The Highwayman (2 page)

Dougan watched her go, suffused with interest and amusement, he savored the feeling of having something he'd never had before.

A friend.

*   *   *

“
Pssst!
Dougan!” The loud whisper nearly startled Dougan out of his skin. He whirled around, ready to deflect a blow from one of the other boys, when he spied a pair of owlish eyes sparkling at him from ringlets spun of moonbeams. The rest of her was cleverly shadowed behind a hallway tapestry.

“What are ye doing out here?” he demanded. “If they catch us, they'll whip us both.”

“You're out here,” she challenged.

“Aye … well.” Dougan had tried to fill the emptiness of his stomach with water. Two hours later, while tossing in bed, the plan had somewhat backfired and he'd been chagrined to find that someone had hidden the chamber pot, forcing him to go in search of the water closet.

“I have something for you.” Merrily, she hopped from behind the tapestry and linked her elbow with his, careful not to touch the bandages on his hands. “Follow me.” A door at the end of the hall sat slightly ajar, and Farah shoved him through, closing it softly behind them.

A lone candle flickered on one of several small tables, the light dancing off walls comprised entirely of bookcases. Dougan wrinkled his nose. The library? What would induce her to bring him here? He'd always avoided this room. It was dusty and smelled of mold and old people.

Pulling him toward the table with the candle, she pointed to a chair tucked in front of an open book. “Sit here!” By now she was nigh on quivering with excitement.

“Nay.” Dougan scowled down at the book, his curiosity dying. “I'm going to bed.”

“But—”

“And ye should, too, before they catch ye and flay yer skin from yer hide.”

Reaching into her apron pocket, Farah produced something the size of a tin of potted meat wrapped with linen. Setting it on the table, she uncovered a half-eaten slab of cheese, some dried roast, and most of a bread crust.

Dougan's mouth watered violently, and it was all he could do not to snatch it from her.

“I couldn't finish my supper,” she said.

Dougan fell upon the offering like a savage, seizing the bread first, as he knew it would produce the most filling effect. He could hear the rooting, growling noises his throat produced around gaping mouthfuls, and he didn't care.

When she spoke again, her voice was full of tears. “Dear friend…” Her little hand pressed against his hunched back and patted it consolingly. “I shan't let you starve again, I promise.”

Dougan watched her reach for the book as he shoved as much of the roast in his mouth as would fit.
“Waff's tha?”
he asked around the food.

She spread her tiny, pale hands to carefully smooth across the open pages, and nudged the tome toward him. “I felt bad for not knowing enough about the rifles this afternoon, so I spent all evening searching, and look what I found!” She mashed her wee finger next to a picture of a long Enfield rifle. Beneath it were smaller pictures of different parts of the disassembled weapon.

“This is a Pattern 1851 rifle,” she offered. “And look! Here are the bayonets. The next chapter is about how they're made and how one affixes them to the top of—What?” She'd finally glanced over at him and something in his expression caused her to blush.

Dougan had almost completely forgotten about the food, for his entire body was suffused with the most intense and exquisite sensation he'd ever known. It was something like hunger, and something like fulfillment. It was wonder and awe and yearning and fear encapsulated in a tender bliss. His chest expanded with it until it pressed against his lungs, emptying them of breath.

He found himself wishing there was a word for it. And maybe there was, lost in all these countless books for which he'd never before had use.

She turned back to the pages, clearing her throat. “They noted all the names of all the different components right below the pictures, see?”

“How do ye know?” He peered down at where she pointed and noted the markings below the pictures, but, to him, they were meaningless.

“It says right here. Can't you read it?”

Dougan filled the silence by tearing off a chunk of cheese and popping it into his mouth, chewing furiously.

“Did no one teach you?” she asked astutely.

He ignored her, finishing off the crust of bread whilst staring down at the pictures, wanting very much to know what they were about. “Will ye—read them to me, Fairy?”

“Of course I will.” She leaned forward on her knees, the table too tall for her to sit on the rickety chair and see over the top. “But tomorrow when we meet here, I'll teach you how to read them for yourself.”

Feeling full and satisfied for the first time in as long as he could remember, Dougan began to point to pictures, and she would tell him the caption beneath while he savored the cheese in little crumbles.

By the time they got to the chapter on bayonets, Farah's head had sunk to his shoulder as they huddled around their book and candle. He used one finger to point tirelessly at picture after picture, and the other found its way into one of her ringlets, idly pulling it straight and letting it bounce back into place.

“I was thinking,” he said some time later as she paused for a drowsy yawn. “Since ye doona have any family to love anymore, ye could love me…” Instead of meeting her gaze, he studied the way the pristine white of her petticoat bandage made his hand look that much grubbier. “That is, if ye wanted.”

Farah buried her face in his neck and sighed, her lashes brushing against his tender skin with every blink. “Of course I'll love you, Dougan Mackenzie,” she said easily. “Who else is going to?”

“Nobody,” he said earnestly.

“Will you try to love me, too?” she asked in a small voice.

He considered it. “I'll try, Fairy, but I havena done it before.”

“I'll teach you that, as well,” she promised. “Right after I teach you to read. Love is quite like reading, I expect. Once you know how, you can't ever imagine not doing it.”

Dougan only nodded because his throat was burning. He put his arm around
his
very own fairy, reveling in the fact that he finally had something good that no one could take away from him.

*   *   *

Dougan learned much about himself in those two blissful years with his fairy. Namely that when he loved, he did it nothing short of absolutely. Obsessively, even.

She told him how her father had been exposed to cholera while visiting a friend at a soldier's hospital and had brought it home. Farah Leigh's older sister, Faye Marie, had been the first to die, and her parents had followed in short succession.

He told her that his mother had been a maid in a Mackenzie laird's household. She'd borne one of the laird's many bastards and he'd lived with her for about four years until she'd died violently by the hand of another lover.

One of the things Dougan had realized from an early age, which set him apart from other people, was that he remembered almost everything. He even recalled conversations he and his Fairy had a year later, and would shock and delight her by reminding her of them.

“I'd forgotten that!” she'd say.

“I
never
forget,” he'd boast.

The ability made him a quick study, and he'd surpassed her reading skills quickly. Though he always sat attentively while she taught him, even when he didn't want to. Besides, she picked books that he would be interested in, ones about ships, cannons, and a barrage of historical wars from the Romans all the way through Napoleon. His particular favorite was one on the maritime history of pirates.

“Do ye think I'd make a good pirate someday?” he asked her once around a mouthful of hard cake she'd brought him as a special treat.

“Of course not,” she'd answered patiently. “Pirates are wicked thieves and murderers. Besides, they don't allow girls on their pirate ships.” She'd turned to him with moist, frightened eyes. “Would you leave me to go pirating?”

He'd pulled her in close. “I'd never leave you, Fairy,” he vowed fiercely.

“Truly?” She'd pulled back, staring up at him with storm-cloud eyes that threatened rain. “Not even to be a pirate?”

“I promise.” He'd taken a bite of cake and smiled at her with full cheeks before turning back to the book. “I might be a highwayman, though. They're a lot like pirates, but just on land.”

After a short consideration, Farah had nodded. “Yes, I think you would be
much
better suited to the life of a highwayman,” she agreed.

“Aye, Fairy, ye'll have to resign yerself to being a highwayman's wife.”

She'd clapped and sparkled delighted eyes at him. “Sounds like an adventure!” But then her face had sobered as though she'd remembered something particularly distasteful.

“What?” he'd asked anxiously.

“Only that … I think I'm supposed to marry someone else.”

Dougan snarled, shaking her wee shoulders. “Who?”

“Mr. Warrington.” She continued upon seeing the anger and puzzlement in his eyes. “He—he worked with my father and is the one who left me here. He said that when I'm a woman, he'll come to collect me, and we are to be married.”

A cold desperation stole into his blood. “Ye canna marry anyone else, Fairy. You belong to
me
. Only me.”

“What do we do?” She fretted.

Dougan thought furiously as they trembled against each other in the arid library, the threat of a future separation driving them together. Suddenly, he was struck by genius.

“Go to bed, Fairy. Tomorrow night, instead of meeting me here in the library, let's meet in the vestry.”

Dougan had waited for her in the vestry with the only memento of his family he'd ever owned. A scrap of Mackenzie plaid. He'd bathed and scrubbed and yanked the tangles out of his straight black hair before tying it back with a string.

Farah's unruly curls poked around the heavy doors to the chapel, and when she'd spied him standing next to the altar, only illuminated by a lone candle, the brilliance of her smile had preceded her down the aisle. She wore her simple white nightdress that pleased him to no end, and her bare feet poked out from the long hem with her every step.

He offered his hand to her, and she took it without hesitation. “You look very fine,” she whispered. “What are we doing in here, Dougan?”

“I'm here to marry ye,” he murmured.

“Oh?” She looked around curiously. “With no priest?”

“We doona need priests in the Highlands,” he scoffed gently. “Our weddings are bound by many gods rather than just one. And they come when
we
ask, not when a priest says.”

“That sounds even better,” she agreed with a fervent nod.

They knelt facing each other in front of the altar, and Dougan wrapped his faded plaid around their joined right hands.

“Just say what I say, Fairy,” he murmured.

“All right.” She looked up at him with those eyes, and Dougan experienced a pang of love so intense and ferocious it felt as though it didn't belong in this holy room.

He began the incantation he remembered from watching once from behind his mother's skirts when he was young.

Ye are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.

I give ye my body, that we two might be one.

I give ye my spirit, 'til our life shall be done.

Farah needed a bit of prompting to remember all the words, but she said them with such fervency that Dougan was touched.

Slipping a ring of a willow herb vine onto her finger, he recited the sacred
olde
vows with perfect clarity, but translated them into English for her sake.

I make ye my heart

At the rising of the moon.

To love and honor,

Through all our lives.

May we be reborn,

May our souls meet and know.

And love again.

And remember.

She looked lost and mystified for a moment, then announced, “Me, too.”

It was enough. She was his. Sighing with the alleviation of a great weight, Dougan unwrapped their hands, and offered his plaid to her. “Ye keep this with ye, next to yer heart.”

“Oh, Dougan, I have nothing to give to you,” she lamented.

“Ye give me a kiss, Fairy, and then 'tis done.”

She launched herself at him, puckering her wee mouth artlessly against his, and then letting go with a loud
smack
. “You're the best husband, Dougan Mackenzie,” she announced. “I don't know of any other husbands who can make a frog jump so high, or come up with such clever names for the foxes that live under the wall, or skip
three
stones at a time.”

“We musna tell anyone,” Dougan said, still reeling a bit from the kiss. “Not—not until we're grown.”

She nodded her assent. “I'd better get back,” she said reluctantly.

He agreed, lowering his head to kiss her on the mouth once more, softer this time. It was his husbandly right, after all. “I love ye, Fairy mine,” he whispered as she silently padded back down the aisle, clutching her plaid and crowned with the vibrant flowers.

“I love you, too.”

*   *   *

The following night, a small body roused Dougan by lifting the covers and wriggling into his narrow dormitory cot. He opened his eyes to see a wealth of silver ringlets tucked against his chest in the dim light of the lone candle.

“What are ye doing, Fairy?” he whispered drowsily.

She didn't answer him, just clung to his shirt with uncharacteristic desperation, her body racked with shivers and wordless little whimpers escaping from her throat.