Passion and Plaid - Her Highland Hero (Scottish Historical Romance) (11 page)

“Ach, but she’s good at this, isn’t she?” Lynne
said to Elena who returned a smile in response.

Moments later the commanded items began to appear,
first the cold water, and a pile of linens and a small mattress that Duggan brought
up from the inn’s storage area before trotting off to fetch a pot and heat
water over the fire. The boy was moaning, groaning with pain, and had a great
bruise above one of his eyes, but there seemed to be no bleeding, at least not
that anyone could see.

Before he ever spoke, Gavin knew what had
happened, and already had a knot balling up in his throat. He knew what would
come out the instant the boy opened his mouth.

With Rory bedded down in the linens, Lynne cradled
his head in her lap and began to gently stroke the raised lump on the side of
his head with a cool cloth after having cleaned the dirt off his face and some
blood out from under his fingernails.

“I didn’t let him get...away...without a fight,”
he said. “I hit...him...with a horseshoe. He knocked me back and
then...then...”

“Don’t worry, Rory,” Gavin said. “Drink this.” He
held a ladle to the boy’s lips and let him drink as long as he liked, then got
another. “Don’t worry about talking right now, let’s get you taken care of
first.”

“Sir, I let him go. I didn’t mean to, really, I
didn’t! I tried to...tried...”

“Quiet,” Gavin said again, brushing the boy’s hair
off his wet face with a tenderness that made a smile pass from Lynne to Olga to
Elena. “Don’t worry about the sheriff, he can’t go very far. Not without a
horse, anyway, and not in a place that he doesn’t know. Especially in a place
he doesn’t know where no one knows him. He’s got no place to hide.”

“Th – that’s just it, sir,” Rory stammered. “He
does
know someone here in town. At least he said he did.”

“Are you sure you’re not needing to rest? The
first thing is keeping you healthy, Rory.”

“Y – yes, yes sir, I’m fine. I’m shook up but
that’s all. When I was feedin’ him, the sheriff, whoever he is, he hit me with
his head and knocked me out. That’s what the lump under my eye’s from, y’see.
When I came to, he had somehow cut them ropes around his wrists, got hissel’
free. I canna say how, exactly because you lot have the key to the shackles on
his ankles, and he didn’t come in here and ask for it.”

John laughed. “No, he certainly didn’t. Did he
break the chain?”

“Aye, he musta,” said the boy. “But when he came
to, I mean me, when I came to, he was straddlin’ that mule what came with you
all, and still had the shackles on his feet but the chain was broke.
That’s...that’s when I hit him with the horseshoe, but I missed his head and
hit him on the back.”

“But where was he going?” Gavin asked the boy.

“That’s what I was gettin’ to. He kept asking
after the mayor. Boy, which way to the mayor’s house, he kept saying. I told
him the mayor’s a bit of a stranger lately, but he said he knew him. Kep’
callin’ him Steven. I didn’t remember until he was gone, until I’d pointed him
in the direction of the mayor’s house, that Steven’s his given name. I
don’t...I don’t know what I did, but I hope I didn’t cause any problems that
can’t be fixed.”

“Ach, you’re a brave boy,” Gavin said. “Dinna
worry after any of that. What matters most is that you’re safe, and you are.
Does anything hurt?”

“Head aches, but past that, nay, nothin’ too bad.”

“Alright, you rest. Lynne, Elena and Olga, you see
to his needs. Aye?”

“Course,” Lynne said.

“Yes, Mister Gavin,” Elena said.

Olga crouched, nodded her assent and began to
stroke the boy’s hand.

“Did she just say Gavin?”

“Aye, on account of it being my name. Gavin
Macgregor.”

Realization dawned on the boy’s face and a look of
awe came over him.

“Gavin...Macgregor?
The
Gavin Macgregor?
That means that I was just given the what-for by Alan? The shamed sheriff?”

“News travels faster than we do, it seems,” John
said with a grin.

Seeing no reason to try and lie, Gavin gave the
boy a bow and shook his hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, young man.
Anything I can do for you, just ask.”

“Aye, there is,” he said.

“What is it?”

“The sheriff,” he said. “I want you to catch him
and make him pay for whatever it is he done. And, I’m more than a little
embarrassed about the whole thing, as I’m the one who let him go two times now.”

A smile crept across Gavin’s face. A wry one, a
proud one. He grabbed the boy’s hand again.

“We will,” he said. “I won’t let you down.”

M
ornay’s Cleft

August 18, Noon

––––––––

“I
am, in a word, displeased that you’ve decided to
reappear, Alan.”

“Sheriff Alan. That would be more correct.”

“Sheriff of what, exactly?”

Willard pushed away from his desk and pulled the
cuffs of his gloves so that the black leather stretched around his fingers and
released a sigh.

“Just because some greasy-haired Scot put me in
chains and dragged me up here doesn’t mean I’m not the sheriff of Edinburgh
anymore. In fact, all it means is that I’ve got a claim to having support from
the Crown to come and get him, and that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Spell it out, Alan, I’m not in any sort of mood
to play little word puzzles with you. How does your holding a grudge against
the fiancée of my guest have anything at all to do with me? And I would prefer
you not do that here.”

Cutting a long slice from a plug of tobacco he’d
stolen from the stables at Duggan’s inn, the sheriff grinned as he wrapped his
tongue about it and began to chew. “You’ve a spittoon?”

“Please, Alan, tell me why I should allow you to
stay here and sully my morning. And do it before I lose whatever shred of my
patience is left.”

“Because you know I’m right. You know that if the mope-minded
people in this backwater get wind that you’re clear cutting their forests and
sending the wood to docks in Manchester to be turned into...what – trading
ships? Slaver ships?”

“What they do with the wood is their concern,” the
mayor said, crossing his arms and clasping his elbows behind himself. “And it’s
my
wood in the first place. Why should the people in this town care what
I do with it? And how is it you’re privy to all my private doings anyway? I
haven’t seen you since I left Manchester for this present office a decade ago.”

“From a boy working the stables at Duggan’s inn.
Straw headed boy, probably fifteen or so? He went on at great and angry length
about the harms you were doing with overtaxing his father, taking the money and
investing it overseas in the Caribbean.”

“How did-”

“Because, mayor,” Alan cut in and spat a brown
puddle into a perfectly innocent teacup, “when you take people’s money, they
seem to notice. And when you don’t give them what they expect in return – the
roads around here, they’re just awful, and I noticed a distinct lack of upkeep
on the kirk as I was passing it. I’m amazed the presbyter doesn’t complain
more.”

“He’s on my payroll. Or, the city’s payroll. Which
as it happens is the same as being in my pocket.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is. You’ve a complicated
series of payoffs what’re supposed to keep the locals quiet. Rarely works in my
experience. What was that?”

“What was what?”

“That noise. Sounded like someone bumped against
the door.”

“Hm,” Willard said whistling between his teeth as
he crossed the room and looked out the glass pane. “Probably one of the hands
cleaning. Nothing to worry about.”

Kenna held her breath so tight in her chest that
it burned. Crouching as low as she could, she looked up at the door until the
shadow of the mayor’s form left the window before she relaxed enough to
continue scribbling down everything she could make out that was passing between
the two men. So far, she’d made note of some collusion with the Company she
didn’t quite understand the details of and something about payoffs and the
local kirk’s traveling presbyter being on the mayor’s payroll. The problem was,
as she saw it, that nothing going on was actually against any laws.

As she wrote and wrote, she wasn’t paying any
attention whatever to the increasing pressure she put on the pencil, she was so
caught up in making sure nothing slipped past her recording.

“
Tax hikes, moving the poor in the towns under
his control to London to be forced into the work houses. Overseas shipping
investments, optioning large loan amounts from the Bank of England? How much
money is circulating here?”
She drew a few lines under the note about the
bank for emphasis, but the voices got too quiet to hear almost immediately afterwards,
even with her ear pressed hard against the door.

Again, footsteps came toward where she crouched
and Kenna looked down to realize that at some point, she’d managed to snap her
pencil. Silently, she cursed at herself and moved away just as the shadow of
the mayor came back through his window. The first time she was nearly caught
was bad enough, but the second one sent her heart racing.

“It’s nothing,” he said, returning his attention
to Alan, who had filled his cup and reached for a second one. Willard grimaced
as the man wiped the brown stain off his lips with one of his nicest
handkerchiefs. “But really, Alan, can you stop with all that? To this point it,
seems like you’re working at irritating me.”

That got the sheriff to pull back his lips in something
approaching a yellow-toothed grin, but with such an indignant air that Willard
pursed his lips and walked over to the front of the sitting sheriff and
glowered at him.

“Why did you come here? What did you expect to
happen?”

“Why, Councillor, I merely wanted to offer what I
knew as a means of helping you. It seems to me that many of your constituents
are unhappy, and I didn’t want my old friend to be struck blind by a bunch of
angry peasants. That’s all.”

“That’s it, then? Fine. Thank you, and have a
joyous trip back to Edinburgh or wherever it is you’ll be going.”

“Oh, well, I suppose there is one more thing.
Since you asked, Councillor.”

“I don’t recall asking if there was anything else,
but go ahead.” Willard stretched his fingers then clenched them into fists,
relaxing the ache that settled into his joints. “I’ve not much time for this.
There is far more important business to which I must attend, so do go on and
get it out.”

“Who is it that you think these people are? Your town’s
esteemed visitors, that is.”

“The little red-headed Scot? Or the hundreds of
people who’ve come for the festival?”

“The Moore girl, and the gang of ruffians she
travels with. Who do you think they are?”

“I’m absolutely certain I haven’t any idea. But
I’m equally sure you’re going to offer me advice on the topic. Really, Alan, we
may have once worked at the same barrister’s office, but that’s as far as our
love for one another goes. You needn’t play these ridiculous games with me. Just
tell me what you want and what you have to say and remove yourself from my
presence, sir.”

“I apologize if I’ve offended you, Councillor. It
wasn’t my intent at all.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“The people you think are just hapless Scots
wandering through your town on the way to some final destination are not. The
girl you’ve kidnapped-”

“Guest.” The mayor snarled. “She’s my guest.”

“Right, your guest, she and the man playing at
being her husband were responsible for the terrible happenings in Edinburgh.
You’ve heard of Ramsay Macdonald’s shame? You’ve now got one of the five? Six?
I forget how many, but you’ve got one of the perpetrators in your clutches. You
have the ability to right a terrible wrong and bring a good man back from
ruin.”

“Ramsay Macdonald is not what I’d call a good man,
sheriff. He stole from his people and he plotted to buy...”

“Ah, the connection becomes clear where it was
once clouded, does it not?”

“Say what you mean, sir.”

“You’re doing very nearly the same thing he did,
though on an even grander scale. You’re the mayor, Councillor! You’re able to
sink or float entire towns. Two of them anyway.” The sheriff grinned, very
impressed with his cleverness. “You might not see what you’re doing as being
bad. You’re within your rights to tax these mutts whatever you wish to tax
them, but I’ll tell you right now, from one friend to another-”

“We’re
not
friends, Alan,” the mayor
interjected.

“Be that as it may, I’m telling you that what
you’re doing is going to land you in a whole mess of a situation, and the
people who are going to do it to you are right here in Morland’s Cleft.”

“Mor
nay
’s Cleft, sheriff. How could you
live a half-day’s ride south of me and not have any idea where the grain that
feeds Edinburgh came from?”

“I’m a person more interested in whisky than in grain
and in money more than both, Councillor.” He stretched his short, skinny legs
out in front of himself and intertwined his fingers behind his head. “It seems
to me that you are too. So are you going to hear me out, or are you going to
keep cutting in and telling me how badly you dislike me?”

Willard stiffened visibly, clenched his jaw and
exhaled through his nose. “Speak then, Alan.”

“You pointedly don’t call me sheriff.”

“Talk.”

“Assuming you’re familiar with the story, the girl
you’ve presently got kept, she’s the fiancée of one Gavin Macgregor. If you
know anything of the clans from the highlands, you’ll know the Macgregors as a
riotous bunch who stood by the usurping Prince Charles in the latest series of
comically pitched wars that were fought over the past two years. As a reward
for their obnoxious loyalty to a dead line of kings from a country which should
be buried just as deep as Robert the Bruce, the Macgregor chieftain was
outlawed, and so is their plaid.”

“I’m well aware of the danger of plaid, Alan. I’ve
outlawed the wearing of Mornay patterns here for just that reason. Disobedience
comes from disorder, I’ve found.”

“And yet, do you find that the wretches keep right
on wearing it, perchance when your back is turned?”

“There was one man, a farmer from here, who chose
to wear his great kilt to court the other day. I ought to have had him hanged.”

“Why?”

“Seemed out of place to shoot an old man dead in
the middle of court proceedings. But yes, to answer you, I’m well aware of the
dangers of allowing clannish people the right to behave in clannish ways.”

“And yet, that’s the very thing they want, isn’t
it? To be allowed to behave in their savage ways and all the while, not be
taxed too much.”

“Get to the point, Alan.”

“I’ll speak plain then.”

Willard drew a deep breath and seemed ready to say
something, but reconsidered at the last minute, not wanting to give the sheriff
any means by which to continue talking any longer than absolutely necessary.

“Please,” he said. “Go on.”

“Right, well, what I’m driving at is that Macgregor
sees himself as a kind of Robin of the Hood. He spent two years in Edinburgh
stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down and giving it off to poor Scots to
live on. I chased that bastard from one end of King’s Road to the other, and
since he was doing something everyone quite liked, it was impossible to catch
him. At least, it was impossible until he started getting careless. And he
started getting careless when there came to be a girl involved, as so often
happens.”

“You mentioned a gang, Alan, what-”

“Isn’t just the two of them gallivanting around
and stealing things. There’s a whole crew. They’ve got a fellow with two
fingers, who happens to be a Hell of a knife fighter. Actually, those two were
the first thorns in my side. Kenna didn’t come along until quite a bit later.
Also to worry about is a woman called Lynne Stevenson, who I had in my employ for
a short while, but she turned her back on me out of some prurient desire for
one of the Scots.  And then finally, there’s a damned foul Spaniard who
betrayed me as well, after I’d paid his way through life for several years.”

“Seems as though you’re betrayed quite a lot.
Perhaps there’s something to look at within yourself?”

Alan clenched his teeth and narrowed his gaze. “At
any rate. In exchange for this information, and for my warning of danger and
all the help I’m going to give you, I’ll be staying here until I’m ready to
leave. I want to see them all dead.”

“What cause do I have to execute a bunch of Scots?
Do you really think that’s the best way to go about this?”

“If you don’t do
something
, I promise
you’ll regret it sooner than later. They’re not going to let you get away with
anything that harms their precious chunk of this island.”

“But it’s my right to do-”

“No it’s not. At least not the way they see it.
These people, Councillor, they’re not like us. You know that. You found it out
when bandits killed your daughter, didn’t you?
Scottish
bandits, no
less. These aren’t grateful people, nor are they reasonable ones.”

“She doesn’t look dangerous to me,” the mayor
said, as he watched Kenna pass in front of his window, plucking flowers and
smelling them. “In fact, she seems completely incapable of the things you say.”

“Harrumph,” the sheriff said. “You believe that,
you’re in for a terrible pain.”

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Looks nothing like
most of these women. Most of them rather resemble the sheep they tend.”

Alan grimaced and chuckled shortly. “I’m telling
you to watch yourself. Macdonald fell into the same trap. Tried to marry her,
and now he’s ruined. This is a game you don’t want to play. Figure out why
they’re here, find out what they know, and if you’re not going to be wise and
kill them, at least get them out of here before they cause problems you can’t
fix. And,” he said with another of his irksome grins, “It seems to me that
since you’ve not yet ejected me from where I sit, that you’re listening to what
I say.”

“Seems to
me
I’ve no choice. I didn’t
maintain this position for ten years by ignoring threats.”

“Ah, there’s a wise mayor,” Alan said, smiling.
“Do you have a servant to lead me to my quarters?”

Glaring at the awful, round little man with the
brown lips, Mayor Willard took up his bell and rang it to summon Rollo. When he
appeared, the sheriff guffawed and pointed. “You’ve acquired a hunchback for a
servant?” Neither Willard nor Rollo paid it any mind.