“Next time?” she retorted. “Then you’ll have to marry me before my grandmother changes her mind altogether.”
Edward’s eyes opened. “She’s changing her mind about the wedding?”
Sophie nodded. “I believe she thinks I can do better.”
“She does?” Outraged, he struggled to one elbow. “How dare she!”
She ran her finger down the side of his face and across his lower lip. “But if we elope, she won’t be able to do a thing about it.”
“Very true.” He buttoned his breeches and sat all the way up. “Although I have to say my family wouldn’t be happy about an elopement.”
“We can still have a big wedding afterward. That’s all they want. We can do that.”
Edward glanced at her, and she could see the possibilities sifting through his thoughts. Suddenly he smiled. “We can get married in Scotland and stay at our family holding on Lake Lemond. It’s rustic, but impressive in a way.”
“It sounds perfect.”
“You know, I feel so much better now,” he remarked.
“I’m glad.”
He leaned forward and kissed her. “Go back to Carlisle and pack your things, my winsome pet, and we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I didn’t tell my grandmother I was coming here this afternoon. I’m sure she wouldn’t have approved. And if I go back, she might not allow me to leave the house again.”
Edward smoothed his hair, somewhat shocked. “Then what do you propose. Leave today?”
“Yes.”
“My God!” He looked at her and grinned. “This is just wonderful, Katherine. Truly. More than I could have asked for.”
She smiled. She felt almost the same way. He was playing into her hands more easily than she had ever imagined.
While Edward packed for the trip to Scotland, he sent a servant to retrieve the small traveling trunk Sophie had hidden in the shrubbery outside the Carlisle House. Then, heavily armed against highwaymen, they set out for the north road to Scotland with a single driver and a sturdy coach. In Scotland they could legally marry without waiting to post bans or gaining the consent of her grandmother, as Sophie was still under the age of twenty-one.
Most of the snow had long since melted in London, but in the Lake District, further to the north, they encountered more and more snow, which turned the highway into a muddy mess of ruts. The closer they got to the border, near the village of Gretna Green in Scotland, the slower the carriage rolled, or so it seemed to Sophie.
She stared glumly out the window at the breathtaking landscape of high wooded hills and stone outcroppings. In another season and in another state of mind, she might have found beauty in the dark copses of pine, the small lakes nestled in the hills, and the occasional glimpse of a country estate, but her heart felt as bleak as the gray winter sky overhead. In a matter of hours she would be a married woman, destined for a life of comfort but one that would come at a heavy price.
Worse, she had lied outright to Lady Auliffe. What would the older woman think of her when she discovered the letter Sophie had left in an attempt to explain her trickery? Lady Auliffe, so admiring of honesty, would never trust her again, and would think of her with contempt. The thought shamed Sophie to her bones.
As Ramsay left the Border hills of Scotland and turned westward toward the sea, he rode into a wall of fog. It was as if fate chose to conceal the homeland he had not seen for twenty years by smothering the landscape in an eerie white mist. What he had hoped might be familiar landmarks to lead him home instead loomed as gray phantom shapes, only gaining form and color when he got within a few feet of them. As he rode, he felt time and distance growing distorted, sounds oddly muffled, and after a few hours he found himself disoriented and lost.
“Damnation,” he muttered, pulling his mount to a stop at a fork in the road. He didn’t recognize the countryside well enough to know whether he should turn right or left, and no signpost was in evidence. On his right stretched a stone outcropping capped with snow, and on his left stood a bank of half-rotted broom, shrouded in fog. He rose up in his stirrups to alleviate the stitch of the old wound in his thigh, and looked around, unable to see anything more than twenty paces away, and nothing to aid him in getting his bearings.
“Which way, old boy?” Ramsay inquired of his mount. The horse blew and shook its head, rattling the bridle with a damp clank of metal.
“My sentiments exactly.” Ramsay settled back into the saddle. He could smell the dankness of the sea on the air, and knew the road he sought lay close to the water’s edge. Guided only by smell, he gently urged his horse to the left, hoping he would find an inn or posting house not much further up the highway, not only to confirm his location but to afford him something to eat.
After another hour of riding through the strange white world, he heard the sound of someone weeping. He slowed his horse to a prudent walk, and peered through the mist, hoping to glimpse the source of the noise, which sounded like a woman or young child. A minute later he came around a curve and spied a woman in a tattered brown cloak huddled on a rock at the side of the road, and a darker shape hanging ominously still above the path.
Ramsay pulled back on the reins, his gaze riveted to the shape dangling before him, and realized he had ridden straight into a nightmare. The shape swinging above the road was the body of a young man hung from the neck, naked from the waist down, his genitals hacked away, and his feet pointing lifeless toward the ground.
The scene cut through Ramsay like a knife, bringing back every wretched memory of his childhood. Here was the savage surprise his homeland had saved to show him in the fog—the very image of his last days in Scotland, brought to life in glaring, gruesome horror. He was not meant to take a contemplative trip to Ayr, weighing the precarious machinations of his present life, his thoughts tormented by a woman with chestnut-colored hair. No, he was meant to see this butchery, this blood-soaked reminder of everything that had turned him cold and hard inside.
For a long moment, Ramsay couldn’t move. All he could see was his father’s body swinging from a tree, the branches above black with crows. All he could feel was the utter helplessness he knew as a child, when he’d been unable to keep the crows from pecking out his father’s eyes, no matter how many rocks he hurled, no matter how he screamed at the starving black birds to go to bloody hell.
For the third time since meeting Sophie Vernet, Ramsay felt a deep swell of grief roar up his chest and surge into his throat. All these years he had managed to lock away the memories and the pain, holding them back as he had held everything and everyone back. But the press of Sophie’s cheek on his spine that night in his study, the touch of her gentle hands on his chest, and her tender knowing embrace had unleashed the tightly wound bundle of despair he’d buried inside him. And now, Scotland was doing the rest, blinding him with a blaze of pain that cut across his heart.
Gradually, however, the woman’s sobs seeped into his consciousness, and wrested him from his dark hesitation.
He looked down at her. She watched him, her chapped red hands clutching her cloak to her chin, the hood outlining her pale slender face, her eyes huge with alarm, not knowing whether he had stopped for good or evil, not knowing if he were English or Scottish. She was young, not much older than Sophie, but her eyes were old, as old as Mollie MacRell’s and all the other Scots he’d helped.
For the last few hundred years, his people had eaten hardship and grief as their daily bread, and a sorrowful wisdom had become part of their bones and hung in the eyes of even the smallest bairns. With the loss at Culloden, they’d lost the clan chiefs who had once protected the people of the glens. The safe haven of extended family and kin were no more. The English had killed the lairds who had stood against them and embraced the ones who bowed their heads in submission. The traditions that had bound his people together through glory and hardship had been severed by British sabers and British laws
that banned the Scots from even so much as playing their pipes.
Now, all that remained of the old ways were clan names carried by men who lived in fashionable houses in London, men who had turned their backs on their heritage—some out of cowardice, some knowing it was the only way to survive, but mostly out of greed.
And now, with the price of wool outstripping that of beef, a remote clan laird living in London, his Highland soul and the claymore of his father packed away and forgotten, could make more from grazing sheep than he could collect in rent from his tenants. Only a “lucky” few crofters were retained to serve as hired labor to tend the sheep on the estates. The rest were being sold as slaves and sent to the Caribbean on “coffin ships” or turned out to face an even more wretched poverty than they’d known before, with no way to scratch a living from the earth, as the forests and fields were cleared for pastureland. In the past few years, Ramsay had watched his homeland become a nation of poachers, trespassers, and thieves, while the English called them savages, barbarians, and compared them to cattle.
Damn them all to bloody hell.
Anger never far from the surface washed over him, urging him to action. He kneed his horse forward and slipped his fingers into the top of his riding boot for the knife he always carried while traveling. Rising in his stirrups, he reached up to cut down the hanged man.
The woman jumped to her feet. “Sir!” she cried. “What are ye doin’?”
“I’m cutting him down.”
“Ye can’t!”
“And who will stop me?”
“The soldiers, that’s who!”
“Let them come. I’ll not see a Scot hang like this!” He strained to reach for the rope. Thankfully, the man hadn’t been hanging for more than a day or two. Still, Ramsay had to hold his breath as he sawed away at the thick cord of hemp.
The woman clutched his ankle. “I beg you, sir, dinna do it! They’ll kill ye, too!”
“Let them try.” The English had killed the best part of him long ago. He had no concern for the portion of him that remained.
“They said they’d come back to make sure he’s still here.”
“Then they shall have a surprise when they do.”
With a few more strokes, he cut the man loose, tossed away the knife, and caught the slumping body as it fell. His horse whinnied and pranced, frightened by the smell of death. Ramsay managed to control him with his knees, and then slid from the saddle and eased the man across the ditch in the road and up to a patch of snowy grass.
The woman fell to her knees beside the body, weeping pitifully.
Ramsay gently removed the noose from the neck of the young man. “Your brother, lass?” he asked. “Or your husband?”
She swallowed. “My husband.”
“What was his crime?”
“Wearin’ the plaid at our wedding.”
“Good God!” Enraged, Ramsay threw the rope upon the road.
“Jamie was proud, so proud.”
“Aye. And they made him pay for it.” Ramsay rose and clenched his hands into fists, trying to control the dark rage that engulfed him. A man had died for wearing a colorful scrap of cloth forbidden by the English. And now his widow, no more than a girl, wept at his side, probably never having known a single night in her lover’s arms. The unbending cruelty of the English in the name of their unjust English law was outrageous. Heinous.
“Do you live nearby?” he asked tersely.
“About a mile, sir.”
“I’ve a blanket. We can wrap him up and take him home.”
“But, sir, what if the patrol comes?”
“How many are there?”
“Three of them. They’ve been harassing us for months.”
“The same three?”
“Aye. May they rot in hell.”
“The fog will conceal us.”
She nodded, but kept throwing glances over her shoulder as if she expected to hear the thunder of hoof beats at any moment. Ramsay had forgotten what it was like to live each day in fear of the law.
He strode back to his skittish horse, retrieved his knife from the muddy ground, and led the animal to the side of the road, where he untied the blanket fastened at the back of the saddle. Then, as gently as he could, he rolled Jamie’s body in the blanket, hoisted it to his shoulder, and draped it over the saddle.
“Which way?” Ramsay asked. The woman pointed to the right, toward a path that snaked between huge mounds of heather.
“What happened?” he ventured, pained to see the stark expression on her young face.
“They got wind of our nuptials. The damned patrol.” She peered over her shoulder again. “‘Twas but a day ago—the happiest day of my life, or at least it started out that way.”
“And the groom wore his plaid?”
“‘Twas a private ceremony. We thought no one outside our families knew about it.”
“But they found out?”
“They always find out.” She set her jaw. “They pulled Jamie from the hall. We couldn’t even take the chance to marry in a real kirk. They ripped off his plaid and tossed it in the air, shooting it until it was nothin’ but a rag. And then they shot my Jamie as he stood there half-naked. My Jamie,” she looked away. “On our wedding day.”
They walked in silence for a good five minutes, their hearts heavy, their path closed in by the steep walls of a glen with a small brook running black and cold at its bottom.
“What is this place?” he asked, still not sure of his bearings. “I got lost in the fog.”
“Dunure.”
“Ah.” He knew of Dunure. A few more hours of riding, and he would be home to Loch Lemond.
“What’s your name?” Ramsay inquired as he urged his horse through the shallows of the brook to the other side.
“Connie, Sir. Constance MacLoughlin.”
“I’m Ramsay.”
“Not Captain Ramsay?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Oh, aye. ‘Tis whispered ‘round here that if ye make it t’ London, Captain Ramsay and his bunch’ll help ye, no questions asked. He’s an angel. The only hope some of us got, sir.”
“A knight in shining armor, eh?” he commented bitterly, knowing he had not done nearly enough for his homeland. He had not made a stand for Scotland as his father had done, had not sacrificed his life for the cause. He had done nothing but provide small gestures of aid, a service that seemed cowardly and small-minded when Scotland needed help on a much grander scale. Still, he was alive and able to help while his father’s bones rotted in the ground, useless. Somewhere between the two extremes lay the proper course. He just hadn’t found it yet and wasn’t certain it existed. “This captain of yours sounds more myth than man, Connie.”
“You don’t know him then? He’s not your kin?”
“Not the man you speak of, no.” He guided his mount up a steep incline, making sure the body stayed securely upon the back of the horse. “The only Captain Ramsay I’ve heard of owns a gambling house in London.”
She turned and looked at him, her eyes red and hard-edged from crying. “I believe the captain’s real, Mr. Ramsay,” she said vehemently. “I have to.”
He stared at her, struck to his core. How many other Scots knew his name and felt the same way? Or was his reputation known only here in the southwest?
After the better part of an hour, they came upon a clearing and a small cottage built of stones gathered from the surrounding field. There, Ramsay met Connie’s family, her gaunt mother and father, and a swarm of offspring—far too many people to live in three small rooms. He tried not to let the dismay at seeing their living conditions show in his face, and left a generous handful of guineas on the mantel when no one was looking. Then he and Connie’s father headed off to bury Jamie in a thicket where the grave could not be seen. The ground was hard and difficult to break, and after another hour, they finally chipped out a hole deep enough for a decent grave. When the job was finished, Ramsay checked his watch, shocked to di
scover it was past noon. The morning had disappeared in a swirl of mist and misery. At this rate, he wouldn’t make it to Loch Lemond until mid afternoon.
As they returned to fetch the rest of the family for a few words in Jamie’s memory, they heard a scream rend the air.
Chapter 16
Ramsay dashed toward the cottage, leaving the older man to catch up. He pulled on his coat as he ran, admonishing himself for leaving his horse out in the open, and his weapons out of reach. Breaking from the wall of gorse, he spied three men on horseback, wearing the familiar scarlet uniforms of the English army. One of them had Connie by the hair. Ramsay’s blood rose in anger, and he shouted at the soldiers. All three of them looked his way, their expressions plainly displaying their surprise at discovering a gentleman among the peasants.
“What’s going on here?” Ramsay demanded, taking their measure. The three soldiers were cut from the same unsavory cloth as many of the men he’d seen posted to the frontier in any part of the world: unshaven, unkempt and mostly unprincipled. Patrolling the outback of the British empire, the trio likely deemed themselves above the law, as their superiors turned a convenient blind eye to their activities, as long as the King benefited. So had it been in the colonies.
“This bitch defied the Crown,” the sergeant spat, giving Connie’s red hair a yank. “We told her to leave MacLoughlin swinging, but she didn’t listen.”
“Let her go.”
“Not on your life, sir. We don’t let treason go unpunished.”
“Since when has it been treason to bury a husband?”
“When the Crown says to let him swing and rot!”
“Then let him swing in the spring, gentlemen. The poor brute will last this cold winter through, only serving to scare poor post boys and the ladies and getting in the way of the mail coach.”
“And until then, let him sleep in the ground?”
“Why not?” Ramsay continued in his best American drawl. “He’s learned his lesson. Don’t trouble him until spring. Until then, you three men can enjoy the pleasures of a nice warm pub, with my compliments.” He held out a hundred pound note.
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