My Lord Jack

by Hope Tarr

  “But—”

  “This interview is concluded, McBride. MacDuff, show him the way out. And mind this time it’s through a back door.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Claudia flattened her back to the wall and willed her body to stop shaking. She’d been on her way to the library in the west wing, hoping a book might carry her away from her troubles if only for a while, when voices coming from Aberdaire’s study had stalled her. Hearing only MacDuff and the earl, she’d started to pass on when a third voice, Callum MacBride’s voice, found its way to her ear: “One thousand pounds, and ye need ne’er trouble yerself about Jack Campbell again.”

  Jack’s earlier warning came back to her. Do you really expect Aberdaire will let me live once you and Haversham tie the knot?

  Men such as Phillippe had been, as the earl was, invariably hired underlings to carry out their dirty deeds. And now it seemed that Aberdaire had found a way to turn the enmity between the two brothers to his advantage.

  Turning back down the hall before she might be discovered, she avowed there was no help for it. As soon as she could, she must find a way to warn Jack.

  The smart rap outside Jack’s door was as unwelcome as the late morning sun glaring through the wavy glass panes of his chamber’s window. Both reminded him that his head ached, his body ached—his heart ached. Barring having Claudia back in his arms and life, he wanted nothing so much as to fade into a sweet cloud of black oblivion, to succumb to the numbing forgetfulness of sleep.

  Sprawled on his back on the bed, he called out, “Go away or come in if ye must. It’s no locked though I dinna want for anything save clean water for washing.”

  The door scraped open. “It is late to be abed still, is it not?”

  He whipped his head about on the pillow to see not the chambermaid but Claudia standing in the doorway. She looked very smart in a velvet riding habit of peacock blue and matching cape with epaulets trimmed in gold braid, her military-style hat set at a jaunty angle atop her blue-black curls.

  Forgetting his bound ribs, he started up. “You’ve come.” Sucking in his breath against the pain, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Och, but I prayed—”

  “I can stay only a moment,” she said, and Jack felt his hopes shrivel like a balloon on the receiving end of a hatpin. “Mon Dieu,” she exclaimed, her gaze slipping over his bandaged bare chest, “all this, it is Callum’s doing?”

  He dragged his hungry gaze away from the vision in blue to glance down at himself. By now he was accustomed to the sight, but Claudia was not. Pride bade him say, “He had help, no to mention I was chained to a wall at the time.” He patted the vacant edge of mattress beside him. When she still kept by the door, he added, “Bruises and cracked ribs are no catching, mind.”

  She sent him a look that assured him he was being a perfect idiot and then started toward the bed. Sitting beside him, she busied herself with arranging her skirts. “I am sorry you were hurt.”

  He wanted to tell her he’d gladly brave hellfire and brimstone for her sake, let alone men’s fists, but instead he said, “You’ve no come only to admire my beauty marks, I think.”

  Slowly she nodded. “Callum, he is in Linlithgow. He arrived at the castle not long after you left, and I…I overheard him speaking with the earl and MacDuff.” She shifted to regard him, eyes wide and brimming with entreaty. “Oh, Jack, he means to kill you.”

  Jack answered with a sharp laugh. “It wouldna be the first time.”

  “But this time it will be at the earl’s bidding. Oh, Jack, if you stay, I fear that this time he will succeed.”

  “I’m no going anywhere.”

  “But you must.” She pushed at his arm then dissolved into apologies when he winced. “Go away, chéri, leave at once. Tonight, no better yet, leave now. And take Luicas with you.”

  “So Luicas is still in Linlithgow? I promised Milread I’d find him and bring him safe away.” Along with you.

  She nodded. “After what happened, he was too ashamed to face you and too afraid of Callum to return. He took a position in the stable at the Purple Mouse. It is an inn much like this one and just down from the Cross.”

  “Aye, I saw it when I rode in.” Curious suddenly, he asked, “How is it you managed to come here?”

  “I persuaded Lord Haversham to bring me into town.” Violet eyes rolled as she admitted, “He thinks I am still at the milliner’s deciding between the dunstable straw bonnet with ostrich feathers and the scarlet velvet with the blond braiding. But at any moment he may grow impatient and discover me gone.”

  “You could have sent word to Luicas and had him warn me and yet you didna, you came yourself. Why, Claudia, why did you come?”

  She gazed up at him, eyes moist and mouth trembling. “Perhaps because I am weak. Perhaps because I wanted to make sure for myself that you were all right, that your wounds were not serious.” She drew a shaky breath. “Perhaps because after the other day, I could not bear to think that we would part forever with words of anger.”

  “If I have my way, we’ll no part at all.”

  “Oh, Jack.”

  She started to turn away but, although it cost him, he reached out to stay her.

  “Jack, do not—”

  “Hush, mo chride. Be still.” Be mine. He stroked the curve of her quivering bottom lip, the delicate juncture of her cheek and jaw, the pulse striking against the side of her throat. “Tell me, mo chride,” he said, his thumb playing in the blood-warmed hollow of her throat, “how is it that I’ve slept alone all my life and yet now I canna so much as close my eyes in peace without you beside me?”

  She raked her teeth over her bottom lip; the gloved hand that rested on the mattress between them drew into a tight little fist. “Jack, please, please do not say such things. And do not call me by that…that name.”

  “Dinna call you ‘my heart’ even though that’s what you are?” he whispered, retracing the path, this time with his lips, and reaching up to cup her breast through the layers of fabric. “And then I suppose I also may no say that battered and fevered though I am, and paining in places I canna even begin to name, all I can think of right now is how much I want to lay you down upon this bed and make love to you? Are these the things on which you’d have me hold silent?”

  She turned her face to his, eyes large and luminous and beseeching. “Yes. Yes!” He took his hand from her breast and she rose. “I must leave. I dare not stay longer.”

  He came up beside her and started the search for his shirt. “Your Sassenach lordling must be daft to let you roam the streets without escort.” Finding it, he slung it over his shoulder and started after her, already halfway to the door. “At least let me see you safely back.”

  On the threshold she shook her head. “Non, it will be bad enough if I am seen coming from here, but if I am alone at least I may say I lost my way. Adieu, chéri.” Mouth trembling, she turned to go.

  “Claudia?” She faced around, and it was then that he saw she was crying. “When you walk into the chapel on Thursday to take your vows before God and man and priest…” He took a deep breath and scarcely noticed the pain knifing through his sides for his heart’s pain was so very much greater. “When you do so, I want you to mind one thing. Mind that I love you.”

  Tears filming her eyes, she nodded and then hurried out into the hallway before she might weaken and turn back. “I love you, too,” she whispered but by then she was out the inn’s main door and stepping onto the cobbled High Street. By the time the milliner’s shop came into view, the tears were flooding down her cheeks, causing the bustling street to appear awash in gray, not sunny and clear.

  She was halfway to her destination when she sighted Lord Haversham disembarking from his phaeton. Zut, alors but he was walking her way. If he sighted her coming from the opposite direction, from the inn, he was bound to wonder why, perhaps even remark upon it to the earl. Sweat filmed her forehead, dampened her underarms. Think, Claudia, think!

  Cas
ting her gaze about, she saw that the tea shop she was coming up on had an alley running along one side. She darted a quick glance about and then ducked inside. Pulling in her skirts, she crouched behind a beer barrel just as Haversham passed, high heels clicking on the cobbles in time with the tip of his ivory-handled walking stick. She waited a moment more and then started out from her hiding place.

  Behind her, a hard hand clamped over her mouth. Another caught her about the waist, pulling her against a spare, sinewy form. Struggling, her screams muffled, she caught the reek of whiskey as a hot mouth closed over the outside of her ear. “Dinna be in such a rush…Lady Claudia.”

  The ransom note, penned in Claudia’s flawless, flourishing strokes, found its way to Lord Aberdaire that night by way of a large stone flying through the leaded glass panes of a lower story window. The missile missed his head by bare inches, not that the viscount would have noticed if it had struck. Since he’d returned hours before to give his stammering report of how his betrothed had gone missing somewhere between the milliner and the bookbinder, he’d downed glass after glass of brandy. He’d been unconscious for nigh on an hour, sprawled across the velvet-covered settee, unlaced belly rising and falling with each expelled snore.

  MacDuff stepped forward and bent to untie the note from its wrapping of string. “May I, milord?” but Aberdaire was already nodding for him to go on. Looking up from the oily scrap of paper, he said, “It seems Lady Claudia has been kidnapped.”

  Aberdaire shook his fist. “Campbell, that devil. Seeking to feather his nest at my expense and with my daughter, nay less. I should have had you kill him when we had the chance.”

  MacDuff shook his head. “Not Campbell but McBride, milord. He demands one thousand pounds by midnight and says that none other than Campbell is to bring it to him.”

  Aberdaire raked a hand through his hair. “Perhaps Campbell and McBride are in league after all. Do you suppose their show of enmity could have been contrived?”

  MacDuff hesitated before answering, “I suppose it is possible, milord.”

  Abderdaire vented a weary sigh. Since his returning to Scotland nothing, absolutely nothing, had gone as he’d planned. “One thousand pounds. As if I have that kind of blunt setting about. Has the fool never heard of banks?” Subsiding back into his chair, he asked, “Does he say where the money’s to be left?”

  “The abandoned cottage on the south bank of the loch.”

  Aberdaire inclined his head. “Do what you must.”

  “No much longer now,” Callum said and cinched the rope binding Claudia’s wrists to the post even tighter. “And I’ll have Jacko and the money both. And your dear da the earl will be ruing the day he ever bade me take myself tae the tradesman’s entrance, let alone await his pleasure. I’ll have ye, too.” Crouching down beside her, he grabbed her face in a pinching grip and yanked it up to his. “And whatever will I do wi’ ye, d’ye think?”

  “Och, Callum, but we havna time for that.” Wallis, the warder from Selkirk, rose from the dust-covered bench where he’d been priming his pistol.

  Claudia had just finished penning the ransom note when Callum’s crony had arrived at the cottage. When she’d asked for the pen and paper back under the pretense of having left off a line, Callum had grown suspicious and snatched the writing materials away.

  Coming over to them, Wallis announced, “’Tis midnight a’most.”

  Tears of frustration stung her eyes. In a short while Jack would be walking into an ambush and there wasn’t a blessed thing she could do to warn him.

  Scowling, Callum released Claudia’s face. “Is it now? Then ye’d better take position outside, hadna ye?”

  Starting toward his hiding place, Wallis turned back to whisper, “Wheesht, someone’s coming down the path outside.”

  Callum nodded. Turning back to Claudia, he replaced the gag in her mouth and then started up. Watching him slip into the shadows, she heard the click of a pistol hammer being cocked and, futile though it was, she worked her stinging wrists against the rope.

  The cottage door opened to reveal a large hooded figure limned by moonlight and carrying a satchel. Tall, Claudia thought, but was he tall enough to be Jack? And the stance, slightly hunched, was not Jack’s either but then perhaps he held himself thus because of his injuries? Sagging against the post, she started to pray. The satchel thudded at her feet.

  Callum sprang from his hiding place into the open. “Ye took long enough, Jacko.” A flare of light streaked across the narrow room, and Claudia ducked as the bullet whizzed over her head.

  The figure in the doorway leapt lithely to one side. Callum’s bullet found purchase in the plaster wall beyond his shoulder.

  “Jesus, Jacko!” Callum exclaimed when the fired upon man drew his own weapon from beneath the cape’s folds. He dropped his useless pistol and backed away.

  From across the room it was MacDuff who called out, “I’m afraid you’ve the wrong man, Master McBride, but then, ’tis the last mistake you’ll ever make.” A primed pistol held in one steady hand, he used his other to push back his hood. His opaque gaze flickered over Claudia before he shifted it back to Callum.

  Hands held high, Callum cried, “Ye canna kill me, ye canna.”

  “Canna I? Ye’ll no be the first I’ve offed though at least the courier took his bullet like a man, no a sniveling bairn.” He cocked the flintlock and took aim. “Courage, man, we canna die but once.”

  Behind MacDuff, Wallis’s stocky silhouette slipped from the opposite corner. Silent as a cat, he stepped behind MacDuff and brought the butt of his pistol down upon the back of the butler’s head.

  MacDuff staggered forward and then folded to the floor, nearly knocking over the lantern at Claudia’s feet.

  Callum dropped to his knees, pawing at the satchel. “Straw! Bluidy hell, ’tis filled with straw.”

  Coming up beside him, Wallis bent to examine the wicked gash at the back of the butler’s head. “Christ, I dinna mean tae kill him. I didna…Did I?”

  Shoving the satchel aside, Callum regarded the unconscious man. MacDuff’s pistol, loaded and ready to fire, lay on the ground beside him. Heart pounding, Claudia watched him pick it up and press the barrel to the butler’s temple. She squeezed her eyes closed and the pistol fired.

  Grinning up into Wallis’s horrified face through a wreath of smoke, Callum chuckled. “Nay, Wallis, ye didna kill him. I did.”

  When MacDuff still had not returned by breakfast the following morning, Aberdaire kent he had to face the cold, hard facts. His trusted MacDuff had failed him and like as not was even now dead. Later, when he had leisure to reflect, he might find himself lamenting the loss of the man who had served as not only his legs, but also his trusted confidant and, in a way, friend for more than a decade. But for the present there simply wasn’t time or energy to expend on sentiment—only action.

  Accordingly, he beckoned to the white-gloved footman posted at the sideboard, who hastened to his side. “More of the herring, milord?”

  Pushing away his untouched plate, Aberdaire shook his head. “There’s a tall, red-headed Lowlander called Jack Campbell biding in town. Gather a group of our canniest lads and comb the streets. A gold guinea to the first man who finds him and bears him here to me.”

  “Aye, milord.” The footman cast him a startled look then bowed himself out into the hall.

  Chubby countenance cast with green, Lord Haversham raised his puffy eyes from the poached egg he’d been contemplating. “Who is Jack Campbell?”

  Aberdaire didn’t bother to conceal his contempt. “A Scot from the Borders and, it would seem, a cannier man than I’d credited.”

  A slender hand descended on Jack’s shoulder, jiggling him into painful wakefulness. Not that he minded, for it was Claudia—it had to be. At last she’d come to her senses. She’d come back to him.

  Bruised cheek turned into the pillow, he murmured, “Claudia, lass,” and reached out to capture her hand from his shoulder. “So warm, so so
ft…” he said around a sigh, then carried his prize to his lips.

  “Yuck!” Abruptly the hand pulled away. “’Tis me, Master Jack.”

  Dragged from the depths of the dream, Jack cracked open an eye and looked up into the pale, freckled face above him. “Luicas?”

  “Aye,” the boy said, wiping the back of his hand on his breeches. “And ye maun get up, for Lord Aberdaire’s put a party o’ men out tae search for ye.”

  Gritting his teeth against a groan, Jack lifted his head from the banked pillows. “He has, has he?”

  “Aye, five of ’em, or so I counted. They came into the Purple Mouse—that’s the inn where I…where I work—askin’ had I seen ye. I didna tell ’em anything, mind, only came here straightaway tae warn ye and…Och, Master, but ye’re hurt bad.”

  Jack followed the boy’s horrified gaze from his swollen eye and cheek down to his battered and bandaged sides and back up again. “A parting gift from Callum and his mates,” he explained, shifting to slide his legs over the side of the bed. “But how is it you found me?”

  “There’s no all that many inns in town, mind, and as ye werena at the Mouse and this is the only other proper house, I kent ye’d like as no come here.” At Jack’s questioning look he grinned. “I was minded of how fond ye are o’ your washing water and your soap.”

  Bracing a hand on the mattress on either side, Jack lifted himself onto his feet. “Verra resourceful, lad.”

  Dismissing the compliment with a shrug, Luicas reached down to stroke Elf, stretched out over the foot of the mattress. Gaze glued to the dog, he asked, “I, er, dinna suppose ye’re still sore at me for bringing Mistress Claudia north instead of o’er the border tae England as ye bade me do?”