Hero in the Highlands

by Suzanne Enoch

  Dear God. Fiona shot to her feet, ice slicing through her. Gabriel had already launched himself across the top of his table, charging for the well with dozens of men and women on his heels. Not this, she prayed silently, hiking her skirt to her knees and sprinting to catch up. Not this, please.

  * * *

  Gabriel ran, barking orders for someone to fetch rope, ladders, anything they could use to reach the bottom of the well. He couldn’t remember even setting eyes on the damned thing, and now—

  Christ. The thought of a child drowning while he dined on sandwiches both sickened and horrified him. He’d seen dead children, and they still haunted his dreams. This, though, was one of his. His responsibility, his care, his duty. He could be sick later, horrified when lives didn’t depend on his actions. If nothing else, being a soldier had taught him that. Act first, feel later—if at all.

  A half-dozen more children stood leaning over the three-foot stone circle to look down the dark hole in the middle. “Get back,” he snapped, jumping up onto the foot-wide lip and squatting to look down. He was ready to jump, but he wasn’t going to risk landing on a struggling child’s head. He needed to see, first.

  The well looked like a gaping, bottomless black maw. Even worse than the dark, though, was the silence. He sank down onto his stomach, shading his eyes from the sunlight. Behind him adults chattered in a panic, trying to figure out which child was missing.

  His eyes began to adjust, and slowly a thin white shape came into view, protruding from the still black surface of the well water. He felt like ice inside. An arm? A leg? Abruptly the shape registered, and air flooded back into his lungs.

  “It’s a cow,” he said, looking up to meet Fiona’s horrified gaze, to see relief return blood to her face. “It’s Brian Maxwell’s cow.”

  Fiona’s hands went to her mouth, her eyes bright with tears. “A cow?” she repeated, visibly shaking. “Are ye certain?”

  He nodded, wanting to hold her. “I can see an upturned horn and part of the muzzle.”

  “Oh, thank God,” she breathed. “Thank God.”

  “How the devil did a cow end up in the well?” Niall Garretson demanded, the miller’s voice unsteady.

  They’d all been shaken. Around Gabriel, relieved, half-hysterical laughter filled the air, coupled with speculation about how any cow had ended up at the bottom of a well. He sat as the big blacksmith pounded up, ropes coiled over his shoulder. “Any idea how to pull a cow out of here?” Gabriel asked him, gesturing.

  “A cow? Thank Saint Andrew.” Tormod leaned over the lip beside him. “Horses and rope, I reckon. Someone’ll have to go doon there to get a line around her.”

  Abruptly Brian Maxwell was there, peering over the side. “My red?” he asked, tears running down his freshly shaved face. “Oh no, lass. Ye ken she likes to wander, Yer Grace, but she’s a clever one, she is. She’d nae just jump into a well.”

  Gabriel refrained from pointing out that the first time he’d encountered the red-furred cow, she’d been trapped up to her chest in a mudhole. That didn’t seem especially clever of her. “However she got in there, Brian,” he said, gripping the farmer’s shoulder, “we need to get her out. This is the village’s main water supply.”

  The farmer nodded. “Aye. Aye, I ken. My Brady, he’ll do it. He’s a good lad.” A young man of about fifteen stepped forward, his expression grim.

  It had been on the tip of Gabriel’s tongue to countermand that suggestion, and to announce that of course he would go down there himself. Strouth was his land, these, his tenants. The risk should be his. Before he could say it aloud, though, he caught sight of the villagers around him nodding their approval at the farmer’s words.

  His pride didn’t like it, but his common sense understood. Brian had been negligent—again—and allowed his cow to escape her pasture. Brian therefore needed to make this right. He held out a hand to the boy. “Come up here, Brady,” he said. “We’ll tie a rope around you and lower you down. You’ll need to secure the second rope around both horns, and you’ll have to do it mainly by feel.”

  The lad nodded. “I ken. Let’s get her oot before she spoils the water.”

  Gabriel and Tormod tied the rope under the boy’s armpits while several others unhitched three pairs of horses from the waiting wagons and harnessed them together. When everything was ready, Brady sent his father a nod and then scooted off the well’s stone lip.

  While Brian hung over the edge and motioned them to let out rope, Gabriel, Tormod, and two other villagers slowly lowered Brady Maxwell into the darkness. They played out nearly twenty-five feet of rope before the farmer announced that his boy was in the water.

  More men lowered a second rope, and then what seemed like an hour later but must have been only a few minutes, Brady yelled that he’d finished. They hauled the boy up.

  “There’s blood in the water,” Brady said breathlessly, as they freed him from the wet rope and Fiona threw a picnic blanket over his shaking shoulders. “I couldnae make oot how much, or where it came from.”

  “Let’s get her up, and we’ll find out.”

  With six horses, even the waterlogged weight of the dead cow moving straight up the inside of the stone wall of the well didn’t present much of a problem. A moment later and the bloated carcass with its twisted horns bumped heavily over the lip of the well and thudded to the ground.

  “She’s well gone,” Tormod noted, wrinkling his nose at the smell. “She must’ve wandered into the village last night, tried to climb up fer some reason, and fallen in.”

  “Aye,” Brian said mournfully. “Dogs always spooked her. She might’ve been affrighted.”

  To Gabriel that didn’t seem particularly plausible. The red beast had been accustomed to wandering and likely to all the dogs in the village, as well. But if it hadn’t been an accident, then someone had dragged a dead cow into the middle of Strouth, dumped it deliberately into the well, and escaped—all without being noticed.

  “It were the curse,” the farmer said, toeing the cow. “We all knew someaught would happen. If the bairns hadnae seen that twisted horn of hers, we’d nae have noted anything was amiss until folk started getting sick.”

  Gabriel exchanged a glance with Fiona. Did she have the same questions? Was she wondering who might gain from poisoning the well water? “Let’s get this away from the village and burn it,” he said. “If some illness caused her to do this, I don’t want anyone eating the beef.”

  “A good milking cow lost and nae a thing gained,” Brian muttered. “’Tis the curse, poor lass.”

  “We’d all best leave the well be fer a few days,” Fiona said, putting her hand on Gabriel’s arm for balance so she could lean over and look into the depths. “The water flows doon there, but we dunnae ken how slowly.” She straightened. “There’s food still to eat, and enough’s been wasted today.”

  Gabriel placed her hand around his arm again as they and most of the villagers wandered back to the picnic. Several of them crossed their fingers and spat over their shoulders as they passed the well. “We were lucky,” he murmured, low enough that only Fiona could hear him. “Twice over.”

  “I nearly choked on my own heart,” she returned, “thinking it was a bairn who’d fallen in. But if they hadnae all gathered aboot to play here today, all we’d know fer a time is that Brian Maxwell’s cow went missing again.”

  “Do you think it was an accident?” he asked, lowering his voice still further. “Because I don’t.”

  “I hope it was. I truly do. But I wouldnae wager any coin on it.” She glanced over her shoulder. “And I’m thinking ye should keep those extra men watching the sheep.”

  He nodded, a smile tugging at his mouth. “You are a sensible lass.”

  “And ye’re a fine man, stubborn though ye are. I dunnae think I was the only one to notice how ye stepped right into the middle of the lads to help. And ye let Brian save face. It almost makes me want to kiss ye.”

  “‘Almost’?”

&
nbsp; “Aye,” she said, grinning at the ground. “Almost. I’ve nae wish to turn this from a picnic into a hanging. Though I’m beginning to believe ye’d get by with a good flogging, after this.”

  “That’s encouraging. Thank you.”

  She bumped against his side. “I think ye should thank me later.”

  Oh, that he would do. Several times.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fiona wakened from a dead sleep, a sound she couldn’t quite identify pulling at her. Warmth surrounded her, and she shifted just a little to feel Gabriel’s solid form against her back. He had one arm stretched beneath her head, and the other draped over her ribs, and she wanted to stay that way forever. She loved the stubborn Sassenach and the way he was so willing to take on the impossible without even a second’s hesitation. When they were like this, she could see them together in a future with fields full of butterflies and crops growing tall and green.

  In the dark she could also acknowledge that her being in love with him wouldn’t prevent him from marrying someone else, that he’d never mentioned words like “marriage” or “love” or “forever” in her presence. She took a breath. He was a soldier, accustomed to fighting in order to survive from one day to the next. Perhaps “forever” never occurred to him. And really, if all his day-to-days ended in her company, she had nothing about which to complain.

  A low-pitched cry echoed dimly into the room, sounding like it had come from very far away. She couldn’t make out the words, but that had to be what had awakened her before. The hair on the back of her neck pricked.

  “Did you hear that?” Gabriel asked, his voice alert.

  “I did. I couldnae make it oot, though.”

  He stretched, then sat up. “I’ll go find out. Stay here and keep the bed warm.”

  Fiona scooted to the edge of the bed. “Ye can get a wee coal pan fer that, ye sluggard.”

  The voice came again, from closer, and this time she could make it out. “Fire!”

  Gabriel drew in a sharp breath. “The cow wasn’t an accident,” he muttered, grabbing for his trousers.

  She had nothing but her night rail with her. Cursing, she slipped it on over her head. “I’m getting dressed,” she said, running for the door.

  “Fiona, if you smell smoke, don’t stop for a gown,” he ordered, already stomping into his boots.

  “If I smell smoke, I’m coming back fer ye,” she shot back, and pulled open his door. The hallway was empty, but she could hear voices coming from the direction of the stairs. The air didn’t smell of anything but an evening’s chill, either, and so after a quick mental debate over whether she should dress or go find out where the fire was, she hurried to her bedchamber.

  Muttering curses to herself, she yanked open her wardrobe. In the dark she couldn’t tell which gown she touched first, but that didn’t matter. She left on the night rail and pulled the gown on over it. It wasn’t much, but it would provide her at least a little additional warmth. She also dug out her heavy work boots, which would likely serve her better than any of her prettier, less practical shoes.

  A heavy man’s coat went on over everything, and she headed back for the door, pausing only to grab a ribbon so she could tie back her loose hair. She still didn’t smell any smoke, but it was a big house. And Gabriel would be ahead of her, diving directly into wherever the most danger lay.

  On the second-floor landing she finally spied someone running below her. “Lochie!” she called, leaning down to see the second footman as he headed toward the front of the house. “What’s going on?”

  “The mill, Miss Fiona. It’s blazing, Oscar said. We’re all heading up with buckets. The lads in the stable are getting wagons.”

  Her relief that Lattimer wasn’t in flames vanished just as quickly as it came. “Go!” she said, motioning at him. “I’ll catch up.”

  The footman continued on his way. Someone had thought to light lamps on the bottom floor, at least, so she could see where she was going. Fleming stood in the foyer, which would have been a normal sight except for the fact that he wore only his nightshirt with his coat pulled on over it. “Is the rest of the house awake?” she asked, moving sideways as another handful of servants ran outside past her.

  “Aye, miss. The laird ordered me to stay, though, with some of the footmen. He said to watch for anyone who shouldnae be here.”

  She nodded. “First the cow and now this. Someone’s doing this, George. It’s nae some curse that sets a fire.”

  “Then watch yerself, Fiona, lass. And watch oot fer the laird. He took his horse; I heard someone say he rode oot bareback.”

  Of course he had. “I will. I’ll send ye back word as soon as I know anything.”

  One of the wagons rolled past as she reached the stable, and she grabbed for the tail. Two of the grooms pulled her aboard, and she sat down between them. The road wasn’t meant to be traveled this quickly at night, but the fire wouldn’t wait for them. “Stop at the loch and fill the buckets,” she ordered, as Loch Sìbhreach came into view on her left. “Tilly, ye and Diarmid stay right here and make certain the wagons behind us do the same.”

  The footman and the maid jumped to the ground. “Aye, Miss Fiona. We’ll see to it.”

  The moment they crested the low hill she could see the glow in the center of the valley. The villagers in Strouth must have heard the alarm being raised as well, because she could see the line of lanterns heading along the road that intersected with the path to the mill. Good. Strouth was a bit closer than Lattimer was, and every second would count.

  “It smells like burned bread,” one of the others said, as they rumbled and jolted toward the orange and yellow blaze.

  “That’s the sacks of flour and grain burning,” Hugh replied grimly, nothing but a dressing robe and a pair of breeches between the footman and the chilly night.

  They needed to move faster. Gabriel’s comment that they were being attacked, that this and Brian Maxwell’s cow hadn’t been accidents, made sense. And added in with Lattimer’s other misfortunes over the past years, it infuriated her.

  Someone had stolen sheep, yes, but she’d put that to poachers, to the desperate act of a few desperate individuals. The irrigation gates that failed one by one, the mill’s grindstone that seemed to crack at least once a year, seed grain that got wet and rotted—everyone else had put those and dozens of other incidents to the MacKittrick curse. She’d decided it was general bad luck, brought on by the property’s slowly diminishing finances that kept her constantly behind on repairs.

  But if someone had done this … Fiona clenched her cold fingers into fists. She needed to talk with Gabriel. Previously her familiarity and friendship and kinship with everyone had given her an advantage over him, made her necessary—or so she’d thought. Now, though, all this pointed to someone she knew, and she hadn’t a clue who it might be. Nor could she go about threatening and accusing people. As much as she would hate to see him do it, Gabriel could be more forceful than she. And he was certainly more cynical and suspicious to begin with.

  The trees gave way to meadow, and she gasped. The grain mill wasn’t merely burning. It was fire. She couldn’t make out anything but orange and yellow flames roaring halfway to heaven, obscured only by black smoke and broken here and there by black sticks that had once been beams but that now looked crazily like some giant’s burning bones.

  A line of people stretched from the stream to the fire, the buckets they passed along heavy and reflecting wet in the light from the fire. The wagon lurched to a halt, and Hugh helped her to the ground, grabbed up a bucket, and ran toward the fire. Fiona turned a quick circle, looking for Gabriel.

  Her first concern should have been for Niall and Letitia Garretson and their young daughters Jenny and Rose, but she couldn’t help herself. She needed to know he was safe. It was so odd to realize that nothing and no one mattered as much as he did, even weighted against people she’d known all her life. Even when she’d devoted the past four years to looking after all of them�
��every single life here in the meadow.

  She frowned. Wherever Gabriel was, he would be helping. Grabbing an empty bucket and then a second one, she strode over to where the bank of the millstream flattened out into a manageable slope. Adding them to the pile being filled and handed off, she turned to go looking for more.

  A wall collapsed, sending a shower of fire and sparks into the air. One fell on her skirt, smoldering, and she beat it out with her hands. Before she’d even arrived the mill had been completely engulfed; it was horribly clear that there was nothing left to save. The best they could hope for now was that they could keep the blaze from spreading to the wheat fields around the mill.

  She retrieved bucket after bucket as they were emptied into the flames and cast aside. As the fire finally began to run out of fuel, the flames dipped lower over the glowing pile of timber and blackened stone. The black smoke became white steam, and she finally caught sight of Gabriel, beating out a long tendril of flame with a shovel before it could spread in the long grass.

  Thank goodness. Tired as she was, the tension running through her shoulders eased a little. He was safe. Or as safe as any of them were, anyway. As she watched, he finished beating the spot fire out and went back to shoveling dirt and mud over the smoking wreckage.

  When the parade of buckets began to slow and light began to glimmer on the eastern horizon, she handed the duty off to someone else and went to find the Garretsons where they stood in their nightclothes by the stream. She put a hand on Niall’s slumped shoulders and then wordlessly hugged Letitia and the two lasses.

  “I banked the fire in the cottage,” Niall said. “Before we went to bed. Just as I always do. And I would nae leave a lantern in the mill. I wouldnae do such a thing. My lasses … I might have lost my lasses. We were asleep, Miss Fiona. If we hadnae … Someone fired a shot, and that woke me.”

  “Thank goodness it did,” she said aloud, though the gunshot troubled her as much as anything else. “Did the shot come from close by, then? Do ye ken who did it? Did they help ye flee the cottage?”