She stared, her mouth agape. All three of them had bright red hair, darker red bushy beards, and shoulders so muscular and wide they put her in mind of a team of oxen.
“Hallo, Logan.” The first man out the door offered Logan a brief nod, but he wasn’t looking at Logan. He was looking at her, and he didn’t seem at all impressed. He stared at her for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite decide what sort of creature she might be, then jerked his chin in her direction. “Who’ve ye got here?”
Logan leapt down from his horse’s back and strode across the yard to shake hands with the red-headed giant. “Robertson.” He nodded to the other men, then turned and waved a hand toward Juliana. “This is Lady Juliana Bernard. She’s a friend of Fitzwilliam’s, and has come to Castle Kinross for a visit.”
It took every bit of Juliana’s composure not to blanch when the three pairs of hard blue eyes turned on her. None of the three of them said a word, but they stared at her for so long her knees trembled underneath her skirts. Dear God, each of them was more enormous than the next, and they looked as if they’d welcome the chance to squeeze the life of out of her.
“Lady?” One of them asked, just when Juliana was ready to sink under the weight of those cold blue gazes.
“Yes.” Juliana gathered her courage and took a step forward. “How do you do?”
Three sets of red eyebrows shot up. One of the men turned and spat on the ground, then dragged a massive hand across his mouth. “She’s English?”
This wasn’t asked in the spirit of friendly curiosity. He fairly seethed with menace, and Juliana, whose courage had failed her, was unable to say a word in response.
Logan cast her an impatient look, but he did take pity on her. “Aye, she’s English, and under my protection.” He didn’t say anything more, but the other men seemed to understand him readily enough.
The Englishwoman—as undesirable as her presence might be—was to be treated if not with courtesy, then at least with forbearance.
“But what’s she doing ’ere?” The smallest of the three giants shoved his way past his brothers, and gave Logan a baffled look. “What’re we meant to do with ’er?”
“That’s a foolish question, Callum,” Logan said, that smug smile once again playing about his lips.
The other men didn’t seem to find it foolish in the least. They blinked at Logan, then exchanged glances with each other.
Logan raised an eyebrow. “She’s come to help us search for the sheep, of course. Or the poacher. Whichever comes first.”
“She?” Callum swept a doubtful look from the top of Juliana’s head to the toes of her riding boots. “But she’s no bigger than a sheep ’erself!”
“I beg your pardon!” Juliana folded her arms across her chest, piqued. “I’m much bigger than a sheep, I assure you!”
“An English sheep, maybe,” Callum muttered.
Juliana huffed out a breath, but before she could offer a word in her defense she was interrupted by a hearty laugh from Logan. She jerked her gaze toward him, and her eyes widened.
Yes, a very nice mouth, indeed.
He’d put it to good use at last, too, with that smile. Mocking as it was, it wasn’t the sort of smile a lady could dismiss with a shrug. But then it wasn’t aimed at her, was it?
Logan slapped Callum on the back. “You never know, Callum. She may surprise you, and prove a useful member of the search party.”
It was plain by his arrogant grin Logan thought it unlikely she’d prove anything but a nuisance, and if she could judge by their discontented mumbling, his tenants thought the same. Juliana regarded them all with narrowed eyes, her determination rising right along with her temper. Logan Blair might go to the devil, and take that infuriating smirk with him! She was going to make him swallow those words. She’d find a damn sheep today if it took until midnight, or she died trying.
She marched over to her horse, swung herself up into the saddle, and turned a cool look on the four men still standing in the yard. “Well? Do you intend to stand about all day, discussing the size of English sheep, or will you actually come and find them?”
Callum Robertson’s red brows drew together. “Bhig galla,” he muttered.
Logan threw back his head in a laugh. Whatever Callum had just said, he seemed to find it very funny, indeed.
Juliana’s lips pinched together. “What does that mean?”
No one answered her, but Logan let out another chuckle that made Juliana want to tear his hair out. The Robertson brothers—for indeed, brothers they must be, for no three men could look more alike—mounted their own horses, and in the next moment they were all off, clouds of dust rising from ten pairs of hooves as they thundered from the farmyard.
Once Robertson had pointed out the general area where the sheep had gone missing, Logan pulled out a tattered map and marked off a large section of land with that spot in the center. They split up into two groups, with Juliana, Logan, and Callum going in one direction, and the two other Robertson brothers in the other. They spent the rest of the afternoon riding in an ever-narrowing circle around the place where the sheep had disappeared. They met up at the close of each circle to confer, then set off again, moving a little closer to the center each time.
By the time they’d gone around twice, Juliana had begun to understand the enormity of her foolishness in insisting on accompanying Logan on the search. It was back-breaking, exhausting work—far more strenuous than anything she was used to. Her legs were screaming with pain, and her bottom, which had been courteous enough to remain numb for the earlier part of the ride, suddenly awoke, and made its fury known. She’d gone cross-eyed from peering under bushes and scrub brush for a glimpse of white wool, and her back was soaked with sweat.
Still, not a single whisper of complaint crossed her lips.
As the afternoon wore on she caught Logan watching her with a measuring look in his eyes, but she only raised her chin and rode on. She’d fall off her horse in a dead faint before she’d gratify him with even a murmur of protest.
After the third time around without any sign of a sheep they paused, and the men bent their heads over the map. Juliana stayed a little apart, half-listening to the four of them argue about which direction to take next when a faint noise caught her attention.
They’d stopped near the edge of a small wood, and the noise seemed to be coming from the trees. She stilled, listening, and after a moment she heard it again.
It sounded like…bleating.
Juliana straightened in the saddle, her ears pricked. Yes! It was definitely bleating, but she couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.
“Did you hear that?” She brought her horse closer to the men, but they were gathered in a tight circle, and they didn’t shift to make space for her. “I heard a sheep or a lamb bleating!”
No one paid her the least bit of attention.
“We’ve already been ’round the south edge three times.” Callum tapped a finger against the map. “They wouldn’t ’a come all this way.”
Logan was shaking his head. “They have before. I say we circle back one more time.”
Juliana raised her voice. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but I’m quite certain I heard—”
“I say we ’ead back toward the farm.” Robertson scratched his beard, frowning. “They don’t usually wander so far.”
“For pity’s sake, will you listen to me? I tell you, there’s a bleating sheep not five yards from—”
“If they were that close to the farm, they’d ’ave made their way back by now,” Callum insisted.
Juliana looked from one man to the next, but none of them spared her a glance. “Oh, bother this.” She wheeled her horse around and headed in the direction from which she thought the sound had come.
No one tried to stop her, and no one asked where she was going.
By the time
they remembered her presence and looked up to find her, she was gone.
Chapter Nine
It was some time before Logan realized Lady Juliana had disappeared.
He and the Robertson brothers had been deep in discussion about which direction their search should take when Callum Robertson, who’d dismounted and wandered off to take care of his personal business, sauntered out of the wood, looked around, and asked, “What’s happened to yer wee English lass, Blair?”
“Nothing’s happened to her. She’s right…”
But she wasn’t right there. Lady Juliana had been a few paces behind him, prattling some nonsense about bleating lambs, but she and her horse had vanished. Logan glanced around, shading his eyes from the sun. There was no sign of either of them.
Lady Juliana was gone.
Now he’d noticed her absence, he suddenly became aware at least ten minutes had passed since she’d ceased blathering in his ear. He peered around again, uneasiness tightening his stomach.
There was no telling how much trouble Lady Juliana could get into in ten short minutes. Her father had lost track of her for only a few weeks, and she’d made it all the way to Scotland.
“She’s wee, but she’s hearty.” Brice, the eldest of the Robertson brothers, nodded at Logan. “She’s that look about ’er like a brisk wind could blow ’er off ’er horse, but she’s sturdy like. Wee, but stronger than she looks.”
This was high praise indeed coming from Brice Robertson, but Logan wasn’t interested in Brice’s philosophical musings about women. “She may be small, but she’s not small enough to disappear. Come on, then. She can’t have gone far. We’ll have to go find her, and then we can carry on searching for the sheep.”
Logan kicked Fingal into a trot and headed for the woods, and the other men fell in behind him. When they found Lady Juliana, he was going to wring her delicate white neck. What did she mean, running off like that without a word to anyone? It had already been a grueling day, and it promised to become more so before it was over. They’d been riding for hours without any sign of the missing sheep, and now they were obliged to halt their search to chase after a troublesome chit who was too foolish to know better than not to scamper about the Highlands by herself.
He should never have let her come with him today. As soon as he noticed she was following him, he should have taken her right back to—
“That lass don’t carry on much,” Callum Robertson offered suddenly, as if he’d been considering the matter for some time. “She looks like the sort who would, ye ken. English sorts do, especially the smallish women.” He nodded wisely. “But that lass never moaned once all day, not even when Brice’s horse kicked that cloud of dust in ’er face.”
His brothers nodded their agreement. Logan kept quiet, but he silently admitted to himself it was nothing but the truth. By midday he could see the rough terrain and the relentless pace were wearing her down, but she hadn’t uttered a single word of protest all day. She’d listened to his instructions, and though she’d struggled at times, she’d kept pace with four men three times her size.
“Aye, she seems a good lass. Bonnie, too.” Dougal, who was the second youngest of the brothers and a favorite with the ladies, winked at Logan. “Just as well she came out today. I’d rather look at ’er than any of you.”
His brothers laughed, but Logan, who was far more irritated by this comment than he had any right to be, scowled at him. “Never mind looking at her. She’s not here for you, Dougal Robertson.”
“No,” Dougal agreed, mildly enough, but his eyes were glinting with mischief when they met Logan’s. “I ’spect she’s yours, innit she, Blair?”
Logan gritted his teeth. If the offer of her hand made her his, then she was damn well his, all right.
Then again, Lady Juliana hadn’t offered her hand so much as demanded his. Not that it would make any difference to the Robertson boys. They’d consider any offering or demanding of hands a betrothal, and the last thing Logan needed was the entire clan gossiping about how he was going to marry an English lady.
“She won’t be anyone’s unless we find her, so stop your blathering, Dougal, and put your eyes to work instead of your mouth.”
Dougal chuckled, but he obeyed this command, and they searched along the edge of the tree line without speaking. For the first mile or so Logan was distracted by fantasies of tossing Lady Juliana onto her horse and riding her straight back to Castle Kinross, but as they continued on without any sign of her, his irritation began to give way to concern. It was only another hour until the sun set, and there was a chance a poacher was nearby.
Where could she have gotten to? Had she gone down the far side of a hill, and lost her way? It seemed unlikely she’d get so easily turned around. Lady Juliana’s mind was even sharper than her tongue.
Was it possible she’d lost patience with him and had returned to Castle Kinross on her own? Again, it didn’t seem likely, but he hadn’t been particularly kind to her today. He’d let his temper get the best of him this morning, and he’d been surly with her ever since.
Guilt stabbed at him as he recalled that she’d been trying to tell him something right before she disappeared. He hadn’t paid any more attention to her than he would a streak of dust on his boot.
What had she been saying? Something about a lamb bleating—
“Did ye hear that?” Callum pulled his horse up with a quick jerk and sat still for a moment, listening. “It sounds like—”
“Like a lamb bleating. Just before Lady Juliana disappeared she was trying to tell me something about a lamb. She must be nearby.” Logan called the words over his shoulder as he rode deeper into the woods.
By now he’d grown desperate to lay eyes on her and assure himself she was still in one piece, but as soon as they got into the woods their progress slowed to a crawl. There’d been a violent storm the previous week, and they were obliged to pick their way over fallen branches and downed trees.
Logan followed the sound of the lamb, whose frightened bleating had taken on a new sense of urgency. It was squealing and carrying on as if some wild animal were about to pounce on it, a circumstance that did nothing to ease Logan’s mind.
As they drew closer, Logan heard rushing water. He turned to Brice with a puzzled frown. “Is that Ruthven Burn? Jesus, it’s flowing fast.”
Brice nodded. “Aye. It’s like to have swollen past its banks from the storm.”
For the most part Ruthven Burn was wide and shallow—more a creek than a river—but some parts of it were deeper than others, and it was known to overflow its banks after a torrential rain.
“That could be where your sheep have got to, couldn’t it?” Logan was more concerned about Lady Juliana than the sheep, but he had a suspicion where they found one, they’d find the other.
“Mayhap they wandered here to drink from the burn.” Brice frowned. “Every now and then they come down this far, but not often, and they find their way back to the farm quick enough.”
“They may have come down and gotten trapped in the deeper water.” Logan’s tone was grim. Sheep weren’t the stupid creatures many people believed them to be, but their intellect wasn’t such that they could assess the depth or speed of the burn. And where one sheep went, others would follow.
Instinct told him they were about to find a half-dozen drowned sheep in the Ruthven Burn, but when they cleared the woods at last and emerged onto the bank, what he saw instead was far, far worse than drowned sheep.
He stared, the blood going cold in his veins.
The burn had indeed swollen past its banks, and an enormous tree had torn loose and fallen across the rushing water. Three or four sheep who’d gone down to the bank to drink had gotten trapped amongst the tree roots and drowned. The sight of their helpless, swollen bodies was enough to unnerve even stalwart farmers like the Robertson brothers, but it wasn’t the sheep that made Loga
n go numb with panic.
A tiny lamb was perched on the thick trunk of the fallen tree, halfway across the width of the burn. It was stranded there, bleating piteously, its fleece smeared with mud and its spindly legs shaking.
And there, her arms flung wide to balance herself was Lady Juliana, creeping along the trunk toward the lamb, one tiny step at a time.
“What the devil is that lass about?” Callum Robertson was the last to make it to the edge of the bank. He took in the scene with one glance, and was startled into an ill-advised shout.
“Shut it.” Dougal slapped a hand over his brother’s mouth. “Ye’ll make ’er fall!”
Logan held his breath, his heart crowding into his throat. His body tensed to leap for Lady Juliana, but she didn’t fall, or even stumble. She only paused, and said in a steady voice, without turning to look at them, “Quiet, if you please. If the poor thing takes fright, she’ll tumble in and drown in an instant.”
“She’ll drown?” It took every bit of Logan’s control not to shout at her to return to the safety of the bank at once, but he managed to keep his voice calm. “You’ll both drown if you fall in, lass. You should have thought of that before you crawled out there!”
This warning didn’t make any impression on Lady Juliana, who continued to make her way across the trunk with no more concern for her own safety than if she were moving through the figures of the quadrille. “Nonsense. I know how to swim.”
Logan was tempted to ask her if she’d ever gone swimming in a fast-moving burn in boots and a riding habit. Instead, he held his tongue. She was less likely to panic if she didn’t stop to consider the real danger she was in.
He was forced to admit she looked very far from panicking. Logan couldn’t imagine how the indolent life of an English aristocrat could have produced a lady of such nerve, but there was no question she was as steady as the massive tree trunk under her feet.
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