The Scot and I (4 page)

Three

When she stepped out of the warm inn, the blast of cool mountain air seemed to clear her mind, and the panic that urged her to make a dash for freedom became easier to manage. There was no doubt that she would make a dash for it, but it would be at the right time, when she had a chance of escape. This hard-eyed jailer who was directing her to the stable with a hand on her elbow would not be easy to shake off. She needed all her wits about her.

A little help from the dirk in her boot wouldn’t come amiss.

She chanced a quick look up at him. That granite-hard expression promised a swift and severe retaliation if she failed to disable him. Her choices were deplorable: disable a crack agent who outweighed her by four or five stone or be handed over to the tender mercies of men who were experts at prizing secrets out of people. And the law was on their side.

She wasn’t panicked. She was numb with fear. Where would Thomas Gordon have taken the woman in this isolated corner of the Highlands? Her brain was frozen.

She gave a start when Hepburn spoke to her.

“You needn’t fear me.” He sounded annoyed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Fear you?” She remembered in time that she was Thomas Gordon, and she set her chin. “I’m not afraid of you!”

“Then why are you trembling?”

“I’m not trembling. I’m shivering. I’m not used to this cold mountain air.”

She didn’t hear his response. Something had caught her eye. There was a peat cart in the courtyard, at the side door to the cellar, and three brawny Highlanders were unloading peat for the inn’s fires while two others leaned nonchalantly against the wall, conversing in Gaelic. Hepburn had noticed them, too.

“Smugglers?” he intoned, and shook his head.

She shrugged. She wasn’t going to betray Dugald’s friends to an officer of the law.

“You needn’t glower, Thomas. I’m not interested in smugglers. I’m not an excise man.”

Smugglers. Excise men. Her brain began to thaw. She knew now where she would have taken the woman. It might work. No. It would work, if her nerve held. “We take the bridge,” she said, “to the north road.”

 

 

There was something different about the boy. Alex knew the smell of fear, and the boy’s fear had trickled away as they jogged along this old drovers’ road. They were on their way to the White Stag, a former change house that was now, with the coming of the railroad, off the beaten track. Change houses and stagecoaches were going out of style.

Darkness pressed in on them from every side, but it wasn’t completely unrelieved. Moonlight glazed the dense stands of trees that flanked the road and filtered down to show them the way. They weren’t alone. Smugglers were abroad, plying their trade in contraband whiskey. He heard snatches of Gaelic coming from the underbrush, and occasionally they encountered the odd traveler. Not that he understood a word of what was said.

The boy spoke Gaelic. When they were hailed by riders, he returned their greetings. About the only Gaelic Alex remembered was
uisque beatha
, and a few odd phrases. His grandmother, the Witch of Drumore, would be sadly disappointed.

Something stirred at the back of his mind, something about the boy. What was it? He was from Aberdeen, yet he spoke Gaelic. A small point. He himself was Highland bred, and his Gaelic had died away from lack of use.

Lights winked at them through the trees as they approached their destination. This was where the boy said that he had delivered the woman, to the White Stag. Had there been time, Alex would have plied him with questions. He wanted to know how the boy had met the woman and how much she had told him. He wanted to know what he had received for services rendered.

He and Gavin had counted two riders who had split up and gone their separate ways, so they had split up, too. All going well, they were to meet at the family’s hunting lodge and possibly turn their captives over to Dickens at the castle. Alex liked and trusted Dickens. He would deal fairly with the boy. He couldn’t say the same for Colonel Foster, who had temporarily taken charge when Durward had been called away. The colonel was all spit and polish and liked to throw his weight around. But he wasn’t in charge of Dickens or Alex.

He hoped the boy was on the periphery of this conspiracy, that his only involvement had been to wait for the woman and escort her to the change house. He didn’t want to make war on boys, and this beardless boy seemed too young to be let off his leading strings. Where were his parents? Who was looking after him? If they only knew the reputation of the man whose hands their stripling had fallen into, they would be shivering in their boots.

Reputation was not reality. The boy would come to no harm with him. As for the woman, that was a different matter. He knew her kind. He’d met her like once before and still smarted from the mauling he’d taken.

As he tied the horses’ reins to the tethering rings in the White Stag’s courtyard, Alex took a moment to get his bearings. There was no sign of contraband whiskey, but the burly Highlanders in their tartan trews and plaids looked a little too happy, as though they’d been making inroads into their private stock. Alex didn’t doubt that they were smugglers. Caution had been thrown to the winds, and he thought he knew why. Every policeman and servant of the crown had been drafted into service for the queen’s soiree. There couldn’t be a more perfect night for smugglers to go about their business. Who was there to stop them?

They didn’t know about the shooting in Balmoral. By morning, Deeside would be swarming with agents, and the smugglers would be home snug in their beds. He wasn’t going anywhere, not until he’d found out who had put the woman in the blond wig up to murdering him.

As they pushed into the inn, someone struck up a tune on a fiddle. The public room was crowded. Smoke from clay pipes hung in the air. Toes began to tap, then voices broke into song. He recognized the air: “Mahri’s Wedding.”

The boy seemed to falter. “Steady, Thomas.” Alex put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He felt a tremor but wasn’t sure whether it came from the boy or was an involuntary twitch of his own fingers. He dismissed the idle thought and spoke to Thomas again. “Let’s . . .” He had to raise his voice above the singing. “Let’s have a word with the landlord and find out what room Martha McGregor is in.”

As it turned out, there was no Martha McGregor at the inn, though there was a Morag McGregor. Alex was watching the stairs as the landlord asked whether she could be the lady the gentleman wanted. “Possibly,” Alex replied, his attention drawn to a succession of men either ascending the stairs or descending them. It was becoming clear to him that there was more to the good times at the White Stag than
uisque beatha
and fiddle playing.

He looked at Thomas.

The boy answered with a nonchalant shrug. “I may have misheard the name,” he said.

Alex grasped Thomas’s shoulder and propelled him toward the stairs. “You young whelp,” he gritted, “I know how Mistress McGregor paid you for services rendered, and you deserve a whipping. How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? You should be in the schoolroom learning your alphabet, not amusing yourself in the fleshpots of Deeside. You could hang as a traitor. Don’t you know that?”

“For amusing myself with the lassies?” It was a glib retort, but the boy looked frightened.

 

 

Alex shook his head. He didn’t know why he was angry at the boy, except that for some obscure reason, he had taken a liking to him. Still, his anger was out of place. He’d got up to a lot more mischief than amusing himself with the lassies when he was the boy’s age. A reluctant smile had to be severely repressed.

“Which door?” Alex asked when they reached the upstairs corridor. There were five doors.

Thomas pointed and gulped. “Ye’re no going to shame me?”

Was there anything more fragile than a young lad’s confidence in his power to attract the lassies? Alex remembered his own blushes when some lass had held him up to ridicule. Gavin, of course, had never suffered such indignities. The lassies had loved him only too well.

He looked into Thomas’s troubled eyes, half-fearful, half-hopeful, and he gave a resigned sigh. He was only a lad after all.

“No. I won’t shame you,” he said. He released his hold on the boy. “Wait here, but leave the door open. Don’t move from that spot. Don’t even blink.”

He knocked on the door and entered on command. The woman, who was lounging in a chair, was as bonnie as they came, but she was not the woman who had attacked him in the castle ballroom. Even if she were a consummate actress, nothing could conceal her overripe curves, and this woman was so scantily clad that nothing was left to his imagination.

Uttering an apology, he made a hasty retreat.

The woman came after him. “Dinna run away,” she cooed. “Ye’ve come to the right door. I’m the only lass that’s free for the next little while, and that won’t last long.”

Because he wasn’t a boor, he pressed a kiss to the hand that she offered him. “Alas, ma’am,” he said, “I’m looking for my brother, and dare not tarry. Some other time, perhaps?”

She was cooing like a dove when he stepped into the corridor and shut the door. “Thomas?” He looked down the length of the corridor. There was no sign of Thomas. He let out a bellow. “Thomas?”

 

 

Mahri pelted down the back stairs, flung herself through the door to the cellar, and exited by a side door. She was no stranger to the White Stag, though her memories of the inn went back a few years, when her brother and she would escape the servants’ vigilance and go exploring on their own.

She was in the courtyard at the front of the inn where Hepburn had tethered their horses. Hepburn would know that she’d taken to her heels, but he would want to make sure that the woman he sought was not in the other rooms. Four more doors to try, then he’d realize he’d been tricked. It would give her time to untether her pony and melt into the night.

It didn’t occur to her to appeal for help to the patrons who had taken their drinks outside to escape the noise of the public room. They would believe Hepburn before they would believe her. She had to get away before he thought to look for her outside.

Her fingers had never worked faster as she tried to untether her pony. There was a knot she couldn’t undo. Fear pulsed hard and fast in her blood. How had the knot got there?

“Going somewhere, Thomas?”

The quietly spoken words had all the force of a thun derclap to her panicked ears. When her heart resumed beating, she lifted her head to look at him. The light was behind him, and his silhouette showed a tall man with broad shoulders and—this might have been a trick of her imagination—long, muscular legs. At any rate, no one could doubt that he was a formidable adversary.

A few heads turned as patrons looked at them curiously.

She was struck by a blinding flash of inspiration. Pointing a shaking finger at Hepburn, she cried, “He’s an excise man!”

There was a stunned silence, then everyone was on the move.

“An excise man!” a broad-chested Highlander chanted, and the cry was taken up.

No one was intent on harming the excise man. They all seemed to have the same idea: to get away before he arrested any of them. To defraud the government of the tax on whiskey carried a severe penalty. To maim or kill an officer of the law was to court the hangman’s noose.

People were streaming out of all the exits. Hepburn was jostled and lost his footing. That’s when Mahri made her dash for freedom. She regretted having to leave her pony, but she didn’t have a choice. The wily Hepburn had knotted the reins so that, in all likelihood, he was the only one who could untie them.

She hared into the cover of the trees, crouched down, and scanned the inn’s courtyard for a sign of her enemy. Carts and horses with riders were taking off in every direction. Her pony was still tethered, but there was no sign of Hepburn or his horse. Swallowing her fear, she rose to her feet and began to run.

Though it went against every instinct, she made for the ford that crossed the Dee at Invercauld. Once she crossed the Dee, she would be back in what she considered to be enemy territory, the hills bordering the Balmoral estate, the way she’d come earlier that night after she’d shot Ramsey. She didn’t have much of a choice. She wanted to stay close to Braemar, where she was supposed to meet up with Dugald. The south bank of the Dee was a land of uncultivated forests, barren moors, and few people except the residents of Braemar and, perhaps, gamekeepers and shepherds. Militia, policemen, and anyone in a hurry would take the north road, and Mahri wanted to avoid them.

As her fear ebbed, her pace slowed. This felt like the longest night of her life. She’d been fatigued beyond bearing when she’d arrived at the Inver Arms, but when Hepburn had stepped into the taproom, she’d found her wind again. Now she was completely spent. She couldn’t get her legs to obey the commands of her brain. She had to stop frequently to catch her breath. And if that were not enough, it had begun to rain.