Aye, Payton did his damnedest to court the unruly lass, but he kept running into Miss Crowley—curiously, just about every time he turned around. And she was always in the company of Mared, who made a habit of leaving them—and quickly, too. He saw the two of them at the kirk, on the road, at a ceilidh, a gathering in Aberfoyle where people from the village and surrounding lochs shared music and drink and gossip.
He’d seen Miss Crowley and Mared most recently in the confectioner’s shop, where he always stopped when in Aberfoyle, for he had a rather irrepressible sweet tooth. At Mared’s urging for all and sundry to hear, he bought Miss Crowley a sweetmeat, but took great satisfaction in not purchasing one for Mared as well, the exasperating little wench.
He saw Miss Crowley the following day, too, when he returned to the smithy to fetch one of his bays. She was walking in the street with Mared, who, he remarked, was spending an awful lot of time in Aberfoyle of late.
“A happy coincidence, I assure ye,” Mared had said with a brilliant smile, and then suddenly, “Oh!” as she remembered the important errand that had brought her to Aberfoyle. She scurried away like a rat deserting a sinking ship, leaving Payton alone with Miss Crowley.
Payton liked Miss Crowley, actually. Once she stopped being afraid of him, he discovered she was really a very nice lass, and he enjoyed her company—but in a friendly sort of way. Not enough to wed her for all eternity, as Mared obviously wanted him to do. He had the sense that Miss Crowley felt much the same way about him. Frankly, she seemed far more interested in the smithy’s son than in him.
He thought that rather fortunate, for he’d not want to see Miss Crowley hurt by Mared’s silly games.
On a morning that dawned clear and blue after two days of heavy rain, a restless Payton saddled his big bay hunter, Murdoch, then whistled one of his best sheepdogs, Cailean, to his side, and set out to have a look at his sheep.
The ride was slow; Murdoch kicked up thick clumps of mud from a ground turned to bog as they moved slowly along the base of Ben Cluaran. Even Cailean ceased his running ahead and then behind Murdoch, as sheepdogs were wont to do, and walked wearily beside them. High above, on hills that stretched to the sky in shades of green and gold, Payton could see the tiny dots that were his sheep, grazing as high on the face of the hills as any creature could go.
In a week or two, they’d herd them down. The trick with sheep was to keep them moving so they did not graze to roots in any one spot.
When he reached the mouth of Glen Ard, Payton turned upstream, into a narrow split between hills, guiding Murdoch to a place where he could drink from the fast-running stream.
He found a grassy spot and dismounted and knelt beside his horse to drink himself.
As he did so, he heard a mysterious thud and then the ominous sound of something falling down the steep hillside behind him, crashing into trees and rocks. Still on his haunches, Payton looked over his shoulder and saw an enormous rock tumbling down toward him. Instantly he jumped to his feet, grabbed Murdoch’s reins and pulled him upstream. The rolling rock hit a tree and hopped a little to the right, then came crashing into the stream exactly where Payton had been drinking.
Cailean trotted over to have a sniff of the rock, but Payton couldn’t move, could only stare, his heart racing. The thing was as big as his largest ram. If he hadn’t moved so quickly, the bloody thing would have bowled into him and likely killed him.
“Mi Diah!”
The voice came from somewhere above him; Payton groaned, and with his hands on his hips, turned around.
“Are ye harmed?” Mared cried as she quickly picked her way down the sheep trail to him, her two dogs darting ahead of her. She had a basket in her hand, her green and blue wrap of plaid, her arisaidh, dragging behind her, and her long black hair unbound beneath an old straw hat.
She leapt off the last rock onto the path by the stream and paused for a moment to stare at the rock before turning to him with an awe-filled expression. “Are ye all right?”
“I am quite all right; it didna touch me!” he said gruffly. “What are ye about, pushing rocks that size down the hill? Ye might have killed me!”
“I did no’ push it!” she cried indignantly. “I donna know how it came to fall!”
Payton snorted.
“On my honor! The earth is quite wet—it must have come loose….” Her voice trailed off, and she frowned at his expression. “Really, if I’d attempted to slay ye, I’d have done so in such a slow and painful manner that there’d be no question it was me. I didna touch that blasted rock!”