Chin down, examining the necklace, Heather fingered the small purple beads. “And these are amethyst, too?”

“Yes. The construction you have signifies a melding of love and intelligence, with love the principal force. It’s an appropriate charm for a young lady seeking to look into her hero’s heart.”

“Thank you, but it must be valuable.” Heather looked up. “Are you sure—”

“Yes.” Catriona smiled. “Courtesy of the Lady, I know my passing it to you is right. You’re supposed to wear it until you’ve found and secured your hero, then pass it to Eliza, then Angelica.” Catriona paused, then her brows rose. “And apparently it then goes to Henrietta, and finally Mary, before coming back here to Lucilla.” She opened her eyes wide. “It seems the Lady has quite a few destinies already in mind.”

Heather tucked the pendant inside her bodice. “I have to admit that knowing I have the Lady on my side is reassuring.”

Catriona smiled. “I knew I was to hand it to you — that’s why I brought it with me this morning. But I didn’t know the rest, about the others. I suspect being told that Lucilla will indeed eventually find her hero was my reward for doing what I was supposed to for you.”

Heather fingered the necklace. “It must be a wrench, giving up something of your grandmother’s.”

“Yes, and no.” Catriona picked up her mortar and carried it to a bench. “I’ve learned over the years not to question — to just believe and obey.”

Smiling back, Heather turned to leave. “I’m going to the nursery — do you have any message?”

“Just tell the twins to stop fighting over their knucklebones. Oh.” Catriona looked up. “One other thing — remember that a man who declares his heart too easily will leave you wondering whether he truly meant it — and the converse is even more true.”

Brows arching, Heather thought, then nodded. With a wave, she started up the stairs.

In midmorning, Breckenridge rode past the spot in the manor’s drive where, the afternoon before, he’d stood and watched the man he was sure was behind Heather’s kidnapping looking down at them.

“He sat his horse at the top of the lane”—he pointed to the lane leading down from Knockgray—“and just watched us.” After a moment, he added, “I didn’t get any sense that he was interested in coming closer.” He glanced at Richard, mounted on a raking black beside him. “Is there something Catriona does to repel invaders?”

Richard snorted. “I don’t ask, but I suspect those intending harm would, these days, find it strangely difficult to cross our borders. It wasn’t always so, but she’s grown progressively stronger with the years.”

When they reached the Ayr road, Richard nodded up the lane. “Let’s see if we can pick up his trail.”

They rode quickly up the lane, slowing as they reached the top of the steep rise. Leaning from his saddle, Richard studied the ground, then smiled. “Nice big horse, with nice, extra-large hooves.” He wheeled his mount, trotting on along the lane past the cottages of the village. “This way.” When they reached the end of the tiny village, and the trail led on, Richard grinned and straightened. “Excellent. This lane rejoins the road near Carsphairn. With any luck the locals will have seen him.”

Breckenridge brought the bay he was riding up alongside. “If he’s anywhere near as large as he looked, it shouldn’t be too hard to know if they’d seen the right man.”

“How big was he?”

Breckenridge glanced at Richard, measuring his height against the height of his horse. “If his horse was larger than yours — and that might well be the case; it looked massive — then he’s at least a few inches taller than you, and broader by a considerable amount, at least in the shoulders and chest.”

“A big beggar, but as you say, that should make him easier to track. What color hair?”

“At a distance, black.”

They each glanced at the other’s head. Breckenridge’s hair was a sable brown, while Richard’s was true black. But picking the difference at any distance. . Richard grimaced. “Dark hair, then.”

It didn’t take them long to reach the spot where the lane joined the Ayr road. Just before the junction, a neat cottage bordered the lane. An old man sitting on the porch in a rocking chair held up his hand in greeting.

“Fine day, Mr. Cynster.”

“Indeed it is, Cribbs.” Reining in his prancing black, Richard asked, “Tell me, did you see a large man on a large horse go past yesterday afternoon?”

“About four o’clock,” Breckenridge added.

But Cribbs was already nodding. “Couldna’ missed him, big as he was. Lordling or laird, by the look of him. Nice chestnut gelding he had under him. Must have been strong as an ox, the horse, to carry his weight.”

“That sounds like the man we’re after — did you see which way he went?”

“On toward the village.” Cribbs nodded north, toward Carsphairn.

“Thank you.” Both Richard and Breckenridge saluted and trotted on.

Once on the better-surfaced road, they let their horses stretch their legs, on and up around the next bend. When they reached the parish church, Richard reined in. “There’s only one watering hole — Greystones.”

Breckenridge followed Richard to a neat, low, whitewashed building a little way along the road. Richard rode down a narrow alley alongside, and they dismounted in the gravel yard behind the tavern. Leaving their horses tethered to a post, Richard led the way through an open rear door. Both he and Breckenridge had to duck beneath the low lintel. Straightening once inside, Breckenridge found himself in a cozy tavern bar.

With walls half paneled in dark wood, and dark wood tables and chairs, and a long bar running along one side, all lit by the fire in a stone hearth and the sunlight pouring through twin windows facing the road, the long, narrow room was comfortably warm and full of good cheer.

“Mr. Cynster, sir! And what can I get ye?” The barman’s gaze tracked past Richard to Breckenridge. The man nodded in smiling greeting. “And your friend, too.”

“Two ales, Henry — and your ear.” Grinning, Richard fronted the bar, leaning on the raised counter.

Breckenridge ranged alongside, his gaze scanning the other occupants. Four old codgers with nothing better to do than sit indoors, sip ale, and watch the road — just what he and Richard were looking for.

The barman set down two pint pots filled to the brim with frothing ale. Breckenridge turned to accept his with a murmured thanks. He sipped, then cast Richard a glance Richard had been waiting for. Breckenridge grinned and wordlessly toasted Richard. “Your secret?”

The ale was ambrosia.

Richard shrugged, swallowed. “I’ve just never seen the need to mention it at the manor, at least in female hearing.”

The barman returned from carrying the fresh pints Richard had sent to the four older men, all of whom called their thanks and toasted Richard before gratefully drinking.

Henry, the barman, pulled out a cloth and industriously wiped the counter. “So what can I help you with, sir?”

“A large man on a big chestnut gelding rode past yesterday afternoon.” Richard turned to include the four older men. “Did any of you get a good look?”

“Better’n that,” Henry said. “Came in here, he did. Stopped for a pint.”

“Aye,” one of the older men said, “and asked after the manor. Wanted to know what lay down the drive.”

Henry nodded. “That’s right. Good looking gentl’man, he was.”

“Taller than me,” Breckenridge said, “and broader, too?”

Henry and the others gauged Breckenridge, who was a touch taller than Richard.

“Aye, that’d be right,” one of the older crew opined. “Handsome, he was, too, but not as handsome as you.”

Breckenridge good-naturedly lifted his pint at the resulting laughter.

“So was he lowland or highland?” Richard asked.

“Highland, definitely, or me mother’s an Englishwoman,” one of the regulars called.

The others all nodded.

“Never seen him ’round here before,” Henry said, “and he did say he was just passing through.”

“Rode on away to the north,” the old man closest to the window offered. “And that horse of his was something to see. Massive in the chest, and strong, I’d warrant.”

“Close to, what did he look like?” Richard asked Henry.

“Black hair — black like yours. Eyes. .” Henry paused, then shivered. “To tell the truth, if he hadna been such a personable chap, those eyes woulda given me the willies.”

Breckenridge lowered his pot. “How so?”

“Pale they were — put me in mind of the ice that forms on yon burn in winter. Cold and pale, but with something flowing underneath.”

A moment of silence gave due note to Henry’s poetic turn.

“What about his features?” Richard asked.

Henry grimaced, looked to the others. “Pretty much what you’d expect from a laird, I’d say.”

“Aye — clean-cut, well-shaven. His clothes were quality, too. And his boots.”

No matter how they angled their questions, they learned nothing more.

After draining a second pint each, Breckenridge joined Richard in bidding the five men in the tavern farewell, then walked back out into the rear yard.

Both he and Richard halted in the yard, looking up at the sloping field behind the tavern while they pulled on their riding gloves.

“Not much to go on, beyond confirming he’s a laird — they wouldn’t have got that wrong.”

“And his eyes,” Breckenridge said. “Of everything we’ve learned about him, his eyes are the one thing that’s most distinctive. That, combined with his size, combined with his being a laird. . it might not be enough for us to identify him, but it should be enough to recognize him if he comes after Heather again, or goes after one of the other girls.”

“True.” Richard caught his horse’s reins and swung up to the saddle.

Breckenridge mounted more slowly, juggling possibilities in his mind. Settling in his saddle, he met Richard’s eyes. “There’s an outside possibility that the man who stopped here was simply what he claimed — a highland laird passing by on his way north. He might have simply been curious about us walking ahead of him.”

“But you don’t believe that.” Richard held his skittish black in.

“No.” Breckenridge turned his bay into the alley back to the road. “Because I can’t deny the similarities between the descriptions Heather and I independently wrung from Fletcher and Cobbins, and what we just heard.”

He rode out and back onto the road. Richard ranged alongside and they cantered south, back toward the Vale.

“So how are the wedding plans progressing?” Richard asked, once they were out of the village.

“They aren’t.” Breckenridge heard his clipped tones, heard the irritation beneath. Didn’t care if Richard did, too. “She’s taken some nitwit notion into her head that I don’t need to marry her, that she’s going to go off and manage an orphanage in the country, or some such thing, so her social ruination doesn’t matter.”

“Ah.” Richard nodded sagely. “She’s playing stubborn.”

“Playing?” Breckenridge shot him an irate look. “She’s the definition of the word. I’ve already tried talking her around. Twice.”

“I hate to break it to you, old son, but it won’t be your honeyed words that change her mind.”

Breckenridge snorted. “I’ve tried that, too — so far all that’s gained me is. .” An even deeper sense of being irrevocably linked to her.

Richard glanced at him curiously. “What?”

Breckenridge pulled a face, growled, “Damned if I know.”

Richard grinned. “Well, whatever it takes, just console yourself with the thought that the end result will be worth it.”

Breckenridge cast Richard a sharp glance, saw the open contentment in his face. Felt compelled to ask, “So what did you have to do?”

Richard’s smile deepened. “The same thing we’ve all had to do — prostrate ourselves at their dainty feet, swear undying love, and mean it.”

Easy for you. He didn’t say the words, because even as they formed in his head, he knew they were unlikely to be true. Richard was very like him, even down to the true nature of his birth. Richard had been the scandal that had been no scandal; Helena, Richard’s father’s duchess, had claimed him as her own shortly after his birth and his natural mother’s death in childbed — and no one with a brain in their head argued with Helena.

Breckenridge was a bastard, too, but it had been his father who had opened his arms to him and claimed him, also from birth.