One Night with the Laird

by Nicola Cornick

  “I apologize for holding you up,” Lucas said, his gaze going to Jack’s riding clothes, “but there is something here I think you should see.” He held out a document. “I had a thought after you left last night. If MacLeod had been intending to flee the country with his lover, then there would in all likelihood be a record of their departure on a sailing from Greenock.”

  “But MacLeod had faked his own death,” Jack said. “The booking would be in a false name.”

  Lucas nodded. “Yes, but there would be two names if he was fleeing with a lover. As a long shot I thought I would check the records for around the time that MacLeod was supposed to have died and see if anyone on the manifest sounded familiar.” He unrolled the document and pointed. “This is what I found.”

  Jack looked. The ship was the Jura, bound for Madras in India, the date the day after Archie MacLeod’s apparent death had been reported in the Edinburgh papers. He scanned the list of passengers impatiently. MacRae, parents with two children, Mr and Mrs D MacReavy, Mr S Oakes, and then, scored out, Mr A Oxford and Mr J Oxford, brothers, and the word cancelled....

  “Oxford,” Lucas said eagerly. “Cambridge. You see the connection?”

  It took Jack a minute. His mind felt frustratingly slow. He remembered Mairi telling him that no one other than herself and Lord MacLeod had known about Archie’s secret lover. McLeod’s man of business had most certainly not been in on the secret. Or had he? Jack thought of Jeremy Cambridge coming to Methven and of Wilfred Cardross dead in a ditch the following morning. He remembered Mairi saying that Cambridge had promised to visit her when she returned to Edinburgh. Suddenly he felt paralysed with fear.

  “Oh God,” he said. He thrust the paper back into Lucas’s hands. “I have to go.”

  It was only seven miles from Edinburgh to Ardglen and he could only pray that he was not too late.

  * * *

  “YOU WERE ARCHIE’S LOVER,” Mairi said. “I had no idea.” The sun still poured down, the water still ran in the stream, but it was as though she could not see it nor hear it. She felt as though she were encased in a separate world, a world encompassed by Jeremy and the pistol and the ghastly truth that he had killed her husband.

  She trawled back through her memories, sifting, searching. Had she ever seen any indication that Archie and Jeremy were more than simple acquaintances? She thought not. But then there had been no reason to notice. It would have been the last thing she would have expected. She had imagined Archie’s lover to be a woman, not a man.

  “You’ve been deceiving Lord MacLeod, making him think that Archie is still alive,” she said. “Why would you do such a cruel thing?”

  Jeremy blinked. There was no emotion in his gray eyes, only a blank emptiness that was more chilling than any anger. “I wanted money,” he said. “I kept Archie alive so that I could make Lord MacLeod pay.”

  Mairi glanced toward the cairn and saw him smile. “I meant in spirit,” he said. “He died the night we left.”

  “Was it an accident?” Mairi asked, and shrank before the contempt in his eyes.

  “Of course not,” Jeremy said. “We quarreled. He was supposed to bring the money with him, but the sentimental fool had made it all over to you! He said he owed it to you, as though he could ever make up in money for what he had done! He said you would use it to do good.” His lip curled. “Poor Archie, he was so weak, so weak and so broken with guilt.”

  “He was a better man than you will ever be,” Mairi said with a flash of anger, but it slid off Jeremy as though it could not touch him.

  “I’m not interested in being good,” he said. “I’m interested in being rich. For seven and twenty years I’ve been Lord MacLeod’s lackey and my father before me. We were meant for better than that.”

  The faint scent of smoke drifted down the valley and Mairi turned her head sharply. Immediately Jeremy raised the pistol and gestured to her to keep still.

  “You can’t shoot me,” Mari said. “The servants know you are here. They will know it was no accident.”

  “I’ve no intention of shooting you unless I absolutely have to,” Jeremy said. “No, I will be the one to find your body. I’ll try to save you like the hero I am.” He saw her frown and smiled with broad satisfaction. “The hillside is alight, my dear. The heather and bracken is tinder-dry. A flame dropped here and there...” He shrugged. “Soon we will be surrounded. You’ll never get out alive.”

  Mairi could hear the fire now. She made an involuntary movement and once again Jeremy jerked the pistol at her.

  “I want to tell you the rest,” he said.

  “Why?” Mairi snapped. “To gloat?”

  He shrugged. “If you like. I killed Wilfred Cardross after he failed to kidnap you and bring you to me. I would have killed Michael Innes if Rutherford had not shut him up first. As it is...” He shrugged again. “I’m still thinking about it. Maybe in a little while...”

  “Another accident?” Mairi said. “They will be becoming a little too frequent, Jeremy. People will start to suspect.”

  “It’s all your fault,” Jeremy said, suddenly fretful. “I had been intending to marry you, to get hold of the money that way. Then you accepted Jack Rutherford instead. Lord MacLeod told me it was all a pretense, but I knew you were Rutherford’s mistress and I could not take the risk.”

  “So you sent Wilfred to kill me,” Mairi said.

  “To kidnap you,” Jeremy corrected. “You were no use to me dead. But now—” he sighed as though her behavior had been particularly annoying “—now I have no choice because you know about Archie. It’s damned irritating.”

  He smiled suddenly, shrugging off his ill temper with the whim of a child. “Anyway, I must be off. Fortunately I can run a good deal faster than you.” He looked at her pretty kid boots with amusement. “Those dainty little things won’t help you in a fire.”

  He raised the pistol in a mocking salute and then he was gone, scrambling up the bank and disappearing over the top. Mairi fought viciously against the relief and nausea that threatened to turn her dizzy. This was no time for weakness. She set her teeth and started to climb up after him.

  By the time she had reached the top of the bank her leather half boots were in shreds just as Jeremy had predicted, and her skirts ripped to pieces on the heather and rock. Her legs were already aching. She crested the rise—and fell back with a cry at what she saw. The little valley had been a temporary oasis that gave no clue about the inferno that was blazing across the hillside. It surrounded her, wave upon wave of wildfire that ate through the tinder-dry heather and bracken and roared down toward Ardglen. Smoke had turned the blue of the sky to a hazy threatening gray. She could hear the hiss and crack of the flames and smell and taste the acrid scent of burning on the breeze.

  Mairi had never seen a wildfire before. The speed and the sound of it terrified her. Jeremy had got through just in time. She could see him fleeing down the path, racing ahead of the fire, running at a pace she knew she could never match.

  A sudden gust of wind drove the sheet of flame so close she could feel the heat. She fell back, scrambling back down the side of the valley the way she had come, her heart thumping and the roughness of the rock scoring her palms. When she saw the fire top the bank and follow her down she screamed.

  The water. She had to get into the water.

  Despite the heat of the summer the stream was brutally cold and she caught her breath on a gasp of shock. She plunged downhill, following its course, heedless of the mossy stones slipping beneath her ruined shoes and the brambles that tore at her clothes. Twice she fell, scraping her raw hands and bruising her knees. There was only one thought in her mind and that was that she was not going to die here to oblige Jeremy Cambridge so that he could keep the secret of Archie’s murder. In some way it felt as though she would be failing Jack. It felt as though he was calling her
on. Yet even as she scrambled along the stream, soaking now and cold, the flames kept pace with her, dancing along the bank, reaching out to her, so close it was terrifying.

  About fifty yards from the bottom of the hill she knew she was not going to make it. Here the stream disappeared underground through caves hollowed in the sandstone thousands of years before. A dry old oak, deadwood, overhung the water and as she watched it caught fire and split apart. The sound was indescribable, a fierce blistering crack like a gunshot. The tree fell across the stream, burning fiercely, and the flames jumped the water to catch on the other side and turn her only escape route to a wall of flame.

  * * *

  JACK HEARD THE sound of the tree falling as he came up the slope of the hill. The entire landscape seemed to be alight. By the time he had arrived at Ardglen, Frazer was evacuating the house. Servants were running around frantically, the grooms leading out the horses. Of Hamish and Murdo and Ross, there was no sign. Frazer, pale and his face drawn into tight lines of strain, told him that Lady Mairi had gone for a walk earlier and had not returned. The boys were out searching for her. He said that Jeremy Cambridge had called and had set off up the hill after her. It was then Jack felt the dread encase his heart like ice.

  At first he thought it was a shot he had heard; then he saw the tree fall across the stream. Beyond that he saw a flash of white against the dazzling brightness of the sun on the water. Of all incongruous things, it was a parasol.

  Mairi.

  Even as he started to move, Murdo came up at a run and caught his arm. The man’s face was already filthy with sweat and soot and soil. The heat was fierce here and the fire only yards away. There was desperation and grief in Murdo’s eyes.

  “You can’t go up there, sir—” he started to say.

  “I can,” Jack said, “and I will. The fire is not going to take her. I won’t let it.” Even as he spoke he felt the despair, the fear that he was already too late. He crushed it down.

  Murdo and Hamish and Ross surrounded him.

  “Let me pass,” he said on a burst of fury, “or I’ll knock you all down.” They fell back, respect in their eyes even though they knew and he knew it was a death trap.

  Jack ran toward the fire, meeting it just at the point where the stream vanished into the rock. He leaped for the water, blinded, deafened by the roar of the fire, feeling the flames reach out to catch at him. Then he was down on the streambed and the cold of the water surrounded him. He stumbled, momentarily shocked by the chill. He reached out and touched flesh and caught Mairi’s hand. She was cold, soaking wet and trembling, but she felt like the most wonderful thing in his arms and he dragged her to him and pulled her beneath a sandstone overhang as the fire raced overhead and turned the water red.

  Her face was pressed into the curve of his neck and he had a hand on the back of her head and his arm about her waist holding her still against his chest. He was shaking, he realized, and his breath came in great shuddering pulses that threatened to wrench him apart.

  “Mairi,” he said, and could not recognize his own voice. He felt her move then, burrowing closer still into his arms. They were both chilled and drenched to the skin, but where their bodies were clasped together they heated each other and the blood beat warm. Jack pressed his lips to her hair and breathed deeply, smelling the smoke that clung to her. She was singed and filthy and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he felt as though his heart were cracking open.

  He was not quite sure what happened next. He had thought only to find them both some cover, pitifully small as it was, from the fire that roared overhead. But then the ground beneath them seemed to give way and they fell, tumbling over and over, until they came to rest on the floor of the cave below.

  * * *

  MAIRI CAME BACK to consciousness to find herself clasped close to Jack’s body. Her head was against his chest, and his body was curved over hers to protect her from the falling stone. Her lungs were choked with dust and dirt. She felt frozen, filthy and shaken to the core, but she was alive. She shifted slightly, angling her head up toward him. The bank above them had collapsed, but there was just enough light coming in to see his face.

  “Jack?” she said.

  He shifted. His hands on her were urgent. “Mairi? Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Mairi said. She started to shake with cold and reaction, shivering uncontrollably. “You?”

  “I’m still alive.” Astonishingly she could hear the smile in his voice. “Mairi, darling—” His tone changed, turned so fierce it made her tremble. “God Almighty. I thought I had lost you forever and I could not bear it.”

  Mairi stopped feeling afraid then. There, with the sound of the fire roaring overhead and the slither of the rock still falling about them, she was aware of nothing more than an infinite peace. Jack held her tightly. His eyes were closed, but she could feel the thud of his heart, hard and strong beneath her ear, and she knew suddenly that if forever lasted only a few minutes more, that would be enough.

  Jack’s fingers were against her face, turning it up to his as he kissed her with infinite gentleness. “You taste of salt,” he said a little later. “And ash.” He kissed her again. “I love you,” he said. His voice fractured. “I thought I was never going to have the chance to tell you.”

  She had known, in the moment that he had held her, known he loved her and known that to be with him was the most important thing in the world. Now she felt a ripple of laughter bubble through her. “Jack,” she said. “You have the most terrible sense of timing.”

  “You’ve never complained about it before,” Jack said. He kissed her again. “I love you,” he repeated. His voice sounded stronger this time, more certain, as though he was trying out the words and finding them slightly more comfortable.

  “Marry me,” he said. Then, with fierce humility, “I know I’m not good enough for you—”

  “Hush,” Mairi said. She kissed him. “You are all I want, everything I want.”

  She heard him give a shaken laugh. “I love you hopelessly. I’ll love you forever.”

  “You are doing frightfully well,” Mairi said demurely, “for a man who until today thought himself unable to love at all.”

  “Minx.”

  She could feel his smile as he kissed her again, with tenderness and infinite sweetness. His body had relaxed into acceptance now, acceptance of his own emotions and of the love she had for him in return. He held her protectively and with a sort of blazing, defiant pride that made her feel humble and astonishingly happy all at the same time.

  “Sir!” There was a shout from the top of the shaft where the faint light gleamed. “Madam? Lady Mairi?”

  “Damn,” Mairi said. “They’ve found us.” She scrambled up. “Murdo! Over here!”

  It was a half hour later that she and Jack finally emerged into the daylight, filthy, cold, blinking in the sudden brightness. The wind had taken the fire away down the valley to the west, leaving nothing but charred and smoldering heather and scorched ground in its wake. A dark pall of smoke hung over the hill. Ardglen still stood looking peaceful and immaculate beside the sparkling sea.

  “We found Mr. Cambridge’s body by the stream,” Murdo said. “Had he come looking for you, ma’am? Looks like the fire caught up with him. It moved so fast. I’m very sorry, ma’am.”

  Mairi held Jack’s gaze. She thought of Lord MacLeod and of Archie and of the scandal and she knew Jack was thinking of them too. She took a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry too,” she said. “I don’t know what Mr. Cambridge wanted. I didn’t even know he was here.”

  She saw Jack smile ruefully, but he said nothing and in that moment she loved him even more. In a little, she thought, she would tell him about Archie and they would arrange for a decent burial and his parents could mourn him properly. But for now she was going back for a b
ath and clean clothes and salve for her cuts, bruises and burns.

  She looked at Jack. “Please will you take me to Glen Calder soon?” she asked. “I would like to be married there.”

  Jack smiled at her brilliantly and the love she saw in his eyes made her heart turn over. “With the greatest pleasure,” he said. He swept her up in his arms. “I’ll take you home.”

  * * * * *

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  ISBN-13: 9781460320921

  ONE NIGHT WITH THE LAIRD

  Copyright © 2013 by Nicola Cornick

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