Amanda Scott (28 page)

“Well, Goodall, you and I are well acquainted now, and you know that my word’s as good as your own. I told you I’d fetch a firkin of whisky along the north road under your very eyes, and that it would be on the road between Foyers and Inverness betwixt nine this morning and five o’clock this evening, did I not?”

With a chuckle, Dugald said, “That’s the laird, that is.” Standing, he signed to the others to follow and scrambled toward the road.

As the two horsemen approached, the one called Goodall said, “I’m telling you, MacDrumin, there was no whisky. That you keep saying there was does not convince me. I did think you a man of your word, but now—” He broke off, gaping, when Rory and the others stepped onto the road, then added in a startled tone, “Lord bless me, where did that lot spring from?”

MacDrumin had also seen them, and he called out cheerfully to Dugald by name, adding, “A good evening to you, lad, and to your companions, as well.”

“A fine good evening tae yourself, laird, and tae you, as well, Bailie Goodall,” Dugald said. “I ha’ brought Mistress Maclean, her brother, and Lord Calder by the short way, laird, so as tae get them tae Glen Drumin afore midnight.”

MacDrumin bowed to Diana from his saddle and smiled, revealing a missing eye tooth. His bow was graceful, however, and his manner polished when he bade her welcome. Then bending toward Rory, he extended a hand, saying bluffly, “I don’t believe we have met before, my lord.”

Rory judged him to be of middle height and some fifty years of age. His grip was firm but not overly so, although he was powerfully built. He bore a decided air of audacity, and his eyes twinkled each time his gaze met Dugald’s.

From Rory, he turned to Neil and shook hands with him too. As he did, he said dryly, “Good manners demand that I present Bailie Goodall, I expect, though it fair goes against me grain to do the polite for a government man.”

Rory smiled at the bailie. “You represent the Crown in these parts then.”

“I do, sir, although it is a thankless task, I can tell you. Here’s MacDrumin playing off his tricks again this very day, and still insisting he’s a man of his word. It’s not the playing of a trick on me that I mind,” he added, looking sorrowfully at MacDrumin. “It’s that you broke your pledged word, Andrew. I trusted you.”

“Aye, but I kept my word,” MacDrumin said, “and the whisky’s well on its way to Inverness. I’ll not let you cast doubt on my integrity, you English villain.”

“Then you still insist that you sent a firkin of whisky along the north road toward Inverness between nine and five. Have you any witnesses, sir?”

“Aye, there’s yourself. Man, you took off your hat to it!”

Mouth agape, Goodall stared at him for a long moment before he collected himself enough to say, “You devilish old sinner! The Lord ought to smite you where you stand. You hid that whisky amidst the funeral cortege!”

“I did, and it’s long gone now,” MacDrumin said cheerfully.

Clapping a hand to his head, Goodall said, “I don’t want to believe it, but it’s as plain as dirt that’s what happened. Well, you’ll not catch me that way twice.”

“I never do anything the same way twice. Will you ride with us?”

“Not the whole way. I’m spending the night in Glen Tarff. But mayhap the lady would care to ride my horse until we part company,” he added generously.

When Diana politely declined, both riders dismounted and the entire company walked along together until Goodall left them at a track leading to a cut in the wooded north-facing slope.

Rory had noted that the northern side was different from the one they had climbed. Where smooth granite slabs, huge boulders, and scree defined the latter, punctuated by occasional dry grassy meadows and thickets of trees, the northern hills, valleys, and glens were lushly green and thickly forested. He could hear water rushing through nearby brooks and rivers.

Full darkness had fallen by the time Goodall left them, and by then Rory found himself with yet another dilemma to pit duty against instinct. He had heard clear evidence of lawbreaking. Worse, the bailie had obviously turned a deaf ear. He had treated the incident as no more than a prank or a childish game.

Rory could think of no way now to stop the funeral cortege with its illicit, duty free whisky, but he would have to do something about an officer who allowed such crimes to go unpunished within his bailiwick. Odd though it was to find an Englishman corrupted by a Scot, Rory could not allow it to continue.

To make certain of his facts, he said casually, “I collect that your success against Goodall means that you’ve distributed your whisky duty free, MacDrumin.”

The older man chuckled. “Aye, sure. That duty is an abomination the British government visits upon us poor Highlanders. German George has no right to claim it on a product we’ve been producing in the Highlands since the dawn of time.”

Diana said hastily, “Perhaps you do not realize it, sir, but Lord Calder is a Campbell. He is more generous than most, and I know he would never so far forget his duty as a guest as to inform on his host for any perceived … uh … misdeed—”

“Misdeed, is it?” MacDrumin chuckled again. “Did I no just tell you, lass, there was no misdeed. German George is not entitled to one penny from my whisky, and that’s all there is about it. Here’s our turning now. You’ll be glad to find beds awaiting you, I’ll warrant, and to get some good hot food into your bellies.”

“Aye, sir, we will,” she said, but Rory, meeting a look of concern mixed with speculation, read her thoughts as easily as if she had spoken them aloud to him.

He said nothing, for there was nothing to say. He was a man of law, and as such, he could not ignore activities like MacDrumin’s, guest or no guest. As soon as possible, he would have to let Goodall’s superiors know the man was ineffective, and order a search made of MacDrumin’s estates. If the man had illicit stills, Rory’s men would find them and put him out of the whisky business. That he and the laird would break bread together before that was unfortunate, but it could not be helped.

Diana, watching Calder, was dismayed to think that by allowing him to accompany her, she had betrayed MacDrumin. The Crown allowed Highlanders to produce whisky for sale only if they paid for the privilege, and she knew well that MacDrumin delighted in thumbing his nose at the rules. She knew, too, that Calder would feel obliged to do something to end the illicit whisky trading.

When the opportunity presented itself, she moved to walk beside MacDrumin, saying quietly, “I am glad to meet you at last, sir. My mother has spoken of you often, and we are mighty beholden to you now.”

“Whisst, lassie, you’ve naught for which to thank me. I like your mother.”

Glancing back to reassure herself that Calder was conversing with Dugald and Neil, she said, “I wish we had not had the misfortune to meet you whilst you were riding with the bailie. Pray, sir, accept my apology for that.”

“Nay, lass, there is no need. I have naught to fear from Goodall or your tame Campbell. You must trust that one, or you’d not have brought him with you.”

“That’s just the problem, you see. I did not invite him. We met with a spot of bother along the way, and he was kind enough to give us his aid.”

With concern in his voice, MacDrumin said, “Who dared to accost you?”

“Lord Balcardane’s son Black Duncan,” she said.

“But Balcardane is a Campbell. Is he not Calder’s kinsman?”

“Aye, his uncle.”

He was silent for a long moment, and Diana wondered what he was thinking. She had heard much over the years about Andrew MacDrumin of that ilk, chief of the MacDrumins. Her father had admired him greatly, and her mother showed more respect for MacDrumin than she had for any man since Sir Hector Maclean.

Some tales Diana had heard seemed apocryphal, but if even a small percentage of them were true, the MacDrumin had enjoyed a long and fruitful career, tweaking the noses of British authorities. She believed that he had fought at Culloden, although apparently the English had failed to find any Highlander willing to state without equivocation that MacDrumin had taken any part in the rebellion.

When she decided that he was unlikely to say more about Calder’s relationship to Balcardane, or to inquire more fully into the incident at Spean Bridge, she said quietly, “Did you know my father well, sir?”

“Aye, lassie, a fine man he was, too. I saw him fall, I’m sorry to say.”

Gasping at such a revealing statement, she looked back over her shoulder.

“So you don’t trust Calder much, then.”

Put that way, as a bare statement of fact, the words were too harsh. “I don’t really know,” she said. “Until I do, perhaps the less said about such things, the better, but I am glad that if you saw Papa fall, you lived to tell others about it.”

“He was a brave man, your father. He was fighting three of the villains single-handedly when he fell.”

Feeling a pricking of tears in her eyes, she brushed them away with the back of one hand and said with forced cheerfulness, “What do you hear from Maggie?”

“That she will be in the glen Monday, and ’tis a pity, that, for we did not expect them for yet another month.”

“A pity! You sound as if you don’t want your daughter home again, sir. I cannot believe that is true.”

“Nay, I’ll be glad to see the lass. But she’s expecting another bairn, so I don’t doubt she’ll be right skittersome, like most women at such times. I don’t envy Rothwell dealing with her, I admit, but he ought to have kept her in England another sennight at least. I’ve got kegs to move.”

She recalled the ones they had found in the cave. “He does not approve?

“Och, well, I’d not go so far as to say he disapproves, but ’tis better when he knows naught about some things.”

Struck by a sudden, dismaying thought, Diana said, “Faith, sir, I can see that you will want Mam to leave if his lordship is coming. But things have come to an unfortunate pass at home, and I do not know if it is safe yet for her to return. We need to speak with her, which is why Neil and I have come to Glen Drumin.”

“Campbell trouble?”

“Aye, one of them wants to turn us out of our home and set us to serving the new tenants as common drudges.”

To her surprise, he chuckled. “Lady Anne Stewart, a drudge? You’re all about in your head, lass. It won’t happen. She’d snatch any mistress bald-headed the first time she wanted a dust mop. No wildcat is a ruthless as that woman.”

“I shot at a wildcat not long ago,” she said. “It was attacking Calder.”

“You didna let the animal maul him to bits? You are either not your mother’s daughter, lass, or you must be hard smitten.” He chuckled again. “Come to think on it, he didna let you fall victim to his cousin, so he must be smitten, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” Diana said, but her thoughts whirled. It had suddenly occurred to her that she might keep Calder from betraying MacDrumin’s activities to the authorities if she could keep his interest fixed on her.

The thought stirred an anticipatory tingling in her nerve ends again, but she ignored it, telling herself firmly that if she decided to seduce his lordship, it would be because she had a duty to protect MacDrumin. Thus, such a decision would be sensible—nearly patriotic, in fact—and certainly not derived from mere animal lust.

T
HE GOLDEN GLOW OF
candlelight spilled into the yard through the open doorway of Glen Drumin House when they arrived. Men called to one another in the stable yard, and Dugald shouted to someone named Geordie that he had another task for him after they had put the laird’s horse away.

Diana, waiting impatiently for her host to move toward the house, watched the doorway expectantly. She did not have to wait long before a familiar figure appeared there and a familiar voice exclaimed tartly, “Is that you at last, Andrew? We had begun to think you must have fallen off a mountain. Do you consider no one’s wishes but your own, sir?”

“Mam!”

“Diana? Bless me, child, is that really you?”

A moment later, Diana was in her mother’s arms, hugging her tightly. “Oh, Mam, I think I’ve missed you even more these past weeks than when you were in prison. How can that be?”

“Don’t be absurd, child,” Lady Maclean said, hugging her back. “I am far happier here than I was in Edinburgh, I promise you.”

“I’ll warrant you are,” Neil said with a laugh, coming up to them.

“Neil, you too? But how so? Is aught amiss at home?”

“That’s why we’ve come,” Neil said. “Diana thinks—”

Cutting him off without hesitation, Diana said, “This is not the time or place to discuss our reason for coming. Wait until we can be private with her.”

“Oh, aye, if you like, but Calder’s gone somewhere with MacDrumin.”

Lady Maclean said, “We ought not to stand in the doorway, at all events. Come in, children, and have something to eat. Kate, my dear, tell them to bring more food. We have guests!”

A smiling young woman came forward to greet them when they entered the cavernous, candlelit great hall. Her hair was pale blonde and fine, her features small and neatly etched. She went on smiling politely as Lady Maclean made the introductions, and Diana found it hard to believe that this was Dugald’s cousin Kate, who had grown from a barefoot girl of the glen to become sister-in-law to a powerful English earl. It was even harder to imagine that this dainty, well-mannered creature had once been known as Mad Kate MacCain, but so Dugald had told her.

“How do you do, ma’am,” Diana said.

“Very well, thank you,” Kate replied with a twinkle.

Lady Maclean said, “Kate’s husband is presently somewhere in the northern Highlands, tending the sick. He is quite skilled with his remedies, I’m told, though I have not been privileged to see him at work. I have told him and Kate about our Mary, however. I do trust she is well.”

They reassured her, taking seats near a fireplace large enough for six grown men to stand upright and abreast. A medium-sized fire blazed there now, and they warmed their hands and talked of domestic matters until the other men came inside. Then there were more introductions.

Upon hearing his name again, Lady Maclean eyed his lordship askance. “Calder? That would be the Cawdor branch of the Campbells, would it not?”