Amanda Scott (7 page)

Knowing better than to name names, she gave him a quick, welcoming hug and said, “Why are you still here? There are soldiers everywhere!”

“There are none here,” Allan Breck said, grinning at her, his blue eyes dancing with mischief. He wore the dark blue coat and red waistcoat of his French regimentals over dun-colored breeches. “They’ve moved to the south,” he added. “I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, lass. Did you think we’d leave you behind?”

“Hush,” she said, casting a glance at Calder, who was stirring, and another at Thomas, struggling angrily in her brother’s grip.

Allan’s servant, Fergus Gray, smashed his fist into Thomas’s face, whereupon Thomas sagged in Neil’s arms and the lad dumped him unceremoniously to the ground. Pulling a
skeanochil
from his boot, Fergus turned toward Calder.

Instantly discerning his intent, Diana snapped, “No! Don’t kill him. Stop him,” she added urgently, clutching Allan Breck’s arm.

Allan checked Fergus with a gesture but scowled at Diana and said in Gaelic, “I do not like leaving witnesses, lass. Certainly not Campbell witnesses.”

“Tie and gag him,” Diana said to Fergus in the same language. Then, to her brother, she said, “Do the same to Thomas, and make sure neither can free himself quickly.” Knowing that Neil would obey but uncertain of Fergus, she turned back to Allan, saying insistently, “You must not kill them. Calder is close kin to Argyll, and the duke’s men would punish every family in Appin to avenge his death. You were in France when the Duke of Cumberland wreaked havoc here after Culloden, but I remember how it was, and I don’t want it to happen again if I can prevent it.”

“She is right,” Bardie Gillonie said in his gravelly voice as he slid down the hillside behind them. He, too, spoke the Gaelic. “No reason to bring the whole lot of them down on us. Speaking of Campbells,” he added, glancing back anxiously over one shoulder as his feet hit the path, “I heard a whistle just now.”

Diana saw with approval that Bardie kept out of Calder’s line of sight. His lordship would remember her all too well, but he could not have seen Bardie before the attack, and she doubted that even Thomas, now stirring awkwardly in his bonds, had seen enough to realize how easily the dwarf could be identified. Sliding on his backside Bardie had looked almost normal, albeit shorter than most men, but on his feet, his deformity was obvious. With stunted legs too short to carry his large torso easily, his gait was lurching and ungainly.

He grinned at her, revealing surprisingly white, even teeth. She had always thought his smile his best feature, but running a close second were the richly dark, expressive eyes set deep beneath shaggy dark brows in his overlarge head. He had a big bony nose and chin, huge hands, and amazingly muscular shoulders. Presently wearing a leather waistcoat and breeches, he was clean shaven and wore his dark hair tied back, as always, in a black bag at the nape of his short, thick neck.

“Expected you last night, lass,” he said. “We had the devil’s own time of it, keeping out of sight of Patrick Campbell’s louts, though in fairness, there was little danger of them catching us. Never saw such a bunch of blind beggars in all my life. Must have prowled under our trees all of fifty times these two nights past. Grew downright wearisome till they went to bed and let us get some sleep.”

“I could not get away before,” Diana said. “They have strict rules about when females can go out. I tried to leave at once, of course, but the ferryman would not bring me across. He said Patrick Campbell would have his head for it.”

Bardie frowned. “But that ferryman is a Bethune of Craignure, is he not?”

Neil said, “He is.” He looked at Diana. “Did you tell him who you are?”

It occurred to her that they all had assumed neither of their captives spoke Gaelic, and she realized in a rush of alarm that such an assumption might prove disastrous. “We had better go,” she said, shooting a look at her cousin.

He nodded, glancing at the captives with a speculative expression that showed he had instantly understood her caution. “Are they well tied?”

“Aye,” Neil and Fergus said as one.

“Drag them into the shrubbery then, and be quick about it,” Allan said. He cocked his head, listening. “Another whistle. They are coming this way. Bring that other horse,” he said to Diana as he snatched up the reins of Calder’s gray. ‘She saw then that Fergus had blindfolded his lordship, and felt some relief, hoping he had not seen any of the men clearly enough to identify later. Of them all, the one he most likely had seen plainest was Allan, and of them all, Allan would be the most careful, for his very life depended on it.

Many people in Appin country knew him, and although most would not betray him, he was well able to look after himself. That he was still alive after six years of paying cat-and-mouse visits to Scotland from France proved that much.

Still, she said, “We cannot steal their horses.”

“Not steal, borrow,” he said, smiling at her. “The men from Stalker are coming from the south, so we shall ride north for a mile or two before we turn the beasts loose in the woods. When they find them, they’ll scour the area thereabouts, searching for these two, because I’ll wager anything you like that they will pass by here without seeing them.” Signing to Fergus, he said, “You’ll ride with me, and you,” he added with a nod at Neil, “will ride with her.”

Diana said, “But what about—?”

Quickly cutting in, Bardie said, “I’ll look after myself, lass. I’m as safe in the woods as anyone could be. I’m sure,” he added dryly, “that himself knows that as well as anyone. Always thinks of others, he does, so large of mind as he is.”

Allan shot him a sour look but said calmly to Diana, “He hates riding. You know that. He is afraid of horses and boats, and God knows what else.”

“He risked his life to save yours, however. You might show more gratitude.”

Ignoring Allan, Bardie said, “Don’t fret for me, lass. I have my own trails, and I’ll be home through the forest before anyone knows I’ve been away.”

Allan said no more, and once Neil and Fergus had dragged Calder and Thomas well off the path, Neil mounted Thomas’s horse and reached down a hand to Diana. “Hurry,” he said. “I can hear them now. I thought they were all moving south, but one party must have turned back this way.”

“Patrick Campbell knows Calder is riding toward Balcardane,” she said, letting him pull her up behind him. “Doubtless he diverted a few men to keep an eye on him. We can be grateful he did not think to do it before now.”

“Don’t stand about gabbing,” Allan said, reverting to English. Setting Calder’s gray to a trot, he led the way with Fergus clinging behind. The last glimpse Diana had of Bardie was as he scrambled up the hillside and burrowed into the thick bracken beneath the densely growing trees. He would be safe, she knew. The woods thereabouts were too thick for riders, even for most men on foot, and if soldiers later chanced to see him in the forest, they would have no reason to accost him.

Leaning forward, she hugged her brother, saying, “I’m glad to see you, but you took a dreadful risk. I’d have got away on my own eventually, you know.”

“We didn’t know,” he retorted. “Allan said he did not think Patrick Campbell would suspect you, but I wasn’t as certain, so if we are to talk of taking chances, we’ll soon be at outs with each other, Diana. Did they give you any trouble?”

“Not until last night,” she said. “Some tried to take liberties, of course, but I expected that, and the only difficulty was making myself remember that I could not just tell them to keep their hands to themselves. But last night was different,” she admitted with a grimace she knew he could not see.

“What was different about last night?” Neil sounded merely curious, but she was glad he was the one asking, and not her cousin. Before she had thought of an acceptable reply, he added, “I expected your greatest trouble to come immediately after they discovered Allan had got away.”

“Well, it didn’t, for I was lucky. No one saw me near the tower, so no one had cause to suspect me. They would have got round to me soon enough, but Calder’s arrival made rather a big difference.”

“Why were you riding with him today? If he is kin to Argyll, I should have thought you’d keep well clear of him.”

“I don’t know if you recall all that happened in Edinburgh,” she said, keeping her voice low, although the chance that it would carry above the sound of the horses’ hoofbeats to the riders ahead of them was slim.

“I remember that you insisted you should be the only one to go inside the castle,” Neil said. “I still say—”

“It would have been foolish for you to go,” she said, as she had at the time. “Men are always more suspicious of other men man they are of women. But never mind that now. I met Calder there that day.”

“Good God! Is he the visitor you told us about? I didn’t recall his name.”

Since she had not decided how much she ought to reveal about her confrontation with Calder, she was glad when Allan chose that moment to rein in and say, “We’ll leave the horses here.”

They had reached an arched stone bridge over a little burn that tumbled merrily over rocks and stones in its haste to reach the loch. To their right lay a steep-sided, lushly green glen that over the centuries the rushing water had carved into the mountain. Leathery ferns hugged the base of every oak, beech, and hazel tree, and some even grew in the forks of high branches. Patches of orange, gray, and black lichen and bright green moss crept upward, even on the pines, painting their bark with color. Honeysuckle and giant ivy draped otherwise bare oak and hazel branches, and the scent of rich, damp earth drifted from the glen’s dark depths.

In surprise Neil said, “You want to stop? We’ve gone less than a mile!”

“All the same, lad, we’ll leave the horses in this wee glen and take to the ridge top. We’ve been fortunate not to meet anyone else, but we cannot hope that will continue. Folks are out and about now, and the last thing we want is for anyone to remember us with these horses. This gray I’m riding is too easy to describe. It’s bad enough that we’ve had to keep to the shore road this long, but till now we’ve had no easy access for these nags into the woods.”

By the time he finished speaking, the others had dismounted. Neil bent to get a drink, and then they quickly led both animals along the burn, up the narrow glen, into the woodland. Finding a deer trail, they followed that up away from the water for a hundred yards, then released the horses and walked on without them toward a ridge where the trees grew less densely. Still well below the crags with their treacherous scree, they wended their way along a low, winding ridge that connected several glens, some sloping west, their burns feeding Loch Linnhe, and others sloping east into Glen Creran and Glen Ure. Bardie was undoubtedly traveling in the same general direction, but they saw no sign of him.

They did not talk. Conversation would not travel far in the woods, and they could be fairly certain the enemy did not lurk among the granite boulders and open, heather-covered stretches above them, but the others knew that Allan was listening to the animals for any odd silence or chattered warning of enemies approaching.

Their own silence reassured the forest creatures that they meant no harm, and soon the anxious twittering of the birds returned to song. The cawing of the rooks grew deeper and more resonant. The only strident note came from a blackbird that erupted from a thicket with an angry scream as they approached, foolishly revealing the location of his mate’s nest.

Two hours later, as they walked west down Glen Duror, accompanied by the roar of its frothing, icy river, Diana felt little surprise to see a doe heavy with fawn gingerly make her way to the bank to drink, heedless of their passage. Snowdrifts lingered in shadows, but signs of spring appeared everywhere. Buds seemed to swell before her eyes, while masses of herbs in leaf and early bloomers like the tiny forest daisies, chickweed, and dandelions created a colorful carpet beneath her feet.

She began to feel a familiar sense of homecoming. It was the first time she could recall feeling the sensation about the gray stone, slate-roofed house on the hill above Cuil Bay. She still retained strong feelings for her family’s ancient home on the Island of Mull, overlooking the convergence of the Sound of Mull with the Firth of Lorne. One of the most recent Maclean strongholds to fall to the enemy, Castle Craignure had been forfeited after Culloden and her father’s death. Its lands legally belonged to the Crown now, but she did not doubt that one day a Campbell would live there. They had taken over nearly every other piece of Maclean land on Mull and elsewhere. Had her mother’s family not been willing to provide Lady Maclean and her children with a home, they would have had to beg for their bread.

Despite living now in Appin country, dependent on the Appin Stewarts, Lady Maclean still took an interest in her late husband’s tenants. Thus, when many had been unable to find fuel for their home fires over a particularly harsh winter, she had ordered trees at Craignure cut for firewood and had refused to disburse the rents that many insisted on paying to her. Those two crimes had brought her to the notice of the authorities, specifically Red Colin Glenure, the Crown factor, who ordered her arrest. Although it was not yet safe for her ladyship to return from Glen Drumin, Mary would be waiting at home for Diana and Neil, glad to have them back again. She would not be so glad to see Allan, however, Diana thought with a sigh.

They had emerged from the thickest part of the woods, and Diana realized that in her enjoyment of the forest and the welcome signs of spring, she had allowed the distance to widen between herself and the men. She hurried to catch up.

“Allan,” she said, “were you expecting to stay with us? Because if you were, I should perhaps tell you—”

“We’ll stop at Aucharn,” he said, cutting in without apology, as was his too-frequent habit. “We must pass right by it, and James will want to know I’m safe. I need stay in the area only the one night, Diana, because I’m for Rannoch Moor tomorrow, but there are arrangements I must make. James will help me, I’m sure.”