Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero (13 page)

“Hey, hey! What’s this then?” Sheriff Alan charged
down the hall as fast as his tiny legs could carry him and he smacked Gavin on
the wrists with a stick. “Enough! Let go of him! You can’t beat a witness!”

“Witness!” Gavin shouted. “You’re a witness! You
threw everything away for a girl!”

He slammed John against the door a final time, but
he was already weakening, and fell backwards when the sheriff hit him again.

“Come on, vagrant, let’s go. You’re exciting the
prisoners.” Alan tromped off down the hall, satisfied with what he’d done.

John followed for a moment, and then came back to
the cell. He put his bloodied face right up to the bars and whispered: “I’ll
get you out of here if it’s the last thing I do, and it’ll be before the
wedding. Everything will make sense. I swear it.”

“You were my brother,” Gavin said, stunned and
lurching.

“Aye, and I still am. Give me two days. You’ll
see.”

––––––––

“Y
ou did what?” Red Ben Black bellowed at the top
of his lungs after John finished the tale. Alice, likewise, stared with an open
mouth.

“You turned him in? How – why – how did that
possibly seem like a good idea? If it were up to me, I’d strangle you here and
now!”

“Calm down dear, he’s been throttled sufficiently,
I’d say, judging from that lip. Let me get you some salt and alcohol for that.
It’ll hurt but that’s better than it getting pus.”

John pushed himself back on his heels, leaning the
chair back so he hovered on the back two legs. Gingerly, he stuck a piece of
roast in his mouth and chewed slowly.

“It weren’t his fault,” a voice from beside him, a
voice which Red Ben was unfamiliar with, said. “I told him to do it, but I
thought it’d turn out a bit different.”

“Oh. Thought it’d turn out different. That’s fine
then. No reason to worry, dear!” He shouted. “The girl with John told him to
betray Gavin, but it’s alright because she thought it’d turn out differently.”

He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes to slits,
which raised his cheeks, which in turn made his face look like a flaming ball.

“We’ve not been introduced,” he said with his eyes
fixed on Lynne. “John, won’t you do me the honor of introducing me to the fine
young lass what sits beside you? Hello, young lass,” he said to Lynne.

“She’s-”

“Lynne Stevenson, sir,” she said with an
outstretched hand. “And you’re Red Ben. If this were a thousand years ago,
you’d be a giant, but now you’re just a wee bite frightening.”

“And if it were two days ago, I’d be the most
loyal friend you ever had. But now, I’m not so sure. Help me understand what
happened. All’s been said is that you two had some kind of plan and it went
back on itself?”

“That’s a good way to put it,” John said. “But I
think I’ve done something else that can help us out of this mess in which we’ve
found ourselves. Or I suppose we’re not the ones in the mess, but...”

“Aye, right, we’ve got a ways to go if we want to
fix this one, lad.”

“Last night, before I went to see Gavin, I, well...this
is going to sound curious.”

Alice came back with a pan of shortbreads and
everyone took one except Ben, who took four and stuck one in his mouth.

“Go on, John, I’m listening. Seems you can’t get
any stranger than you already have.”

“Aye, well, you know that Gavin said he’d go visit
Kenna? Presumably to whisper sweet nothings in her ear from afar and whatnot?”

“I remember something of the sort.”

“This is delicious,” Lynne said. “Get on with it
John, we’ve got other things to talk about than your chat with Gavin’s lady.”

“You what?” Ben grunted between cookies.
“Explain!”

“Calm down, Goliath.” John said. “Sit, sit. It’s
nothing so exciting as all that. I just thought that she might be expecting him
so I, er...”

“You dressed up like him and talked to her, but
you did a bad job at it, right, get on with the plan,” Lynne said. She grabbed
another shortbread. “These really are delicious, Mrs. Black, are there more?”

“Uh, yes, well that’s about the size of it. I
talked to her for a bit, she told me she was getting married in a week so they
could trap me – Gavin – and then I swore an oath to rescue her, and told her to
meet us at the
salon
where I dishonored myself.”

“Good summary,” Lynne said. “Right, so what is it
exactly that we’re doing?”

A moment later, the rest of what John said struck
her.

“You what? How in God’s name is she going to meet
us at a
salon
in the middle of the Queen’s Street? I assume you told her
to meet us at night? How do you expect her to manage that?”

“Look, Lynne, you’re the one that told me to do
it. I dinna know why you keep on blaming me for all this when you’re the one
who talked me into all of it in the first place.”

“Wait. Hold right there,” Ben said. “You’re to
tell me, and mind you, I’m to believe – that after this woman talked you into
getting your best friend thrown into jail that you took her advice on
something? Why does this seem to me a less than perfect idea?”

John took a deep breath and let it out in a long
sigh. “Look, there’s nothing I can say except that I’m sorry and get on with
the fixing of it.”

Ben leaned back on his chair, which creaked
loudly. “There’s one question that’s left to be answered, aye?” He eyed Lynne.

“Me? The question is me, aye?”

“That would be it, yes, lass. What stake have you
in all this? Why do you care about Gavin or the sheriff or any of the rest of
this business?”

Lynne pushed her straight, black hair behind her
ear and leaned forward, her elbows resting on the tabletop. “This might take a
while,” she said.

“Alice! Bring the bottle, we’re to hear a great
and sundry tale, and I canna do it without drink.”

Whiskey poured, more shortbreads plated, Lynne
swallowed hard, sipped her drink, then downed it.

“Another?” Ben said.

“Aye, it’s...a hard story to tell. Thanks.” She
drank it down. “Another?”

“Ach, this girl’s got more of a man to her than
you do, Two-Fingers. Here. Now get on with it.”

Lynne lifted the clay cup to her lips, inhaled the
fiery scent, and then put it back to the table.

“When Alan came to Edinburgh, you remember, he
went on a real tear, aye?”

Both men nodded. “He defiled that noble’s wife,
then he found himself up here in the midst of a town he hated, surrounded by
people he thought to be less than dirt,” John said.

“And more than that, he was taken away from his
wealth, from his estate in Manchester. Dinna forget that he has to him a lot of
old money, though he’s been removed from it. He’s got also the King’s wrath,
because of the trouble he caused just after the second George was brought and given
the crown. Keep that in mind.”

They nodded again. John sipped his whiskey and
grimaced as it burned the inside of his mouth.

“To answer your first question, I don’t care about
Gavin and Kenna – or I didn’t. Not until I actually saw him. When I saw the
pain in his eyes as he was lying there, tied up and half conscious, I knew that
look because I’d had it once before. Eyes half-open, drooping on the corners,
and terrified.”

“Gavin’s never terrified,” John said.

“No, not for himself. The way he looked wasn’t
fear that he’d be hurt or killed. No, I could tell he wasn’t afraid of that one
bit. He’s got a burning heart full of courage and pride and pain. There’s
nothing to him that says he’s a coward. But his was a different sort of fear.
He was afraid for someone else.”

“Kenna...”

“Aye, he’s afraid for her. He loves her. He has no
reason to, from what I’ve been told, except fate, or destiny or whatever you’d
call it, but there it is. The first man I loved I had no reason for either. No
reason except that I loved him.”

“I still have no reason for mine!” Alice shouted
from the other end of the house where she stirred a pot.

Lynne tried not to smile, but she drew her full,
bowed lips up at the corners and when she closed her eyes for a moment, John
stared at her, amazed at what he saw.

“But there doesn’t need to be a reason. Although
from what John said, Gavin first saw her when they were both young, and they
played at flirting for going on ten year, which will make anyone a fool for
anyone else.”

“I saw ‘em,” Ben said. “I saw how he held her when
they were dancing at that party. I watched him go from a thoughtful, cautious
man to something entirely different in the space of a second and a half. You,
either of you, can say there’s no reason for the way he feels and the way he
acts around her, but to me there is, and it is plain as day. You can say that
fate is no reason for anything, that it’s all luck or chance, but to me that’s
just not the way of it.”

Lynne swallowed her drink and poured another
without Ben noticing.

“When first I saw her,” he tilted his head to
Alice, “I haven’t any idea in the world why I thought she was so special. We’d
never seen each other before, and I was wildly drunk, though that may have had
something to do with it.”

“You watch your tongue, Red, or I’ll mount it to
the wall with a nail!”

“Or it was her gentle way.” He smiled. “But what I
mean is, when people say that somethin’ happened for no reason, or it was luck
or it was chance, all that really means is they don’t understand why it
happened. Two people fall in love and they say ‘it just happened’ but what they
mean was that it was supposed to happen but they just didn’t know it until it
did.”

Lynne and John were smiling when he stopped for a
breath. Ben’s cheeks were burning with embarrassment as the two of them stared
at one another.

“That,” Lynne said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

She stifled a smile and John looked away. “Aye, it
does,” he said.

“Anyway, uh, that’s my piece on that. Sorry for
breaking between your story.”

“That was beautiful, Ben,” Lynne said. “You dinna
seem the type to be a poet, but there it was.”

“Oh, get on with it, you.” Ben grinned beneath his
beard, despite consciously trying to pinch his face into a scowl.

“Aye, that’s...I think what you say is true.
Though I’m used to being angry and making everything into a problem, even when
it maybe isn’t, you know? But that’s not the point here. You asked me why it is
that I care about him. Why he matters to me? As I said, it’s a long story, but
the short of it is that I was jealous of him.”

“Jealous? How?” John said, never once taking his
eyes off Lynne’s face.

“He saved my Da when I was helpless. And you too,”
she eyed John. “You were there too. I wanted to hurt you, even though you
helped me. Do you remember, about two year ago, you and he managed to keep a
farm from being sold off by the sheriff? Some new money in Edinburgh wanted a
nice country farm, and Alan was to run off some poor family and make a place
for the nobles to take over in their stead.”

“I don’t...”

“You stole so much money from those people that
they weren’t able to buy the place. They were new money, their credit was no
good. They had to make a trip back to London to get more of their gold and then
just never came back.”

“I don’t mean to brag, but we’ve done that many a time,
Lynne.”

“Right, but how many of them ended with you in a
knife fight with that Spaniard the sheriff keeps as a goon?”

“Ach, well, three or four,” he said with a shrug.

“Alright you brave savage, how many of those ended
with you getting pierced through the shoulder and then you barely fending off
Rodrigo at the point of your sword?”

John’s eyebrows lifted. “Well that one, just the
once. That was your farm?”

“Aye. You saved my parents as easy as that. And
you never even knew it. You do so much good that I hated you. But I knew it
wasn’t you who did the leading, so I hated Gavin most of all.”

“But I guess I can’t quite make out how you’d be
angry at us.”

“Don’t you see?” She said. “Can’t you understand
how even though saving people left and right is good that they all feel
indebted to you? They all feel that they owe something they can never repay?”

“I...suppose I never thought of that.”

“You didn’t think of a lot of things, John. For
one, you didn’t think about touching my hand just now, but here you are.”

John looked down, blushed and pulled his hand
away.

“No, too late now, you presumptuous bastard,” she
said with a grin as she put her hand back on top of his. “But I’m serious. You
put these people in a place where everything is fine, but with a debt they
canna ever repay. And that’s much worse for some people than is death, or
losing a house.”

John looked down at the table and Red Ben quirked his
eyebrow at the two.

“If you’re going to need him to roger you before
we can get on with the planning, we’ve got a bed over there.” Ben said.

Lynne pulled her hand away and her eyes got wide.

“Finally got you blushing. I thought it’d never
happen. But, listening to you, I think you have the right of it.”

“Well,” John said, “that does make sense that you
put it that way. But your indebtedness to us was all it took to have you trap
Gavin? Even if we put you in a bad place-”

“No,” she interrupted, “that’s not it at all. I
was getting to that if you’d listen instead of talking, John. Even after we
kept the land, we still had no money even with the handouts we got from Gavin
when he swept through the area delivering gifts. We’d buy food for a week and
then be out again. Something had to be done.”

“But what does-”

“Stop talking.” Red Ben and Lynne both said at the
same time.

“Even though we had a house we had no money. We
had a farm that we couldna grow anything on for lack of seed. We had cows and
sheep that died for lack of money to buy food. Something had to be done. So I
thought about Gavin, or the ghost as we knew him, and then about your
adventures and your – as I imagined it, wild and exciting lives – and decided
to try it meself.”

“You get rosy when you’re excited,” John said.

“Shut up!” Ben and Lynne said.

“Alright, alright, sorry. As you were saying?”

“I tried it out, the life of a thief. At first
everything was fine. I robbed nobles for no more than we needed. I’d steal
thrown-out food and grab whatever I could to get us through. But still, we had
no seed and we had no money to buy it after feeding my parents and the other
wee li’l sprouts. So, I made a different decision. If Gavin stole for good,
even if it didn’t always end up that way, I decided that I was going to steal
for my
own
good. I got wild with it, I did. I don’t regret what I done,
but...well, things didn’t work out as I thought they would.”