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speculatively, and for a moment she seemed like her old self. “It will be good for you to have someone your own age here.”
    “Don’t.” Isobel felt as if she might choke. “Please, don’t try to matchmake. It’s impossible.”
    “Nonsense. Now come in and sit down and tell me all about him.”
    “I cannot.” Isobel pulled away, ignoring the faint hurt in her aunt’s eyes. “I will come back later and tell you everything I know. But right now I must go. I—I have to fetch something. From Meg.”
    Her aunt frowned. “Meg?”
    “Meg Munro, Auntie; you know Meg. Coll’s sister. Their mother Janet was Andy’s wet nurse.”
    “Of course I know Meg.”
    The vagueness in Elizabeth’s gray eyes made Isobel doubt her aunt’s words. I cannot bear it, she thought.
    “I must go,” she repeated, and fled down the hall without looking back.
    Inside her bedroom, Isobel closed the door and sagged against it. She wasn’t sure how she had gotten through itwithout breaking down. Her knees were jelly, her hands trembling. She heard the sound of footsteps and voices in the hall outside her door as Hamish and the Englishman walked past, a bitter reminder that her home was gone.
    Not just the house she had grown up in, but the loch, the earth, the rocks and caves, every inch of this land and its wild, harsh beauty. Her very life was tumbling down around her, ripped away by her young brother’s folly. Even her beloved aunt was being taken from her bit by bit each day, her mind retreating.
    She could not hold back a sob. Grabbing up her cloak, she ran from the room, tearing down the stairs and out into the yard as if pursued by devils.

J ack looked around the unprepossessing bedchamber. The room to which Hamish had led him was large, he would give it that—large and cold and sparsely furnished. At the far end was an unlit fireplace. A massive wardrobe loomed against the wall opposite, its dark walnut and plain lines at odds with the decoratively carved oaken bed’s delicate—indeed, one could call them spindly—posts. A few more lumps of furniture were hidden under covers, and a faint but distinctly unpleasant odor hung in the air.
    Hamish dropped Jack’s bag unceremoniously on the floor beside the bed, muttering something beneath his breath. Could this growling gnome of a man really be the butler? Jack did not expect a butler to be friendly, for they could be chilling in their courtesy, but he had never encountered another so surly or so lacking in dignity.
    “I take it this room has not been occupied in a while,” Jack commented, and the butler cast an unfriendly glance his way.
    “We wurnae expecting ye.” Hamish’s accent, if possible, seemed even thicker than it had before.
    Jack peeled off his sodden jacket and began to unknot his equally wet neckcloth. He wondered if the estate was in as bad a shape as the state of this room suggested. He did not know Sir Andrew well, but the lad had always sported plenty of blunt, a bird of paradise on his arm, the wine flowing freely, as he gambled away the night.
    Hamish ripped the covers from the one set of windows, sending dust flying and revealing velvet curtains that might once have been dark green or blue or perhaps even red. Their nap was worn so thin that in spots the afternoon light, weak as it was, glowed through the material. Hamish shoved the draperies open, alleviating the gloom somewhat, then clumped about the room, yanking off the rest of the covers.
    “Will ye be wanting anything else?” The butler gave Jack a look that was more challenge than inquiry.
    “I believe a fire in the grate might be appropriate,” Jack snapped, nettled. “And what the devil is that smell?”
    “Smell?” The butler gazed at him blankly. “I widna know, sir. The sheuch, mebbe, below.”
    Jack felt sure his own expression was now as lacking in comprehension as the other man’s. Did these people not speak English? “The what?”
    “The sheuch.” The butler made a careless