Once Upon a Highland Autumn by Lecia Cornwall Page A

waste.”
    “I’m not hungry,” Megan said. She wanted out of the creaking stays before they strangled her.
    “Poor Margaret. It’s understandable,” Devorguilla sighed. “Your first broken heart. I remember my own. I didn’t eat for three days.”
    “It’s not—” Megan began, then paused. Why bother to explain? She wasn’t hurt—she was furious. “It’s just been a long day.”
    “I’ll send up some tea and toast, then. Tomorrow we’ll make a list of eligible English lords arriving to hunt, and prepare to bag ourselves a prize. I suppose we’d better have the seamstress make at least two or possibly three suitable outfits for hunting.”
    Megan watched them leave her room, almost numb with horror. If her mother had her way, she’d be married before the first snowflakes fell on the hills and glens.
    She had to do something. She paced the floor and racked her brains, trying to think of a way to make herself the most unmarriageable lass in Scotland. But perhaps all English gentlemen would share Lord Rossington’s opinion and find her hideous.
    But the idea was not as comforting as she’d hoped it would be.

 
C HAPTER N INE
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    “O ld Glen Dorian Castle needs to be pulled down, of course, and I daresay an English lord like yourself would want something more modern—a grand and glorious hunting lodge, perhaps, to spend a few weeks of the year visiting. The Highlands are grand indeed for hunting,” Angus Grant, canny Inverness solicitor and man of affairs, said. “There’s excellent game here in the glen with those woodlands there—” He pointed to a lush stand of deep green trees that filled half the glen. “Or the loch could be stocked with trout if you prefer to fish.”
    They sat in Kit’s carriage on the hillside, looking across Glen Dorian at the castle on the island. The day was sunny and warm, and birds wheeled over the broken towers. The loch sparkled, the deepest blue he’d ever seen, and Kit wondered if there existed a finer view anywhere. If he climbed the hills on one side of the glen, he would have an endless view of other lochs, rolling green hills, and the narrow silver edge of the sea beyond. If he walked the other way, there’d be snow-capped peaks as far as he could see. Here in the glen itself, all was peaceful. There wasn’t a single matchmaking mama, or one simpering debutante for miles and miles. He took a deep breath of the soft air pouring through the open window of the coach.
    “I’d thought only of renting it for a few months,” Kit said.
    The man’s expression turned sharp. “But there’s no house to stay in, save that little cottage on the hillside, there—Mairi’s Cottage, it’s called—if it’s still habitable after so many years.” He pointed to a small stone house. “Glen Dorian was once a fine holding, but the castle has been unoccupied for some seventy years, the cottage for well over twenty.”
    “Why?” Kit asked. He doubted Angus Grant, a sensible man of cashboxes, leases, and bills of sale, would give him some foolish story about curses and legends.
    The solicitor took off his beaver hat and scratched his head. “We-ell, living in the castle was banned after the Forty-five, to punish the Jacobite rebels. Lady MacIntosh stayed, so they say, and made her home in the glen in that very cottage, determined to hold the land for her husband’s return.” He paused, and withdrew a flask from his inner pocket and held it out to Kit, then sipped when Kit refused.
    “And then?” Kit prompted.
    “Then? Well, I suppose there’s some that say she’s waiting still,” Grant whispered. A gust of wind buffeted the coach, and Grant frowned and sipped his whisky again. “Wild deer graze in the glen, my lord, and the otters and birds nest by the loch, but no one else has found a welcome here. There’s no heir to claim it, and it wants a buyer. I daresay the government will gladly allow the purchase of it.”
    Kit considered. He could hardly look for