by Aileen Adams
To the east were fields, walls of stone dividing one parcel of land from another. Ancient walls, crumbling in some places thanks to time and the harsh weather. They formed a charming scene, especially where children ran along them and jumped over the spaces where the stone had fallen away.
There was a lush beauty to it all. The deep green of the grass, the deep blue of the sky. Thick pine forests, and the way the first snow lay gently among the needles.
Quinn wondered if he could say goodbye to all of it as she was. If he would feel the same deep pull of longing he could so easily sense in her.
“You do love it, then?” he asked, his heart softening even more than it already had.
“Aye,” she said, mocking his brogue but with a gentle smile and her gaze still turned outward. “I do. It’s come to mean so much to me, and I’ll never have the chance to see it again. Isn’t it strange, though, how a person does not know what they have until they’re on the cusp of leaving it behind?”
He studied her, the face he already knew so well, the curve of her cheek and jaw, the slope of her throat, the thick hair which waved back away from her smooth forehead.
Her beauty ran deeper than that which so plainly displayed itself on the surface. The courage and determination of her, the pain she had borne without complaint. The deep love she felt for her homeland, a love which mirrored his own.
“Aye,” he whispered, realizing his feelings had moved long past the point of no return. “Tis strange, indeed.”
19
“Ye remember what we discussed, do ye not?” Quinn’s voice was little more than a low grunt in Ysmaine’s ear, barely audible over the harbor’s commotion. She had never seen such activity all at once, and so many people rushing back and forth as though there was a fire to put out.
She did not smell smoke.
It was an effort to turn her attention from the madness around her and nod in agreement. “Yes, I remember.
“And ye intend to keep your word?”
She rewarded him with a withering glare. “When have I given you reason to doubt my word?”
“Ye haven’t,” he muttered, his eyes moving back and forth, though his head remained still. “This is the most important of all, however, and ye know it. If anyone aboard the ship knows the nature of our being together…”
“They will not,” she reminded him. “You are a guard sent to me by the Marquis. You are merely escorting me to my destination, which is Cherbourg.”
“Nothing else?”
“You speak nothing but French, so you will not be able to understand the owner of the ship or any member of the crew,” she added, wondering how well this would plan would serve them. How long would it be until someone who spoke the language decided to converse with him?
Her heart thudded harder every time she imagined this taking place. How would he react? He was unskilled when it came to thinking through a problem before reacting, hence the manner in which he had captured her carriage.
While he believed he’d been clever and brave, she saw his actions for what they were, the desperate flailing about of a man in trouble, one who would go so far as to throw himself in front of an approaching carriage in order to startle the team which pulled it.
He might have killed himself in the process.
He might very well have killed her, as well. It was a miracle that she hadn’t broken her neck.
A lot of good it would have done him, attempting to secure ransom for a dead woman.
She would have to keep a close watch on him, nothing less. If approached, she would do the talking for them both.
It was nearing nightfall, yet the activity in the harbor seemed to slow not a bit. Ysmaine’s stomach let out a rumble loud enough to color her cheeks, though Quinn seemed not to notice or care overmuch.
“Hungry?” he asked after a while, making her blush again.
“A bit.”
“It sounds as though ye are more than a bit hungry,” he chuckled.
“Must you?” she hissed.
“Not that I blame ye,” he added. “I’m hungry as well and was giving thought to finding a place in which to take our supper.”
She would offer no argument, as they had not stopped for anything but water and nature’s needs since first leaving the healer’s home. The flat, wide, well-traveled road into Burghead had made the going easy, though they had encountered ever-increasing numbers of travelers the closer they’d come to the harbor village.
Which was when Quinn had suggested they create a story both could use once they’d reached the village. No doubt the people they’d cross paths with were accustomed to travelers from all walks of life, with any number of stories to tell about their adventures.
So long as they two kept quiet and refrained from attracting attention, they ought to avoid notice, at least, that was what they’d agreed upon. Would that the people with whom they came into contact might be kind enough to cooperate.
An ear-splitting crash made her jump and cling to Quinn, who sat behind her as he had all along. He stiffened but did not move to push her away. “Only a barrel dropped from the back of a cart,” he explained as he steered the horse around the puddle of ale the barrel had left behind.
“I’m not accustomed to this,” she admitted, flinching as a team of horses cut in front of them on its way to the harbor, driven by a man standing fully upright in the carriage. How he did not fall, she would never understand.
She would never understand any of it. The noise! Enough to crack her head open. So much movement, so many people and animals pressing in on one another. She heard bits and pieces of at least ten different conversations, watched as women tossed buckets of foul, gray water from open windows, listened as peddlers called out to passerby and flinched away from curious eyes, eyes belonging to men interested in only one thing about her.
“Pay them no mind,” Quinn advised, casting a doleful look in the direction of one such man. He rode without a saddle on the back of a gray mare, his hat cocked at a jaunty angle and a knowing smile on his face. As though he’d seen what she looked like beneath her kirtle and was interested in knowing more.
When Quinn glared in his direction, however, the man moved on. Quickly, too.
This eased her considerably. Quinn would not allow one of these men to touch her, nor would he allow any sort of misfortune befall her. She was too important to him for such a thing to come to pass.
If only she were important for some reason other than the ransom she’d fetch.
There was little point in entertaining the thought, or in revisiting the fantastical idea that he might care for her. He did no such thing and had made it quite plain, had he not? Theirs was a business arrangement.
Even so, this did not stop her from clinging to him a little more than was necessary. She could not help but give in to temptation, when his body was all but joined with hers. Every breath he took, every beat of his heart, every movement of his chest, shoulders, arms, she felt it.
After all, she would never see him again. Who could blame her for taking what little comfort she could in him while she could?
Why are ye doing this? Her father’s voice, strident and powerful as it had been in her dreams. She’d never heard him in her head throughout the four years since his passing, why did he have to make himself known just then?
Ye would allow this Highlander to use ye for profit. Ye would lie for him, when it would be so much better for ye to tell the truth and have him hanged for what he’s done.
Yes, her father would believe all of this and more, but she did not. She merely suffered pangs of the most bitter guilt as a result of what she knew he—and her mother, too—would think if they saw her then. If they knew she was willing to lie, to debase herself in such a manner. She was little better than his accomplice, his partner in this crime.
And she allowed him to use her in order to collect his money.
But it was all for the sake of his brother! She would have argued this point until she no l
onger had the breath with which to fight, had they been able to hear her. He did not use her for his own gain.
What’s more, she had agreed to aid him. She had not only refused to stand in his way. She had decided to do whatever she could to free his brother. Lennox, his name was. He had a wife, children. It was for their sake, not for Quinn’s, that she allowed this lie to go on.
She was a liar, just as he was, and a thief as well. For she would see to it that Quinn collected the Marquis’s money under false pretenses. She would even encourage it, if need be.
She would be forgiven.
Would she not? Was not a sin only as sinful as the intention behind it? She had always believed so.
Did Quinn feel that way about his life? What he did to make his living, she had a distinct feeling there was much he had not shared with her. Much violence, much privation.
Perhaps many people had suffered because of him, if not directly. The wives and children of men he had killed, or the mothers and fathers. Missing their loved ones, perhaps starving because the young men who had earned the family’s living or worked the land would no longer be able to do so.
And yet he’d had his reasons for doing as he’d done. Either because he had been compelled to kill or risk being killed, or because he had been protecting another. As he had protected her.
She might have died at the hands of that terrible man in the woods.
If given her choice, had the whole thing happened again, she certainly would not have begged Quinn not to kill the thief. She might even have helped him.
No such man deserved to live. Not when they took pleasure in bringing pain to others too weak to defend themselves.
“Are ye listening?” Quinn grunted, leaning close so that he might speak into her ear. She willed away the thrill that was his breath against her ear.
“There is so much to see,” she explained. A feeble excuse, but it was preferable to his knowing what went through her mind.
“I asked if your leg was feeling poorly,” he explained.
“Not at all. I had almost forgotten the pain. I’m certain I will remember it the moment we dismount.”
“Aye,” he agreed with a wry grimace. “That is normally the case. We forget the pain until it is time to move again, then, it’s as though the pain is angry that we ever forgot it existed.”
She laughed, as this was the case exactly. He had such a way of speaking plainly the words she wished she could find. To think, it was she who was so carefully educated.
To think how she had considered herself so superior to him when they’d first met.
He brought the horse to a stop in front of a likely looking tavern and dismounted before helping her down. As she had expected, the new movement after so much time spent sitting in the same position made her clench her teeth to suppress a cry of pain.
Quinn frowned. “Ye might take a bit of the tincture the healer prepared for ye, to help ye through the rest of the night.”
She shook her head. “Perhaps later.” The tincture provided blessed relief from the pain, but it also left her feeling as though there were a fog in her brain. She could not think clearly; it made her want nothing more than to sleep.
She did not wish to sleep. She did not wish to miss a moment of her remaining time with him.
“Come,” he bade, offering her his arm after securing the horse. She leaned on him, remembering how she had refused to do so that morning. How could she have been so stubborn?
How could she have done so many things?
20
Hot, meaty stew and rich wine bolstered them both, making it seem almost easy to make their way through the wide road running through the center of the village and on to the harbor.
That, and the way none of the tavern’s patrons had so much as looked twice at either of them.
“See, lass,” Quinn murmured as they elbowed their way along the wide walkway of wooden planks which ran the length of the harbor, “I told ye. So long as we keep to ourselves and pretend as though there is nothing amiss, no one will think twice of our traveling together.”
Perhaps if he repeated this enough, he would believe it.
It was entirely for her benefit that he put forth a confident attitude. In reality, this was the most dangerous stage in their journey, as there was no chance of escaping an angry crew while in the middle of the North Sea.
While he had always been a strong swimmer out of necessity, he little longed to test his mettle in open water.
If they caught wind of his true purpose—either because the lass allowed the truth to slip out, or because of a mistake on his part—it would be over. He would be lucky to escape with his life when all was said and done.
Once again, he gave Ysmaine credit for her courage. She walked with her chin high despite the fear he knew coursed through her veins. She had cowered against him from the moment they’d reached the village until the moment they took seats in the tavern.
He took it she’d never spent time among so many at once—to say nothing of the nature of the men who wandered about the docks and the village beyond. Rough men, men who lived their lives on the sea. Merchants, tradesmen, peddlers.
All of them mixed together in a teeming, shouting mob.
None of them above leering at a beautiful lass such as the one whose arm was linked with his.
He would not allow her to let go, awkward though it was to push their way through the crews who unloaded crates of goods from the ships docked at the piers. Sidestepping barrels being rolled down long planks which extended from ship to docks.
More than once did a man call out to Ysmaine, inviting her to go sailing with him. More than once did the chorus of knowing, lascivious laughter ring out from groups of half-drunk men lingering about.
She took it well, as though she’d heard such invitations before.
Perhaps she had, it occurred to him that he knew little about her in that regard. Her father had been quite a figure in Clan Fraser, he knew. It seemed unlikely he would have allowed his clansmen to speak to her that way, or that he would have left her open to such language and behavior.
But he had not known the man. Far stranger things had taken place.
They reached the second-to-last ship, which one of the shipping agents along the dock had confirmed was the one sailing to Cherbourg before continuing down the coast of France.
It was a smart, single-masted ship built from oak and fitted with a square sail which the crew was in the process of lowering. Its fresh appearance—he suspected it was a new ship, as it did not bear the worn quality of the others docked nearby—led Quinn to wonder how much more enjoyable the journey would be under better circumstances.
He nudged Ysmaine to hurry, hoping against hope that she would manage to do her part as they had planned. The ship’s captain may not be as well-inclined to provide passage to a lass, or might charge more simply because he believed he could get away with it.
The man cast a shrewd eye toward Ysmaine as they approached, and Quinn was certain to keep the jeweled sword in plain view. A silent warning.
“Good evening to you, sir,” Ysmaine began, her good manners coming up at once. “I’m looking to secure passage for my escort and myself.”
The man spat, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Aye? And where are ye looking to go, then?”
Ysmaine flinched at his sharp voice, which Quinn knew was most likely sharper and more booming than usual in an effort to intimidate. She swallowed hard but did not back down. “Cherbourg. The Marquis d’Orsay waits for us. He sent his man to escort me back to his estate.”
It was Quinn’s turn to be looked up and down by the captain. “I see. And did he give ye the fare you’ll be needing to make such a sailing?”
“Of course. We need only your permission to board.” She patted the sack she carried beneath one arm, full of dried meat and vegetables. “We have our own provisions. As soon as you determine what would be a fair amount to pay for two passages to Cherbourg, we can be on
our way.”
She spoke with such conviction, such clarity of purpose. He had expected her to wilt beneath the captain’s scrutiny, so, too, had the captain, if the look of grudging admiration he tried to conceal was any hint.
When he spoke again, he sounded more like a gentleman than before. “I suppose half a shilling would do the trick, if ye only intend to go as far as Cherbourg and will be taking care of yer own provisions. I warn ye, though, that I do not keep accommodations for passengers. This is a cargo ship, the cabins used by myself and my crew. Understood?”
Ysmaine favored him with a brilliant smile. “Yes, of course. So long as we can make it to France.”
She had done it. He had doubted her, but she’d put his doubts to rest. She could handle herself in the face of crude, overbearing men who would likely wish to take advantage of her.
He nodded when the man’s back was turned, flashing her a smile he hoped shared his admiration and faith in her.
Only when they were alone, in the bowels of the ship, did he dare speak. “Ye did fine, lass.” He patted her on the back, a bit awkward, to be sure, but it was all in the service of giving her greater confidence.
She sank down onto a wooden crate, holding her face in her hands. “I shook so. Did you not see me shaking?”
“Nay, lass. Ye looked for all the world as though ye knew what ye were about and what ye wanted.” He chuckled as he sat on the floor in front of her. “Did ye see how the captain changed his attitude when ye told him we brought our own provisions? And that ye were merely waiting for him to name his price? I thought he would soil himself on the spot!”
She laughed, hands over her mouth. “He did look surprised,” she admitted.
“Surprised? You knocked him over, lass. Well done.” He did not notice his hand rubbing her knee until it was too late. He had caressed her without meaning to, a friendly gesture, one meant to bolster her spirits, but one easily mistaken for something more intimate.