“And I shall stay here,” Mama finished. “And pray that all this is only a tempest in an impulsive teapot, and His Grace will return here, chagrinned to find you all gone in search of him.”
“Thank you, Mama.” Greer pressed a fervent kiss to her mother’s cheek. “We can only hope you are right.” But she feared not. She knew not—her chest was a fisted knot of dread.
Ten minutes, and a short stop in Dalshee’s gunroom to equip the party for all eventualities, and Alasdair, Quince and Greer were climbing the moor for Glas Maol, from which she hoped to scan the glens.
Two hours of pushing their mounts hard up the hills brought them to the rocky ridge, from which they could survey the bothy in the upland glen and see across to a larger portion of Crieff’s moorland. The bothy was still dark and empty, and Greer could discern no movement save the occasional sheep grazing in the lowland pastures.
“Anything?” Alasdair asked from behind his own glass.
“Nothing.” Greer didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried—both Ewan and Dewar could be hiding in a thousand and twelve places they would never find. The distances were too far, the estates too vast to comb carefully. All she had to direct her was her intuition. “Best push on toward Crieff.”
They did so apace, easing their mounts as quickly as they dared on the downhills, winding across the ridges, glens and brae side, until Alasdair called a halt. “Back there. Down the hill. Did you see that?”
Greer followed the line of his arm, scanning the forest edge where the fringe of trees cut across the moor until a flash of movement—the stony white of a pony’s hide—caught her eye. And there, leading a pony with a body trussed over the saddle was the old moorkeeper, striding stoically for Crieff.
“Dewar!” Her cry carried down the glen, eventually reaching the moorkeeper, who stopped and waited the long minutes for their approach.
It seemed forever for Nicnevin to pick her way down the steep brae until Greer was close enough to ask. “Who is it? Is it Ewan? What happened?”
“Dinna fash, mileddy.” He turned the pony to show the trussed man’s head. “It be the mon Gow, mistress.”
“Gow?” Relief made her too giddy to recognize at the fellow. “What went on?”
Dewar touched his cap as Alasdair and Quince made rein beside her. “Milord and Leddy. Yer mon bid me take ’im up the glens, but he were naught but cutty-eyed the whole trip. I reckoned he were up tae no good, an’ meant tae kill me, same as he tried tae kill our lad.”
“Gow?” Alasdair asked. “Not Malcolm Cameron.”
“One or t’other, makes all the same—one tae gie th’ order an’ t’other tae make it so. Thick as thieves, them twa.”
The satisfaction of having her feelings confirmed made her imprudent. “I never did like him.”
“Reckon the feelin’s mutual, mistress, wi’im likely the one as shot at yer father, the earl, an’ ye up the glen. Right comfortable with ’is guns, was our Gow.” Dewar held out an ancient but very well-kept rifle cradled alongside his own smaller fowling gun.
“That’s a Ferguson breech loading rifle of the last war,” Alasdair claimed. “Ewan said he thought this Gow was a solider.”
“Aye, milord,” Dewar agreed. “Stands tae reason. A good shot, but no hill craft tae speak of—caught ’im in a man-trap. T’weren’t much of a job tae steer ’im right intae the snare. He’s a fair shot wi’ a rifle, I’d reckon, but he’s no’ a man o’ the moor to ken where tae put ’is feet.”
“Is he dead?”
“Nay. Savin’ ’im for the hangman, as it should be, mistress. Though, ’ee’ll have hisself the devil o’ a loupin’ head when he wakes up.” Dewar gave her a craggy wink. “I may have skelped ’im good wi’ the butt of me rifle while ’ee was danglin’ there in me snare.”
Greer’s relief at having one of their miscreants accounted for was only temporary. “What about Ewan? Have you seen him?”
Dewar shook his head, all grumpy annoyance. “I’ve no’ seen him these two days now, mistress. Told ’im no’ tae go haring off to one place or another, but tae keep tae himself ‘till he remembered who it was tried to kill ’im.”
“Perhaps he has.” She could only hope Ewan had enough craft not to go walking into a snare unawares. “I fear he’s gone for Crieff. I feel it in my bones.”
And the feeling was that something had gone very wrong indeed.
Over the ancient oak door of the keep were the words inscribed in the stone by a mason in medieval ages past—Cuidam toleranda est. One must endure—the motto of Crieff.
If Ewan had wanted a signpost from a helpful God, this would have sufficed. Because that was what he had done—he had endured. And he would endure longer still to make himself worthy of Crieff, and of her, his lass, his Greer.
A shining face—perhaps a clock dial, gold and gleaming—swam across his brain, but he pushed it aside, and concentrated upon the reality before him. He urged Cat Sìth up the paved steps of the keep, letting his mount’s big hooves clatter like drum beats on the stones until he was directly in front of the door.
“À Crieff,’ he bellowed against the high stone walls that echoed his name and passed it back through the ancient courtyards, guard towers and turrets. “À Crieff,” he boomed again until he was sure every window pane rattled and every person that belonged to the house had heard.
Crieff was back, and he wanted his house. His home.
They poured out of the building, throwing back the massive oak portal of the front door, pouring out of lesser entryways, throwing up windows, and running down the drive from the stables.
He waited atop his horse, like some medieval crusader come back after years and years away as they gathered around him, waiting for their own sign that he was not in fact a ghost, but a real flesh and blood man, returned to them from the dead.
“Your Grace,” MacIntosh looked thinner and more severe than ever, as he made his careful, measured way through the throng. “Welcome back, Your Grace. I trust you had a good journey?”
As if he had only been out for a morning ride around the loch, and not hauling himself out of the Shee and fighting for his life for the better part of the last month. Trust MacIntosh to be as true as a tall fir, bending to the wind but never relenting his grip upon the solid earth.
“A long journey, MacIntosh. A very long journey.” Ewan dismounted and took his steward’s hand in an overlong clasp. “It is good to be back. And to see everyone.” He acknowledged the thinned rank of servants he knew better than his own face. “But where is my cousin?”
“I am here.” The way parted to reveal Malcolm standing in the wide doorway. “Welcome, cousin. Welcome home so you may begin your recuperation. I’ve sent for a doctor—a specialist from Edinburgh to help you regain your faculties, but for now, come home and let Crieff rejoice in your rebirth, as it were.”
There was something too pat, too rehearsed, in his cousin’s otherwise fine manners—something of the underhanded child who had delighted in besting his younger, but already taller, cousin. Something that Ewan didn’t like and felt sure he shouldn’t trust.
It was doubt—doubt that made the smiles and looks of wonder ebb from the faces of Crieff’s people like the retreating tide, washing all comfort away. The doubt that he was capable of being Crieff.
He hated it—however true it might have been.
Ewan met his cousin’s eye, and prickles flashed across his palms and up the back of his neck in warning—pride rearing its stubborn head. But his pride was all he had left of his own. “I am Crieff. And I am here to stay.”
He would be Crieff, whether he was worthy or not. He would make himself worthy.
“Of course.” Malcolm smile was easy and bright. “As long as you are able, and your mind holds.
“Aye.” His changeable mind did need to hold. But he could see that he also needed to hold the line with his cousin, who was as insinuating as he was openly amiable.
“So remarkable, your return. It’
s as if you’ve come back over some otherworldly bridge to us.”
The memory slid into Ewan’s head like a granite curling rock, heavy and substantial, and polished to a shine—Malcolm waiting for him on the bridge. “We met.”
“Yes, of course.” His cousin was all familial agreement. “Many times. We are cousins, of course.”
“Nay. On the road home from Edinburgh. At the bridge over the Shee Water.”
“What?” Malcolm’s smile never faltered, though he shook his head and creased his brow into a bewildered frown as if Ewan had taken leave of his senses. “No. You must be mistaken. Although I understand you had a grievous injury to your head. Your brain has no doubt been disordered.”
Had he told Malcolm what happened—that he indeed had a grievous injury to his head? Or only that he did not remember what had happened?
“You are mistaken,” Malcolm repeated, surer now. “I went to Edinburgh to meet with you there, but you never came. I went to your house, where we were to meet, but your people said you had gone missing.”
Nay. The image in Ewan’s head grew stronger, and more clear. “Your man was there, too.” The pale face of the man standing as still as a stone behind Malcolm came into focus, stark against the vivid green of the trees. “Gow. And not in Edinburgh.”
“Gracious, cousin. Such fanciful ideas you’ve dreamt up.” Malcolm smiled at Ewan before he turned to the steward. “That’s enough theater for the day, don’t you think? MacIntosh, return the people to their work.”
“Aye, Mr. Cameron.” The steward was exact in his obeisance. “With your permission, Your Grace?”
Ewan was hesitant to let his people disperse. They were his people, and he felt the need of them. Just as he was loath to let Cat Sìth go, too. He wanted to be on his back again, in control again. “Enough havering. You haven’t answered my question, Malcolm.”
“Enough posturing.” Malcolm turned for the door. “Let us go inside and discuss this like gentlemen.”
Those had been his exact words that day—let us discuss this like gentlemen.
“You asked me for money.”
“Entirely fanciful. Must have been quite a hit you took.”
Ewan was sure now that he had not said anything about being hit. “It was, cousin. But you know that.”
But Malcolm walked on, so Ewan had no choice but to follow. But he had learned the lessons of his childhood. “MacIntosh, stay with me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of letting ye out of me sight this day, Your Grace.”
Ewan followed the sounds of Malcolm’s progress through the house to the grand, mahogany paneled library with its shelves upon shelves, and balcony with more shelves upon shelves ringing the second story. Malcolm seated himself behind the massive desk in the center of the room. As if he owned the whole of the place. As if the keep of Castle Crieff were his.
Pride gripped Ewan’s throat like a fist. That was his grandfather’s desk.
His desk.
“Get up.” He didn’t give Malcolm time to settle into the seat before he was on him, catching him up by the lapels—and devil take him if the suit wasn’t familiar—and bodily tossing him from the chair. “You’re even wearing my clothes.”
Malcolm scrambled for purchase, flinging his hand toward an open drawer, but Ewan had had more than enough. He had endured all he was going to take from his cousin and yanked him away.
Ewan kicked the chair out of the way, as well. “Let us stand face to face, like gentlemen, Malcolm. Isn’t that what you said to me that day?”
His cousin’s face, so very much like his own in form, went taut with understanding. “You said you didn’t remember.”
“I do now.” The memory was stark. The two of them, face to face on the bridge, with Gow taking the reins and idling off to the side, just out of Ewan’s vision. But he had been there, too. Ewan was sure of it. “I told you I couldn’t finance you forever. Grandfather told you the same. He begged you to take up a profession—he paid for you to study the law and that came to nothing.”
“I’m not a clerk,” Malcolm spat.
“Those were your exact words that day, as well.”
Malcolm dismounting his horse, and saying, “Can’t we talk about this like gentlemen? Or must you loom over me like some bloody tyrant?”
“I am no tyrant,” Ewan had answered. “But this morning I find myself out of charity with you and your constantly empty pockets.”
“You must help me,” Malcolm had pled.
“Must?” Ewan had answered. “I have already. Numerous times. Too numerous to count.”
“Then what does one more time matter?”
Why had it mattered? Why would he not pay his cousin’s debts out of family duty, if nothing else? Or had he been thinking of the future, and the family he wanted to have—the new life he was about to start with Greer—and known that Malcolm’s claims would only grow larger and more outrageous with time?
He looked at his cousin now, tight-lipped and taut with some suppressed emotion. “You said, ‘You can’t mean to refuse me.’”
“But you did.”
“Aye. I did. There was nothing more I could say to you. The time for kind words and good advice had already passed, as neither had been heeded.”
“So bloody self-righteous.”
“I am Crieff, Malcolm—it is my job to be righteous. Grandfather was as generous with you as he had been with me—we had the same allowances for years. You could have studied, could have taken up a profession, but you chose not to. You chose to spend rather than save and spend more than you had.”
“Bloody prig.”
Ewan didn’t even bother to retort. He turned away, and gathered his reins to prepare to mount, and—
Nay, that was memory—pain, sharp and concussive echoing from his head down through his body and pitching him forward into the horse. He had groped for the saddle leather to keep his balance even as the edges of his vision closed in.
“You hit me.” Another pain had erupted from his shoulder where a second blow landed. He had staggered sideways and went down hard on his left shoulder.
Ewan had to put out his hand to steady himself against the solid weight of the library desk.
“Again,” he had heard over the screaming ache that ate him whole.
More pain, sharper, harder, more jagged, clawed at his temple.
A rock. Someone had hit him with a rock. From behind. Not Malcolm. Gow.
Ewan gripped the edge of the desk and tried to focus his gaze on Malcolm, who was moving away from him toward the doors. Getting away. Nay—closing and locking the doors. Locking them in.
“Is he dead?” That had been Malcolm’s voice, high and tight with panic.
“Not yet.” Gow, quiet and terse.
“Jesus look at the blood.” Malcolm again, nearby.
They had stood over him, talking about him, while he bled. While he was so badly hurt.
“What if someone sees?” Malcolm’s voice had hissed in desperation. “Get him off the road. There.”
Hands had closed around his ankles like shackles to drag him away. He tried to struggle, to move. But he could not. Instead the pain had eaten him whole, chewing him up and spitting him out like a monster from a child’s storybook—agony pierced his skull like teeth.
They were dragging him across the rutted rocky road, when Malcolm said, “Wait.”
They had left him for a moment, and the agony subsided to a roaring ache. He had tried to breathe—to take in air, to push out the pain rattling through him like a runaway carriage. Tried to order his thoughts to push out the panic that crawled up his throat.
Hands had grabbed and turned him, pulling and tugging. They were going to help him now, he had thought. Surely his cousin would not let him die?
“Not much money.” Gow’s voice, measured and low. “But the gold’s worth something.”
“Do you mean his ring?” Malcolm had asked, his voice hushed and nearly aghast at what they were contemplating t
o do.
“Can’t be the duke if he doesn’t have the ring. And it’ll make it hard to identify the body.”
A gasping silence followed, and that was when Ewan knew they meant to kill him—they were killing him. They, his cousin and his servant, were the ones who had caused this pain, this endless agony.
There was a terrible pause—a hellish wait to find his fate.
“Take it.” Malcolm’s voice, cold with death.
Ewan had fought to open his eyes. Struggled to focus on the shapes of the men looming above, as they grappled to take the ring from his finger.
His hand had dropped to the ground, empty, and throbbing.
“Now what?”
The sharp snick of a dirk being unsheathed from Gow’s boot was his answer. Ewan saw it, level with his half-opened eyes as he tried to think. “If he’s not dead yet.” Gow’s voice was full of casual malice. “He will be soon.”
Ewan tried to fight, tried to command his arms and legs to his bidding, but the pain ate him up again, filling his mouth with bile and his brain with agony.
No, he wanted to shout. No. I don’t want to die. I can’t—there’s a lass I love—
But the words couldn’t come out. They were swallowed whole by the gaping maw of pain as he pushed himself away from the blade. His back had come up hard against the stone wall at the edge of the bridge, stopping his flight.
There were only two choices—the blade or the bridge.
And he chose, shoving his legs under him, and tipping himself backward over the edge. And he was cartwheeling through the air until the sky hit him and turned dark. Liquid blackness sucked him down, down, down. There was nothing he could do but die.
Lady Greer Douglas
The Inn of the Three Sails
The Hague
1 August, 1792
Dearest, kindest, most beloved Greer,
I received your last from the Low Countries on Tuesday, and while very pleased to have your thorough and very useful reports of the canal systems, as well as the latest dairying practices of the Dutch, I profess myself most glad of the intelligence that you plan on returning home. The news from France has given me some anxiety for your safety, and I will be pleased to have you away from the Continent, and safe back upon these shores.
MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS TO MARRY (The Highland Brides Book 4) Page 31