Highland Heiress by Margaret Moore Page B

no more time to waste. They’ll have the ring set up by now. We’ll have to find you some thing else to wear, though. I wouldn’t want you to ruin your clothes.”
    As if his clothes were all he should be worried about.
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    After Moira left the lane, she wanted nothing more than to get to her carriage and back home as quickly as possible. She hurried along the street past the shops and houses, head down, eyes on the uneven pavement, not wanting to stop, or be stopped by anyone, making every effort not to glance over her shoulder to see if McHeath had followed her out of the lane. Or where he was at all.
    How could she have been so foolish? So weak? So stupid? To let him kiss her again… To surrender to thedesire he aroused. To be so bold and wanton, brazen and reckless. To let him stroke and caress her, until…
    â€œGood morning, my lady.”
    She came to a halt and turned toward eleven-year-old Lillibet MacKracken, who was dressed in a much-mended calico dress, bareheaded, her face tanned, and ankles skinny above boots too large for her feet. The little girl grinned shyly at her from the edge of the milliner’s shop on the far side of the booksellers.
    â€œHow are you today, Lillibet?” Moira asked with a smile, her own troubles momentarily forgotten.
    â€œAll right, miss—my lady,” Lillibet replied, blushing furiously as she twisted the corner of her relatively clean apron. She started to sidle back into the shadow of the shop, as if she was afraid to be seen talking to Moira.
    Considering who her father was, that might indeed be so.
    â€œAre you still going to have the school, my lady?”
    â€œYes, Lillibet, I am. They’ve started to work on it already.” She nodded to a stand of trees on the northern side of the village. “Just over there, in that grove. You can go look at it if you like. I’m counting on you to be one of the first students.”
    â€œOh, no, my lady, Pa says school’s a waste o’ time for the likes of us,” Lillibet demurred. “We should be out earnin’. Maybe Jackie will be able to go someday. He’s a clever wee bairn, my lady.”
    Jackie was only three years old. Knowing how fiercely Lillibet’s father opposed the school, it might take that long to persuade him to change his mind. “I hopethat once it’s built and other children begin to go, he’ll decide to send all his children.”
    Lillibet nodded, yet Moira could see disbelief that such a thing would ever come to pass in the little girl’s hazel eyes. “I’d better get along home now,” Lillibet said softly as she dipped a curtsy, then rushed away.
    If only there was some way she could make Lillibet’s father see that education was not a waste! Moira thought as she watched her go. Learning provided a window onto the wider world, and surely there was nothing wrong with that.
    More determined than ever to build her school and somehow convince Big Jack MacKracken and all those other parents that the school would be good for their children, Moira started toward the livery stable again.
    And realized there was nobody outside it, or the tavern, where there was usually at least three or four men gathered, unless it was raining.
    She stopped and looked around and discovered that men were gathering in the nearby meadow. They looked excited, not anxious. Then she saw the empty square of space about eight feet on all sides, marked off with ropes and stakes.
    That could mean only one thing: there was going to be a prizefight.
    She was relieved her father had declined to come to Dunbrachie with her that day. Attending a boxing match inevitably led to celebratory drinking if the man her father had wagered on won, or consolation drinking if he lost.
    She hoped Jem and the two footmen weren’t in thecrowd, although she supposed she could fetch them if she had to. First, though, she would see if they were inside the