Highland Crown

by May McGoldrick

“Where do you hurt? By the devil, there’s blood enough.” He tilted her neck to the side, wiping away the warm wetness from her skin.

  His face was drawn, but he was undeterred in his search.

  Weak and wracked with fever as he was, he’d still managed to present a bold and clearheaded front when facing Hudson and his men. And now, he was fraught with worry that she’d been shot.

  Isabella snapped herself out of her stupor when his fingers tried to open the buttons of her dress to find the source of the blood. She’d never been struck with a bullet before, but she had enough experience with the injury to know that somewhere in her body, she’d be feeling a hot and aching pain.

  “I’m not hurt. I’m fine. This has to be your blood.” She pushed his hand away and pressed on his shoulder, urging him to lie back so she could find any new injury he’d suffered. Her first thought was that the wound in his chest had opened up anew.

  The cart jostled them as it bumped over the road.

  “If ye two’re done pawing each other back there,” Jean called over her shoulder, “I’d like to know which of ye is dying. And unless ye say otherwise, this nag is taking us to Inverness.”

  “Searc Mackintosh. Maggot Green.” Cinaed’s head dropped back, but another bump made him groan.

  He couldn’t afford to lose more blood, but it was indeed everywhere. On her clothes, on his, on her hands. It was truly a miracle he was still alive. But for how long?

  She realized why he’d used only one hand to find where he thought she’d been shot. Her heart sank. Davidson’s bullet had found its mark, striking Cinaed in the arm.

  Isabella dove inside her bag before remembering she’d intended to use her scalpel for other purposes. Taking it from the folds of her dress, she sliced open the sleeve of his shirt and inspected the new wound.

  The motion of the cart and the muscles of his arm made it nearly impossible to tell if the bullet had struck the bone. It wasn’t shattered, at least, and she could see where the ball had exited, but she feared a piece of the bullet or a splinter of bone might still be lodged in there. She couldn’t do anything about it here, however.

  “You take off my arm, and I’ll never save you again.” He was watching her and, for the moment, appeared to be lucid.

  His concern was hardly unfounded. In wartime, surgeons were quick to amputate a limb if a bone was shattered or a bullet or shrapnel remained embedded in the flesh. Of course, they rarely received a patient immediately after an injury was sustained. And the delays were deadly. She’d seen it herself in Wurzburg during the war against the French. By the time soldiers reached the surgeon’s table, too often the wounds had already begun to fester. Untreated, the deaths were unspeakably painful. Taking off the limb could preserve a life, crippling though it might be.

  But she would do everything humanly possible to save Cinaed from either of those fates.

  She tried to reach into her bag for a cloth to cover and bind his arm, but he caught her hand. When he entwined their fingers, her heart swelled unexpectedly, and a knot formed in her throat.

  What was happening to her? For her entire adult life, she’d been a woman of reason. She prided herself on her detached, clear-thinking approach to each patient. But this man had done so much for her. His life, his well-being mattered to her. He mattered. Even as she was assessing the body temperature, the firmness of the grip, the complexion of the skin, she was not only worrying about her patient, she was worried about him. She prayed that caring for him as a man wouldn’t weaken her judgment as a doctor.

  He flinched as the cart rolled over a rut and then expelled a deep breath. “I understand you. I want you to understand me.” The whisper was pained. “You trusted me. And I trust you. So I’m telling you now, my arm stays.”

  “I understand.”

  As he held her hand, the impact of everything they’d gone through rained down on her. It was like hail in a summer storm, pelting her and leaving her with a confused mix of pain and awe. She tried to blink back unexpected tears, tasting their saltiness in the back of her throat. The shield she’d always been able to erect was gone. She no longer stood apart as an observer and healer. The battle was no longer surrounding her; it was inside of her.

  She freed her hand and found the strip of cloth she was searching for. Binding his arm tightly, she hoped the pressure was enough to slow the bleeding.

  “How does the arm look?”

  She could give him a diagnosis based on her medical training. But when one considered the fever, the wound in his chest, and the physical dangers they were not yet free of, he had far more to worry about than just his arm.

  Isabella had to say something, however. She took out another cloth and wrapped it even tighter. “I don’t know how you’re continuing to manage. One minute you’re barely conscious, the next you’re ready to fight a dozen men. Based on what I know of you, I’d say you should be able to fight again by the time we reach your kinsman’s house.”

  He caught her wrist. His strength was waning, but he had something he wanted to say. She brought her face close to his.

  “Searc will be no friend to you. You cannot trust him. He’ll sell you to either side if he thinks he can line his pocket.”

  “Why are we going there, then?”

  “He’s a Mackintosh. And he’s been true to me in the past. I trust him now to honor and protect what is mine.”

  Her mind raced. Isabella would need to find a different shelter for herself. They would take Cinaed to the man’s house in Maggot Green and she would go.

  At the inn, her reluctance to let him leave had taken her by surprise. She’d made a mistake then. Rather than consider all that could go wrong, she’d acted on what she hoped would happen. She’d wanted to trust the innkeeper. She’d wanted to believe that John would return to the inn. She’d wanted to believe the girls were safe. And she’d blindly walked into a trap.

  Cinaed had not trusted in hopes. He’d stayed and put himself in a deadly position to help her. How could she not care for this man?

  She touched his wounded arm and saw the blood already soaking through the binding. She would think as a physician and as a woman, for she was both of those things.

  “Your kin Searc will need to find a doctor for you immediately. Someone must tend to your arm and—”

  “You’ll do it. You’re staying with me when we get there.”

  A feeling of happiness billowed up within her. He wanted her with him. But there was still a problem. She had no doubts about her ability as a doctor, but she was a horrible liar.

  “Tell him we’re husband and wife.” He took her hand again, his eyes drifting shut. “Searc will protect you if he thinks you’re mine.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The way was long, the wind was cold,

  The Minstrel was infirm and old;

  His withered cheek, and tresses gray,

  Seemed to have known a better day.

  —Sir Walter Scott, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”

  The summer sun barely set in the Highlands, and Isabella had no idea what time it was until the church bells of the ancient port city tolled the hour. It was after six o’clock when the cart reached the muddy banks of the River Ness.

  A fine stone bridge of seven arches spanned the water, but only a single row of buildings lined the far bank. Open fields, farms, and pastureland dominated the landscape beyond. For the most part, the city lay on this side of the river, and the thoroughfares were bustling with workers on foot and late-day vendors hawking their wares. The people in the street barely spared them a glance.

  Isabella was relieved that Cinaed was asleep, fitful as his rest appeared. Touching his brow, she knew his fever was soaring dangerously high. And each bump on the road made him groan in pain, sharp reminders to her of the injuries that needed to be tended. She’d spread her cloak over him to avoid attention as they passed through the city. Without it, he looked like a wounded soldier returning from the war. The abuse his body had undergone matche
d any battlefield injury. As for her own blood-spattered dress, she sat beside him with her travel bag on her lap to hide the worst of it.

  Jean stopped the cart and queried a pair of women carrying wash baskets about directions to Maggot Green. After receiving curious looks from them, one pointed toward a second bridge of blackened timber downriver. Thankfully, they hadn’t far to go.

  Cinaed freed an arm from beneath the cloak and tried to push the covering away. She couldn’t understand his mumbled words. Isabella imagined his dreams had turned to nightmares, and she reached for him. His hand closed around hers, and she stared at the contrast between his strong callused fingers and her own pale ones. A sprinkle of dark hair spread across sun-browned skin. She peered into his handsome face. His labored breathing deepened her worry. She hated the feeling of helplessness but told herself there was nothing she could do until they arrived at their destination.

  “Look ahead, mistress,” Jean said over her shoulder. “I’m thinking these are some places ye’d be loath to pay yer social calls. Maybe never seen alleys quite like these.”

  They were approaching Maggot Green, and though Isabella had seen neighborhoods nearly as bad as these in Edinburgh, she understood Jean’s words. And she now grasped the meaning behind the washerwomen’s looks.

  The twisting lanes grew narrower and muddier, and the stench from the river grew stronger. It seemed as though half the buildings were deserted. Many of them had collapsed, and their crumbling walls had fallen into the lanes. Cottages and houses that offered any shelter at all were crowded with poor folk, who stood in the doorways and the alleys and watched them suspiciously as they passed.

  “What happened here?” Isabella wondered out loud as Jean negotiated the cart around a pile of rubble.

  “The earthquake two years back,” the older woman told her. “Never felt anything like it. It was like yer insides were all aquivering. It was worse here than at Duff Head, they say. The steeple of the High Church back there twisted and nearly fell in.”

  Larger buildings of red stone crowded the banks of the river. They also seemed empty, even those that appeared intact. Of course, there was no telling who might be living in them.

  Jean noticed where she was looking. “Some of them’s warehouses. Some, auld malt houses.” She gestured downriver. “The port is moving toward the firth. When they open the canal, if they ever do, all this’ll be left to rot.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “My husband came to Inverness to sell his fish.” The older woman’s lips thinned. “Back in the day, that is.”

  Jean looked away, and Isabella saw her bat away a tear. The two of them, she thought, had been thrown together for a reason. They sat quietly for a few moments, and then she broke the silence.

  “What will happen to the poor who are living here? When they open the canal, I mean.”

  “From what I’ve seen in my life, no one cares much about the poor.” Jean shrugged. “I don’t know why it’ll be any different then.”

  When no one cared about them, people were forced to take control of their own future. If there was one thing Isabella had learned since coming back to Scotland, it was that people would only stomach so much suffering.

  Not too long ago, forty thousand Scots made their voices heard at a meeting on Glasgow Green to end the Corn Laws that kept the grain prices high and to demand a more representative government. A week of rioting rocked Paisley. Protest meetings stirred the hearts of folk in Ayrshire, Fife, Stirling, Airdrie, Renfrewshire, and Magdalen Green in Dundee. The riots in Glasgow and Edinburgh this past April. She knew every name Cinaed had mentioned, but she couldn’t admit it to him then.

  The aristocracy feared the kind of revolutionary turmoil that had been seen in France and Ireland could take place in Britain. But they did nothing to help people or give them a voice in Parliament. Instead, they passed laws that made public gatherings criminal and speaking out in protest sedition. South of the border last August, sixty thousand people had been peacefully protesting in Manchester when government forces attacked, killing and injuring hundreds of innocent citizens. The newspaper called it the “Peterloo Massacre” in spite of the authorities’ efforts to suppress information about the event.

  The hypocrisy of the elite and the repressive efforts of those in power were only stoking the fires they sought to extinguish.

  Isabella took a deep breath and tried to calm the rush of temper heating her veins. For all these years, she’d told herself she wasn’t listening. She wasn’t interested in politics. Reformers and radicals had a job to do, and she had a job to do, and a solid line existed between them. She’d worked hard not to cross it. But sometime during these recent weeks, the line had been erased.

  “Maggot Green, mistress,” Jean announced, breaking into her thoughts. “Though it looks to be more maggot than green.”

  She was right. Maggot Green was a flat, muddy field at the edge of the Ness, empty except for wrecks of boats and broken casks and crates along the shore. Ragged children were sorting through the trash for anything of the least value. Next to the field, a distillery appeared to be operating, and smoke from its chimneys had coated the crowded buildings around the green with heavy, black soot. To Isabella, the area smelled like a combination of barnyard and wet dog.

  A young lass steering a pair of filthy boys along the lane pointed out the house of Searc Mackintosh.

  “The Shark,” one of the little ones whispered to Isabella before they moved on.

  Searc’s house appeared to be as dilapidated as the rest of the area. It was set back a little from a busier main road, behind a high wall. They followed a narrow lane down one side of the wall until they reached a gated opening. Farther on, the lane appeared to drop off into the river. She studied the house. It was large and appeared to be attached to a warehouse of some sort. Inside the gate, she could see a yard and neglected gardens, and a small stable standing at the end of the yard. A round, tower-like structure had been added to the front at some time, with a square block of a room perched on top.

  “Not too inviting, I’d say,” Jean noted as she reined in their horse.

  Isabella remembered Cinaed’s warning. Taking her wedding ring out of her purse, she slipped it on her finger.

  “Why don’t you go and ring the bell at the gate, if it has one, and tell this Mr. Mackintosh that Captain Mackintosh is in grave need of assistance. He is here with … with his wife.”

  Stony-faced, Jean had no reaction to Isabella’s mention of the word “wife.” One might have thought the old woman had even been a witness at the wedding.

  Before walking away, Jean looked back up the lane, where a group of tough-looking men were staring down at them. She nodded in agreement. “To survive around here, mistress, a body needs to be spoke for. And don’t forget, I’m spoke for by ye.”

  She shuffled wearily to the gate. Isabella was grateful for how strong Jean was, in spite of her age and affliction.

  Peeling the cloak off Cinaed’s body, she turned her attention to him. Between the blood and the sweat, he was soaked to the skin. His pulse was rapid, his breathing heavy. She pushed the hair back from his forehead. His eyes were closed, his body jumping as if he were caught in another nightmare. She didn’t want to look too closely at the wounds on his chest or his arm for fear of not having any way of stopping the bleeding if it started again.

  “Soon now,” she murmured. “We’ll take you inside soon.”

  “Who are you?” The gruff voice made Isabella jump. She’d heard no one approach. “What have you done to him?”

  Black eyes were peering at her from beneath bushy dark brows that formed a solid line across his face like an overgrown hedgerow. He was stocky and short, but even standing still, he seemed to be constantly in motion. His clothes were not shabby, but they were not new, by any means. He had one hand inside his coat, and she half expected him to draw a weapon at any moment.

  Without waiting for an answer to his question, he leap
ed with unexpected agility onto the cart and studied Cinaed’s face and the bloody shirt.

  “He was shot. Twice.” Her words drew only a quick glance. “The wound in his chest has been tended to, but it needs to be sewn shut again. I fear the hole in his arm may still have a piece of the musket ball lodged in it.”

  He was back on the ground with the same abruptness as he’d climbed up, barking orders at a servant standing in the open door. A moment later, two burly serving men ran down from the house, and a stable boy was running up the lane to fetch a surgeon. No formal introductions were made, but from the servants’ responses, she knew this was Searc Mackintosh.

  Cinaed was gently lifted off the cart, with Searc bearing the bulk of the weight as they carried him inside.

  “I’ll get the bags, mistress,” Jean told her, gesturing with her eyes. The pistols had been stored there. “Ye stay with them.”

  “My medical instruments.”

  “Ye’ll have them soon enough,” she replied, lowering her voice. “But let them get used to ye a wee bit before ye start flashing all them fine, shiny things of yers.”

  Isabella saw the wisdom of Jean’s suggestion. Searc had already accused her of wounding Cinaed. She had no doubt he’d be horrified to find out she was a doctor. She hurried after the men.

  A housekeeper and a woman wearing a cook’s apron leaped into the fray as soon as they passed through the front door. With each of them shouting unintelligible directions at Searc and the men, they added more confusion to exactly where the wounded man should be taken. The master of the house ignored them entirely, however, and he was carried through a dimly lit hall up an even darker stairwell.

  Isabella saw almost nothing of their surroundings, though, keeping her eyes on Cinaed’s face and the uneven rise and fall of his chest. He was in his prime and strong, but what he’d gone through and how much blood he’d lost since last night was enough to kill any man.

  They laid him on a bed in the square room at the top of the tower. In the lane below the window, she could hear Jean exchanging words with a stable hand.