Chapter One

Muirford, Scotland
1878

"All I am saying, Cleo, is that if you don't show a proper decorum I will quite simply die!"

"She means she wont find a beau," Pia translated Annie's concern.

"Which is infinitely worse,"' Annie said to Pia, turning to the fourteen-year-old who sat in a huge wingback leather chair. "You're too young to understand. And Cleo's too old and—"

"Dried up?" Pia teased.

She had a wicked, quick wit, did Pia, and a penchant for telling too much truth. Cleo, unstung by anything either girl said, watched Annie's cheeks go bright pink with embarrassment. Cleo and Annie were blond and fair skinned, while Pia had milky skin and dark hair and uptilted green eyes. She was quite the fairy child. Though sometimes demon seemed more appropriate.

"Cleo is uninterested in anyone who hasn't been dead at least a thousand years," Annie hastened to explain. She turned to face her oldest sister, who sat behind huge piles of papers at the desk. "Cleo, I don't think that you're a dull old spinster or anything, but, well, you are, and..." Annie Fraser waved her hands dramatically, encompassing the library and all the boxes of books and artifacts yet to be unpacked. "I care nothing for all this. Scholarship isn't for a proper woman. I want—"

"A husband and children and a nice house with a rose garden," Cleo defined her middle sister's longings. Wanting anything was dangerous, as she well knew, but she had been sixteen once herself. Fortunately, Annie's wants were more modest and mundane than hers had been. Annie would also be seventeen in a few days. Seventeen was not a bad age to begin thinkingof home and hearth, and a husband to provide them. "It would be nice if you met someone this summer."

just as long as you have a long courtship and an even longer engagement, my girl. She wanted her sisters to know and trust the men they fell in love with. She glanced past Annie to Pia, who was still too enamored of dogs, horses, and kittens to care about the male of her own species. Cleo smiled to herself as she looked back at Annie, and she made a mental note not to use words like species or bring up Darwinism in company. She was sure Annie could come up with a huge list for her of subjects that ladies shouldn't discuss.

"You do realize, I hope," Cleo said to her nearly- seventeen-year-old sister, "that any eligible young man you are likely to meet here in Muirford will either be teaching at the university or be studying at it."

"No man I marry is going to end up a professor, I assure you," Annie proclaimed. "We've already had way too much of that in the family. Young men are trainable."

Cleo had not found that to be true, though Annie sounded very certain of her ability to manage a man. Perhaps she should have a heart-to-heart talk with her sister about the realities of life. Or perhaps Annie could teach her a thing or two about feminine wiles. It really wasn't something Cleo had made a study of. Right now, however, she had no wish to dampen Annie's enthusiasm at the prospect of going out into society.

"You'll have to concentrate your husband hunt away from the history department, then, if you don't want a dusty professor for your mate," she told Annie.

"Mother didn't mind a dusty professor," Pia spoke up. Then she giggled. "But Father doesn't count, I suppose. He's never stayed in one place long enough to get dusty."

"Until now." Annie sighed with relief. "And he is the grandson of an earl. Mother married quality as well as brains. I'm so glad he's taken the appointment here in Scotland, where the Fraser name has some cachet. I'm sure to find a beau among the young men who are going to attend Muirford."

"Fortunately for you, Sir Edward intends Muirford University to turn out engineers and other such fine, practical professional men," Cleo said. "I'm sure they'll strike a nice balance between dusty and socially presentable for you."

Sir Edward Muir, newly knighted and rolling in money earned with the sweat of his factory workers' brows, was endowing this new university in the highland village of his birth. He'd bought the estate where the Muir family had toiled for generations as tenant farmers, and put in a railway line to reach the remote town. Beautiful stone-and- brick buildings were going up. A fine teaching staff had been hired. There was even going to be a...