Read Sarah Gabriel for Free Online Page B

to Stirling and beyond by landau, entering the foothills of the Highlands to stop at an inn at Callander, where the roads were still good. After a night’s rest, he dispatched his driver back to Edinburgh. Then he spent a solitary day walking the countryside, finding some interesting formations of mica-schist which answered to the bite of the small hammer he had carried with him. He made notes on the finds that night and had a quiet dinner, enjoying more than he would admit to anyone the Highland atmosphere. Next morning the ghillie from Struan House had arrived to fetch him in an old but ser viceable carriage pulled by a pair of sturdy bays.
    Angus MacKimmie was a grizzled, bearded fellow in an ancient and rumpled red kilt and a threadbare brown jacket and bonnet. He had offered to carry James’s satchel into the house, but James had released him to the task of tending the horses. When no butlerappeared, James had let himself in the front door to stand in the echoing foyer.
    That large, dim space was made even gloomier by the silvery sheen of rain through tall windows. “Where the devil is everyone,” he muttered.
    Somewhere in the shadows past the staircase, a door creaked, and a large gray wolfhound approached on rangy legs. Pausing to give a throaty woof, he then sniffed at the new viscount. James patted the dog’s head. “Not only fairies and eerie screeches, but now fairy hounds, hey?”
    The dog pushed his head under James’s hand to ask for more petting. The eerie sound echoed again, miserable and faint, and the hound whimpered. Was it a creaking floor, or a madwoman trapped somewhere? James could not fathom it.
    “‘Kirk-Alloway is drawing nigh…where ghaists and houlets nightly cry,’” James murmured, quoting Burns as he rubbed the dog’s ears. Though he enjoyed poetry and ballads as well, he never recited verses or sang in company; but the dog would not think him of a sentimental bent.
    He was about to take his case upstairs and go in search of his rooms when the front door opened behind him, and Angus MacKimmie stepped inside. “Still here, sir?” He picked up James’s leather case. “Upstairs I’ll be taking this, then. You must make yourself heard here. My wife is a bit deaf. Mrs. MacKimmie! ” he thundered as he went up the stairs, booted feet pounding. “ MacKimmie! ”
    The door beyond the stairs opened again, and a woman came down the hall followed by two terriers, one black and one white. Stocky and middle-aged, thewoman wore a plain dark dress, her gray hair wisping beneath a translucent white cap. “Oh, sir! Lord Struan, is it! I’m Mary MacKimmie,” she said, dropping a slight curtsy. “Welcome to Struan House. I hope you did not wait long. I was in the kitchen. I’m that surprised to find you here so early in the day—”
    “MacKimmie! ” thundered the ghillie, above stairs.
    “I’m here, ye loon!” she called, and turned back to James. “So you’ve met my husband, and these are the dogs. Osgar,” she said, patting the wolfhound, “is a big lad but very gentle. The terriers are Taran—that’s the black one—and Nellie. They’re good wee pups, though do they see a fox or a rabbit, they’ll be gone on the chase.”
    As she spoke, the shriek came yet again, and a sharp chill with it, as if an outside door blew open, but the front entrance was shut against the cool autumn breeze. Osgar howled plaintively, and the terriers made low, gruff barks. Mrs. MacKimmie glanced calmly upward, as did James, and smiled as if nothing was amiss.
    “We expected you later today, with the roads so muddy from the rains. Though Mr. MacKimmie drives like the de’il sometimes, to be sure.”
    “An interesting ride indeed. Mrs. MacKimmie, I must ask—what is that sound?”
    “Oh, that’s our banshee. Strange, that. She’s glad to see the new laird, I suppose.”
    “I came to Struan as a boy,” he said, “and never heard that sound.”
    “You weren’t the new laird then, were