* * *
Gowan came back to the cottage carrying a brace of rabbits and a little sackful of wild mushrooms, expecting to find Minna there. However, when he walked into the cottage there was no sign of her, and he looked around, baffled. The structure of the locks was such that she could not leave once the outside lock was bolted, but she had evidently managed it somehow.‘I should have known.’he thought wryly, shaking his head. He knew, even on short acquaintance, that she was not only beautiful, but fearsomely intelligent.
Gowan dropped his catch on the floor and put the hood of his cloak up again. He was ravenous, and had wanted to begin skinning and eating the rabbits straight away, but he had more pressing matters to worry about now. Where was Minna?
He left the cottage again and began to sprint through the woods, heading for the castle. It did not take long to find her. Instead of walking towards the castle, Minna was sitting thoughtfully looking at the loch, her arms wrapped around herself, seemingly mesmerized.
“What are you doing here?” he asked angrily, putting his hand on her shoulder as he knelt down beside her. “Your brother’s guards could come and drag you back to him at any moment.”
“Take your hand off me, please!” she replied, batting it off her shoulder angrily. “I am going to face my brother! His evil can't be allowed to continue, and I will do my best to put a stop to it!”
Gowan stared at her in disbelief, shaking his head. “But you can't do that! Are you mad? I thought when you told me this before you had listened to my advice, but now I see that you are just as misguided as before. You will be committing suicide!” He looked down at her and realized that he would be bereft if anything happened to Minna. He had only known her a few days, but already he had begun to care about her.
Perhaps it was because she had she had assuaged his loneliness, or perhaps it was because she attracted him so much on a physical level, but he did not want to see any harm come to her. She was in particular danger because her monstrous brother, who should have been protecting her, was her enemy. He growled inwardly. Why would she not see sense?
“You are a coward,” Minna said contemptuously, her voice throbbing with anger. “You lived like a hermit for years rather than helping your clan! I don’t wish to speak to you any longer! Get away from me!” She gave him a firm push and he took a step back towards the loch, but he was too far away to fall into the water.
Gowan reached forward and grabbed her hand, then looked down at her, his eyes begging. He could not leave matters like this. In one last desperate attempt to make her stay he kissed her, almost savagely.
Minna tried to resist him for all of a second, but her efforts were futile. She was furious, but her anger only seemed to fuel the passion inside her, and in a few more seconds their bodies were fused together again, lips locked in a desperate kiss.
Gowan wanted it to go on forever, but it could not, and when Minna broke the kiss he felt a plunging sense of disappointment which fled as soon as the flat of her hand hit his cheek.
“I am going to see my friends - they have more respect for me than you do!”
Minna gave him a glare that would have felled a lesser man then walked away. She glanced over her shoulder once to make sure he was not following her, but Gowan was standing in the same spot, immobile, watching her but doing nothing.
Minna broke into a run. She was using her fury as a weapon, because she did not wish to think of what could have been had she stayed with the man she had just left. It was simply not meant to be, she told herself, and that was the end of it.
18
Minna did not intend to go straight to the castle, but to the village. If the worst happened to her she wanted to tell the inhabitants of Cairndene where she had been and let them know that she had not forgotten them.
Accordingly, she ran all the way into the village, glad that she was wearing her breeches and not her dress. The moment she arrived at the end of the street one of the children screamed, “Mistress! Mistress!” and threw herself into Minna’s arms. Minna staggered back and almost fell, but managed to right herself, laughing at the delighted expression on the little girl’s face. Bridie was all of five years old and one of Minna’s favorite children because of her happy, enthusiastic nature.
“Where have ye been?” she asked, touching Minna’s cheek as if to make sure that she was real. “We missed ye.”
“I have been visiting a friend who was very sick,” Minna replied. “I did not have time to tell anyone. I am very sorry.”
“Is your friend better now?” Bridie asked earnestly, her big blue eyes wide with concern. Minna wished the little girl was her own sometimes.
“Yes, much better now,” she replied, smiling. “All she needed was a wee bit of rest.” She bent down and set Bridie down on the ground, then smiled at the crowd of people who had come to greet her. Everyone wanted to know where she had been and how she was, of course, and Minna told them the same story she had told Bridie, since she did not want to tell them the truth in front of the children.
The villagers were hanging back, because like most country people, they were superstitious. Minna might be a ghost or some other species of malevolent spirit. However, after a few more moments, when she called aside Senga Smith and asked her to send the children away for a little while so that she could speak to the adults, they relented.
This was duly done and the adults all sat on the ground around the well while Minna explained what had happened. She took a deep breath. “I am not a ghost,” she said. “But I nearly was. I think my brother tried to kill me.”
There was a collective gasp of shock as Minna spoke, but she raised her hand for silence as everyone started to talk at once. “Let me explain. As you know, my father took Cairndene Castle by force, and when he died, my brother Jamie inherited it. You know that he is not only a bad Laird, but a very bad man, and no Laird at all. When I was coming to see you a few days ago, he met me on the road. We had an argument by the side of the loch and he pushed me in. A man rescued me and looked after me for a few days, because my throat was sore, and I was very weak. That is where I have been.”
“But Mistress,” Senga asked. “Who is this man? Where does he live?”
“I can't tell you what his name is because I do not know it,” Minna lied. “And he kept his face hidden from me the whole time I was there. As for his home, he made me vow not to tell anyone where it is. He is a very private person, a hermit, you could say. I am well, and that is all you need to know.”
“But Mistress, where will ye go?” Archie Findlay asked.
“What a stupid question, Archie!” Craig McLeod said scathingly. “She can stay wi’ us of course!”
There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the villagers and it warmed Minna’s heart to see their kindness and goodwill. “Thank you all, but you have little enough to go around already,” she pointed out.