Once Upon a Highland Autumn by Lecia Cornwall

the look in her eyes cheerfully predatory once again. “You will simply be a pleasant surprise. A new quarry.”
    “The Earl of Marion has a shooting box not five miles away, and Lord Berry’s is nearer still. There are always properties rented out for the hunting season by English lords.” Eleanor chuckled. “And you, my pretty squab, will be fair game when they get a look at you. Don’t fret.”
    “I’m not fretting,” Megan said, but they ignored her.
    “Of course she will,” Devorguilla said. “I don’t see how any gentleman worth the name could resist such a lovely girl. I expected that I’d be announcing your betrothal to Rossington, but we’ll simply put it about that there is an earl’s unmarried daughter, fair of face and well dowered, here at Dundrummie. I daresay we’ll have to drive off hopeful suitors with a pike. Then won’t Lord High and Mighty Rossington be sorry that he was so hasty? We’ll stop at nothing short of a duke, with ten—no, twenty—thousand a year.”
    Megan stared at the canny look on her mother’s face, and an uneasy feeling settled in her stomach. She’d be trapped. “What if the Earl of Berry and Lord Marion are already married?” she asked. Oh where was Eachann?
    “It’s the Earl of Marion, and Lord Berry,” Eleanor corrected. “It doesn’t matter. They always bring their sons, and cousins, and assorted aristocratic friends up for shooting parties.”
    “You make it sound like a seasonal migration,” Megan said. “Don’t Englishmen bring the females of the herd?” She imagined flocks of English lords flying into the windows of the castle, honking like geese, their feathers fine, their manners abysmal.
    Eleanor chuckled. “Of course they do. Just be careful out in the hills, all of you, lest they mistake you in earnest for a grouse. Poor Bessie Fraser was grievously wounded that way one year.”
    Her mother’s eyes were glowing. “It’s all the better if they do bring their sisters and daughters. If you befriend the ladies, the gentlemen will follow.”
    “But I don’t want to marry an Englishman!” Megan tried the truth, holding her breath.
    Her mother waved her handkerchief. “Don’t be silly Margaret. You saw Rossington,” her mother sighed. “What a fine figure of a man, tall, handsome, elegant—”
    “And completely uninterested in marrying me,” Megan said. “If you liked him so much, why don’t you marry him, Mother?”
    Devorguilla smiled. “Perhaps I will.”
    “Mother!” Megan looked at the countess in surprise. Devorguilla crossed to the mirror and peered at herself, touching a hand to her cheek, still soft and smooth despite her years, and met her daughter’s gaze in the glass.
    “What? I’m still young enough to marry again. Would you have me sit and knit and grow roots like Eleanor? She is more oak tree than woman now.”
    Eleanor merely cackled at the description.
    Devorguilla turned to her daughter. “But my first concern is seeing you married—and Alanna and eventually Sorcha after you. You are the eldest, and the match you make will set the standards for your sisters. They will see how very happy you are with your English lord, and wish to marry English lords themselves.”
    “But what if a Scot could make me happier still?” Megan asked.
    “The heart obeys the head,” Devorguilla quipped.
    “Not if you’re lucky,” Eleanor murmured.
    Megan put her hand in her pocket, touched the tiny ring that Eachann had given her the day he left. She dared not wear it. She tried to picture his face, remember how his kisses felt. But she saw only one face, one pair of horrified, disdainful gray eyes. She felt her skin heat all over again. Apparently beauty by Scottish standards was quite different from what was considered beautiful in England.
    Eleanor squeezed her hand. “Never mind. We’d best take our supper before it’s time for breakfast. I don’t see any point in letting a fine roast of beef go to