s voice was high and clear like a lark. “Gent? Gent, come!”

  Aye. Gent—the dog plastering itself loyally to his side as if it were loath to let him from its sight.

  “Hello.” She stood on the other side of the burn, this bonnie, ginger-haired lass, who steadied her wary stance and lifted her chin before she spoke. “I’m so very sorry if the dog or I startled you. Gent’s usually so well-behaved.”

  “Nay,” he managed. After her clear voice, his sounded harsh and raspy. Rusted from recent disuse.

  But she made no mention. She frowned at the animal pressing itself into his leg. “Gracious, but he seems to like you very much, though I apologize if we’ve intruded upon you. I saw you from over on Glas Maol.” She gestured toward the mountaintop that loomed over the glen like a raptor.

  “Aye. Glas Maol.” These words came out of his mouth more easily—both his tongue and his brain had become more familiar with the name. Because he’d practiced it—along with the other words he was desperately trying to keep in his head—day after day, alone, talking to the wind to make himself remember. “The green mountain.”

  “Aye, just so.” She gave him a more confident smile. “I’m glad to see you’re better—that you’re up and about.” She took a step closer to the edge of the burn and raised her voice over the run of the water. “I’d been so very worried.”

  “You know me?” The thought gripped him tighter than the binding around his head and ribs.

  “Well, aye,” she qualified. “Do you remember? A fortnight ago? The carriage? We helped Dewar, the moorkeeper, and put you into his care. I assume he knows you’re here?”

  A strange image of bloodied lace against the polished wood of a cart leapt into his head, along with the sickening feeling of jolting over a rutted road, but things were all tangled up in the fog that crept across his brain concealing and revealing in unpredictable turn.

  Aye, of course, he wanted his mouth to say. Aye, I would definitely remember someone as bonnie and obviously kind as you, even if it were a lie. Even if he could not recall her place in the events that brought him here, there was something about her—something, if not familiar, then stirring. Something in her instinct for kindness to a stranger that made him want to know more of her, despite Dewar’s warning.

  But the words remained trapped inside his own head. Because in that moment, he was keenly aware of being less than he wanted to be—though he could not know what he had been, only what he was now.

  Yet, he felt diminished. Especially before this creature, this lass, with her soft voice and clear, kind eyes.

  “I hit my head.” But that was not right either—someone had hit him on the head. Someone had tried to kill him.

  “Aye, I see. So I am glad to see you better.” She picked her way across the dry rocks in the burn with two other, less enthusiastically friendly dogs following behind, and stepped forward through the rough grass, holding her hand out to him. “I’m Lady Greer Douglas. I’ve come from Dalshee.”

  Dalshee—the land on the other side of the burn to which she looked when she said it.

  “Aye, over the moor.” And then for no reason, his brain prompted him to say in a voice as creaky as a rusted farm cart, “Crieff.”

  “Aye, this side of the burn is most decidedly Crieff.” Her kind smile widened. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to find you better. Or at least on the mend.”

  She came close enough that he could see the warm kindness in her clear eyes, feel the balm of her smile, and smell the divine soft scent of blossoms. Better than the dog, who smelled wet and earthy, although the creature still twined about his legs was lovely. But the lass was lovelier.

  “Are you all alone here?” she asked. “Has Dewar left you to your own devices? I had hoped he would be able to return you to your family.”

  Too many questions at once. “No. I—” His mad, damaged brain struggled to keep up.

  “Or have you no family?” she finished for him. “Oh, I see.” But she looked around at the stone bothy as if she did not see at all.

  “No. I have—” Hell and blast. The damn truth was he had nothing that he could remember beyond coming to with Dewar a fortnight ago. He had only the bloody blankness in his brain and the unreliable strength of his slowly recovering body.

  “You do have family?” she assayed. “Is that what you were trying to say?”

  He had no idea what he was trying to say. He only knew that he was trying to say something. That some part of his darkened brain still knew that this is what one did—one carried on a conversation by speaking when one was spoken to.

  “Friends,” he said. But when he spoke, he sou
nded deranged, as if the words got all mangled on the way out of this throat. It was ugly and frustrating and hard, bloody damn hard. Because how he knew he had friends, when there was no evidence of such beyond auld Dewar, he could not say.

  His head began to ache.

  “It’s quite all right,” she said, laying her gloved hand on his forearm in a gesture he understood to be kind.

  And because she was soft and kind, he could not seem to stop himself from grasping the comfort she offered. From taking her hand and pressing the warmth and softness of her palm into his like a brand, heating him through to his bones.

  She stilled beside him, like the deer in the glens when they heard something, looking up at him with the same sort of wide-eyed, wary intensity.

  Don’t go, he wanted to say.

  Stay, he wanted to say. Stay and let me thank you. For your kindness. For your warmth and beauty.

  He wanted to reassure her that he was not as mad and strange as he must look, living out here in the wilderness in a hut like a hermit. But he could not. Because he feared the words would come out in some mangled, twisted moan that would startle her into flight like a deer at the sound of a gunshot.

  He closed his eyes for a long moment, trying to sort out the feelings in his head, trying to make his brain force the words from his tongue. But the damned hills shifted under his feet, and the vertiginous swirl of the wind pushed him sideways.

  “Oh, gracious.” She caught him up by his forearms, trying to take his weight upon her own. “Easy there. Let’s set you down on that bench.”

  “No. I’m fine. Just—” He knew she was right, and that he needed to park his arse on the flat slab of stone next to the bothy, where he often had to recover himself in the afternoon sun, resting like a great serpent on a heated rock, exhausted until his blood heated again.