“I dinnae have to stay, if ye dinnae want me to,” he said, at last. “I should’ve sensed there were more to yer protestations. Believe me, I can understand the sanctity of a person’s own quarters, and I’ll nae take offence if ye boot me out.”
Victoria relaxed a touch. “It was just unusual, that is all.”
“Nae anymore?” He smiled, leaning over the bed to kiss her on the lips. A fleeting graze that left her starving for more, especially considering where they were.
But Genevieve will arrive soon, she reminded herself. It was true that her dearest friend had become fond of Camdyn, but that did not change the fact that Victoria was a lady, and Genevieve was a lady’s companion of sorts. Even though Victoria’s maidenhood had been taken upon her wedding night, Genevieve still had a duty to protect her lady’s honor. Without vows being spoken between the pair, the older woman would not tolerate any open displays of affection.
And that is the impossible part.
Victoria sighed, suddenly feeling very weary, indeed. Her feelings did not matter, in the grand scheme of society and its judgment. If she were to wed Camdyn, she knew she would lose everything else: this house, her study, her private hospital where she gave hope to the poor who could not afford a physician. It was not about the comfort and the luxury. They simply provided her with the means to help others.
Deep down, she knew she could not be selfish, putting her affections for Camdyn above the welfare of so many. Nor could she ask Genevieve to give all of this up, in the winter of the older woman’s life, because of her. Besides, they had only begun this love affair. She could worry about all of that when, or rather if, she had to.
“There’s that tickin’ again.” Camdyn gently tapped the side of Victoria’s head. “Anythin’ I can help with?”
Victoria sighed sadly. “I wish you could, but I think this is something I must navigate for myself.”
“Then, do ye want me to leave?”
She blinked up at him, her heart swelling. “Never.”
Chapter 14
As irony would have it, it turned out that Victoria really had caught an affliction from the coughs and snuffles of her patients. Camdyn stayed with her, in her bedchamber, as often as Genevieve would allow it, though his sweetheart’s motherly companion seemed determined to avoid leaving the pair alone.
He stole kisses when he could, confident that his hardy constitution would not allow him to contract her cold, but the household’s stubborn sentinel was never far away. It made him wonder if Genevieve might have seen or heard more of their entanglement in the study than she had let on, though she did not treat him any differently, aside from the constant supervision of her ward.
On the third day of Victoria’s recuperation, with Genevieve fetching fresh water, Camdyn stooped at Victoria’s bedside and planted a lingering peck upon her fever-moistened forehead.
She murmured in her delirium. “Do not go… Stay with me, Camdyn. No matter what comes… say you will stay.”
Dinnae let Genevieve hear ye whisperin’ that sort of thing. If she is nae suspicious now, she will be if ye give us away in yer fever.
Secretly, it pleased him to hear that, even in the throes of an illness, she continued to think of him.
“I will, love.” He smiled and smoothed dampened tendrils away from her angelic, flushed face. “But I have to go now, just for a while. A few hours.”
She stirred, her eyelids flickering and her brow furrowing, as though she did not like his reply. But she remained sleeping, her expression relaxing once more as he listened to the soft breaths of her slumber.
“If I’m to stay here, like ye want, and like I want, then I need to go back to me own home to collect a few things that I left behind,” he explained, though she could not hear him. “I promise ye, I’ll be back before ye wake. So dinnae go frettin’ in yer sleep that I’ve wandered off.”
He stooped to kiss her once more, placing his temporary goodbye upon her lips, before he turned and left the room.
It had actually been their conversation about the sanctity of a person’s rooms that had inspired him to take the plunge and go back to his lodgings in town. He had not heard much news about the state of tensions between the English and the Scots who had supported King George, and the Jacobites who had not. As far as he was concerned, no news had to be good news, so now was the best time to venture back.
In the entrance hall, he encountered Genevieve, her arms heavy with a basin of fresh, cool water to ease Victoria’s fever.
She eyed him curiously. “And what do you intend to do with your day, Mr. McKay? I thought you’d be sitting bored at My Lady’s bedside, keeping me company.”
“I’ve got a few errands to run,” he replied vaguely. “Will nae take long.”
Genevieve’s look of curiosity transformed into one of concern. “Are you sure that’s wise? I haven’t heard much about the English continuing their pursuit of fugitive rebels, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe out there for you.”
“I know Inverness like I know me own kilt, Genevieve.” Camdyn smiled reassuringly. “I’ll be stickin’ to back paths and alleys. Even if they are chasin’ us down like dogs, they will nae catch me. But if I am nae back by evening, ye should probably go ahead and assume I’m rottin’ in a gaol somewhere.” He meant it as a joke, but Genevieve looked horrified.
“Why would you go and say a foolish thing like that?!” She shifted the heavy basin into a different position. “If you aren’t back by evening, I’ll march down to every authority myself and demand your release, by order of the Countess of Desiglow!”
Camdyn smirked. “If we’d had more of yer sort on our side, Genevieve, Bonnie Prince Charlie would be sittin’ on his throne right about now. To be honest, ye probably could’ve won the campaign for us on yer own, by havin’ a few of yer sternest words with the usurper’s army. The Duke of Cumberland would’ve turned back with his tail between his legs, for certain.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Her expression softened into a smile. “Men do not like to think so, Mr. McKay, but women have a knack for doing precisely what men do, and often better, without resorting to violence.”
“I think there are a lot of lads out there who could learn a thing or two from Victoria, and nay mistake,” he conceded. “I’ll be off then. I’d ask ye to take good care of yer mistress while I’m out, but I ken she’s already in the best hands.”
Genevieve snorted as she walked by Camdyn and headed on up the stairs. “And she claims to be the physician. I knew she was unwell! Stubborn as a donkey, that one.”
But ye love her all the same, nor would ye have her any different.
He knew that because he felt the same. In his youth, he had only had Bernadine as reference for Sassenachs. She had been tough and determined, in her own way, and he had always admired her for it, but Victoria’s feistiness and independent nature was incomparable. At least, in his eyes. He had never met a woman like her, and though he still despised the English, somehow, she did not count.
Exiting the house, he drank in the cold, refreshing air beyond the bubble of the Desiglow mansion. A drizzle of rain pattered down upon his warm face, washing away the fustiness of Victoria’s sickroom. It was not her fault. All sickrooms had a certain humidity to them, tinged with the scent of fever and the body fighting against it.
Picking up his pace, he half-walked, half-jogged down the main thoroughfare toward Inverness. His thigh muscles loosened with the exercise, relishing in the freedom. Although, he made sure to keep to the shadier verges of grass to the sides of the road, so he could duck deeper into the copses of trees that lined it, if he spotted anyone looking at him suspiciously.
Before long, he reached the town itself. The thrum of so many lives, all tossed together in one place, seemed to deafen him as he slowed to a walk and kept his head down. The cries of costermongers, hawking their wares. The slurred laughter of inebriates congregating outside the inns and taverns. The shrill shouts of fishwives selling their husb
ands’ haul, the bloodied tables where they carved up their offerings glittering with fish scales, while bold black flies buzzed around the buckets of innards.
I forgot what the outside world looked like.
Up by Victoria’s mansion, he rarely saw people pass by on the road. Ordinary folks did not go there unless they had a purpose for visiting, but even the steady flow of patients that came in and out of the house paled in comparison to the throngs who bustled hither and thither through the web of streets.
Slipping down a back alley behind the Cock and Bottle tavern, Camdyn did as he had promised, using the network of narrow backstreets and alleyways to reach the southernmost edge of the town’s center.
He skirted around a whore and her client, the former bent halfway across the limited alley, while the latter pounded into her like a slab of meat. Neither noticed him as he passed by, though he could still hear the bestial grunts and groans as he carried on.
Ye wouldnae catch me bein’ so brutal to Victoria.
The bawdy scene reminded him of all the things he one day hoped to do with the woman he adored, and it did not include ploughing her in so careless a manner. If he was ever granted the opportunity to lie with Victoria, he intended to please her until she could not take the bliss any longer. He wanted to hear her cries of delight rising above his own moans, his lips and tongue and fingers and member savoring every inch of her.
He was still imagining how glorious that would be, when he emerged onto the corner he had once called home. There were not as many people milling about here, which was part of the reason he had chosen its location.
Glancing up, he could see the closed shutters of his lodgings, just as he had left them. In terms of belongings, he did not have much, but there were a couple of spare shirts and a few keepsakes from his true home in the Highlands that he desired to take back to Victoria’s house: a handful of books that Bernadine had given him, the brass medallion he had once worn with pride as Laird Young’s second-in-command, a sporran containing some coins and a folded collection of the letters home he had never sent, plus a dried sprig of heather that the Young children had given him before he departed.
For luck.
He snorted bitterly, wishing he still possessed the innocent mind of a child. They had been so eager to give him the gift, promising that it would keep him safe from harm. He paused. In a way, it had kept him safe. He was alive, wasn’t he? And he had found Victoria, out of all the death and devastation and failure.
Maybe if I’d taken it to Culloden with me, we’d have won.
He did not know why he had left it behind when they set out on the hopeless attack of Nairn, for he had never left his lodgings without it before then. Perhaps it really would have helped. He supposed he would never know, and if he continued to think that way, he would drive himself mad.
Shuffling off the encroaching ghosts of hindsight, he walked a short way down the street and came to a halt in front of McLachlan’s Bakery. Home of his dear friend, Murdock.
He peered into the smudged, condensation-blurred windows and spotted Murdock himself, toiling away at the huge, smoke-belching ovens behind the counter. He looked the same as ever, with his tangled mass of silvery hair and his short gray beard, the former held back with a threadbare strip of black fabric. He mopped his brow with the back of his sleeves, squinting his pale blue eyes as he shoved a blob of dough into the hollow of the furnace entrance. Fortunately, there was no one else in the bakery.
Taking his chance, Camdyn entered, prompting a bell above the door to jangle loudly. It seemed like an innocuous addition, but he knew better. Murdock had put it there to sound a warning to Camdyn, when he lived in the lodgings above, just in case a redcoat came looking for him. Although, in truth, it also helped Murdock to hear when he had customers, over the roar of his fired ovens.
Murdock turned, putting on a gapped smile as though expecting a customer. The moment he set eyes on Camdyn, however, the practiced expression shifted into unbridled shock.
“Lord have mercy on me soul!” he yelped.
Camdyn lifted a hand in a stiff wave. “Been a while, eh? Was nae sure if ye’d recognize me.”
“Camdyn McKay, I dinnae ken whether to throw me arms around ye or bake yer heed in me oven!” Murdock vaulted over the counter, still somewhat spry in his advancing years.
“I’ve already had me brush with death, thank ye. I would’ve thrown meself on me sword at Culloden Moor if I’d known ye were goin’ to do me in anyway,” Camdyn jested, as Murdock barreled into him like a bull, wrapping his meaty arms around him. Thanks to all the kneading his friend did, Murdock had forearms like a horse’s neck, and he put them to good use at that moment, hugging Camdyn so hard he could almost feel his newly healed ribs crack.
Murdock chuckled heartily. “Och, ye bastard! Ye’ve been alive all this time, and ye dinnae think to let me ken? I put a bloody cross on a loaf for ye and buried it out by the Firth, ye damn skink!”
“I only got one loaf?” Camdyn feigned disappointment. “I hope it was a big one, at least.”
Murdock pulled away, slapping Camdyn jovially on the cheek. “I should’ve left it out for the birds, ye great oaf. And to think I managed to squeeze a tear out me eye for ye, an’ all. I should be the one bakin’ me heed for thinkin’ ye’d nae wriggle yer way out of death’s clutches.”
“It almost had me, I can promise ye that.” Camdyn clapped his friend hard on the shoulder, as payback for the slapped cheek. It was difficult to pinpoint the nature of their friendship. Sometimes, it was like they were brothers. Sometimes, like father and son. Sometimes, like comrades, though Murdock’s fighting days were long over.
“Well, ye rose from yer grave, and that’s what matters to me,” Murdock said cheerily. “I almost gave yer lodgings to some other lad, but there has nae been much interest since…” He trailed off. As a matter of duty, he had always rented the rooms above his bakery to Jacobites. Now, the Jacobites were either dead, captured, or scattered to the four winds. The cause bayonetted to a mangled corpse of shattered hopes.
Camdyn bowed his head. “Most would think me lucky.”
“Ye are lucky, ye fool!” Murdock barked. “I cannae think of many who escaped that battle. Two lads came here in that first week after, but they made a run for the Highlands on a friend’s cart. I hid ‘em in two barrels with me own hands.”
“Are the English still about, then?” Camdyn knew his friend was the only source of knowledge worth listening to. Murdock might have looked like a respectable member of Inverness society, but he had his ear to every door, and little birds who constantly cheeped tidbits of information to him. Nothing happened in this town without Murdock hearing about it first.
Murdock’s lips curled up in disgust. “Aye, hangin’ around like a foul stench.” He offered an apologetic look to Camdyn. “Which is why ye should get yer things and be off as soon as. Not that I’m eager to shove ye off or aught, but I dinnae want ye endin’ up in gaol after survivin’ that mess on the moor.”
“Have they been searchin’ for anyone in particular? Have ye heard specific names? Or are they just out to get us all?” Camdyn had a feeling he did not want to hear the answer, but he had to. His continued survival might rely upon it. Plus, he also hoped he might hear some familiar names among the list, to give him comfort that old comrades had somehow made it through the carnage.
Murdock hesitated. “I dinnae realize it at first, but now that I’ve seen ye here, like a livin’ ghost, I think I’ve an idea of who they’re lookin’ for.”
“What do ye mean?” Camdyn squinted in confusion.
“It’s ye, Camdyn.” Murdock twisted the peak of his beard anxiously. “See, they dinnae give nay blatant names, ‘cause that’d make it too easy. I only heard they were searchin’ for a lad who had a bird’s head carved into the hilt of his broadsword, with a redcoat’s bayonet smile across his belly, and a hit to his chest. They seen ‘im scarperin’ away from the moor, ye see, but he vanished before they cou
ld find ‘im. To be straight with ye, I had nay clue why they were botherin’ with such a lad, since he were probably dead of his injuries. Apparently, I was wrong. That’s ye, right?”
Camdyn nodded slowly, thinking of his broadsword, now hidden under his bed in Victoria’s mansion. The bird’s head in question was a raven, though it had smoothed out over the years through relentless use.
“But how could they have seen me that close?” he whispered, as though the redcoats might be listening. “Ye have to get near enough to me broadsword to see that hilt. And, like ye say, why would they keep after me when they ken how badly I was injured?”
Murdock shrugged. “Somethin’ to do with a Duke’s son gettin’ skewered by that sword. Some other lad said he saw it and saw the two of ye fall. He were a friend of the lad, I expect.”
Highlander's Fallen Angel : A Steamy Scottish Historical Romance Novel Page 12