Once Upon a Highland Autumn (33 page)

She surprised him by moving first. “They’ll come to the castle first. Ruairidh, go and get Fionn, tell him to go to the village, send them out now. Tell them to take what they can, but they must be gone within the hour, is that clear? They’re to go to the corrie, leave no trail for the soldiers to follow.”

“Yes Mairi,” the boy said, and set off across the causeway.

“You’ve got to go too,” Nathaniel said, his heart pounding in his breast. “Get on my horse.”

She picked up her skirts and hurried into the castle instead. “There’s something I must do first,” she said. She opened cupboards and rushed to the kitchen, yelling orders. Folk began to scream, to panic, and he watched her calm them. She handed out loaves of bread and blankets and lengths of plaid as they passed her, giving orders in a soft voice, her face placid, though her hands shook. He took a box of candles off the shelf, and handed it to a woman who took it, and spit on his boots, muttering a curse on Gaelic.

“She doesn’t know, doesn’t understand,” Mairi said. “Her husband is gone, too, and she’s sure he’s dead.”

He probably was, Nathaniel thought.

Once her people had left, Mairi turned and raced up the steps. “You’ve got to come now, Mairi—there’s no time!” he said, but she kept going. He followed, found her in the bedroom, kneeling before a chest, looking for something.

Through the window he could see the troop marching across the glen, their red coats glowing against the green of the hills, the drum still too far away to hear. An officer rode with them, and Nathaniel sent up a prayer that he outranked the man. Mairi wouldn’t get out now, not without being seen. If he put her on his horse, they’d intercept him, take her, and—

He grabbed her arm. “Is there a place you can hide?” he demanded roughly. There was a scrap of cloth in her hands, white and soft, and she looked up at him in fear. “Go there, Mairi, Go now. I’ll try to send them away.”

She took a box from the chest, tucked it under her arm, and left the room with a single backward look. He followed her down the stairs. He could hear the drums now, which meant they were crossing the causeway. “Hide,” he said through tight lips, reaching for the hilt of his sword. This time she didn’t hesitate, she hurried through the kitchen. He watched saw her run through the garden to the edge of the loch. She disappeared behind the rocks on the shore, and he heard the sound of English shouts, and hobnailed boots on the stone floor of the hall.

He grabbed a half-empty pot of ale and walked out of the kitchen. Three soldiers turned their bayonets on him, then stopped at the sight of his uniform. “What the devil are you doing here?” the captain leading them demanded.

Nathaniel forced a sly smile. “Same as you, I assume. Looking for a bit of goods to sell on.”

The man relaxed. “Is there anyone here?”

Nathaniel shrugged. “It was empty when I got here, and that was hours ago.”

“Where’s your company?” the captain demanded.

“I got lost in the hills,” Nathaniel said, drinking deeply. He feigned a drunken grin. “Easy enough to do. Fortunately I found this place.”

“Damned dangerous. You’re lucky you didn’t get your throat cut. These hills are a nest of bloodthirsty rebels. We killed three of them this morning. Hanged ’em outside one of those hovels they call cottages. Pigs live better.”

The captain jerked his head and watched his soldiers scatter, begin to search. Nathaniel heard the breaking of china, the crash and splinter of furniture. They came back with a few trinkets, bottles of ale, pewter plates. “Load it all up,” the captain ordered. “Any gold, jewels, plate?” he asked Nathaniel.

He felt bitterness fill his mouth. He forced himself to smile, and turned out his empty pocket. “Not a farthing. They must have taken it with them. Even the ale is sour.”

The officer squinted at him, then cast a suspicious look around. “No women, no children, no old people?”

Nathaniel glanced at the soldiers prowling through the garden, his heart in his throat. He put his hand on his sword, and held his breath, waiting for the shout of discovery, expecting to hear Mairi’s screams as they dragged her inside. But the soldiers came back alone. “No one,” they reported.

Nathaniel met the captain’s eyes. “No one at all,” he agreed.

The captain spat on the floor. “The bastards must have been warned.” He turned to his men. “All right, take what you have, then burn it, Sergeant. Leave nothing for the Jacobite scum to come back to.”

A
lec was seated in Eleanor’s study at Dundrummie castle, and Kit’s first thought was that the Earl of Glenlorne was far too big for such a small and ladylike desk.

He waited while Glenlorne’s eyes roved over him, assessing him now he was dressed properly. His linen was crisp and white, his excellently tailored coat a sober shade of dark blue, his breeches buff, and his boots polished to a gloss. He took off his beaver hat and tucked it under his arm as he bowed. Leslie had assured him he looked precisely as an English earl should look, but Glenlorne’s dark expression told Kit that he was not going to be so easily impressed.

“You wished to see me,” Glenlorne said crisply, folding his hands on the surface of the desk, his fingers laced together as if he were imagining them around Kit’s throat. Kit sat down, though he hadn’t been offered a chair. “I trust you are unscathed by the events at the castle?”

He wouldn’t say unscathed, exactly. He’d slept poorly for the last two nights, having agreed at Glenlorne’s insistence that he would wait that long before coming to call at Dundrummie to “discuss things.” Alec needed time to think everything through, he said. Kit was here at last, and once this was settled, he would sleep for a week—hopefully with Megan.

“I wish to ask for Megan’s hand in marriage,” he said without responding to the earl’s question. He watched Glenlorne’s face redden dangerously.

“Are you doing this because honor demands it?” he asked.

Kit raised his chin. “In part. She’ll be a countess.”

“I doubt she cares about that.”

“Because I’m not a Scot?” Kit asked.

“In part,” Glenlorne parroted. “Have you heard of Eachann Rennie?”

Kit felt his throat tighten. “I have.”

“Then you’ll know she cares nothing for titles. Megan is the most romantic and sentimental of my sisters. Alanna is sensible, and considers matters with her head. I know she’ll make a good match. But Megan follows her heart, and it’s not always right. Eachann is not the first man she’s fancied herself in love with. She loves her homeland with a far more steadfast passion. I doubt she’d be happy in England.”

Kit swallowed. Did Glenlorne expect him to declare his love for Megan here and now? He hadn’t even told her yet, and he wouldn’t if she still loved Eachann.

“I would do my best, of course, to make her happy, but if she loves Eachann, and you are amenable to that match, then—”

“Eachann has Grace,” Glenlorne said.

Grace?
What did that mean? Was it some deep Scottish quality, perhaps, or was grace simply the blessing of Megan’s love?

“Megan will never be a typical countess,” Glenlorne went on. “Not an English one at any rate. No doubt Devorguilla will approve of you.”

Kit’s eyebrows rose at that pronouncement. “Does her approval have a bearing on our conversation?” he asked. “I had thought this was between you, me, and Megan.”

“It is, but her entire family will become involved. Tell me, if you wished to marry Megan, then why the handfasting?”

Kit leaned forward. “Neither of us wanted to marry at all. She wished to wait for Eachann to return, and I didn’t wish to wed.” Glenlorne looked baffled. “If you met my sister, Arabella, you’d understand. She is the most unhappily married person in all of England, save for her husband, of course. I must admit the Dowager Countess of Glenlorne did propose, and I said no.”

Glenlorne’s eyes popped. “Devorguilla wanted to marry you?”

“She wanted me to marry Megan. We had only just met, and her hair was—” He raised his hands above his head, trying to describe the high and ridiculous coiffure Megan had sported the night they met. “I didn’t know her, you see. How wonderful she was with her hair down her back, walking over the hills as she does . . . that fire in her eyes . . . those incredible eyes of hers . . .” He realized he was babbling, and Glenlorne was staring at him in astonishment. “Of course, if she prefers to marry—elsewhere—for love, then I shall not stand in her way,” he said again.

“I think I shall need to speak to Megan,” Glenlorne muttered. “Or my wife. None of this makes any sense to me.”

“It’s simple. I will withdraw my offer, leave for England at once if Megan’s heart is engaged elsewhere, grace notwithstanding.” He took an envelope from his pocket, pushed it across the desk. “My wedding present to her, whether she chooses to marry me or not, is Glen Dorian.”

“You’re giving her a ruin?”

Kit smiled and took a flask from his pocket and offered it to Glenlorne. “I’m giving her a treasure,” he said.

In the hills above Glen Dorian, January 1747

N
athaniel climbed the side of the mountain and whistled softly. Ruairidh popped out of the heather, taller now, but leaner too, more hollow eyed. He smiled warily. A younger boy came shyly out from behind him. “Duncan, is it?” Nathaniel said, ruffling the child’s dark hair, and gave him a bit of sugar. He popped it into his mouth and ran to tell his mother.

“How is she?” Nathaniel asked Ruairidh.

“Not the same since she lost the babe. Have you brought news?”

He handed the boy the pack he carried, filled with oats, bacon, dried beef, and what flour he’d been able to find. “No,” he said. “There’s no word of Connor.”

The boy’s face fell.

The boy blamed himself, Nathaniel knew that. If not for him, Connor would have been at Glen Dorian on the day of the battle. Nathaniel knew now they still would have come for him, not caring if he was a Jacobite or not. They would have arrested him or hung him in the courtyard while they killed his people around him, raped his wife before his eyes. It had happened all over the Highlands, was still happening. People were starving, dying.

Nathaniel walked up the slope with Ruairidh, toward the hidden corrie that held the tattered remnants of the Glen Dorian MacIntoshes—less than two dozen people, and fewer every day, though Mairi did her best to keep them together, warm, fed, and hopeful. They left anyway, slipping away, sure they’d find something better somewhere else, knowing there was nothing left for them here. They accepted what Mairi refused to believe. Connor MacIntosh was gone, almost certainly dead. He’d simply disappeared. Nathaniel knew now that he wasn’t in England. His name was not on the rolls of those tried or executed or transported.

For Mairi’s sake, and without much hope, Nathaniel had even gone to search the fearsome prison ships that lay at anchor off Inverness, filled with prisoners who overflowed from the overcrowded gaol. You could smell the hulks from land, the stench of decay, death, and despair. He was glad for once that he didn’t find Connor. A guard told him they cast the bodies of the dead out of the holds every day or two, burned the putrid corpses, not bothering to record the names. Nathaniel couldn’t imagine the proud, educated, gentle MacIntosh suffering such a fate, nor could he imagine telling Mairi that he had.

And so he kept searching for Connor. It became an obsession. Now, nearly ten months later, there was still no word, and each time he came to the corrie, bringing what supplies he could, he watched the hope in her eyes grow fainter and fainter. He braced himself to see it again now, to feel it hit him like the lash of a whip, knowing he must disappoint her.

She gave him a faint smile of thanks as Ruairidh dropped the pack at her feet. She was thinner now, and strands of gray wove through her dark braid.

“How kind of you to come,” she said, as she always did, as if she were still the Lady of Glen Dorian, inviting him into her castle. He looked around at the hollow faces that crouched by the fire, and wondered how they were going to survive the rest of the winter, how he was going to find enough food to help feed them all. Ruairidh and the other lads set snares, trapped rabbits when they could, or grouse. He’d brought three chickens for eggs in the fall, and a ewe to give milk, but they were gone now, eaten. Mairi was always the last to eat.

“Two men left last week, and didn’t come back,” Ruairidh told him. “They said they were going across the sea.”

Mairi laid a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “They might still decide to come back again,” she said. “Will you eat?” she asked Nathaniel, holding out a bowl of thin soup.

“No,” he said. “I have to go back before I’m missed.” It’s what they said to each other every time he came.

“Is there news?” she asked breathlessly.

He stared at her in the firelight, beautiful and brave for the sake of Connor’s people. He still saw determination in her eyes, and weariness as well. Would it be kinder to tell her what he feared, or leave her to hope? Would hope keep her warm through the winter? He opened his mouth, then shut it again. “No,” he said, and left her.

K
it sat on the bench outside the cottage, and stared down at the castle. Autumn had turned the glen from green to brown and gold and russet, the colors of Megan’s eyes. It would be four days tomorrow since the storm, and two days since his meeting with Glenlorne. Alec had insisted that Kit wait until Megan had recovered before he made his proposal—and Glenlorne would inform him when that time came. Kit was beginning to suspect the earl was hoping Kit would change his mind and leave. He folded his arms over his chest and watched an eagle circling the glen. He would wait for as long as it took.

“So what will you do with all that whisky?” Alec McNabb asked, and Kit looked up to find him standing beside him, his eyes on the bird as well. His expression gave nothing away.