“If you married, you-”

“I beg you not to start on me again,” he said with so much agony in his voice that she relented.

“All right,” she said as she got up, with Angus pushing on her back to help her. “I’ll leave you be if you promise not to take a girl’s laughter in anger. She bested you with the only weapon a woman has, her tongue.”

“There are other uses for a woman’s tongue,” Angus said, his eyes twinkling.

Kenna stuck out her big belly. “Do you think I do not know all about the uses of a woman’s tongue-and a man’s?”

Angus put his hands over his ears. “Do not tell me such! You’re my sister.”

“All right,” she said, smiling. “Keep your belief that your sister is still a virgin, but please do not let anger rule you over this girl.”

“I will not,” he said. “Now, go back to your husband.”

“And what will you do?”

“I’m going to crawl under a rock and sleep for a day or two.”

“Good, mayhap the heather will sweeten your temper so that when a girl makes a remark to you, you can reply in kind.”

“In kind,” he said. “I will remember that. Now go before I have to play midwife to you.”

2

ANGUS MANAGED TO avoid seeing the niece for an entire week. He followed the wisdom of his sister and pretended to laugh at himself with all the other people, but when he turned away his smile didn’t remain.

At first he’d tried to defend himself, but that only made people laugh harder. It was as though they’d been waiting all their lives to find humor in him and now they were making up for lost time.

However, Angus was glad that no one-except his own brother-in-law, that is-so much as hinted that Angus had been the one to loosen the girth and make the girl fall. No one said so, but they knew who had done it.

Angus didn’t catch Shamus alone until three days after the incident. By then Angus had had to answer the same questions a thousand times. “Yes, yes,” he said, each time trying hard to smile, “I was quite stunned by the beauty of the girl.” “No, I’d never seen anything like her before.” “Yes, I’m sure the angels smiled when she was born.” “Oh, yes, what she said was quite clever. Never met a girl as clever as she is.”

Each time he walked across the courtyard, it was always the same. No one wanted to talk to him about anything but the way he’d stared at the girl-except for his young cousin Tam, who wouldn’t speak to Angus at all. Twice Angus tried to get Tam to go hunting with him, but the boy wouldn’t. “She depends on me to hold her horse, so now I ride a pony and follow her. I’m one of the few men she trusts. She told me that, and she called me a man.” As he said it, he gave Angus a look that told him they were no longer friends.

By the time Angus was able to catch Shamus, he wanted to smash his big face. Angus grabbed him by the collar while he was in one of the horse stalls, slammed him against the wall, and raised his fist. But Shamus wasn’t afraid of pain; it was something he’d lived with all his life. When they were children everyone knew to stay hidden when Shamus appeared with a black eye. His father had again beaten the boy. Now, his father was dead and there was no longer any reason for Shamus to do what had been done to him, but old habits don’t die easily.

“Go ahead,” Shamus said. He wasn’t as tall as Angus, but he was older, and bigger. When an oxcart got stuck in the mud, it was Shamus’s strength that helped pull it out.

Angus lowered his fist. “Are you mad? To do that to Lawler’s niece? She must not have told or her uncle would have had someone lashed. How long has it been since you had the skin on your back torn off?”

Shamus shrugged. “Not too long. A year or two. But I knew he wouldn’t do anything. He hates her.”

“Who hates her?” Angus asked.

“Lawler hates his niece.”

For a moment Angus didn’t know what to say. How could a man hate his own niece? For all that he complained about his sister’s children, he would die for them, imps that they were. “You’re lying.”

“If you think so, then you should listen more.”

“Should I be like you and sit in the shadows and spy on people?”

“I learn things, like the fact that Lawler can’t abide her.”

“Then he should send her back to London so she can be with her own kind.” Angus spoke of the girl as though she were an alien species.

“Angus!” He heard Malcolm’s voice, and when he turned in that direction, Shamus slithered away. For someone as big as he was, he could certainly move quickly when he needed to.

After that, Angus quit letting everyone’s constant retelling of that day when he’d been humiliated by a bit of a girl bother him, and he started listening. When all of them lived as they did, under the rule and out of the pocket of one man, it was imperative to know what that man was up to.

They all knew the story-or at least part of it. When Lawler was no more than Angus’s age, on one cut of a deck of cards, he’d won from the McTern laird the castle and the acres surrounding it. What no one knew was that since Lawler was the third son of a man with little property, he was not to inherit anything. His father had told him that if he’d go into the clergy, he’d find him a church to preach at. But there was nothing in the world that Lawler wanted to do less than to spread the Gospel.

When Lawler proposed to the drunken old Scotsman that they cut the cards for his castle and lands, Lawler had lied and said he owned an estate in York. Had he lost the cut, Lawler would have had no way to pay the debt. But he hadn’t lost.

The next day, Lawler rode north to find the castle he’d won, and although it was a poor estate, it suited him. All he wanted to do was hunt and fish and play cards, so the old keep and grounds were enough for him. He soon found that the McTerns still thought of the place as theirs, so they did the work and the small profits went to Lawler. Now and then one of the Scots would do something he found intolerable and he’d have the man tied to a post and whipped, but he’d never hanged anyone.

And as the years passed and Angus, the young man who would have inherited the property, grew, Lawler left the running of the estate to him, as he seemed to love responsibility and work as much as Lawler hated it.

For days, Angus listened more and stopped letting his anger close his ears to what was going on around him. If Lawler didn’t like the girl, why not? No one seemed to know. Morag, who worked inside the castle, said she’d often heard Lawler shouting at the girl, but it was always done behind closed doors, inside the stone walls, and even as hard as she listened, she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“Poor thing, how could he shout at an angel like that?” Morag said, making Angus roll his eyes.

No one missed the fact that every day when the niece went riding, Angus was nowhere to be found. Her mare seemed to know when she was going to show up because it started prancing about in its stall. The moment the mare lifted a forefoot, Angus seemed to dissolve into smoke. He wrapped his plaid about himself and went into the hills to stay away from her.

Of course this caused more laughter, but Angus didn’t trust himself to look at her and not lose control. He figured he’d either stand there in a stupor, or he’d- He couldn’t think what he’d do if she again made people laugh at him.

On the eighth day after Angus saw her, Malcolm came into the stables very upset. “You have to go after her.”

“Who?” Angus asked. He’d been in the hills all night and had just awakened a few minutes ago.

“Her. Lawler’s niece. You have to go after her.”

“I’d rather face the entire Campbell clan alone than follow her. Besides, she can take care of herself.”

“No,” Malcolm said, “she’s gone off with Shamus.”

Angus paused for a moment with a harness in his hands, but then he hung it on a hook in the wall and kept walking. “Why would she do a thing like that? Does she like him?”