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her lower lip. “Then we put it away, for it made my mother cry.”
    A puzzle piece, Hadden realized; she missed her uncle and ached for her mother’s pain. “Why did he leave?”
    â€œMemories are long here in the Highlands. There were those English who took over estates abandoned by the outlawed Scots, and one remembered Uncle Clarence and threatened to turn him over as a rebel. Uncle knew the family could ill afford that.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter when it so obviously did, “So he left.”
    Moving slowly, Hadden seated himself on the cushioning sheepskin, stretched out his long legs, and kneaded his thighs as if they ached. “But he must have been an elder! What did this Englishman think he could do?”
    Her gaze slid sideways toward him. She watched his hands move up and down along his muscles, and unconsciously she mimicked him, rubbing her legs with long, pensive strokes. “He could seduce his old sweetheart away from her miserable English husband and take her with him, that’s what.”
    She injected humor into her tone, but she wasn’t truly amused. Sorrow lurked behind the brave smile, the lifted brows.
    â€œHe was the black sheep, then,” Hadden pronounced.
    â€œNot in the MacNachtan family. In the MacNachtan family, all the men are black sheep.” Sitting forward, she delved into the trunk as if she could hide behind the contents.
    But she couldn’t hide from Hadden. Not when he was getting the answers he’d sought. “Who else?”
    â€œHmm?” She raised her ingenuous gaze to his.
    He didn’t believe the innocence for a moment. “I never heard this before. Who else was a black sheep?”
    â€œOh . . . my father, for one.” The paper rustled as she unwrapped the knobby bundle, and a five-inch-tall stone statue of a naked woman with bulbous breasts emerged. She chuckled again, but this time her mirth seemed forced. “Look. From Greece. Uncle thought she was a fertility goddess.”
    â€œReally?” He barely glanced at the ugly little figurine. “What did your father do?”
    â€œAfter Uncle was exiled, Papa decided to make his stand for Scottish freedom, and in an excess of patriotism—and whiskey—he rode to Edinburgh to blow up Parliament House.”
    Hadden had seen the noble pile of stone last time he’d visited Edinburgh, and said acerbically, “He didn’t succeed.”
    â€œNo. He and my brother drank their way through every pub in the city, telling everyone of their plan.”
    Hadden’s astonishment grew. “Your brother, too?”
    â€œMy mother said they did it on purpose, telling everyone of their scheme, because they were both too kindhearted to think of actually hurting anyone, English or no.” Andra unwrapped another package and showed him a statue of much same size as the other one, but made of bronze.
    As she held it up to him, the miniature woman dressed in a cord skirt saluted Hadden, her golden eyes ablaze.
    â€œFrom Scandinavia,” Andra told him. “My uncle said she as a fertility goddess as well. The natives put quite a store in her.”
    Hadden plucked the female deity from her fingers. “Are they in prison in Edinburgh?”
    â€œWho? Oh, my father and brother.” Andra’s elaborate casualness didn’t cozen him. “No. They were put to the horn, outlawed—a matter of great pride to them—and they fled to America. My father died there, but my brother writes occasionally. He’s married quite a hearty woman, born in that country, and he’s doing well.”
    â€œHow old were you when all this occurred?”
    â€œEleven.”
    â€œI see.” Hadden saw more than she wished. Her men, the ones who should have defended her against all hardship, had abandoned her for ineffectual glory. She had been posed on the cusp of womanhood, ready to dance, to flirt, to be courted