Her Outlaw (23 page)

She made a quick trip up to her room where she gathered the barest of necessities into a single bag. At the writing desk she hesitated. The envelope addressed to her parents lay ready and waiting to be posted. She’d written the letter yesterday afternoon, filling the missive with news that sometimes leaned more toward fiction than fact. It was the fifth such letter she’d written. She wanted to do everything she could to alleviate as much of their certain worry over her adventure as possible.

Trace and Jenny McBride had suffered grievously during the months they believed Kat had died in the Spring Palace fire. Emma knew they’d worry about her trip to Scotland no matter what, but she hoped the news she sent in her letters might hold the worst of that worry at bay.

She wrote chatty little notes that made Dair sound more like a brother than a lover. Not that she expected her father to actually believe it, but she imagined he might pretend it was so from time to time. Yesterday’s letter had been especially cheery. Dare she send it now in the wake of her discoveries about her lover? The idea felt particularly deceptive.

Emma picked the letter up, tapped it against the desk, then slipped it into her handbag. She’d send this one, then stop. In her next letter, she’d tell her parents the truth—about the engraving on the necklace, the Sisters’ Prize, and falling in love with MacRae. Mama would understand. She’d make Papa understand, too. Eventually.

Emma turned to leave, then stopped, reconsidered, and retrieved the garnet nightgown. Downstairs, she followed Dair’s employee into the kitchen and across a narrow alley to the house next door. There, with the help of his lady love, he offered her a servant’s apron and bonnet and a large basket in which to conceal her bag.

She made her escape without detection and made her way toward the bookshop, her thoughts a jumble.
Am I in love with an outlaw? Who’s now a fugitive? What will we do about the treasure hunt? I wonder if he’s found my necklace? I can’t believe I’ve fallen in love with an outlaw.

Well, you wanted adventure. I’d say you got it.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she spied the bookshop sign half a block ahead. She’d quiz Robbie Potter while she waited for Dair. Maybe his expertise included good escape routes from the city.

The familiar jangle of the doorbell settled her nerves a bit because it signaled she’d no longer be alone. Though Emma was long accustomed to trouble, she ordinarily had company while being involved in it.

She retraced yesterday’s path through the labyrinth, and at about halfway toward the counter she noted a new, troubling addition to the familiar musty-bookstore scent. It was…coppery. Disturbingly familiar.

Emma smelled blood.

Her stomach clenched. “Mr. Potter? Robbie?”

No response.

Her knees went weak. Emma dragged her feet forward, dread weighting every step.

He lay on his stomach behind the counter in a pool of drying blood, his head turned to the right, his eyes open and fixed. A knife hilt protruded from his back.
Oh my oh my oh my.
“Robbie.”

The poor, poor man. Tears stung her eyes as she fell back a step, her besieged brain trying to make sense of a nonsensical day. First the disappearance of her necklace, then the revelation about Dair, and now this. If this was fate or fairies at work, she wished they’d take a holiday.

“Oh, Robbie,” she repeated. She wanted to close his eyes, to cover him. To somehow make it better. But she knew from hearing her sheriff brother-in-law talk about his work that it was best she didn’t touch a thing. The police would want to see everything just as it was.

The police. The same police who’d told her to remain at Dair’s town house. “Holy Hannah,” she muttered. “I’m in trouble.”

Actually, Emma only thought she was in trouble then. She knew she was in trouble seconds later when the doorbell jangled and she heard a man’s voice say, “At first I didn’t notice it because of all the blood and the knife sticking out of his chest. Then I looked at his hand and saw his finger and I realized he must have written the name of his killer.”

Emma’s gaze shifted to Robbie Potter’s hand and she gasped. There, written in blood on the wooden floor, were two words:
Emma Tate.

She heard footsteps approaching. She didn’t have time to think. Acting instinctively and moving as quietly as possible, she darted up the staircase she’d used the day before. In the room where Dair had recovered from his headache, she eased open the window, then stepped out onto the roof.

A strong summer wind whipped her skirt around her and paper trash from the street below swirled up and over the chimney as Emma made a quick survey around. Luckily, the bookshop’s roof butted up against the butcher shop’s roof next door which in turn was connected to a law office. She scrambled from one rooftop to the next until she decided she’d traveled far enough to descend to the street. Locating a fire escape, she made her way down.

When her feet touched the ground, she paused. She drew a deep breath, then exhaled on a shaky sigh. Emma looked from one side to the other, in front of her, then behind her. She was alone, in a foreign country, being pursued by the police.

She hadn’t a clue what to do next.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“H
OW COULD SHE
just disappear?” Dair threw a Meissen pitcher against the bedroom wall in the master suite of his Edinburgh town house and watched it smash to bits. “She has little money. Little knowledge of the area. She’s wanted for murder and yet she’s managed to evade the authorities for weeks.”

“It’s a puzzle,” his man Harvey agreed, wincing at the destruction now scattered on the master suite’s hardwood floor. “I expected the Highland Riever would evade capture, but the fact that the hunt for the ‘Black Widow’ has met with no success is certainly surprising.”

“Surprising? It’s damned unbelievable!” And it was scaring Dair to death. He’d looked everywhere for her. He scoured the city—not an easy task for a man at the top of the police’s most-wanted list. He’d traveled to Rowenclere Castle in the hopes that she’d fled to her distant cousins. He’d made a quick trip through Strathardle Glen in case she’d decided to continue the treasure hunt without him. He’d even gone to England only to learn that Jake and Kat had married and departed Chatham Park. Without Emma.

The days since Emma’s disappearance had been one nightmare after another. Shortly after leaving the town house that fateful morning, he’d been felled by a headache—by far the worst he’d suffered so far. As a result, he’d been out of his senses during those first hours of the hunt for the Riever—lying in an alley and taken for a drunk by any who might have noticed. By the time the pain cleared enough to let him think and he went to meet Emma, the bookstore was filled with lawmen and she had vanished.

He was concerned the first day when he couldn’t find her, worried the second, and frantic by the third. That emotion had only escalated in the days since when none of his efforts to find her proved fruitful. And now, a quarter of an hour after sneaking back into his town house, he could feel another damned headache coming on.
I hate this house.
“What have you been able to learn about the murder, Harvey?”

“They’ve circulated a drawing of Mrs. Tate. She made quite an impression upon the fellow who works the desk at the lending library, and he provided a fair description. The most disturbing piece of news I have to impart is the appearance of a witness.”

“Oh?” Dair pinned him with a stare. “A witness should be good news.”

“It’s not. He claims to have seen a woman fleeing the bookshop shortly before the body was discovered. His description matches Mrs. Tate.”

“That’s preposterous. Who is this witness? He’s lying.”

“Reverend Harold Markhum from Dublin Street Presbyterian Church.”

“Well, hell.” Dair rubbed his brow and tried to will away the pain. It wasn’t going to work. The blackness was coming on fast. “I need to rest and it’s probably better I not do it here.”

“They searched the house an hour before you arrived, sir. I doubt they’ll be back. They’ve never searched twice in one day.”

“All right, then.” Not here, though, in the master suite. He’d go to Emma’s room, Emma’s bed where the scent of her would linger on the sheets. Guilt rode him as hard as the headache. She was in this trouble because of him. He’d brought her to Scotland. He’d gotten her tangled up in the Sisters’ Prize. If not for him, she undoubtedly would have returned to Texas with her sister. She’d be safe and sound at home instead of lost and alone and pursued by police here.

He stumbled onto her bed just as the pain overtook him. “Emma, I’m sorry,” he murmured, his face buried in her pillow. “Emma, where are you?”

Hours later when the pain receded and his ability to think returned, he put together a plan. Removing a sheet of paper and a pen from the desk drawer, he sketched out an advertising flier, which Harvey delivered to a printer along with a large monetary incentive to do the work immediately.

The following morning, the man took delivery of boxes of fliers reading:
Do You Have Bad Luck In Love?
The seminar about improving one’s romantic relationships would be hosted by Mr. Trace McBride one week from tonight. Interested parties should contact Mr. McBride for more information by way of a postal box. Return contact information should be included.

Through Harvey, Dair had hired help to plaster Edinburgh with the advertisements. If Emma was still in town, she’d see it. If she saw it, she’d decipher the message. With any luck tomorrow he’d find directions to her whereabouts in the mailbox rented in her father’s name.

Because he couldn’t bear waiting around and doing nothing, he’d saved a stack of his own fliers to disperse. Donning an old man’s disguise, he retraced the route Emma would have taken the morning she disappeared. Eventually, that led him to the bookstore. He was surprised to see an Open sign in the window. Potter had bemoaned the fact that he had no heir to run the shop after he was gone.

Dair ducked his head as he entered the bookshop, listening carefully for any sign of authorities. Though he believed his disguise would hold up under most circumstances, it was reasonable to assume they’d look hard at anyone arriving at the scene of a murder. Hearing no conversation, he moved toward the sales counter at the back of the shop.

The large, gray-haired woman seated at the study table surrounded by books looked vaguely familiar at first glance. She looked up briefly from her reading, and as soon as she went still, Dair made the connection to the “companion” who accompanied Emma to Jake Kimball’s bride interview. “Emma?”

“Dair?” she asked simultaneously.

“Emma!” Relief crashed over him like a tidal wave.

She stood, braced her hands on unnaturally wide hips and snapped, “Well. It’s about time you got here.”

Dair couldn’t help it. He burst out into a loud, strong laugh.

“Oh, hush,” she scolded. “You totally betray your disguise. Old men don’t laugh with such gusto.”

“True.” He marched toward her, grabbed her arm, and tugged her into his embrace. “They don’t do this with such gusto, either.”

Then he kissed her, pouring all his anger and frustrations, worry and relief, joy and jubilation into the act. He let her know in no uncertain terms how he felt about losing her, then finding her again.

When he finally released her, Emma’s makeup was smudged and both her wig and bosom were askew. When she caught her breath enough to speak, she said, “I…uh…you…oh.”

Dair marched to the front of the store, turned the lock and flipped the Open sign to Closed. Without saying a word, he took her hand and tugged her along behind him upstairs where he tossed her onto the bed, then fell on top of her.

He made love to her fast and furiously, with a desperation that surprised them both. When they were done, he rolled off of her panting. He flung an arm over his face. “I swear I feel as old as I look.”

It took her a minute, but Emma started laughing. “Look at us. My bosom is lopsided and I have cotton in my ears. Your beard is hanging by one side and your belly has shifted around to your back.”

Dair cocked open one eye. “It’s impolite to laugh at a man’s deformity.”

She sniggered and a warmth spread throughout his chest. “Oh God, Texas. Have you been here all this time?”

Now she frowned at him. “It’s where we agreed to meet.”

He groaned and shut both eyes once again. “I came as soon as I heard about Robbie, but the place was swarming with police. I didn’t go inside, but I searched the area. Where were you then?”

Emma told him about her race across the rooftops. “When I realized I had nowhere to go, I got scared. I just started walking. After a while—hours, actually—my brain thawed out and I started to plan. I couldn’t get near your town house or even the one next door to contact Harvey. I remembered Mr. Potter mentioned his sister recently passed on and that he had no relatives. I decided that pretending to be Miss Potter and taking up residence here until you came for me would be the safest thing to do. I traded my clothes for these.” Her lips flashed a quick grin. “Besides, it was my turn to play Wilhemina Peters.”

“The character Katrina played when you came to Jake’s bride interviews.”

“Yes.” Emma propped herself up on her elbow. “It’s tedious, though, being in disguise. You must do it quite a lot as the Highland Riever. You’re quite good at it. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Dair knew he’d have to explain about the Riever, but he wasn’t ready to leave the subject at hand yet. “When I couldn’t find you here in town, I went to Rowanclere, then to Strathardle, then to Chatham Park.”

“You saw Kat?”

“No. But I do have news. She married Jake, Emma, and she’s taken the children and returned to Texas.”

She heard what he didn’t say. “Where’s Jake?”

“He apparently went through with his plans.”

“To sail to Tibet? That scoundrel.” She sat up and began righting her clothes, stuffing her stuffing back into place as she thought aloud. “Maybe the children have something to do with her task. She must have made progress on her problem with little ones. That’s good. It’s wonderful. And who’s to know what Jake will find in Tibet or how fast he’ll find it. Why, he might change course and head for Texas for all we know.”