Sarah Gabriel (2 page)

Yet she must not let herself be captivated by a stranger, though he made her heart beat faster, in a way she had never experienced before. She must use her gift of charm to help her Jacobite kinsmen—that was why she was here. She must not lose sight of her purpose.

Yet somehow she felt as if the unknown Highlander had thrown a glamourie over her—she was the one caught, for a moment, while he walked away without a backward glance.

Closing the door, she turned, smoothing the skirt of her satin gown. Across the room, her aunt conversed with a blustery lieutenant general who had spent years plotting military strategies against the Jacobites. Kate felt sure she could coax a smile or two from him—and soon enough, learn some tidbits of information to benefit her northern kinsmen.

Summoning a smile, she moved forward.

Scotland, the Great
Glen October 1728

“P
reposterous,” Alec muttered as he regarded the broadsheet in his hand. The creased, worn page had just been handed to him by the young officer standing before his makeshift desk in the field tent. “‘Highland menace,’ it says here. Do you agree, Lieutenant Heron?”

“Perhaps, Captain.” The young officer turned his black cocked hat nervously in his hands. “General Wade asked me to come here to tell you about my encounter with this, ah, menace.”

Alec sifted through some of the papers on the table
surface. “I’ve read several accounts in the few days I’ve been here, but you’re the only one I’ve interviewed personally regarding the matter. This is the first I’ve seen of this broadsheet. She’s rather fetching,” Alec drawled, eyeing the page.

“Not so much in that drawing, perhaps, but she’s very fetching in person.” Heron cleared his throat.

“Ah.” Alec tilted the page toward the lantern’s glow to read the text again. In the silence, rain and wind battered the canvas shelter, and the door flaps billowed. The tent was crammed with a cot, a wooden chest piled with papers and books, the narrow folding table, and a rickety folding chair that Alec occupied. With nowhere to sit but the bed, the tall young lieutenant stood beneath the tent’s peak.

“‘Katie Hell,’” Alec read aloud. “‘Notorious Highland wench.’” He tipped a brow as he scrutinized the illustration above the caption. “‘A thief and a spy, a threat to the crown…possessing a most peculiar magic.’ What the devil does that mean?” He looked up.

“She’s notorious among General Wade’s troops, and she will lure a man like a siren—before she steals documents out from under him. There is…a peculiar power about her. I cannot quite explain it. Have you come here intending to capture her, sir?”

“No. I’m a lawyer, not a constable. But since I was here reviewing legal documents, General Wade asked me to look into this matter as well. I’ll take a written testimony of your encounter with this Katie Hell, if you don’t mind, Lieutenant.” He pulled a sheet of paper from a stack, picked up a pen, and dipped the point in a small inkpot.

“Of course, sir. She must be caught.”

“Indeed. She’s making a mockery of all of us with these antics.” Alec turned his attention to the woodcut image printed on the page: a slender young woman with a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other. She was dressed in tartan knee breeches and a snug matching jacket, with a plaid sash crossing her ample bosom, and jaunty buckled shoes on her feet over stockings that clung to shapely calves. A Highland bonnet with a feather sat upon her hair, which was pulled back by a loop of ribbon, with fat curls spilling over one shoulder. A beauty mark graced her cheek, and her eyes were large and clear above a pouting mouth.

Alec began to read aloud.

He looked up at the young officer. “Was that your experience? Rendered senseless, and so on?”

“She, er, did hit me in the head with my pistol.”

“Aye?” Alec glanced up, intrigued. “Go on.”

“She’s not like the silly strumpet in that drawing, though she has a quality to her that seems…almost magical, I’ll admit. When I saw her, she wore a modest
gown and had fine manners. I was enchanted, in a way. It never would have occurred to me that she practiced espionage, though I could believe she might possess…well, fairy magic. That is, until she took up my flintlock and knocked me in the head with it.”

Alec nodded, perusing the page. “She looks more like a pirate than a fairy. Could you identify her if you saw her again?”

“I am not sure. It was dark, and there was only candlelight in my tent. She was a lovely and gentle young lady, innocent and educated. Not that painted harlot.” He gestured toward the broadsheet. “She left a token behind. A white ribbon sewn like a rose. The white cockade of the Jacobites.”

“Aye, she’s left them before. I’ve seen other accounts—what was your experience of her?” Alec poised the pen to write.

“Just as the sheet says, she is a siren. I could not resist her charms. There is something delectable about her.”

“Siren. Delectable.” Alec made a few more notes. “So you enjoyed a tryst with her?”

“I, uh, do not know.” The black hat went round in circles in the officer’s hands. “I cannot remember all of it.”

Alec frowned. He had read the same in the other testimonies: the officers were never quite sure what transpired after they met the Highland wench, though they mentioned kissing, then they either fell asleep or passed out drunk. Alec suspected the girl might have used potions of some sort to affect the men. Upon waking, each officer found a white cockade and discovered documents missing from his quarters.

Heron shrugged. “And when I woke, the girl was gone.”

Alec scratched his pen over the paper. “This girl is clever, Lieutenant. None of the officers seem to know who she is, what she looks like, or what exactly happened. They all seemed bewildered. Her ruse of having fairy magic is quite clever,” he said wryly, “and even practical soldiers seem to believe it. Go on. Was anything missing from your tent?”

“Maps and chocolate.”

“What?” Alec looked up in surprise.

“I do cartographic drawings for General Wade to chart the Highland roads his crews are constructing. My maps were gone, and a tin of chocolate powder was missing. Our family’s preferred variety of chocolate drink, if I may say so, is always Fraser’s Fancy Imported Cocoa Powder, which I understand your family manufactures. Most excellent.”

“Thank you. I will convey your compliments.” Alec shifted papers, unwilling to discuss, or even think, about his neglected role in the Fraser chocolate import business. “How do you know this girl took the things?”

As a knock sounded on the wooden post between the tent flaps, Alec glanced up, and the lieutenant turned.

A Highland woman peeked through the flaps, a bulky plaid wrapped over her head and form against the wind and rain, worn over a shabby green dress. Holding a basket filled with folded linens under one arm, she spoke in Gaelic and pointed toward the bed, then the basket. Her hand was swathed in a moth-eaten fingerless glove.

“The laundress,” the lieutenant told Alec. “I’ve seen her around camp. Harmless. A bit of a lackwit.”

“I see. Miss, come back later, if you please.” Alec half stood out of habit in the presence of a female.

She came inside regardless, mumbling in Gaelic and waving a hand to indicate she only needed a few moments. Brushing rain from her hood, she went toward Alec’s narrow cot, set down her basket, and began to strip away the blanket and bedsheets.

“Miss, we are busy here,” Alec said, sitting again.

“She doesn’t understand much English,” the lieutenant said. “A few local women tend the chores in this camp, and none speaks a comprehensible word. They do their tasks well enough, but come and go as they please without regard for manners or protocol.”

The woman hummed to herself, and seemed not only plump but clumsy, dropping clean linens on the earth floor and picking them up to shake the dirt off. Unable to see her face well, Alec noticed that under all her clothing, she had a womanly shape and was perhaps not as plump as he thought. And a glimpse of a very pleasant face under the shadow of her plaid showed a younger woman than he expected.

She took a clean sheet from her basket and snapped it out to spread it over the mattress. The crisp scent wafted through the tent, pleasantly dissipating the musty smells of grass and earth.

“Miss,” Alec began. “Please—” But the girl ignored him.

“It’s no use, Captain,” Heron said. “So long as we set up military camps in Highland areas while General
Wade’s road-building campaign continues, we must hire help from among the locals. Many of them only speak the Irish tongue, and while they are genial—and the women are bonny,” he added, glancing at the laundress, “they can be a stubborn and superstitious lot.”

“To be fair,” Alec murmured, “Highlanders are also a generous, polite, hospitable sort. And there is no more handsome race on earth, so they say.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I was raised in the Highlands.”

“I, ah, beg your pardon, Captain,” Heron mumbled.

“Now,” Alec continued, “I presume the sentries check the identities of all women entering this camp, given the events of the last several months?”

“Of course.” Heron waved his hand. “They’re often kinfolk, sharing the work among themselves.”

“Not reassuring, given the bonds among Jacobite families.”

“Aye, but we’ve had only two incidents here, myself and Colonel Grant.” Heron cleared his throat. “Ever since the colonel met this Katie Hell himself, he makes certain no female goes in or out of camp without identifying herself. He was furious about his experience. Still is—claims she was a harlot and threatened his life. Though he was not crowned with a pistol butt, sir.”

“I’ve read the testimony. His pride was more wounded than anything else,” Alec agreed. “To continue, Lieutenant, how do you know the girl took your things? The maps and the, er, cocoa?”

“She complimented my drawings and expressed interest in the chocolate, even made us each a cup with
boiled water and sugar. Said she was devoted to chocolate and must have some.”

Having tucked the sheets, the laundress lifted the blanket to shake it out. The movement rustled the papers on Alec’s desk, and several of them scattered to the ground.

“
Tcha,
” she muttered, turning to catch up the pages, stepping on some and crumpling others in handfuls as she bent to fetch them. Her hands were swallowed by the shabby sleeves of the overlarge dress she wore under her plaid cloak. Alec noticed that her hands were slender and pale in the fingerless gloves.

Mumbling in Gaelic, she slapped crushed pages on his desk and bent to fetch the rest. Alec leaned down to do the same, and their heads knocked with an audible sound. She gasped and glanced up at him.

Beautiful eyes, he saw, of an extraordinary silver color. He stared, and his mind flickered over a memory. Had he seen this simple Highland woman before?

“Sorry,” he said, stretching out a hand to touch her plaid-swathed head. An odd ripple plunged through him, an instant need, a craving. Had it been so long since he had been near a woman?

She rose quickly, and Alec turned back to his work. “Pardon, Lieutenant. We were saying.” Alec picked up the broadsheet to look at the image of Katie Hell again. “So the vixen snatched your pistol? Why was that?”

“Well…I attempted to demonstrate my affection by, ah, kissing her. Then she hit me with the butt of my pistol.”

“Ah.” Alec glanced up. “And why was she in your tent?”

“I found her wandering in the camp after dark. She said she was looking for a kinsman but seemed to be in the wrong encampment. She was weary and lost, and I offered my help.”

“Did she give you her name?”

“Marie. It’s…all I remember, at any rate.”

The laundress picked up a feather pillow and smacked it hard, then laid it on the bed and smoothed the blankets again.

“Was she Scots or Highland?”

“She spoke excellent English, without a trace of brogue. And she understood French when I, er, recited some poetry to her.”

“Poetry.” Alec wrote it down. “Would you say she was bonny?”

“Yes. Quite young, and delicate in appearance. Her hair was blond, or perhaps ash or reddish, and her eyes were blue, or green. Could have been gray. I remember that her gown was dark, and she wore a lace cap and a dark cape and hood. She smelled like lavender. Her hair was so soft,” he said dreamily.

Alec took up the pen. “Eyes of an uncertain color, hair of an indeterminate shade, speaks French and English, dark clothing, smells like a sachet…not very specific. Can you add anything?”

“She had a rare quality,” Heron said, nodding. “A sort of allure and innocence all at once, so that I wanted to protect her as much as…make love to her. An irresistible combination and hard to define. I felt besotted,
even bespelled. Perhaps the rumors that she is a fairy, or practices magic, are true.”

Alec set down the pen. “The other officers reported similar impressions. You may have been drugged by something she put in your cup of chocolate.”

“I find that hard to believe—she was so appealing, so tender and gentle. I desired her completely—-”

“I hope your sore head convinced you otherwise,” Alec added with chagrin. While Heron nodded and fidgeted with his hat, Alec glanced again at the laundress, who took a shirt and a pair of tartan stockings from the basket and laid them on the bed.

The garments were not his own, but he’d accept them regardless, he thought. Wiggling his feet inside his buckled shoes, he realized he had worn the same shirt, plaid, waistcoat, and stockings for far too long. Clothing often had to last indefinitely in the field, but he preferred fresh shirts and stockings whenever possible. The clean bed linens the laundress had brought were an unexpected boon. The local washerwomen were efficient at their work, he thought.

Narrowing his eyes, he studied the girl, whose back was turned. She seemed plain enough, with no trace of the irresistible female described by the men who had met the
intriguante
Katie Hell. But for those lovely eyes, which he had glimpsed when she had dropped the papers…

Thoughtfully, he watched the Highland girl.

Katie Hell would have to be stupid as well as bold, he decided, to enter a tent with two officers inside. He glanced at the lieutenant. “That will be all, Lieutenant.
I’ll give the notes to General Wade. He’s anxious to find the woman who has been harassing his officers.”

“Sir, I would not call it that. It was more like…a few moments of bliss, sir. Ataste of magic. She is enchanting.”