by Gwyn Cready
“Is it a handful or a party?” she demanded, reaching for her boots. “There’s a difference. And even a handful of English soldiers can be the harbinger of something more.”
“The clansfolk are enjoying your family’s hospitality. Why don’t we wait until the dancing is over?”
“’Tis my hospitality they enjoy, not my family’s, and they may continue to do so within the confines of the castle, where they will be safe from attack.”
A hint of rebellion rose in Murgo’s eyes, but he held his tongue. “As you wish, Chieftess. In the field beyond the river, as soon as possible.” With a quick nod to the other women, he hurried off.
The insolence. Abby felt the blood rise in her cheeks. He wouldn’t have argued if he’d been talking to her father.
Serafina regarded her with shock. “You are the head of the clan?”
Abby would never get used to the surprise this caused. She felt like the cadaver of the three-eyed pig the surgeon in Coldstream kept on his shelf in a jar. “Aye. For nearly two years now. I want you to follow Undine back to the castle. Undine, will you please tell Bobby to bring me my horse.”
Serafina looked at the growing line of men heading in the opposite direction. “Surely you’re not planning to join them in battle…”
Undine snapped her fingers. “Grendel, come.”
The music had stopped, and the men were dousing the fires. Mothers with babes were hurrying their children toward the castle, which stood to the east, outlined against the darkening sky.
Abby brushed the dirt from her gown. She wished she’d been wearing a riding skirt. She also wished she’d thought to bring a weapon. The soldiers’ appearance was likely to be nothing, but no one would take Clan Kerr by surprise. Not while she was in charge.
By the time she reached the river, the men were standing in informal lines, arranged by family, those on horses in the back. Rosston and the men from his family stood closest.
“I did not expect your invitation to include a battle, Cousin,” he said from his mount as she passed. Given his height and the preternatural size of his steed, it was like a bit like walking before Apollo.
“Let us hope it does not,” she replied. “I shouldna like to be considered an unwelcoming host. I thank you and your men for standing with Clan Kerr.” She gave a grave nod to the clansmen at his feet.
“Never let it be said that the Kerrs of Linton do not support their fellow Kerrs. We have not forgotten the old alliance.” He bowed deeply, his blue eyes sparkling.
The faces of her own men were bright with emotion. In a few, especially the younger ones, she saw fear. In others she saw suspicion, though she did not know if it was a response to her or the threat of Englishmen a few miles from their village. In most, however, what she saw was desire for direction from the leader who would drive them into the fight. She would gladly serve them in this role. Unfortunately, it was Rosston upon whom their eyes were trained.
“We do not seek battle,” she said, raising her voice to be heard by those at the farthest edges of the gathering.
A few groans rumbled through the crowd, and Rosston opened his mouth to silence the noise, but a pointed look from Abby stopped him. Dammit, where is my horse? She felt like a child, standing before the men on their mounts.
“We do not seek battle,” she repeated, “but we will not tolerate an act of aggression by the English. Not on the Kerr lands. Not ever.”
The men cheered.
“We must hope for the best but prepare for the worst. That is the only way. Are you ready?”
The sound of hoofbeats made her turn. It was Undine on Abby’s mare, Chastity.
“Bobby had her tied at the gate,” Undine said, dismounting.
Abby ground her teeth. Even the groomsmen denied her the respect she deserved. She took a deep breath to arm herself with dispassion, letting it wrap around her chest and limbs like chain mail. From her saddle, only a bow and quiver hung—no pistol. But she’d cut out her tongue before she’d let the men know her groomsmen had failed to prepare her mount properly.
She lifted a boot into the stirrup.
“Wait.” Undine reached in her pocket and brought out one of the distinctive twists of orange paper she used for her magic herbs.
“Not this,” Abby said. “Not now.”
“I know you do not believe in my herbs,” Undine said a touch hotly, “just as I do not believe in your war. But I have no doubt my herbs have kept you safe.” She loosened the paper and touched a finger to the powder then ran it across Abby’s cheek. “In any case, your clansmen do believe, and they like to see their chief so anointed. Look at them. They watch you now—not Rosston—every last one of them.”
Undine was right. Abby could feel their eyes upon her. Perhaps the power of the concoction was not in the spirits it evoked, but in the belief. “Thank you,” she said meekly.
“On the other hand, they may simply be imagining you without your gown.”
Undine clapped her hands twice, releasing a puff of powder over Abby’s head. Then she placed the paper in Abby’s hand. “The rest is to be used for your strong arm.”
“My what?”
“The man you seek.”
“Good Lord, Undine. This is hardly the time.”
“Nor is it meant to be used now. Keep it with you. When you’re ready, sprinkle a tiny pinch in front of you. Dissolve another pinch in wine, then drink—only a thimbleful.”
Abby could feel the odd warmth of the contents. “What’s in it?” She began to open the paper.
Undine clapped her hand over Abby’s. “Not here! Great skies, not with so many people around. Use it in an enclosed space, when you are undisturbed, with the thought of the strong arm in your head.”
A dirty floor and an upset stomach were the only things Abby could imagine being the results of such an exercise. Nonetheless, she dutifully refrained from rolling her eyes and slipped the paper into her pocket. She put her foot back in the stirrup and mounted Chastity, whose large brown eyes shone with anticipation.
Undine said, “Be safe, my friend.”
Abby nodded, grateful, and clasped her friend’s hand. She might not believe in the power of Undine’s herbs, but she did believe in the power of friendship.
With a cluck of her tongue, she geed the horse to a trot, and the men fell in line behind her. Together they made their way through the forest, toward the rise from where they could view the Greenlaw Bridge.
“Pass the word to spread out,” she said in a low voice to the man beside her. “But stay out of sight behind the trees. And let silence reign. So long as the soldiers stay on the road, we will not act. But if they raise their guns or leave the road, we will consider that an act of aggression. No one is to move without an order from me.”
She knew what to say—had listened in awe to her father’s battle stories a hundred times over—but from her mouth, the words sounded hollow and untrustworthy. How could clansmen used to being led by a man put their faith in her? Aye, she had negotiated a much-needed peace in the borderlands. But her clansmen did not value peace as much as they should, and now she was asking them to follow her, a woman untested by battle, into whatever happened next.
The men spread out as they’d been told. From her perch on Chastity, she could see the bridge, though the road on the farside, the road on which the soldiers were approaching, disappeared quickly into a vale below, hiding them from view.
She could feel the uncertainty of the clansmen behind her as clearly as she could the day’s damp heat. A few men shifted. She heard a belch, some whispering. Moisture gathered on her back.
“Quiet,” she commanded.
She had three dozen or more clansmen here, if you counted the boys, which she did, and at least as many swords, but they had less than a dozen pistols and even fewer horses. If the English soldiers were out on a harmless but m
isguided exercise, she would not jeopardize the fragile peace to make an example of them.
Damn you, Bridgewater. Why did you have to choose this of all days?
The muffled sounds of boots hitting the hard-packed dirt grew closer, and the faint scent of gunpowder that always hung in the vicinity of the English army stung her nose. By the noise alone, there were more than a couple dozen men—well more. So much for the reports of her scouts.
Her hands shook. She could almost hear her father’s voice. “When ye confront an armed man, take his measure by his hand, not his eyes. Every man with his finger on a trigger has fear in his eyes or he’s a bloody fool. But the hand of a man actually willing to pull that trigger is as steady as death. ’Tis the hand that tells the tale.”
The first soldiers marched into view, and a palpable, untamed energy rose from the men behind her. This was the most dangerous time. One man could start a war that a thousand could not undo. The nerves in her skin flashed like tiny pistol blasts.
The English soldiers marched carefully, their eyes on their sergeant. Had the men miscalculated their location? To be fair, the Kerr lands sat on the border and the soldiers were only two miles north of it, but it would take a pretty piss-poor soldier to overshoot by two miles. Or was this a trick?
Soldiers continued to crest the hill, their well-shined boots and buckles catching the setting sun. Ten. Twenty. Thirty, she counted.
Her fingers jangled in the reins, dampness turning to raw sweat where flesh met flesh.
Forty. Fifty. Sixty. Sixty. Sixty and a few more.
Sixty soldiers. An entire company. Each with a musket. Clan Kerr had the advantage of position and surprise, but position and surprise do not prevail in the face of sixty muskets. What was this well-armed company attempting? Should she let them continue? Her mind raced through a dozen possibilities.
A twig snapped.
The sergeant wheeled in a circle and raised his musket, followed instantly by his men.
“Stop!” Abby cried and charged from the shadows.
“I am Kerr of Clan Kerr,” she shouted. She stopped halfway between the soldiers and her men. “You have wandered over the border into our lands.”
Terror thundered in her veins. Sixty-odd barrels stared her down, the great majority guided by hands as restless as hers, but at least one pair, the sergeant’s, was immovable as stone. Her mouth dried.
“You have found yourself in the middle of a day of festivities.” She hoped she’d spoken aloud, as the sound seemed to rumble around her head like marbles in a bucket. “My men mean you no harm.”
She made a forward gesture with her hand, and the front line of her clansmen emerged just far enough to be spied. It was a Clan Kerr feint of long-standing to suggest many more men stood behind them.
“Attack!” a clansman shouted.
“No.” Abby turned to her men. “We do not need to fight.” Many clansmen had reached for their weapons, and the hands of her men were steadier than those of the English soldiers. Fearing what the next unexpected noise would bring, she pulled the twist of paper from her pocket and held it in the air.
The Kerrs gasped as one. They knew from whom the orange paper had come, and everyone on both sides of the border had heard the stories of Undine and her magic. What power they ascribed to this particular mixture of herbs, Abby did not know, but she hoped it was the power to end this confrontation without the firing of weapons.
She waved the paper again and her men retreated a pace. With her arm still in the air, she turned to the soldiers, and more than a few of them stepped back as well. Undine had earned her reputation.
“I repeat,” Abby said, “we mean you no harm.”
She did not order the soldiers off her land. She had learned early in her tenure as chief that men did not take kindly to orders from a woman. Instead, she prayed the sergeant would come to this idea on his own, though she damned the world for forcing her to finesse rather than demand action. Even the most plank-headed man would have an easier time of it.
Suddenly, something stung her fingers and she heard a loud pop. Someone had shot the paper from her hand.
For an instant, Undine’s powder sparkled in the air like a tiny shower of Chinese fireworks. Then the world became a maelstrom of pounding hooves and musket fire.
* * *
Duncan cleared the bench and raced through the park. His heart thrummed like an engine and his feet moved like Mercury’s. He’d narrowed the distance between him and the band of Senecas to little more than thirty feet. Step after furious step, like a man-machine, he closed the distance. The ancient hunger for devastation squeezed his balls. He could feel it like a magnet, lifting him from his shoes and delivering him to his triumph. And if the Senecas made the mistake of running under the pedestrian bridge, they were done for. A company of English soldiers had disappeared under the same bridge a few moments earlier. In this battle the Highlanders and English were allied against the French and Indians, and as much as it pained him as a Scot to be on the side of his countrymen’s ancient enemy, he had to admit there was nothing in his life as a bond trader that equaled the thrill of herding his prey into a wall of waiting redcoats.
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Flirting with Forever
by Gwyn Cready
Campbell Stratford hopes her biography of court painter Anthony van Dyck will give her the credibility she needs to land her dream job as a museum curator. One day, while doing research on Van Dyck and his successor Peter Lely, Cam is abruptly transported to Lely’s studio in 1673.
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“Romantic and wickedly witty.” —Rachel Gibson, N
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by Mary Wine
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Pick for Spring 2015
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Praise for Mary Wine:
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