Highland Heiress - By Margaret Moore Page 0,21

stable.

Between the church and tavern were several stone buildings whitewashed or not, with slate roofs and smoke curling from their chimneys. She passed the baker’s and the bookseller’s, separated by a narrow lane leading to yards in the back, the milliner’s, the tea shop and the candle maker’s.

Since it was market day, temporary stalls surrounded the green. Some were no more than the open back of a wagon and some, belonging to traveling peddlers, were more elaborate.

It was pleasantly warm and sunny, and the delicious scent of bread and pastries from the baker’s drifted on the breeze. Small children and dogs chased each other around the stalls, or stood and watched the puppet show that had been set up near the middle of the green.

None of the dogs she could see were as big or as black or as ugly and vicious as the one that had chased her up the tree.

Perhaps that had been a stray or a wild dog, abandoned or lost by its owner.

Indeed, today Dunbrachie was like a rustic idyll, far removed from the teeming, bustling, aggressive market in Glasgow where she’d shopped before her father had become prosperous enough to have food and other goods delivered to their home. In some ways, she missed that market, for there she would be relatively anonymous except to those merchants whose stalls she frequented.

In Dunbrachie, everybody knew who she was, as well as the story of her father’s unforeseen inheritance and her broken engagement to Sir Robert McStuart. Here she was subject to more than the glares of angry men who saw her school as a threat; there were the furtive looks, the scandalized whispers, the knowing glances and scornfully curled lips of the women, epitomized by the three young women she thought of as the Three Geese.

It might have been easier to stay at home, except that she had no intention of allowing gossip and rude behavior make her a prisoner in her own home.

Nor was she going to be intimidated by the glares of the men who didn’t want her to build her school, most notably Big Jack MacKracken, who stood six feet tall in his bare feet. At the moment he was among the several men gathered at the tavern, where benches and tables had been set outside on such a fine day. If looks could wound, his glower would have had her writhing on the ground.

However, his angry gaze couldn’t hurt her, so lifting her head high, she marched past, heading for the wagon belonging to Sam Corlett, which was bedecked with ribbons, feathers, laces and trims as if it were a huge hat.

A shadow crossed her path. A broad-shouldered shadow.

“What do ye think yer about, anyway?” Big Jack demanded.

Obviously, he was no longer at the tavern. Just as obviously, judging by the odor of ale emanating from him, he’d been drinking for some time.

She wasn’t afraid of him. They were in too public a place for him to do her any real harm, and now there was her title to offer additional protection. A man like MacKracken would appreciate that his punishment would be severe if he physically attacked a lady.

She gave him the same cold look she gave to merchants who tried to cheat her. “My purpose here is none of your business, Mr. MacKracken.”

“Mister, is it? Think you can sweet-talk me, do you, with yer ‘misters’? Not likely—any more than any of my bairns’ll ever set foot in that school you’re building.”

He had seven children, the oldest a girl of eleven, and all of them could benefit if they went to school. “Education is something to be cherished, Mr.—”

“If ye wants yer children growin’ up wantin’ things they can ne’er have,” he retorted. “What good is readin’ and writin’ to a man does a man’s work on a farm? Aye, or his wife?”

“None, perhaps,” she replied, keeping her voice level, “unless they have to sign a bill of sale, or a will, or some other legal document. And who’s to say your boys will want to be laborers? My father was born poor and yet he’s achieved great success, which he wouldn’t have been able to do if he hadn’t learned to read and write.”

“He got a title because some cousin he ne’er even met died.”

“He was successful in business long before that.”

And before he’d started drinking too much. Mercifully his drinking had been confined to overimbibing at night, at first rarely, but in the last few months, more frequently. However,