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

by Karin, Anya

  “It’s...a long story,” he said. “Probably one best saved for another time. Unfortunately, as much as I’ve enjoyed our chat, I have to get to work on some other of the house business. I hope you’ll excuse me?”

  “Oh,” she answered, “of course I’ll excuse you. Although I canna think of anything to do while I’m here. And if I’m honest, I’d rather like to leave.”

  Rollo pursed his lips, obviously wanting to say one thing but having to say another. “I...understand. Mayor Willard has asked me to keep you here until he awakes. There’s something he wants to discuss with you, but what that is exactly, I’m not privy to knowing. I hate to ask, but would it be possible for you to wait in your quarters until such a time as I come get you? Attached to the bedroom you stayed in, you’ll find a study with a number of books – many current ones. History, metaphysics, and even something new from Voltaire, if that sort of business is to your liking.”

  Kenna knew there was no reason to argue, and further, knew that what was happening wasn’t Rollo’s fault, so she just tacitly agreed.

  “Again, I’m very sorry to inconvenience you like this.”

  “It’sna a worry. I’ve nothing to do at the inn either.” Except see the man who I love more than anything in the entire world. “I’ll see you shortly?”

  “Yes, you will. And again, thank you.”

  The little man nodded and went about his business, waddling through the foyer and through a door that he closed behind him. Kenna went up the stairs and looked down the hall to the right, toward the door of her chamber.

  She looked about and saw no one. Rollo had mentioned he worked alone most of the day, so that wasn’t a surprise.

  After another quick glance, she pulled out her notebook, untied it, and began to sketch a rough map of the house.

  Since I already know what that end looks like, she thought with an impish grin, I do believe I’ll go the other way.

  “Now Gavin, isn’t any reason to think anything terrible has happened to Kenna just yet. And damned if these aren’t the best sausages I’ve ever had,” Lynne said around a mouthful of apple-stuffed sausage. “Is there apple in this?”

  “Aye,” Duggan said. “Apple, and herbs. Secret recipe, that. D’ya like it?”

  “Delicious. Dinna know if ever I’ve had better.”

  “Mein Gott,” Olga said as she wandered down the stairs a half hour after everyone else had come down. “I can’t look at a sausage or a mug of beer.”

  “How about just a roll, help settle the stomach?” Duggan laughed as he broke off a hunk of bread and buttered it before handing it to the woman who took it and looked at him with glazed-over, but obviously starry eyes.

  “I just canna help it,” Gavin said. “I canna shake the feeling that when we left Kenna last night, something bad was about to happen.”

  “Look lad, I know it willna be much help in easin’ your troubled mind, but for all his recent cruelty, Willard’s never just outright kidnapped anyone. He’s a very different sort of character than is that thing what’s living in my stable presently.” Duggan took a rag from his water basin and wiped out a mug from the night before.

  “The sheriff?”

  “Aye, Kenna told me about him, and then when I made my way out there with the sun risin’ I had the pleasure of talking with him for a time. He’s certainly an opinionated man. He doesn’t seem to hold you in very high regard.”

  Gavin had to laugh. “No I expect not. He hasn’t been abusing that stable boy has he?”

  “Ach, he did, but even if he tried, Rory’s not interested in buying what the sheriff’s selling. Not anymore anyway. Learned his lesson.”

  “As soon as we can get to Glasgow, Alan’s promised that he’ll make good on what he told the boy he’d get him – the hundred crowns or whatever absurd amount it was.”

  “Oh he has, has he? How did you manage that one?”

  John finished chewing a mouthful, swallowed and said: “we told him if he didn’t that we’d take him all the way to Inverness and then just let him go. I think that just might be so far into the Highlands that he’d really enjoy the walk home.”

  “Ha! You lot are a cruel gang, are you not?”

  “We only do the things we do when people deserve it.” Rodrigo’s face was grey and grim. Gavin expected to find at least a shred of the man’s normal good humor, but there was none. “The man presently warming hay in your stable caused more suffering to many more people that you can possibly know. This mayor, he may be more sophisticated in his evil, but do not underestimate Alan’s ability to be cunning and nasty.”

  Duggan raised his hands and shook his head. “Ach, no, I dinna mean it that way. I know what evil he’s done. I just find that the best cure to a morning full of the remnants of last night’s drink is levity.”

  Rodrigo tightened his mouth and stared at his uneaten food.

  “Is something wrong?” Gavin turned to his friend and put his hand on his shoulder. Looking to Elena, he saw that her face too was not happy.

  “He...when he see Kenna last night, he say that he no want her to suffer any more, under any other cruel people,” she said. “He say he just tired of suffering all around. This has been...bother? Bother him for a few days. I think that seeing her uncomfortable and not where she belongs – not with you – it made him take on a bad mood.”

  “Is that it, friend? If it is, rest assured, we’ll not let her stay there any longer than need be. We could be talking at a useless end though, as she may be on her way presently. There’s just no way to know. I would be happier too if we knew what her disposition was, but the best we can do is figure out a plan and get at it, aye?”

  Rodrigo did not speak, but he did nod in agreement.

  Duggan frowned. “I hope you’re not meaning to simply break into the mayor’s estate and steal her away, are you? That’s more dangerous than you’d think.”

  “No,” Rodrigo said. “I’ve seen his guards – or rather the guards who are presently about him. I’ve come across the vileness of the East India Company mercenaries before. Do not worry about my underestimating them. They’re trained men, and there are a great number of them waiting for some sort of trespass with which to visit violence.”

  “Not only can he thread a needle at fifty paces, not only is he the greatest fencer I’ve ever seen, not only can he sword fight with both hands equally well, but the man is also a poet. Close your ears, Lynne,” John said with a grin, “for if you don’t, I might find myself with a heart full of unrequited love.”

  The clouds finally parted from Rodrigo’s face and he let a hint of a smile cross his lips. “Well then to keep me from both stealing my friend’s love and then being murdered subsequently by my wife, what shall we do until we hear from –”

  Just at that moment, the inn’s door burst open and the stable boy Rory stumbled in. Heavily favoring his right leg, and bracing himself against the table, the teenager propped himself up with a hand on the table nearest the large fireplace at the far end of the inn.

  “Kenna?” Rodrigo finished his sentence with a dumbfounded look on his face as Lynne and Elena both sprang to their feet to help the boy.

  “Ach! By the beard of Robert the Bruce, what happened to you?” Lynne asked as she and Elena got an arm under each of the boy’s arms and his legs went weak, collapsing out from under him.

  “He’s hurt! He’s hurt!” Olga cried, gathering her skirts up in one of her hands and shuffling across the room to the boy. She pinched his cheeks gave him a little clap with both her hands, then ordered John to fetch hot water, Rodrigo to get cold water, Gavin to get a pile of rags, Duggan to gather something upon which to lie the boy, and concluded her commands by telling Lynne and Elena to wait until there was a place to put him.

  “Ach, but she’s good at this, isn’t she?” Lynne said to Elena who returned a smile in response.

  Moments later the commanded items began to appear, first the cold water, and a pile of linens and a small mattress that D
uggan brought up from the inn’s storage area before trotting off to fetch a pot and heat water over the fire. The boy was moaning, groaning with pain, and had a great bruise above one of his eyes, but there seemed to be no bleeding, at least not that anyone could see.

  Before he ever spoke, Gavin knew what had happened, and already had a knot balling up in his throat. He knew what would come out the instant the boy opened his mouth.

  With Rory bedded down in the linens, Lynne cradled his head in her lap and began to gently stroke the raised lump on the side of his head with a cool cloth after having cleaned the dirt off his face and some blood out from under his fingernails.

  “I didn’t let him get...away...without a fight,” he said. “I hit...him...with a horseshoe. He knocked me back and then...then...”

  “Don’t worry, Rory,” Gavin said. “Drink this.” He held a ladle to the boy’s lips and let him drink as long as he liked, then got another. “Don’t worry about talking right now, let’s get you taken care of first.”

  “Sir, I let him go. I didn’t mean to, really, I didn’t! I tried to...tried...”

  “Quiet,” Gavin said again, brushing the boy’s hair off his wet face with a tenderness that made a smile pass from Lynne to Olga to Elena. “Don’t worry about the sheriff, he can’t go very far. Not without a horse, anyway, and not in a place that he doesn’t know. Especially in a place he doesn’t know where no one knows him. He’s got no place to hide.”

  “Th – that’s just it, sir,” Rory stammered. “He does know someone here in town. At least he said he did.”

  “Are you sure you’re not needing to rest? The first thing is keeping you healthy, Rory.”

  “Y – yes, yes sir, I’m fine. I’m shook up but that’s all. When I was feedin’ him, the sheriff, whoever he is, he hit me with his head and knocked me out. That’s what the lump under my eye’s from, y’see. When I came to, he had somehow cut them ropes around his wrists, got hissel’ free. I canna say how, exactly because you lot have the key to the shackles on his ankles, and he didn’t come in here and ask for it.”

  John laughed. “No, he certainly didn’t. Did he break the chain?”

  “Aye, he musta,” said the boy. “But when he came to, I mean me, when I came to, he was straddlin’ that mule what came with you all, and still had the shackles on his feet but the chain was broke. That’s...that’s when I hit him with the horseshoe, but I missed his head and hit him on the back.”

  “But where was he going?” Gavin asked the boy.

  “That’s what I was gettin’ to. He kept asking after the mayor. Boy, which way to the mayor’s house, he kept saying. I told him the mayor’s a bit of a stranger lately, but he said he knew him. Kep’ callin’ him Steven. I didn’t remember until he was gone, until I’d pointed him in the direction of the mayor’s house, that Steven’s his given name. I don’t...I don’t know what I did, but I hope I didn’t cause any problems that can’t be fixed.”

  “Ach, you’re a brave boy,” Gavin said. “Dinna worry after any of that. What matters most is that you’re safe, and you are. Does anything hurt?”

  “Head aches, but past that, nay, nothin’ too bad.”

  “Alright, you rest. Lynne, Elena and Olga, you see to his needs. Aye?”

  “Course,” Lynne said.

  “Yes, Mister Gavin,” Elena said.

  Olga crouched, nodded her assent and began to stroke the boy’s hand.

  “Did she just say Gavin?”

  “Aye, on account of it being my name. Gavin Macgregor.”

  Realization dawned on the boy’s face and a look of awe came over him.

  “Gavin...Macgregor? The Gavin Macgregor? That means that I was just given the what-for by Alan? The shamed sheriff?”

  “News travels faster than we do, it seems,” John said with a grin.

  Seeing no reason to try and lie, Gavin gave the boy a bow and shook his hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, young man. Anything I can do for you, just ask.”

  “Aye, there is,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “The sheriff,” he said. “I want you to catch him and make him pay for whatever it is he done. And, I’m more than a little embarrassed about the whole thing, as I’m the one who let him go two times now.”

  A smile crept across Gavin’s face. A wry one, a proud one. He grabbed the boy’s hand again.

  “We will,” he said. “I won’t let you down.”

  Ten

  Mornay’s Cleft

  August 18, Noon

  “I am, in a word, displeased that you’ve decided to reappear, Alan.”

  “Sheriff Alan. That would be more correct.”

  “Sheriff of what, exactly?”

  Willard pushed away from his desk and pulled the cuffs of his gloves so that the black leather stretched around his fingers and released a sigh.

  “Just because some greasy-haired Scot put me in chains and dragged me up here doesn’t mean I’m not the sheriff of Edinburgh anymore. In fact, all it means is that I’ve got a claim to having support from the Crown to come and get him, and that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Spell it out, Alan, I’m not in any sort of mood to play little word puzzles with you. How does your holding a grudge against the fiancée of my guest have anything at all to do with me? And I would prefer you not do that here.”

  Cutting a long slice from a plug of tobacco he’d stolen from the stables at Duggan’s inn, the sheriff grinned as he wrapped his tongue about it and began to chew. “You’ve a spittoon?”

  “Please, Alan, tell me why I should allow you to stay here and sully my morning. And do it before I lose whatever shred of my patience is left.”

  “Because you know I’m right. You know that if the mope-minded people in this backwater get wind that you’re clear cutting their forests and sending the wood to docks in Manchester to be turned into...what – trading ships? Slaver ships?”

  “What they do with the wood is their concern,” the mayor said, crossing his arms and clasping his elbows behind himself. “And it’s my wood in the first place. Why should the people in this town care what I do with it? And how is it you’re privy to all my private doings anyway? I haven’t seen you since I left Manchester for this present office a decade ago.”

  “From a boy working the stables at Duggan’s inn. Straw headed boy, probably fifteen or so? He went on at great and angry length about the harms you were doing with overtaxing his father, taking the money and investing it overseas in the Caribbean.”

  “How did-”

  “Because, mayor,” Alan cut in and spat a brown puddle into a perfectly innocent teacup, “when you take people’s money, they seem to notice. And when you don’t give them what they expect in return – the roads around here, they’re just awful, and I noticed a distinct lack of upkeep on the kirk as I was passing it. I’m amazed the presbyter doesn’t complain more.”

  “He’s on my payroll. Or, the city’s payroll. Which as it happens is the same as being in my pocket.”

  “Oh, so that’s how it is. You’ve a complicated series of payoffs what’re supposed to keep the locals quiet. Rarely works in my experience. What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “That noise. Sounded like someone bumped against the door.”

  “Hm,” Willard said whistling between his teeth as he crossed the room and looked out the glass pane. “Probably one of the hands cleaning. Nothing to worry about.”

  Kenna held her breath so tight in her chest that it burned. Crouching as low as she could, she looked up at the door until the shadow of the mayor’s form left the window before she relaxed enough to continue scribbling down everything she could make out that was passing between the two men. So far, she’d made note of some collusion with the Company she didn’t quite understand the details of and something about payoffs and the local kirk’s traveling presbyter being on the mayor’s payroll. The problem was, as she saw it, that nothing going on was actually against
any laws.

  As she wrote and wrote, she wasn’t paying any attention whatever to the increasing pressure she put on the pencil, she was so caught up in making sure nothing slipped past her recording.

  “Tax hikes, moving the poor in the towns under his control to London to be forced into the work houses. Overseas shipping investments, optioning large loan amounts from the Bank of England? How much money is circulating here?” She drew a few lines under the note about the bank for emphasis, but the voices got too quiet to hear almost immediately afterwards, even with her ear pressed hard against the door.

  Again, footsteps came toward where she crouched and Kenna looked down to realize that at some point, she’d managed to snap her pencil. Silently, she cursed at herself and moved away just as the shadow of the mayor came back through his window. The first time she was nearly caught was bad enough, but the second one sent her heart racing.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, returning his attention to Alan, who had filled his cup and reached for a second one. Willard grimaced as the man wiped the brown stain off his lips with one of his nicest handkerchiefs. “But really, Alan, can you stop with all that? To this point it, seems like you’re working at irritating me.”

  That got the sheriff to pull back his lips in something approaching a yellow-toothed grin, but with such an indignant air that Willard pursed his lips and walked over to the front of the sitting sheriff and glowered at him.

  “Why did you come here? What did you expect to happen?”

  “Why, Councillor, I merely wanted to offer what I knew as a means of helping you. It seems to me that many of your constituents are unhappy, and I didn’t want my old friend to be struck blind by a bunch of angry peasants. That’s all.”

  “That’s it, then? Fine. Thank you, and have a joyous trip back to Edinburgh or wherever it is you’ll be going.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose there is one more thing. Since you asked, Councillor.”

  “I don’t recall asking if there was anything else, but go ahead.” Willard stretched his fingers then clenched them into fists, relaxing the ache that settled into his joints. “I’ve not much time for this. There is far more important business to which I must attend, so do go on and get it out.”