DARE THE WILD WIND (20 page)

And she and Fenella were not even truly
Cam or Iain's kin.  Brenna's mouth tightened in a stubborn line.  "We have to find a way.  If you'll only drop us at the edge of the town, we'll wait till nightfall and try to find a fisherman with a boat to take us into the harbor."

"I vow your friend here had the right of it," the older woman said in disbelief.  "You are quite mad to think you'll slip aboard a British transport.  Dark or not, you'll be shot for your trouble."

"We didn't come this far to be turned back."

Lady Wittworth gave Brenna a long assessing look.  "Then you'll do far better not to tilt at windmills on the wharf.  If you're determined to have news of these men, it's possible I can have a word with my husband."

Brenna stared back at her in surprise and hope.  "I can only repay you in a small way, but I
'd be forever indebted to you."

"Let's have no talk of debt," Lady Wittworth said crisply.  "Now," she went on in a different, direct voice, "you must tell me who you are."  Brenna hesitated, but the other woman persisted.

"Your speech and deportment don't fit the clothes you're wearing or your bedraggled state.  I'm persuaded this shy child spoke the truth when she addressed you by your title.  You have the manner of a gentlewoman, and charming little Fenella is no unschooled country girl."

Brenna took a small breath.  "I'm Brenna Dalmoral, and this is Fenella Strath."

"Dalmoral?"  Lady Wittworth mused for a second.  "I believe I've heard of your brother."

"My half brother," Brenna corrected with distaste.

"Ah," she said with a lift of her slanting brows.  "Now I recall.  Lord Dalmoral.  I think he was presented to me last summer.  I must say I'm quite relieved to see there's so little resemblance between you."

In spite of herself, Brenna laughed.  Then her tone sobered again.  "He despises me as much as I detest him.  He mustn't find out I'm in
Inverness."

"Especially since it would be embarrassing to him to have it known his sister is inquiring after Rebel prisoners of the Crown?"  Brenna nodded.  "Have you thought of the consequences of all this?  Of how your brother will deal with you when you return home?"

Brenna's eyes lifted.  "I know what I've done.
I don't intend to go back.  I mean to follow Cam, wherever they take him."

There was a small silence between them.  "Then this
Cam is your fiancé?"

"His name is Cameron MacCavan, chief of the MacCavans.  And Fenella is promised to his cousin, Iain MacCavan."

Lady Wittworth shook her head at embroiling herself in such folly.  "Geoffrey will call me addled, but I suppose I find intrigue of this sort irresistible."

"Will he agree to help us?" Brenna asked, suddenly aware Lord Wittworth could well refuse and turn them promptly over to Malcolm.

Lady Wittworth let out a small, unruffled laugh.  "My husband may look very stodgy and unprepossessing to those who don't know him.  But I assure you his appearance is a far more effective disguise than the one you're wearing today."

Then, as if she had revealed some secret she preferred to keep private, she smiled at Brenna and Fenella.  

"I've quite forgotten to properly introduce myself.  I'm Lady Eleanore Wittworth, and I'd be pleased to have you as guests in my house until Geoffrey can make inquiries about your wild young Scots."    

The coach turned into the drive of the Wittworth estate less than an hour later.  Built of red and weathered native sandstone, the house sat on a wide promontory above the sea.  It boasted windowed wings added in Tudor times, but the central structure had been a fortified keep.  Its crenellated tower looked down on the two newer and stubbily symmetrical wings that flanked it like a doughty old warrior in charge of two fat and feckless geese. 

"It's an absolute monstrosity," Lady Wittworth said with good
  humored honesty, "but Geoffrey is fond of the place.  It belongs to his family, though God knows it's been a good hundred years since any blood tie to the Wittworths called himself a Scot.

"It's quite the most primitive,
coldest
place I've ever been," she went on.  "The dungeons and the kitchens and bakehouse were carved directly out of the living rock under the original castle."

"Then this isn't your home?" Brenna asked.     

"Heaven defend us," she exclaimed
with a laugh.  "We have a far more comfortable town  house in London, and a proper estate in Devon."  She shrugged fondly.  "If Geoffrey didn't dabble in shipping, we'd never make our annual pilgrimage to Inverness.  But he'll have none of our friends' snobbery about stooping to trade, and I long ago resigned myself to his eccentric ways."

They were greeted by a solemn and haughty butler with wintry features nearly as gray as the hair severely clubbed at his neck.

"You mustn't mind Desmond's
London airs," Eleanore said
sotto voce
.  "He is a bit of a stick, but Geoffrey wouldn't travel anywhere without him.  And I must confess his forbidding manner is all to the good dealing with the local servants."

To Brenna, he looked faintly aggrieved to be presiding over such a remote and undistinguished house, and distinctly disapproving of her appearance and Fenella's. 

"Tell Cook we'll require a light repast," Lady Wittworth said firmly.  "Lady Dalmoral and her companion have been incon
venienced by the unpleasant events of the past few days.  They'll be our guests until they can return to their home in safety."

She led Brenna and Fenella up the central staircase to install them in adjoining rooms in the wing of the house that overlooked the windswept shore of the Firth.

Though the stone walls were chill with the close damp breath of the sea, Brenna's chamber was warmly furnished.  The canopied bed was richly draped in fine floral brocade, and two matching armchairs with gracefully
curving rococo arms sat on either side of the fireplace.  A walnut veneered tallboy stood against one wall, a writing table with ornate cabriole legs next to it.

Tactfully, Lady Wittworth advised Brenna to ring if she cared to have a bath before tea.  Mentally she measured Brenna.  

"I'll send my maid with a change of clothes.  We are of a height, but I'm afraid I've always been a touch too thin.  Perhaps a dressing gown will do until the seamstress from the village can let out something of mine for you to wear."

"Lady Wittworth, I've already imposed too much on your charity, " Brenna objected in a rush.  "I have money to pay your seamstress if she can fashion a simple gown for me."

"I doubt you'll care to confine yourself to these rooms until she can," the older woman said with a small laugh.  "And I insist you call me Eleanore."

She smoothed her skirts, preparing to go.  "I'll send a groom to
Inverness for the poor animal you left behind.  There are more than enough pastures for such an old horse here at Redstone."

Brenna was grateful.  In two days' time, she had become attached to Canmore.  "You've been too kind," she began.    

Lady Wittworth cut her short with a quick graceful gesture of her hand.  "We'll take tea in my sitting room.  Fenella, too.  Unless, of course, I've been mista
ken, and the girl is your maid?”

Brenna shook her head quickly.  "Fenella's father is the rector of our church."     

"Then I'll give you time to settle in," she said.

Sudden guilt lanced Brenna.  The Wittworths could have a great deal to lose by befriending them.  If Geoffrey Wittworth's butler gossiped with the staff he ruled, word could be passed that Lady Wittworth harbored two Scottish girls in search of captured Rebels.  Eleanore Wittworth's promise to aid Brenna and Fenella could put all she and her husband possessed in jeopardy. 

Brenna forced herself to speak.  "Lady Eleanore, taking the two of us in could put you and your husband in a dangerous position."

Lady Wittworth halted, her hand on the brass latch of the door.  Brenna continued, though she knew what it could cost her.   "My brother may be a Lo
yalist, but the man I love is a Jacobite.  You must know I'd do anything to see him, anything to set him free."

Fresh respect registered in Eleanore Wittworth's
face.  They exchanged a level look, the difference in their ages falling away. 

"Not quite anything," she said in a tone that paid tribute to Brenna's candor.  "Your concern does you credit, but your fears are misplaced.  Charles Stuart is in flight, and the Rebellion is at an end.  Neither you nor your friend are fugitives from the Crown."

"Only from
my brother," Brenna reminded her.

"That's another matter entirely.  Geoffrey will doubtless say you're mad, and perhaps you are to run off after a man who may be completely beyond anyone's reach."  She paused.

"But I know this.  I'd do the same if it were Geoffrey in chains.  And once I've given my word, I never go back on it."

Chapter
13

"Curse it, but it's colder than a doxy's heart.
"

Shivering in his plum silk coat and breeches, Thomas Wolcott burrowed deeper into the cape of his greatcoat and gritted his teeth to keep t
hem from chattering in the raw wind off Moray Firth.
 

"Be thankful it is," Drake said shortly.  The stench rising from the hold of the
Hornet
was foul even in the frigid North Seagale slicing across the deck where they stood.
 

The captain of the man
of war paid obsequious respects to the Duke a few yards away on the quarterdeck.  His massive bulk girded in scarlet and gold, Cumberlandsaid little, but the Earl saw his shrewd eyes ticking off every shortcoming the captain had failed to conceal in time for his inspection
.

The Marquess of Tillbury had overheard Wolcott's complaint.  With his bobbing Adam's apple and stooped graceless gait, he resembled a longshanked tenant on one of his own estates.  But broken veins in his nose and his round basket of a belly testi
fied to his gluttonous habits and his prowess as a tosspot.  Tillbury was an ill mannered donkey, but nightly he matched the Duke drink for drink long after Drake had retired from the contest
.

"This benighted place is more miserable than the steppes of
Russia."  He brought a lace handkerchief up to his nose.  "The smell of these filthy Scots bids fair to send me to the rail.
"

Drake had thought Tillbury had a stomach of iron.  "A courtier's life has its penalties," he said in a dry voice.    
 

"I suppose you find these pigs' aroma sweet perfume.
"

"A soldier prefers meeting his enemy on the field to playing jailor once the battle is done.
"

The Duke glanced their way, and Tillbury lowered the scrap of lace, smiling unpleasantly. "Our commander would disagree.  He takes a personal interest in the disposition of our prisoners.
"

Almost as much as he did in dispatching them with his cannon. 
Cumberland had filled every gaol and church in Invernesswith captured Rebels before he ordered them aboard the fleet in the harbor.  And denied them meat or drink for two days. The Duke had laughed at the suggestion of a subaltern that the wounded should be issued blankets to protect them from the cutting wind and cold
.

"They fought in their shirttails.  Let them dance in them now.  There may be fewer to deal with in a day or two.
"

Today the Duke had boarded the
Hornet
leading a deputation to list and count the prisoners.  As part of Cumberland's official entourage, Drake and Tillbury and half a dozen other members of his staff would make the round of the transports and warships riding at anchor in the narrows of Inverness Firth
.

Finally the prisoners were being fed.  Each Rebel had been allotted half a pound of oat meal a day.  Little as it was, Drake was relieved
Cumberland didn't mean to starve them to death.  He knew Charles Stuart's mercies might have been scant if the Pretender had won at Culloden Moor, but there was no more to fear from beaten men.  The Duke had dealt far more honorably with their old enemies the French than he was willing to do with men who had threatened to tumble his family from the throne
.

"Will the Duke require this pomp and ceremony on every ship in the harbor?" Thomas asked, jigging his stockinged legs to keep warm
.

"Very likely," Drake answered, his tone cautioning his aide to remember
Cumberland's uncertain temper. "His Royal Highness has never minded the cold.
"

"Or you,
Stratford?" the Marquess sniped.  "What is it that shakes that damned composure of yours?
"

Drake restrained the urge to throttle Tillbury.  It grew daily, but his youth at court had schooled him to the carping of fools.  He flexed the stiffness of his knitting shoulder.