The Scot and I (6 page)

“What does that mean?”

She blinked up at him as her mind focused. “It doesn’t mean anything profound. I’m tired; that’s all.”

His voice sounded gentler to her ears. “Shall we start over? At the reception tonight, you aimed your revolver at me and fired. If I wasn’t your target, who was?”

She had rehearsed a little speech for this eventuality, but it was one thing to say it to herself and another to say it to this hard-eyed man. Something else was bothering her. Balmoral wasn’t so far away. Why were they holed up here, when they could just as easily have borrowed some dry clothes and made it back to the castle where she could be questioned by other agents, too? She’d feel safer in the castle with the queen in residence. And this place was, more or less, a bawdy house. What was the significance of that?

If he thought he could cow her with these tactics, he would soon learn his mistake. She was Mahri Scot and could trace her line back to King Robert the Bruce. The blood of warriors ran in her veins. Traitors’ blood, too, and the odd sprinkling of rogues’ and charlatans’. But as far as she knew, none of them had been cowards.

If only she could stop her inner trembling and show her mettle.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” he said.

“Ronald Ramsey,” she stated baldly, “the man I hit. He was my target.”

Baffled, he sat back. “Why him? What did that poor lad ever do to you? You might have killed him.”

“I told you. I never miss. I didn’t want to kill him, only to disable him.” She paused to marshal her thoughts. There was enough truth in what she was about to tell him to persuade him to let her go. A darting look at her grim-faced jailor convinced her that she was way off the mark. This man was relentless. He would not let her go until he had verified every last detail of her story. The best she could hope for was that it would buy her a little time till she could figure a way of escape.

“Ronald is mad,” she said, and that was the truth. Now the lies began. “When I refused to marry him, he warned me that he would do something spectacular to make me regret my decision. He sent me a note to say that he was going to kill the queen at her reception. I wasn’t sure if he meant it, but I decided, just in case, to foil him in the act. And I did.”

He grimaced in disbelief. “You expect me to believe that? The man was standing right behind me. He made no attempt on the queen’s life.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” she said crossly, “because I shot the gun out of his hand.”

He took a moment to consider this. “There was no gun.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’m a secret service agent. I’m trained to notice such things.”

She stared at his set face, then gave a hoot of laughter. “Well, Mr. Secret Service Agent, Ramsey had a gun, a revolver to be precise. I know, because I shot it out of his hand.”

Alex’s lips flattened. His eyes narrowed on her. “Then where is the gun now, Miss Know-it-all?”

She gave an elegant shrug. “How should I know? I’m not the secret service agent.”

His next words wiped the smile from her face. “Why didn’t you warn the authorities about Ramsey? Why didn’t you appeal to them to help you?”

She had warned the authorities, in a roundabout way. Much good it had done. They hadn’t taken her seriously.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She should have escaped in the panic, and Ramsey and his fellow conspirators should have run for cover, knowing that their plot had failed.

It was all such a muddle. How much should she tell him? How much did he know?

Half in earnest, half playing a part, she said, “What could the authorities do? Arrest Ramsey before he committed a crime? They were more likely to arrest me. Now you tell me there was no gun. In that case, I misjudged him, and it was nothing more serious than a lovers’ tiff gone wrong.”

His tone was dry. “Have done with the lies. You planned your escape with meticulous detail. A sign of a guilty conscience?”

“A sign of knowing my enemy!” she retorted. “You’re all the same, you men in high places. When things go wrong, you look for a scapegoat. I’d hoped to vanish into thin air before you found one—me.”

She stopped suddenly. She was talking too much, giving too much away. The trouble was, she could hardly keep her eyes open. She was losing her fear of him—she didn’t know why—and the soft bed was lulling her senses to sleep.

His next question put paid to any idea of sleep.

“What happened to your companion?”

“There was no companion.” He meant Dugald, of course. “I was the only one involved.”

“There were two riders,” he said. “You split up. I followed your trail and a colleague followed your companion.”

“He might have been a smuggler. I don’t know. He was no friend to me.”

She wasn’t unduly alarmed. Dugald was on home ground. He was a stalker. It would be different if he were found with her. Then he’d come under suspicion, too.

Something occurred to her and she said, “Why didn’t you follow the other rider? Why choose me?”

“The other rider was making his way back to the castle. I knew . . . sensed . . . that it was the last place you’d want to go.”

“You . . . sensed?” Her nose wrinkled. “I thought that secret service agents relied on their powers of deduction to solve cases. Too bad you didn’t sense that Ramsey had a gun.”

“And it’s too bad for you,” he snapped, “that I was on duty tonight, or you might have got away with your crime.”

She’d made him lose his temper and that pleased her enormously.

After an interval of silence, he said, “How did you get past the footmen who were on the doors? I take it that you didn’t have an invitation to the queen’s reception?”

“I entered as though I belonged there. When one foot-man asked for my card of invitation, I told him that I’d given it to another. They were very polite, very helpful. Do you know, Mr. Hepburn, I think that security at the castle could do with some improvement?”

His chin jutted. Hers lifted.

There was a discreet knock on the door. He got off the bed and reached for his gun. “Who is there?”

“Mrs. Leslie, your landlady.”

He thrust his gun into his coat pocket and took a quick look around. “Do something with your hair,” he growled. “You look like a girl.”

He waited until she had gathered her mane of hair at her nape and covered it with the blanket before he opened the door. Their landlady, all smiles and good humor, bustled in with an armful of clothes.

“If this disna suit, let me know,” she said, “and I’ll fetch something else. Now give me your wet things, lad, and I’ll dry them in front of the kitchen fire.”

The change in Hepburn was dramatic to say the least. Mahri couldn’t help staring. The landlady was an old crone who kept a bawdy house, yet he treated her with the deference due the queen. He smiled, he nodded, he blathered on about Highland hospitality and how there was nothing like it, and he secured the promise of a pot of tea and scones before the landlady left.

As soon as the door closed, Mahri said, “You can take that smile off your face, Hepburn. It’s not you our landlady likes; it’s the sovereigns in your pocket.”

His smile vanished, and he gave her one of his glowering looks.

She smiled. “Don’t tell me I’ve hurt your feelings? I’m sure she likes you as well as any of her customers.”

Was that a smile he was trying to suppress? Evidently not, because he barked out, “Choose what you need and get dressed, unless you prefer to be naked. It’s all the same to me. And do something with your hair, or I’ll be tempted to cut it off.”

She wasn’t frightened now. She was offended. He’d treated Mrs. Leslie with deference while he had manhandled her, Mahri Scot, who was on his side and had done her best to foil the plot against the queen. For her trouble, she’d had her backside swatted and been terrorized by a string of threats. Well, he’d uttered one threat too many.

“I bet you loved your granny.”

His head jerked up. “What?”

“It’s obvious. You like old women, but you distrust any female under the age of thirty. What happened, Hepburn? Did your granny spoil you? Did some young woman break your heart? Mmm?”

He had the oddest look on his face, as though someone had just walked over his grave, then his expression cleared, and in the same cutting tone, he said, “I don’t have a heart, and you had better remember that. Now move your arse.”

Keeping a wary eye on him, she began to pick through the clothes. When she had what she wanted, she looked a question at him.

“What?” he asked.

“I have to use the facilities.”

“The facilities? Oh, I see what you mean. I’m sure there’s a chamber pot under the bed.”

“A chamber pot!” she gasped.

He grinned.

He seemed to be enjoying her embarrassment, and that made pride stiffen her spine. She dropped the clothes on the floor, kept the blanket wrapped tightly around her, and without a word, lay down on the bed and closed her eyes against the loathsome sight of him.

A minute went by, then another. Finally, he sighed. “Dress yourself,” he said irritably, “and I’ll take you to the privy. But no tricks, mind, or it will be the worse for you.”

Tricks were the farthest thing from her mind. She really had to go.

She was too modest to throw off the blanket and reveal her nakedness, so she made do by using the blanket as a tent as she wiggled into a shirt and a pair of trews. When she’d done that, she threw off the blanket and pulled on her boots.

The words to thank him were on the tip of her tongue when his next words crushed the impulse.

“If you think,” he said, glowering at her, “that all that writhing under the blanket will make me susceptible to your wiles, you can think again. Frankly, Thomas, I prefer my women to be a little more buxom.”

She stomped out of the room when he held the door for her.

 

 

She’d fallen asleep before she’d taken more than a few nibbles of scone. He’d bundled her, fully clothed, into bed, but it soon became apparent that her borrowed garments were too tight for her comfort, too tight and too hot. He’d had to waken her to get some of them off. Naturally, she’d fought him. He’d left her with a voluminous shirt that came down to her knees, then he’d covered her with the blanket.

He had positioned the only chair in the room against the door and was sitting with his booted feet resting against the bottom of the bed. He figured that if she tried to leave the room when he was asleep, she would have to move his chair, and he would be on her before she took her next breath.

He swallowed a mouthful of cold tea as he studied her. She looked so slight and defenseless that it seemed inconceivable to him that she could be part of a plot to assassinate the queen. On the other hand, she’d led him a merry chase tonight and had damn near been the death of him. He was exaggerating, but not by much. This young woman was resourceful. She was a master of deceit. In the normal course of events, he wouldn’t have allowed her to catch her breath, much less sleep. He should be firing off questions, coming at her from every direction, trying to trick her into telling him more than she wanted to. After his disastrous blunder with Ariel, he’d vowed never again to be taken in by a pretty-faced, scheming bitch.

The girl’s careless words had hit the mark. “
You like old women, but you distrust any female under the age of thirty.
”

He couldn’t argue with that. One Ariel in a man’s lifetime was more than enough—beautiful, deceitful, heartless Ariel.

She was the only woman he had ever loved. He could think of her now without drowning in a cauldron of emotion—fury, hate, grief, and despair. It had taken a long, long time to regain his balance.

He took another swallow of tea as memories filtered into his mind. He had recruited Ariel into the service, not as an agent on active duty but as someone who could spy on the comings and goings of high-ranking government ministers and their aides. These were the circles Ariel moved in. Little did he know that Ariel’s loyalties lay elsewhere, with a group of misfits belonging to a group called Demos. Their aim was to end the monarchy in Scotland and turn it into a republic. They were all talk and no action and hardly registered in intelligence reports. No one took them seriously. And they paid for their mistake. The direct result of his personal negligence was that three of his closest associates were blown up by a bomb. He was the only one to survive the blast.

He had survived, but Ariel had not. She’d fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck. Whether she died at the hands of British Intelligence or was murdered by a member of Demos was never satisfactorily answered in Alex’s view. But Demos paid dearly, not for Ariel’s death, but for killing three agents, and British Intelligence had hunted her comrades into oblivion.

After that experience, he had asked for a transfer. The glamour and excitement of the spying game had lost its gloss. He’d retreated to his desk in Whitehall and become one of the ministry’s crack code breakers. There was no pain in breaking codes, no treachery and no guilt.

Life became easier to manage. Code breaking kept his mind from straying to the past. He lived comfortably in his rooms on Piccadilly, met acquaintances and associates at his club, and occasionally posted up to Scotland to reac quaint himself with his family and old friends. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t miserable either.

What had brought him back into the game was that Demos had recently burst upon the scene in a stunning revival. Attempted assassinations and bombs going off in government buildings had become the order of the day. He was a Scot, and with his experience, so his superiors told him, he was uniquely placed to smash Demos and bring its leaders to justice.

They’d had forewarning of an attempt by Demos on the queen’s life. An anonymous letter had arrived that might well have been a prank but that British Intelligence took very seriously. There was a plot to assassinate the queen at her reception, the letter said. Hence the elaborate ruse of the stand-in. They’d hoped to lure the assassin into a trap.