Snowy Night With a Stranger

by Jane Feather

  A look came over Mr. Duncan that suggested he did indeed have liberty, and as if to prove it, he suddenly swept her up in his arm, took three steps back, and deposited her at the wagon. “Stay,” he ordered her, and walked on.

  “What? Who do you think you are?” Fiona called after him. “My brother will hear of this!”

  But Mr. Duncan was striding along, ignoring her.

  “Inquire as to supper!” she added hastily.

  She thought about following him, but thought the better of it, and stood next to the wagon, wincing a little against the hunger pangs she was suffering. Dusk was turning into a clear night; it would be quite cold. She hoped the inn was properly heated.

  Several minutes later, Mr. Duncan appeared again, striding toward her.

  “Ah! There you are! Did you order a supper?”

  “They’ve no lodging,” he said.

  Fiona blinked. Then looked at the wagon. “Oh no. Oh no, you canna expect me to stay in that all night, sir! I’ll catch my death, I will! I could perish! I could very well perish in that wagon!”

  He stepped around her, slid the saddlebag off his shoulder, and tossed it into the dark interior.

  “You may be quite accustomed to sleeping in the elements, but I am no’! I require a bed! And a bit of food!” she exclaimed, pressing her palms to her belly. “I grant you that your laird is something of a beast, but he would naugh’ stand for this, I am really fairly certain!”

  That seemed to give the man pause. He stilled and looked down at her so fiercely that Fiona recoiled a bit. “What?”

  “Wait here,” he said, and turned on his heel.

  “Wait here?” she exclaimed, hugging herself tightly as he strode up the road. “Where are you going?”

  He did not respond, naturally, and left Fiona to stand at the back of the wagon as a curious couple walked by her, eyeing her suspiciously.

  “For the love of Scotland,” she muttered, and peered up the road.

  The Buchanan man had disappeared from sight.

  Chapter Four

  The innkeeper had pointed Duncan to Mrs. Dillingham, a widow who lived down the road in a whitewashed cottage. The innkeeper said she would take the occasional family or young couple in need of lodging when the inn was full.

  Mrs. Dillingham looked rather alarmed to see Duncan at the door, but he hastily pardoned the intrusion and explained he was a Buchanan man, ferrying Lady Fiona Haines, the Earl of Lambourne’s sister, to Blackwood.

  The moment the word lady left his lips, Mrs. Dillingham’s doughy face lit with pleasure. “A lady!” she exclaimed happily in a thick Scots accent. “I’ve naugh’ had the pleasure of keeping a lady!” Her eyes were shining as Duncan imagined they would shine on a child or a favored pet.

  “If you would be so kind, I will compensate you well for it.”

  “I’d be delighted! Oh, but me abode is too humble for the likes of a lady, is it no’?”

  “She would be honored.” He hoped to high heaven she would be honored. She certainly wasn’t honored by wagons. “Might you have a bit of supper for her?” he asked, reaching for his coin purse.

  “Supper! Oh, good sir, I’ve no doubt a lady is accustomed to finer fare—”

  “She would be grateful for whatever you might have. She’s no’ eaten this day.”

  “No’ eaten! Poor thing! I’ve a stew in the kettle, if that will suit.”

  “Perfectly,” he said, and holding the coin purse in the claw of his left hand, he fished three coins from the bag and handed them to Mrs. Dillingham.

  “Three pounds?” she exclaimed, looking wide-eyed at the money. “Oh, she must be a fine lady indeed!”

  “Mind that you take good care of her,” he said. “Look after her properly, for she’s had a rough go today. I’ll fetch her.”

  He left Mrs. Dillingham scurrying about to tidy her cottage.

  Lady Fiona was precisely where he’d left her, at the back of the wagon, stomping her feet for warmth. When she saw him, she threw her arms wide and looked up at an increasingly dark sky, making a sound of relief. “You scared the wits out of me, you did!” she blustered as he approached. “For all I knew, you’d walked back to Edinburra as well, leaving me to stand here all night until the wolves came to feast upon my flesh!”

  Beneath his scarf, Duncan smiled. “You’ve quite an imagination, lass.”

  “And just where have you been, then?” she demanded as he reached around her into the wagon for the smallest of her portmanteaus. “There’s hardly a village here at all—I canna imagine where you’ve been off to, but I hope it was in the pursuit of food. On my word, I’ve never been so famished. Have you brought us anything to eat?”

  He glanced at her as he hooked the handles of the portmanteau on his bad hand. “No.”

  “Aaah,” she exclaimed, bending backward a bit and closing her eyes. “I would eat your glove were it presented on a proper plate. Honestly, I would eat it were it presented on a stick.”

  Duncan smiled in spite of himself. “Have you what you need in here?” he asked, lifting up the portmanteau.

  “What I need? What I need for what, pray tell? I can tell you this—there’s no’ as much as a morsel in there.”

  “Come,” he said, and began walking.

  “Where?” she demanded, but fell quickly in with him, glancing over her shoulder at the wagon. “Where are you taking me? If any harm comes to me, sir, I can assure you my brother, the earl, will find you and exact the proper revenge! He’s rather fierce when provoked.”

  He gave her a withering look. “So you’ve said.”

  “What, then?” she asked with a shrug of her slight shoulders as she marched alongside him. “I’ve quite a lot of cause for concern, really, if you consider it from my shoes. My maid has deserted me, I’ve been left in the hands of a man I donna know, and really, you have no’ said where we are going. Into the woods? It looks as if this road curves into the woods. I will grant you, it is dark, and I suppose it is possible there is more of the village around that bend, but…Oh my, do you smell that, Mr. Duncan?” she asked, pausing midstride and putting a hand on his useless arm to stop him. “Do you?” she asked, smiling up at him. “That is the most heavenly smell!” she exclaimed, clapping her gloved hands together at her breast. “That is the smell of roasted venison.”

  Duncan began to walk again, turning into the little gate of Mrs. Dillingham’s cottage.

  “One might find that sort of venison only in Scotland,” Fiona continued to prattle, following closely behind him. “The venison in London is rather stringy—even at the queen’s table, if you can believe it. She’s awfully frugal, the queen, and will settle for stringy venison.”

  Duncan gave the door a quick rap with his knuckles.

  “I would never, were I queen. When I was a girl, Cook used to make the most delicious venison stew. She used potatoes and—”

  The door swung open and the smell of venison stew wafted across the tiny courtyard. “Oh!” Mrs. Dillingham said, nervously patting her hair with her hand. She suddenly remembered herself and curtsied a bit lopsidedly. “How do you do, milady?”

  “Very well,” Fiona said, reaching to help her up. “I beg your pardon, Mrs….?”

  “Dillingham, your ladyship. Mrs. Dillingham at your service.”

  Fiona looked past her into the small cottage. “Something smells simply divine, Mrs. Dillingham.”

  “Oh, that’s just a wee bit of stew I’ve got on the fire,” she said, stepping back to give Fiona entry. “Come in, come in! My home is right humble, but I think it rather cozy.”

  Fiona looked uncertainly at Duncan.

  “Your lodgings,” he said. “I’ll come for you in the morning.”

  “My lodgings?” she said as Duncan deposited the portmanteau on the stoop. “But what about you?”

  He tipped his hat to Mrs. Dillingham and turned around, walking through the small yard and little gate. He paused to latch it and glanced back—Mrs. Dillingham had her
firmly by the elbow, but Fiona was looking at him. Looking, he thought, a little worried for him. It was a strange thing to see—no one worried about him. Quite the opposite.

  He continued walking up the hill, resisting the urge to look back. He had the horses to rest and water, and a space in the stables to sleep for which he’d paid a small fortune. If there was one thing he agreed upon with Fiona, it was that the stew smelled divine. It made his cold scones rather disappointing fare, but they would reach Blackwood tomorrow evening, God willing, and he would feast then.

  Duncan went about the business of unharnessing the horses and bedding them down with a sack of oats, then made a bed for himself in straw near a small fire that another driver had made. With his greatcoat and a pair of furs taken from the wagon, he was warm. He stretched long on his makeshift bed, his head propped up on a saddlebag, and chewed cold bread while he thought of a pair of beautiful golden eyes.

  It had been a long time since he’d beheld a woman’s eyes and the sparkle of happiness in them. Since the fire, his associations with women were confined to inns like the one here, with women he did not know and would never know, and in darkness so that they did not see the burns that had marred his left shoulder and arm.

  How ironic that there had been a time when women like Fiona Haines had flocked to him, their parents desperate for a match. He’d once been the most sought-after bachelor in all the Highlands, vain and proud and arrogant. He might have had his pick of any number of them, but he’d been more intent on sampling their wares than wedding himself to one of them for all eternity.

  And then, three years ago, on the eve of his twenty-seventh birthday, a fire had swept through Blackwood.

  Duncan rarely thought of that horrendous night—it was too painful to recall the event that had precipitated so much loss in his life—but he’d been at Blackwood with his usual coterie of friends: Devon MacCauley, Brian Grant, and Richard Macafee. There had been a pair of women from the village with them, as well as two of his cousins. His mother was in Paris, where she spent most of her time, and his cousins had retired early to another wing of the house, having lost their enthusiasm for the antics of four drunken men and two loose women.

  Aye, the four of them, notoriously fond of drink and women, had fallen well into their cups that night as they were wont to do, drinking from what seemed an endless vat of Scottish whisky.

  Duncan could remember very little of the events before the fire other than crying off when another bawdy parlor game was proposed. He remembered seeing Brian and Richard with the girls they’d brought up from the village, and supposed Devon must have been somewhere within the room, but for the life of him, he could never recall seeing him.

  Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective—Duncan never made it to his suite of rooms in the east wing. He’d been obliged by the amount of whisky he’d consumed to take refuge on a divan in the study just down the corridor from where they’d been engaged in adult games. Given his state of inebriation, it was nothing short of a miracle that he was awakened by an awful crash and the smell of smoke. After a moment of gaining his bearings, he’d rushed into the corridor—and into a wall of smoke. It was billowing out of the salon, where he’d left the lads.

  Brian and one of the lasses stumbled out of the room, coughing. Duncan had rushed to help them, but Brian had waved him off, urging him to save himself, they were all out.

  But they weren’t all out. As servants rushed past them toward the fire, and Duncan and his guests gathered in the front lawn, he realized Devon was missing. Brian and Richard could not say where he was. Duncan had felt a surge of sickening panic unlike anything he’d ever felt in his life, and had run back into the burning wing.

  Cold, hard fear was a sobering agent; he clearly remembered yanking his shirttail from his trousers and holding the tail over his mouth and nose. He remembered how intense the heat was from the blaze in the salon—the furniture, the draperies, the carpet, all in flames. He pushed past the brave souls who were trying desperately to beat the fire into submission, ignored their cries to come back, and entered the room.

  The smoke was so intense that he’d dropped to his knees. But still Duncan had crawled, searching for his friend, desperate to find him.

  He never found Devon. A moment after he entered the room, a piece of drapery and its apparatus had come tumbling down in a fiery blaze. His shoulder and arm and a sliver of his face were badly burned. His servants had pulled him out of the fire and rolled him on the carpet to extinguish the fire on his body. Duncan remembered only that; the rest of it, including the rapidity with which the fire spread, destroying the western wing of what had been a grand estate, he did not recall.

  The charred remains still stood—Duncan had not yet found the will or energy to repair it. The shell stood as a silent but constant reminder of all that he’d lost.

  Devon’s remains were found a few days later—or rather, the soles of his boots and a gold ring were found in the salon. He’d fallen so far into his cups he’d passed into oblivion, and his absence had gone unnoticed by his equally inebriated friends.

  The cause of the fire was never discovered, but no one needed to suggest it was a drunken mishap that had sparked it. Most around Blackwood blamed Duncan and his libertine ways for it. So did Duncan.

  He spent weeks in a painful fog, and it was months before he could manage the physical pain. He suspected it would be years before he could manage the emotional pain of it. To make matters worse, people who had once flocked to him were repulsed by his burns and disgusted by the unnecessary death of his friend. Duncan had gone from king of Highland society to pariah.

  Yet he could scarcely complain—after all, his life had been rather shallow before the fire. He’d lived from one moment to the next without regard for anyone but himself.

  And while he still dreamed of himself as a whole man, with a functioning arm and an unmarked face, he nonetheless felt himself a profoundly changed man. He kept to himself these days, using Cameron as a front man to do his business so that he did not repulse anyone with his unsightly appearance. He did not enjoy the genteel company of women as he once had, but then again, he had come to regret his cavalier treatment of them and everyone else in his life when he’d had a life to speak of.

  He regretted so many things.

  Duncan shifted beneath the coats and rugs and closed his eyes, methodically stretching the fingers of his scarred hand as far as he could, then closing them again, over and over as he did every night, hoping that somehow some use would come back to the gnarled fingers.

  Chapter Five

  Fiona was awakened by the smell of cooked ham. Mrs. Dillingham was at the long table in the kitchen cutting thick slices of bread when Fiona came down from her attic bedroom. At her elbow was a pail.

  “Good morrow, milady!” she said cheerfully, “I hope you slept with the angels.”

  “I did. Thank you.”

  “‘Twas me pleasure, it was. Eat, eat!” she exclaimed, gesturing to the feast that graced the table. “I’ve made your breakfast.”

  Grateful, Fiona sat. As she ate, Mrs. Dillingham stood at the table and put the slices of bread, ham, and other items wrapped in paper into a pail. When she’d filled it with what seemed like enough food to feed an army, she picked up a handful of straw and began to stuff that in the pail, too.

  “You must hurry on, then, for your man is anxious to be on his way,” Mrs. Dillingham said. “He says he feels snow coming, and you’ve still a way to go to Blackwood.” She smiled at Fiona as she stuffed more hay into the pail. “He wouldna even have a bite, if you can believe it, but I’m no stranger to stubborn men, no I’m no’. I insisted he take some food along.”

  “How very kind of you.”

  “A big man like that canna work and see after you on an empty belly, can he, now?”

  Apparently, she’d not be traveling on an empty belly, either. The food was delicious; Fiona ate until she was quite stuffed.

 
Mrs. Dillingham tested the heft of the pail. “There we are,” she said, apparently satisfied with her work, and as Fiona stood, she handed the pail to her. “Here you are, milady. A bit of food for your journey.”

  “For me?” Fiona asked, surprised. “How very kind, Mrs. Dillingham. Thank you. I’ve some coins in my portmanteau—”

  “No, no, your man has paid for it.”

  “He did?” she said, startled.

  “He was right generous when it came to your lodging, milady. Said I was to take proper care of you.” She smiled. “Take it, then, and Godspeed.”

  Fiona took it. And when she walked outside the little cottage into a gray day, her man, as Mrs. Dillingham had put it, was standing at the fence, waiting for her. “Good day, sir!” Mrs. Dillingham called out to him. He nodded in response.

  Fiona walked across the yard to him, her portmanteau in one hand, the pail of food in the other. “Good morning,” she said.

  He hardly spared her a glance as he took the portmanteau from her hand and placed it carefully onto his bad hand. “Morning,” he responded as he took the pail from her. “Shall we?”

  “Yes.” She turned and waved to Mrs. Dillingham, then followed Mr. Duncan up the road. Mr. Duncan kept his gaze on the road, but Fiona looked curiously at him. “Mrs. Dillingham said you paid for my keep.”

  “Aye.”

  “Why?” she asked. “I can pay my way,” she said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

  “We’ll settle at the end of the journey.”

  “Will we indeed? You are quite free with your commands, Mr. Duncan. Funny, I did no’ think you looked like a Duncan when first we met, but now I think I am beginning to see it.”

  That earned her a curious glance. “Pardon?”

  “I did no’ think a Duncan should be quite as tall as you,” she said, eyeing his torso. Or as broad. “Or as taciturn,” she said. “I thought a Duncan would be a bit of a prattler. A rooster.”

  “Rooster?”

  “Mmm,” she said, looking at him studiously. “Rooster. You have a bit of it in you.”