The Highlander's Maiden. Elizabeth Mayne

himself with the hope that there would be inns up the road in Lochaber, too. He wouldn’t put the womenfolk of this house through the extra work of boiling water so he could shave or wash. They worked as hard in a day as he did. That mild consideration meant that those same ladies would have to suffer his presence at supper with a week’s stubble of beard, packing creases in his spare shirt and a kilt that had received no more than serious brushing to free it of Glencoe’s rich black mud.

      He would wash anything he possessed in water drawn from a good well and did so all the time on his travels. Hence he stripped down inside the barn to his kilt and bare feet for the second night in a row, grimly facing the task before him.

      A yellowed cake of hard lye soap made a gray lather on his hands. The light in the barn was dim, only a punched tin lantern helped him with his difficult task.

      Road dirt was one thing, but the dirt from the muck in the byre was of another class. Robert dunked his hands in the water to rinse them and revolted against using that soil to wash his face or other parts. He had to throw it out and fetch fresh.

      He shook the excess from his hands, picked up the bucket and went out into the darkening night. He didn’t really feel the snow under his bare feet. Experience on the march and through wintry mountains had hardened him to the point that he only felt the cold when he actually warmed up. There were some crofts that he couldn’t remain long in now. Robert couldn’t breathe when the air was close and overheated indoors, or so smoky it choked him.

      Actually, he was most content to have a barnor a shed to pass a cold night in, sufficient harbor from the wind. Mostly he and Alex sheltered with crofters. Farmsteads like this were as rare as royal princes in Scotland. Wherever they were at suppertime, they were always invited to share what fare the family had. Glencoen Farm was a double boon. The food offered on this prosperous farm’s table was filling and plentiful.

      If there was one thing Robert missed on this mission to complete the first stage of his cartographer’s work, it was hot food, served to him regularly. When this journey ended, he didn’t think he would be able to look at a blackened coney on a spit with any sort of relish. But he did now. At this moment he’d have eaten a raw rabbit. That was how ravenous he always was at the end of every arduous day of hiking and measuring mountains.

      Come June, the task would be over. Nothing was going to distract Robert from the goals he had so permanently fixed in his mind—nothing. Once all of Scotland was measured, they could sit down to the next task, that of compiling all the measurements, diagrams and drawings into a concise and perfect graphic rendering of Scotland as she really, truly was.

      In Campbell country, King James’s approval of their work carried about as much weight as the Marquis of Hamilton’s endorsement—none. The coin of commerce in Glen Orchy and Lochaber was the bond and goodwill of the Earl of Argyll, Archibald Campbell. Even if Robert had garnered that august man’s endorsement it wouldn’t have mattered. He was a Gordon and Highland Campbells hated all Gordons. Their ill will came with the territory.

      On the positive side, Robert and Alex knew more about Scotland than any other Scotsman alive. They had cataloged the elevation of nearly five hundred mountains, identified the longitude and latitude of each hamlet, village and township in the realm and measured the length and breadth of every lake, bay, inlet and peninsula in their convoluted, mountainous homeland.

      All save what terrain lay in the shire of Lochaber.

      Lochaber was the last. The only shire remaining on their list to be surveyed. Someday soon, the end result would be a map that was as precisely accurate as their mathematical brains could make it.

      It was an occupation that would fill the best years of their lives and no small ambition. They were sworn on their scholars’ vow before God Almighty to make their map the most accurate map ever made of their Scotland. A map that navigators could use for centuries to come with complete faith in its accuracy.

      Since the age of ten and four Robert had been assigned to the George Gordon, the Earl of Huntly’s vanguard, as a scout reconnoitering the terrain ahead of the earl’s army. Robert had come to cherish accurate maps and guarded them with his life. It had paid in the end. He and his brothers and most of his kinsmen were all alive and for the most part, the victors in the recent civil wars.

      Too many of Argyll’s poorly prepared Campbells weren’t.

      Robert shook himself out of his reverie and stamped his way to the well. He hoped the day’s luck held and MacGregor would crack open a bottle of his whiskey and invite them to share a wee dram or two of it.

      The mud was more dense at the farm’s well than anywhere else outside the pigs’ byre. No matter where he’d traveled it never seemed to get cold enough to freeze the mud under a bunch of dirty pigs. He caught the rope and pulled down the well pole, dropping the bucket into the water below. The crackle of filmy ice snapped in the cold air, quite loud.

      “Who’s there?” a started voice asked.

      Robert turned to find the speaker and found a woman at the fence gate of a shed. He raised his hand and called out, “Don’t be alarmed. It’s only me, Robert Gordon, the surveyor.”

      “Ah, the man who saved my life,” replied the woman in a rueful voice.

      He squinted across the increasing gloom and found the wry speaker. It was definitely the same young lady Robert had watched skate with the farmer’s children—the redheaded maiden with freckles on her nose and lips set in a perpetual smile. The young woman whose life he’d saved and body he’d held and breath he’d shared. He’d wondered if she was avoiding him apurpose.

      His Lady Quickfoot wore a most unlikely disguise—that of a simple hill farmer’s sister.

      It was dark. Not so very dark that he couldn’t see her hair forming a river of captured fire against the deep darkness of her woolen cloak. Drat that, he thought. What was she doing out in the cold? She was standing still as the night air against the closed gate. Perhaps she’d only come outside to take some cooler air. He hoped that wasn’t a sign that the farmhouse felt like Lord Hamilton’s African hothouse.

      Robert shook his head and told himself it was none of his business what she was doing outdoors. Did he have the good sense the Lord had blessed him with, he’d get his water and go back to the barn before his whole body turned into an icicle without his ever knowing it.

      He could forget that he knew she was Lady Quickfoot and go on about his business. He didn’t need a woman’s help to complete one speck of his work.-If the truth were told—which it never could be in Scotland when Campbell kinsmen were about—Robert had his own suspicions about King James’s peculiar motives. Why the king would even want to pair another Campbell or Gordon together was beyond him. Robert needed nothing more than his own astute gifts of logic and scientific investigation to complete this mission of his in Lochaber. Yet the king thought otherwise.

      Ignoring the beautiful woman, Robert tipped the dipper and poured its contents into his bucket. The excess splashed onto a layer of dirty straw. Cold water skittered across snow, ice, straw and black mud, soaking the toughened soles of his bare feet.

      “There’s a huge kettle full of heated water to bathe with in the shed behind the kitchens,” Cassie said, reluctantly deducing his purpose for sojourning out into the elements in only his kilt.

      It neither alarmed nor impressed her to see any man going about without his sark at this time of the day on the farm. Nor could she figure out why she was speaking to him. She might well owe him something for her life, but that debt ought to be well paid by Euan’s offer of hospitality. Then she remembered, Gordon hadn’t just saved her. He’d rescued Ian, too. So Cassie offered more…as an appeasement to her conscience. Maggie would expect that of her.

      “Euan keeps soaps and razors and scrub brushes for all to use. You are welcome to help yourself. Your friend has already gone in to see to his toilette. You’ve time before supper. Do you want me to show you where to go?”

      Robert looked down at the full bucket of cold water. She couldn’t have tempted him more if she’d invited him to