One

They needed money. Banknotes or coin, it mattered not, just so long as there was plenty of it.

All seven Lockharts agreed that they had no choice but to return to England and attempt to find the ancient family treasure, a solid gold beastie with ruby eyes, to stave off certain ruin. They would not, however, dispatch Liam to fetch it.

That had been their first blunder—Liam had returned from London with a woman and a bonny young lass. But not the beastie.

No, this time, Liam's younger—and dandier— brother, Grif, would go.

Yet Aila, the lady of Lockhart, had reservations about a second attempt at retrieving the beastie. "'Tis certain disaster," she said as the family reviewed their latest scheme at the supper table. "We tempt fate, as we've no' the slightest notion where the beastie may be. We know nothing other than Lady Battenkirk took the blasted thing!"

"And gave it to Amelia," Ellie, Liam's bride, pleasantly reminded the lot of them.

Everyone paused to look at Ellie as she blithely continued her meal.

That was because Ellie had stolen the beastie from beneath Liam's nose, then sold the priceless ornamental statue for a paltry amount to a Londoner she'd encountered in a small shop of knickknacks and household wares in Cambridge. Now, the only thing they knew for certain was that the Londoner's name was Lady Battenkirk, and that Lady Battenkirk had said at the time of purchase that she intended to give the beastie to her friend Amelia. That was it—the sum total of what they knew about the precious statue. Everything else was wildly imaginative conjecture.

But Grif was confident in his ability to bring the beastie home, and affectionately squeezed his mother's hand. "Liam went as a soldier, no' a gentleman, like me. He was ill-suited to acquaint himself with society, whereas I am perfect for it."

"Society!" Liam muttered. "Ye can have the bloody lot of them!"

Liam, a captain in the Highland Regiments, was, kindly speaking, a little rough around the edges. And while Grif could be just as rough if push came to shove (he was, after all, born and bred a Highlander), he fancied the life of a high-society gentleman, a desire that had been firmly entrenched after two years of university in Edinburgh.

That had been, by his measure, an eternity ago, when the family had means, before they began to buy out the tenants who could no longer support Talla Dileas, the remote family estate in the Highlands near Loch Chon. When Grif returned home five years ago, it was to a different place, where crofter's cottages stood empty and the old mansion had begun to fall into a state of disrepair. The situation had only worsened—not a fortnight past, the roof over the original kitchen had collapsed, and they could do nothing but board it up.

Grif missed his former life on Charlotte Square, where he and his lifelong best friend, Hugh MacAlister—who was seated across from him now, trying gamely to swallow the stuff in his bowl—had been the most popular of the young gentlemen vying for the attentions of the debutantes. The prospect of London—London! —was perfect for a young man such as himself.

"Aye, Aila, what choice do we have, then?" Carson, the laird of Lockhart, asked wearily. "We've no tenants to pay rents, the cattle are so few in number as to be laughable, and we lose money each day. All around us are sheep that graze the Highlands much easier than the blessed cattle. If we donna do something rather soon, the sheep will put us in debtors' prison, they will."

He spoke true. For all their misgivings, one fact remained indisputable—the beastie, that ancient piece of valuable art, the one thing that the English and Scottish Lockharts had continued to feud over the last several hundred years (in spite of the family chronicles showing quite clearly that it rightfully belonged to the Scottish Lockharts, thank you), was the key to their survival. Only it had been stolen back and forth for centuries, and their damnable English cousins had last pilfered it around the time of the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Since then, it had languished in a fine London salon, a trophy for the English Lockharts.

But the English Lockharts were quite wealthy. They didn't need it. The Scottish Lockharts, on the other hand, needed it desperately.

"Ye have me word," Grif said to his mother, "that I'll no' skip merrily to London and hie meself home again with a wife and bairn—"

"I beg your pardon!" Ellie interjected, as she was the wife Liam had hied himself home with, along with her daughter, Natalie.

"Forgive me, Ellie," Grif said, turning from his mother and instantly grabbing Ellie's hand and bringing her knuckles to his lips. "Ye know I adore ye, but ye're no' exactly what we had hoped for, are ye now?"

"Oh no—Liam has made it perfectly clear that I'm not," she admitted cheerfully.

"But Grandfather says we are much better than that old beastie," Natalie sniffed, earning a tweak of her cheek from Carson.

"Of course ye are, Nattie," Grif quickly reassured her. "And we'd no' have it any other way… but if only ye'd come to us without selling the beastie—"

Copyright © 2005 by Dinah Dinwiddie