Rose In Scotland (2 page)

“No tears now, little one,” he scolded gently, raising his hand to brush her damp cheeks. “It’s happy I want to remember you.”

A tentative smile wobbled on her trembling lips, but her eyes were solemn as they met his. “Will you be back, Hugh?”

Hugh thought of the dangers he would face as a soldier. The chances he would survive the next several years were all but nonexistent, but how could he tell that to a child? Then he saw an
adult’s understanding shimmering in his sister’s eyes, and wondered how he could lie.

“If I live,” he said quietly, granting her the honesty she craved. “My word to you, Mairi. I will come back.” He reached out to give a tangled curl a playful tug. “I must come back, mustn’t I, so that I can dance at your wedding?”

As he knew it would, her small nose wrinkled in disgust. “I’ll nae be marrying some pest of a boy!” she declared with conviction. “They’re the very devils!”

He gazed down into her face and saw the promise of great beauty in the odd angles of her expressive face. “ ’Tis a beauty you will be,” he told her, his heart aching that he would not be there to see her grow into womanhood. “Father and I will have to post all the clansmen on the towers to keep watch, so that some love-struck prince from a far-off land doesn’t carry you away.”

“Let him try,” Mairi retorted, tossing back her curls with a sniff. “I’ll stick my knife in him as if he was a haggis!”

Some of the women nearby tittered with laughter, while others shook their heads and muttered how wild the cailin had grown. Hugh ignored them all, his concentration fixed on Mairi. She was the image of his mother, and with that thought in mind he reached into the pocket of his jacket, extracting the locket he had carried with him since the day his dying mother had pressed it into his hand. He flicked open the heavily etched silver case, gazing at the miniature it contained.

His mother had been seventeen when it was
painted; it was the year she married his father. She had been young and full of life then, her emerald eyes sparkling with laughter. Eighteen years later she was dead; killed, he knew, by the harsh life and grief over the four small ones who had gone before her. He studied her beloved face for several seconds, and then snapped the locket closed for the final time.

He reached out and took Mairi’s small hand in his, placing the locket in her palm and folding her fingers around it. “Keep this safe for me, Mairi,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. “The day I come back, you may return it to me. But if I do not, I want you to promise me you will give it to your firstborn son that he might give it to his wife. Will you do this for me?”

Mairi’s thin fingers clutched the locket tightly. “I will, Hugh,” she vowed, pressing the locket to her heart. “But you will come back; I know you will. And I will be waiting for you.”

A single tear Hugh could not stop wended its way down his cheek. “Good-bye, Mairi,” he whispered brokenly. “Good-bye,
mo cridhe
.” And with that he turned and left, closing the great wooden doors of Castle Loch Haven behind him.

Castle Loch Haven

Scotland, 1785

A
ll for nothing. Hugh gazed up at the stone turrets of the castle, his eyes narrowing against the lash of ice and rain. The past fourteen years of his life—the pain of it, the hell of it—had all been for naught. His lips twisted in a bitter smile at the realization. ’Twould seem his father had had the final say after all, he decided, his hand clenching about his reins.

“And when was it you say that the soldiers came for my father and brother?” he asked, his voice devoid of emotion.

“Four years last May,” James Callamby provided, reaching up to rub his cheek thoughtfully. “I remarked on it because it happened but a week after my Elspeth married Rory Steward. I was to Dunstaffnage for the feasting, and a good thing it was, too,” he added, his blue eyes dancing with merriment, “else I wouldna be having this conversation with ye.”

Four years ago, Hugh mused, his expression hardening as he did some quick calculations.
That would have been about the time he and his regiment were bogged down in the swamps near Cowpens in the Carolinas. At the same time that he was fighting for his life, killing American rebels for a flag he detested, his father and brother were being dragged off in chains by other soldiers of that same flag. The irony of that was almost laughable, but the feelings tearing at him were too painful for laughter.

“Tell me what happened,” he said, banishing the black thoughts from his mind with the experience of many years. “I would know all.”

There was a long silence as the older man gathered his thoughts. “ ’twas after the hanging of the rebels in Glasgow, and feeling was running high against the clans,” he began, his face taking on a distant expression. “The soldiers came from the border, marching from glen to glen, and those who wouldna sign a pledge of fealty to the king were taken to London for trial—your father, brother, and uncle amongst them. We know some were transported and others hung, but of the men of Loch Haven we have nae heard a thing.”

Transported
. Hugh’s jaw clenched at the fearful word. If his father and Andrew had been shipped to some far-off colony, then they were as good as dead. No one returned from such hellish places, and he knew that in such a circumstance, hanging would have been the truer mercy. It was a horrifying thought, and he felt his stomach tighten in sickness.

“Mairi.” He forced the word between gritted teeth. “What of Mairi?” If his sister had been
transported as well, he knew he would truly go mad.

“In Edinburgh with your Aunt Egidia,” James assured him quickly. “The old lady was fair ill at the time, and Mairi had gone there to care for her. She was well away from the castle when the soldiers came.”

Hugh closed his eyes in relief. “Thank God,” he murmured feelingly. “I could not have borne it to have lost her as well.”

“Ye almost did.” James’s lips curled in a rueful smile. “For when she heard what happened, what did the lass do but take herself off to London to demand their release. Aye, and her not but seventeen at the time. It was a grand thing, and the clans speak of it still.”

Hugh was too stunned to reply. He had been in London but twice, and the filth and the vice of it had horrified him. The thought of his innocent sister alone in such a place filled him with terror, and he made a mental note to give the little
deamhan
a sound shaking when next he saw her. After he kissed her and held her close, he admitted to himself.

“Where does Aunt Egidia stay?” he asked, turning his thoughts to the next thing to be done. “Is she still living on Chambers Street near the kirk?”

James nodded. “Aye. Keir MacKinney is at university there, and writes he saw Mairi not one month past. ’Tis said he is after courting her,” he added, twisting in his saddle to cast Hugh a teasing grin. “Though ye’ll have to have a word with him on that yerself, MacColme, to be certain the lad’s intentions are as they should be.”

Hugh was silent on the long ride back to the village. Mairi being courted, he mused, dazed at the very notion. For the past fourteen years he’d carried the image of a dirty-faced urchin close to his heart, clinging to her memory even as he’d gone screaming into battle. Although he’d known she was growing up through the years, until this very moment he hadn’t considered the ramifications of what that would mean. A reluctant grin tugged at his mouth as he remembered her passionate declaration never to marry. ’Twould seem a great many things had changed in the years he had been gone.

Despite James’s insistence that Hugh stay with him and his family, Hugh returned to the small, rough tavern that passed for an inn in Loch Haven. As it had been when he’d ridden out earlier that morning, the taproom was filled with hard-faced men, and ’twas obvious by their ominous silence that they were no more pleasantly disposed toward him than they’d been when he’d left.

“So, ye’ve been to the castle and seen fer yerself the truth o’ what we told ye,” Angus MacColme, his father’s distant cousin, snarled, his thin mouth set in a contemptuous sneer. “Yer fine English king nae mair kept his word to ye than did ye to us. Or have ye forgotten the oath ye swore before us all?”

Hugh set his tankard on the bar with studied care. Years of swallowing every manner of insult without complaint had taught him to keep his temper hidden, and none of his rage showed as he raised cool eyes to meet the older man’s derisive gaze.

“I forget nothing, cousin,” he said, his tone deceptively mild. “Not a vow nor a slight. I remember all.”

Angus’s cheeks grew red at the implied threat, but before he could speak one of the other men asked challengingly, “And what will ye do to take back what is yers? With yer father gone ’Tis the laird of Loch Haven ye be; his obligations and duties are now yer own. What will ye do to fulfill them, Hugh MacColme?”

This was a question Hugh had been asking himself since learning of his father’s arrest and the seizure of their lands and title. His years with the army had taught him much about English politics, and he intended on using every bit of that knowledge to gain back what was his. But to do that he would need to journey to London—an action he was certain would make his remaining chieftains even more wary of him.

“I will do what I must,” he said simply, raising his tankard and taking a sip.

There was an expectant silence, and when he did not elaborate, the men began shifting their feet and exchanging confused looks. “That is all?” the man who had spoken before demanded in a baffled tone.

Hugh thought of the English major who had been his first commanding officer after he’d been made a sergeant.
“Explain nothing,”
the man had advised, giving Hugh’s shoulder a companionable slap.
“Simply issue the orders and act as if they had already been carried out.”

“It is enough,” he said, taking another sip of ale. “Now I would speak of the clan. Tell me how fares everyone.”

There was an uneasy silence and another exchange of looks, and Hugh braced himself to prepare for anything from an insult to a dirk in the back. Finally a man Hugh recalled from his youth set down his own tankard and began speaking.

“We are better off than many of the others,” he said, tugging at his beard in a gesture Hugh well remembered. “The seizure was limited only to yer father’s house and lands, and the rest of us were let be. The sheep and cattle are well, and so ’Tis enough meat we have to sustain us. Many of the crofts are in sad want of repair, but we have nae the money to see to it.”

Hugh thought of the money tucked away in his things. Despite his meager salary he’d managed to put aside a considerable sum, and then there was the money he’d won as part of the booty seized in battle. All in all it was several thousand pounds, enough to repair a hundred crofts and see to the most immediate needs of the clan. Unfortunately, he feared, the money would be needed to buy back his land and title from an English court that would doubtlessly listen better to a man with bags full of gold than to one with pockets to let.

“Talk to the other clans,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “Offer a trade of meat for the material to help in the repairing of the crofts. That will help them as well as us. What else?”

“We’ve several widows and women without their men to help them,” Lucien Raghnall, a man who had been Hugh’s close companion as a lad, volunteered warily. “They stand to lose all if their taxes are nae met by year’s end.”

Hugh said a mental good-bye to a goodly part of his money. “They will be met,” he said. “Are there other matters to discuss? How many men were taken from Loch Haven?”

“Besides yer father, uncle, and brother, there were ten others,” Angus MacColme said, the bitterness fairly dripping from his words. “And half a dozen more dragged off by the press-gangs that followed the soldiers, my own Donald included. Dragged from his own home, he was, and taken away as if he was nae mair than a runt to be slaughtered!”

Hugh was silent, his heart aching at the thought of any man under the hell of impressment. Army life was bad enough, often unendurable at times, but it paled in comparison to what befell a man impressed into His Majesty’s navy. He’d heard stories horrible enough to give him nightmares, but now he grudgingly accepted there was naught he could do to help the men so cruelly taken away. The best he could hope for was to learn if they even lived, and he doubted that would provide scant comfort to those left behind.

“James told me there was no word on the fate of the men arrested,” he said, focusing on the things he felt he could do something about. “Is that so? Were inquiries made?”

“Aye, inquiries aplenty,” another man said heatedly. “For all the good it did us! Even yer sister could learn naught when she went there, and ’twas proper determined the lass was, too. Threatened to storm the prison herself and see to their welfare, she did, and was almost clapped into irons for her pains. But she didna back
down,” he added with an approving nod.

Hugh winced at the admiration in the man’s voice. ’Twould seem James had not exaggerated Mairi’s heroics, and he shuddered at the image of a flame-haired hellion dressing down some staunch and sour magistrate in a black robe and powdered wig. Well, he was home now, and the first thing he meant to make clear to his sister was that she was never again to do such a foolish thing. He was the laird, and what risks there were would be taken by him.

“What will you do, Hugh?” Lucien was regarding him curiously. “Will you go to London to petition the courts for redress?”

“I had thought to do so,” Hugh replied. “I’ve the king’s pardon to show them, and enough groats to grease as many fat English hands as it may take. Although I pray God ‘twill not be many.” He added this last part with a wry grin, and was rewarded when they broke out into raucous laughter.

“Nae much chance of that, lad,” one of the wizened Highlanders chortled, slapping his knee in amusement. “ ’Tis greedy as ever the English be, and they’ll take yer gold, yer boots, and yer buttons if ye dinna keep yer wits about ye.”

“Then I shall have to make certain to do just that,” Hugh said, pretending to relax even as he was careful to keep his guard firmly in place. “I haven’t survived this long to be buggered by some fat pig of a magistrate.”