by Laura Parker
“Nay, you sing well, as I recall.” Some fleeting emotion passed through his expression; a hint of bemusement? “But ’tis Scotland. Bawdy ditties will likely bring down upon us the ire of the kirk.” He paused to gaze significantly at her. “The tried and true will not do either, I suppose.”
She looked away from his wicked expression. It contained his falsely persuasive, rickety-coach-to-hell smile meant to put an adversary at a disadvantage. “I still have my necklace.”
“Keep it.”
She wondered what he really expected of her. “Then what shall we do?”
That plaintive “we” tugged at Jack but he rejected the unaccustomed twinge of his conscience. Did she not realize that he had as many options at hand as he could imagine? As a peer of the realm, he might seek the residence of the nearest Scottish laird and expect to be welcomed as a guest with all customary honors.
Then there was the matter of the guineas tucked into the lining of his greatcoat. No seasoned traveler ever put all his coin in his purse. Gambling had been good in Bath. With his winnings he could purchase this inn and all it contained. Yet he was an adventurer at heart and the idea of buying his way out of trouble before he had wagered his wit against the odds struck him as unsporting.
“So then we must improvise,” he mused aloud.
Seeking to do something useful, Sabrina signaled to the barmaid.
The girl came forward eagerly, though her bold gaze and steady smile were aimed at Jack. “Aye, what be yer pleasure, sir?”
“I should like to how much further it is to the McDonnell’s Tweeddale farm,” Sabrina said in a peremptory voice.
The barmaid jerked as if Sabrina had poked her with a stick; her smile dissolved in the instant it took her to switch from a contemplation of Jack to her. “Ye were for tha’ place?”
She looked Sabrina up and down with brisling hostility before spitting deliberately beside Sabrina’s boot. “Tha’ for the McDonnells!”
“That was enlightening.” Jack’s face showed the first glimmer of interest in their surroundings as the barmaid swaggered away.
He stood up and slowly unbuckled his belt and let his sword, concealed under his coat, slide to the floor. “Drink your chocolate, sweeting. I’ve a bit of conversing to do.”
As he was about to move away, he glanced down sharply at Sabrina. “You do have your pistol?”
A rill of fear tiptoed up her spine. “Yes. Why?”
“Primed and ready?”
She felt for the butt of the weapon in the deep pocket of her riding skirt. Pleased to learn she knew how to handle a pistol, he had provided her with ball and powder for the trip. “It was, but the weather—”
He cut her off with lift of a single finger. “If I give the signal, aim it as though it will blow to kingdom come any soul within its sights.”
As it happened, his injunction was far from necessary. Within minutes he had struck up a conversation with the men crowded round the wooden plank which served as a bar. Sabrina watched them very closely, her nerves pricked by the possibility of danger, and saw several of the men glance repeatedly at her and then guffaw in laugher.
It was nearly an hour later when Jack strolled back to where she sat, the summit of his bronzed cheeks blushed by his liberal imbibing of the Gaelic uisge beatha.
His smile did not sit quite perfectly on his face, but he maintained his footing with a grace she suspected required a great deal of concentration. “Come with me. I’ve arranged for a room.”
Sabrina rose from her chair, a doubtful expression on her face. He took her arm as they moved away from the table to the narrow stairs that led to the rooms on the upper floor, but it quickly became obvious that he was leaning on her for support as much as guidance.
“You are foxed,” she whispered indignantly when he misstepped.
“Aye.” The Gaelic inflexion rolled effortlessly off his tongue as they climbed the final steps. “And a lovely feeling it is, lass.”
Thoroughly put out, she did not guard her tongue. “Well enough for you. But what am I to do once you’ve retired for the night?”
His smile wobbled in a most endearing manner as he lifted the latch on the door to their right. “Here I’ve gone to great lengths with no thought but your benefit. And, like a woman, you criticize me for it.”
“Indeed?” Sabrina’s brows lifted in exasperation as she stepped past him and over the threshold into the dark and cheerless room. “How is your being flummoxed of value to me?”
He stepped inside and caught her one elbow and, to her astonishment, tapped a finger of his other hand along the side of her nose. “ ’Twould seem, sweeting, your nearest and dearest kin the McDonnells are in dispute with their neighbors.”
“Why?”
“Last winter they called down the wrath of the Kirk upon the owner of this inn for trafficking in that exquisite elixir made by the illicit distillers who flourish about. The inn was fined severely and the owner drummed out of the church.”
“Oh.” She did not have to imagine what the ordeal had been like for the innkeeper. Cousin Robert had threatened her often enough with a similar fate, though she was not Calvinist.
She moved forward into the room, quickly finding a candle and tinderbox, and struck a light.
Because she was only human and the covert glances of the men at the bar continued to haunt her, she turned with candle in hand to ask, “What did you tell them about me?”
Jack sat heavily on the bed, which creaked ominously under his weight, an expression of self-satisfaction on his handsome face. “You would rather not know.”
The candle flame trapped as a flash of silver mischief in his gaze confirmed in Sabrina’s mind that he meant it. “I think I must insist.”
He eyed her lazily. “I told them you are a highbred whore and that I’d bought you for an evening’s pleasure.”
“You what—?”
“And that you were so smitten with me that you’ve followed me from England, though I’ve not paid a cent to ride you since.”
“That’s a horrid, terrible thing … and just like you,” she finished in exasperation.
Feeling every bit the despoiled virgin she was, Sabrina sank down beside him on the narrow bed. What had he told them except the truth? An ugly, only partially revealing truth, but in barest sketch not a lie.
“You’re wrong.” He gently touched her shoulder. “ ’Tis not how I view you.” By her expression he had exactly guessed her thoughts.
“You are no whore, sweeting. You’ve not the talent.” He went on smoothly, despite her stricken expression. “You like the exercise far too much and you lack the cold-hearted instincts of a mercenary.”
Sabrina gazed down into her lap, summoning her courage. “Then why did you tell those men such a tale?”
“Because it was a tale men like to hear. ’Tis every man’s hope and fear that the woman who however innocently stirs his lust is every bit as debauched as his imagination can make her.”
She looked at him. “Do you share this hope?”
He smiled at her almost regretfully as he slid an arm about her shoulders. “I know better than most that ’tis often the case. There lies in the heart of many a woman the soul of a rake.”
Sabrina turned away from him. He would not make it easy for her. He had warned her. Do not look to him for mercy, he had said. She must not fault him for that honesty, even if it was painful. “So then,” she said in a small voice, “what shall we do now?”
He pulled her gently toward him, pressing her back against his chest as he bent his head to drop a light kiss on the curve of her neck. “We will sleep until a knock upon the door beckons us to adventure.”
She resisted the urge to relax and mold herself more fully against him. “What sort of adventure?”
He lifted her hair and kissed the sensitive place just behind her ear. “You wanted to free your brother, did you not?”
She twisted around to face him. “
You have thought of something?”
“I hope, sweeting, that I have thought of everything.”
Her thoughts went back to the men in the bar, their wolfishly eager, envious expressions now explained by his words. “Those men are going to help us?”
“They have agreed to help me.”
The weight of that final word made her lift a brow. “Why are they willing to help you?”
“Because it seems the Scots have a particular fondness for thieves and marauders.” He tightened his arms about her until her bosom was flattened against his coat front. “Especially those who steal the wives of the English.”
Sabrina arched away from him. “But you told them I was a whore.”
He shook his head slowly. “You are going to criticize my tale? I told them you were wed to an old pox-ridden peer. Left to your own devices, you were in the market for a lover. Enter I, who bought you at a private auction where, to appease your lustful appetite, your English husband sold you to the highest bidder for a night of pleasure.”
He watched her jaw drop in astonishment. “No one would do such a thing.”
Jack stared at her. Was it possible that she was unaware of the sexual highjinks among the more jaded of London’s Beau Monde? If so, this was not the moment to enlighten her. “I have a clever mind.”
“You have a vulgar mind.”
“To be sure.” He leaned forward and caught her mouth in the embrace of his lips. When she did not respond, he lifted his head, a mild reproach in his expression. “Would you like the hear the rest of my tale?”
“I don’t know. Yes.”
“Since you ran off with me, we must hide from your pursuing husband. To that end, I have come to Scotland to pursue my profession unhampered.”
“What profession would that be?”
“Highwayman and kidnapper. A man with no great love of the self-righteous McDonnells, I’ve come to kidnap the heir to the McDonnell family fortune in the hopes of redeeming him for a fat ransom.”
“You told them all that? You are a madman!”
“Mostly likely you are correct.”
She raised her hands and pushed firmly against his chest. “You may have ruined everything. There may be those below who will warn the McDonnells of our presence.”
“And lose their prize? I do not think so. In fact, I am quite certain they are setting in motion at this very minute the plot we devised to free your brother.”
A nasty suspicion entered her thoughts. “What prize did you offer them?”
He reached for her. “I have missed you, sweeting. Come let me warm us both most thoroughly.”
Sabrina held him back with a hand. “If what you say is true, your new friends could knock upon the door at any moment.”
He reached for the buttons of her jacket and pushed open the first two. “They know better. We have an hour, at the very least.”
Sabrina fell back against the bedding with him, wondering if she were not being a fool. In succumbing to the thrumming pleasure of his touch, was she not accepting the very temptation she had promised herself she would resist? He was a dark-hearted and dangerous man, capable of all sorts of villainy. In her escapades in London she had merely played at mischief. He lived it. Yet she could not say what she thought was more at risk in lying here with him—her life or her heart.
At the end of the hour, she did know one thing more than before. She pitied all those men and women who had never lain in joy as they had just done, who had never loved with lightheartedness and without shame, who came together without imagination and tenderness, who did not know what it was to love so fiercely that for an hour nothing at all mattered of the past or future, or of anything else at all.
She would be grateful. When he was gone and the long barren rest of her life lay before her, she would hold to this moment and nothing else and be grateful. She had thought she risked only her virtue in lying with Jack. Now she knew better. She had wagered with her heart, and lost.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You are certain this will work?” Sabrina whispered as she hung doggedly to the side of the rough-boarded pony cart in which she and Jack were riding.
Jack held his temper and repeated yet again what she already knew. “The McDonnells have gone to Kelso to bear witness against a man accused of witchcraft and consorting with the devil. ’Tis the Sabbath. They will not return before sunset.”
Sabrina’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold or the wee hours. It was difficult for her to believe that right and reasonable people still believed in witchcraft. Worse yet, some wretched soul’s misfortune was making possible her own chance for happiness. How happenstance life was!
“Suppose they have taken Kit with them?”
“There’s an ailing child left behind in the keeping of a maid.”
“How do you know that?”
Jack swore under his breath. For a woman who had had very little to say while she lay sprawled under him in stunned ecstasy two hours ago, she had become a veritable magpie under the stars. It was nerves. He felt it, too, but he was accustomed to the tension that came before the moment of action. He would have done better to leave her behind if he had dared risk it.
“Tis Evan Lachland who told me. He is going to pay court to the McDonnell’s maid and we are along for the ride.”
“I see.”
Sabrina considered how often love lay at the bottom of mischief and wondered how the McDonnell maid would fair if it were known she was consorting with one of the moonshiners her employees had sought to run out of business. Did strife and trouble trail every love affair? Were there no easy and pleasant couplings? Did there not exist anywhere gentle courtships and contented marriages? She glanced at the man by her side and doubted she would ever know the answer.
Ridiculous, romantic, foolish, delirious; all those appellations and more she attached to the emotion quaking through her. Jack Laughton was no ardent swain out to prove his love by slaying his lady’s dragons. He was riding with her this night because it pleased him to cause mischief. When the amusement value of her plight paled for him he would be gone without a backward glance, perhaps without even a warning of his departure.
“You are shivering.” Jack tried to pull her close but she pushed roughly out of his arms, unaccountably angry.
“I’m cold, ’tis all. Let me be!”
Sensing that nothing he could do at the moment would win her from her strange thoughts, he released her. He had trouble of his own to ponder. Stealing a child was one thing. Secreting him long enough to whisk him out of Scotland was another. And then what? She had not confided that element of the plot to him. And he had not pressed her.
Because I do not want to know.
He did not fault himself for a certain cowardliness where her future plans were concerned. He did not figure into them, so why should they be of interest to him? Yet that was only a half-truth. He did not want to know because he did not want to have to think about the moment of their parting or wonder how she would fare after that. He did not want the burden of concern. He never worried about himself and the welfare of no one else had ever mattered to him. He held a certain fondness for Zuberi who, if he were following instructions, had returned to London to pack his things and close his London residence.
England had lost its dubious charm. When this interlude was done he would go back to the West Indies. There were land holdings there that he had never seen. Jack Laughton had been a reviled scion without means nor standing. Now that he had inherited the title of viscount, all that would change.
He had no taste for the life of a slave owner but he did fancy the life of a rich man. Perhaps he would become an importer/exporter—no! He would open the finest gambling establishment in Barbados!
He would grow rich very quickly. Despite all the centuries of hostility, the English, French, and Spanish who peopled the New World shared one common love, that of risking their wealth on the toss of a pair of
dice or on the turn of a playing card. They would come to his salon for the thrill and cheerfully lose their riches to him. He would, of course, then be looked upon as a traitor by the aristocratic classes and regarded with jealous skepticism by his mercantile, middle-class neighbors.
Neighbors?
His thoughts shocked him. He had never before in his life planned his life beyond a fortnight. Roots had never interested him. Next he would imagine that he would prefer to lie nightly snuggled against the same warm woman smelling of perfume and their commingled essences rather than to continue to seek comfort with a different partner each night. Bah! If he did not get away soon to some diverting debauchery the alarming notion of matrimony would soon creep into his thoughts!
He crossed his arms and sighed in bewilderment. Scottish whiskey must have softened his brain.
Unaware of his troubled thoughts, Sabrina strained her eyes in hope of spying their destination. But the land did not yield its secrets easily. Under a midnight sky the dark land stretched interminably into the distance. No trees, no lane that she could decipher, no villages, nor even a cluster of cottages glowing within from their hearthside fires.
When the shape of the lone farmhouse appeared on the shallow vale of the surrounding countryside, it did so suddenly, appearing as forbidding as any witch’s hut.
“We’re ta’ stop here,” Evan said, bringing his donkey cart to a halt. “We walk the rest.”
Jack helped Sabrina down and then held onto her hand when she would have rushed ahead. “We do not wish to announce ourselves,” he whispered when he had drawn her close.
He was right, she knew, but Kit was so close.
Falling into step behind the young Scotsman, they followed at a distance of several yards. The lane was hard under her shoes, every sound of stone slipping and tumbling over stone as loud in her ears as the crack and snap of a roaring fire. They would be heard long before they reached the house. Roused by footsteps, would the McDonnells’ servants come running or turn their dogs on the unexpected visitors? She clung to Jack’s hand, uncaring that her vise-like grip betrayed her fears.