moments for one of the servants to come and tell me the reason for the delay. No one appeared, so I tried to open the carriage window to see what was going on. But the frame was splintered and the window stubbornly refused to move. I opened the door and stuck my head out.
We had stopped halfway along the edge of the loch. To one side of the carriage there was the water, and on the other side the rocky wall of the hillside rose straight and sheer from the edge of the road. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I was able to open the door wide enough to jump down.
Gathering up my skirts, I hurried around to the front of the coach. The horse—a tired old beast with a white star on its head and manners far more pleasant than that of its driver—whickered in greeting and nuzzled my pockets for a treat. I patted his nose.
The road unrolled before me, stretching away to a small wood at the end of the loch. There was no sound but for the whisper of the wind in the reeds by the water. The same wind brought the scent of woodsmoke faintly on the air. It was cold air, and it breathed gooseflesh along my skin, for the coachman and groom had completely vanished.
A second later instinct made me aware that I was no longer alone on the road. I spun around, but I was a moment too late. Strong arms had caught me from behind, pulling me backwards against a hard male body. A hand came down over my mouth. Through my struggles—for I wriggled and kicked and strained to be free, of course—I had a confused impression of movement about me, and I heard the scrape of steel on stone.
I never scream. I have never been able to. When I was a child and the village boys teased me and pulled my hair, my cries of anger always came out as frustrated squawks. It was most vexatious to lack this accomplishment at a moment when it would have been useful to scream loud enough to make the mountains ring. It would also have been useful to be built along more generous lines, for I was slight and thin, and no match for my captor’s strength. In less than a moment he had both my hands held behind my back in just one of his. His grip was tight, and he held me hard against his own body so I had no chance to escape nor even to see his face.
‘I never scream,’ I said, when I had ceased my struggles and caught my breath. Since he still had his hand over my mouth, this came out something like, ‘Mmmmmfffff.’
Surprisingly, he took his hand away.
‘I never scream,’ I repeated.
‘No one would hear you if you did,’ he said. He spoke with a remarkably strong Highland burr, so his words came out something like, ‘Nae oon wuid hear ye an ye did.’
I have always liked the Highland brogue, and his voice was low and melodious and oddly attractive. I had to remind myself that he was a felon and up to no good. His words were all too obviously true. There was not a soul in sight. No one would come to save me even if I had a scream like a banshee.
I sighed instead. ‘What have you done with the coachman and the groom?’
‘They ran away.’ The laconic answer held a hint of amusement.
I made a sound of disgust. ‘Cowards!’
He moved slightly, though his grip on me did not slacken. ‘I cannot disagree with you there.’
‘So what do you want?’ I demanded. ‘Are you a footpad? If so, I can tell you that I have no money.’
This was not precisely the case. I had the five pounds that the trustees of St Barnabas had sent, plus a further five pounds donated most generously by my father’s scholarly colleagues, and yet another pound confided to me by Mr Campbell—who had probably taken it, most improperly, from the Sunday collection plate. This grand total of eleven Scottish pounds would be riches indeed for a thief on the road.
I thought that I felt my captor shake with silent laughter. ‘I do not believe you,’ he said. ‘You are a lady. You must be rich.’ He slid his free hand caressingly down the length of my body and I stiffened with outrage beneath his touch. ‘Shall I search you,’ he continued, ‘to see if you tell the truth?’
‘Do so and I shall see you hanging on the end of a rope for your pains,’ I said, between my teeth. It was strange, but I had a feeling that robbery was not his aim at all—nor the ravishment of innocent young ladies. Even as we spoke I sensed that his mind was working with some other urgent preoccupation.
‘So you think me a highwayman?’ he said.
Something clicked in my mind then—the smell of the smoke, the other men who had passed, the scrape of metal on the stone. I realised that they must have been moving a whisky still. The Highlands were rife with illicit whisky distilleries, tucked away in every mountain glen. It was the curse of the excise men, because all the local populace would be part of the conspiracy—even to the point of local ministers hiding bottles of malt in coffins in the church.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think you are a highwayman. I think you are a whisky smuggler.’
I felt the surprise go through him like a lightning strike, and in that moment his grip on me loosened and I pulled free and ran.
On reflection it was not a sensible thing to have done. The light was fading fast now, and I could barely see to put one foot before the other. I did not know where I was and I had nowhere to run to. Besides, my captor was a lot quicker and stronger than I was.
He caught me within six paces, as I dived into a copse of pine trees in a vain attempt to hide. If I had thought him rough before, it was nothing to how he treated me now. He grabbed my arm, knocking me to the ground and pinning me there with the weight of his body on mine. All the breath was crushed out of me.
The ground beneath me was dry and soft with last year’s pine needles. I lay still, inhaling the sharp, fresh scent and trying to catch my breath. It was too dark to see his face, but I was aware of every tense line of his body against my own. My hands were trapped against his chest, and beneath the coarse material of his coat I could feel the hardness of muscle and his heart beating steadily. In that moment all my senses seemed acutely sharp, so much so that I could smell the scent of him: leather, horses, fresh air and an echo of citrus that mingled with the smell of pine. His cheek brushed mine, and I felt the warmth and roughness of his skin against my own. A shiver seemed to echo its way through my entire body. And in that moment, although I could see nothing of his face in the darkness beneath the trees, I recognised him and knew who he was.
‘Mr Sinclair!’
I heard him swear, and he clapped a hand over my mouth again. ‘Quiet!’
I ignored him, trying ineffectually to struggle free from beneath his weight.
‘When you said I would see you within the month,’ I said, ‘I had no notion you meant it to be so soon.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And what the devil,’ I added, ‘do you think you are doing, smuggling whisky and accosting young ladies on the road?’
His grip relaxed a little, though he still held me pinioned beneath him. It was, in truth, disturbingly pleasant to be held thus, so hard against him. My body, which seemed to have developed a will of its own from the first moment I had met Mr Neil Sinclair, was busy telling me just how pleasurable the whole business was. I tried to ignore the stirring of desire deep inside me, but Neil would not let me up, trapping me with one leg across my skirts and thus keeping me trussed up beneath him.
‘Stop struggling,’ he said, and his voice sounded lazily amused. ‘I rather like you like this, Miss Balfour.’
I
