Cocooned in warm down, Catriona smiled. Just what her title meant few outsiders understood. Some thought her a witch-she'd even used the fiction to scare away would be suitors. Both church and state had little love of witches, but the vale's isolation kept her safe, there were few who knew of her existence, and none to question her authority or the doctrine from which it sprang.

All the inhabitants of the vale knew what she was, what her position entailed. With roots buried generations deep in the fertile soil, her tenants, all those who lived and worked in the vale, viewed "their lady" as the local representative of The Lady herself, older than time, spirit of the earth that supported them, guardian of their past and their future. They all, each in his own way, paid homage to The Lady and, with absolute and unquestioning confidence, relied on her earthly representative to watch over them and the vale

To guard, to protect, to nurture, nourish, and heal-those were The Lady's tenets, the only directives Catriona followed and to which she'd unstintingly devoted her life. As had her mother, grandmother and great grandmother before her. She lived life simply in accordance with The Lady's dictates, which was usually an easy task.

Except in one arena

Her gaze shifted to the parchment left unfolded on her dresser. A Perth solicitor had written to inform her of the death of her guardian, Seamus McEnery, and to bid her attend McEnery House for the reading of the will. McEnery House stood on a bleak hillside in The Trossachs, north and west of Perth; in her mind's eye Catriona could see it clearly-it was the one place outside the vale in which she'd spent more than a day.

When, six years ago, her parents had died, Seamus her father's cousin, had, by custom, become her legal guardian. A cold hard man, he had insisted she take up residence at McEnery House, so he could better find a suitor for her hand-a man to take over her lands. With his rigid fist clamped on her purse strings, she'd been forced to obey; she'd left the vale and gone north to meet Seamus.