Passion and Plaid - Her Highland Hero (Scottish Historical Romance) (20 page)

“Pistols aren’t a problem. Very inaccurate if the
target is moving, and unlike you, I don’t want to stand in one place and swing
my weapon about my head in a circle.” Rodrigo grinned. “And I said I could take
six. If there’s more, you can do a little bit of work at least.”

“I suppose, dear Gavin,” John said, “that our
friend’s modesty is not one of his virtues. But the question remains – how many
are there? And is fighting even an option? Right now, we have the chance, but
assuming we’re to be transported somewhere, I’d expect to be shackled.”

“Ah, yes! Shackles! What a fine idea!” Alan
entered almost on cue and spat a brown puddle in the dirt. “Bring the shackles,
Franks!”

The guards locked their hands in similar cuffs to
those that went on their feet, frisked the three men, and confiscated an arsenal
including six knives off John’s person, two from Gavin, and Heloise.

One of them gave Gavin a punch right in the gut,
making him double over and suck air.

John grunted in pain when one of them gave him a
shot in the stomach. “This treatment makes me wonder if we’re still to have
that winner’s feast.”

Gavin shot a wicked glance at John right before a
fist crunched against his temple and he fell to his knees. Another punch sent
him to the ground.

“Aye, hit us now that we’re bound!” John shouted, rage
boiling up inside him. “Take these off me and see what happens!”

Rodrigo too fell, though John didn’t see what took
down the big man.

“Is he really shouting at us?” Franks said as he
lifted John’s chin. “He is, isn’t he?”

John spit directly in the man’s pug-nosed face.

“Oh I’ll enjoy this one.”

John shouted again, rage blasting from his throat
in a raw scream.

A meaty fist connected with his jaw, and then the
only other noise he made was a thump when he hit the ground.

T
he Atlantic Ocean

August 23

––––––––

G
avin opened his eyes. His whole face hurt and he
couldn’t remember what it was, exactly, that had happened the past few days.
The beatings had been severe, and regular. It seemed as though every time he
and his friends woke, either the sheriff, or one of his mercenaries, had
appeared to punish them.

Creaking boards and the heave of a wave passing
under his feet reminded him that he wasn’t dreaming. For a half second, his
stomach lurched and he wished that he was dead instead of in the dark, shackled
to a beam in the hold of a ship bound for Jamaica, but then he thought of
Kenna. And even with his busted lips, bruised face, and throbbing headache, just
her image in his mind calmed him enough to pull him through the pain for a
moment longer.

He shook his head and looked to his left, where he
knew John was bound, and to the right where Rodrigo was tied. There was
absolutely no light at all in the belly of this wooden beast, save when the
door to the hold opened.

“You awake?”

“Aye,” John answered. “You?”

“Aye,” Gavin replied, “Thought maybe I was dead,
though.”

“I dreamed last night,” Rodrigo said in a husky,
thirsty voice, “that we were back in Castile. All of us. We had a...Elena made
a huge pan of paella and we-”

John groaned out loud. “Don’t remind me of food. I
canna take it with this heavin’ and throwin’.”

Rodrigo chuckled softly, and then hissed a breath.
“My mouth hurts.”

“I think most of all three of us hurts,” Gavin
said with a sigh. “How many days does this make? Three?”

“Four by my count. Assuming they feed us twice a
day.” Rodrigo cleared his throat. “I’ve been fed seven or eight times by now.”

“Did you eat any of it? I kept trying, but something
about the texture of oats when you can barely move your lips, I couldna do it.”
John’s voice scratched as he spoke.

“A few bites from each bowl. It would be quite a
lot easier if they’d let us feed ourselves instead of making those foul-smelling
guards lift spoons to our mouths.”

 “How long can they keep us like this? My wrists
ache so badly I doubt I’ll be able to hold a knife again.” John moved left and
right. Gavin heard the squeak of rope against the wooden post where his friend
was tied.

“Ach, it’s only six weeks, give or take, by boat
across the ocean. So unless they take us all the way to the islands and leave
us down here to rot the whole time, it canna be any longer than that.”

Footsteps, heavy ones, descended the stairs that
connected the deck to the hold of the ship that was filled with Gavin, John,
Rodrigo, and a whole lot of barrels of some kind of supplies meant for the
islands.

 “Boys, boys, boys. I guess we’ve found ourselves
in a bit of a spot, eh?”

“My fault,” John whispered. “I was just wondering
to myself how this could possibly be worse. I suppose there’s the answer.”

Alan kicked open the hold door, and stepped
through. A beam of sunlight stretched almost to John’s feet.

“Well here’s a happy surprise,” Gavin said.

“Ha! Happy indeed,” he said back. “But I suppose
you’re right. Instead of beating you with this lash like I was planning on, I
could just let you go. That would certainly be agreeable, hmm?”

A heavy thump of leather on skin made plain what
he had in his hand. Without thinking, Gavin winced. The previous days’ beatings
still hurt. Gavin felt the pain deep in the bones. It was the sort of agony he
couldn’t forget by falling asleep.

“What do you want with us? Why willna you let us
go? We’ve done nothing to you what you didn’t deserve.”

“Oh my, he speaks with such indolence for a man
tied and bound in the bottom of a ship.” Alan made a sucking sound, and then
spat on Gavin’s chest. Most of their clothing had been stripped from them when
they were imprisoned, and they had been hurt badly, but that one offense by the
sheriff was the worst he’d endured.

“Just tell us what you want and we’ll give it to
you, aye?”

Rodrigo and John both grunted in agreement.

“Alright then, Gavin,” the sheriff’s voice sounded
like a hissing serpent when he spoke Gavin’s name. “I’ll tell you what I want.
We’ll see if you offer to give it back to me then. I want you to never have
come to Edinburgh. I want for all the trouble you caused to just...go away. I
want to be back in the place where I’d made my home and made a life for
myself.”

“Every time I ever heard you speak of Scotland it
was with venom in your voice, sheriff. You hated Edinburgh just as you hate all
of us. You did nothing but complain about the food, the people, even the music!
And you expect me to believe you want to go back?”

“Would it surprise you that I’ve found everything
since to be less appealing? Recall, if you will, what you did to me. I’ve lived
in back of a barn, slept once on the road under a bush, and then in a ditch,
and then for two nights at a filthy tavern on Rose Street. Then, I was given
the pleasure of returning to the stables. You’re right. Why ever would I want
to go back to a time when I slept in a bed every night?”

“Every night except the ones you spent asleep on
the side of a road, or in the stoop of a pub, you mean,” John said with a
mocking laugh.

Alan’s hand whipped through the air, the leather
strap whistled, and caught John between the head and the shoulder with a
terrible thud followed by a muted, hissing, agonized groan.

“Any more clever quips?”

No one responded, out loud anyway.

“Good. As I was saying – what was I saying?”

“You were waxing endlessly about the horrible
things I’d inflicted upon you. Even though you were the reason it all happened.
Your corruption, your greed and your arrogance is what brought all this upon
you, nothing else! Take some responsibility for what you’ve done, Alan!”

“Look, Macgregor. If things were different. If you
weren’t you and I wasn’t me, maybe we could get along. I don’t find you all
that awful, not really. The problem is you forever stepping in the way of my
life. Of me just getting along.”

“You canna be serious,” Gavin said, risking the
lash. “Is this how you keep yourself from seeing what you do?”

“It’s always something, isn’t it?” Alan walked in
a slow circle, heels clomping on the wood. “You’ll always figure out some way
to blame me for whatever it is that you see going wrong. How’s this for a turn
around. Did you ever once – ever in your life – consider that before you started
stealing everything and righting made-up wrongs in Edinburgh that we, that the
English who the Crown put in charge, weren’t actually as bad as you thought?
Mull it over. Before you and your cronies here came along, there were rich and
there were poor, just as there are now, yes?”

“Aye, I suppose,” Gavin said. “But you’re not-”

“Finished? Quite right. I’m not finished,” the
sheriff cut in. “And you’ll let me or I’ll bind your mouth. Good. And I’ll
address your Spaniard when I’m done with you. I’ve got at least as much to say
to him.”

“Ach,” John whispered, “I suppose he’ll be talking
until we’re pitched from the deck into the deep blue.”

“I should hit you for that but I won’t. Not
because I don’t want to, but because I pity you. You’ve spent two years, maybe
more, I don’t know because that’s how little you matter to me. You’ve spent
this time trying to get justice or freedom or whatever it is you think you’re
doing. And how is it going to end up? With you and your pretty girl married and
happy in a Scotland free of the English?” The sheriff laughed a mocking, bitter
laugh. “Is that what you think? Sorry to tell you, it won’t be happening.
Scotland isn’t for the Scots anymore. It’s for the Crown. Just like England. Do
you think England is for the everyday English? Even for the minor nobles? If
you do, you’re wrong!”

Slowly, he paced the room, thumping his leather
strap against his palm. Gavin reflected that the sheriff must have been
thinking about this for quite some time. To his right, he heard Rodrigo moving
back and forth, or maybe it was his hands shifting in the painful shackles that
he heard rubbing against the post.

“Get to the point, Alan,” Gavin hissed. “I’ve a
busy day.”

“I’m sure you do. My point is this, Macgregor.
Without you, without your meddling and your thievery, men like me would not
have turned corrupt! Wouldn’t have been any reason for it, you see. Could have
happily gone on earning our livings as always, in a perfectly legal way, and
you could have too, if you’d chosen. Instead you had to try and...and cut a
path, carve a swathe of righteousness through the town, eh? Leave behind
everyone you saw as evil cut off at the knees. Without you, Macgregor, there
would be no
me
.”

Gavin sucked his lip between his teeth for a
moment before it stung too badly. He didn’t want to do anything that might
endanger his seeing Kenna again, so decided that incensing the sheriff wasn’t
the best thing he could do at just that moment.

“From your silence, I think maybe you’re listening
to reason for the first time. Good. Now, as for you.” Alan’s boots clomped over
to where Gavin knew Rodrigo was located. “You make me more angry than anything
those two could do. They’re crusaders. They’re silly children playing at a game
they don’t understand. But you...I gave you a second chance at life, Spaniard.”

Rodrigo groaned, but said nothing.

“Do you remember where you were when I hired you?
That wife of yours – who by the way is presently in a similar condition to you
three, though much less beaten up and wearing nicer clothing – you and she were
without two pennies to rub together. Or a lira or a drachma or whatever it is
you savages use for money.”

“
Real
,” Rodrigo said softly.

“What was that?”

“The money, it’s the
real
.”

Alan sighed. “Learn something new every day. Of
course I knew that. Anyway, when I found you, you were broke, you had been
rejected from a mercenary corps. You had nothing! Not a single thing! You
couldn’t feed your wife, you couldn’t feed yourself!”

“Say what you mean, sheriff.”

“You pretended you couldn’t talk. Why?”

“So I wouldn’t speak my true thoughts.”

Leather whistled, Rodrigo shouted in pain and
surprise and quickly caught his dignity.

“You ought not tease people when you’re tied up,
Spaniard. What else was it about you? What else was it that you thought I never
knew? Oh, that’s right. That’s it, I remember. These waters aren’t unfamiliar
to you, are they?”

“You’re saying nothing they don’t already know.”

“Ah, is that the case. Then I suppose I should
start referring to you as Captain Montez, then?”

“Captain?” John said. “I thought you said you were
just on a ship.”

“I was. I was never a captain.”

“Crewman, captain, what’s the difference? A
pirate’s a pirate. I’ve made special arrangements for you, by the way. Would
you like to hear about them?”

“I’d like to hear your head thump against this
post, you awful bastard.”

“Oh he’s spirited! Good!” The sheriff whipped his
lash, crashing it once across Rodrigo’s back and then once in the face. The
only noise the Spaniard made was a grunt. “Spirited and tough. I’m going to
enjoy this. But the special arrangements. You see, while these two, and their
three consorts – two, I mean. No, no, make that one. Lynne, she’ll be joining
the staff at the plantation with the two of you as indentured servants. Only because
the mayor doesn’t want to call you slaves. Elena will too, but this one will
finally get his go in a crow’s cage. Kenna of course will have a much better
lot. The mayor – or rather, plantation man – has really taken a liking to her.”

Back and forth he walked, slowly.

“Hit me,” Rodrigo said. “Come here and hit me.
Don’t use that lash, do it like a man. For once in your life, do something like
a man would do it.”

“Oh, gladly. But I’m afraid first I must-”

“When I’m hanging in that cage, I’m going to tell
everyone what you did with your servants in Manchester. I might be pecked to
death by birds, but before I am, I’ll shout to everyone that comes to watch
about your taste for serving girls. And how you are too revolting for them to
give in to you willingly.”

Whatever you’re doing, Rodrigo, keep at it
,
Gavin thought.

The sheriff took a step forward and drove his fist
into Rodrigo’s teeth. “We’ll see if you can spread lies when you’ve no teeth!”
Another punch made the big Spaniard groan.

“Lies? I think you wouldn’t be so angry if they
weren’t true. Hit me again. Take out your rage. Make me suffer for who
you
are.”

Alan lashed out again, but this time there was no
thump of a fist on a face. Instead his hand met wood.

And then he screamed.

“I was no captain, that much is true,” Rodrigo
said. “But I still learned some things in my time on the seas.”

Metal thunked. The sheriff screamed and began to
thrash. “You
bastards will pay for this!
”

“For one,” Rodrigo said. “I learned how to slip
shackles. Come on, we’ve got something to do.”

A moment later, Gavin and John were standing free,
looking back and forth at each other, blinking in the light that streamed
through the door at the base of the stairs leading to the deck.

“Wait a tick,” Gavin said. “Something over here.
Oh would you look at that? It’s the clothes we had waiting to change out of
after the festival. What a wonderful surprise.” He tossed a bundle of cloth to
John and one to Rodrigo. Quickly, the men threw on their kilts, and Rodrigo
yanked his leather trousers up. None of them had shirts, and boots were
ignored.

“One thing, Rod, before we go?”