What Happens in Scotland (12 page)

“Do you refer to Miss Dalrymple?” Georgette asked in confusion. “She is my ladies’ maid.”

“Maid?” The man’s face reddened through Elsie’s uncharacteristic silence. “Is that what she’s calling herself now?”

Georgette looked between the pair, wondering how to handle the situation. Her early lessons in decorum had never addressed how to defuse a brewing altercation between a former prostitute and a man of God. Was this the man who had charged Elsie with public indecency?

Reverend Ramsey settled the issue for her as he turned his back on the maid. “Where is Mr. Burton?” he asked bluntly. “I presumed there had been a change of plans when you did not arrive at the church last night, but when I saw you together on the street this morning, I assumed you were simply delayed.”

Her cousin’s earlier insistence that the rector would form his own conclusions about what he had seen this morning still rang in her ears. Georgette swallowed. “I would like a chance to explain, Reverend, about what you may have seen. I was delayed last night. And Randolph found me. But—”

“You do not need to provide the details,” he interrupted with an impatient wave of his hand. “You were with your betrothed this morning. It is improper, of course, but not unmendable. Of course, I would not advise delaying the wedding further. People will start to talk.”

“I . . . I beg your pardon?” Georgette asked, appalled as much by the insinuation that she was engaged to her cousin as by the man’s stark delivery of the news.

“I must presume you still plan to marry Mr. Burton,” he said.

Georgette risked a glance at Elsie. The maid was doing an admirable job of ignoring the conversation and displaying dutiful appreciation for the sandwiches in front of her. Georgette no longer felt quite so hungry herself. “Did you say
still
marry?” she asked, squinting back up at the man.

“Mr. Burton told me last week you both wanted a quick ceremony with minimal fuss.” His eyes raked over her, resting on the dirty dress, her uncovered hair, the single glove. “Given appearances, I would not waste a single moment.”

He offered a curt nod to Georgette’s stunned silence, and then turned and walked away.

“What in the criminy was that all about?” Elsie asked, already halfway through her first sandwich.

“I was wondering that myself.” Georgette sat as still as the water in her glass, not knowing what the odd, aching emotion in her throat was.

No, that wasn’t quite true.

She was angry. Randolph had scheduled their wedding. And he had done it last week, before she had come to visit, before he had even asked for her hand.

And he had handed her that first brandy last night with the assurance of a man who knew what he was about. She could not remember what happened after that, but she could suspect. Randolph had intended to marry her last night, whether she agreed or not. Brandy, consumed by someone with so little experience with spirits, could have only helped his cause.

“What are you going to do?” Elsie asked, chewing with her mouth open. “You can’t marry two men.”

“No, I can’t.” Georgette considered for a moment the insane urge to correct the maid’s atrocious eating habits. In the end, she picked up her sandwich and abandoned the idea. She had little enough time to accomplish all the things on her list today without reforming Elsie’s table manners too. “But you see, I have no intention of being married to either one of them.”

“Sounds like you might need to inform your cousin of that fact.” Elsie licked a smear of sauce from one side of her sandwich.

Though the maid only stated the obvious, truer words had never been spoken. And that meant Georgette’s list had a new, necessary addition:

Teach Elsie the fundamentals of being a ladies’ maid.

Search for Mr. MacKenzie.

Return the kitten to the butcher.

And find her cousin and give him the dressing-down he so clearly deserved.

Chapter 12

J
AMES PUSHED INTO
the butcher’s shop on Main Street with his stomach halfway to his feet. He dreaded what he might find, and yet he owed it to his horse and his sanity to find out.

William followed close behind, an unshakable shadow apparently determined to make sure James didn’t take out the rest of MacRory’s teeth. It was laughable, really. If Caesar had already been sacrificed to the butcher’s knife, it wasn’t MacRory’s teeth his brother needed to worry about.

William would need to hold him back from full-blown murder.

James had not a single idea what he had done with his horse, or how he had lost him. Over the course of the last hour, he had begun to remember even more about his evening, starting with every dimple possessed by the delectable Lady Thorold. James had counted them last night, in that ramshackle room above the Blue Gander. There had been two lovely divots of a size to hold kisses resting on her back, just above the flare of her hips. The dimples of her cheeks had prompted him to work hard to elicit the smile that brought them into full relief. He remembered the indentation he had discovered, quite by accident, resting behind her left knee.

Yes, he remembered Georgette Thorold now, every bewitching inch of her.

But he could not remember trading Caesar to the town butcher.

No matter how hard he tried, the gleaming counters inside MacRory’s shop brought no sense of recall, no flash of memory. The fresh copper smell of meat did not seem familiar, and the view from MacRory’s shop to Main Street outside was equally unknown.

He wanted to presume he hadn’t done it. There was no way he would have traded Caesar to the butcher, not when he had worked so hard to possess the animal. James had wanted the stallion since his father had first sent the animal to his house, two weeks after he had returned to Moraig. The Earl of Kilmartie had offered the horse as a gift, but James had refused the man’s generosity. His pride was flying high, and his anger at his father’s meddling was still too great, even after being gone so many years.

But one look was all it had taken. James had wanted the horse with a passion, scraping for months to come up with enough money and then negotiating the deal to purchase the stallion behind his father’s back. He couldn’t afford such a fine horse, but somehow he had done it, even though his finances were better saved for other things.

The horse had represented his future and his pride. And James had just lost them, all to one drunken night.

Furious with himself, he paced the confines of the little shop. “MacRory!” he shouted. “We need a word with you!”

Instead of a toothless butcher, a tabby cat the size of a toddler emerged from some hidden corner of the butcher shop. Its enormous yellow eyes stared at the visitors as if in accusation for disturbing its sleep. After a twitching moment, it ambled past them through the front door to the sunlit street outside and then sat down and began to clean itself.

“Where in the deuces is he?” James slapped his fist down on the countertop with a force that made the front windows rattle.

William glanced out a window along the far wall of the shop. A low whistle escaped him “You might want to take a look out back.”

James stalked over to the window, which looked out on an alley behind the shop. The view here was far different from the pristine white counters where most of Moraig purchased their cuts of meat. Out back, he could see barrels of offal and buzzing flies, and everywhere he looked there was dried blood and bits of hair. His stomach churned like a spinning top, threatening to purge itself from the visual violence.

If Caesar
had
been here, there was no evidence he still lived.

William peered out at a split carcass that was hanging from a chain across the narrow alley. “Does that look equine in origin?” he asked, squinting at the shape of it.

“Bovine.” James closed his eyes to the red muscle and white cartilage outlined in the shape of ribs. He willed it to be true.
Please God, let it be true.

A shadow fell across them, and James whirled to find the butcher’s rotund shape outlined in the door frame.

“MacRory,” he said slowly.

“MacKenzie.” The butcher stepped inside his shop, moving from backlit sun to shadows, each footfall more menacing than the last. His mouth parted, revealing the red-rimmed space his front teeth had so recently occupied. The sight brought a spasm of guilt to James’s chest.

He had knocked out MacRory’s teeth last night. He had forgotten that part in his concern over Caesar. He supposed an apology was in order. Instead, he swallowed the bile that rose in his throat, and forced himself to ask the question he had come for. “My horse has gone missing. Do you know anything about him?”

MacRory’s eyes narrowed. He made a great show of scratching his whiskered chin. “Well now, I see a lot of horses. Which one was yours again?”

Was.
The man had said “was.”

Worry for Caesar surged through him. “He’s a chestnut stallion with a white blaze, socks on his hind feet. Stands just over seventeen hands.” James risked a peek out the nausea-inducing window again. “A bit too-fine boned to make a good steak,” he added.

“I don’t sell horse meat.” The butcher sounded offended. “And I don’t like customers looking out in the alley behind my shop. ’Tis bad for business.”

James returned his gaze to the glowering butcher. He supposed he could see the logic in that. He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to touch a nice cut of beef again after witnessing the carnage that lay just beyond the plate glass.

“I’m here because David Cameron sold you a black mare. He’s got no cause to lie about it. So if you don’t deal in horses . . .”

The butcher interrupted him with a snort. “I didn’t say I don’t deal in them, just that I don’t carve them up.”

James took in the man’s soiled apron, the dirt and less mentionable filth that lay beneath MacRory’s fingernails like a storefront sign. He raised a brow. The man was a butcher. There were not a lot of other options here.

MacRory flushed under the scrutiny. “I admit I purchased a black mare from Cameron. But I bought her with an eye toward her value as a broodmare, not as dog meat.” He leaned in, his lips curving upward beneath his disgusting beard. “Don’t tell the magistrate that, though. He gave me the mare at a bang-up price.”

“Well, how did I end up with her if you bought her?” James asked in irritation. It seemed he was no closer to finding Caesar than he had been on storming in here, and while he was happy not to find his horse in pieces, he still had no idea where the stallion was.

The butcher shrugged. “How the devil should I know?” He grinned then, the atrocity of his ruined mouth front and center. “I didn’t keep her more than a day. Sold her right quick, and at a profit to boot.”

James grabbed on to the one meager clue. “Who bought the mare?” If he could find the end buyer, intuition told him he would also find Caesar. Although how these damnable pieces of the puzzle all fit together was becoming impossible to imagine, much less sort out.

MacRory shuffled his feet a moment, hands fluttering about his hips. “Can’t rightly remember. If it wasn’t you, guess it could have been Hillston, down on the south side of town. Or maybe McDougal. I do a fair bit of this sort of thing, though I’ll thank you not to spread it around. It’s hard to keep it all straight.”

James struggled against his mounting impatience. Each new clue, each lead, just seemed to lead him further into a quagmire of confusion. Caesar was still missing. Lady Thorold was still hiding. And apparently, the butcher was a discriminating connoisseur of horseflesh, but not horse meat. He stared at his brother, thinking hard. What should they do next?

Head off and ask every horse trader in Moraig if they had seen Caesar?

Or, now that he at least knew the horse wasn’t bound for someone’s dinner table, did he return his focus to the more pressing issue of finding the woman he had married last night?

William, for his part, appeared to have something different in mind. He cleared his throat, and tossed a narrow-eyed glance toward James. “My brother has something he wants to tell you.”

“I do?”

“Yes.” William nodded toward the butcher. “Go on with it.” When James did no more than stand there stupidly, he jerked his chin encouragingly, spreading his hands palms-up in a universal symbol of apology.

James slumped in defeat. Damned if his brother wasn’t right. Damned if his brother wasn’t
always
right.

“I’m sorry about your teeth,” James offered, knowing it was true, knowing that an apology was the only thing that might convince MacRory not to spread and expand upon the tale about what had happened last night. “I was not thinking clearly, and, well . . . suffice it to say, I wish it hadn’t happened.”

The butcher’s bushy brows shot up. “Oh, I’d say you were thinking plenty clear. And I don’t blame you a bit. Why, if I had just gotten married and you tried to kiss
my
pretty new wife, I’d have aimed a bit lower than your teeth.”

James was startled. “You tried to kiss her?” His mind flew faster, wrapped wider around the memory the man’s words conjured. The butcher lifting the blond-haired sprite up in a big bear hug, her squeak of protest, and then his fists, swinging of their own accord.

The butcher’s cheeks turned ruddy at the question. “Well, she was a right sweet thing, and it
is
a tradition. Kiss the bride and all.”

James managed to grind out, “She’s not my bride.” And she wasn’t. His own memory disowned it, and Cameron had confirmed it.

So why did part of him still squeeze tight at the thought?

MacRory perked up at that. “She’s not? Well, that’s a fine bit of luck then.” He licked his lips, and his eyes took on a predatory gleam. “Does that mean she’s still available?”

All thoughts of apology promptly became tangled up in James’s ears. It occurred to him it would be only a little more trouble to aim for the man’s back molars. His fists were halfway to attention when William grabbed his shoulders and shuffled him out of the shop, calling out a chorus of “thank-yous” and “sorrys” behind them.

His brother gave him a hard shove, sending James stumbling out onto the busy street. “You just got through saying you were sorry to the man, and there you go, about to do it again! MacRory is only having a bit of sport with you.” William poked James in the shoulder with a self-righteous finger. “This woman has you tied up in knots. You have to decide: either you want her or you don’t. This flipping back and forth is going to make you cross-eyed and annoy everyone who is trying to help you.”

James took a deep breath. He didn’t need his brother’s reminder to realize he was acting like a fool. What was it about this girl that simultaneously aroused his anger and his protective instincts? His fists resisted his commands to unfurl, and he concentrated on loosening his fingers in slow, deliberate steps. He had become adept at controlling his unruly temper with the sawdust-filled bag he kept in his kitchen, spent hours each day throwing punches until his lungs burned and his knuckles cracked and bled.

But there was no sawdust effigy here. There was only William, with his crooked nose and congenial smile and damnably right words. William, and a gathering crowd of curious onlookers.

James’s hands dropped to his waist. His brother was right. He had forgotten what was important, neglected to consider that no matter what damage he had done last night, he still had a responsibility to Moraig’s citizens—and to himself—to conduct his affairs with dignity. Knocking out more of MacRory’s teeth or picking a fight with his well-meaning sibling was not going to help the town’s residents trust his legal advice. And neither would milling about the streets like a love-struck swain, searching for his missing paramour in every hole and crevice.

Just as he was taking the deep breath necessary to restore himself to calm, he was nearly bowled over by someone who darted from the crowd, moving like the wind. He felt the impact of the knife rather than the pain of it, a blow to his chest that snagged a second on muscle and bone before sliding southward. He shoved hard against his attacker, caught the slightest glimpse of white-blond hair and a slim build before the figure was off and running, trouser-clad legs stirring up clouds of dust on Moraig’s dry streets.

And then his assailant was gone.

James lifted an incredulous hand to his chest. His fingers came away sticky with blood.

William’s strangled gasp came louder, closer, and then, finally, James felt the grasp of his brother’s fingers on his arm. “That bastard stabbed you!” William exclaimed. “Can you stand?”

“Aye. It did not go deep.” His legs, oddly enough, felt steady beneath him. He edged his fingers around the periphery of the wound. Although it bled, it was reassuringly shallow. “ ’Tis a scratch,” he clarified. “I would not even tolerate one of Patrick’s sorry bandages on it.”

His gaze fell to the street. A knife lay there, coated with his blood. He bent down and picked it up, turning it over in his hand. No, not a knife . . . some sort of instrument. It was curved and had a folding blade, but that was where the similarity ended. A sharp implement would have been cleaner, quicker.

Deadlier.

“Bloody hell, that’s the second time someone tried to kill you today,” William growled, shaking his head at the discovery. “First the girl tries to kill you with a chamber pot, and now this.”

James wiped the blade on his coat and nodded grimly as he slipped it into his pocket. The pain, momentarily delayed, became a slicing want in need of attention, but he ignored it as he turned over the facts in his mind. Yes, it
was
the second time he had been attacked today.

And only the second time in his life, as well.

“Do you think this could be related to the business with Lady Thorold?” William asked, his voice a hard rumble.

His brother’s palpable anger made James feel better for some reason. He nodded again and lifted his eyes to the crowd, searching.
There.
Moving north, past the milliner’s shop. A towheaded figure wove its way in between the crowd. The figure was dressed like a man. That much he had ascertained during the attack. But wearing trousers did not make one male, any more than wearing a dress made one a lady.