Taming the Heiress by Susan King

at the outset of a long workday. Thora was built wide and powerful, and he could well imagine her toting long, lanky Norrie out to his boat for a day's fishing.
    "Young Iain will be a fine fisherman someday," Dougal said to Thora as he walked beside her and the boy.
    "Aye, but she wants him to be an educated lad. She's already hired tutors for him, and him so small. He takes lessons at Clachan Mor when she visits here."
    "His cousin the baroness?" Dougal glanced toward "Berry" out in the water. She had sunk down in calm water up to her chin, wide straw hat shading her face.
    Along the edge of the surf, Margaret strolled, lifting her skirt hem, splashing along, ignoring them—and him in particular, he thought.
    "Aye. She will hire tutors for his wee sister, Anna, too, when she is older," Thora said. She carried Iain, and Dougal walked beside her. Mother Elga followed, carrying the plump fair-haired baby. "It is generous, but why so much education for them? They will not want to stay on the island when they are older. She should know. We have a good life on Caransay now. The baroness has made us safe from the clearings of land and islands going on elsewhere. We make a good living with fish and lobster, and collecting kelp and birds' eggs. We have nothing to worry about nowadays but the weather." She laughed.
    "Wicked, our weather can be," Mother Elga said. "Have you ever been out in a storm, Mr. Stoo-ar?"
    "Aye, often," he answered.
    "Hah, I knew it," Elga said.
    "It is truly a paradise here on your island," he said.
    "You like Caransay," Elga said. "And you like the ocean."
    "Aye," he said. "When I was a child, I swam like a fish."
    "Did you!" Mother Elga grinned, and shifted the baby on her hip.
    Dougal turned toward both women. "Would you like me to carry the lad, or the little one?"
    "We would not," Thora said hastily, exchanging glances with her mother-in-law.
    "You shall not have our babies!" Mother Elga snapped.
    Dougal was startled. Had he offended them? Was there some island taboo against men holding children? He did not think so. Perhaps they had misunderstood his English.
    Thora set the boy down at the edge of the water. "Go with Margaret," she said sternly. "Go on, now."
    Out in the mild waves, the other lady's head, capped in its straw hat, seemed to bob on the surface like a buoy. "I wonder if the baroness would give me a little of her time," Dougal said.
    "You cannot disturb her," Thora said. "She is a very proper lady and she would not like to be approached."
    Mother Elga stepped closer, studying his face, then poked at his arm with a stiff finger. Dougal eyed her uncertainly.
    "Perhaps I can call on her later at Clachan Mor," he said.
    "She does not like visitors. Leave the lady be, sir."
    "Leave her be," Elga intoned. "Go back to your rock, water man." She continued to examine him oddly, walking around him and then staring down at his booted feet, wet in the foamy surf.
    "Ah, er, thank you. Perhaps you would be so good as to obtain an invitation for me to call," Dougal suggested. "Tell the lady that I am not the ogre she believes me to be."
    Elga asked a question in Gaelic, and Thora answered her. Elga grinned. "Kelpie," she said, pointing to him. "Not ogre."
    He was beginning to think that the old woman was daft.
    "We shall see, sir," Thora said.
    "Thank you." He wondered if they would help or hinder him from meeting with Lady Strathlin.
    Turning, he saw Margaret walking toward her blanket. Behind her, the woman in the water now surged toward the beach, emerging from the water like a small black whale.
    He had never pictured her quite so... corpulent, he thought.
    "Turn away your eyes, sir," Elga said. "She is not wanting a man to see her now."
    "Of course," he said, turning.
    "Oh, she's coming this way," Thora muttered.
    Moving quickly, Thora snatched up a blanket from the sand and hastened to meet the woman in the black bathing costume, wrapping her in the covering. They walked together, pausing to talk to