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might have grown up, Lucian,” she said bitingly. “It seems ye’re nothin’ but a bairn still.”
    It was then Lucian MacDermott, unprincipled youth as he had been an unprincipled child, belittled in front of his friends and furious because of it, drew back his arm and backhanded Anne across her face.
    The basket flew from Anne’s arm; as she staggered momentarily, her hand went to her cheek, already scarlet and hinting at the bruise that would swell there and the discoloration that would result.
    “Enough!” The two young men, shocked, drew Lucian back. Shrugging them off he would have returned to the attack except that someone, calling from the stables, demanded to know what was keeping them.
    Turning reluctantly away, Lucian, his eyes hard, flung back over his shoulder, “Just who you think you are, I can’t imagine! Frasers have ever been available to the MacDermotts, no matter what the need. And my needs are not met—yet!
    “And clean up that mess, wench,” he shrieked, his tossed head indicating the dozen or so eggs that had flown from the basket and were lying smashed on the ground.
    Anne, deaf to everything but the roaring in her ears, was fumbling for the basket. Ignoring its broken contents, she stumbled homeward. Here, she bathed her cheek and eye and groaned at the sight, knowing it could not be disguised. As in most emergencies, her thoughts went automatically to a soothing cup of tea. Waiting for its medicinal purposes to bring a degree of calm to her spirit, which was as bruised as her countenance, she shrank from the thought of explaining to her father and brothers.
    There was no hiding the injury. Her father, a most careless parent, noticed as soon as he came in the door. It seemed that he inquired about its cause almost reluctantly.
    “It was Lucian,” Anne, ever truthful, admitted, and recounted briefly the meeting with the young men and its outcome.
    “What in heaven’s name did ye do to cause him to act so?”
    “Nothin’, Da, nothin’ at all!”
    Paul Fraser’s face grew red. “You got in the lad’s way. Don’t be a fool, girl. Stay out of that’n’s way—”
    “He’s no lad, Da. He’s older’n I am . . . old enough to have some sense and to know better, I’d think.”
    “It makes perfect sense to him,” Paul said bitterly. “Dinna ye know, lass, that the laird has full say o’ all of his tenants? All o’ us is at his beck and call, and that goes for the young laird too.”
    “Even wives and sons and dauties, is that what ye’re sayin’?”
    “That’s the way it is. It’s always been that way, and it always will. Ye have nae right tae think things’ll be any different.”
    “Are you tellin’ me, Da, that he can get away wi’ . . . wi’ whatever it is he’s threatenin’, and naebody can say him nay—not e’en me own father?”
    “Not me, nor yer brothers. So leave them oot o’ it, ye hear? I dinna want them in any mair trouble than they have a’ready. Ye hear me, Anne?”
    Anne, more blinded by tears than when Lucian had so summarily struck her and more injured in ways that matter, put supper on the table and escaped to the loft. Here she stayed throughout the evening and night, never coming down to subject herself to her brothers and a further confession, from them, of helplessness in the face of Lucian’s abuse.
    Cook, the next day, gave Anne’s face a keen look and shook her head, muttering darkly, but apparently not surprised. Mrs. Case, the housekeeper, studied Anne’s face grimly and set her to cleaning silverware rather than servicing the rooms above stairs.
    “I can’t keep you downstairs forever,” she said almost crossly, as though angry at the need to face the problem. “You aren’t the first in the world, by any means, to have such a problem. It’s the price you pay for having a pretty face.” She spoke as if it were Anne’s problem, not Lucian’s. “If you’re lucky it’ll be a passing phase. These things never last; no