Once Upon a Highland Autumn by Lecia Cornwall Page B

the castle’s hidden treasure without some kind of legal right to do so, such as a lease, or a deed.
    Angus Grant took out a pencil and scrawled a number on a scrap of paper, then passed it to Kit. “’Tis all it would take,” he said.
    Kit looked at the cottage. It stood patiently on the hillside, the small windows staring down at the old castle, like a hopeful wallflower at a ball, waiting to be asked . . .
    It could serve as a home for a few short weeks, a place to stay as part of the adventure.
    “Done.” He took the paper and tucked it into his pocket. “I will write to my man in London at once, and you may conclude things with him.”
    H igh on the hillside, Megan McNabb stood with her hand shading her eyes, watching the coach. After a number of minutes, she saw the Earl of Rossington get out and begin the steep walk down the hill toward the causeway, and the coach trundled away, up and over the lip of the glen on the narrow track.
    “Trespassing,” she breathed, and the wind snatched the word away, dragged at her skirts.
    She watched as he crossed to the castle, stopping to watch the otters playing in the water, and to look up at the hills that surrounded him. Megan ducked low.
    Even from here, it was plain to see he loved the old place. She could see it in the way he took note of the details of Glen Dorian—the heather-covered hills, the loch, the hot sun on his back that made him take off his coat and sling it casually over his shoulder. It was exactly the same way her brother looked at Glenlorne—with pride and awe at the beauty of the land, down to the last rock, and the very grass.
    But this Englishman did not belong here. Megan felt anger surge, and she pulled out a tuft of grass and threw it. She waited for the castle to throw him out, to frighten him away and send him back where he belonged, but after an hour, he still hadn’t emerged.
    With an oath, Megan picked up her skirts and hurried down the hillside.
    K it looked around the ruins of the great hall, noted the charred wood, the broken stones, the hideous scars war had left on the castle. Surely somewhere there was a clue to guide him to the treasure. He took Nathaniel’s journal out of his pocket, found Mairi MacIntosh’s letter and read it again. “ I have our treasure safe, hidden where the English thieves will not think to look for it. Again, you will know the place, ” she’d written. Now where would a lady hide her most valuable possessions? He could see three fireplaces. A secret space under a loose hearthstone made sense, but how could a lady lift such giant slabs of stone? The walls were three feet thick, and formidable, but the stones stood close together without any secret gaps that he could see. The room was filled with rubble, wood and roof slates, heat-shattered stone, and nothing else. The castle had obviously been looted before the English troops set fire to it. Had they found Mairi’s treasure?
    He looked across at the staircase, blocked by a mountain of debris. The floor above that part of the room was intact, the wood there barely scorched. Perhaps there was a bedchamber or a solar there. It might be a place to look, but the rubble between himself and the steps was twenty feet across, and too sharp and dangerous to climb over.
    Kit sighed. He’d wanted an adventure. It seemed it couldn’t begin until he’d moved the debris out of the way, one piece at a time. He tossed his coat aside and rolled up his sleeves. He grunted as he grasped a chunk of charred stone and tossed it aside. Under it lay three other pieces of stone, and he shifted those too, and considered what had happened here, and wondered how well his uncle might have known the people who lived here. “What’s the secret, Nathaniel?” he murmured, and the whisper echoed back to him, sending a prickle up his spine.

 
C HAPTER T EN
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    Near Inverness, Scotland, February 1745
    C aptain Nathaniel Linwood sat in his tent, huddled beside a brazier that