The cottage in the glen was everything that the brochure from "Aunty Mary's Tea Time Travels" had promised. The distinct air of a Scottish romance that hung about the place like a highland mist tickled Jenny's New World fancy.

Admittedly the Crown Derby china was both cracked and chipped, the linen sheets were threadbare, the thick plaster was peeling in spots and there was a distinct odor of dry rot that made her sneeze. But that simply gave the tiny Highland home a charming and historical feel.

The main room was simply furnished with a thick oak table that had probably been in use before her own country won its independence from the British. Seating was limited: a plank bench beneath the table and two oak chairs pulled up before the hearth, but Jenny didn't expect to spend a lot of time on her backside anyway.

The Highland Festival would take up most of her time for the few days of her vacation. There was also a cupboard with the makings for tea and a mantelshelf decorated with the ancient Crown Derby, a set of pewter tankards and well-polished silver spoons.

Some pictures of some scrawny Highland cattle, which looked like they had eaten bad grass, completed the decorating scheme. Jenny dumped her violin and backpack on the table, poked the peat fire into a little more of a blaze, picked up her clothes bags and headed for the other room.

The brochure had made rather a point of the fact that the bedroom had obviously served as a hayloft in earlier days. Jenny was glad to find it was served by a set of sturdy stairs set into the dark recesses of the front wall. The thought of having to schlep up and down a no doubt rickety, antique ladder on midnight forays to the small bathroom had not been attractive. Other than a faint smell of mold similar to the main room, the bedroom was pretty cozy.

Jenny began to sing, "By yon bonny bank and by yon bonny brae, where the sun shines bright on Loch Lommand! Where me and me true love will niiivver meet agaiiiinnnn-".

She stopped singing. Well that was for darn sure. Her true love, or at least the guy who had been passing himself off as her true love for the last seven years, was back in Chicago where he had found himself another woman.

She'd first met Jim on an adventure travel retreat, rafting down the Grand Canyon. Jenny had been bowled over by his sense of humor, ability to adapt to unusual situations and his great biceps. She had been ready for true love's kiss and Jim had supplied that and more. They were passionately involved by the second night of the trip.

Jim's idea of true love was wild infatuation, followed by, what had seemed to be, a comfortable ease. Finally even the ease was gone when her husband had announced his intentions to move in with this new lady he 'loved now'.

Divorce papers had been signed and filed and she was footloose and fancy-free. Wasn't she? Either true love wasn't all it was cracked up to be or else there was more to it than good shoulder muscles and a fun, can-do attitude.

Jenny sighed and threw herself down on the bed. There were two huge pillows filled with down and covered in lace-edged, linen cases embroidered with white roses and purple thistles. The top sheet was embellished in the same design.

It was hard to be melancholy over lost loves, who maybe never had been true loves, when you had really gorgeous bed linens under your chin. And besides, in the secret fastness of her heart, Jenny had a feeling about this trip. A feeling there was someone waiting for her here. Someone who knew more about love than infatuation.

She knew there was something out there for here waiting with a deep thread of intensity and rightness. Jenny plumped the cushy softness of the pillows behind her head. The clip in her hair caught on something and she sat up higher to wrestle it free from the small, lace-edged linen curtain that hung just above the bed.

She drew back the material to find a tiny paned window with a beautiful view of the small lake in front of the house.� The loch," she reminded herself.� Remember, to think loch." Yon loch definitely included a 'bonny bank' or maybe it was a 'bonny brae'. No doubt someone at the festival would enlighten her as to the difference.

Since she'd arrived in late afternoon, the loch had transformed itself into a silver puddle of fairy glass shimmering faintly in the dying light of the sun. In the faint glow of dusk, she could just make out a pile of rock on the far side. A ruin maybe? She hoped there would be time to investigate