Kissing the Countess (2 page)

"Then we will pray this is the last of the evil clearings."

"At least in our glen. The Earl of Kildonan wants to make sheep runs with just a handful of Englishmen and Lowlanders as shepherds. Cheaper than a hundred Highlanders on the same land, he claims. The rest of the land will be rented out for a hunting reserve." His frown was bitter and deep.

"What will happen to the history, to the stories and the legends and the songs of this glen?" Catriona sighed. "I wish I could capture all that wisdom and magic myself and keep it safe. It will be gone with these people—carried away to other lands. If only we could save the glen, its people, its heritage." She shrugged. "Just a dream. I am but the minister's daughter, and he is losing most of his parish today."

Finlay put his arm around her. "Sometimes a dream is enough, if we let it grow into a strong thing." He gazed toward the mountains, where sunlight poured over snowy peaks. "I wish I could bring back every one of those people to their homes. Our brother Donald would not stood by for this. He would have done anything to stop it."

Catriona thought of bright, brave Donald, who had died on the upper slope of the mountain where they stood. "If Father were a crofter instead of the reverend of Glenachan, we would be leaving, too. And none of us could stop it."

A gust of wind billowed her skirt and plaid shawl, and her gair, a bright stream of red-gold slipped loose of its braid. She stood beside Finlay in silence, feeling like an honor guard.

The wailing sounded again below them as a woman raised her hands to the sky, the plaintive sound echoing, resounding, deepening. The sad tones stirred the very air.

"The hills themselves are crying," Finlay said. "Look there at the runnels of melted snow rushing down the slope like tears."

Catriona took her brother's hand. Now singing began on the road below, and she began to sing too, softly and then with clear melody. The song was a
tuireadh,
a lament Highland women sang at funeral processions, and its melody twisted her heart.

Where shall we go to make our plea

When we are hungry in the hills?

Where shall we go to warm ourselves

When we are chilled with cold?

Hiri uam, hiri uam...

The sounds rolled outward, up to the mountains, and Catriona closed her eyes and felt the music fill her soul.

* * *

"Father, listen, I beg you," George Evan Mackenzie, Viscount Glendevon, implored. "This is not the way a Highland chieftain tends to his people!"

"Do not spout nonsense at me about Highland custom," his father replied. The earl was a large man, gruff and gray, his suit and hair like dull pewter. "Mr. Grant, see that those stragglers hurry up, or we will be all day about this," he instructed the factor. "They must reach the coast by nightfall to board the cattle ships on the morning tides."

"Cattle ships!" Evan rounded his stallion, the bay reacting to his owner's agitation by snorting and sidestepping.

"Aye. We've arranged passage to Canada for some. The rest will go on to Glasgow to find jobs there."

"With what skills? These people have lived here for generations. Most of them have never been to a city, let alone another country. They know nothing but these hills and the way of life that has existed here for centuries."

"That stagnant, simple society of theirs is just the problem. They are complacent and lazy, walking about the hills tending to small flocks and herds, small crops, small crafts. They have no ambition, do nothing but weave and herd and tell stories. They will not flourish here. They do well to leave the glen. We are doing them a service by sending them away from here."

"Service! Ask the poor who crowd the cities, their children's limbs misshapen and their bellies empty, if they think this is for the best," Evan snapped. "These Highlanders were healthy and proud, happy in this glen. Land and kin are all to them. Their culture is all to them. Send them away and you take away their very soul, sir."

"Then their Highland soul does them no good. When you came north for a bit after your last term at university, I did not expect to hear the same babble your mother sings. That tiresome save-the-people righteousness," he barked. "I
am
saving the people—giving them opportunity beyond this savage existence."

"Rationalizing arrogance and greed," Evan said. "I hoped you would change—I hoped when Mother left you and took Jeanie and me with her, you would realize what is important. These Highlanders value family and land and love—it's all we have, that love. But you destroy something precious and call it good." Evan waved an arm.

"Keep babbling like a charity matron, and I'll take that land and inheritance from you and give it to your sister."

"What will there be for anyone to inherit but sheep and stubble on the hillsides if you empty this glen of its people and its culture and sell the land for profit?"

Evan looked around at the hills, the sky, the lines of people with their strength and pride like the very mountains. His childhood memories of Glen Shee were precious—he loved this place, wanted to protect it and its people. He had always felt this was his true home, here in Glen Shee and Kildonan.

Yet he was powerless to stop his father from doing this. The clearings had been practiced widely in the Scottish Highlands for economic reasons. Evan did not give a damn about financial gain or improvements if it meant destroying the dignity of this place and its people. He had been torn away from here by his mother's decision to leave his father—so in some way he knew what it felt like to leave Glen Shee.

"Profit? I am paying off debts so you will have a decent inheritance," his father said. "Running sheep on these hills will make a fortune for you and your sister. You will be happy about it eventually, trust me."

"I find no happiness in this," Evan said.

"Eviction seems cruel, but these folks will benefit and so will we. Now this glen will produce, really produce. Sheep by the thousands, wool enough to clothe the Continent, and all of it managed efficiently by a few men and their families."

"Let Highlanders do the work for you."

"They are not reliable—they'd rather wander the hills or sit tell stories. My men will count and mark sheep, move them, gather and shear them, prepare the wool for market—and make all of us a fortune. Fifteen Lowland men will do the work of two hundred lazy Highlanders. What is that caterwauling?" The earl turned abruptly.

"A song of mourning," Evan said. He understood a little Gaelic from boyhood, but regardless of the words, he knew grief when he heard it.

"I'll be glad to leave this place myself," Kildonan said. "My factor, Mr. Grant, will run the estate once the flocks and shepherds are in place. I will come back for hunting and fishing, but I need not live here. These mountains haunt me. I cannot sleep here." He looked around.

"Then you do have a conscience," Evan snapped.

"Heel, pup. Go back to Edinburgh and build bridges or whatever the devil it is you do. Engineering is no occupation for a peer of the realm, but suit yourself. You might have chosen the ministry, with all the pontificating you've been doing today."

"I should have read for the law, so I could stop this."

"Leave, Evan—before I banish you from this estate," the earl thundered. "Your stubborn youthful ideals will not last long, but there is no convincing you. Ride out. Go on."

Evan rounded his horse and rode off in a fury, his grief as terrible as the people's, as the mountains overlooking the glen. Riding past the Highlanders, he heard the wailing song of the women cut into his soul.

He could not look at them—he wanted to apologize, but he was powerless to change this. He felt ashamed to be the heir of the man who brought catastrophe to the place he should protect.

Evan had returned to Kildonan Castle and Glen Shee hoping to reason with his father. But the old earl was interested only in wealth—at a cost Evan could not bear to think about.

As he cantered away, he heard another female voice raised in song. The clear, sweet sound sent chills up his spine. He looked up the hill beside the road.

A young woman stood in the heather high on the slope. She was slender, bright and beautiful, wrapped in a tartan shawl, her red-gold hair rippling down. With her stood a young man. They seemed like a vision, a part of the ancient Celtic beauty of the glen, watching over the sadness of this day.

The girl sang the lament so poignantly that Evan paused to listen, hands on the reins. The afternoon sun turned the mountains pink and gold, and the singer glowed with an inner fire, a proud, brave, beautiful spirit. Others were now listening. Even the old earl looked around.

Her voice was clear and haunting, imprinting itself in Evan's heart. The last note faded like the clear strike of a bell.

Then he took up the reins and rode away, taking his grief and leaving his lost happiness in this glen. He could never return to Kildonan and Glen Shee with his head high again.

But he felt a little balm of healing from the Highland girl's song. He took that with him, too.

Chapter 1

Scotland, the Northwest Highlands

November, 1859

Clinging to a wall of rock with his fingers pressed into narrow crevices and his hobnailed boots propped on a ledge inches deep, Evan Mackenzie, Viscount Glendevon and lately Earl of Kildonan, took a deep breath. He rested his brow on his upraised arm and contemplated his dilemma.

He was alone on a nearly vertical rise of rough black gneiss in a cold, buffeting wind and heavy mist. Sleet pattered the rock around him, rendering it slippery as the devil, and he could scarcely see past his own reach. And his only companion had disappeared over half an hour ago.

The mist was thick and cold, and he couldn't see worth a damn. One wrong step on this precarious upward path and he could plummet. The corries and natural chimneys along the black mountainside would claim him before he reached solid ground over two thousand feet below.

Well, it was only what he deserved for returning, he told himself wryly. He had kept his distance from Glen Shee for years, but the mountains had lured him back, the silent call stronger than he had realized, but there had been the practical demands of his inherited property as well. His father had died in a shooting accident while hunting several months ago, and Evan had finally found it necessary to return north.

Glancing down, he looked into the white mist that swathed the mountain just below his booted feet. He felt as if he floated on a cloud miles above the earth. A bit too close to the angels for comfort, he thought.

"Fitz!" he shouted. "Arthur Fitzgibbon! Where are you! Damn, where the devil are you?" he finished in a mutter. His words came back to him in an eerie, muffled echo.

Silence, but for the wind. He heard no crunch of rock under his friend's boot, no shout, not even a cry of distress. Evan was fairly sure that Professor Fitzgibbon had headed downward, for he had not been keen on climbing in mist today, though the two men had planned to conquer one peak today if possible.

Evan had clambered ahead by the time Fitzgibbon had called out his intention to turn back. Evan had answered that he wanted to go a little higher and would soon follow down as well. Fog and spitting rain had obscured the view, so Evan had not known at what point Arthur had gone out of sight.

No doubt Fitz was heading back to Kildonan Castle to warm his feet before the fire and enjoy a dram while waiting for Evan to trek back. Fitzgibbon was a good fellow, but not the most practical of souls, his mind easily lost in geological observations. He might assume that Evan would soon follow, and he would want a geological report when he did.

That would be simple enough, if he made it down safely, Even thought. He peered at the rock nearest his nose. The rock wall was a mix of black gneiss and white crystal, striped like a wild zebra—and treacherous as the devil with a coating of verglas, a thin transparent layer of ice. He pulled a small ice pick out of the canvas knapsack on his back. Hacking into the verglas, he improved his next fingerhold and moved upward.

Perhaps he really should go downward now, he thought.

Thinking of the comforts of a hearth fire and a glass of whisky only made him more aware of the chill invading his feet and hands, and the hunger twisting in his belly. He could not blame Arthur for giving up adventure for a hot toddy and warm toes by the fire.