He couldn 't! Not with Walter Innes and Colin Forbes coming on the morrow to wed her sisters. Why had she waited until the last minute to steal the damned beasts? If only she'd taken them two at a time over the last few months, but the truth was she hadn't the means to feed them. The cattle would have lost weight if they had been in her care for too long. She couldn't offer her prospective brothers-in-law scrawny cattle. She had attempted to take the creatures last week, but the cowherd's dog had set up a barking to wake the dead. She supposed that was what had alerted the laird of Loch Brae to watch his cattle more closely. What on earth was she to do?

"Well, Mistress Hay? Will ye buy my cattle, or will I drive them back down the ben to their own meadow?" Angus Gordon demanded.

A proposal, outrageous but possibly workable, entered Fiona's mind at that moment. He could not accept, but he would certainly be shamed by it and leave her in peace. "I have only one thing of value that I might give ye in exchange for the cattle, my lord," she told him, refusing to admit even now that they were his. "It is my most precious possession. Will ye have it?"

"Take it!" James hissed at his elder sibling. "Honor will be satisfied, and none will call ye weak, Angus."

"I would know what this valuable property is first, Jamie-boy," the laird told his brother. He looked again at Fiona. "What is this most precious possession that ye would offer me in exchange for my cattle, Mistress Hay? A dozen head of cattle don't come cheap, lass."

"Eight, my lord," Fiona replied softly.

"Twelve, including the ones you stole from me last autumn," he answered her as softly, his eyes meeting hers.

"Twenty head total. I'll need eight more head to dower my two youngest sisters, but they're only seven and ten years of age now, so I would not want them until Jean and Morag are old enough to wed. I canna feed them."