Highland Lover: Book 3 Scottish Knights Trilogy (12 page)

Seeing her blush, Jake said evenly, “That will do, Will. You are speaking now of things that are no concern of yours.”

Will met his gaze with a direct one of his own but kept silent.

Turning to Alyson, Jake said, “Ships do not lend themselves to romance, I’m afraid. Few have room for comfort. I saw that you’d shared that tiny cabin with your woman. I expect the men all shared Orkney’s cabin, did they not?”

“Nay, for he was playing ship’s master. The
Maryenknyght was
his. He wanted to put Jamie and Will in the smaller forecastle cabin and Niall and Mungo—Sir Kentigern Lyle, that is—in the one opposite mine. But when I suggested that that might be a mistake—”

“Aye, sure, it would,” he agreed. “Every man aboard that ship would have wondered why two lads were sharing such quarters, whilst a knight and a gentleman slept in hammocks below.”

She nodded, and as she did, Jake heard an echo of her words in his mind. “
You
told Orkney not to put the boys in the deck cabin?”

Her long-lashed, gray eyes twinkling now, she said, “I believe I said that I’d
suggested
as much. I do know him, sir. I am well aware that one is wiser not to sound as if one is flinging orders at him.”

Jake laughed. “You may well say so. I’ve known him since we were bairns, and I knew his father even better. I can tell you, too, that the first earl was nothing like as impressed with his august position as Henry can seem to be.” Still smiling, he added, “I can just imagine him puffing off to that English captain. In fairness, though, I must say that Henry is a gey good friend and an expert swordsman.”

She nodded. “Will told me that he took an aversion to the gannets that fly around the Bass Rock.”

Laughing again, Jake noted that the level of noise in the room had diminished enough so that his laughter was drawing attention. Nodding to a man whose gaze met his, he turned to Mace and said quietly, “Finish your ale. And if there is more in that pot, share it out to the rest of us. We’ll drink up, and then Will and I will see Alyson to her chamber. When the alewife returns, suggest that she send Lizzie back up to see if ‘my sister’ requires assistance. Then, refill that jug and see what more you can learn about our friends in Bridlington harbor.”

Mace nodded and poured the ale.

Alyson shot Jake a speaking glance when Mace poured more into her mug.

“You need not drink it if you loathe the stuff. But look as if you’re tasting it.”

Alyson obeyed, although she thought the English ale worse than any she had tasted and decided she need only pretend to drink some.

She was glad that Jake did not linger over his but soon stood and extended a hand for her to rise. Gesturing then for her to precede him upstairs, he followed.

Aware that others in the common room were watching, she waited until they reached her chamber before she said, “Those men below will quiz Mace about us, won’t they?”

“Aye, sure, but he will tell them nobbut the tale we devised earlier,” Jake said. “You may have noticed that Mace does not talk much. He does, however, have a rare gift for listening, so people tell him more than they think they do.”

Lizzie came upstairs then, so Jake said goodnight, and Alyson greeted her.

As they entered the chamber, Lizzie said, “Ah hope tha be comfortable here, mistress. This room be smaller than t’other and overlooks the yard. But it bain’t as if we was in Flamborough where tha’d be hearing folks coming and going all night. The road t’ Filey runs past here, but nae one will likely be on it t’night.”

“It’d no trouble me, any road,” Alyson said. “Me eyelids be drooping already. But Ah wonder if tha wouldst mind brushing out me hair afore Ah sleep t’ be sure it be dry. It does dry gey quick, but—”

“Och, tha mustna sleep wi’ a wet head. Tha wouldst catch thy death!”

“Ah ha’ me doots it would be that bad,” Alyson said.
Then, realizing that she would likely give herself away if she tried imitating Lizzie at length, she encouraged the girl to talk about herself instead.

Learning that the young woman was a widow, her husband having “drooned off a fishing boat through his ain foolishness” the previous year, Alyson expressed her sympathy with a look and a few words, then asked if Lizzie had children.

“Nay, for we were wedded just a short while afore the accident. But me cousin Mae near Filey kens a lad as is looking for a wife, and Mae thinks Ah might do. Me da says it be too soon, but me ma says time doesna stand still and if Ah’m nae careful, Ah’ll soon be as old as dirt.”

She chattered blithely on until Alyson knew more about Lizzie’s family than she knew about some of her own cousins.

She climbed into bed at last and fell asleep at once, waking only to the gray light of dawn and thudding hooves below her window.

Getting up, she snatched up the kirtle she had worn the previous night and stepped into it, lacing it up the front and then moving to look outside. The rain had stopped, and as Lizzie had said, the window overlooked the yard. A dozen mounted men were there, their mounts stamping restlessly. A man led one horse away while a second man stood with his back to her, talking to a third still on horseback.

That man nodded and dismounted, tossing his reins to a second rider.

The man with his back to her and the one to whom he’d been talking turned then toward the alehouse. Alyson recognized the first man at once.

Darting to her door, she yanked it open and stepped onto the landing, just as the door opposite opened, and Jake stepped out.

“What’s amiss?” he asked her.

“It’s Mungo… in the yard. I must go and ask him—”

“Nay, lass, think first. What do you mean, he is in the yard? Are you sure?”

“I am, aye. And he must know what has become of Niall.”

“Did you not tell us that Mungo serves Orkney, and did Will not say that Mungo insisted they all board the pirate ship, if in troth it was a pirate ship?”

“What makes you think it was not?” she asked, chafing at the delay. If Mungo left before she could even ask him about Niall—

“The fact that its captain recognized Jamie when he saw him,” Jake said, interrupting that thought. “You heard Will. That captain had no doubt who Jamie was. They may be pirates. But if that’s all they are, they know more than any pirate
should
know. The fact that Mungo is apparently free again—”

“There were men with him. Mayhap they are his guards.”

“Did he act as if he were under guard?”

Gritting her teeth but unable to insist that Mungo had looked anything like a man under guard when he had walked inside the inn with only one person, while others rode out of the yard, Alyson sighed. “Nay, he did not. He is below in the common room now, I think, with one other man. Both of them were smiling.”

“If they came from Bridlington, they are traveling north,” Jake said.

“We must find out where Niall is,” Alyson said more sharply than she had intended. Nevertheless she met his narrowed gaze resolutely.

“Aye, we must,” he replied. “But we must also take care not to endanger ourselves whilst we do. I’ve a notion that the men who took Jamie and Orkney would not be happy to know they’d left witnesses behind.”

“But Mungo is no enemy,” Alyson said. “I cannot say I like him, for I do not. But he
is
Orkney’s chief secretary.”

She started to turn away to go downstairs, but he caught her by the shoulders. Gently but firmly, he turned her back to face him.

“Hear me now, lass, and heed what I say. If the captain of that English ship knew Jamie by sight and had been seeking ships from the north for a fortnight, he was
seeking
Jamie. And if that is so, he had knowledge that none save Bishop Wardlaw, the King, and Orkney shared. Therefore…”

When she gasped, he paused but held her gaze, clearly inviting her to finish the sentence.

Dampening dry lips, she said, “Therefore, someone close to one of those men must have shared knowledge that he had no right to share.”

Chapter 6

E
xpelling a sigh of relief, hoping he had persuaded Alyson of the danger that lurked around them, Jake said, “Someone certainly shared the fact that Jamie was leaving Scotland by ship. I’d like to see this Mungo of yours—”

“Please, sir, he is
not
mine. He is merely Henry’s secretary.”

“And he is apparently riding northward now with a company of armed men. Art sure that your husband was not with them?”

“Had I seen Niall, I would have recognized him at once,” she said. “I did not see all the riders. But I’m sure that Niall would not leave this area—not to ride away to the north—without first learning what had become of me.”

Gentling his voice, he said, “Someone likely told him the
Maryenknyght
had sunk, lass. Judging by the way the pirates treated anyone who did not obey them quickly whilst she was sinking, I expect they’d have treated anyone else who gave them trouble in a similar manner.”

Her face paled. “Do you think they might have thrown Niall overboard? But he cannot swim!”

“Since we cannot know what they did, such speculation
is useless. If you did not see him with Mungo and the other riders, Niall is likely with Orkney and Jamie. The only other choice is that he is dead. You did say earlier, however, that he possesses a complaisant nature, did you not?”

“He seeks to oblige, aye. But if he knew that he had left me to die on a sinking ship, or that Mungo had…” She paused, frowning.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know exactly. My words just then felt wrong somehow.”

“What do you mean,
felt
wrong? You were just thinking aloud.”

“I was. But don’t you get feelings sometimes, when what you say does not—rather suddenly—seem to agree with the facts as you know them?”

He opened his mouth to deny it, only to realize that he had experienced such feelings. “I think I do,” he said. “The sensation is akin to what often happens when someone asks how long it will take us to reach a destination. I tell that person how long it usually takes from where we are, and sometimes I get an odd feeling when I do. I’ll realize, after I think, that I’d unconsciously noted things about the weather that meant a change was likely coming. Such details had simply not added up yet to full awareness. Is that the sort of thing you mean?”

“I don’t know. It seems as though it might be similar, but I often get such a feeling and cannot explain it so easily.”

“Forbye, we are left with the same possibilities for Clyne’s fate.”

She nodded. “We must learn where Mungo is going,
but we must also take care and keep an eye on those pirates.”

His mouth tightened, but he did not argue with her. He did have to learn all he could, if only to report the details to Wardlaw. But he was experiencing feelings or instincts of his own that did not bode well for the others who’d been aboard the
Maryenknyght
. To her ladyship, he said only, “I suggest that before we do aught else, you finish dressing. Meantime, I’ll go downstairs and see what I can learn.”

“I
am
dressed,” she said.

He smiled. “You might want shoes.”

Glancing down, she looked at him ruefully. “You must think me demented.”

“Nay, only worried about your husband. Go and put your shoes on. Mace has bespoken our breakfast, so it will be ready when you are. I just rousted Will out of bed, though. I’ll tell him to wait for you.”

He saw her back into her chamber, spoke to Will, and then went down to the common room. From the turn of the stairway he saw that two strangers sat at a table near the kitchen door, drinking from mugs of what was likely ale. The two talked as equals, and since he did not know which one was Mungo, he studied both closely enough as he continued down the stairs to recognize either man again.

Mace caught his eye when Jake reached the foot of the stairs and gestured toward their table of the previous night. Jake nodded but said nothing, strolling to the front door instead to have a look at the yard.

The two strangers chatted too quietly for even his quick ears to catch all they said, but he heard enough to tell him they were waiting for something.

Outside, the wind was still high, but an azure sky alive with scudding white clouds seemed to belie the storms of the previous week. The air still felt wintry, and the breeze carried more than its usual dampness. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the salty tang in the air as he studied the scene before him.