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He grimaced at Kathleen. “I am truly sorry, lass.”
“It’s fine,” she repeated. “As long as we’re safe.”
It wasn’t fine. It was awful, and she wanted to cry over the loss of her mother’s ring. Still, they were alive and whole.
“I’m grateful they were scared off,” she added. “Is there really a rider coming?”
Angus, who’d gone to talk to the coachman and Robby, gazed up the road. “Aye, there is.” Then he snorted. “It’s the bloody village vicar, ye ken. Come to our rescue.”
Chapter Eleven
“Found it!” The vicar triumphantly held up Jeannie’s shoe.
While Angus helped the girls reorganize their trunks, Grant and the vicar retrieved various bits of clothing and personal items scattered about the roadside and ditch. Robby and the coachmen, now armed, kept a careful watch on the surrounding countryside.
Given the unsettled situation, Grant had been tempted to leave the trunks and their contents, returning for them once the sisters were safely stowed at Lochnagar. Kathleen, however, had pointed out that the bandits had taken everything of value, and she refused to leave her undergarments strewn about the roadside for everyone to see. Grant had declined to point out that the road into Dunlaggan was hardly a bustling thoroughfare, which was why they’d been robbed in the first place.
After a few tartly exchanged words, he’d reluctantly given in. But he would not rest easy until the lasses were behind the sturdy walls of his brother’s manor house.
“Thank goodness you arrived when you did, Mr. Brown,” Jeannie enthused to the vicar, clasping the other shoe to her chest. “We probably would have beenkilledif you’d not come along to rescue us.”
Grant swallowed a snort. Though he had an athletic build, Brown was an exceedingly peaceable and rather absent-minded fellow. It was impossible to imagine him affecting any sort of rescue, much less taking on a gang of highwaymen.
Nevertheless, the sound of Brown’s horse had spurred the gang to quit the scene. That was a good thing, since Heckie’s interest in Kathleen had crossed the invisible line in Grant’s head. He’d been seconds away from gutting the man despite the likelihood that he’d have been shot as a result.
Grant had been damned careless with the safety of those in his charge, and for that he wouldn’t forgive himself. Still, who could have foreseen highwaymen operating this close to Lochnagar? It didn’t make any sense. Not on Graeme’s watch, practically under his magistrate-brother’s nose.
“You’re very kind, Miss Jeanette,” Brown said as he climbed out of the ditch. “But it was lucky the poltroons didn’t know it was I who was the rider. Vicars aren’t very intimidating, you know, except from the safety of our pulpits.”
When he handed Jeannie her shoe, the girl gazed up at him with a dazzled smile. “Oh, no. You definitely saved us. Didn’t he, Kath?”
“Every little bit helps,” replied Kathleen as she carefully tugged a thistle that was enmeshed in a delicate lace scarf. When the lace ripped, she sighed and pitched the scarf into the trunk.
“Sorry, lass,” Grant said with a sympathetic grimace.
He finished dusting off her books with his handkerchief before placing them back in her trunk.
Those books had surprised him. Expensively bound, they contained detailed illustrations of gardening plans and beautiful drawings of various types of fauna. She’d clearly been distressed to see them so casually tossed aside—and a little embarrassed when Grant had retrieved them from under the carriage. Muttering something about herhobby, she’d then hurried off to rescue a blushing Mr. Brown, who’d discovered her stays behind a bush.
Grant had not taken her for the gardening type. Then again, hisSassenachbeauty was full of surprises, she was.
His brain mentally stumbled over the notion of thinking of Kathleen ashis, before refocusing on her.
“What’s that, Miss Calvert?” he asked.
“I said that it’s not your fault,” she carefully enunciated, as if he were both slow-witted and hard of hearing. “At least they missed your bags, which is a small blessing.”
Grant’s plain carpetbag, along with his grandfather’s, had been shoved in the back of the boot, behind everything else. In any case, except for his silver-chased pistol, which might as well have been a decoration for all the good it had done them, anything of his could easily be replaced.
“I’d much rather they’d taken mine than yours,” he said.
She shrugged, doing her best to put on a brave face. “They’re just things, you know. The important thing is that we’re all safe.”
“Aye, that.”
He hated that she’d been robbed of her jewelry, especially the little garnet ring. By her reaction, it obviously held great sentimental value.
She frowned as she rolled up her now mucky evening gown. “I must say that I had no idea the roads in the Highlands were so dangerous. I wouldn’t have brought Jeannie along if I’d realized.”
