by Sara Donati
Robbie lifted the book up and opened it.
“Holy Mary,” he said reverently. “They work.”
There was laughter all around, but Robbie kept his gaze fixed on the book in his hands, turning the pages with one great splayed thumb as if he thought that the clarity of the words, black on white, might turn out to be a trick of his mind.
“I dinna ken how tae thank ye for a generous act such as this,” he said, looking up finally. Gently he took the spectacles from his face and held them on his open palm like a treasure.
“No thanks needed,” Nathaniel said. “Not between us.”
“Now you can read to us,” Liam said hopefully, brushing the matted red hair out of his eyes and stifling a yawn.
“But not tonight,” amended Elizabeth.
Moncrieff had been watching the conversation with some interest, but he stood now, clearing his throat quietly to get their attention.
“I ken it’s late,” he said. “But if I could have just a half hour o’ your time, Mr. Bonner, I would be thankful. I’ve been a year looking for you, and it will be difficult to sleep if I dinna first say a few words. But if you’ll excuse me for just a moment—”
And with the resigned look of anyone who had to leave the warm cabin for the realities of the Necessary, Moncrieff finally went off to relieve himself of the effects of Elizabeth’s generosity with the cider.
Hannah fell on Robbie like a plague, fairly climbing up his arm in her curiosity.
“Where’s my grandfather?” she demanded, without niceties. “And when is he coming home?”
Robbie laughed, shaking her off like a wet leaf. “When last I saw him he was in guid health, and he bid me tell ye that when next I came tae call. He doesna ken that Kirby’s deid—” He nodded to Liam, in acknowledgment of his loss. “And that there’s no sheriff tae put him back in gaol. Elizabeth, yer faither is no’ o’ a mind tae see Hawkeye’s sentence completed? Well, then. I suspect he wad be here hisel’ if he kent that. But he’s in Montreal, or should soon be.”
“Montreal?” echoed Nathaniel, leaning forward. “Why?”
“Otter,” said Robbie, simply.
Hannah was on her feet instantly, but Nathaniel caught her up and kept her still.
“Yer faither went tae extricate him from some difficulties,” Robbie continued. “We had word o’ young Otter when Spotted-Fox came through ma part o’ the bush.”
“But he was supposed to be fighting with Little-Turtle,” Hannah said. Liam started visibly at this, but Hannah’s whole attention was on Robbie.
The little girl’s expression, half terror, half hope, made Elizabeth’s heart clench. She went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Well, at least we know where Otter is, and that your grandfather is nearby.” Elizabeth said this calmly, trying to force the idea into Hannah’s head, and her own.
Nathaniel rubbed a hand over his face, as if to wake himself up. “What’s this all about, Robbie?”
“It has tae do wi’ a lass, as I understan’ it.” He grinned lopsidedly. “As trouble oft does when a man is Otter’s age.” But there was something uneasy about his smile, and Elizabeth wished desperately to be alone with Nathaniel and Robbie so that they might have the whole story.
There was the sound of a step on the porch, and Robbie leaned toward Nathaniel with a sense of urgency. “Moncrieff seems a guid mannie tae me,” he said. “But the tale he has tae tell ye is gey strange. I didna think I should tell him aboot yer faither, or where tae find him, wi’oot yer permission.”
“What—” began Nathaniel, but Moncrieff was already halfway in the room, and the conversation turned back to less sensitive matters.
Hannah and Liam were sent back to bed, and the adults settled around the fire. In spite of the late hour, Elizabeth was curiously awake, and aware of the smallest details: the fact that Nathaniel had a cut on his thumb, the shape of the pine knot she had lit on the hearthstones for more light, and the large, neatly turned ears of Angus Moncrieff, still almost purple from the cold at their outer edges. Behind them the room was in shadows, but the fire glowed white and amber, pulsing slowly.
“We had some word of you from a trapper we know,” Nathaniel began. “But he’s simpleminded and he had things confused.”
“A big man, in need of a wash?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth confirmed. “He told us that you were the Earl of Carrick.”
“No,” said Moncrieff, his eyes narrowed slightly. “The Earl of Carrick would be Daniel Bonner’s first cousin, Alasdair Scott.”
There was a sudden silence. Beside Elizabeth, Nathaniel tensed as if he had heard a trigger cocked.
Robbie cleared his throat. “Speak plain, man. Spit it oot.”
Moncrieff turned his hands over to stare at his own palms. Then he looked up steadily and met Nathaniel’s gaze.
“I have verra strong reason to believe that your faither is the only son of James Scott, who was the younger brother of Roderick Scott, the last Earl of Carrick.”
James Scott. Jamie Scott.
The hot August day in Albany; it seemed almost like a dream to Elizabeth.
Who is this James Scott?
I am. I do the banking for Bears. It’s just a name, Boots.
Elizabeth was holding Nathaniel’s hand; the tension humming in him said this was not a simple coincidence. She swallowed hard and tried to keep her face as expressionless as his, although she could not stop the color from rising on her neck and cheeks.
“I think you’ve got the wrong man,” Nathaniel said. “But if you were right and you had proof, what of it, then? The younger brother of an earl has nothing to claim, as far as I understand it. His son even less.”
Moncrieff grunted. “It’s true, Jamie Scott came awa’ to the New World with neither title nor lands. When he left, his brother Roderick already had a son and heir. That was Alasdair, the current earl, who is my employer. A man of eighty-two years, this summer past. In good health when last I saw him, but feeling his age.”
Elizabeth squeezed Nathaniel’s hand and he sat back to let her speak. “Why would his lordship send you so far to find a cousin he did not know existed? Unless the present Lord Carrick has no heir of his own?”
Moncrieff shifted in his chair. “You’ve got to the heart of it, Mrs. Bonner. The earl has no son, and so he sent me off to find Jamie Scott’s son, or grandson. The last of the line, you see.”
“And if Jamie Scott never had a son?” Nathaniel asked.
“But he did,” said Moncrieff, taking a bundle of papers out of his vest and putting them on his knee. “There was nae trouble tracing Jamie Scott’s movements. There are ship rosters, and land changed hands, after all. He took a guidwife, a young lady who emigrated from Edinburgh on the same ship as he. There’s plentifu’ information about his early dealings in the Colonies, including a letter hame to his brother announcing the birth o’ a son, in 1718.” The strong, slender hand rested on the papers. “But there’s no detail at all about Jamie’s death. Just a letter written by a priest in Albany to his lordship to notify him of the massacre, in ’21, and the fact that a child had survived. A son called Daniel.”
“It’s a common enough name,” said Nathaniel.
Robbie cleared his throat. “If the laird kent the lad had survived, why did they no’ come tae find him then?”
Moncrieff leaned forward. “In fact, a great deal o’ money was spent to find the child, wi’oot success.”
“You’ve got no proof of any of this,” Nathaniel said shortly.
The keen brown eyes turned to him, and examined Nathaniel’s features closely and without apology. “There’s proof,” he said. “I see what I see. The lairds of Carrick have always marked their get, and you’re the verra likeness of Jamie Scott.”
“And how would you know that?” Nathaniel said testily. “You would not have been born when he set sail for the Americas.”
Moncrieff seemed not at all perturbed by Nathaniel’s irritation. From a purse he wore unde
r his arm he drew a pendant which he opened with a small snap. Then he held it up by its chain so that it spun lazily, catching the light to cast it out again, before it came to a stop.
Elizabeth inhaled sharply, for it might as well have been Hawkeye as a young man: the same strong bones and coloring, piercing dark eyes under straight brows. And because it might have been Hawkeye, it was enough like Nathaniel to make him look away.
“James Scott?” She heard her voice crack.
“No,” said Angus Moncrieff, snapping the pendant shut again to tuck it away. “Roderick, Earl of Carrick. Jamie’s twin. They were born ten minutes apart.”
“That proves nothing,” Nathaniel said, the muscle in his cheek fluttering in a distinctly disturbing way.
“Let me ask you this, then. Have you nivver heard your grandfather’s name spoke by your faither?”
“My grandfather’s name was Chingachgook,” said Nathaniel, his eyes flashing a warning that Elizabeth hoped Mr. Moncrieff could read. “We buried him on the rise at the back of the gorge in the late summer, near my mother.”
There was a small silence.
“O’ course. But have you no knowledge of your faither’s natural parents?”
“They had a farm on the Hudson. They were killed in a raid, is all I know. A French trapper by the name of Bonner picked up my father wandering around afterward. Chingachgook offered to take the boy and raise him up, and the trapper was glad of it.”
“He called himself Daniel when—Chingachgook, have I got that right?—when Chingachgook adopted him?” asked Moncrieff
Nathaniel stood suddenly, and walked out of the light into the shadows, where he stood motionless.
“His name is Dan’l Bonner, called Hawkeye by the Mahican people who raised him. Longue Carabine by the French and the Huron. Those are the only names he has ever had or needed. Why worry him with lands and titles at this point in his life?”
Robbie had been quiet for all of this, but he spoke up, finally. “Because if he doesna find Laird Carrick’s richtfu’ heir, the title and the lands will revert to the English crown.”
“And you’re still enough of a Scot, after all these years here, to care?”
“Aye, and mair than that, laddie. There’s muny a Scot who wad travel tae hell and dance wi’ the de’il tae keep what’s left of the border counties oot o’ English hands.”
“I want to talk to my wife,” Nathaniel said from the shadows. “Alone.”
She went to bed while Nathaniel showed the Scotsmen where they could sleep. For a long while Elizabeth lay with her head pillowed on her arm, listening to the murmur of his soft, low voice rising and falling in contrast to Robbie’s. They were talking in the workroom; Moncrieff had been given a pallet under the sleeping loft.
In near full dark Elizabeth lay listening to that soothing music, and tracing the arc of the moon as it made ready to set. The confusion of thoughts in her head made it throb slightly—she was prone to headaches since her fall—and so she tried not to dwell on Angus Moncrieff, and the incredible but increasingly obvious fact that she had somehow managed to marry into a Scots earldom.
Aunt Merriweather would choke to hear it told. Elizabeth, who had scorned the very concept of a good match, had made the best match of all: if Moncrieff was right, Nathaniel would one day be the Earl of Carrick. It was almost enough to make her laugh out loud, the idea of it, but then Elizabeth remembered the tension in his face and the urge left her.
She sat up and lit a candle to brush her hair, afraid that otherwise she would fall asleep before he came in, and sleep uneasily for want of the rest of the news.
Nathaniel came in, and sat behind her on the bed to take the brush from her hands. The mattress crackled as he moved closer. With the steady movement of the brush over and over again through the length of her hair, she arched her back in pleasure.
“What of Otter?” she asked finally, when it seemed that he would never talk.
Nathaniel’s voice at her ear, soft and close. “He got tangled up with the wrong woman. My father went to set him straight on the path home.”
“What do you mean by ‘wrong woman’?”
The movement of the brush paused, and he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “One who doesn’t want him.”
“Ah. Otter may be of a different opinion. Do you think Hawkeye will have any success with a young man as strong-minded as he is?”
He went back to his work, drawing the brush down and down. “Aye, well. So was I at that age, and he managed to shift me out of Montreal, under pretty much the same circumstances.”
“The same circumstances?” Elizabeth asked, all thought of Moncrieff and the Earl of Carrick suddenly eclipsed.
The steady motion of the brush never faltered, but Nathaniel cleared his throat. “The woman is not unknown to me. She collects backwoodsmen as a kind of hobby, I guess you might say, in international relations. I was one of her first trophies. This was before I knew Sarah,” he added hastily.
A vague sense of familiarity with this story washed over Elizabeth. “Her name is not Giselle, by any chance?”
Nathaniel jerked in surprise, so that he dropped the brush and had to retrieve it. “What do you know of Giselle?” he asked, not quite managing to hide his surprise or discomfort.
“Oh, this and that,” Elizabeth said, glad that her back was still to him and he could not see her face, for she feared she could not hide her scowl. “Richard apparently had a bit of an encounter with her this past summer, as well. Aunt Merriweather mentioned it to me. To think of Richard and Otter at odds over the same lady—it would explain Richard’s long absence, in part. But I would have thought Otter far too young for her?”
“Then you don’t understand the kind of woman we’re talking about,” Nathaniel said gruffly, taking up his brushing again. He worked in silence for a minute, one hand on her shoulder to hold her still. She had the urge to rub her cheek on his hand, but her bones were turning to liquid and she could do nothing but sit there and let him have his way.
“It explains Richard’s sudden interest in Kitty,” he said after some time. “After Giselle, he’s got a better appreciation of a worthwhile girl.” Before she could answer, he put his hand lightly over her mouth. “Never mind about Giselle,” he said. “I got something else to say to you.”
His whole posture changed.
“I’m sorry, Boots,” he said quietly. “If I had known Moncrieffs purpose, I would never have let him in the door.”
She turned to him awkwardly, taken by surprise. “But why?” she asked. “Nathaniel, I don’t understand. Mr. Moncrieffs news is certainly a shock, but why this hostility?”
There was an unfamiliar uncertainty in his face, and worry. He leaned toward her and put his forehead on her shoulder, and her arms came up around him.
“I thought you would be angry,” he said. “Back when you found out about the gold, you asked me if I had told you about everything. And I said I had.”
She stifled an uneasy laugh. “But you didn’t know about this. You could not have.”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t know.”
“You think that he is right, that James Scott was your grandfather.”
He nodded wordlessly, and then turned from her to slip out of bed. From the small pile of things he kept on a shelf, he took a leather bag she had seen before, but never thought to ask about. Out of it he took a bound volume to put into her hands. A Bible, well worn in bindings that crackled slightly when she opened it. And there, on the flyleaf:
James Scott and Margaret Montgomerie
Bound in Holy Matrimony on the sixteenth day of July, 1716
“The farm was burned in the raid,” Nathaniel said. “The story goes, a trapper called Bonner found my father sitting next to the body of a woman. She was holding that Bible when she was struck down.”
After a long while, Elizabeth said: “You did not show this to Mr. Moncrieff for a reason. Do you not wish your father to claim the title and lands?”
“Christ, Boots,” he said, all of his exasperation and anxiety surfacing again. “Can you imagine my father an earl?”
“He has a greater acuity of mind than many I have heard of.”
Nathaniel grasped her by the arms. She saw with some shock that he was on the edge of tears, a place she had seen him only one other time.
“Do you want him to sail off to Scotland? You haven’t had enough of leave-takings?”
Elizabeth cursed herself for her shortsightedness, and put her hands on Nathaniel’s face. “He need not go to Scotland,” she whispered. “Neither need you.”
He pulled away with a harsh laugh. “Moncrieff came all the way here to talk him into laying claim to the title, and he expects nothing in return? You heard them, they want us to go fight the English for them. As if we didn’t have enough of fighting the damn English.”
“There will be no more war between England and Scotland,” Elizabeth said. “The country was razed so thoroughly after Culloden, Nathaniel, that there is no chance of it. And the war with France takes precedence right now. If there are battles to be fought over Scottish holdings, it would be in a court of law.”
He grunted. “I ain’t so sure you’re right. You saw Robbie’s face tonight; he’d pick up a musket and be on a ship tomorrow if he thought he could make a difference in throwing the English out of Scotland. But even if you’re right, even if this is nothing more than a legal battle, it’s one I want no part of. And neither should you.”
Elizabeth sat quietly, thinking.
“You want to go,” he said finally, in amazement and unease.
“Oh, no,” she said, with a sharp shake of her head. “It is hard enough for me to think of leaving Lake in the Clouds at all. Scotland is not a temptation, Nathaniel.”
He relaxed suddenly. “That’s good to hear.”
“Which part is good to hear?”
He blinked at her, confused and a little wary.
“Nathaniel,” she said softly. “I think all this time you have asked me to make the decision about staying or going from here, and you have been struggling not to tell me what you want.”