Page 16 of Highlander’s Sloth

In real time, it did not take them long before they broke apart, panting and spent, but it seemed like an age to the young couple. Every knee-trembling moment had extended time itself, making each passing second build until the light in the shed appeared to explode around them. Dust motes circled in the sunbeams, and the barrel on which they had been leaning creaked and groaned.

A footman shouted at them from the doorway, “Is that ye, Master Callum? It’s too dark to tell.”

Kirsty and Callum had burst into laughter and left the way they had come; the footman’s puzzled expression following them out the door.

Kirsty found she had lots to do in the following days. Lady Elspeth had insisted on taking Kirsty to see her dressmaker in town—Callum had brought back dozens of ells of silks and satins from Paris for his mother—and Kirsty got to know the surrounding countryside by riding her new pony, a sweet-natured animal with a light mouth and prancing stride.

A warm glow smoldered in her stomach whenever she thought about their whisky barrel tryst, bringing a small smile to her lips and lighting her eyes, and this served to keep Kirsty content for a few weeks. It was halfway into the third week after their tour around the distilleries when Kirsty began to chafe at the boring routine at Macanroy Lodge. Sure, she had her beautiful dress robes and pretty little pony, but her husband had done a vanishing act again.

According to what Brock told her when she interrogated him, his master would come home when the roosters started to crow, and collapse into bed with strict orders for no one to disturb him until he woke. Then all he would do was repeat his actions of the previous day. On Sundays, he would loll about in his father’s library, sifting through ledgers and legal documents, trying to make sense of the whole as his father’s health deteriorated further. When he happened to bump into his wife in the corridors, he would kiss her forehead in a distracted manner and then go about his business, telling her to go about her own.

Kirsty could feel her hackles rise at these instances of neglect, but then Lady Elspeth called her into the bedchamber again. She found her mother-in-law lying on the divan in her usual manner.

Kirsty held out the note to her. “Ye asked for me to come by, madam?” she asked politely, secretly hoping Lady Elspeth did not want her to sit and drink orgeat with her again.

“Aye, me dear, that I did. I need ye to ride into town for me and pick up the French lace I had ordered for the new morning gown I’m having made up. Fanny requires me to check ‘tis the right kind before she sews it into the cuffs. It’s a fatiguing business, but what can one do? But as good luck will have it, Cal is riding the same way, so ye can escort each other.”

Kirsty was secretly elated she had been given this task and in no way planned on telling her husband about it. She would follow behind him without him knowing; the road twisted and turned enough for her to be able to keep hidden long enough to watch where he stabled his horse when he reached the bustling town of Pitlochry.

Whenever Kirsty had asked Callum what took him to town from sunup to sundown, he had been able to fob her off with explanations about imports and exports and merchants, but today she was determined to discover the truth. Her husband did not look like the sort of man who would take so much pleasure in the deals and transport arrangements whisky distribution offered him.

And so, after trotting a good way behind Callum as he rode his distinctive black stallion towards Pitlochry, Kirsty saw him hand the huge animal over to a groom in a spacious tavern courtyard and step inside.

Undaunted by the tavern’s imposing façade, Kirsty waited a while and then approached the bay windows overlooking the stables. When she peeked around the side, she was greeted by a familiar sight. Lady Christine had held enough balls and invited many gentlemen to them for Kirsty not to recognize gaming tables when she saw them. The noonday bells had not even yet rung, and the tavern parlor was already full of men from all stations in life, mingling around the various games of chance that had already been set up and laying their coins next to the hand they believed most favorable.

Callum was easily distinguishable out of all the men, rendered obvious by his French garb, height, and distinctive wide-shouldered posture. She watched for a while as he quaffed ale with a few merchants’ sons, a wide smile on his handsome face, his hand sunk into a pocket heavy with gold sovereigns.

Kirsty needed to see no more. She gave the curious groom a shilling not to say anything to the gambling saloon occupants and then rode her pony back ho