This was likely true, but did nothing to assuage her annoyance.

“You told Da? And he just said fine, and both of you thought it was perfectly all right to—to—lug me off into the woods for three days, without telling me what was going on? You—you—”

“High-handed, insufferable, beastly Scots,” Ian said, in such a perfect imitation of her mother’s English accent that she burst out laughing, despite her annoyance.

“Yes,” she said, wiping spluttered grape juice off her chin. “Exactly!”

He was still smiling, but his expression had changed; he wasn’t teasing anymore.

“Brianna,” he said softly, with that Highland lilt that made of her name something strange and graceful. “It’s important, aye?”

He wasn’t smiling at all now. His eyes were fixed on hers, warm, but serious. His hazel eyes were the only feature of any beauty about Ian Murray’s face, but they held a gaze of such frank, sweet openness that you felt he had let you look inside his soul, just for an instant. She had had occasion before to wonder whether he was aware of this particular effect—but even if he was, it was difficult to resist.

“All right,” she said, and waved away a circling wasp, still cross but resigned. “All right. But you still should have told me. And you won’t tell me, even now?”

He shook his head, looking down at the grape he was thumbing loose from its stem.

“I can’t,” he said simply. He flipped the grape into his mouth and turned to open his bag—which, now that she noticed, bulged suspiciously. “D’ye want some bread, coz, or a bit of cheese?”

“No. Let’s go.” She stood up and brushed dead leaves from her breeches. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we’ll be back.”



THEY STOPPED AN HOUR before sunset, while enough light remained to gather wood. The bulging knapsack had proved to contain two blankets, as well as food and a jug of beer—welcome, after the day’s walking, which had been mostly uphill.

“Oh, this is a good batch,” she said approvingly, sniffing at the neck of the jug after a long, aromatic, hop-edged swallow. “Who made it?”

“Lizzie. She caught the knack of it from Frau Ute. Before the … er … mphm.” A delicate Scottish noise encompassed the painful circumstances surrounding the dissolution of Lizzie’s betrothal.

“Mmm. That was too bad, wasn’t it?” She lowered her lashes, watching him covertly to see whether he would say anything further about Lizzie. Lizzie and Ian had seemed fond of each other once—but first he had gone to the Iroquois, and then she had been engaged to Manfred McGillivray when he returned. Now that both of them were free once more …

He dismissed her comment about Lizzie with nothing more than a shrug of agreement, though, concentrating on the tedious process of fire-making. The day had been warm and an hour of daylight remained, but the shadows under the trees were already blue; the night would be chilly.

“I’m going to have a look at the stream,” she announced, plucking a coiled line and hook from the small pile of effects Ian had unloaded from his bag. “It looked like there’s a trout pool just below the bend, and the flies will be rising.”

“Oh, aye.” He nodded, but paid her little attention, patiently scraping the pile of kindling a little higher before striking the next shower of sparks from his flint.

As she made her way around the bend of the little creek, she saw that it wasn’t merely a trout pool—it was a beaver pond. The humped mound of the lodge was reflected in still water, and on the far bank she could see the agitated judderings of a couple of willow saplings, evidently in the process of being consumed.

She moved slowly, a wary eye out. Beavers wouldn’t trouble her, but they would make a dash for the water if they saw her, not only splashing, but smacking the water with their tails in alarm. She’d heard it before; it was amazingly loud, sounding like a fusillade of gunshots, and guaranteed to scare every fish within miles into hiding.

Gnawed sticks littered the near bank, the white inner wood chiseled as neatly as any carpenter could do, but none was fresh, and she heard nothing nearby but the sigh of wind in the trees. Beavers were not stealthy; none was close.

With a cautious eye on the far bank, she baited the hook with a small chunk of cheese, whirled it slowly overhead, picked up speed as she let the line out, then let it fly. The hook landed with a small plop! in the middle of the pond, but the noise wasn’t sufficient to alarm the beavers; the willow saplings on the far bank continued to shake and heave under the assault of industrious teeth.

The evening hatch was rising, just as she’d told Ian. The air was soft, cool on her face, and the surface of the water dimpled and glimmered like gray silk shaken in light. Small clouds of gnats drifted in the still air under the trees, prey for the rising of the carnivorous caddis flies, stone flies, and damselflies breaking free of the surface, new-hatched and ravenous.

It was a pity that she hadn’t a casting rod or tied flies—but still worth a try. Caddis flies weren’t the only things that rose hungry at twilight, and voracious trout had been known to strike at almost anything that floated in front of them—her father had once taken one with a hook adorned with nothing more than a few knotted strands of his own bright hair.

That was a thought. She smiled to herself, brushing back a wisp of hair that had escaped from its plait, and began to draw the line slowly back toward shore. But there were likely more than trout here, and cheese was—

A strong tug came on the line, and she jerked in surprise. A snag? The line jerked back, and a thrill from the depths shot up her arm like electricity.

The next half hour passed without conscious thought, in the single-minded pursuit of finny prey. She was wet to mid-thigh, rashed with mosquito bites, and her wrist and shoulder ached, but she had three fat fish gleaming in the grass at her feet, a hunter’s sense of profound satisfaction—and a few more crumbs of cheese left in her pocket.

She was drawing back her arm to throw the hook again, when a sudden chorus of squeaks and hisses shattered the evening calm, and a stampede of beavers broke from cover, trundling down the opposite bank of the pond like a platoon of small, furry tanks. She stared at them open-mouthed, and took a step back in reflex.

Then something big and dark appeared among the trees behind the beavers, and further reflex shot adrenaline through her limbs as she whirled to flee. She would have been into the trees and away in an instant, had she not stepped on one of her fish, which slid under her foot like greased butter and dumped her unceremoniously on her backside. From which position she was ideally placed to see Rollo race from the trees in a long, low streak and launch himself in an arching parabola from the top of the bank. Graceful as a comet, he soared through the air and landed in the pond among the beavers, with a splash like a fallen meteor.



IAN LOOKED UP AT HER, open-mouthed. Slowly, his eyes traveled from her dripping hair, over her sopping, mud-smeared clothes, and down to the fish—one slightly squashed—that dangled from a leather string in her hand.

“The fish put up a good fight, did they?” he asked, nodding at the string. The corners of his mouth began to twitch.

“Yes,” she said, and dropped them on the ground in front of him. “But not nearly as good a fight as the beavers.”

“Beavers,” he said. He rubbed a knuckle meditatively down the bridge of his long, bony nose. “Aye, I heard them slapping. Ye’ve been fighting beavers?”

“I’ve been rescuing your wretched dog from beavers,” she said, and sneezed. She sank to her knees in front of the new-made fire and closed her eyes in momentary bliss at the touch of heat on her shivering body.

“Oh, Rollo’s back, then? Rollo! Where are ye, hound?” The big dog slunk reluctantly out of the shrubbery, tail barely twitching in response to his master’s call.