by Karen Ranney
Mary turned to her friend as Mr. Grant called Hamish to the rear of the coach. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I hope so.” She hesitated and then asked one last favor of Mrs. Grant. “You’ve already done so much for me, but could you do one thing more?”
“If I can.”
“Could you take Betty in? Charles won’t be kind to her after her testimony at the hearing.”
Mrs. Grant nodded, smiling. “Of course, and Cook as well, if she’d like to come.”
“I shall miss you dreadfully,” Elspeth said when her mother stepped back. “Who will know my secrets now?” She slanted a glance toward Brendan. Mary smiled in response.
“I shall miss you as well,” she said. “But you must write me as often as you wish. When I have an address, send me all your letters, and I’ll do the same.”
Elspeth sent a look in Hamish’s direction. “I doubt you’ll have time to write, Mary,” she whispered, smiling.
They hugged one last time, and Mary got into the carriage, pushing her skirts aside, and waiting for Hamish.
“If you have a moment,” Marshall said from behind Hamish. “I’ve a gift for you.” In his arms, he carried a leather chest. For a moment, Hamish thought it a duplicate of the case Mary had used for her medicines, but then realized there were clasps around the top to allow the sides to drop down.
Marshall lowered it until it rested in the back of the carriage.
“I’ve been working on a new design of my electrical machine, but I would like you to have this one.”
He opened the case to reveal an apparatus consisting of a hollow glass cylinder supported on two wooden cradles. On the outside of the cylinder, midpoint, was a metal bar with a handle. Against the length of the glass was a piece of black leather attached to a rectangle of crimson silk. Behind the cylinder was a thin rod topped with a metal ball.
“The practitioner cranks the handle while the patient grips the ball,” Marshall instructed. “You’ll get a shock. Not enough to kill,” he said, in an obvious attempt to reassure Hamish, “but more than sufficient to cause some stimulus to the damaged nerves.”
“Mary will be overjoyed,” Hamish said, hoping to mask his own, less enthusiastic, response. “Thank you.”
“Use it for your good health, Hamish. A way of apology for my earlier forcefulness.”
Hamish smiled. “If I’d not wanted to marry, Marshall, no threats of heaven or hell would have swayed me. Even those against the Grants.”
Marshall studied him for a moment, then nodded once. “Yet you would never have allowed them to be harmed, I think.”
“No,” Hamish agreed.
Marshall stepped back, and Hamish thanked them all again.
“Where will you go?” Brendan asked.
Hamish stepped away from the rear of the carriage. The lantern was extinguished, and the courtyard plunged into darkness.
“To Gilmuir,” Hamish told him.
It was too dark to see his brother’s face, but surprise was evident in Brendan’s voice. “Is that wise? Do you really want to bring trouble down on Alisdair and Iseabal?”
“We won’t be there that long,” Hamish said. “Only long enough to buy a ship from Alisdair.”
“You’re going back to sea?”
Hamish nodded, thinking that he should confide in Mary before Brendan.
The two brothers looked at each other, the darkness easing the farewell. For the first time since India, Hamish felt close to Brendan. Or perhaps loving Mary made him feel as if he belonged to the world again.
“Will you go back to Castle Gloom and gather up my belongings?”
“I will,” Brendan promised.
“Be careful,” Hamish said. “As soon as word of Mary’s escape is discovered, I’m certain we’ll fall under suspicion.”
“I’m a MacRae. I’ll be fine, as you will,” Brendan said, the echoes of childhood daring in his pronouncement. “You should have told me about India, Hamish.”
Hamish nodded. “I think perhaps I should have,” he agreed. But he’d had to begin to accept his own actions first, before he could share them with another soul. It was strange, however, how much lighter he felt after his confession in a crowded courtroom. He’d never forget Thompson, or that singular moment when he’d made his decision to live, but Hamish no longer hated himself for refusing to die like those around him.
The farewells done, Hamish climbed into the carriage. The door closed, the signal was given to the driver, and the coach began to move.
Chapter 24
H amish settled into the seat beside her. Slowly, they made their way out of the Grants’ courtyard, bound for freedom and even more adventure.
She turned and looked at Hamish. “What happened to Thompson?” she asked gently.
He glanced at her, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. When he did his voice was low and hesitant. “When I was rescued, my first thought was to go back and find him. It was too late; he was already dead.”
“Was there suppuration in his wound?” she asked.
“Some.”
“Any discoloration?”
“There were red streaks leading from it to his thigh, and down to his foot.”
“Smell?”
He nodded. “Are you determining the degree of his injury, Mary? If so, I can tell you that he probably would not have survived his wound.”
“But you still blame yourself.”
He said nothing, and she was suddenly reminded of those moments in the courtroom when their gazes had locked and he’d told her the story of his escape. It hadn’t seemed important that there were people all around, rapt and entranced by his tale. He’d spoken directly to her, telling her what all those nights and days and conversations between them had only hinted at. Now she understood the agony of his soul more completely.
“He was alive, and because of me, he died,” he said gently, cupping her face in his hand.
She understood, at that moment, exactly what kind of man he was. Because he accepted the responsibility for his actions, he was also branded by them. But if he’d been another type of man, she wouldn’t have been so captivated by him. She never would have remained at Castle Gloom for all those weeks, and her heart would not be touched now by his unvoiced pain.
She had a confession of her own.
“Have you ever noticed that when you stub your toe and concentrate on the pain that it seems much worse? Whereas if you stub your toe and think of other things, the pain disappears within moments?”
“There must be a reason for such a question,” he said, amused.
“I’ve never told you about Gordon. Not truly. I preferred not to think about him.”
“So the pain would go away?”
She looked away, fingering the curtain and staring out as if she could view Gordon from there. All she witnessed were the sights of a town in which she’d lived all her life. A place that felt alien to her now. “Not the way you mean. Perhaps more my guilt. I was grateful to my husband for more than one reason. He was kind to my mother, and helped settle my father’s debts. At first, it wasn’t difficult to love him.”
He remained silent, listening.
“A few years later, his mind began to wander. He would accuse me of not feeding him immediately after our evening meal. He said that Charles stole his gold, and the neighbors were laughing at him. He began to forget things. Once, I came into his workroom and found him just sitting there, holding one of his tools. When I asked him if anything was wrong, he looked at me as if I were a stranger. He wanted to know if he worked with the tools and what he did. I wanted to cry. A few minutes later, however, he was working again.”
“He was an older man, and sometimes the old lose their way.”
She shook her head. “It was more than that. I should have investigated it further.” She turned to face him. “I began to spend less and less time with Gordon. I’d find any excuse to leave the house, and when we were there together, I was always in my w
orkroom. If I’d been the kind of wife he deserved, perhaps I would have noticed his condition.
“I’m not innocent, Hamish,” she said, speaking the hideous truth. “I want to be, but I’m not.” Accident or not, she’d urged Gordon to drink the medication that might have killed him.
“Neither am I,” he said gently. “Leave innocence to babies and saints, Mary. People are flawed, incomplete, and occasionally simply wrong. Even Gordon deserves his share of blame.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because he didn’t tell you he was also taking Grampian’s potions. Does that not reveal a lack of trust on his part?”
She considered that point for a moment. “Will we always feel guilty, Hamish?” She should have chosen a better time to ask, perhaps, but there might never be a more intimate moment. They were alone with the rest of the world sleeping around them. Their whispers were carried on the night wind, the chill of the evening evident in the puffs of smoke that coated each word.
“I think so,” he said after a moment of silence. “Some guilt is not an altogether bad thing, Mary. It keeps us from repeating our actions, makes us hone our souls.”
A philosophy she’d never before considered. “What will happen to Charles? He, too, knew what was happening, but chose to tell no one.”
“Perhaps nothing right now. Or not that we can witness.”
She glanced at him, surprised.
“Unfortunately, some wicked people escape justice and good people pay for crimes they didn’t commit. Life is occasionally not fair.” He sat back against the seat and reached for her as the horses rounded a corner. “The Hindus believe that a man will ultimately pay for his crimes. If not in this life, then in the next.”
“Is that a philosophy you espouse?”
He chuckled. “It begins to make perfect sense if one can believe in a universal justice.”
“He should be made to pay for his actions, Hamish. If he’d only spoken sooner, Gordon would not have died in such agony.”
“One thing that my time at Castle Gloom taught me was that I didn’t want to waste the joy of my days on hatred and anger. You helped me realize that, Mary.”
“I did?” She smiled, realizing that, like Charles, he offered her a choice. But this one was so much more palatable. To be bitter or happy. “I say we should consign Charles to the past, Hamish. Along with Sir John.”
He bent his head to kiss her, taking her from this chilled and shadowed place into one filled with warmth and delight. Suddenly, her cheek was pressed against his chest, her arms were under his, her hands pressed flat against his back. He was there, solid and real, not simply a man she’d dreamed to fill in her nights. She clutched his shirt, not wanting to move.
Days of being subjected to Sir John’s imprisonment, the hearing, and her own sense of sorrow for failing Gordon conspired to overwhelm her. Because of her fatigue, her grief, and her longing, she wasn’t wise, or restrained, or mindful of her pride.
“I love you, Hamish,” she said, no doubt startling him with her declaration. She’d thought of him in the morning when she’d awakened to visions of his smile, and replayed all the memories of their loving at night to keep her company.
She wrapped her arms around him as far as they would go, pressed her cheek against his chest, and closed her eyes. Tears fell now, dampening her cheeks and his shirt.
When he would have pulled away, she held on tighter, not allowing him to move or see her crying.
“Mary,” he said tenderly. Just that and no more.
“You’ll come to love me,” she promised him rashly.
“Do you think I don’t now?” he asked, extricating himself from her grip and pulling back to look down into her face. “Or do you suppose I go about betraying my secrets, rescuing prisoners, and proposing marriage to any woman?”
“You didn’t exactly propose,” she corrected, blinking up at him. “I believe we were cowering under some sort of theological threat.”
He smiled at her and gently wiped the tears from her face with one thumb. “I do not cower,” he said.
Mary pulled back and studied his face, wondering at the delightful sense of buoyancy she was beginning to feel. A bubble of excitement was opening up inside her and spreading from her toes to her fingertips.
“Besides, you had to marry me,” he said.
“I did?”
“Yes, to save my reputation.”
He kissed her again, and she felt his smile.
The carriage left Inverness with all possible speed, but not so much that their flight would attract attention. Less than an hour had passed since they’d left the jail, but there was still the possibility that the ruse with Hester and Micah hadn’t worked.
A little while later, Mary fell asleep beside him and Hamish extended his arm around her. Gently, he untied her bonnet and slipped the ribbon free before tossing the offending headgear to the other side of the carriage.
He propped up his feet on the opposite seat so that he might make himself a bed for his wife. He eased her head down until her cheek was pillowed on his thigh. She made a soft sigh as if she fell into a deeper sleep. He hoped her dreams were sweet ones.
All that time at Castle Gloom, she’d never complained, never made herself out to be a long-suffering spouse to garner attention or sympathy. She’d commented on Gordon’s good qualities and remained silent about the rest.
How long would it take him to know her, and would the journey prove to be as fascinating as the introduction to Mary had been?
They drove onward into the night, the moonlight illuminating the road. Twice, Hamish thought he heard the sound of hooves thundering behind them, but it was only the hills and valleys carrying back the sound of the speeding carriage.
They were little more than shadows, an occasional silhouette thrown down onto the surface of the road by the moon to their left. He leaned back against the seat, allowing his eyes to close, hearing the rhythm of the shod hooves of the four horses.
With any luck, there would be a ship available at Gilmuir, one that Hamish could purchase from Alisdair. It would be a difficult bargain. Alisdair would want to give the ship to him, but the shipyards at Gilmuir were his brother’s future, and he wouldn’t jeopardize it. Besides, a MacRae ship was worth the price. Sleek and fast as a swan coming to rest on the water, one of Alisdair’s ships would take them from Scotland with all possible speed.
His mind cataloged all the places they might go. Florence, first of all, where he would commission the finest Italian leather case for the medicines Mary would begin to collect again. Then to Rome, perhaps. Anywhere but India. Not that the country had a monopoly on cruelty. There were too many other places in the world where the recent British incursion had angered the natives, making them want to rebel as fiercely as the Atavasi.
He would never put his wife in danger.
His wife. Words that held a tinge of justifiable possessiveness. He knew so much more about her now, and her allure had only deepened. He’d thought to want only one thing from this woman, and discovered that loving her physically was not enough. He wanted to plumb her mind and test the dimensions of her soul.
Her smile always possessed an edge of sadness, and her eyes, sometimes sparkling with mischief, sometimes sober and intent, had always seemed a little weary of the world. He’d known of her ability to heal, but now suspected that she did so as a way to fight loneliness.
Sitting in the courtroom today, he’d finally pieced it together, understanding that what he saw in her was what he’d also felt in himself, an apartness, an aloofness that separated him from other people. He recognized a kindred soul in her.
The woman he’d bedded had merged with the woman who fascinated him. The two became one, an amalgam of charm, physical grace, intelligence, and more. He found himself wanting to know why she thought certain things, what her childhood had been like. What her dreams were, her favorite color, all answers he might have known if he’d courted her properly.
Once, he might have been a proper suitor, but he’d returned from India a different man, the idea of indulging in courtship far from his mind. Yet somehow, Fate or Providence had brought Mary into his life. A reward, perhaps, for his stoic refusal to die?
His mind wandered to those days in the desert. For months, he’d not wanted to think about Thompson. Hamish found himself reliving the scene as if he were not simply involved in it, but as if he also stood apart, watching the man he’d been.
His clothes were in tatters and his skin burned to blisters by the sun. His lips were white with sores as he knelt beside Thompson.
“Get up,” he’d commanded, his throat feeling as if he’d swallowed burning hot sand. Months of screams had cracked his voice. “Get up, damn you.”
Thompson hadn’t moved for a long while. Finally, he’d opened his eyes, staring full-faced into the sun. “Susan? Is that you? Oh, my dearest girl, I’ve dreamed of you.”
“Get up, Thompson.”
The other man shivered, burying himself deeper into the sand until only his chest and head showed. “It’s cold in Surrey in winter,” he said to no one in particular.
Hamish stood, his reserves nearly gone. It would be so easy to simply join him, lie down in the sand and pretend himself home. He shook himself and stared off toward the far horizon. Only a day more. He repeated that to Thompson, but the man didn’t answer. “Damn it!” he shouted. “Do you want to die?”
Again, no response.
“Susan, close the window, it’s cold in the room.”
Thompson crossed his arms over his chest as his body bowed, his entire frame shaking. He, like Hamish, had lost so much weight over the past months that it wasn’t difficult to imagine his skull through the thin layer of flesh and muscle. His grin wasn’t humor but a muscle spasm.
“Thompson!”
The longer he stood there, fatigue leaching the last of his resolve, the more the sun seared into him. Thompson was dying, just as Hamish would if he didn’t find shelter.
He looked toward the far horizon once more before bending and picking up Thompson’s water jug. He poured half of it into his own container, and tried once more to rouse him. When Thompson didn’t answer, Hamish turned and staggered toward the horizon. If he found help, he’d come back for the man.