by Pamela Clare
He heard Bourlamaque’s low chuckle of approval; then Bourlamaque spoke in French. “Did I not say you would be pleased, Amalie?”
Amalie looked up at her guardian, gratitude in her eyes.
“Oui, monsieur. Et je vous en remercie.” Yes, and I am grateful to you.
Morgan kept his face expressionless, knowing that to give himself away would spell catastrophe. No one must know that he spoke the French tongue—not if he was to survive this little game and escape. “Bourlamaque has explained to me that this was your doin’. I am deeply in your debt, lass. I owe you my life. If there is augh’ I can do, you need but ask.” The blush in her cheeks deepened. “You are welcome, monsieur.”
From behind him came the sound of the front door opening and men’s voices speaking in hushed French.
“I cannot believe we are made to suffer through this! Dining with this barbarian after all he and his men have done to France? Disgraceful!”
“Bourlamaque has lost his mind to grant the bastard his freedom! The Abenaki are outraged. I heard they’re talking of taking the Ranger by force.”
Taking in this bit of information, Morgan watched Amalie’s smile turn to a look of worry, her gaze shifting to Bourlamaque, who glanced nervously at Morgan, as if to see whether he’d understood and was offended.
Then Bourlamaque frowned, his gaze shifting to the men in the hallway beyond. “Amalie, would you please guide our guest to the table, while I greet my officers.”
But Morgan knew it wasn’t a greeting they’d receive. And, indeed, while Amalie led him to the table, he could hear Bourlamaque’s angrily whispered chastisement. “Oui, he is a barbarian, but he is also the grandson of a Scottish lord allied with our king, a Catholic, and a skilled warrior! We stand to gain much from him. You will treat him with respect!”
“Oui monsieur,” they answered almost in unison.
So they expected a barbarian, did they?
Morgan would hate to disappoint them.
“I’ve no doubt Cumberland and his men would have run my brother Iain through, had my grandfather not offered himself up instead. He wasna given the chance to fight, but was instead stripped of his sword and taken to a British prison barge to rot. As his heir, my father was exiled from Scotland, his holdings on the Isle of Skye and all that we owned forfeit to the crown.”
“And that is how you came to be in America?” Amalie asked, watching as Monsieur MacKinnon struggled to keep peas upon his fork.
“Aye.” He frowned as the peas rolled back onto his plate. Though some might have mocked him for his lack of sophistication, she found it charming. “I was a stripling lad of fourteen. Iain was fifteen, and Connor but twelve.”
To his right, Lieutenant Fouchet and Lieutenant Durand were no longer exchanging smirks, as they’d done when he’d picked up his bowl to sip his soup. They were as caught up in his story as she was.
“Then your father is rightful heir to the MacKinnon tides and lands?” Lieutenant Fouchet asked, not seeming to notice the Ranger’s faux pas.
Monsieur MacKinnon resorted to jabbing at his peas with the tongs of his fork, clearly unaware that many would consider his manners vulgar. “My father died four winters past, my mother several years afore him. She never grew accustomed to this land. The frontier is hard on the lasses.” As he spoke those last words, his gazed brushed over Amalie. “Such a sad tale!” As she watched, she saw him as the young man he must have been, left without parents on the frontier. She knew how it felt to be alone. “It must have been hard to lose so much so young—your home, your possessions, your family.”
He met her gaze, and something tickled in her belly. “Aye, it was, but no worse that what other loyal Highland clans suffered.”
“So that is how you came to be such a skilled frontiersman,” Lieutenant Durand offered. “You were forced to survive on your own.”
The Ranger shook his head, then set his fork aside and herded peas into his soupspoon with his thumb. “My brothers and I were adopted into the Muchquauh, the Bear Clan, of the Muhheconneok people. As Iain tells it, the old grannies got so tired of us eatin’ their food that they decided to make us part of their clan so they could quit treatin’ us like guests and send us out to fish and hunt. Our father taught us to wield a sword, but it was the Muhheconneok who taught us to survive.”
He popped the spoonful of buttery peas in his mouth and chewed with relish.
“The Duke of Cumberland,” Bourlamaque said, a thoughtful look on his face. “Is he not the son of King George?” Monsieur MacKinnon nodded, a hard look on his handsome face. “Aye, he is, and a bastard if e’er there was one. Pardon my tongue, miss.”
“Is Lord Wentworth not the grandson of King George?”Bourlamaque asked.
“Aye, he is. We call him ‘the wee German princeling.’” “Surely not to his face!” Lieutenant Fouchet gaped at the Ranger in disbelief.
“Och, aye, to his face—and worse besides.” Monsieur MacKinnon grinned as if such insubordination were nothing more than an amusement.
Fouchet and Durand laughed and raised their glasses in tribute.
But Bourlamaque pressed on, clearly driving toward a point. “Then Cumberland, who so wounded your family, is Wentworth’s .. .”
“Uncle,” Monsieur MacKinnon finished, sharing a knowing look with Bourlamaque and breaking off a piece of bread with his hands. “Aye.”
Monsieur MacKinnon and his brothers had suffered all of these insults—the loss of their inheritance, their home, and their freedom—at the hands of the same English family. “Does he not punish you when you speak disrespectfully to him?” Amalie asked. She set her fork aside, too full to eat more.
Monsieur MacKinnon grinned. “He doesna dare. He kens only too well that our men are loyal to us, and no’ to him. The Muhheconneok fight beside us and would leave Fort Elizabeth at once should he anger them by harming one of us. Force us to fight he might, but he doesna hold all the power.”
“And now he finds himself deprived of your service.” Bourlamaque smiled and raised his glass. “ Vive la liberte. To liberty.”
The Ranger raised his glass, his lips curving in a breathtaking smile. “Liberty.”
Bourlamaque turned toward Morgan, two crystal snifters of cognac in hand. He offered one to Morgan, then gestured to the chair that sat beside his writing table. “Please sit, Major.” Morgan accepted the glass, then strode over to an ornate chair like the ones he’d seen in Wentworth’s study and sat, knowing that the time had come to hold up his part of the agreement. He swirled the glass beneath his nostrils, inhaled, then sipped. It wasn’t good Scottish whisky, but it would do. He let his gaze travel over the room. A dozen or so leatherbound books sat on a shelf, gold letters on their spines. Another shelf held scrolled maps and charts. An elegant rapier hung on one wall. On the other hung a painting of a woman. Was she perhaps Bourlamaque’s wife? Young, bewigged, and wearing an elaborate pink gown, she smiled at the viewer, a small dog in her lap, her slender fingers caressing its white coat. Bourlamaque sat at his writing table, a pensive look on his face. “Before I call my officers in to join us, I must first make myself very clear, Major. If you betray me, I will turn you over to the Abenaki and light the bonfires myself.” Morgan saw in his eyes that he meant what he said. “Och, well, I thought as much. But I owe Wentworth nothin’. So long as you keep your word, I keep mine.”
He spoke partly truth—he and his brothers owed Wentworth nothing. Bourlamaque was by far the more honorable man, and a Catholic at that. But Morgan’s loyalty lay where it always had—with his brothers, with the Rangers. Bourlamaque nodded, but his expression remained grave. “You must understand that, given your formidable skill as a warrior and the degree to which some of my men hate and fear you, I cannot let you roam freely about the fort. By letting you live, I am taking a great risk. Until I am certain you can be trusted and are in no danger, you will remain confined to my house—as my guest, of course.”
So Morgan was to be his prisoner.
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br /> “Of course.” Morgan met the older man’s gaze, raised his glass, and sipped.
Bourlamaque shouted for his men to enter, then settled in his chair, as one by one his officers filed into the study. Tellingly, Rillieux was not among them, and Morgan couldn’t help feeling some sense of satisfaction. The bastard deserved whatever punishment Bourlamaque had seen fit to bestow upon him.
Morgan met the gazes of the men who stood about him—Fouchet, Durand, and others whose names he had not yet learned. They watched him, a mix of awe, wariness, and curiosity in their eyes.
“Now, Major, tell us everything you know about Amherst’s plans for this summer’s campaign.”
ELEVEN
Morgan paced his room, cursing this idleness, this isolation, and the injury that had so weakened his right leg. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t walk without limping. The surgeon had offered to have oxter staffs made for him, but he had refused. If he hoped to make the journey back to Fort Elizabeth, he needed to strengthen his limb, not coddle it. But how could he do that locked in this cage?
And a gilded cage it was. The bed was softer than any Morgan had slept in since his childhood days on Skye, the dressing table of polished wood, the wardrobe filled with foppish garments—silks, fine woolens, and enough velvet and lace for a bloody brothel. Aye, Bourlamaque had given him every promised comfort, except his freedom. For a week now, he’d been Bourlamaque’s guest, confined to this room except for meals—and those long hours when Bourlamaque had questioned him.
The man had been relentless. With his officers watching, he’d pressed Morgan for every bit of information that might be of use to him. He’d started by asking about Amherst’s designs to capture Fort Carillon, the plan of Fort Elizabeth, and how many British troops Wentworth had at his command. He’d wanted to know how Amherst and Wentworth got on and which Indian nations they’d sought to befriend. Then he’d begun to interrogate Morgan in earnest, pounding him with questions about the Rangers.
Who chose the men? How did they train? Where were their supply caches? Who determined how to use the Rangers in battle? Which paths in the forest did they use most frequently? How did they manage to move so silently and invisibly through the forest? What were their most common signs and countersigns? What supplies did they carry with them? How did they learn to shoot with such deadly accuracy? Did all Rangers carry rifles? How many men had Morgan had at his command? There’d been no time to think, no time to construct careful lies, but Morgan had expected as much. Some of the questions he’d answered truthfully because the answers gave Bourlamaque no advantage. Others he’d answered with half-truths, giving up the locations of old supply caches, abandoned campsites, and trails that the Rangers had long since deserted. Still others he’d answered with lies.
The Rangers had been hand-picked by Iain with Morgan’s and Connor’s help, chosen for their woodcraft and skill with a rifle. They trained at the fort, shooting at marks and practicing with swords or bayonets. They’d learned how to move silently from the Indians. Wentworth chose the Rangers’ missions, while Morgan, like Iain before him, commanded them in the field. Signs and countersigns changed with each new dawn. The men learned to shoot well at a young age because they depended upon hunting to fill their bellies. Only officers carried muskets with rifled carbines. Under Morgan’s command, the Rangers had numbered six score and four. His lies they had believed. But Bourlamaque and his officers had thought him dishonest on that last point, though he’d told the truth. Fouchet, Durand, and the other officers had laughed out loud, while Bourlamaque had glared at him. “Do not trifle with me, Major,” he’d said, his face turning an angry scarlet.
Morgan hadn’t been able to keep the grin off his face. “I find your doubt flatterin’. You’re thinkin’ there must have been a thousand of us, aye? In truth, there are precious few. We eat and sleep together, officers and men. Aye, and we train together, too, and call each other by our Christian names. We ken one another well and fight as one. We are more a band of brothers than a company of soldiers. That is what makes us Rangers.”
He’d all but shouted those last words. And in that moment, he’d missed his brothers and his men so much that the pain of it had struck him like a fist to the gut. But the emotion behind his words must have impressed Bourlamaque, for he’d moved on to other matters.
What Morgan would never tell Bourlamaque was that each Ranger was trained to memorize and follow a set of eight-and-twenty rules—the Rules of Ranging. The rules had been created to hide the men’s numbers, to give them every advantage in battle, and to enable them to work together silently and under fire, as each man knew what the others would do. Though Wentworth knew the Rangers had a set of rules, not even he knew what they were.
Rangers never marched in noisy, cumbersome ranks like British Regulars, but single file, and far enough apart that two could not be killed by a single shot. When they marched through marshes or over wet ground, they walked abreast to make their numbers harder to count. When pursued, they circled back to their own tracks, surrounding the enemy in ambush. In battle, they staggered their fire, reloading while those beside them fired, giving the enemy no chance to rest. If the enemy’s numbers overwhelmed them, they disbursed, each man for himself, making his way to the next rendezvous point. They never crossed rivers at the usual fords, nor walked the forest on known paths. They never stopped until long after dark so that the enemy could not see where they made camp, and only half their force was permitted to sleep at once, the others remaining ready to fight lest they be attacked. They rose before dawn and scouted the forest ahead before moving on. They never returned the same way they’d come lest the enemy lie in wait for them. And they never, ever left their flank unguarded.
The Rules of Ranging enabled them to emerge, silent and swift, from the forest, and to vanish again. The Rules helped them fend off much larger forces without heavy losses. The Rules kept them alive.
Morgan would die to keep them secret.
Och, how he hated the game he was playing! He would much rather face the French in an honest fight, rifle and claidheatnh mor in hand, than to battle them with lies and wylie words. Still, this was better than perishing in flames. He strode over to the small glass window, lifted the iron hook, and thrust it open, needing to feel fresh air on his face again. The sun was setting, rosy fingers stretched across the sky, the breeze warm with the scent of wood smoke, roasting meat, and springtime. Somewhere in the distance, French pipes played out a merry tune.
The happy wail made him think of Ranger Camp, where the men were surely settling down with their nighty ration of rum under these same stars. McHugh would be playing his pipes, while Dougie tuned his fiddle and old Killy told stories. Joseph and his warriors would be sitting around a fire, telling their own stories. And Connor, left to lead the Rangers, would be walking among them, speaking with each man, offering him a few words of encouragement, as Morgan had done, and Iain before him.
An ache swelled in Morgan’s chest, then rose into his throat.
Sweet Mary in heaven, how he missed them! I will see you again, lads, if God is willing.
He drew in a deep breath, ignoring the sentry who had just snapped to alertness and stood in the shadows watching him. Did Bourlamaque truly believe him fool enough to try escaping out his own bloody window?
Then from overhead came soft footfalls.
Amalie.
Morgan had seen her only at meals under Bourlamaque’s watchful eye, their conversations more guarded than they’d been in the infirmary. Still, Morgan couldn’t keep his eyes off her, aware of her as he’d been of no other woman—her every word, every glance, every movement. She seemed to be bonnier each day, the worry that had lined her face now gone. One smile from her, and he became a blethering idiot, her femininity pulling at him from across the table, heating his blood, making him think of her in ways he shouldn’t. Almost directly overhead, he heard the hook on her window clink against glass, then heard her voice as her window swung open.
/> “A bath would be wonderful, Therese. Thank you!” she said in French.
It was as if Morgan had been struck on the head with a bolt of lightning. Whatever thoughts had been in his mind vanished. He stood still and listened as something heavy— no doubt the same copper washtub he’d bathed in this morning—was dragged across her floor. Then came the sound of heated water being poured into the tub, bucket by bucket, followed by the soft murmur of female voices and—was he imagining it?—the rustle of skirts and petticoats. Moments later, he heard the tinkle of water, and he knew she’d stepped into the tub.
He turned his back to the night, leaned against the sill, and closed his eyes, his mind filling with images of her—sensual, arousing, forbidden images. Amalie stepping into the bath, naked, her skin golden in the candlelight, her long hair spilling down her back. Amalie rubbing the soap over her glistening skin, her nipples taut from the gentle lapping of the water. Amalie rising from the tub, water trickling down her skin in rivulets. Amalie reaching for a towel, running it over her breasts and the thatch of dark curls between her thighs. Amalie bending to dry her legs, the twin mounds of her bottom ripe for his touch, the dark cleft of her sex revealed.
He was hard as stone now, his cock straining against his silk drawers, his cods tight and aching for release. He knew he should stop himself, knew he should banish these thoughts from his mind. She was promised to the Church, soon to become a bride of Christ.
You’re a cad and a bastard, MacKinnon!
Aye, he was. But even as he tried to stop himself, new thoughts assailed him. Would her nipples be rosy pink, dusky like wine, or a soft fawn brown? Would they be small and supple or large and soft like rose petals? Would they taste—? A knock came at the door, which opened to reveal Bourlamaque. Morgan stayed where he was, leaning against the windowsill, grateful that his waistcoat covered the bulge of his erection.