Smitten by the Spinster by Cassidy Cayman

on her own, and she’d been listening outside doors and sneaking looks at things she wasn’t strictly meant to look at since she was a wee lass. If they bloody thought she was old enough to get married, they could bloody tell her if something was going on with the clan. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had troubles before.
    When she crept into Quinn’s room and turned his things upside down, she found a message from home. They’d only been there a few days, the messenger must have rode day and night from the moment they’d left. Sure enough, something was wrong and Quinn was wanted back at home. She was taken aback to find they hadn’t wanted Quinn to come with her at all, and felt betrayed and treated like an outsider. Did her own family and friends, people she’d known all her life, consider her only by her English half, counting the days until they could be rid of her?
    Her heart sank further at the thought of Quinn leaving. As much as she wanted to hit him a good lot of the time, and as lovely as her new English auntie was to her, she didn’t want him to leave her. Well, whatever happened, all she could do was have a stiff upper lip about it. She recalled Miss Burnet’s words on her first day here, how she could choose whoever she wanted, due to her fortune. Her resolve solidified as she looked down at the message from Quinn’s advisor, a person she thought loved her, who she thought of like another brother. Pretty much telling Quinn to abandon her and race home to settle some dispute.
    She decided there and then to marry the person she liked best, title or no title, and to hell with what Quinn or any of her other so-called family thought about it. When the crops went to hell, maybe she’d send them a few bags of grain. Maybe she’d invite them to her estate one day. Maybe she wouldn’t.
    After she was done being outraged at the message from home, she dug around some more, to find something so strange, she had to sit down on the edge of the bed. It was a letter written in her brother Lachlan’s own hand, giving a load of detailed instructions to Quinn on how to handle the farm, and the clan, and even her. The end puzzled her most of all. It begged Quinn’s forgiveness, and if Quinn should tell her the truth, he prayed she would forgive him as well. The truth about what? Why should he need her forgiveness? Her hands shook so badly, she had to place the page on the bed to read it through again. Questions flew through her mind like screaming crows, jostling at one another for her attention, but she couldn’t focus on any one thing. It was all too confusing.
    Her brother had been killed in a fire that had been set during a battle. He’d married Isobel Glen, the daughter of their perpetual enemy, and subsequently became laird of that clan after her father died. Lachlan’s death had been sudden and unexpected. When did he have time to write all these instructions?
    She realized there was more on the back, and not sure she could take any more, stared at the wall for a few moments before gathering her wits to read it. What she read so shocked her, she stood and paced the room, completely forgetting she was trespassing and needed to be mindful of the time. Her brother could return at any moment and then she’d be in trouble. Her shock turned to anger as the worry about Quinn’s return set in. Let him find her with the letter. She had loads of questions for him. What could he possibly say to her that would explain what she’d read?
    The back of the letter had the strangest and most frightening instructions, what seemed to be a spell for moving around in time. It involved chanting words Catie didn’t understand, a variety of herbs, and the worst, the most horrible, the blood. It seemed like the darkest witchcraft. Had her beloved brother Lachlan gone mad before he died, and was Quinn following in his footsteps?
    Quinn had his faults, some might say he was a bit degenerate, but he’d always seemed of sound mind