“Allow me to thank ye on behalf of my ill-mannered mongrels,” he said with a disarming smile. “Trixie is good with the sheep, but has always been a little daft if ye ask me, and shite with swimming.”
“Think nothing of it.” Mena backed toward the grassy knoll, painfully aware of the peril of her situation. “I really must be going, good afternoon, sir.” She wrestled with her water-logged skirts and the give of sand beneath her feet as both impeded a hasty escape.
“Ye’re English,” he observed affably.
“Quite,” she clipped, bending to retrieve her shoes and stockings, grateful that the water had pulled her skirts from where she’d tucked them up before. Mena found herself wondering if the Highlander had spied her when she’d lifted her skirts well above her bare knees earlier.
“I’m Gavin St. James of the clan Mackenzie…” He stopped and offered a hand, which Mena pretended not to see as she climbed the knoll toward the forest. She didn’t have to look behind her to know he followed her. “And ye are?” he prompted, his voice betraying only amusement rather than ire at her discourtesy.
“I am very tardy,” she said over her shoulder. “They were expecting me back at Ravencroft Keep some time ago, and will likely already be looking for me as the hour is late.” She crested the hill quickly and, though she was a bit winded, she hurried toward the deer trail, hoping he took the not-so-subtle hint that she didn’t welcome company.
No such luck. “Would it make ye feel more at ease if I told ye that I’m foreman at the distillery and I ken who ye are, as I was there that day the linchpin gave on the axle.”
Mena paused at the tree line and turned to face him, studying his chiseled features more carefully. “You were?” she queried. “I don’t remember you.” Though she had been focused on none else but the imposing laird.
“I was mostly behind the carriage,” he said sheepishly. “Also, I was wearing a rather dashing hat.”
Searching her memory of that day, Mena found him. “The red hat with the dark coat?”
“That would be I,” he announced. “And it might further please ye to know that it was yer ward Rhianna who named Trixie when she was a wee lass.”
“Oh.” Mena tucked a stray tendril back into her knot as the wind caught it. Somehow she found that it did, indeed, make her feel a bit less anxious about finding herself alone with him. “Forgive me if I was rude, I am not accustomed to walking in the forest with strange men.”
“Think nothing of it.” He repeated her words back to her with the most charming twinkle in his eyes. “Now that we are no longer strangers, would ye allow me to escort ye back to the keep, English? No offense to yer capabilities, but how could I face me own mother knowing I abandoned a half-drowned lass in the woods?”
His eyes were so soulful, his demeanor so earnest, Mena found that she couldn’t at all refuse him. And besides, she was in no hurry to return to the keep.
And to the demons she might find there.
“Am I correct in assuming you live around here?” she queried, stooping to pick at a heather bloom at the edge of the forest.
“Aye.” he motioned to the north and west as he fell into easy step beside her. “I hie from over to Inverthorne Keep north by Gairloch, though I’m here with the men for the distilling of the summer harvest, and then the sowing of the winter crops.”
“Oh? I was unaware another keep resided so close to Ravencroft.”
Another of his easy smiles endeared him to her even more. “’Tis another Mackenzie stronghold, lorded over by the Earl of Thorne.”
“I’ve never met the Earl of Thorne.”
“And ye shouldna like to, either.” he warned sagely. “Ravencroft’s half brother. An incessant hedonist and notorious libertine, that one. Pretty lass like ye would do best to avoid his ilk, lest ye find yerself in trouble.”
Mena’s eyebrows flew toward her hairline. “I wasn’t aware Ravencroft had any more brothers.”
The Highlander slid a bemused glance her way. “What do ye mean, more brothers?”
Oh, blast, why had she allowed this slip of the tongue? Of course no one else knew about Dorian Blackwell. That he’d once been Dougan Mackenzie. She’d never forgive herself if she revealed a secret that was not hers to tell.
Especially when she trusted the Blackwells to keep her own secrets.
“Not very many outsiders know about Hamish,” he said easily, sensing her distress. “I’m surprised ye were told, is all, English.”
“I thought Hamish was the name of Ravencroft’s father.”
“So it was.” Gavin nodded, studying her intently. “But it was also the name of Liam’s elder brother.”
“Good Lord. How many errant Mackenzie brothers are there?”
“Too many.” Gavin peered into the woods toward Ravencroft, though they were still too far away to see it through the copse of dense trees.
Mena barely had time to wonder at the shadows that settled over the genial Highlander’s features before they were gone.
“The lairdship of Hamish the elder was a dark time for the Mackenzies of Wester Ross,” he explained. “Young Hamish was the firstborn of the laird, but he wasna legitimate. Liam followed soon thereafter, and then the marchioness died under what some believe to be suspicious circumstances. There was a rumored bastard or two after that, no one knows who or how many. The laird wasna a kind man, ye ken, he didna always give his mistresses the choice…”