Passion and Plaid - Her Highland Hero (Scottish Historical Romance)

by Karin, Anya

  Sleep came quickly and held her – held them both – until well past dawn.

  Two

  Mornay’s Cleft

  August 16, Morning

  Slowly, Kenna’s eyes opened, and she inhaled deeply. A scent of burning wood filled her nose, but not the sort that would be used for a hearth fire. She reached back for Gavin and then when she didn’t feel him behind her, called his name.

  “Where’d you go?” she asked, rolling over and finding the bed empty.

  Kenna stood up, shrugged and stretched her arms high above her head until her shoulders popped and twisted back and forth, then kneaded her back where it was sore from the previous day’s ride. Out the small window, she saw that there was a haze settled in over the little village and when she opened it, the smell of burning oak, hazel and fir trees stung her nostrils. Up the hills that flanked Mornay’s Cleft, the trees had been cleared away and others of them were lit on fire, as though someone was trying to clear the land.

  She changed clothes in silence, wondering about the smoke settling over the village, but in the front of her mind was getting back on the road. The night before there was no one out after dark, which she dismissed, but not having a single soul walking around of a morning struck her as very odd. Even more than that, the inn was silent. No one taking breakfast tea, and of all the smoke she smelled, none of it was the sweet stuff from a pipe like the one her Da and most other men smoked of a morning.

  “Ach! Ke - Mary!” Gavin shouted from downstairs as soon as she emerged from the room. “I thought you were going to sleep the whole day through, it’s almost two hours past dawn.” His smile was every bit as disarming and sweet as the first time she saw it, for a moment making her forget about her unease.

  “And a good morning to you, husband.” The word still made a pleasurable little lump in her throat. “And to you, Duggan.”

  The two men nodded, Duggan lifted his floppy hat off the top of his bald-in-the-middle head and greeted her. “Breakfast?”

  “Oh yes please, I’m famished. Those sausages last night were brilliant, but maybe something a little lighter? I don’t like riding on a full stomach.”

  “Well you’re in luck,” Duggan said. “Sausages are gone. But there’s porridge on the boil if that’ll suit. Oats and milk, little sugar in the mix. Got a few bits of bacon too if you’d like, though not much.”

  “We couldn’t take the last of your food,” Gavin said. “You won’t even let us pay you.”

  Duggan shook his head. “Needs to be used up. It’s going old. You two have some tea and I’ll fry it up. I could make coffee too if you’d like. Got a tin from a traveler what came through here a few days past. Never had the stuff meself, but it seems to be getting a bit popular with the old men what come here of a morning. Pipes too, if you’d like.”

  “I’ll try some, never had the pleasure,” Gavin said. “Coffee, I mean. Never took a taste for pipes.”

  “Ach, not now,” Kenna said. “Just tea for me. I find I’m not very adventurous early in the day.” She wanted to add that she didn’t particularly want any bacon either, but Duggan had already snorted a laugh and gone back to the kitchen.

  As soon as he was gone, Kenna turned to Gavin and put her hand in the crook of his arm.

  “It’s bothering me again, the inn being empty and all. It made sense last night, but an inn? Empty of a morning?”

  “Place being empty...it is a bit odd.” He agreed, nodding. “Something else vexing you?”

  “Aye, the whole town, it’s just empty. Not a soul on the street. No carts carrying goods to Edinburgh. And this place too, there’s no one here. It’s strange, dinna you think?”

  Gavin nodded slowly and tucked his hair behind his ear, leaning close to Kenna.

  “I dinna know if this is what you mean, but Duggan did mention something about the local mayor. He said he’s really taken to his tax farming and keeps raising the rates on everyone. Says it’s getting to the point no one can keep up, especially the poor farmers.”

  Just as he finished, Duggan returned with two steaming mugs, and two bowls of porridge balanced precariously on his thickly muscled forearms. “Grab ‘em,” he said to Gavin. “Right, be back with the bacon.”

  Before he was through the door, Gavin had a spoon in his mouth. “Ever since I was a wee lad, I’ve loved this stuff. Nothing more Scottish than sweet porridge on a foggy morning, aye?”

  “It’s not fog,” Kenna said. “It’s smoke from the hills. Someone’s burning the woods. Clearing them.”

  Gavin opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Duggan’s dropping a tin plate with a few hunks of bacon in front of either one of them. “It’s old,” he said, “but eats damn good.”

  “How old is old?” Gavin asked as he took a bite. “Tastes good to me.”

  “Smells a mite funny, but tastes plenty fresh.” The innkeeper gave one of his crinkle-eyed winks to Kenna. “Anyway, Mrs. Macintyre, you’ve not said where you’re going. I suppose you’ll be leaving soon?”

  Gavin nodded, but Kenna answered. “Aye, we will, but one thing’s got me a wee bit confused. When I awoke, there was a great lot of smoke all around. Why?”

  “Ach, the fires.” Duggan’s demeanor suddenly grew cloudy. He blinked a couple of times and took a drink from his mug. “I was tellin’ your husband. The mayor, an Englishman called Willard. Steven Marlowe Willard. He bought up the land on the hills what make up the thing Mornay’s Cleft is a cleft ‘tween. At least I think he bought it. There hasn’t been anyone living up there for years and years, all the way back to the days when I was a laddie half his age.” He tilted his head toward Gavin, whose face was pointed directly at his plate, and whose mouth was alternatively full of meat or oats.

  “Is he...why is he burning the forest?” Kenna took a much more reasonable bite than Gavin.

  Duggan shrugged. “Not a-one of us is sure. Lachlan and Egan, two farmers what’ll be in for a late breakfast when they get their affairs settled, they’ve decided he’s trying to clear them to make farmland. Around here, turnips and oats are about all what grows. Well, that and sheep, but those don’t spring from the ground last I checked.” He laughed, and continued. “They believe him to be trying to take over this town, and the one a ways off, Duncraig. Say that he’s going to clear all this land, set up some kind of plantation and apply for a monopoly from the Crown. Drive us all out of business, and then when all the farmers got no place to turn, pay them terrible wages to work his land.”

  Kenna raised her eyebrows, considering what he said. Gavin took another bite of bacon, but mumbled something.

  “What was that? You’ve half a pig in your mouth, husband.”

  “What I said was,” he swallowed, “I said that sounds familiar. Planning to take over a big part of land and drive the regular people out of business. What else is he doing? You told me he’s always hoisting the tax rates?”

  “Aye,” Duggan clicked his teeth and sucked air through them. “That he is. It’s a strange thing. But maybe these two would be better to tell you of it, though people here, we don’t much trust outsiders. Something about you though, lass, you seem to loosen tongues.”

  Kenna blushed and turned to see two old men, just as Duggan described them, bumbling through the door. They looked quite a pair – one tall and lean, the other man who pushed the skinny one aside was a squat, powerful looking square of a man.

  “I can’t tell you about any of that,” the shorter one said to the taller man. “It’s all what I can do to keep the farm afloat with Willard’s damnable taxes and how they keep going up every season.”

  Gavin stood up and pushed his plate across the top of the bar to Duggan. “I’ve to go check the horses. Need to be on the road before too long, and I need to make sure that-”

  “Ga...Hamish?” Kenna whispered. “Is there any way we can stay? I’ve got such an odd feeling about all this. Something’s just not right.”

  “Stay? Nay we canna stay, we’ve got to t
ake Alan north.”

  “This is going to be awful,” she said. Gavin knew before she spoke what was to come next. “Is there any way you can take him and come back? If you make good time, it’s only a day or so of a ride from here and I’d...”

  “Feel a lot better if we helped these people?” He finished her sentence. “Aye, me as well. Why canna we just be greedy and selfish?”

  “Because if you were, I wouldn’t have stayed in love with you for this long.” She smirked. Under her breath, she continued, “I’m sorry, but I don’t care about the wedding. Just being near you is good enough for me, and anyway as soon as we figure out some way to help these people, we can go on our way.”

  Gavin sucked one of his lips between his teeth and dragged them along, rasping over his stubble. “I don’t know why you can convince me of things like this, Mrs. Macintyre, but aye. I’ll do it.”

  She smiled and threw her arms around his neck. “Wait a tick, what about the others? John and them?”

  “Write a letter,” he said. “Tell them to hold off for a few days. The lot of them weren’t set to head north for a time still. Right, you talk to them and I’ll go check with our friend. Aye?”

  “Thank you, Hamish. You’re...I dinna what I’d do without you.”

  “You say that a lot lately,” he said as he turned for the door.

  The two men sat at a table near enough to Kenna that she could hear them, though they were talking so loudly that wouldn’t like to have been a problem if she were in another building. Just like with Duggan, she instantly felt a fondness for the loud pair.

  “Tall one’s Lachlan and the bulldog is Egan. Good sort, both of them.”

  Kenna nodded and turned to introduce herself, but Egan beat her to it.

  “What’s this then? Haven’t seen a lassie this fine in Mornay’s Cleft since...well, since you were a lass, Lachlan.” He laughed so hard he wheezed, and the other man slapped him on the back.

  “Be decent, Egan,” Duggan said. “She’s a married one aside from being a fine one. Her husband’s out tending their horses.”

  “Ach I meant nothin’ by it, sorry if I offended.”

  “No, no, not at all – I’m flattered,” Kenna said, smiling. “But I do have a question for the two of you. When I woke up this morning there was a smoky haze over the whole place.”

  “Aye, from the bastard mayor burning the countryside. He’s plotting to make a plantation and ruin everything in the town, you know. And not only this town, but the next one over too.” Lachlan took a long swallow of black coffee when Duggan delivered it. “That’s not all though. Whatever he’s doing up there, that’s to be seen, but what is for sure is that with every turn of the seasons, the taxes get higher. All of them. And when you can’t pay in coin, he forces you into agreements to pay more later on. When exactly that is, he never says.”

  “How is that allowed?” Kenna asked. “Isn’t he a representative of the Crown? How can he do whatever he wants?”

  Lachlan and Egan both shrugged at the same time. “We farm the land, he farms us. That’s the way of it. Not so different from what happens all over the country. Here though, these are old towns filled with old people. No one cares much, so he gets away with more. He wasn’t always like this though,” Egan said.

  “Nay, he weren’t,” added Lachlan. “Until his daughter died, Willard was as good a man as you could have for a mayor, but since then.”

  Egan packed a clay pipe full of tobacco from a tin that Duggan offered, and lit it from a little sliver of wood he touched to a candle. He puffed twice and the sweet smoke momentarily took Kenna home.

  As she was mulling over what the two men said, a blundering, irritated-looking Gavin came in the front door and sat down heavily beside her. “He’s gone,” he said under his breath.

  “What do you mean? Who’s gone?”

  “Shh! The sheriff, he’s...the boy watching the stables let him go. Greasy bastard promised the boy a sack of Crowns if he did. Can’t blame the lad. But we had him, Kenna!”

  Kenna flinched at Gavin’s use of her name and wrapped her fingers tightly around his. “Listen to me, Hamish and listen well. We’ve got the most important thing in the world. We’ve got us. We’ll find him again but right now that doesn’t matter.”

  “Aye, but I blame myself, I –”

  “No,” she cut in. “That’s...not right. He lied to a boy who had no reason not to believe him. Alan will get what’s coming to him, and sooner than later.”

  “And,” Duggan cut in, “it’s my fault anyway. I went back on my word. I broke a promise. My honor’s in a shambles. I promised the boy would keep him as he was. I even secured shackles to the man’s ankles myself. I warned Rory.”

  “Duggan,” Gavin said. “None of it is your fault. You’ve been more than kind. I should’ve been with him myself.”

  “Both of you stop,” Kenna said. “If what you say is true about the taxes squeezing people so tight, the boy likely just did what he thought would help his family.”

  “You two...” Duggan said after clearing his throat. “Keep your voices down. I swear to you I’ll do anything I can to help remedy what I’ve done.”

  “Uh,” Egan stood looked out the window for a moment before pulling Lachlan to his feet. “We’ve got a place...we’ve got somewhere to be. Let us out the back?”

  Gavin and Kenna both looked back and forth from each other to Duggan. The innkeeper signaled the two men to leave through the kitchen, which they did although not without bumping into one another. Lachlan cursed, Egan grumbled, and the tall man gestured his friend through the door first. At almost the same instant those two departed, the front door swung open, apparently on its own accord.

  In the doorway, framed by the morning sun, was a man wearing a long, straight, black waistcoat with lace frills poking out of his sleeves. He was long, lean and tall, standing at least a head higher than Gavin; a head and a half higher than Kenna. As he stepped in and swept his embellished tri-cornered hat off the top of his head, then ran his hand from his forehead over his hair, Kenna saw that his temples were gray tending to white, but the rest of his slicked-back hair was as black as his cloak.

  “Duggan! So good to see you this morning. Nice one, isn’t it?” The voice that came from the man matched his appearance. Slick, dangerously smooth and disarming but with a very plain hint of malice behind every word he spoke.

  “Look, mayor, I only got the regular amount. If you try to get more out of me, I –”

  “You’ll what? The rate went up. I can’t help it.”

  Gavin started to stand up, but Kenna grabbed him by the pants waist and held him in his chair, shaking her head. “Just listen,” she said under her breath. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

  He clenched his hand so hard his knuckles went white until she stroked his forearm, calming him just enough to open his fist and lay it flat on the table.

  “Well,” Willard sighed heavily, “I suppose it can’t be helped. What do you have for me?”

  “What I paid last week.” Duggan dropped a leather sack of coins on the top of his bar. “Business is slow. Ach, except for these two, shop may as well be closed.”

  “What’s he owe? We haven’t paid yet, so I can cover it.”

  “Sit down, laddie!” Duggan said. “This isn’t your concern.”

  “No,” Gavin said. “I insist. What is it?”

  “Hmm.” The mayor searched Gavin up and down. “You’re new here. Traveler?”

  “Aye and –”

  “What’s this?” He moved past Gavin, throwing his eyes to Kenna. “You can’t be a Scot. They’re never quite so delicate.”

  “Ach, I’ll show you delicate!” Kenna stood up, surprising everyone.

  Gavin put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

  “You’ll watch how you speak to her. She’s my wife,” he said.

  “I see no rings. Married? Are you sure about that? At any rate, Duggan’s right, this isn’t your concern. His taxes ar
e his.”

  “So my money’s no good then?”

  “I never said that, young man. But I would warn against you being quite so forward. Sit. Keep your woman calm. She seems hysterical, or almost so.” He turned back to Duggan.

  “This is all I got this week. There’s no two ways about it, I can’t give you what I dinna have.”

  “Of course,” Willard said with a curling sneer, “this means your payment will be higher still next week. We understand each other, yes?”

  “Aye, we do,” Duggan said, wiping down his bar with a cloth for something to do with his hands. The mayor snatched the coin purse by a string off the bar, tossed it into the air and caught it as it fell.

  With a stiff nod to Gavin and a sweep of his hat to Kenna, he turned on his boot heel and strolled out, shouting to someone in his carriage, and leaving the door wide open.

  “That’s it,” Gavin said. “I’m going to Edinburgh.”

  “What? Why?” Kenna held onto his hand. “What for?”

  “We can’t let this happen, and I have to find Alan, wherever that greasy creature has gone. I expect he’ll go crawling back to Laird Macdonald to see if they can share in their shame. It’s only a day’s ride. We’re going to need help if we’re to get to the bottom of whatever this mayor is trying to pull over on these people.”

  “Now wait a minute lad, I canna ask you to –”

  “You didn’t ask me for anything. I won’t be gone for more than a couple of days. Can she stay here until I return?”

  The innkeeper looked at Kenna with soft eyes. “Of course, but-”

  “Good.”

  “Ke...uh...Mary,” he said holding her hands. “I love you, I always have.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. “Don’t be gone long?”

  “And be away from you? Not a chance. I’ll see you soon, dearest. I’ll just take one horse and leave the supplies.”

  He tried to step back and away but Kenna held him tight. “Promise me you’ll be safe,” she said.