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

by Karin, Anya

  Kenna sighed miserably. And what about her things? She wondered what was to become of all of her and Gavin’s bags and their supplies at Duggan’s inn. To say nothing of her worry at actually having to stay with Willard, which she considered getting out of by offering her soul to the devil himself.

  Some sort of noise from outside caught her attention. No one else seemed to notice it, with all the grumbling about dessert and the complaints from the man whose lap was filled with spilled drink. Kenna squinted and tried to see what was out there, rustling about in the bushes, but she couldn’t.

  Willard began to get agitated and slammed his hand on the table. As soon as he did, the whole room went silent. All attention, even Kenna’s, snapped to him.

  “Quiet!” he shouted. “This was a fine, genteel, enjoyable dinner until we began to talk about dessert. Why don’t we all take a moment, calm ourselves, have a drink and then continue? We’re all getting very upset over nothing.”

  As he talked, she heard another noise outside and again strained to see or hear what was happening.

  “Rollo!” The mayor shouted, turning back to the kitchen door. “Dessert!”

  The waitstaff poured into the dining hall, every one of them carrying a tray or a platter of some sort of sweet dessert, and as abruptly as chaos had erupted in the hall, it went silent. The angriest of the Englishmen was quite content with the tremendous slice of pie that he received, and the scoop of pudding that went beside it. Rollo approached Kenna with an apologetic look on his face and asked if she’d like anything. She told him yes, just to avoid attention.

  And then something brushed past a bush immediately outside the window. She couldn’t possibly be sure, but she thought that somehow, against all odds, against all reason, she saw a person’s face out there.

  She thought she saw Gavin.

  “Ach! There’s never a dull moment with you, is there?” John snickered and crouched low, well outside of sight of anyone in the house.

  Gavin turned and grinned in response. “Wouldna have it any other way, aye?”

  “Makes me feel alive to constantly be on the verge of getting hanged. What are we doing though? You said she was poking around town to try and figure out this corrupt mayor and now she’s in there...poking, so to speak. Sorry.”

  Waving his hand dismissively, Gavin shushed John. Rodrigo joined them just then, creeping around the corner nearest the door to the estate.

  “Two guards at every entrance,” he whispered. “I think there’s a way up to the roof, but it requires a smaller man. If I tried it, the drain pipe would fall, I think. John might be able to make it. Not that you’re small. Well, you are, but-”

  Gavin shushed him too, hardly able to keep his laughing quiet. “Right. The problem is, I’mna sure we need to get in. She looks rather irritated, but not troubled, particularly. I canna help wondering if we’d just be messing about in things we needn’t mess in.”

  For a moment, none of the three spoke. Gavin chewed his lip, John tugged at the little beard on his chin, and Rodrigo looked very stern.

  The Spaniard broke the silence a moment later, “The guests are all occupied with a meal and nothing else is going on about the mansion. And there’s one other thing – these guards, I recognize the uniforms. The men dining must be dignitaries from the East India Company.”

  “Are you sure? Shouldn’t they be in India?” John whispered.

  “You’re a simple man aren’t you?” Rodrigo grinned. “The higher ups in the Company, the ones who make deals and so on, they always travel with heavily armed guards. I’ve seen these sorts before.”

  “You have? When?” Gavin crouched down and took a peek inside at Kenna, who was busy poking at some sort of food that a little hunchback brought her, but not actually eating.

  “When I was in the Caribbean. There is much about me that neither of you know. So far as I’m aware the only one who knows is Elena.” Rodrigo pulled back his sleeve and in the faint orange torchlight where they crouched, Gavin could make out the faint outline of a P-shaped burn on the man’s forearm.”

  “Ha! Nice to meet you, Captain Rodrigo,” John said. “How did you get away?”

  “Long story, doesn’t matter. Suffice to say, pockets are always open in the Caribbean just waiting for Crowns to fall in them.”

  Both men nodded.

  “But as I was saying, these aren’t normal soldiers. They’re highly trained, and more importantly, heavily armed. Each will have a brace of at least four pistols about his chest, under those silly jackets they wear. That’s aside from the muskets they carry and the most dangerous of all their armaments.” He paused but never resumed.

  “...And that would be?” John asked.

  “Their whistles.”

  “Might just be me,” said Two-fingers, “but I’d be more worried about having my brains shot out than someone blowing a whistle at me.”

  “Shh! The whistles are for calling the other guards, you sheep’s ass. Quiet, someone’s coming.” Gavin waved the other two men to silence, and crouched lower, looking up through the window as someone drew near.

  “Ah, what luck that I have what I believe was called a ridiculous device?” John extended his telescoping mirror and bent the arm of it at an angle to look at the incredibly tall, severely sour-faced man who loomed above them. All in black, from head to toe, with a long and regal nose, hair pulled back into a tight pony tail. He watched Mayor Willard glance about outside, move his lips in speech, and then turn back to the crowd in the table. There was a slight eruption of noise and then silence, just like a few moments before.

  “What do you suppose he’s doing?” John said to Gavin as the man in black moved away from the window.

  “Seemed to be looking for something, though I canna say what. He couldna have seen any of us. Kenna saw me I’m almost certain, and maybe he caught a glimpse of her looking out the window and got curious. I canna shake the feeling that’s something’s wrong, though from the look of things, there’s nothing in particular.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit late to be having a dinner party? Probably two hours past midnight by now,” Rodrigo said. “The mayor, who I assume that was, doesn’t seem the sort to have long, drawn out conversations. Or any conversations at all, actually.”

  “Aye,” Gavin said. “That’s along the lines of what I was thinking.” He stole another glance at Kenna, who just happened to be looking out the window at that very moment.

  The instant his eyes fell upon hers, he felt his chest flutter, and his breath quicken.

  “Ach, the love birds seem to have found one another.” John spoke with feigned irritation, but the grin he held gave him away.

  Gavin didn’t hear him. Nothing else in the world existed right then except himself and Kenna. His sweet, sweet, beautiful Kenna. Her hair was pulled back, as tame as he’d ever seen it, and she had a touch of something on her lips that made them even more red and wonderful. Her hips, her curves, and her face, so delicate and dream-like, it all pushed Gavin into a sort of lover’s trance. Finally when she smiled for only a half-second, so as to make sure no one saw, his heart melted for her.

  He wanted to put his hand to the window and call out her name, but he knew he must not. Gavin longed to burst through the window, grab Kenna, and then steal one of the Company men’s carriages and ride for Fort Mary. Just he and Kenna and their friends, going north, that’s all he wanted.

  Their friends would be in a different carriage.

  The thought made him grin, and when he grinned, showing Kenna the dimple on his left cheek, she couldn’t help smile again. He looked at her sweetly pursed lips and imagined kissing them, imagined her hands on his back and his on hers, pulling his love close and holding her against his chest as their breath went together, the gentle rise and fall of their chests in time with one another.

  “I think we’ve lost him, Rod,” John said, snapping Gavin out of his stupor and making Rodrigo chuckle out loud. “Oh there he is. Is she alright, or do w
e need to start planning a daring escape?”

  Gavin mouthed to Kenna asking if everything was right. She nodded so slightly that her gesture could easily have been a glance at the table.

  “She says she’s fine,” he said turning back to the men. “Something still bothers me, though I can’t say what it is.”

  “If she says everything is okay, you should trust her. She’s proven herself more than capable of a great deal, yes?” Rodrigo asked.

  “No, you’re right, of course.”

  He poked his head back up, took one last look around the room and watched a toast. Strangely, the mayor did not participate, though he was smiling a grim, awful kind of smile. Kenna took the smallest sip of wine that ever had been taken before looking back to Gavin. He mouthed ‘inn’ and she again gave him a slight nod. Ducking down again, he crept along the wall, summoning his friends to follow. From his sporran he retrieved one of his many short knives, and stood up with his back against the wall.

  “Ach, well, she doesn’t seem to be in any trouble. I think maybe she really is just here for a dinner party.”

  “Dinna the innkeeper say she’d gotten a formal invitation earlier in the day?” John asked.

  “Aye, that he did. But still, I canna figure on why she did. Why would the mayor invite Kenna to a dinner party? She’s not of this place, and unless something has happened in my absence, he has no reason to believe she’s anything other than a traveler. And if he’s having some kind of business meeting with the India Company, then having her here makes even less sense.”

  John shrugged. Rodrigo cocked an eyebrow. “Hard to say, for a certainty,” the big Spaniard said. “But if she seems safe, and she said she wasn’t in any danger, then why worry about it? She certainly will be back by tomorrow morning. I’m sure she’ll be able to clarify whatever was happening then.”

  “It makes me nervous, that’s no’ a secret, but you’re right. After you, gentlemen?” Gavin pushed off the wall and made to leave.

  “Aye, I’m famished,” John said. “Do you think there’s any of those sausages left?”

  Rodrigo shook his head. “One of you is love sick and the other one a glutton. How is it I fell in with you lot?”

  Gavin grinned and as they reached the edge of Mayor Willard’s estate and hopped the wall, broke into laughter. “Ach, that’s good! The pirate captain is calling me lovesick!”

  “Now look,” Rodrigo said, “I was no captain. I only worked the sails.”

  The joking and the chatter on the way back to the inn was enough to loosen Gavin’s spirit so that he was able to sleep that night, but only just. As he lay down and closed his eyes, the phantom scent of Kenna’s hair floated through him. When he was just on the verge of sleep, the sounds in the inn caught his attention and kept him from drifting off for just a moment longer.

  John was snoring in the next room, and Lynne was whisper-yelling at him to stop.

  Rodrigo and Elena were silent, though Gavin was sure they were as happy as they could be in each other’s arms and he again thought of Kenna being with him.

  And then from downstairs, just as he was being enveloped by sleep, he heard Olga.

  “Are you sure there’s no more sausages? No more beer? What sort of an inn is this?” She said with a little bit of a slur. “How can we drink more if you won’t get another barrel?”

  The three lodgers who remained in the inn’s common area grumbled their assent.

  “One with an innkeep whose tired and is wantin’ to sleep a’least a wink afore the sun comes up, you wicked woman! There’s plenty more barrels, but if I were to appease you I think I’d have none left for anyone to drink the rest of the week.” Duggan let out a loud, leathery laugh that came from deep inside his belly. “I like you, woman. Can I keep ya?”

  “You can do whatever you like with me as long as your arms stay that big. Oh, listen to these manners.”

  Gavin wasn’t quite certain, but he thought that right as he fell asleep, he heard the sound of two chairs scraping across the wooden floor of the Mornay’s Cleft Inn. He hoped he did anyway. Olga deserved someone who could match her.

  And Gavin’s arms needed a break. Best someone else get the rubbing for a time.

  Nine

  Mornay’s Cleft

  August 18, Morning

  Kenna remained at the mayor’s party until two hours before sunup, and she was almost certain that the discussion, which had gotten quite heated after Gavin disappeared from the window the final time, had dragged on for hours after she left. At the time she excused herself, she’d tried in vain to get the mayor to allow Rollo to take her back to the inn, but he refused, insisting that she stay. Instead, he summoned the fellow to show her to her quarters at his estate, much to Kenna’s chagrin.

  He’d escorted her to a rather lavish bedchamber on the second story of the house, and presented her with a closet full of nightclothes, then bid her good night and remarked that no matter what time she should arise, she would almost certainly be up before the mayor. By the time Rollo led her through the corridors to her quarters though, she was so exhausted that she barely listened to anything he said.

  Stretching her arms above her head, Kenna instinctively touched her thistle pendant and looked over at her evening gown which was still rumpled in the chair near the massive east-facing window where she’d left it. She’d had no dreams, or if she had, they had vanished from her memory by the time she rose.

  The morning was clear, with no sign of the burning wood – neither the smoke, nor the smell – to which Kenna had become so accustomed. Otherwise, everything was as she remembered. Her clothes on the chair, the small glass of water she’d poured from the pitcher that Rollo brought with him to her room. It was all the same.

  She thought back to her brief imprisonment in the house of Laird Macdonald before Olga helped her escape and remembered with horror how every time she slept, she’d wake and something would have been moved or tampered with or taken in the night. She told herself this was a different place, a different circumstance. She’d never be back there again, and neither would anyone else.

  Gavin and John and everyone else had made sure of that.

  She’d made sure of that.

  Gavin, she thought, remembering the way he’d looked at her through the window the previous night. How did you find me? Did Duggan tell you? He must’ve, there’s no other way. I wonder if he brought the others back with him? That would be too much to ask.

  She plucked her notebook from underneath her dress and sat down to write. A moment later, after she’d recorded everything she could remember from the night before that had anything to do with either the Company, or Mayor Willard’s business, Kenna stuck her stubby pencil in her mouth.

  “But if he’s selling lumber to the East India Company for the building of ships, then why would he be burning things? Why burn the woods instead of cutting them down?”

  She scribbled some circles in her book and labeled them “EIC” and “WILLARD” and then another one for the townspeople and then another one for the King, though she couldn’t figure out any reason George would be involved.

  I dinna even know what could be involved in his scheme or even what the scheme is! What if there isn’t one? What if he’s just an angry man who blames the town for what happened to his daughter and so he’s taking it out on them and he’s burning the wood that wouldn’t be of any use to the Company, but keeping the rest? That would be the most obvious answer.

  Somehow though, it just didn’t quite satisfy.

  Too many coincidences – the taxes and the land grab at the same time? The deal with the Company right when he’s planning to build a plantation on the backs of the townspeople? There’s just too much that fits together for it not to fit.

  Scratching her chin with the end of her pencil, she fetched the tiny knife she kept in her sash and used it to hone the point. Before long her stomach set to rumbling, and she remembered how very little she’d eaten at the party. It didn’t take l
ong before Kenna stood up, stretched again, and wandered over to the closet. Rollo told her it was full of clothes, some of which should fit, and all of which she should feel free to use.

  She selected a remarkably comfortable looking gown with a short shrift. It had a soft green hue to it, almost exactly like her dress from the night before. As soon as she was dressed and out of her chamber, she saw Rollo coming toward her.

  “Oh Miss Kenna, so good to see you. You’re hungry, I expect? I couldn’t have eaten last night either, with all that shouting and hooting that those men were doing.”

  Instantly, she liked him even more than she had before. As he spoke, she felt warmth from him that was completely unlike everything else in the estate. She gave him a sweet smile and thanked him for all he’d done, which the short man met with a polite nod and a slight bow.

  “I am, after all, a servant,” he said in his fascinating accent. “This way please, you can wait in the drawing room while I make your breakfast. Eggs and porridge to your liking?”

  “Aye,” she said, “but would it be alright if I went with you? I dinna like being alone in places like this. It...takes me back to a place I’d rather not go.”

  “Oh, of course. I hadn’t thought of that. Right this way.” He swept his arm and led her to a small kitchen off the foyer. “You’re sure you’d rather not wait?”

  “Yes, quite. I enjoy cooking as well, so you may put me to work if you like.”

  “I just may. And in truth, I enjoy company too. It gets lonely when you’re the only one working for most of the day and your only companion is, well, a somnolent conversationalist at best.”

  The two of them shared a quiet laugh, and then prepared a light breakfast, which they ate, also together. After quite a long and pleasant exchange, Kenna asked Rollo to tell her about his past and how he’d come here from Algeria. A faint smile crossed his lips, the sort one has when thinking about a pleasant memory.