Amanda Scott by Highland Spirits

he reached the courtyard, he found MacKellar waiting, and as the two rode out through the main gate, Sir Renfrew said, “Did ye see the lass again?”
    “Nay, laird, but I did learn that they be leaving at the skreich of day, bound for Auld Reekie.”
    “Edinburgh, eh. Now, I wonder what’s possessed the lad to take her there.”
    “I dinna ken, laird, but he’s no keeping her there. They be bound for London town, his men say, and from what I’m told, they mean tae stay a month or more.”
    Sir Renfrew received the news with annoyance at first, but when his nimble brain had considered the prospects, annoyance changed to grim satisfaction. “I’m thinking,” he said a half hour later, “that this turn of events may prove advantageous to a man o’ my clever notions.”
    “Will it then, laird?”
    “Aye. I’m thinking I’ve got a ship bound for Bristol in a sennight. I’ve no been nigh London these five years and more, and forbye, I’m thinking ’tis time I returned to see how the city has changed. Let’s ride, man. There will likely come a mist later, and I dinna want to spend the night at Kilmory.”
    No mist marred Michael’s plan to leave Mingary early the following morning before the birds had begun to sing. The starry sky had a clear hardness after a night of frost, and a keen, stiff breeze from the northwest sped their boat through the Sound of Mull. They reached the harbor of Oban on the west coast of Lorne as the sun was rising, less than three hours after leaving the castle.
    Snow still capped the higher peaks beyond the village, but spring had arrived on the shore, where primroses and violets bloomed in abundance.
    Michael stepped ashore with a sigh, wishing it had been possible to sail all the way to Glasgow, from whence it was but forty miles to the capital, much of it by post road and all of it fit for a coach. With a healthy breeze like the one that had sped them to Oban, they could easily have reached Glasgow in a single long day by making use of the narrow neck of land that separated the head of West Loch Tarbert from Loch Fyne on the River Clyde.
    Since the time of Robert the Bruce, it had been common practice to have men pull one’s ship across that bit of land—less than a mile wide—rather than sailing around the peninsula below it, thus saving more than a hundred miles in distance. But sailing to Glasgow would mean entrusting someone else to deliver Cailean to Glenmore, whose estate lay near Dalmally. Whoever delivered the dog would have to collect the money Glenmore had agreed to pay, too, and deliver it to Michael in Edinburgh. It was more practical and safer to deliver the deerhound on their way.
    Hiring horses for the five of them—Bridget and her maid, Michael and his man, and Connal to tend the horses—they set forth from Oban an hour later. They spent the first night at Dalmally, where Michael sadly bade the deerhound farewell, and the second night with kinfolk at Lochearnhead.
    The weather held, and they easily made Stirling on the third day. Leaving Connal there with orders to return the horses to Oban, Michael hired a coach and four the following morning to take them the rest of the way. They made good time on the post road and entered the capital that afternoon, arriving at Lady Marsali’s town house in Castle Street shortly before four o’clock.
    Bridget eyed the exterior of the gray stone house doubtfully. “It is very plain, is it not, Michael? I thought it would be much grander.”
    “Just wait,” he said, helping her alight from the coach.
    Chalmers hurried up the short flight of stone steps to apply the knocker, and soon thereafter the door opened to reveal a tubby little man in yellow breeches, a black frock coat, and a powdered tie-wig.
    “Come in, my lord,” the man said. “Her ladyship is expecting you.”
    “Good day to you, Andrew,” Michael said, smiling. “I trust she has not fretted herself into a lather with impatience.”
    “Now then, sir, ye