Chapter Three

      Catlyn found herself standing before the double doors to the distillery with no memory of how she’d gotten there after fleeing the great hall. There was no other word for the way in which she had run from the hall, from Ross Sutherland’s touch. Even now her wrist still prickled where his callused hands had encircled it. And her heart beat much too swiftly.

      The man was a menace to womankind. And it was a blow to her pride to find she was not as immune to him as she should be. Awash with shame, she leaned her forehead against the door, drawing strength from steel-banded oak.

      There were too many people counting on her, too many decisions to be made without cluttering her head with silly thoughts of Ross Sutherland. It was just that he was handsome. And strong. Curiously his size and warrior skills appealed to her even more than his poet’s face. Part of her wanted to acquiesce to Adair’s suggestion and hire the knight.

      Oh, and would that not be the most foolish thing she had ever done.

      Agitated, Catlyn pulled open the right-hand door and stepped into the distillery’s anteroom. Immediately, the familiar scent of the Finglas wrapped itself around her. To her, this was the heart of Kennecraig, the center of her world for as long as she could remember. She knew and loved every inch of this ancient tower, from the keg maker’s workshop on the floor above to the cellars beneath housing the mash tuns and stills. On this main floor were the settling rooms and her workroom. Her province, her responsibility.

      Catlyn sighed. Small wonder she craved a champion. Even before Hakon had come into their lives, her days had been hectic and full. Now, as she passed through the entryway and into the maze of dimly lit rooms beyond, she felt weighed down by all that must be done. Always before there had been others to share the burden, but her father was gone, her mother as good as.

      Oh, Roland and his men would perform the manual tasks associated with each phase of the whiskey making, but it was up to her to record these steps in the journals. It was up to her to decide if the Finglas from four years ago was up to Boyd standards and how much of it should be sold, how much kept by for her father’s pet project.

      Tucked away in a darkened corner of the still rooms were kegs from as far back as ten years ago. Thomas had reasoned that whiskey became smoother and more drinkable every year. At ten years, he felt it had reached its peak. If he had been able to, he would not have sold a drop of the Finglas till it was ten years old. But in order to provide for his clan, he’d been forced to sell most of each year’s production.

      This year, he had intended to offer the ten-year-old Finglas to a few discriminating customers in Edinburgh. Among them, the king.

      Now it was up to Catlyn to make her father’s dream reality. But was she strong enough to do it? Would the nobles deal with a Highland distiller who was also a woman?

      Frowning, she wandered into the settling room. It was twice the size of the great hall, the ceilings one and a half stories above the stone floor. During the day, air and light filtered in through narrow openings at the rafter line. By night, only a single lantern, such as the type used on ships, was left burning in a center table, for flame and liquor were an explosive mix.

      Row after row of shelves filled the room, so it resembled a maze. They were lined with single rows of whiskey kegs. Each keg bore a label with a date and batch number inscribed in Catlyn’s precise hand. The numbers were recorded in her ledger books, and from them she could tell what barley fields had been used in the distilling, how many times the liquor had been run through the stills and, of course, how old it was. The chimneys that vented away the smoke from those stills ran up through the middle of the room and thence through the second-story cooperage.

      Bypassing the shelves, Catlyn took the lantern from the table and continued on to her counting room. The door was always locked unless she was inside, not out of fear someone would steal the records but because it had been done so from the beginning and the Boyds were great ones for tradition.

      She took the key from the pouch at her waist, unlocked the door and stepped inside. Immediately she felt her remaining anxiety melt away. Small and cozy, with a fireplace to keep the damp at bay, the chamber had served the lords of Kennecraig as a record room for generations. Ever since her great-great-grandfather had added this building to house the distillery.

      The shelves lining two of the walls of the record room were crammed with the leather-bound ledgers and crumbling parchment rolls that chronicled every step of the distilling process for each year going back six generations. Some were written in Latin, others in French.

      As a child, Catlyn had sat on the floor and fashioned dolls from wood curls while her brother, Thom, studied the languages and ciphering essential to every lord of Kennecraig. She’d been far more interested in his lessons than the silly dolls, which was fortunate. When Thom had died at age fifteen, Catlyn had assumed the heir’s role. There had been grumblings among some of the men, but her father had stood firm. “The lass has my head for details and her grandsire’s nose for the brew.”

      That she’d stepped in to fill her papa’s role far too early saddened her. Yet she loved this craft. Every step held its own fascination. The earthy pleasure of visiting the fields and assessing the barley, of judging when the grain was at its peak and ready to be married to the purest burn water. The careful mixing of barley and water, in just the right portions, appealed to her sense of order. But nothing equaled the thrill she felt when the first drop of liquor fell from the coil of hammered steel tubing.

      A grating sound from the main room had her spinning in the doorway.

      “Who is there?” she called, raising the lantern. Its pale golden light bounced off the nearest kegs but was swallowed up by the darkness beyond. A shiver worked its way down her spine. She had never been afraid to come here, even at night and alone, but that was before Hakon had come to the mountains.

      She thought about the barrels of black powder sitting next to the stills in the cellars. Her father’s desperate scheme to keep Hakon from attacking them. Thus far it had worked, but what if one of his men sneaked