Amanda Scott (50 page)

My husband and I visited the site of the murder (still an ancient woodland called Lettermore Woods) and the site of James’s hanging, both of which have been preserved as historic monuments. We also made a trek to Red Colin’s house, Glenure Lodge, one of the oldest privately owned Scottish residences that is neither a great house nor a castle. The road up Glen Creran to Glen Ure is
exactly
the width of an English Ford Punto, with a steep bank on one side and an equally steep dropoff into the river on the other. True adventure for both of us, especially with a righthand-drive car.

If you enjoyed
Highland Secrets,
I hope you will look for
Highland Treasure
in June 1998 from Zebra, in which a villain captures Diana’s cousin Mary Maclaine because he thinks he can make use of her gift (second sight) to recover a lost treasure.

Sincerely yours,

A fourth-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which appeared on the
USA Today
bestseller list. Her Scottish heritage and love of history (she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Mills College and California State University, San Jose, respectively) inspired her to write historical fiction. Credited by
Library Journal
with starting the Scottish romance subgenre, Scott has also won acclaim for her sparkling Regency romances. She is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award (for
Lord Abberley’s Nemesis
, 1986) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. She lives in central California with her husband.

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The Highlands, 1745

Eerie echoes reverberated through the mist-shrouded forest as the first shovelful of dirt thudded onto the treasure chest. A second shovelful followed, then a third, as Lord MacCrichton and his elder son, Ewan, worked to bury the chest.

Ewan’s brother, Geordie, a huge man with a childlike demeanor, kept a lookout, holding a spout lantern so that its light spilled into the hole containing the ironbound chest. “Hurry,” he said anxiously. “We canna see a thing in this mist.”

“Set down that lantern and notch the tree,” MacCrichton said. He, too, was a big man, though not as large as either of his sons. “You can save us some time.”

“Aye, that’s a good notion, that is. I’ll use my dirk. What mark will I use?”

Impatiently, Ewan said, “Must we think of everything, you daft gowk? Use that rattlepate of yours to think for once. We want to be able to find this tree again.”

“Aye, well, then, X marks the spot,” Geordie said, drawing a
skean dhu
from his boot top and chuckling as he moved purposefully toward the nearest tree.

For some moments thereafter, the dull thuds of dirt on dirt and the scritch-scratch of metal on bark were the only sounds to be heard, for the denizens of the forest were either fast asleep or keeping their counsel. The air was chilly and damp with mist rising off nearby Loch Creran and drifting over the land in vast, dense clouds. All three men listened intently for anything out of the ordinary, suspecting that more than mere forest creatures might be prowling the nearby woods, and the tension seemed to make Geordie particularly nervous.

Suddenly his hand froze mid-stroke, and he exclaimed, “Hark!” When the other two jumped and Ewan glared at him, he said, “Did you no hear that?”

“What?” Then Ewan heard it himself.

A cracking sound, eerily muffled by the mist, came from the direction of the loch. It sounded like a breaking branch, followed by the rattle of moving pebbles.

“That! Someone’s coming. Hurry!” Geordie snatched up the lantern, and just as he shut the spout, its light flashed upon a huge X gashed in the bark.

“By my faith,” Ewan snapped, “have you no brains at all? Anyone who sees that X is bound to dig here.”

“Och, but that is why men call him Daft Geordie, that is,” Lord MacCrichton said with a sigh.

“You said to mark it,” Geordie protested.

“Aye, lad,” Ewan agreed, “but we never thought you’d mark it so bloody damned well.” He fell silent, listening. Then, hearing nothing more that was in any way remarkable, he said, “Look you now, Geordie, help us brush pine needles and leaves over the mound so that it won’t look fresh dug, and then we’ll notch a few more trees like you did this one. The chest is buried deep, so if this one spot don’t shriek out to every passerby to take notice of it, it will lie safe enough, I think.”

“Aye, that’s a fine notion, that is,” Geordie said cheerfully. “Plain to see that you got the brains in the family, Ewan, though I’m not so daft as you think I am.”

Ewan did not bother to reply, and they worked as silently as possible, halting frequently to listen.

A quarter hour later, MacCrichton said, “That will do. I’m for bed now.”

“You and Ewan go on ahead,” Geordie said. “Leave me a shovel, and I’ll cover all our tracks and notch a few more trees before I go in.”

“Very well, lad,” his lordship said. “Don’t be too long, though, and don’t trip over any damned Campbells whilst you’re about it. They’ve been watching us for weeks now, thinking we mean to follow the prince.”

“And so we do,” Geordie said, chuckling again. “Is that no why we’re a-burying of this chest, so as to keep the treasure safe till we can return to Shian?”

“We don’t want any Campbells getting their filthy hands on it while we’re away, that’s certain. Come along, Ewan, and mind now, Geordie, don’t be long.”

“I won’t.” However, several hours passed before he returned to the well-fortified, round-towered castle of the MacCrichtons perched on its grassy, forest-edged hillside above the loch. The next morning when he met his brother in the breakfast room, he said smugly, “Those damned Campbells will never find our treasure now, Ewan.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Because I’ve outsmarted them, I have. I thought of things you never thought about, and that’s a fact.”

Eyes narrow with misgiving, Ewan said, “What did you do?”

“Well, first, I notched every blessed tree for a mile or more, that’s what I did. Those Campbells can dig the whole forest up now. They’ll never find where we—”

“No, nor anyone else,” Ewan snarled as his volatile temper ignited to fury. “How the devil do you think
we
are going to find it again, you daft gowk?”

“But I didna—”

Daft Geordie never finished his sentence, however, for with a single, furious blow, his exasperated brother knocked him senseless to the floor.

The Highlands, November 1753

T
HE BODY OF JAMES
of the Glen swung gently to and fro in the evening breeze, a stark black shadow against the sun now setting beyond the mountains of Morven and the western shore of Loch Linnhe.

The eerie sound of creaking chains stirred a shudder in the second of a string of ten riders passing through Lettermore Woods in the direction of the Ballachulish ferry. Not that the party meant to cross into Lochaber, for they did not. They were making for the hill pass into Glen Creran, and Mary Maclaine, riding away from her old life into a new one, was already enduring second thoughts.

The effort required not to look at James’s body contributed to her depression. The gruesome sight brought back memories not just of James but of Ian, gentle Ian, whom she had loved dearly and whose death had been so sudden and violent, and just as unfair as poor James’s had been.

“Don’t dawdle, Mary love,” the party’s leader said. His tone was coaxing, but it held a note of impatience. “We’ve hours of travel ahead, and there is no use looking wistfully at James of the Glen. Wishing won’t stir his body back to life.”

“I know,” Mary said. “I just wish they would cut him down. It’s been more than a year, after all, since they hanged the poor innocent man.”

“No one knows better than I do how long it’s been,” he said with a teasing look, “but I’ll warrant the devilish Campbells will leave him there till he’s dust.”

He was a big, broad-shouldered man with curly fair hair, and she supposed most folks would think him handsome. He was undeniably charming, for although it had cost him a year’s effort, he had charmed her into agreeing to marry him despite her firm belief that with Ian Campbell dead she would never marry any man.

Her gaze shifted involuntarily back to the corpse hanging in chains near the high road. All who traveled between Lochaber and Appin had to pass the gibbet. Moreover, its elevated position made it visible to folks along an extensive stretch of Loch Linnhe and Loch Leven, as well.

From where she was, she could see the great square tower of Balcardane Castle on the hillside above Loch Leven, beyond Ballachulish village. The sight stirred more memories of Ian, for the castle had been his home. His father was the surly, too-powerful Earl of Balcardane, and his brother was Black Duncan Campbell, a man of whom many folks went in understandable fear. Mary was not one of them, but she had no wish to think about Black Duncan. Such thoughts as she had of him were wicked, for she could not help blaming him for Ian’s death.

“I wish we could just cut James down and bury him properly,” she said abruptly, forcing her gaze back to her fair-haired companion.

“It would be as much as our lives are worth to try,” he said. “That’s why
they
are there.” He gestured toward the hut where soldiers guarding the gibbet kept their food and pallets, and could take shelter from the elements. Smoke drifted upward from their cook fire now, and a man stared at them from the hut’s doorway.

Mary remembered when the authorities had built the hut, a month after the hanging. Its very presence had been and still was an unmistakable sign that soldiers would remain a good long time to see that no one cut the body down.

Without another word, her companion urged his horse to a canter. She knew he wanted to be over the hill pass before darkness descended, but she could not help resenting his urgency. Had he presented himself at Maclean House that morning as he had promised, instead of waiting until nearly suppertime, or had they taken one of the faster routes up Glen Duror or south through Salachan Glen, they might have reached their destination well before dark. He had arrived late, however, and still had insisted upon taking this more circuitous route.

Through habit, Mary kept her resentment to herself. When one had long depended on relatives for one’s bed and board, one did not express feelings freely. Instead, one tried to prove useful, to present as light a burden as possible.

Mary was deeply grateful to her aunt, Anne Stewart Maclean, for years of care. Lady Maclean was neither a gentle nor a tender woman, but she was capable, kind; and strong, and their kinship was close. Not only had she been one of Mary’s mother’s six elder sisters, but her husband, Sir Hector, had been chieftain of the Craignure branch of Clan Maclean. Thus, Mary was a double cousin to Diana and Neil, Sir Hector and Lady Maclean’s children.

Despite the marital alliance, the Craignure branch and her own family, the Maclaines of Lochfuaran, had enjoyed only brief periods of amity. However, after the deaths of Sir Hector and two of her brothers seven years ago at the Battle of Culloden, followed by the even more untimely deaths of her father and remaining siblings shortly thereafter, no one had remained to protest when Lady Maclean had appeared out of the blue one day to take Mary away to live with her.

Seven years she had lived with her Aunt Anne. Seven years of being brave and cheerful and trying not to be a burden when the very times were burdensome. Men said luck came and went in seven-year intervals, and Mary thought that might well be true. Although she recalled little of her first seven years, living with her large family at Lochfuaran on the Island of Mull, she thought they had been generally carefree. The second seven had been horrid.

In her eighth year, like a bolt of lightning, tragedy had struck, carrying off her mother and the two of the six elder sisters who were nearest Mary in age. The three had died swiftly, one after the other, during an influenza epidemic.