Free The Wrong Bride by Gayle Callen Page A

encroach the Highlands. One of the royal castles of the kings of Scotland is there. And ’tis where I keep a private stable.”
    That jolted her from her dazed stare out the window. “What?”
    â€œWe’ll be able to go no farther in the coach, so I house it there.”
    His home was so remote a coach couldn’t travel there. She groaned and closed her eyes, feeling as if she were going to the end of the world.
    â€œI had a letter from a friend in Inverness,” McCallum continued in a wry voice. “The first chaise made it there only last year. He said the whole town came out to see it.”
    Riona could only stare at him in horror. What kind of place was this?
    As they approached the town, Stirling Castle rose high above the surrounding valley, up on a rocky promontory, and Riona saw McCallum’s expression cloud. She knew enough of her history to know that the Jacobite forces had tried to take the castle during the Rising, and had been unsuccessful. Had he been there, too, trying to take back the Scottish castle of his king from the English? But allshe could focus on was what lay beyond Stirling, the daunting line of mountains to the northwest, where they were headed.
    There was no inn that night, much as she might have wished it. McCallum kept a room above his stables roughly furnished with beds and trunks and a table. Samuel shared the room with them, though he seemed embarrassed by it. Riona almost didn’t care by that point. She was exhausted in both mind and body. No wonder her parents had never brought her to the Highlands.
    To her surprise, McCallum remained in Stirling a second night, so that he could purchase supplies for the journey. Samuel was with her constantly, though she spent much of the day dozing on her bed. McCallum seemed concerned about her that night, and she insisted she wasn’t sick, simply appreciative that the furniture wasn’t rocking furiously under her. More than once in the coach, she’d been thrown to the floor.
    Then at dawn, she found herself riding a mare across the valley floor, toward the bleak mountain range that rose up as if in warning. The drovers’ road was barely a path, overgrown with heather and gorse, with only the occasional beech or pine trees in the lower foothills. The two men positioned her horse between theirs, leading a packhorse behind. She had no choice but to follow Samuel along the narrow dirt path that wound its way ever deeperinto the Highlands. Why did it feel so permanent, like she’d never leave again?
    A FTER a day of slow travel, occasionally following the River Teith through the rising hills, they made camp outside the village of Callandar on a cool summer night. The next day, their journey took them along Loch Lubnaig, where pine forests came almost to the water’s edge, and the bare mountaintops seemed like the uneven backs of lumpy animals. Riona thought they would climb the snow-topped heights of Ben Ledi itself, but to her relief, their path turned and edged the loch, then another river before heading west into a glen that eventually broadened into Loch Voil, another beauteous lake nestled within mountains.
    It was late afternoon when Riona wanted to rest, but McCallum insisted they push forward, along the lake and past the next rising mountain. She wasn’t all that anxious to see the place where she’d live temporarily. The few villages they’d passed, thatched-roof huts with stone walls, had not gotten her hopes up. Perhaps McCallum wouldn’t allow the cow to occupy a room in the cottage, like some did.
    She was just about to insist they make camp when they took a turn, and to her surprise, the first square tower rose above the trees, with guards standing watch on battlements. They rode farther,up to a low hilltop where a large castle had been built, overlooking the hills. The fortress was long and broad, with walls of stone keeping intruders out, but for a guarded gatehouse.