I have no right to do so, but I wonder if I may call upon your gentle will for a boon.
I am not a man used to prevailing upon the kindness of others. However, as an unrefined soldier, I am ill-equipped to prepare my children for the world in which they will be expected to reside as the heirs of a marquess. Rhianna is due for a season, and Andrew wishes to go away to university when he is of age. They’re in need of an exceedingly experienced governess and tutor. I would ask that you find one, not for my benefit, but for theirs. They deserve the very best in civilized education. No matter the cost. Inform her that her relocation expenses will be included, and she can have any salary you deem satisfactory.
I will owe you a debt of gratitude for your assistance.
Please extend your husband my regards.
Yours in gratitude,
Lt. Col. William Grant Ruaridh Mackenzie. Marquess Ravencroft.
Bealach na Bà Pass, Wester Ross, Scotland, Autumn 1878
Mena considered it a kindness on God’s part that the brougham carriage wheel had waited to noisily fracture until they’d crested the treacherous road through the Highland mountains and angled west on the verdant peninsula toward Ravencroft Keep. Had it broken earlier, the carriage would surely have shattered upon the black stones scattered about the moss-covered valley floor.
The kind driver in full livery, Kenneth Mackenzie was his name, had been the only one to meet her at the Strathcarron rail station. Mena never could have guessed the elderly man would climb the switchbacks of the Bealach na Bà Pass with the alacrity of a man chased by Death.
After a cursory inspection of the broken wheel, the driver had muttered something to her in an unintelligible form of English, unhitched one of the four horses from the wagon, and gone for help straightaway, leaving Mena with only three horses and the approaching storm for company. That had been—Mena checked her new pocket watch—more than an hour past now, and the torrential rain had begun to obscure the view by which she’d been captivated in her time alone.
The topography of the Highlands tantalized her until she’d quite forgotten about her tossing stomach caused by the vigorous climb up the switchbacks and the ensuing fear for life and limb.
Mena had seen beautiful countryside before, having been raised in the bucolic paradise of Hampshire. Wester Ross was nothing like the tranquil, organized fields and pastures of South England. Something feral and untamed breathed life into this place. An air of prehistoric mysticism lingered in the very stones. She could sense it as potently as the cling of brine in the air caused by water stirred by the storm, or the last fragrant gasp of the heather and thistle as autumn encroached. Moss and lush vegetation clung to the dark rock and soil, painting the landscape every conceivable spectrum of green.
But now low, rolling clouds climbed the black stone peaks like inevitable conquerors, hiding the tops of the Hebrides from view. Even the rain was different in this place. Unlike the gray storms of London, the moisture didn’t fall from the lofty heavens. It crept upon her with the chill of uncovered secrets, surrounding her in a heavy mist tossed about by unruly winds.
She shivered, even in her dress of heavy wool and the blanket the footman had found for her beneath the seat. The cold here reached through her clothing and her flesh, cloying around her bones and causing them to quake.
It wasn’t an ice bath. And so she could endure.
Though she wasn’t certain for how much longer. What if something had happened to poor old Kenneth Mackenzie in this weather? It was barely possible to see much more than ten paces away, and over terrain like this, one could easily end up in a bog somewhere, or stumble down a ravine.
A sound like the muffled beating of her accelerating heart pounded at the earth, and Mena leaned against the window in time to see several mounted Highlanders melt out of the mists like the specters of Jacobite warriors who had roamed these very moors a hundred years past.
Her breath caught at the sight of them. Heavy cloaks protected brawny shoulders, though their knees remained bared to the elements by matching blue, green, and gold kilts. They reined their horses to a walk and lurked closer to the carriage, letting the mist unveil them to her wide gaze.
Mena was suddenly aware of how very alone and vulnerable she was. Chances were, she told herself, this was the help Kenneth Mackenzie had sent for, but she didn’t see the driver among the mounted Highlanders.
She counted seven, each one burlier—and filthier—than the last. On the other hand, they could be brigands. Highwaymen, rapists, murderers …
Oh, dear God.
They circled the carriage, all peering inside the rain-streaked windows with not a little curiosity, speaking the lyrical language of the Highlands. She understood it to be Scots Gaelic, though she comprehended not a word.
Then she saw him.
Her mouth became dry as the desert, and a tremor that had nothing to do with the cold rippled through her.
Though he wore a soiled kilt and loose linen shirt beneath his drenched cloak, he sat astride a black Shire steed with the bearing of a king. Dark waves of hair hung long and heavy with moisture down his back, and menace rolled off the mountains of his shoulders in palpable waves.
Whoever he was, he was their undeniable leader. She saw it in the way they looked to him, in the deference they used when speaking. If not by birth, then by physical laws of nature, surely. As the largest, the strongest, and the most fearsome of them all, he towered above the brawny men as he scowled through the window at her.
Even through the mesh of her hat’s veil, and the black soot streaked across his features, Mena could see the tension in his strong jaw. The aggression etched into the grooves of his fierce, deep-set eyes. Viewed through the chaotic tracks of rain upon the window, he could have been a savage Pict warrior, bred not only to survive in this beautiful and brutal part of the world, but to conquer it.