Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero (5 page)

“Quiet now lads, Tam is afoot, he’s not much in a
fight, but the less he knows the better if you understand.”

“How do you know it’s him?” John whispered.

“Y’hear that clomp-clomp?”

John nodded and squinted into the darkness. “I
do,” he said.

“Right, that’s his foot. Tam, he lost a foot in
one battle or another. The story changes each time he tells it. Now, Tam’s got
a peg, instead.”

“And you say he’s loyal to Macdonald?”

“Well,” he sniffed, “I wouldn’t say loyal. I’d say
he sticks to the side of the bread on which...ah...something about butter? I’m
not sure how it goes.”

“What?” Gavin arched an eyebrow. “Are you hungry?”

“Aye, I’m that,” Red laughed under his breath.
“It’s an expression. I heard it once, or read it in an almanac. Something about
butter, but I don’t-”

It was Gavin’s turn to shush the others as Tam’s
clomping wooden foot went down the hall past the door. The sound of wood
stopped on the opposite side of where the three of them stood breathless. For
too long to be comfortable, they held their breath, and just as Red Ben started
to turn the color of his name, the clomping started again and went back the way
it came.

As soon as they were able to breathe again, Gavin
asked what the significance was of the pin that Alice Black sent him to find.

“Oh, it’s hers,” Red replied. “A family heirloom.
I had to use it one morning, as I lost the pin what keeps my kilt from
blowing.”

Gavin and John exchanged a glance and a grin, and
then they were off. Up the stairs, and then to the left, they went undetected,
saw no one and heard nothing except a rude sounding noise from the room next to
the one where they were to find Mrs. Black’s hairpin.

“The servants here,” Gavin said, “they seem
familiar to one another.”

The grunting next door grew louder, and Big Ben
let a slow smile crawl across his lips. “Aye, that’s Andrew McGinnis and Elsa.
I’m not sure of her last name, but she’s got a nice smile, she’s quite tall and
has the biggest, roundest –”

“Right, right, Ben, where’s the pin supposed to be
then?”

Without saying anything, Ben moved across the room
and snatched not just a pin, but an entire jewelry box.

“Got to be something in here that can help someone
out, don’t you think?”

“I’d imagine so,” Gavin said. “We best leave
before Tam clomps back around.”

As the three of them snuck down the stairs, moved
back through the dining hall, the kitchen and then the pantry, John signaled
the men to stop.

“Did you hear that? Sounds like a horse. Or two.”

Gavin strained, but heard nothing over Red Ben’s
labored breathing.

“It couldn’t be Macdonald home early, could it?”
he said.

“No, it’s not him. He left out morning last as
soon as I arrived. If it were him, he’d be coming with a loaded carriage and
enough servants to provide for a small army. Master isn’t modest.”

“Ramsay Macdonald!” Someone shouted. “I’ll not
wait for you to come out here. I’m coming in after you!”

“That’s not Alan, is it?” John said to Gavin. “He
sounds like he’s two drams from a pint.”

“Shh!” Gavin urged. “It’s him alright. We were
talking about making a game of this, right? Seems like we’ve got the chance to
have a little fun with our friendly neighborhood sheriff and we didn’t even
have to work at it. Come on, this way.”

Silently, except for the gentle jingles of the
jewelry box under John’s cloak, the three men crept around to the side of the
Macdonald estate, hiding low behind an ornamental wall. Sure enough, as the men
watched, the self-appointed Sheriff of Edinburgh wandered back and forth,
thumbs hitched in his thin belt.

“Ramsay!” His slurring was a bit more pronounced
the closer he got. “Come out here!”

Gavin stuck his head around the wall and signaled
to the others with his finger across his lips. He was laughing so hard that his
shoulders shook.

“I’m not going to say anything...I won’t say
anything, uh...”

“What’s wrong with him?” John said, edging up next
to Gavin.

“He’s pissed, what do you think’s wrong with him? Look
at that rosy glow to his cheeks. Look at how his finely powdered wig is sitting
halfway off the back of his head. I bet if he tries to whip off that hat, the
wig will come right after it.”

Sure enough, the next time Alan shouted at the
closed door, he stomped his finely hosed and shoed foot, balled his fists and
yanked his hat off. The wig slid down his back to reveal a head as bald as a
snooker cue and very nearly as pale.

“It’ll be crowded with three of us on the back of
a single horse, but I think we can manage.” Gavin had an impish grin.

“Oh don’t worry about me. I’ve got work to do
around here. Can’t heave off just yet. I just want to see what happens,” Red
Ben said with a laugh under his voice.

“What are you thinking, Gavin? Don’t tell me
you’re –”

Grinning, Gavin pulled his pistol from his belt
and crept along the house nearer where the hooting sheriff was screeching
drunkenly at someone who was almost two days to the north of him. He looked back
at John, waved him forward, and tipped his head to Red Ben Black.

Gavin tightened his belt, snugged down the
loose-hanging part of his kilt, and palmed the
sgain dubh
he always kept
in his stocking.

“You gonna kill him?”

“No, no, just give him a little start. And a
little exercise.” Gavin whispered back. “On three. Ready?”

John waited for the command.

Gavin counted down with his fingers.

“Three.” He whispered.

All at once, he jumped to his feet and ran,
screaming, straight at the wigless sheriff. When the man turned, Gavin fired
his pistol into the air, shrieked again, and waved his dagger as Alan’s mouth
fell wide open and he backed stupidly toward the door, falling over himself and
collapsing to the steps.

“Wha – what is this?” He cried.

“Go home, Alan! You don’t belong here!” Gavin
shouted, reaching out his hand to catch John’s grasp. “None of you do!”

“You’re under arrest! Get back here!”

Gavin felt the leather on John’s glove as he
grabbed John’s five-fingered hand and leapt up onto the back of the short,
stocky horse in a fluid motion.

“Me?” Gavin returned. “I’m under arrest? You’ll
have to catch me first!”

Dust kicked up in a cloud as the two men on the
back of the horse disappeared and the sheriff wiped a sweaty cloth across his
eyes.

“I’ll get you, ghost! I know that was you!” He
swore. “I’ll catch you if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll catch you and watch
you hang by the neck you foul son of a whore!”

Whistling, Red Ben Black closed and locked the
service door in back of the house and strolled through to the front. Pushing
the door open, he whistled cheerfully.

“Ah, Sheriff Alan,” he said. “It’s so nice to see
you again, but very sorry, Laird Macdonald is out on a personal matter. Is
there – oh my, is something the matter? You seem to have lost your wig.”

––––––––

“N
ever lost that trick, did you?”

“What trick?” Kenna said with a smirk. She let the
three small turnips fall into one hand and took a bow.

“Never seen anybody take up juggling who wasn’t
looking to be a fool at court,” her father said with a chuckle. “Listen, lass.
I’m going to miss you terribly. You know that, aye?”

“I do,” she said. “I’m going to miss you two worse
than anything. And I’m going to miss the cows and the dogs and the ponies as
well. If I’m honest, I wish I wasn’t going.”

Since her father broke the news that Ramsay
Macdonald, a wealthy if minor noble with a house about an hours’ ride north of
Edinburgh, had accepted the offer of his daughter, Kenna managed to go through
sadness, upset, irritation and anger in three days. On the fourth, today, she
seemed to return to her normal chipper self, which let William Moore breathe
easy.

He tried to let her out of chores this morning, to
pack, but Kenna refused, saying that her time with the animals was almost over,
and she’d rather forget a few pieces of dress, or a brush, than not be with
them on the last few days of her life at Fort Mary. William just smiled and
nodded and let her be.

“What sort of clothes do you think I’ll need? I
assume that of a summer, the city will be hotter and dirtier than the air up
here.”

“It’s not so different,” he said. “It’s still
Scottish air, lass. If you were going to London I’d tell you to take a sachet
of perfume and herbs and one of those masks doctors used to wear during the
Death.”

She laughed her copper, cheerful laugh for the
first time in almost a week.

“But, no, I canna say it’s much different. It’s
lower and a little less misty I suppose, but you’ll like the city. Lots of
life, lots of people. I haven’t been back down for twenty-some years, but I
can’t imagine the English have done much harm to the place.” In the back of his
mind, William knew what he said was a lie. He couldn’t allow himself to believe
it though, for his sake as much as his daughter’s. “The food’s the same, of course,
you’ll be dining in a Laird’s estate, so I think you’ll have a great deal of
new to get yourself used to. Having servants for one thing.”

Kenna looked dreamily out the window near where
she sat, sipping her morning milk. “Is he a good man?” She said. “Ramsay
Macdonald, I mean. I know he did you a good turn, though you’ll not say what,
but do you know anything of him still?”

Though they’d talked of him before, their
conversations had always been vague.

Her father opened his mouth, and then closed it before
he said anything. Laird Macdonald was a decent man, at least back in the days
when William fought under him. He was older now, and undeniably richer. And
then there was the matter that he had fallen into favor with the English
through a turn of fortune, but no, William thought, he probably had not changed
much.

“Laird Macdonald saved my life, you know. Before
he was a laird. Saved me when I’d been shot. Had a musket ball in my shoulder.”
He poked his left shoulder, from where the ball had been removed.

William still remembered the biting pain of the
blast, the agony of that tiny ball driving into his shoulder and splitting it
apart. And he also remembered the surge of relief he felt when Ramsay Macdonald
appeared, sifting through the dead and wounded, resplendent in his highlander’s
kilt, tartans and big, feathered tri-cornered hat, the dress of a nobleman from
north of Lock Katrine. But at the time at least, Ramsay Macdonald had not taken
on the airs of a nobleman. He drank, fought, lusted and loved just as the rest
of the men in the regiment had done. But then, that was almost forty years
past, he recalled.

”Pa?” Kenna broke his daydream. “Did you leave the
Earth for the heavens?”

“Oh, no, sorry about that. Just thinking of things
from a long time ago. What did you ask me?”

“About Laird Macdonald. I know he saved you, but
is he a good man? I’ve come to terms with missing you and missing Ma and the
land and Fort Mary, but I don’t know. The most frightening part has to deal
with something new, with someone I don’t know.”

“Aye, he is. He’s got the blood of the highlands
in his veins, even if he lives near the Castle. He’ll treat you as you should
be treated. Even if he’s taken on the airs of an Englishman, he’s got a right
spirit.” But what he didn’t say again, was that had been forty years past.

And what Kenna didn’t say was that the only reason
she’d managed to come around out of her sadness, was the rolled up newspaper
she’d snatched from the table when Old Man McCraig brought it to show them the
Ghost.

Gavin,
she thought,
if nothing else goes
the way it should, or if the old Laird is a monster, I’ll just run away and
find you.

Of course, finding a ghost is far more difficult
than hearing stories about a ghost, she knew. But, even as her father spoke, she
thought about the paper she’s secreted between the folds of a dress that was
presently occupying one of the many trunks with which she’d shortly weigh down
a carriage.

Outside, far away and faint, but getting nearer,
they both heard pipes and a fife and drums at the same time and both looked out
the window.

“What is that?” Kenna said, already knowing the
answer.

“One thing you’ll have to learn about Lairds is
that they rarely do by themselves what can be done with a procession.” Her
father couldn’t help but crack a smile and a chuckle as the carriage bearing
Ramsay Macdonald popped up on the horizon.

A few moments of agitated excitement passed with
Kenna staring out the front of the house to catch a glimpse of the man she’d be
marrying.

“A fine place you’ve built for yourself, Moore.”
Laird Ramsay Macdonald stepped down from his carriage with the help of two
servants, and heaved a deep breath as his knees both popped in unison. His
tight stockings were wrapped around impossibly thin calves underneath skinny
thighs. The only part of him that was big at all was his belly, which was so
voluminous that his waistcoat didn’t button.

Kenna watched from the table, with the window
cracked so she could hear the two men chatting. She sipped her milk, afraid
that she’d never taste something so rich and sweet again, no matter how much
she was stuffed with cakes and lowland finery.

“Good to see you, Ram – Ah Laird Macdonald, I
suppose is proper now. It’s been too long, it has.”

The big man had a sour, pinched up face that
seemed to gather around his button nose. His little buckled shoes bulged out on
the sides from the girth they supported, and he was sweating, even in the cool
March air.

“Ramsay is fine. I’ve rooted around in your
shoulder before.” He slapped William on the back and smiled. “And it’s so good
to get out of that damned carriage that if you told me my face looked like a
quim, I’d probably be fine with it to stretch my legs.”

Hands on his knees, Macdonald bent down at the
waist, squatted down so that his knees popped again in a rather astonishing
report, and stood with his fists in his back and leaned backward for a moment.
“Three days. Would have been two, but not for the wheel breaking like it did.
I’d forgotten how hard rocks can be up here.”

I don’t know what I expected
, Kenna
thought,
but I’m sure that this isn’t it. He’s got pencil legs and he’s a
vulgar creature. Who talks about quims in front of someone they’ve not seen for
forty years? And that belly...

“Well, what’s to eat? I’m starved,” Ramsay said,
turning toward the house. “No, I meant what I said, Moore. This is a beautiful
place. I miss the air up here. The quiet. Edinburgh is nice, of course, and to
be in the middle of all the politics and moving and all that is good for some
people. Men of my age, though? I’m not so sure. Seems like I should be doing
what you’re at. A little farm, some animals, a house, and...what’s this, then?”
His eyes settled on Kenna, who was watching him through the window.

“That’s your bride, Laird Macdonald.”

“Ach, that’s Kenna, then? You’ve done better by me
already than most men have after a lifetime of service.”

William smiled, and Kenna had to as well. She was
almost never paid compliments for how she looked. Then again, she almost never
saw anyone that was anywhere near her own age. Even though Macdonald was
probably just shy of Old Man McCraig’s antiquity the compliment was welcome.

“Is she as able in other ways as she is in her
look?” Ramsay Macdonald examined Kenna, but spoke to her father.

“She’s quite good with the animals,” he answered.
“Milks them of a morning, brushes the horses, she cares for the dogs. And atop
that, she’s been trained to nurse men back to health. She’s even nursed a man
or two back to health when they returned from the Bonnie Prince’s war.”

Macdonald cringed.

“The usurper’s war, Moore. You’d do well to
remember it as such.”

“Yes, of course. I apologize, my lord. It’s just
that-”

“I know what it is. I’d be lying if I said I
hadn’t the same feelings for years. But you never know where people are
listening. And anyway, I’m a king’s man now. If she’s going to carry that
little hot-blooded streak of highland rebellion that you’ve got, she canna come
south. But then, she’s a woman. And a fine one at that. I’m sure she knows
better than to air her opinions on matters which she canna understand.”

Listening to him describe her as though she were
some sort of thinking turnip, Kenna bristled. She wasn’t used to someone like
this man swooping in and telling her who she was and what she’d be doing. She
didn’t like it one bit. He had nothing to do with her except a promise from her
father that she was fertile and would bear him children. Of course, that too,
upset her, but she had to come to terms with her place.

“I...I’m sorry Laird Macdonald. We’re a rough
people up here. Not used to the manners of the city, or of court. Give her a
chance and I’m sure she’ll take to figuring on her place.” William looked to
Kenna and pursed his lips as he spoke.

The two of them took another step closer to the
front door, but again the fat noble paused. “Does she cook?”

“She...she can, yes.” William said, still looking
at Kenna. “But her mother does the most of it while Kenna normally enjoys her
chores. We’re simple people here, my lord.”

“You keep saying that,” Macdonald said, “but her
life is to be different now. She’s soon the Lady of Kilroyston and our children
the heirs to an estate. I don’t expect her to cook or to clean or to nurse any
cuts. We’ve got people who do those things for us.”

Nodding, William stepped around the man and opened
the door. “If you please?”

“Oh of course. Thank you. I’d like not to dally.
As much as I would enjoy a few days respite out here in the country, business
back at the Castle demands my return. Is she ready?”

Why won’t he speak to me?
Kenna wondered
and then shivered as she remembered his yellow teeth and the way he’d talked of
her womanly duties. She well knew what that meant, but was less excited about
it than was the Laird.

“Why do you not ask her, my lord?”

“Speak? Oh of course, I’ve forgotten my manners.
It’s the travel, you see, it puts me of a foul mood. Of course I’d like to
speak with her, but we’ll have time enough to converse on our ride back. I hope
to get to know her opinions on all sorts of things.”

He looked around the house.

“Poetry, for one, and her thoughts on music.
Politics of course isn’t something like to interest her, but possibly
literature does?”

“I apologize, Laird Macdonald, it only seemed to
me you’d like to speak to her instead of to her through me.”

“Ach, I suppose you’re right at that, Moore. It’s
to me to apologize for my crass behavior. It’s been quite a time since I’ve
been in the presence of a woman who wasn’t a whore.”

Both William and Kenna bristled. In the midst of
the conversation, Lora emerged from the back, carrying the smallest of Kenna’s
wardrobe trunks.

“Oh, hello there!” She extended her hand. “You
must be the Laird Macdonald. William’s told me of your bravery and your
honesty. I’m glad that my daughter will be going to a place where she can be
safe and secure, and away from temptation and roguish behavior.”

Her grin quickly faded as Macdonald took her hand,
but rather than shaking it, stroked her wrist with two fingers. “I see the
mother is as fine as the daughter,” he said, crooking an eyebrow.

“I, er, thank you, my lord, but I-”

“News!” Old Man McCraig’s voice broke the
oppressive calm between the four of them. “News of the Ghost! Of Gavin!” He
ran, shrieking with delight, into the house through the still-opened door.

“Ah, McCraig,” William said, “this is Lair-”

“Oh yes very nice to meet you. Say, that’s quite a
belly you’ve got. Nice stockings. But the news, it’s fantastic!” The old man
was almost exasperated by the time he caught his breath. “Gavin, you know, he’s
done something else! In Edinburgh! And oh, this is a fabulous story.”

“Do tell,” Laird Macdonald sneered. “Tell me of
your Gavin – that’s what you said?”

“Oh yes sir, yes, Gavin Macgregor,” McCraig said
before anyone could stop him.

Kenna and Lora exchanged a glance. William put his
face in his palm and squeezed his temples.

“What has that lovable scamp gone and done now? Do
tell.”

“Well, sir, nice to meet you, by the way, but the
paper says that Gavin’s done two things in just one night. Seems two days ago,
he broke into the country estate of Ramsay Macdonald – that traitorous bastard
what went south – and then in the same night, stole the horse of Sheriff Alan,
the man sent by the king to capture him, as Alan was drunkenly shouting at the
Laird’s door.”