Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero (11 page)

“John?” Gavin said with his hands outstretched.
“John, what’s happening, where are you?”

“This isn’t easy, Gav. You’re my brother, and I
swear I’ll make this right. But for now, this is much easier.”

“No – what?”

Something whistled through the air and cracked
Gavin right behind the ear. It was an expert blow that he’d landed a hundred
times before.

“Black...jack...” he said as his eyes closed and
his mouth fell open.

“Alright. You owe me for this. You owe me more
than you could possibly know, woman. I’ll never let you forget it.”

“I wouldn’t want you too,” Lynne said, dragging a
finger across John’s cheek and sucking his bottom lip between hers. “I want you
to teach me a few lessons about how naughty of a maid I am.”

“Maid? Now’s not the time. Tie him up, and I swear
to all that’s holy, if you hurt him, you’ll pay.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will,” she said. She kissed him
again, deeper and harder, and pulled away with a suck.

Gavin felt ropes around his wrists.

And then the skin on his hands burned.

His head was heavy. His skin felt heavy, his bones
weighed him down, crushed his chest. He couldn’t breathe.

Then he felt just the floor underneath him.

Then, Gavin felt nothing but warm blackness
swallowing him up.

––––––––

“M
iss Kenna seems like she wait for a something.”

“Close, Elena, but say ‘Miss Kenna seems like she
is
wait
ing
for something’ without the ‘a’, right?” Olga smiled and
intertwined her fingers, then rested her hands on her bosom.

Elena repeated what she was supposed to say, and
Olga patted her on the shoulder.

“Very good. But Miss Kenna, it seems to me that
she is right, no matter her English. Your wedding is in only a few days, but
you seem to be tangled in other thoughts. Is anything the matter?”

“Aye, I’d say there is.”

“You can tell me about it if you’d like. I won’t
say nothing to the Laird if that’s what you’re worried over. My job is to you,
and to you my loyalty lies. Speaking of that, I’ve mended your necklace.”

“Oh, thank you Olga, you didn’t have to do that.
But it’s...no, no, I shouldn’t say anything. I do trust you Olga, and you
Elena, but I just can’t. It’d just be whining. Either that or I’d be mewling
over a little girl’s silly fantasy.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad about how you feel, no
matter what it is, I’m to bet we’ve both thought the same things, or close.”

Elena nodded, pleased that she understood. “Have
felt many pangs, Miss Kenna.”

Olga smiled and shook her head.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to tell you things
that can get you in trouble with Mr. Macdonald. There’s another thing, I’m not
even sure what I’m supposed to be calling him. I went through all the ‘what to
call your elders’ stuff as a little girl, but it’s all just so confusing, and I
canna get my head around it. As a commoner I’m to call him my lord, or Lord
Kilroyston. But then my Pa called him Laird Macdonald, and when I do the same
he doesn’t correct me. It’s just confusing.”

“Yes,” Olga said with a little smirk. “I
understand the difficulty. When I married my first husband, it was a similar
kind of arrangement. Better business, you see, for my father. He made
chocolates and by marrying me to the man he did, my father got another little
store in Munich.”

“How did you get here, Olga? That’s a long way for
someone to come, from Munich – where is that? Switzerland? – to Scotland.”

“Ya,” she said. “It is a long way and was a slow
trip. He was my first husband, and he beat me, so I shot him. And no, Munich is
in Bavaria. I’d love to see it again, but I think it is not likely, at least at
my age.”

“You’ll get back there. You’re not old, Olga. My
Ma is probably of an age with you and she still works the fields in Fort Mary
on the days when my Pa can’t do it...did you just say you shot your husband?”

Olga just smiled, her face round and smooth, but
there was a devil behind her eyes.

“He hit me. Hit my son, then he slapped me and
then I shot him. I didn’t shoot him in the stomach, so it didn’t hurt. Right
between the eyes.”

“Your being here makes more sense now.”

“Oh, lass, it wasn’t because I was on the run. I
went to trial, and was turned out free. I weren’t the first girl he hit.”

“But you were the last.”

“And that I was.”

“What about you, Elena? How did you get here?”

“It a strange story, long one.” She grinned. “But
I think you have met my husband?”

“I...I doubt that, as I’ve not met much anyone
since I got here, not really.”

“Oh, but you’ve met my husband. He tell me about.”

“He
told
me about
it
, dear,” Olga said.

“Yes, yes, that.”

“Is he someone who came to the party?” Kenna
searched the back of her mind for some clue – any clue who the man might be,
but came up empty, except for one horrible thought. “Oh no, you’re not married
to that awful sheriff, are you? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“Ha! No, no, but he are terrible. But you close.”

“Rodrigo? But he doesn’t talk.”

A warm smile played across Elena’s lips. “He
doesn’t need to talk to use his tongue,” she said with a giggle. “But yes, him.
I came with him to this country when Alan hired him as a tough, and the sheriff
and the Laird, they’re...friend not right words...partner.”

“He was rather a decent man when we met.” Kenna
said. “Polite, at least, and seems bothered by his employer’s foulness.”

“Oh yes, dear Kenna, Rodrigo,” she said his name
with a beautiful rolling of her tongue, “he can’t not stand the sheriff. That
thing sheriff chews, and makes Rodrigo carry. He told me wanted to poison it.”

Both of the ladies laughed, but Kenna pursed her
lips and drew them closed.

“Elena! Hush! You mustn’t say that. You’ll get in
all manner of trouble.”

“No worry on that count,” Olga said. “The first
thing you learn when you’re taken into a household as a servant is that you
hardly count as a person. You’re a job that must be done, a worker without whom
your master could not survive, but who he doesn’t see as alive. You’re like...a
tree which sees everything, can tell secrets to other trees, and to the little
birds and the squirrels, but what doesn’t count for anything.”

“That’s awful. You both deserve more. You’re both
such good people.”

“Ah, dear Kenna, the second thing you learn is
that no one deserves anything. These wealthy barons and dukes and earls, they
fall just as quickly as anyone else. And it seems that the bigger they get, the
more they risk on strange schemes to make money, and then they fall with a
crash as loud as you can imagine. But we? No, we just keep going. Keep
listening. You’d be amazed at the wealth of secrets that a couple of silly
serving girls can keep.”

“You must know the most terrible things,” Kenna
said. “Things that Macdonald would be most upset at you telling anyone.”

“Oh I don’t think that,” Olga said. Elena nodded.
“We just keep the secrets and titter about them to other servants. I know about
his crookedness and his nastiness, but no, I don’t think there’s anything too
terrible. After all, someone has to pay attention to you before you can do any
damage. And anyway, what would be the use?”

“Sorry, I just don’t know how to take him is all.
Before I came, I had only a few days between his acceptance of me and his
arrival, and it all happened very quickly. It feels like my life is ending
before it even really started.”

“Ah, dear Kenna, to be young and to worry about
young things. Listen to me carefully. This is a world full of terrors and
darkness. Full of pain. After I shot my husband and was freed, his brother came
to my house and killed my son, killed my daughter-”

“That’s terrible!”

Olga waved her words away. “But everything leads
one way. Moving forward doesn’t happen without some reason. If you don’t have
anything pushing you you’ll stay still. People, we like to be comfortable, yes?
We like to stay in one place. If we’re asleep, we want to stay asleep.
Something must to push you.”

“But why is it always something that hurts?”
Kenna’s cheeks turned red and Olga put her arm around the girl’s sagging
shoulders. “Why can’t it ever be something
good
that makes us move
forward?”

Olga grunted from the back of her throat.

“Everything depends on how you look at it. Nothing
has only one side of the story. Every bad has a good. Look here,” she said
pointing to Elena. “Elena left her brother and three sisters and her parents
when Rodrigo brought her, but since then she’s made a new home here. It looks
different, and it isn’t familiar, but she’s here and she’s got new friends and
a new family.”

Elena nodded solemnly. “New family like Olga –
good because my sisters never have taught me English.”

“That was very good, El,” Olga said. “There must
be something you like about coming down here, even if the marriage isn’t what
you hoped. He won’t live that long at any rate, if you’ve seen the way he
eats.”

Both women giggled at that, and Kenna tried, but
just couldn’t make any laughs come.

“The city’s beautiful, what little of it I’ve
seen,” she said.

“Yes, yes, good. A beautiful place. Much
more...ah...colorful, I think, than Munich. Good, what else?”

“Well I like both of you very much. I’ve been here
less than a week and I already feel like you two will take care of me if
anything happens.”

“For a sureness,” Elena said with another nod full
of gravitas. “Yes.”

“And what else?” Olga said. “I know what you’re
not saying.”

“You do?”

Olga’s hand felt good patting softly on Kenna’s
back, just the way her mother did. “I don’t know what it is exactly, but I can
see something in your eyes.”

“If you already know...”

“It will feel good to say, Miss Kenna. To know
that someone else knows your secret, which isn’t much a secret at all if you
pay attention.”

Kenna took a deep breath.

“Ach,” she said, “I guess there’s no reason to
hide. It’s...”

“Love?”

Kenna nodded, and laid her head on Olga’s
shoulder. “Yes, but worse than that.”

“Love is beautiful! What do you mean worse?”

“It
is
beautiful unless there’s nothing you
can do about it.”

“Is it someone back home? Someone you’re afraid
you’ll not see again?”

“No, he’s here. I didn’t know he was, but then he
showed up last night, and-”

“Was he one of those three men that broke up
Macdonald’s absurd little party? Goodness, but I did find that big one a
handsome creature, though he seemed familiar. Which one was it? And how in the
world did you fall for a man who lived a two-day ride from home?”

“He didn’t always live here. And I canna exactly
say how I fell for him since the only talking we’ve ever done was in short,
whispered bursts. But every time I saw him since I was a little girl, he took
my breath away, made my heart beat just a wee bit harder, a wee faster. I canna
explain, but it all sounds so ridiculous to say aloud.”

“Not at all, not at all. Before I shot Mr. Herzinger,
he did the same thing to me. Gave me a flush, made my skin prickle when I’d see
him, he even made me a rather bit hot, you know, down there.” Olga laughed
unashamed, but Kenna flushed red. “Anyway, no, it isn’t strange, dear Kenna.
Sometimes your mind does things you can’t explain. Other times, you can explain
them, but when you do it, the words don’t make sense outside your head.”

“Thank you. Thank you both,” Kenna said. “But
there’s one more problem that I’m not sure how to explain.”

“Let me have guess,” Elena said. “He’s going to
come to saving you from the married, but you don’t want him to be hurt?”

“Well, aye, but also, from what I gather, he’s not
the type to give up until he gets what he wants. I mean, he’s got his little
gang, and he goes around doing all kinds of things to the nobles in Edinburgh.
He’s so right famous that we even heard some of what he did all the way back to
Fort Mary, though that was just from Edinburg newspapers. I’m afraid he’s going
to get caught up in saving me from here, and then get himself hurt or worse.”

“So it’s the tall one, then?” Olga said.

“The tall one?”

“The man, Miss Kenna. You’re after the tall one
with those big, round shoulders and that flowing brown hair? As I recall, he
had it tied back in a pony’s tail, and had a bit hanging down on either side of
his face. The mask he wore was a small one, black, like a bandit’s, and those
sharp cheekbones, those big, dark blue eyes, he-”

“Olga, it would seem as though you’ve been lusting
after him!”

“I may be a while further on in life than you, but
I know a big, strong, able lover when I see one. I’m right, no?”

“Well, aye, it’s him. The first time I saw Gavin
was when I was very young, he a little older. It was at a dance in Fort Mary.
I’d never even thought of a boy like that before then, I don’t know, he just...”

“Did something to you?”

Kenna nodded. “Like I said, just sent my heart to
fluttering. I was a wee li’l girl, so I had no idea what it was, but after I
got over my fear that my heart was stopping, I didn’t do much else but look
forward to the next time I’d see him. And I did, a couple of years later at
another festival, and then again when he was leaving for the Bonnie Prince’s
war. He made it all the way down here and then I just stopped hearing from him
until...well, until last night.”

Olga pulled her lips tight against her teeth.

“On one account, you’ve no worry. On another
you’ve got quite a one.”

Kenna looked at Olga’s kind, round face and felt a
strange kind of comfort.

“You’re in love with the Ghost of Edinburgh, dear.
You’ve got nothing to worry about in regard to him being hurt. He’s broken into
this house twice now, broken into Macdonald’s apartments in the city once, and
has been slowly building up a whole bunch of people who have made him a hero,
whether or not he meant to be one. If anyone can steal a girl from Ramsay
Macdonald, it’s him.”

“What’s the thing I have to worry about, then?”

“Dear Kenna, you’re going to have to figure out
what to say to him when he shows up tonight. And my only concern is getting you
all gussied up for him.”

“But, what? How did you know about that?”

“Your eyes, dear,” Olga said. “You’ve got eyes
that give everything away.”

––––––––

K
enna did more fidgeting in the two hours after
Olga and Elena left her than ever in her life all gathered up, she thought.

First she stared at her hair in the mirror until
she decided that the way they’d curled it was very nice, but not becoming of
her face shape, and so she let it down, then kept looking until she thought
maybe they were right and bunched it all back up, twisted the ribbon back
around it and teased her two tentacles as Olga called them into a frame around
her soft, perfectly blushed cheeks.

Mostly satisfied with how her hair looked , although
it ended up exactly how it started, Kenna set herself to tugging her sleeves,
then pulling them back up and then tugging them down again, convinced that
there was something off about the length. After several minutes of tugging and
un-tugging, she realized that the dress wasn’t moving very much at all, and let
it be. She took a deep breath, held it in for a moment, and then blew it out as
she fell backwards onto the bed.