The Stolen Mackenzie Bride

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Get them below!” Gair shouted. “Let’s see if we can avoid the whole bloody British navy, damn and blast it.”

  Padruig sheathed his sword, ignored a pistol shot from the mooring that barely missed him, and led them to a cabin below. It was Gair’s cabin, which stretched across the entire stern, its small lights showing murky darkness behind them. Padruig, without word, left them.

  The duke collapsed onto the bunk, his claymore and dirk falling from his hands. Alec braced himself against the sudden roll of the ship, pulled out Gair’s whisky decanter, and poured two glasses. He brought one to his father, who took it between shaky fingers.

  “To Duncan,” the duke said, raising the heavy cut crystal glass. Gair could put his hands on the best of everything. “And Mal. Damn the bloody English.”

  “Aye,” Alec said. He drank, the whisky burning.

  The duke thunked his empty glass to the table and heaved a sigh. “Angus,” he said irritably, “where the hell are we going?”

  Alec chilled, and he poured another swallow of whisky down his throat. “Paris,” he said. He set his glass next to his father’s. “I’m Alec, Dad. Angus is dead.”

  The duke put a hand over his eyes and sat thusly for a long moment. When he raised his head, his expression was weary. “Aye, I know. It comforts me t’ say his name.” He slowly sat up straight. “Paris, eh? Does this mean I get to meet me granddaughter?”

  Alec’s bleak heart warmed at the thought of his daughter, Jenny. He hadn’t seen her in months, and his entire being craved her. He would take her in his arms, kiss her little face, and never leave her again.

  “Aye,” he said. “God help her.”

  The duke barked a short laugh, and then they were silent, as the waves of the open sea took the boat toward their destination.

  At camp, word went around who Mary was, and she was greeted more as a released prisoner than a woman who’d run away with a Scotsman. She was taken to a large house where the commanders had set up base and given a room, food, and coffee. A few of the men in charge knew her father and promised to send him word that she was well. They were deferential to her, as such men would be to the daughter of an important peer.

  Captain Ellis returned after midnight. Mary was still awake, unable to sleep, unable to do much but pace.

  Ellis gave her a polite bow when he entered the sitting room she met him in, but Mary was too stiff and agitated to curtsy in response.

  “Duncan’s body is ready to be taken back to Kilmorgan,” Captain Ellis said. “I have made sure you will not be hampered in any way as to that.”

  “Thank you,” Mary said sincerely. “And the others?”

  Ellis hesitated, but the look in his eyes told Mary all she needed to know. “I never found their bodies. I’m sorry.”

  Mary’s heart pounded swiftly, her throat closing up. “What are you saying? That they escaped?” But she knew he didn’t mean that.

  Ellis let out a sigh. “Mary, there were so many. His Grace of Cumberland has ordered that the Jacobites be given no quarter. The wounded are being killed instead of tended to, those likeliest to live taken off to trial and execution. No Jacobite Highlander is going home alive from this.”

  Mary stared at him. “But he can’t. They surrendered. The war is over, and Prince Charles is gone. They should be left in peace.”

  Ellis shook his head. “Not this time. The fear is that the clans will try to rise again—they did a good job of it this time, until the end. Cumberland wants to crush the rebels once and for all.”

  Mary couldn’t answer. Ellis was saying that even if Malcolm had managed to elude death, he’d be pursued, cut down or arrested, taken to London, hanged. Her breath wouldn’t come, and blackness danced before her eyes.

  Captain Ellis caught her as she collapsed. She found herself seated on a couch, the captain’s steadying hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Mary. So sorry.”

  Still the tears would not come. “You believe they’re dead, then.”

  Ellis slid a paper from his pocket. “Culloden’s men are making lists of those dead or taken prisoner as they go through the field. I was able to get a partial one.” He unfolded the paper and held it out to her.

  Mary didn’t want to look at it. As on the battlefield, she thought that if she didn’t see, the worst would not have happened. She’d go home and believe Malcolm alive, somewhere out in the world, the brollachan causing trouble wherever he went.

  But she had to know. Mary had told Malcolm she was resilient, stronger than he realized. She could not go through life wondering, waiting for him, always uncertain.

  She took the paper from Captain Ellis. It was a list of names, a long list, so many Mackenzies. She’d heard that much of the extended clan had perished at Dunrobin Castle, but the number at Culloden looked large to her eyes.

  They’d been listed in alphabetical order:

  Mackenzie, Alec William

  Mackenzie, Daniel Duncannon

  Mackenzie, Daniel William (Duke of Kilmorgan)

  Farther down the list was:

  Mackenzie, Malcolm Daniel

  And finally, near the bottom:

  Mackenzie, William Ferdinand

  Mary pressed the paper to her face, and closed her eyes.

  Mary took Duncan’s body back to Kilmorgan. Captain Ellis obtained leave to go with her, and she fetched Ewan from Inverness along the way. She and the Kilmorgan servants gathered to lay Duncan in the family tomb next to his mother and brothers.

  Captain Ellis had never found the bodies of the others, though he’d diligently searched. They’d likely already been buried, he’d been told, in a grave with so many others.

  Mary asked the stonecutter from the village, who’d come to carve Angus’s name beneath Magnus Hart Mackenzie to add the others, in order of birth.

  She waited, watching, while he carved out the name Malcolm Daniel Mackenzie.

  Mary traced the letters, her fingers memorizing the feel of the words. She heard the whisper of his voice in the soft Highland wind—

  Nothing will ever keep me from you. Not Death himself. I promise ye that.

  Mary left Kilmorgan the next morning, and went home to Lincolnshire.

  Malcolm slipped through the mists and the shadows, running, crawling, flattening himself against the ground.

  He’d survived the battlefield by a piece of damned, bloody luck. When Mal had come to, surprised he wasn’t dead, he’d been underneath an Englishman, the bayonet that had killed the man digging into the ground half an inch from Malcolm’s ribs.

  Rain had been falling in the darkness, mists swirling around him like ghosts. He’d heard voices, Cumberland’s soldiers wandering the field, looking for survivors. Mal had heard the occasional crack of a pistol or laughter, and English voices. That slid right into him like a knife through butter. Skewered with his own claymore. Nice blade. Will take it home to show the wife.

  Mal had lain motionless, one of the dead, until there was relative quiet around him. And then, inch by inch, he’d crawled, the dead Englishman still on top of him, out through the dark, the way slow and perilous.

  He’d wormed himself along through black mud, dizzy from the blow that had knocked him cold, muck seeping into his mouth and nose. He halted when anyone neared, fearing they’d lift the English soldier off him and shoot Mal through the head just to make sure he was dead.

  At the edge of the field, he’d found trees. Once under their cover, he’d quietly rolled the English soldier over, undressed him, and stolen his clothes, pistol, bullets, dagger, and few coins in his pocket. Then he’d laid the man out for his fellows to find, and slipped into the darkness.

  Mal refused to let himself think. His brothers and father were gone, perhaps all dead. It was over.

  Mal’s only thought, the driving force in his world, was that he needed to get to Mary. She was safe at Kilmorgan, but she wouldn’t be for long. Cumberland’s men were spreading out, searching the Highlands, killing anything in plaid. She was in dan
ger—as was everyone on Kilmorgan lands. He’d make his way home and run with Mary to France.

  Everything Mal had tried to avoid this past year—everything he’d vowed he’d not let happen—had happened. He’d become a traitor to the crown, and his only destination, if Mal remained in Scotland, was the end of a rope.

  He was already a long way from Culloden when he watched from the shelter of a copse three Highland men be surrounded by soldiers and bayoneted. They died bravely, did those lads, but they died.

  Malcolm played the brollachan again that night, burning a wagonload of supplies, but not before stealing some food and brandy. The commander’s tent went up in flames; the horses broke free and ran. One lieutenant came tearing out of the woods where he’d been helping himself to a young woman, his trousers halfway down his thighs. He gibbered about strange lights in the woods and a wild animal that had attacked him. As he spoke, more tents caught fire, and the lieutenant screamed.

  You’ll like this story, Mary, Mal thought, as he took the young woman to the safety of her family.

  He reached Kilmorgan after many days of erratic travel, mostly at night, slowed by rain, cold, and dense darkness. Mal went a long way west, around the firths, to come at Kilmorgan from the north. The English were searching into the west and the islands, since Charles Stuart was rumored to have escaped that way. Mal wouldn’t chance seeking out help from Rabbie or Calan Macdonald, knowing that he’d only endanger those men, whom Mal hoped had wisely fled.

  He came to Kilmorgan on a blustery day. Mal didn’t approach the house that was the distillery directly—he hid and watched to see if soldiers had come to arrest him. He saw no sign of uniforms, but carts stood in the courtyard outside the distillery, waiting to take things and people away. Good.

  Mal left his shelter and made his way silently down the hill, slipping into the house without announcing himself.

  Ewan saw him first. Malcolm had started up the stairs just as the lad ran out of the kitchens with a bag of something bulky.

  Ewan let out a shriek. He dropped the bag, which proved to be full of oats. Malcolm caught it before it fell to the floor, then Ewan launched himself at Malcolm.

  “Me lord, me lord, we thought you was dead!”

  The retainers rushed out to see what Ewan was yelling about. There were shouts, cries, and hearty relief. “Lord Malcolm. Ye’ve come!” “Aye, I thought you were a ghost.” “What happened to ye, lad? We’ve gone and buried ye!”

  Malcolm waved them all quiet and pried Ewan’s clinging arms from around him. “Where’s Mary?”

  Everyone talked at once until Malcolm held up his hands again. “Stop it! Ye’re makin’ me ears ache. Ewan—where is me wife?”

  “Gone, sir.” Ewan swallowed, his young face serious. “She put up a stone to ye and your dad and brothers, then she went home to England.”

  Wise of her. If Mary thought Malcolm dead, if she understood what was happening in the Highlands, she’d go to ground in the safest place she knew. Her father would take care of her, would not let one hair on her head be harmed.

  On the other hand, it was unlike Mary to leave people in trouble. She was very loyal, and she’d come to be fond of Ewan, Jinty, and the others. So why had she left the duke’s retainers here, believing no one was alive to come home for them? She might have reasoned that they’d find safety deeper in the Highlands on their own . . . or Mary had returned to England to preserve someone more than only herself.

  The thought took hold of Malcolm, and would not leave him.

  “You lot, clear out,” Mal said to the others. “Take anything ye need from this place—it’s yours. Ye’ve worked for it. But scatter. Burn your plaids and go anywhere far from here. They’re calling him Butcher Cumberland for a reason.”

  Jubilation waned, faces paled, and they gave him nods. Malcolm left them to it, but took Ewan aside.

  “You, lad, I have a commission for ye.”

  Chapter 37

  When Mary rode up the drive of Stokesay Court, the ancestral home of the Earls of Wilfort, she had a feeling of unreality.

  She’d left here a young lady of not much experience, in a velvet-lined carriage, cocooned against the world. She’d thought herself wise and practical, saving romance for her younger, prettier sister. Mary returned on horseback, wrapped in a man’s black cloak, escorted by a dragoon captain who, ten months ago, would have been considered far beneath her station.

  She’d been abducted, rescued, married, drawn into a family of obsessive and passionate men, and had fallen in love as she’d never believed she could. Mary loved Malcolm with all her heart and now she grieved with that same intensity.

  Stokesay Court, a square, tall, Palladian-style house was elegant, austere, and tidy, the exact opposite of Kilmorgan. Kilmorgan had been an ancient jumble, new piled on top of old, made cozy by its inhabitants. The Earl of Wilfort’s house was cold, regular, and constrained, and now Mary wondered that she had ever found it beautiful.

  At the same time, her heart beat hard in relief. She was home. She’d grown up here, played here, learned here, loved her family. This house was her refuge from a world that had turned cruel, and now it was where she needed to keep herself safe.

  But whether Mary would be welcome she did not know. She hadn’t been able to send a letter to her father since the missive she’d written him in December, and he’d never replied.

  Captain Ellis rode ahead of her. He was a strong man, kind beneath his hard exterior. Mary knew he was in love with her. At any other time, she might learn to return that love, but at the moment, with every breath a reminder of Malcolm, Mary wasn’t certain she could ever love again.

  The first person out the front door, which swung open as they approached, was Whitman, Mary’s maid. The thin, middle-aged lady, always so severe, burst into tears when she saw Mary, and ran at her.

  Captain Ellis swung down from his horse and lifted Mary from her saddle. Whitman reached Mary and flung her arms around her, weeping unashamedly.

  “My lady, my lady . . . Oh, my sweet, dear girl, it is you! You’ve come back to me.”

  Mary hugged Whitman’s familiar form, closing her eyes. In all this time, in her entire journey from Kilmorgan, she hadn’t been able to cry. She didn’t cry now. She laughed shakily at Whitman, who drew out a large handkerchief and blew her nose with a trumpeting sound.

  “Come inside,” Whitman said, tucking the handkerchief away. She seized Mary’s hand and pulled her across the threshold. “You’re father’s here, and your aunt.”

  Captain Ellis remained behind, speaking quietly to the groom, who’d come rushing around the house to them. Every stable hand had joined him, it seemed. More of the staff filled the front hall, some openly weeping, most smiling, all of them turned out to see Lady Mary come home.

  Aunt Danae, who never moved quicker than a stately walk, charged down the stairs, her shrieks ringing through the house. She ran straight to Mary, not stopping until she had Mary in her arms. “Mary, my lovely Mary.”

  Sobbing, Aunt Danae clung to her niece, holding her in a breathless embrace. Mary laid her head on the shoulder where she’d sought comfort since childhood.

  Aunt Danae finally lifted away and seized Mary’s hands, pressing through her gloves. “My dearest girl, we feared that you perished with the rest of them. Or been taken to some prison. Your father has been asking and asking about you . . . Oh, my dear, you are so changed.” Aunt Danae looked Mary up and down, taking in her stained plaid skirt, linen shirt, soft boots, and the cloak Captain Ellis had lent her.

  Ellis came in behind her, and Mary turned. “Aunt Danae, this is Captain Ellis. He has been a good friend to me.”

  “Yes.” Aunt Danae sniffled, wiped tears from her eyes, and approached the captain. “My brother told me about you—a fellow prisoner. I am so grateful to you for all you’ve done for him, and for Mary.”

  Captain Ellis made a short, uncomfortable bow. “My lady.” He was a man who didn’t like formality, ostentation, o
r too much gratitude thrown his way. “I do my duty.”

  What he’d done for Mary had gone far beyond duty, however, and the blasted man knew it. “Great heavens,” she said in a tired voice. “You are far too modest, Captain.”

  Ellis didn’t like Mary’s gratitude either. He wanted more than that, she knew, and Mary also knew she could not give it to him.

  Captain Ellis looked relieved when Aunt Danae took Mary’s hands again. “Your father is upstairs. Go to him. He’ll be waiting.”

  The earl hadn’t appeared, not even to see what the noise was about. But he’d know. Wilfort always knew everything that happened in his house. He was not the sort of man, though, who’d come flying down the stairs in joy, as Aunt Danae had. Dignity always came first with Lord Wilfort.

  And perhaps, Mary thought, he will not welcome me back at all.

  That idea, which would have upset her at any other point in her life, barely penetrated the cloak of sorrow that now surrounded her.

  Mary gave her aunt a thin smile. “Please do not tell me Lord Halsey is with him.”

  Aunt Danae looked surprised. “Halsey? No indeed. Your father and he had a great falling-out, thank heavens. I never liked the man. Halsey has married, you know—or perhaps you didn’t. Olivia DeWitt. Poor creature.”

  Mary’s mouth popped open. “Married? Gracious, he certainly didn’t waste any time.”

  “He did not. He transferred his affections so quickly your father believes he was holding her in contingency all this while. But then, Olivia’s dowry is some twenty thousand pounds, even if her father is only a viscount.”

  The relief to never have to worry about Lord Halsey again stretched one finger of warmth through Mary’s coldness.

  She left Captain Ellis in Aunt Danae’s care and walked sedately up the stairs, making for her father’s study.

  Mary had entered through the doors at the top of the stairs many times—eagerly as a child when privileged to come here and visit with her father, in trepidation as a youth when he called her in to scold her, and with pride when she was finally accepted into the room as an adult. Now Mary wondered what reception she’d find behind the white-paneled, gilt-trimmed double doors.