“Aye, and ye’d have married that bastard, Halsey.” Mal’s golden eyes glittered. “Your sister would be pining for love of Jeremy Drake, who couldn’t wake up and carry her away until someone kicked him in his backside. Your father would have shoved Audrey at another man for his political schemes, married her off whether she liked it or not. You really wanted that life for her? For yourself?” He let out a derisive breath. “You’re damn lucky I came along to save ye from all that.”
“And I know you can twist anything to your own purposes, my dear Malcolm.”
“True enough, but if ye think ye’d be safer in Edinburgh now, ye’d be wrong. There will be fighting, and it will be bloody. Who knows when the Jacobites will decide to cut the throats of English aristos who’ve been sneering at them all these years? Your father has a nice bit of land in Lincolnshire, doesn’t he? Why shouldn’t a Scotsman have it for his sons, turning your family out into the cold?”
Mary went quiet. “Are Highlanders so ruthless?”
Malcolm gave the ceiling a brief glance. “Oh, they are that. I’ve lived with them all me life. I ought to know.”
“You’re a Highlander,” Mary reminded him.
“Why d’ye think I know so much about it? Let me put you out of harm’s away, Mary, love.”
Mary firmed her jaw. “No, indeed. If you are off to Kilmorgan, I am going with you. We can send word to my father and Aunt Danae that I am well and not to come for me. If you are staying at Kilmorgan, then so am I.” She stopped, a qualm stealing over her. “In any case, don’t you think Colonel Wheeler will have sent men to Kilmorgan, waiting for you to return? He is very angry at you. We may already be too late.”
Mal dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “I won’t be marching t’ the front gates brandishing me claymore, will I? I planned to use stealth, sweet Mary. Wheeler will tire of looking for me soon—he can’t spare the men to chase one annoying Highlander around the glens.”
“Very well, then.” Mary’s chin came up. “I will sneak to Kilmorgan with you.”
Malcolm closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ye aren’t going t’ be an obedient and unquestioning wife, I’m thinking, are ye?”
“Certainly not. Englishwomen are resilient creatures. I do not know why people assume we are sweet and docile, innocent and weak.” Mary unfolded her arms and rested her hands primly in her lap. “Look at Boadicea, who led forces against the Roman army for a long, long time. Queen Elizabeth, who often had to remark she was ‘only a woman’ to spare the feelings of gentlemen she could outthink. Even Aunt Danae has survived three husbands and is entertaining thoughts of a fourth, on her own terms. You have no need to worry about me.”
A slow smile had spread across Malcolm’s face as he listened to her speech. When she finished, his eyes were alight, the depths of gold warm.
“Ye see? I knew ye had fire inside you, lass. An inferno of it. You and me—we’re going to burn up the world.” Mal reached for her and took her hand. “But I was wrong about one thing.”
Mary’s throat hurt, dry from her adamant speech. She closed her hand around his and held on, his strength bolstering her own. “What is that?”
“You’re not yet my wife.” Mal’s smile turned wicked. “But we’ll be fixing that today.”
Malcolm purchased a sturdy pony from Rabbie for Mary to ride. He also gave the man money for extra tartans to wrap around her and keep her warm.
They waited for dusk to fall before they left. Mary was happy with that, mostly because Malcolm needed to sleep. He might enjoy acting the part of brollachan, but he was only human, and days without rest could be deadly.
Also, Mary still feared Malcolm being found by the soldiers. The colonel and Mary’s father might have ordered the men to scour the land for them. If Mal took her wandering in daylight, would they be seen, two figures bent into the wind, hurrying deeper into the Highlands? Would the soldiers instantly shoot Mal dead, even if Mary begged for his life? She thought about the exasperated anger of Colonel Wheeler and decided that, yes, they probably would.
They left the cluster of cottages once it was dark, Mal pressing on Rabbie more coin and warm thanks. Rabbie’s wife nodded her good-byes, but for their entire visit, she’d never spoken a word. Mary wondered if perhaps she was unable to.
No other crofters had appeared all day, though Mary had seen the smoke drifting in thin wafts from their houses. Wise of them, she thought. These people had too much to lose to risk anyone discovering how many of them lived in this hollow.
She mentioned as much to Mal as they made their way uphill after sundown, Malcolm leading her pony.
“Aye, they’re a careful lot,” Mal replied. “But Rabbie seems to have a kindness in him, and the others do what he says. If not, they’d have tried to rob us while we slept.”
Mary stared at him. “Good heavens—I thought you trusted them completely. Such thoughts certainly didn’t keep you awake today.” Mal had snored all afternoon long, and when he’d woken, he’d loved her again.
“I wouldn’t have let them touch us,” he said, his voice a comfort in the darkness. “Now cease your chatter. We’ve a tricky bit to go through.”
The “tricky bit” was a flat open plain. Clouds parted to reveal a bright moon, which spilled a path across the land. Mal kept the moon at his right shoulder, leading her and the pony quickly across the open ground.
Mary had no idea where they were. When Colonel Wheeler had taken them toward Inverness, they’d been making straight south for the ferry at Kessock—at least, so she’d been told. Malcolm had sneaked her across country when he’d rescued her from the crofters’ village, following no road. Mary hadn’t stepped outside Rabbie’s cottage all that day, and when they’d finally emerged, the sun had been gone, setting quickly this time of year. She’d seen only a high ridge of hill above a stream, and then this wide stretch of moor.
The drawback about Mal sleeping all day, Mary thought, was that now he was at his full energy. He charged ahead like a mad bull, setting a quick pace through the ice-cold night.
The open heath ended in a thick woods, which Mal plunged into without hesitation. He seemed to know his way through, though to Mary it was dark as pitch, except where mist glowed ghostly white. Branches reached out to tug at her, and she lowered herself to the sure-footed pony’s neck.
Lights flickered at the edges of her vision. At first she thought she imagined them, but Mary once turned her head in time to see a very clear glow that immediately winked out.
“Malcolm!” she called in an urgent whisper.
“They’re will-o’-the-wisps,” Mal said without turning around. “Pay them no heed. If you don’t follow them, they can’t hurt you.”
Another light flickered. Mary turned swiftly, but it had winked out before she could pinpoint it. She gave a nervous laugh. “So, you do believe in ghosts, after all?”
Mal made that scoffing noise she liked. “The light is caused by gases rising in marshy ground. Don’t know how it works, but that’s what happens. If ye chased it, and fell into a bog and drowned, well, the effect would be the same as if it really were a ghost, wouldn’t it?”
He had a point. Mary kept an eye out for the lights, but they came fewer and farther between as they pushed through the woods, and finally stopped altogether.
Mal led them out of the trees not long after that. Moonlight shone on a long stretch of water that smelled of brine, and Mary heard the whisper of waves lapping gently at the shore.
“Gracious, where are we?” she asked. This couldn’t be the sea—she’d had the idea that they were steadfastly moving away from it. But they couldn’t have reached the other side of Scotland, surely.
“Firth of Cromarty,” Mal answered. “The west bank of it. I circled us well away from Inverness and any place we’d have to take a boat or ferry. Couldn’t risk that ferrymen aren’t loyalists who’d give me up for a shilling. There’s a village I know here with no love for the English, and a church with a mi
nister.”
Mary’s heart constricted, his last words more alarming than his first. “A minister? You mean to do this, then?”
Malcolm finally turned to face her. He patted the pony’s neck then laid his hand on her plaid-covered knee, his eyes dark in the gloom. “It’s not what I wanted for ye. I wanted it all t’ be beautiful, perfect, a wedding ye could be proud of for many a long year.”
Mary answered softly, “That’s not so important to me anymore.”
When she’d been resigned to marrying Halsey, she and Aunt Danae had begun planning a wedding that would be the envy of every lady in England—a glittering pageant in St. George’s, Hanover Square, a wedding breakfast and celebration at Lord Wilfort’s London mansion that would be discussed in every newspaper from Dover to Carlisle. But she had realized after meeting Malcolm that it was not the wedding that was important—it was the marriage itself.
Mal thumped his fist on his chest. “It’s important t’ me. I seduced ye, coerced ye, and now am leading ye around the country as though we’re a pair of beggars. The least I could do is give ye a decent wedding.”
“You did,” Mary said, trying to smile. “Up on the cliffs above Kilmorgan. It was a marvelous ceremony.”
Mal abruptly began to adjust the pony’s bridle, turning his face from the betraying moonlight. “Aye, well. That was a bit of theatre.”
“No. It was lovely.”
Malcolm gazed across the firth. “Even if I can’t give ye the wedding ye deserve, I will marry ye this day. Giving you my name will restore your reputation now that I’ve tarnished it and see ye right if the English succeed in ridding themselves of me. Ye will have all my worldly goods, never ye worry. I have a lot of them, and not simply those stashed under the floorboards of Kilmorgan. I have accounts in London, and in France, and other bits of land here and there. I don’t want us t’ live in exile, but if we have to, we’ll do well.”
Malcolm at the moment was nothing but a shapeless lump of plaid—as Mary was—his hair unwashed and flyaway. Anyone would mistake him for an impoverished vagrant, instead of the son of a duke with wealth stashed all over the world.
Mal wasn’t one simple thing, Mary had come to understand—not the rakish charmer, or the practical businessman, or the crazed warrior who blew up tents filled with ammunition and rescued his brother and Mary out from under their guards’ noses. Nor was Malcolm merely a man of the land, at home on the edge of this inlet of moonlit sea, equally at home helping his tenant farmers bring in the harvest or in drawing rooms filled with furniture given to his family by a king.
He was all these things and more. Mary uncovered another layer of Malcolm Mackenzie each day, which deepened her love for him further.
“But I’m forgetting one thing,” Mal said, the charmer coming through in his smile.
Mary attempted a lofty look to tease him. “Oh? What is that?”
Malcolm pulled her from the pony to her feet, then he dropped to one knee in front of her, never mind the mud. He took her hand, his bare, cold, and callused.
“Lady Mary Lennox,” Mal asked in a solemn voice. “Will ye marry me?”
Mary’s pulse jumped. Wind blew across the firth, dragging her hair into her face, and stinging her eyes.
She closed her other hand around Malcolm’s and answered with her heart.
“Yes.”
Chapter 30
In a small village at the edge of the firth, Malcolm stopped at the house of the minister just after dawn, and hammered on the door.
A severe-looking housekeeper wrenched it open, then gasped and tried to slam it again. Mal caught the door before it could close and pushed his way inside, leading Mary into a small square hall with an equally square staircase. The wind blew the door shut behind him, closing them into this warm, stuffy place. Mal’s skin began to tingle, his body happy to be cut off from the wind.
The housekeeper was shouting, rousing the place. Presently, the minister came down the stairs, a tall Highlander with the prudish sneer of a follower of John Knox. “What is this?” he growled.
“I need ye to marry us,” Malcolm said. “Right away, if ye please.”
The man looked them up and down. Malcolm knew he saw a ragged Highland vagabond with a dirt-smeared face and his equally ragged lady, who was wrapped in several layers of plaid. The dun-colored kilts Rabbie had given them were so faded that the pattern was barely distinguishable.
“No,” the minister said. “Be off with ye.”
He was a big man, with large hands and tight muscles. Malcolm pulled a pistol from the folds of his kilt and pointed it at him. “Now.”
The minister glanced at Mal’s pistol, looked at Mary, and returned his gaze to Mal’s set face. He heaved a long, resigned, Scottish sigh.
“Verra well. Go in there.” He pointed at a door. “And put away that damned shooter before ye hurt someone, lad.”
For the second time, Mary let Malcolm put his heavy ring on her finger and say the words . . . With this ring, I thee wed.
This time, the ceremony was spoken by a minister, witnessed, and recorded. The housekeeper and a solid, squat man who did the minister’s heavier chores stood in the front room with them as Mary and Malcolm were joined.
If the minister was surprised he married Lord Malcolm Mackenzie, son of the Duke of Kilmorgan, to Lady Mary Lennox, daughter of the Earl of Wilfort, he made no indication. He finished, noted the marriage in his register, collected his fee, and bade them both a good day.
Malcolm led Mary outside again, his grip on her hand tight.
She was now Mary Mackenzie—or more properly, Lady Malcolm Mackenzie. Legally wed in Scotland, a place of very liberal marriage laws, so she’d come to understand. Two people could be considered “married” if they claimed, before witnesses, that they were. As simple as that. With so much isolation in the Highlands, Malcolm had said, sometimes it was the only way people could wed. This marriage was more proper than that, he said dryly, which should satisfy Mary’s father, and his.
They rode away from the village, Mary light of heart, but they were very shy with each other the rest of the day. Malcolm would glance at her, then smile and look away. Mary would blush and study the firth as though its wind-rippled surface was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.
They continued north along Cromarty Firth for the rest of the day, Mal leading the pony down a narrow road that skirted the shore. They passed clusters of farm buildings and stubbled fields, brown and waiting for the first dusting of snow. Clouds lowered around them, the high hills Malcolm called the Suitors at the mouth of the firth fading into and out of sight.
Darkness fell early, sunset at half past three, but the clouds and mist made it darker more quickly still. Malcolm had told Mary they’d stay the night with trusted friends, but before they could reach the village he made for, Mal veered from the road and struck out over a barren field to woods beyond.
Mary said nothing, having heard the tramp of horses and jingle of bridles. She and Mal reached the shelter of the woods just before the riders came into view, mere smudges in the failing light.
The blue and red of uniforms were easy to discern, however. British soldiers, some mounted, others walking, a mix of cavalry and infantry as had made up the troop Colonel Wheeler commanded. This was not Wheeler’s band however, Mary saw as she studied them. There were fewer, and nowhere did she see the short, rotund Yorkshireman with the loud voice.
The men were passing a deserted farm. The farmhouse, black stone like Rabbie’s, had no roof, its burned beams etched against the mist. Not far from it stood a larger, square building that Mary guessed would have been a barn. A few stone sheds lay around it, most of them falling to bits.
Mary’s pony seemed to know to keep quiet—no snorting or calling a greeting to the horses on the road. But then, they were English horses, and this pony was all Scots. Perhaps the mistrust spread to beasts as well.
Mary’s fanciful thought died as Malcolm stiffened. Near the end of the
line of men were four Scotsmen in shackles.
The four were surrounded by guards, but the Highlanders walked with heads high, arrogance in every stride. One of them said something in Erse, and the other three laughed.
Malcolm remained silent. Mary watched as one English soldier smacked the butt of his musket between the shoulder blades of the Highlander who’d spoken. The Highlander stumbled, fell, then groaned as he tried to gain his feet.
“Sir!” the soldier who’d struck the Highlander called to the nearest officer. “This one’s down.”
A man in a red coat came riding back. “Damn it.” The commander looked up and down the trail, then whistled through his fingers. The lead riders circled around, and the line of men ground to a halt.
“Find out if anyone’s in those outbuildings,” the commander said, waving his hand at the barn and sheds. He was more quiet voiced than Wheeler, the flattening of his vowels putting him from somewhere in Berkshire. “We’ll put up for the night here.”
“What about the prisoners, sir?” the man who’d jabbed the Highlander asked.
The commander looked around again, uneasy with the growing darkness. “We’ll get settled in for tonight. In the morning, stand them against a wall and shoot them. They’re marauders and Jacobites, and they’re slowing us down. Sergeant, give the orders.”
A sergeant with a powerful voice shouted for the men to fall out and make camp, and to check the barn and sheds.
Malcolm took Mary’s hand and led her soundlessly back into the woods. “I’m sorry, love,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’ve got to stay here a bit. I can’t let them execute those men.”
“Well, of course not,” Mary answered indignantly. “I never thought you would.”
Malcolm didn’t answer, head bowed in thought. When he looked up, his eyes gleamed in a chance bit of moonlight. “I’m not sending you off alone either. What do ye know about slow matches?”
The Stolen Mackenzie Bride Page 25