Amanda Scott (24 page)

“I’ll not!” She whisked the hand behind her and, stepping back from him, bent swiftly and reached with her left hand for her right boot. When James moved toward her, she straightened with a vicious-looking dagger in hand; and when he stopped in astonishment, she spat full in his face. “Come touch me now, ye villainous wretch!”

To Rothwell’s amusement, James reacted with even greater speed, grabbing the girl’s arm with one hand, the dagger with the other. Flinging the weapon far across the river, he forced her to bend forward, clapped his left arm around her waist, and with visible force applied his right hand to her backside. She shrieked again, this time with fury, and Rothwell watched her men carefully, lest they try to intervene. Not one moved. Every one stared at James, mouth agape, apparently frozen in place.

Maggie clutched Rothwell’s arm. “Stop him, sir! Oh, stop him! He mustn’t. Kate will murder him!”

Rothwell realized at once that she knew the girl but said nothing, keeping his eyes on the bandits and making no effort to stop the man he had thrown from getting to his feet again. Like the others, the fellow watched James, who was clearly relieving pent-up feelings in a thorough way! His victim continued to scream her fury, calling him names and assuring him he would rot in hell for what he was doing to her, right up to the moment that James dumped her into the chilly waters of the river Garry.

“That ought to cool you,” he said, placing his hands on his hips and looking sternly down at her when she came up sputtering, “You’re a hot-tempered wench and no mistake, but before you spit or shriek insults at a man, be certain he cannot punish you. Only a fool stirs the temper of someone stronger than herself.” Turning away then as if to emphasize the fact that he had no fear of her, he said to Rothwell, “What shall we do with this lot?”

“We should hail them before the nearest magistrate,” Rothwell said, shifting his gaze to Miss MacDrumin.

As he expected, she stiffened and said, “You must not do that. You have just proved they are no threat to anyone.” He noted that she did not look at the bandits when she said this. The drenched figure in the brook was watching her, but she said nothing, and Rothwell thought her expression was a bit rueful.

He said, “Their aptitude, or lack of it, is scarcely the point just now, Miss MacDrumin. They are criminals and no doubt ought to be hanged.” To his satisfaction he saw that the vixen in the brook seemed unnerved at last, but she got to her feet without a word, and though she slipped on the rocks, she refused to accept James’s hand when he reached out to help her.

A note of desperation entered Maggie’s voice. “Please, let them go. They did not know it was your coach they attacked. Moreover, the nearest magistrate is back at Blair Atholl. Do you intend to make them walk behind the second coach, tied together all in a string?”

He pretended to consider the point. He had already decided no good would come of trying to take the sorry group anywhere, let alone back the way they had come. They would be more trouble than they were worth, but he wanted to see how strongly she felt about them. If she was in league with them, it would behoove him to know it before he traveled farther in her company.

His hesitation encouraged her to say, “Please, she is soaked to the skin and there are clouds boiling up to rain again. She will catch her death plodding behind these coaches.”

Glancing up, he saw that she was right about the weather. New dark clouds had formed in the south. He said, “James, take their weapons. Be certain to get them all. Matthew, help him. And check their boots,” he added. When the young woman beside him gave an audible sigh of relief, he shifted his attention to her, adding sternly, “You have some explaining to do, my girl. Get back in that coach.”

Obeying him, Maggie swallowed hard, wondering what she would say, and remembering that in her shock at what James was doing she had spoken Kate’s name. She could not hope a man as astute as Rothwell had missed that. When he had got down from the coach, affecting that languid air of his, she had been surprised, but she realized that he had done it only to fool Kate’s men into mistaking him for a harmless English fop. She had been fooled by the affectation herself in the beginning, so she had not been amazed when Kate and the others dismissed him and focused their attention on the more dangerous-looking James. She had not known that Rothwell was armed, however, or she would have tried to warn them. She trembled now to think he might have killed Kate.

She doubted she would have the strength to deny Rothwell the explanation he demanded. He could stir her emotions in ways no man ever had before and just trying to return his steady look when he turned to be certain she had obeyed him made her wish she could make him forget that he was angry.

James, with the cudgels, came toward the coach. Shouting over his shoulder at Matthew to search for the dagger and pistol, he added in a normal tone, “Dash it, Ned, if I’d known you’d want the devilish things, I’d not have flung that dagger so far. More to the left, Matthew,” he shouted, watching the man paw through shrubbery on the opposite bank. “He’ll not thank me for making him wade that icy river. Good thing it’s not deeper.”

“Better that he find it than that this lot does.”

Maggie glanced at Kate, but Kate did not look at her. She and her men, and young Ian, were standing under a large willow, watching the search. Both weapons were found at last, and when Chelton moved to join his wife in the second coach, Rothwell and James climbed into the first with her. They were soon on their way again, leaving the bandits behind. She waited.

James said, “I’ve never seen the like. Imagine a female leading a gang of cutthroats! Who’d ever believe such a thing?”

“Well, Miss MacDrumin?” Rothwell’s tone was hard, and she could feel his gaze upon her. When she did not look up, he added gently, “Miss MacDrumin must tell us if highway robbery is yet another quaint custom of this so civilized country of hers.”

Her skin felt too tight for her body, and though she did not look up from her lap, she knew that James was also watching her now. She was not afraid of either man, but anticipation of their displeasure—Rothwell’s, especially—made her uneasy, and she could think of nothing to say. In the thickening silence her mind snatched at and rejected one possibility after another until at last, looking at Rothwell, she said, “If Highlanders do things that are considered outrageous elsewhere, it is because they have been reduced to such straits by English oppression.”

“Nonsense, they are criminals.”

“They are not! They are desperate to put food on their tables.” She saw that he did not believe her, and knew she was on treacherous ground, for her own father disapproved of Kate’s activities and said she had no good cause for them. But then he smuggled whisky for much the same reasons, so Maggie had never been certain which of them, if either, to believe. Their methods terrified her equally, not because they were inept, for MacDrumin never failed and—despite the recent incident—Kate rarely did, but because the activities themselves were so dangerous.

Kate laughed at the danger. With no man of her own, and no brother still living who was old enough to look after her family, she had done her best to provide for herself, her mother, her old Granny MacDrumin, and young Ian. When MacDrumin had shouted at her and tried to convince her to let him provide for them, Kate told him fiercely that, having condemned her mother for marrying a MacCain, he need not try to control them now, and he had not forced her to obey him.

“That young woman ought to be married,” James said grimly. “A husband would soon tame her.”

Relaxing a little, Maggie choked back a laugh. “There’s not a man in the Highlands brave enough to
try
to tame her. They all know her temper, you see, and keep a safe distance. Even her cousins dare not command her, and I warn you, you had best hope she never lays eyes on you again after what you did to her.”

When James snorted, Rothwell said quietly, “So you admit you know the wench, do you? I hope you do not condone robbery.”

“Kate looks upon her activities as acts of war, not mere robbery,” Maggie said, trying to match his quiet tone. “She attacks only Englishmen, never Scots, and she has never harmed anyone. I do know her, sir, and have for ten years.”

James said musingly, “She must have been a fierce child.”

Maggie nodded. “Her mother brought them all back to Glen Drumin to live with her parents after her husband died. The MacCains were no more pleased by the marriage than the MacDrumins, you see, so Kate grew up hating both clans equally and determined to look out for herself. Papa has done what he could for them from the first, more since most of the men in Kate’s family died. It was he who pushed us to be friends, and we have remained so, though I was away at school part of the time.”

Rothwell said, “I will believe your friend’s life has been difficult, but if she continues on her course, she will be hanged. Robbery is robbery, plain and simple.”

“As she views the matter,” Maggie said stubbornly, “the English, having stolen from us, should be made to return some of the ill-gotten gains. When people are hungry, sir, they do things they would not do if their bellies were full. I believe it is the same way in London.”

To her surprise, James agreed with her. “She’s right about that, Ned. Even the folks in Alsatia might not be quite so vicious if their bellies were full.”

“They are full,” Rothwell said grimly, “of cheap gin.”

“Which just shows,” Maggie retorted, “that all you said before about town life being better for people is simply not so.”

“I never pretended to believe that town life is perfect,” he said, “but there are certainly more ways to make one’s living in town than in the country.”

“Next,” Maggie said scornfully, “you will try to tell me that everyone in London has an excellent job.”

As the discussion continued, Maggie realized she was enjoying a discussion she had not expected to enjoy at all. Rothwell did not dismiss her arguments, but encouraged her to express her opinions. Although James contributed his mite from time to time, she thought he seemed unusually distracted by his own thoughts, but before she realized so much time had passed, they were fording the river Truim near the village of Dalwhinnie. It was still daylight when they arrived in the village, and Maggie said, pointing, “You can see the Corriearrack from here.”

James whistled. Rothwell was silent. And Maggie was not at all surprised by their reactions. The south side of the pass was extremely steep, and seen from a distance, it looked perpendicular, like a sheer rock wall.

“So that is your civilized homeland,” Rothwell said with a slight smile. “Will you forgive me, I wonder, if I declare here and now that it seems much more like a natural habitation for wild men than for civilized ladies or gentlemen?”

James, still squinting into the distance, said, “Are those man-made walls?”

Chuckling, Maggie said, “That is one of the famous roads built by your General Wade after the first Scottish Uprising, nearly forty years ago. It boasts seventeen traverses on this side alone—those walls you see—and rises to a height of two thousand five hundred feet. The other side declines more steadily, passing through numerous glens and valleys all the way to Fort Augustus.”

Rothwell said, “And how far is Fort Augustus?”

“A long day’s ride from the top,” she replied, “but we don’t go nearly so far, as I told you before. We must spend the night here, however, for we can never make Laggan before dark, but Papa has friends nearby who will be happy to accommodate us.”

The earl’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he said, “One encounter with friends of your family is quite sufficient for one day. We will put up at the alehouse here tonight.”

Maggie perfectly understood his feelings, but their accommodations at the alehouse were the least comfortable they had suffered so far, and having to share a room with Maria while Matthew slept on a pallet in the chamber shared by Rothwell and James did not make the experience more acceptable.

Dalwhinnie was one of the places her father kept horses, but when she suggested the next day that they might do better to ride in order to reach Laggan sooner, Rothwell cast a glance skyward and said, “We will take the coaches. The innkeeper assures me that the road to Laggan is passable, and not only will that mean having less distance to arrange transport for the baggage but we will stay dry if those clouds yonder mean rain.”

“But if the coaches break down we could well be stranded midway,” she protested.

James said, “If MacDrumin keeps horses here, it would be foolish not to make use of them, Ned. We can ride, and if one of the coaches should break down, the women will have less difficulty mounting a saddle-trained horse than a coach-horse.”

Thus, to Maggie’s undisguised annoyance, she was left to sit in the coach by herself, for although Matthew asked if she would like Maria’s company, his attitude was forbidding enough so that she quickly said she would prefer to be alone. She had less than an hour of solitude to endure, however, before the clouds began to spit rain and the men tied their reins to the second coach and scrambled inside with her.

The going was even slower than she had expected, and she felt sorry for the coachmen. James, apparently oblivious to the frequent rocking of the coach, and to the dim light as well, amused himself with his sketchbook. Maggie could not imagine how he could draw at all in a moving carriage, but his pencil sped over the page as it had on numerous other occasions. The one sketch she had recognized looked as if he had tried to capture the robbery on paper, but she could not tell what he was drawing now. It looked like he had outlined some sort of portrait. He glanced up, caught her gaze upon him, and changed his page.

Rothwell hid a smile at James’s evasive action. Remembering his stepmother’s visible displeasure toward Miss MacDrumin, he wondered what she would think to know his artist’s interest, at least, had been captured by a female highwayman, and a Scottish female at that.

The sky was darker, he noted, more like night than midday. He hoped the coaches would not fail, and was grateful yet again for the surprisingly sturdy windows that at least let in what light there was. They had stopped again, at the top of a hill, so the coachmen could affix the skidpans to slow their descent. When they lurched forward again, the lumbering pace reminded him of certain Channel crossings he had made, and the rain dashing against the coach added to the illusion of a ship beating against a heavy sea, straining her timbers, creaking in protest as she fought her way over the waves. A ridiculous fancy, of course. Ships did not have glass windows that rattled in their frames, threatening to shatter over the occupants at any moment.