by L. L. Muir
“Beatrice!” The man who’d shouted immediately looked about him, red-faced and ashamed. He promptly ignored the girl and ducked inside the building a step ahead of the guards.
And well-shamed the fool should be, Connor thought to himself, though he immediately pitied the lass. If her father thought the ridicule of strangers more important than his own daughter’s pride, it was no wonder she’d left home without a second thought.
Connor approached the doorway and received a dozen venomous glares from the offenders who had taken up their waiting positions once more. “A pox on ye,” he muttered, then ducked inside.
The interior of the Constable’s office would have been spacious if not for the overabundance of furnishings, most of which was overly ornate and more suited for either a fine estate or a finer brothel. The place smelled of new wood and fresh varnish that made Connor’s head ache after only a few breaths of the stuff.
After his eyes adjusted to a room made all the darker by a low, soot-covered ceiling, he found the constable sitting behind an elaborately carved desk on what could conservatively be described as a throne. His red cheeks puffed and deflated with his every breath.
“One at a time, gentlemen,” he barked. “The rest of ye wait outside!” He plucked a pair of spectacles off his nose, noted the lass, and jumped to his feet. “Has she murdered someone?”
The foreguards shook their heads while the man who’d shouted the lass’ name pushed his way to the front of the desk.
“Surely not, sir. I know this lady.”
“Are ye her father?”
The man shook his head and ducked over the desk, embarrassed, still. “Her uncle, sir. I will make any recompense necessary, but I beg you to release her into my care.”
The constable looked thoughtfully at the ceiling for a moment, but Connor noticed the way his glance darted here and there around the room. The greedy blackguard was trying to decide what luxury he might be lacking—the mention of recompense must have put him in mind of another boon.
It was the uncle that rubbed Connor against the nap. Any man who would blush and fawn as he did was not man enough to take Miss Beatrice in hand and see her safely home again. The moment he turned his back, or ducked his head, she’d be off like a racing horse, headed for the Highlands, where she might find someone to oblige her…and never be heard from again.
Why, if Connor and his friends hadn’t been honor bound to save Mallory and the other two from their own foolish quests, the three women would still be waiting to be ransomed back from a despicable lot and that damned Blue Brian. And judging by their temperaments, the trio wouldn’t have lasted long enough for their own rescues.
And damn it all, if young Beatrice hadn’t been cut from the same cloth!
Connor cursed under his breath and skirted around the guards, but on his way to the conversation, he was barred by a long serving table that had no business whatsoever in the middle of a constable’s office. So he picked it up and carried it a few paces while ignoring the gasps behind him. When he found the edge of an Aubusson carpet, he set it down and gave it a good shove across the wood floor.
“How dare ye!”
“She’s mine.” In his impatience, the words blurted from his lips before he could think of better ones. “That is to say, I am responsible for this young woman. Listen here. This lass stowed away aboard my ship—well, not my ship, but the ship upon which I booked passage—"
“Do not harm him, Uncle Theodore! I love him!”
Connor glared at the lass. “I dinnae ken who ye might have fallen in love with, locked up as ye were in the brig.”
“You, of course. After you…obliged me—“
“Bite yer tongue.” He turned to the uncle and the constable, both apoplectic. “I have witnesses. She’s been locked away since she was found aboard until the moment these guards put her in chains. No one—and I made certain of this—no one could have obliged her in the manner she’d like ye to believe. And with her so intent on disgracing herself, I hardly think this man—who might or might not be an uncle—has not the mettle to keep her from running off and succeeding.”
He folded his arms and rested his tongue.
The constable nodded. He’d likely heard far too many of the same stories to ask what “obliged” meant.
“I cannot take her home in chains,” the uncle whined. “And I cannot leave her here while I search for my own daughter.” He looked at Connor with pleading eyes. “Her father will pay you well for escorting her home—“
“Never! Never again will I cross into England, do ye hear? Never! And I’ll be damned if I knock on her father’s door and say, Ye’re brother said ye’d reward me well to bring her home again. I’d be arrested in three shakes for kidnappin’.”
“Then what do you propose, sir?” The constable looked like a cat with a mouse in its mouth. Only Connor had no intention of being that mouse. After all, he could not save them all. And the word propose set his feet to itching.
He drew out his pouch, lifted four coins and handed one to each of the guards, then stepped before the woman and lifted her chin with his knuckle. “There are no happy endings to be had here, lassie. Go home and take better care of yerself than yer family cares to. Go home, Beatrice, before ye ruin more lives than just yer own.” He turned to the uncle. “Find yer backbone and get her to England. Save the one ye could find.”
To the constable, he put the dreaded question. “Where is this list? I wish to ken if there is an Englishman in the city by the name of Naylor.”
“Naylor? No Naylors are on the list of the missing.”
It was a relief to know he need not worry after Mallory’s reputation, but he also felt disheartened for a lass whose parents were not searching for her.
He shook off his maudlin thoughts and reminded himself, “I cannot save them all.”
Chapter Fourteen
Connor found his way to a public house determined to surround himself with the sound of Gaelic and the tastes and smells of Scottish fare that would help erase the fragrance of Mallory Naylor’s skin from his memory. As he watched a man approach his table, he realized he should have chosen a pub more carefully.
The Englishman removed his hat. “I was told you can retrieve our daughters.”
“Ye heard wrong. Perhaps what ye heard was Gaelic for English go home.”
“But my daughter—“
“No!”
Farther north and closer to the docks, Connor entered an Irish alehouse he would have avoided on any other visit to Glasgow. There, he tossed the owner a generous coin.
“I have business with Blue Brian.”
“Would ye mean Black Brian?”
Connor didn’t know what game the man played, but he was in no mood for playing it. “I mean blue.”
“Unlucky, that,” the man said, snatching the coin as he spoke. “In jail, is he, and that for another three weeks.”
“And if my business cannae wait?”
“Surely ye wouldn’t wish to break in to jail, sir?”
Connor woke to the clang of a bell and rose to sit on the bed that was only slightly more giving than the wood planks below it. And like every morning, his first thought was of that blasted Englishwoman.
It had been so long since he'd seen Mallory, however, he was beginning to wonder if she was real at all. The details of her face, in general, were looking a wee bit blurry in his mind’s eye, though much of the rest of her would never be forgotten—especially when she wore her ridiculous gentleman’s suit of red velvet. In fact, he would likely never see another hat feather, red or otherwise, without thinking of her.
Oh, she’d been real, all right. As were the consequences of her stepping into his life.
Rory MacPherson was now married--to another Englishwoman, no less--and leading his grandfather's clan on the border. Ian had been deposited in Edinburgh, and that clanging in Connor’s ears was the wharf bell in Glasgow.
The expansive docks were the reason his feet still hurt,
though he'd slept soundly for a good five hours. And sprawling out before him was yet another day of hunting, haunting, wearing a hole in his best boots while essentially guarding the battlements between Mallory Naylor and the sea.
She would find pirates and sea captains thick on the ground, ready and willing to accept her proposal--if he didn't keep her from them. Did no one sail anymore? How many ships languished in the harbor when their captains should have been anxious to be out to sea, ready to pay homage to their watery mistress--and well out of reach of silly women?
He'd been in Glasgow four days, but still there was no sign of her. Against his nature, he'd been forced to strike up conversation after conversation, hoping to hear some word of gossip about a rather beautiful Englishwoman arriving on the wharf. But he'd heard nothing.
The morning fog lifted off his brain and he remembered.
Monday! Today is Monday!
He swung his legs off the bed just in time to catch him as he flew toward the door of his small rented room, snatching up his sword belt as he went. He turned the handle and footed the door open while he stowed his small blades into their respective sheaths beneath his clothes. The smell stirred up by his movements told him it was high time for a bath and a change of clothes, but he didn't dare take the time. Monday meant that Blue Brian would be allowed visitors.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, ye stink.”
How fitting. Even the jailor was Irish.
Connor ignored the comment. “I must speak with Blue Brian, sir.”
“As must the whole of England. Join the que.” The man pointed the feather of his quill over his shoulder. Finely dressed men stood against the building in a long line that wrapped around the corner. “Would ye believe it, they think the man is hiding their daughters from them. If ye ask me, I believe Blue Brian had himself arrested just to find a bit of peace. Yes, I do.”
“They’re all here to speak with the Irishman?”
“They are, more’s the pity.”
He’d go mad if he had to wait all day, so he played upon their mutual lack of love for England. “Don’t ye suppose a Scot should be allowed to see him before an Englishman?”
The jailor lifted his brows in surprise, then narrowed his eyes as he considered. “Right ye are, then.” He called out and a young man came forward. “Take this man to the head of the que for Blue Brian.” He turned back to Connor. “Next time, bathe before ye come, if ye please. This is not a Covenanter’s prison.”
The lad led Connor up the steps and into the building. The former barked at the velvet-covered crowd to step aside, his voice clearing a path to a spacious room with a high ceiling. Along one wall, a line of tables. Behind the tables sat various people, men and women, including one cursed Irishman whom Connor had recently wished never to see again.
The boy led him to the Irishman’s table and held out his arm to block the next man in line. “Wait yer turn, Sassenach,” he snarled. “This Scotsmen has urgent business, aye?”
The Englishman opened his mouth to protest, then coughed and curled his nose. Connor leaned closer, happy to provoke the delicate man with his odor. “Mind yer tongue or lose it.”
The other held his arms out to the sides and stepped back, forcing those behind him to retreat while maintaining his place in line. “After you, sir.”
“Connor McGee! Sure, but ye haven’t lost that Englishwoman again, have ye?” Blue Brian tipped his chair onto its back legs and laced his fingers across his chest, just under the most aggravating grin. “As ye can see, I have no weapon, so these fine guards will think it rude if ye try to harm me.” He sighed. “At the mercy of the court, I am. Though I am accepting donations toward my defense. The sooner I am exonerated, the sooner I can help these gentlemen find their daughters. But alas, an early release does not come freely. If ye’d like me to track that brunette for ye once again—”
“Tell me ye have her.”
Brian dropped his smile and let his chair fall forward with a thud. He glanced at the men waiting in line, then leaned across the table. “After what happened with McMurtry,” he said quietly, “don’t ye suppose that, if I so much as glimpsed those women again, I would run full gallop in the opposite direction? Of course I dinnae have her.”
He gazed at the tricorn that sat crown-down on the corner of the table, then chewed on his bottom lip. Connor followed his gaze and realized the hat was lined with coins, no doubt collected from the man’s distraught visitors. There was a question in Brian’s eyes as he looked from Connor’s face to his treasure, and back again.
“Nay, Irishman. I willnae contribute to yer cause. But ye will point me in the right direction. If my lass started from Hawick or Corbridge, headed for Glasgow, into whose hands might she have fallen?”
Brian choked and snorted. “So, ye lost her again? Oh, boy oh!” It took a few seconds for him to realize the damage Connor could inflict before the guards could stop him, and he composed himself accordingly. “Bound for Glasgow, ye say? If she wished to avoid the main roads and cut straight through—” He bit his lips together and blanched.
“Aye?”
Brian leaned forward again. “Then she might be the guest of a man called Black Brian. As greedy as McMurtry, though prettier, to be sure.”
Connor winced. “Prettier?”
A slow smile spread across the bastard’s face. “Aye. Prettier than you, even.” He sighed heavily. “I wouldn’t wish my lass to be playin’ patty fingers with the likes of him.”
“Where do I find him?”
Brian tilted his head from side to side. “Well, as to that, if ye can find a lovely gown to fit ye, and put yer hair up like the English lassies, Black Brian will find you. Just look for a heavy gold chain about his neck--”
Connor grabbed the man’s clothes and fairly pulled him across the table. “Where?”
Brian peeled Connor’s hands open and retreated to his seat. “Carnwath. Southern edge of the Pentland Hills. There are some ruins…”
Connor was already on his feet.
“They’ll smell ye comin’, McGee, if ye don’t bathe first!”
Chapter Fifteen
Mallory pushed the carriage curtain aside and looked once more at the old castle ruins. The sennight she’d spent among its stones were some of the most illuminating and elucidative of her life, and she wished to remember them as vividly as she would remember the ruins.
As the carriage rolled away from the sea of grass and heather, she stared at the path where Janine, in her blue dress, had raced away from the structure, offering at least a token of resistance to Padruig, the lad who she now fancied she was in love with. But what had changed Mallory was everything that followed.
She needed to remember—must remember—so if she ever came face to face with Connor McGee, she couldn’t fall back to her old ways.
Mal shook her head. No, that could not happen. She wasn’t the same at all. In fact, if Sir Connor passed her on the road, he might not recognize her…
For most of the day, Connor urged his horse south, then east, away from the city of Glasgow. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake. After all, it was a sprawling city that might, at that moment, be hiding Mallory from him. But he’d done his best to ferret her out, and now, finally, he had another place to look.
He quickly made a promise to himself, that no matter what this Black Brian was up to, Connor would not interfere unless the man had his woman. If Mallory wasn’t among the man’s victims, he would ride on. Scotland was far too vast and there was much ground to cover between Glasgow and Falstone, where the women had started. If he reached Baron Braithwaite’s home with empty hands, he’d search the main roads back to Glasgow. After that…
After that, he would leave her in God’s hands and do his best to forget about her. Surely, if he put enough ground beneath him, the drive to prove her wrong would ease.
Surely.
The afternoon sun played off the edges of a carriage headed in the opposite direction and reflected golden sunlight in
to his eyes. He pulled up and waited for the carriage to pass him at a wide stretch of road, and while he waited, he imagined something else that was gold, perhaps shiny, perhaps already dangling around the neck of a certain Englishwoman.
He shook the image from his head and watched the carriage instead. Two horses only. A light load, then. The driver was a young man with a bandaged hand. Two riders out front, six in the rear. Connor smirked. Obviously, it carried another English father on his way to Glasgow to search for his daughter. Did the fool not realize that a bevy of outriders announced he carried a healthy ransom inside, goading the most greedy to take it from him?
He lifted his hand, intending to stop the coach long enough to warn the passengers inside, but before he caught the driver’s eye, he lowered his arm. If he tried to stop the carriage, he’d have nine guns drawn on him before he could state his case. And these young, inexperienced riders might shoot him while trying to cock their pistols.
No. Better to ride on.
At the slight slowing of the vehicle, a set of fingers parted the curtain just as the carriage passed. Womanly fingers.
So perhaps the father had already ransomed his daughter and hurried toward the port city to spirit her home again. If so, had he ransomed her from Black Brian?
Connor turned his horse to follow the coach, regardless of the danger. But then he reconsidered and turned southeast again. He couldn’t allow his imagination to run wild. There was no reason to believe anyone on the road had aught to do with Black Brian.
When the Irishman had mentioned the other man, Connor would have believed it only a tall tale intended to get rid of him—if he hadn’t heard the name before. Another Brian prone to kidnapping? It was all too improbable, but it was one clue he could follow. And he thanked heaven for it. If he’d have spent another day tromping the wharf, he’d have gone mad.