Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero (8 page)

“But you hoped.”

Kenna nodded.

“What’s the matter, wee lass? Isn’t he back in
Fort Mary?”

“No,” Kenna sniffed. “No. He came down here when
Bonnie Prince Charlie-”

“Best not mention that.”

“Right. I mean, he went to Edinburgh a couple of
years ago and never made his way back north. There have been some newspaper
reports, but...”

“Newspapers, lass? Is he important?”

Before she could catch herself, Kenna mentioned
the Ghost, and a half a second later, Orrick’s eyes got very big.

“I think...”

“I’m sorry,” Kenna said. “I didn’t mean to say
that. I must have just seen something that put the thought in my head. Forget I
said anything.”

Ignoring her, Orrick smiled a thin, tired smile.

“You know what they say, lass? They say that for
every man who does wrong, there’s one who does right. You’ve heard the saying?”

“Aye, from my Pa.”

“I think this Gavin of yours, if that be who I
think of, is doing enough good for a hundred villains. A thousand, maybe. He
might even be good enough to make up for King George’s cruelty.”

It was Kenna’s turn to have big eyes.

“But,” his voice returned to the affected north
English accent he had when they met. “There will be time for that, now, we
must-”

Interrupting him, a fife blew a flat note, and
corrected itself.

“Dear?” Laird Macdonald called from the top of the
stairs. He spoke loud enough for the small clutch of visitors who’d appeared in
the entry way to hear his false kindness. “Dearest Kenna? Please, come to me.
We’ve got guests to entertain.

“A
nd that,” Ramsay Macdonald said. “That is why the
French and the English keep fighting, and the French keep losing!”

A round of polite laughter went around the table.
Everyone around them busied themselves scraping their knives and the tines of
their forks around the fine china that Laird Macdonald insisted upon using even
though Orrick told him it was too gauche to use such fine dishes with cheap
silverware. If anyone noticed, they didn’t speak up.

For what seemed like eternity, the nobles of all
sorts sat in a very obvious hierarchy with Macdonald at the head of the table.
Minor peers, four generations removed from any real wealth sat alongside new
money made when the Crown took the Jacobite land. The men and ladies who were
of a station to command respect were given a bit of room at the elbows, while
those Macdonald thought less important, or at least less likely to assist him
in some way, were crowded into the center of the table, so that their elbows
struck one another when they cut their roast pork.

Even Sheriff Alan was there, though almost
unrecognizable without his black plug of chew, and without the brown streaks in
his wig.

Kenna poked at a thin slice of meat, ate two
pieces of turnip boiled so long they were almost liquid. She once lifted a
piece of pork from the plate, but her hand shook so badly that she just put it
down and returned her hands to her lap. No matter how she tried to attend to
one or another of the droll conversations all around her, Kenna’s thoughts
simply wouldn’t leave the dark-haired teenager who gave her the ornament round
her neck. She couldn’t push what Orrick said from her mind, about his goodness.

More than once, Macdonald elbowed her in the ribs
and prompted her to laugh at a joke or gasp at some terrible news that
invariably was about some filthy peasant thinking himself above his station.

She drew a face in the gravy that pooled on either
side of the pork slice, and that was the only time she smiled.

Suddenly, at the other end of the massive oaken
table, a waistcoat indistinguishable from the other waistcoats stood up and
adjusted a wig indistinguishable from the other wigs.

Kenna wished that the pork had been poisoned.

A fat pair of fingers held aloft a glass and
gently clanged a fork against the crystal. Everyone silenced themselves.

This whole thing is so rehearsed,
Kenna
thought,
how are these people not driving themselves insane? Or maybe they
already have...

“Hullo! Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your
attention?”

Kenna looked at him, bemusedly, as he gesticulated
and opened his mouth overly wide to speak.

“As we all know, the reason we’ve been invited to
Laird Macdonald’s beautiful estate, given him by His Majesty King George I, God
rest his soul,” he took a breath and everyone bowed their heads, “is to
celebrate the joining of our gracious host, Ramsay Macdonald, Seventh Earl of
Kilroyston, to the lovely...ah, the lovely...”

A woman tugged the speaker’s hand and whispered in
his ear.

“Of course, the lovely Kenna Moore of Fort Mary, a
town in the highlands which I hear is quite quaint. Aren’t those highlanders a
wonderful bunch?”

Even as she smiled, Kenna’s blood boiled. A hand
on the shoulder from her husband-to-be forced her to swallow the rage as a
round of laughs and soft clapping went around the table. Alan ran his tongue
along his teeth, picked something from between his molars with a grotesque
suck, and stared at Kenna as he applauded.

“What a wonderful toast,” Macdonald said with only
a slight grimace. “Now, shall we adjourn to the ballroom? The rest of the
guests should be there already. Our fife and pipe band will continue to
entertain, and you’re welcome to dance as long as you like, though I must warn
you that at my age, one retires early.”

As the patriarch stood, so did the children. He
smiled and waved and bowed and shook gloved hands with those who dared to
approach him. A few moments later, the dining hall was empty save for Ramsay,
Kenna, and a couple of the kitchen staff busily taking away plates and sneaking
morsels.

“Remember what I told you,” he said. “You’re to
have a good time. It looks best for me if you’re smiling. Do you understand?”

“Yes, of course, sir.” Kenna said.

She was tired of the game, tired of playing along
with the charade.
Just a little longer
, she told herself,
a couple of
hours and this will all be over.

Again, she looked at the soup, then the pork.

Why couldn’t it be poisoned?

––––––––

N
oise of music and stomping feet and laughter
greeted Kenna as she turned down the hallway to the ballroom. Her Earl of
Kilroyston remained behind, he said, to meet with someone in his antechamber,
but would be down afterward.

As she rounded the final turn and the swell of
some barely recognizable folk song or another one met her ears, Kenna
remembered that she was supposed to wear a mask. There was no time though, for
her to go back, so she just walked into the massive room and drank in the
scene.

Far more people than were at the stuffy dinner
were packed into Macdonald’s great hall. All sorts of different tartans were
present, all very neatly bundled and tied. Most of the colors stayed in tightly
packed groups, but it wasn’t long, as Kenna sat back and watched, until many of
the men began to drink enough that the colors mixed and subdued dancing turned
into something much more furious.

She searched the crowd for Orrick, or for anyone she
recognized, but that was foolhardy at best. Behind masks she watched men with
long hair, men with short hair, men with beards and those clean shaven drinking
and dancing. She watched ladies in the finest gowns she’d ever seen swirling
around the floor as though they weren’t being crushed half to death by their
corsets.

Two men caught her eye. They were obviously as out
of place as she was, but they were laughing between themselves.
They’re
wearing Macdonald tartan, but they’re just wandering around. I wonder...

“Milady?”

Kenna jumped.

“Sorry to have surprised you, milady, but I
couldn’t help notice that you were looking rather lost. Might I have a dance?”

Without really taking her eyes off the three men
across the room, Kenna said of course, and bowed deeply, sucking wind right
before bending, as Olga showed her.

The gentleman was kind enough, his dainty touch on
her back barely there. Kenna twirled when he urged, dipped when he leaned. She
even ended up leading half the time when the gentle-faced man seemed unsure. As
they moved across the floor, she noticed that a third man joined the two she
was watching, and parted from an elegant looking lady with a kiss that was a
bit too long to be proper.

He parted from her with a smile and a bow, which
she returned.

When he moved away, she once again glimpsed the
three out of place men, though there were only two now – one very big and one
very slender. The one with the longer haired tied back in a sensible ponytail
had gone somewhere. Kenna caught up with him as he leaned lazily on one of the
tables ringing the dance floor, got a cracker with some sort of meat folded on
top of it, and slipped one of the forks into his sporran. Judging by the size
of it, that wasn’t the first thing to disappear into the man’s pouch, though a
moment later after he rejoined his fellows, the pocket had somehow emptied, for
it was flat again.

The big man, with a huge red beard and darker
mustache, nudged the tall, thick-shouldered one and tipped his head in Kenna’s
direction. She immediately flushed and turned her back, pretending to select a
drink from the table.

“Milady?” Another masked gentleman, this one
wearing English-style dress, approached her.

“Yes of course,” she said before he asked her
anything, and took his hands.

Slowly, they spun round and round to the swaying,
lilting music. When Kenna had a chance to steal a glance, she did, but the
Scotsman with the brown hair was vanished again. This time, the only one of his
friends she found was the slender one with the gloves and what looked like some
kind of injury to his hand.

Where did you go? And why can’t I take my eyes
off you? Who are you?

The man’s face flashed in her mind. His soft blue
eyes, deep as the waters of Loch Katrine, tickled the back of her neck.

“Is something the matter, milady?”

“Oh no, it’s nothing, I just thought I-”

Finally, Orrick wandered into the room holding a
tray of sausages.

“Orrick,” she said. “Have you seen the three men,
one of them rather fat with a big red beard, the other two more slender, and
one of those has long brown hair tied into a pony’s tail, and the third is
wearing black leather gloves?”

“Ma’am, that describes a number of guests,” he
said with a smile. “Can you be more specific?”

She pulled away from the confused gentleman with
whom she was half-dancing, and looked around the room.

“There!” she said.

“Now isn’t that curious,” Orrick said. “That’s Red
Ben. He worked as part of master Macdonald’s household until very recently.”

“Are you sure? I mean with the mask and all.”

“He’s a hard man to mistake.”

The pipes began a rousing rendition of something
that Kenna didn’t recognize, but from the reaction the men in the room gave, it
was popular.

“I don’t mean to cause any trouble,” she said.

“No, it isn’t any trouble. But I don’t know why
he’s here. I wonder if I should say something to...”

“Don’t,” Kenna said. “Please? For some reason I
have a feeling this is...I don’t know why, but it seems like they are supposed
to be here. Please? For me?”

“As long as they don’t cause any trouble, I see no
reason to alert the guards.”

“Thank you Orrick.”

No sooner had he bowed and offered her a sausage
than Kenna felt a hand on her shoulder.

Soft, curling fingers rasped against her gown.

A hot palm warmed her skin.

“My lady Kenna,” said the main behind the mask.
“Might we dance?”

His voice was nothing like the rest of the speech
she’d heard. It was plain, and it was from the north. She recognized the way he
pulled at the end of the words. Without turning, she said, “who are you?”

“Now, now, isn’t it poor manners for a lady to ask
who a man is? I’m wearing a mask for a reason.”

Even though he was behind her, Kenna felt the
man’s breath on her neck and couldn’t help but smile.

“Aren’t you wearing a mask because it’s a
masquerade ball?”

“Too smart for your own good, aye?”

She tried to turn but he held her in place and
slid his hands around her hips. They burned through her gown and through the
awful corset that felt like it was breaking her ribs.

“Tell me sir; is this what I’ve been hoping would happen?
If it is, how is it possible?”

“Well lady Kenna, I can’t say for sure what you’ve
been hoping for, but I know I’ve wanted this for three years. Probably more.”

From across the room, someone grabbed the gloved
hand of the man with the ruined fingers.

“Hey! This foul creature is trying to steal
something from my sporran! I caught his hand in it, jingling about with a mind
to take my money!”

A roar quickly spread through the hall and Orrick
rushed back in, past Kenna and to the man who screamed.

In the space a few breaths, a dirk came out of a
boot, it was slashed and the gloved man recoiled with a cut across his cheek.
He lifted his hand to the wound, looked at his bloody glove and yanked out a
pistol he had secreted under his billowing shirt.

“John! No!”

Kenna’s heart stopped.

A flash erupted from the muzzle of the gun, but
whizzed wide, shattered four glasses and buried in the wall behind them.

“Sheriff! Sheriff! He tried to shoot me!”

The melee that erupted in the middle of the
banquet hall took everyone by surprise as a number of people attempted to
wrestle the spent pistol from the man who fired it, and others tried to get the
still-useful knife from the man who slashed at the thief.

“Kenna, look on me. It’s been too long.”

Her eyes shot wide open when she heard the
completely unaffected voice. Her eyes traced the lines of the face behind the
red and green mask. She examined him for any familiar sign and then when she
had almost lost herself to doubt, she locked on his eyes. Those deep, stormy,
ocean-blue eyes.

“Gavin?”

“I thought I’d never see you again. I’ve worried
about it since the day I left, and I don’t know why. We’ve never talked, we’ve
never so much as touched hands, but as ridiculous as it may sound, the first
time I saw you I knew you were for me.”

She sucked a deep breath. The chaos erupting
around them seemed a world away.

“I can’t believe-”

He pulled her close and lifted his mask.

“Believe it,” he said. “Red Ben said you’d be
here. I wasn’t going to miss this for the world. And I do like a good dance
party. From watching you dine, I’d say you weren’t here on your own accord?”

That got a laugh from Kenna. The first one she’d
had in days.

“My father, he-”

“Not now.” He put his finger to her lips. “I’ve
got to stop my friend from shooting anyone, and get out of here before that
half-wit sheriff makes any arrests.”

She looked at him, refusing to let the man she’d
wanted for her whole life leave without memorizing every single line of his
face, every curl of his hair. As his hands went to either side of his face,
another gunshot sounded, but no one screamed so it was probably fine, Kenna
thought.

“I’ll be back for you. It might take a day or it
might take a year, but I will be back for you. Your room is on the east side of
the mansion, yes?”