Highland Crown

by May McGoldrick

  “Are ye a lady?”

  The question took her by surprise, and she was relieved when Jean—suddenly behaving like a mother bear—put herself between them.

  “Ye’d be only talking to me, if ye please,” the older woman snapped. “So what is it now? Do ye have an answer about my nephew?”

  “Who is she?” the woman asked, trying to look around Jean for a better view of Isabella.

  “Not that it’s any business of yers, but she’s a friend of my cousin, traveling from the Orkneys. Now is John Gordon staying with ye here or not?”

  The innkeeper’s wife stepped around Jean and addressed Isabella. “What are ye doing in Inverness?”

  “What’s it to ye?” Jean barked, trying to put a stop to the questions. “My companion can wait outside if that’d help ye to answer me.”

  “What’s yer name?” the woman asked, persistent.

  “To be sure, yer the most impudent—”

  The innkeeper’s wife raised her hand so quickly, Isabella thought she was about to slap Jean. “Can’t she speak for herself?”

  The customers in the tavern grew silent, and every eye turned in their direction. Isabella knew there would be no end to the woman’s questions until she spoke herself.

  “Mrs. Murray,” she said, trying to imitate Jean’s accent.

  “Ye don’t sound like folk from the islands.” The woman cocked her head and looked at Isabella with open suspicion. “Are ye from Stromness? I know folk from there.”

  “Nay, she’s not from there, ye bold piece,” Jean snapped. “She’s down from Kirkwall, if ye must know.”

  “I’m a governess,” Isabella broke in before the two came to blows. “For a family in the Borders. I was only visiting Mrs. Gordon’s cousin in Kirkwall. I’ll be returning south in a few more days. We heard her nephew was staying here, and I hoped to pay a call while I’m in the area. That is, if you’d be kind enough to tell us if he’s staying at Stoneyfield House.”

  The woman considered the reasonableness of the answer as she ran her eyes over the travel bags again before letting them linger on the purse still in Isabella’s hand.

  “We have a room for the two of ye, if ye care to stay.”

  “That would depend on your answer.” Isabella waited, pasting a pleasant smile on her face.

  The burly woman thought for a moment and then made up her mind. “Aye, yer Mr. Gordon is staying with us. But he’s not here at present.”

  Tremendous relief washed through her. Arriving in the Highlands, Isabella’s primary concern was the safety of Maisie and Morrigan. John had assured her that he had trustworthy connections in the Inverness area. They’d be protected and well cared for. But right now, he was the one person who knew where they were. It would have been horrible if she’d lost the means of communicating with him.

  “We’ll wait for him,” Jean said waspishly. “Ye can just show us his room.”

  The innkeeper’s wife shook her head, waving for the potboy. “Nay. Don’t ye be thinking I’d trust ye to wait in anyone’s room. But I’ll have the lad here show ye to a private dining room, and I’ll send someone to fetch ye when Mr. Gordon returns.”

  Waiting in a private room, Isabella thought, sounded far preferable to sitting here under the baleful stares of the farmers and other customers. She picked up their bags before Jean could do it.

  Upon receiving his directions from his employer, the potboy glanced at the bags in Isabella’s hands and sent a worried look at the innkeeper’s wife.

  “Off with ye, scamp,” the woman said, cuffing him lightly. “Ye know which dining room.”

  As they crossed the taproom toward the back of the inn, hostile stares followed their every step. Following the lad through a narrow door, they made their way down an unlit corridor past a flight of stairs ascending into darkness. Presently, the boy stopped at a closed door and turned to say something to Isabella but decided against it. After opening the door for them, he stepped back and they entered.

  The dining room, airy and well-lit from open windows, wasn’t empty. At the end of the table, a British officer laid his fork down. He stood and donned a dark blue regimental jacket ornamented with rows of gold braid down the front. At the sound of the door closing behind them, Isabella turned to find a second blue-coated soldier blocking their retreat.

  CHAPTER 8

  Norman saw on English oak.

  On English neck a Norman yoke;

  Norman spoon to English dish,

  And England ruled as Normans wish …

  —Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

  The fire in his chest flared up with every labored breath he took. Some unseen hand was twisting a hot poker around in him, igniting every organ from his throat to his entrails, and the ache in his neck, collarbone, and shoulder seemed to be getting worse.

  Cinaed wiped away the sweat standing out on his face. His shirt, soaked with perspiration, stuck to his body. At the same time, a chill lay like an icy blanket around him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced such physical agony. Perhaps he never had.

  The downward turn started when he’d tried to climb back into the cart. He might as well have been trying to scale a castle wall or climb the mainmast of his ship using one hand. And with each passing second, his body betrayed him more. He needed to find a place, a room, a hole, where he could crawl in and sleep. Somehow, he needed to fight off this fever.

  Searc Mackintosh. He was slippery and untrustworthy as a greased snake—he’d grown even more so over the years—but Cinaed knew he was kin and his only hope. Twenty years ago, he’d taken in and cared for a distraught and friendless boy sent down from Dalmigavie Castle. Even now, when he thought back to the time spent in that labyrinthine house near the mouth of the Ness, the smell of malt houses and the river filled his senses. It was all so different from the clean mountain air he knew. But Searc had kept him safe until a ship was found that would carry him to Halifax. To a new life.

  Sitting in the cart with the reins in his hand, however, Cinaed couldn’t bring himself to leave. Common sense told him the women were settled inside the inn and he should go, but his instincts ordered him to stay.

  Vague arguments rolled back and forth in his mind. Perhaps it wasn’t his instincts he was hearing. Perhaps it was simply that he didn’t want to leave her right now. After all, the place looked like any other roadside inn. More customers were making their way to the door. Farm lads and fishermen, looking to enjoy a pint or two before going home to their supper. In the stable yard, a lanky lad with a shock of red hair was rubbing down a horse by the gate.

  Cinaed needed water. He needed rest. And sitting in front of the inn for too long would draw unwanted attention. He should continue on to Inverness. A few more minutes.

  He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. In fact, he wasn’t sure of anything, but still he couldn’t bring himself to go.

  Hours went by, or perhaps only minutes. There was no telling the difference. His throat was rough and parched as old shark skin. Finally deciding that sitting on a stolen cart on the coach road was stupidity of great magnitude, he flicked the reins. The quiet kirkyard around the bend seemed to offer a better choice than pulling in to the stable yard.

  Driving around the back of the kirk, Cinaed reined the cart in under a tree beside a well near an empty curate’s cottage. He was growing weaker, but he managed to climb down from the cart. Drawing up a bucket from a well, he drank deeply and watered the old cart horse.

  Where he sat, he had no view of the door of the Stoneyfield House. A plan formed in his mind. It wasn’t a particularly good one, but it was better than staying here. Cinaed ran his fingers through his hair and assessed the state of his clothing. Total disarray. Gingerly, he pulled the edges of the shirt together over the wound and buttoned up his waistcoat and coat all the way. He was disheveled, and his clothes indicated he’d been through a rough time of it. But unless he began bleeding profusely on the tavern floor, he didn’t think anyone around here
would pay any attention to it.

  Heading back down the road toward the inn, Cinaed felt each jarring step like a bolt of lightning coursing through his body. The shivering only seemed to be getting worse. His body was failing him, but his mind was becoming clearer. He would simply walk inside and pretend not to know the two women. If they were in the tavern with Jean’s nephew, all well and good. If they weren’t, then over food and a drink, he’d ask a few questions of the server and find out what he could.

  As he stepped up to the door, the lanky stable lad with the red hair came running out and barreled into him. The young man went sprawling in the dirt, and a missive flew out of his hand and dropped at Cinaed’s feet. He picked up the letter as the lad bounded up and held his hand out for it.

  “A delivery?” he asked. “Didn’t I see you in the stable yard just now?”

  “Aye, but the master told me to run with it.”

  “Where to?” He started to hand the letter back to him.

  “Fort George,” the young man answered.

  Cinaed jerked a thumb toward the open door. “Is the innkeeper friendly with the soldiers at the barracks?”

  “Nay. This ain’t from the master. It’s from them two officers who been lounging about the back dining room all day.”

  * * *

  Perhaps it was due to her training as a physician and the work she’d done as a surgeon. Perhaps it was an innate quality she’d always possessed. Whatever it was, Isabella had the singular ability to focus in the midst of chaotic situations. When the moment called for it, nothing could distract her from her purpose.

  With all the coolness she could muster, she gazed at the British officer and this room in which they’d trapped her. The dining table contained a variety of food and drink. Outside the open windows, a few livestock sheds and coops for fowl stood between the inn and the open fields.

  She’d felt it in the taproom. The vague responses Jean had received from the innkeeper. The delay before they had an answer about John Gordon’s whereabouts. A trap had been set, and she’d walked right into it. And now, she would keep up the pretense of ignorance until they exposed their hand. Regardless of being caught, Isabella forced herself to stay calm. She could see no path for escaping this predicament, so she simply focused on what she could control—her confidence and her conduct.

  “Humble apologies, sirs,” Jean told them. “We’ve been sent to the wrong room. To be sure, we wouldn’t care to be bothering ye at yer dinner.”

  “You’re mistaken,” the soldier by the door replied, one hand resting on the pistol he’d stuck into his belt, the other on the handle of his saber. He was making it clear they wouldn’t be leaving. “We directed the innkeeper to have you brought here.”

  “What for?” Jean asked sharply.

  “We’ll ask the questions,” he barked in reply. “And you, old woman, will keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  Suddenly, Jean’s legs began to give way, and Isabella took her arm as she leaned on the table to steady herself.

  “You will state your names.” The soldier by the door continued to speak. The officer at the far end of the room had yet to say anything.

  Isabella was no expert on military uniforms, but she’d lived through the French wars and she could distinguish the difference in rank between the men. The shorter of the two, standing by the door, wore the stripes of a sergeant on one sleeve. The silent one, taller and powerfully built, was an officier, distinguished by gold braided epaulets on his shoulders.

  The sergeant, with thinning, long blond hair, wore a moustache that partially hid a scar running from the edge of his mouth to his jawbone. The officer had no visible marks, and his lustrous brown hair was fashionably curled with sideburns that extended well below his ears. His pale blue eyes were fixed intently on her face.

  “I’m Mrs. Gordon. Of Duff Head. This is Mrs. Murray. She’s visiting friends and kin in Inverness. We’re looking for no trouble. We only came here to visit my nephew. He’s in the law trade in Edinburgh. Perhaps ye know him. John Gordon.”

  A muscle in the officer’s face twitched. The next motion of the head was insignificant, but it was understood by his subordinate.

  “Your bags,” the sergeant ordered. “Put them on the table.”

  If they were looking for confirmation of who she was, her medical instruments would be proof enough. Isabella noticed Jean trying to hide her hands in the folds of her skirt. They were trembling badly.

  Neither woman moved to pick up the bags. With a growl of disgust, the sergeant deposited them on the table and started to open one.

  “Stop,” Isabella said sharply enough to make the soldier hesitate. She would never allow herself to be some sheep led to slaughter. She’d fight every step of the way. She turned to the officer. “I have given you no permission to paw through our belongings.”

  “You think we need permission to—” the sergeant began.

  “You will not speak when you are not being addressed,” Isabella asserted powerfully, cutting him off. “You have a superior officer here. Have you forgotten your place?”

  She waved a hand as if he were an annoying insect, softening the edge in her voice as she directed her words again to the other man.

  “If you would be so kind, sir, as to tell us exactly who you are and what business you have with us?”

  The sergeant, reddening from his collar to the roots of his hair, opened his mouth to interject again but was waved to silence again, this time by his commander.

  “Finally, she speaks.” The smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth told her he was impressed.

  “And you, too, have finally decided to join the conversation,” Isabella retorted. “If that’s what we’re to call it.”

  To study medicine as a woman and to convince a patient that she was as capable of treating them as any male physician, she had to appear confident, sometimes even arrogant.

  Isabella’s shoulders and neck ached from holding up the imaginary crown she was wearing for this occasion. Her father always told her that she was more of a queen than any woman sitting on a throne in Europe. That she was able—when it was called for—to wrap herself in regal aloofness. Frailty empowered an opponent, while a show of strength always diminished their advantage. At this moment, she needed to utilize all her strength.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Lieutenant Ellis Hudson of the 10th Royal Hussars, at your service.” He bowed rigidly. “This is Troop Sergeant Davidson.”

  Isabella refused to curtsy and could only manage a slight nod. She kept her chin high. She held the officer’s gaze without a flinch.

  “You will tell us why you’re detaining us, sir.”

  He motioned to the dishes of food on the table. “Would you care to sit and join me, Mrs. Murray?”

  “Thank you, but we have other plans. Now, you will kindly answer my question. Why have you brought us in here?”

  “Mrs. Murray, you say.” He let the name roll off his tongue as if he were savoring the taste. “I have an excellent memory for faces.”

  The man paused, letting the comment hang like a threat between them. Isabella raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “And how is your memory, ma’am? Do you recall the last time we met?”

  Isabella kept her face composed and impassive even as beads of sweat began to run down her spine. She’d lived for six years in Edinburgh. During that time, she’d come in contact with a number of English officers at social events and at the university. She didn’t remember Lieutenant Hudson.

  “We’ve never met. I would certainly recall.”

  The officer tsked his disappointment. It was clear he knew who she was. He trailed his hand along the chairs as he sauntered toward her, but Isabella knew there was nothing casual about this man. She knew what lay ahead. She also knew these men would show no mercy. She braced herself for the worst, for she would not be telling him what he wanted to hear.

  “Never is so definite.” He paused at the corner of t
he table. “I can even tell you when we met.”

  He began counting slowly on his fingers. Isabella understood his deliberateness. Each tick was intended to intensify her nervousness. He was about to place her neck on the execution block, but first he wanted her to see the glint of the sun on the blade and feel the sharpness of the edge.

  “Twelve weeks,” he said finally, dropping his hands to his side.

  The day of the attack on their house. Tending to Archibald, she had been blind to the faces of the soldiers charging in. And later, she’d thought of nothing but getting Maisie and Morrigan safely away. Anger now formed like a fist in her chest. He had been there.

  “Your home on Infirmary Street had a fine clinic, did it not?” he taunted.

  She bit her tongue and looked into the man’s coldly assessing eyes. He could have been the officer in charge of the raid. He could have been the soldier who had pulled the trigger that killed Archibald. The blood of all those who’d been murdered that day and in the days that followed were on this man’s hands.

  “I was hoping for an introduction,” he said with false affability. “You were quite inspiring, leading your distraught stepdaughter calmly through the violence while we restored order to that gang of riotous traitors.”

  Those were the most difficult steps she’d taken in her entire life. Dragging the nearly hysterical Morrigan away while she knew her duty was to stay and fight to keep her patients alive.

  “But then you disappeared. Were you in a hurry to hide that rather volatile stepdaughter or your quiet, sensible younger sister?”

  Isabella wanted to scream. Did he have them? How could he know how different the two girls were unless he’d already arrested them?

  “I can understand your impulse. Such beautiful young women. But what a foolish notion, to think that any of you could put yourselves beyond the reach of His Majesty’s justice.”

  No, she reasoned. The information about the girls could have come from servants and neighbors, as well as from Archibald’s colleagues at the university.