Highland Crown

by May McGoldrick

  For what felt like an eternity, silence filled the room, broken only by the sound of Cinaed’s breathing.

  “I see. Where did you train, Mrs. Mackintosh?”

  For a moment, she was speechless. Isabella squeezed Cinaed’s hand with the hope of gaining even an ounce of his courage. “Well, midwifery requires—”

  “Becoming an expert in surgery?”

  “Hardly an expert, Mr. Carmichael. Not even a novice. Only a wife trying to save her husband’s life.”

  Isabella stood and pulled the clean linen sheet over Cinaed’s chest. Turning around, she found the surgeon taking his time as he wiped his instruments and placed them in his bag.

  “I’ve known no novice, and certainly no untrained wife, who could perform as precise and complicated an operation as the one you conducted removing the bullet from his chest. In fact, I’d say it was brilliantly done, no matter who did it.”

  Isabella wrapped her hands around her waist and told herself he wasn’t accusing her. He was complimenting her.

  “And as to your knowledge of apothecary…”

  What got into her to offer so much information?

  “How did you gain that knowledge?”

  “I am four and thirty.” That was the truth. She forced herself to think. “And prior to marrying Cinaed this spring, I’d never been married.” That was a lie. She paused. “I’ve had many years of watching and learning and practicing.”

  “And where did you do all this watching and learning and practicing?”

  Isabella took a deep breath. “Are you a spy for Searc, Mr. Carmichael?”

  “Thankfully for your sake, I am not.” He dropped the last of his instruments into the bag.

  Isabella waited, not sure what he was after. The truth, of course, but she wasn’t willing to make him a confidante simply because she admired his surgical skills.

  He closed his bag. “I’ve worked at this long enough to recognize expertise and education. And I’d say you have both, mistress. But I’ve also had enough experience dealing with people to know when someone is lying.”

  Her chin rose. Isabella was ready to defend herself, but he held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

  “I don’t fault you for it. This is not a house to expose one’s secrets.”

  She’d known that much from Cinaed’s warning.

  The surgeon picked up his bag and walked toward the door but paused before opening it.

  “So, I’ll share this with you. Most Mondays, Searc entertains the British commander in charge of the port, as well as his staff. On Tuesdays, the government exciseman is invited to dine. Wednesdays are generally dedicated to entertaining politicians. And every second or third Thursday, Searc hosts a squire from the foothills who coordinates the whiskey smuggling in the region. Shall I continue or is that enough to get a taste of the household?”

  No wonder Searc was suspicious of Isabella. “He deals with friends and enemies alike.”

  “He has no friends. He has business partners.”

  “But he does business with British officers.”

  “So long as there is a profit to be made.”

  She understood clearly now why Cinaed insisted Searc think they were married.

  “Thank you.” She nodded. “Will you be coming back tomorrow to check on my husband?”

  “I may stop by,” he said. “But I know he’s receiving excellent care by someone far more qualified than me.”

  Isabella was grateful for the man’s confidence and she told him.

  “Before I go,” Carmichael said with his hand on the latch. “Don’t trust the days of the week as I recited them. And know this: Real danger lurks inside this house, and it doesn’t only come by way of Searc’s dinner guests.”

  CHAPTER 13

  She look’d down to blush,

  and she look’d up to sigh,

  With a smile on her lips,

  and a tear in her eye.

  —Sir Walter Scott, “Lochinvar,” Canto V

  As he awakened, the first place he looked was at the bed of blankets on the floor. She wasn’t there. Immediately worried, Cinaed half rose, ready to push himself out of the bed. Then he spotted her at the window.

  The perpetual glow of the summer night spread its gentle light around her, crowning her head and the long hair cascading over her shoulders with a halo. Her forehead pressed against the glass, and her attention was fixed on the street below.

  He relaxed and lay back. The fever had broken, and he no longer burned. He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulder. It was stiff, but the pain in his chest was manageable. He flexed his arm, and hell fire shot into the muscles of his upper arm. Still, he could move it. Appreciate every blessing, he told himself. Clean bandages covered whatever damage had been done.

  Cinaed guessed a week had passed, though it may have been less, he supposed. It seemed like it’d been a devil of a long time. For most of it, his body had felt as if he was lying one minute on a bed of ice and the next on a brazier of red-hot coals straight from the fiery pit. And when he was able to sleep, his mind had been tormented by a single nightmare that came back time and again. He couldn’t escape it. Trapped in the maze-like streets of a burning city with battered buildings looming over him, a thousand men and women and children followed him. Thick smoke at the end of an alley hid them from the enemy, but the sound of war drums was getting closer. He was the only one armed with a single pistol. The fate of all these people depended on him, and the smoke was growing thicker. There was no escape. Each time, he’d wake up in a panic. If it was the dream or the fever, it didn’t matter, he was chilled to the bone.

  Isabella was his salvation. He recalled her feeding him broth to quench the thirst. During other brief moments of awareness, he’d be watching her as she changed the dressings on his wounds. Even now, he could feel the feathery caress of her fingers when she washed his scorched skin.

  She was there with him the entire time. She never left his side. During the day, he heard her talking to Jean. When Searc’s voice filled the room, she became cautiously silent. At night, he opened his eyes and always found her curled on the bed of blankets on the floor, within reach of him.

  Those were the times when guilt cut into him. What kind of a man was he to lie helpless in bed while she slept on the hard floor? He wanted to give Isabella his bed, give her his protection. No one took care of him; he took care of others. But here she was, turning the tables. Saving him.

  He was whole again because of her, and a warm sense of gratitude filled his heart.

  Cinaed tucked his good arm under his head and watched her as she gathered her hair over one shoulder and ran her fingers through the thick mass. She looked uninhibited, free, lost in her thoughts. She also looked beautiful.

  He sat up slowly and swung his legs off the bed. It was good to feel the solid wood floor beneath the soles of his feet. Sometime after arriving, he’d had all his clothing stripped off. He was now wearing only drawers, tied at the waist and the knees. Not his, by the devil. He was no dandy and never had been. He had a vague recollection of a conversation between Isabella and a servant that she’d asked to help put Cinaed into the garment.

  He wondered what the staff made of a wife demonstrating such modesty in her treatment of a sick and injured husband. No wonder Searc kept coming up here and questioning the veracity of their marriage claim.

  Something beyond contentment stirred in him as she started braiding her hair. “Would you wait to do that until I have a good look at you? This is the first time I’ve seen my wife with her hair down.”

  Isabella whirled. Seeing him sitting in bed, she smiled. “You’re awake.”

  It was the first time he’d seen her smile. In every lucid moment, he’d found himself admiring her beauty. Each time he opened his eyes, her face was the only one he wanted to see. He’d come to know the perfect arch of her eyebrow, the length of her dark lashes, the color of the full lips that pursed when she was concentrating. Cinaed didn’t think
he’d ever seen skin as smooth as Isabella’s.

  She walked toward him, and he paid homage to the waves of lustrous hair falling to her hips. Her shining eyes and her smile dispelled the gloom and made this grim chamber a palace. Cinaed adjusted the blanket on his lap, realizing his mind wasn’t the only thing affected by her. She was an enchantress who had cast a spell on him, body and soul.

  “I’m whole again.”

  “You are not whole again,” she corrected. “Your fever broke yesterday evening, but you are far from healed.” She went to the bedside table and lit a candle before coming to him.

  She checked his pulse, touched his forehead, carefully lifted the dressing away from his shoulder, and inspected the wound. Cinaed inhaled the scent of her hair as it brushed against his chin and fought the urge to thread his fingers into the soft, silky tresses. Her hair was damp. She raised his arm to check the shoulder joint and his hand brushed against the curve of her breast. Her lips were so near.

  “You’ve taken a bath.” He stopped fighting his impulse and pressed his face into her hair.

  She drew back slightly, but she didn’t release his arm. “I had to. I couldn’t stand myself.”

  “Where did you bathe?” He needed to keep himself distracted. His hands itched to gather her in his arms.

  She motioned to the tall, wooden screen that partitioned off a corner of the room. “The housekeeper had a tub sent up and they put it there for me. And Jean somehow sweet-talked the stable hand into carrying up buckets of hot water.”

  “Jean must have a diplomatic side to her that I haven’t seen,” he said. But his mind was envisioning Isabella sitting naked in a steaming bath and washing herself as he slept on this side of the thin wall. Why the deuce hadn’t he woken up sooner?

  Not wanting to frighten her off, he arranged the blanket discreetly on his lap and forced his attention on their surroundings.

  This was the room he always stayed in whenever he came back, and he realized how little it had changed from the first time he’d slept here as a lad. Except for the tub, of course. There had certainly been no thought of a tub for him when he came down from the hills. Searc had dragged him to the river and thrown him in to “wash the cow shit off.” Cinaed was sure he’d emerged from the water dirtier than when he went in.

  The room had two ill-fitting windows, one facing the lane and the other facing the river. In the winter, the wind would howl through the chamber, and if Searc was withholding firewood for some boyish transgression he’d committed, the tower room would get colder than a witch’s teat. He’d only been here the one winter, though.

  Curious, he thought, how the chamber’s contents had taken on a nostalgic quality. By the river-facing window sat the same scarred table and rickety chair. And next to the screen, the wee fireplace that wouldn’t draw if you built a bonfire in the tiny hearth. His eyes moved to his favorite feature in the room, the shelf above the clothes pegs.

  It was here in this chamber and in Searc’s study that the world opened up to Cinaed. The shelf still held the books that he read over and over. Reading Macpherson’s tales of Ossian was like reading of his own ancestors. Sitting on the bed, he ploughed the fields of the Lowlands with Robert Burns and laughed with him at the church-going louse striving to reach the top of Jennie’s bonnet. And in the books he carried up from downstairs, he traveled the roads with Roderick Random and Matthew Bramble, reveling along with them in the adventures they found. He sailed the seas with Robinson Crusoe, escaped with him from slavers, and walked beside the unconquerable seafarer the fateful day he’d found those footprints in the sand.

  “This place never really changes,” he mused.

  “And Mr. Mackintosh is everything you warned me about.”

  He put a hand on top of hers, stopping Isabella as she began to remove the dressing from his arm. “Has he been hard on you?”

  She shrugged and the furrow on her forehead deepened. “After four days of it, I’m learning how to deal with him.”

  He’d wondered how long he’d been delirious. Now he knew.

  “You’ve learned to ignore him.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She took the used bandages and walked to the table where she kept her clean cloths and ointment.

  The dress was baggy and draped from her shoulders. He assumed she’d borrowed it from the housekeeper or one of the servants. He truly thought she’d never left the room at all while he was going through the duration of his illness.

  “He doesn’t know what to make of me. At first, I believe he didn’t trust me with your life. In fact, I think he was somehow convinced I shot you. Now, why I would bring you back here after shooting you involved some logic I couldn’t understand. But since Mr. Carmichael’s visits and his good words to Searc about my abilities, he’s eased up in attacking me. Still, I doubt he believes we’re married. When he glowers at me from beneath those eyebrows, I know he cannot see any reason why you would marry me.”

  An old bachelor, Searc was blind to real beauty and goodness and talent. He would state outright that he had no room for feminine influence in his life. His women were bought and replaced with as little concern as a pair of gloves. When he wanted one, he simply went across the river to a brothel he owned with several partners. He could only remember the topic of marriage coming up a few times, but when it did Searc always spoke quite disparagingly about the institution. On the other hand, Cinaed couldn’t imagine he’d ever met someone like Isabella.

  If Searc only knew what she had to offer. In truth, it was Cinaed who was not worthy of her. If the dire circumstances that had thrown them together had never occurred, he didn’t think she’d even acknowledge his existence. She was a university-educated doctor, he a mere self-taught man of the sea who did whatever he needed to survive.

  She was the noble mainsail, he the fouled anchor.

  “Who is this Carmichael you mentioned?” Since he’d been carried up here, faces coming in and out of the room had been only vague and fleeting images.

  “The surgeon. Searc brought him in the first night to see to your injuries.” She brought clean bandages and ointment back to the bed. “He’s pleasant and honest. I like him.”

  She started to put the salve around the sutures, and he caught her wrist. “Don’t trust anyone who comes to this house.”

  Their gazes locked. “That’s what he told me.”

  Cinaed knew he had to have faith in her judgment, but he was still not completely satisfied. Years ago, he’d learned that in the murky world in which Searc existed, a thin line existed between friends and enemies. And it was a line that was constantly crossed.

  Isabella freed her hand and spread the ointment. His skin warmed beneath her fingers. He tried not to think of how close she was standing. The pressure of her arm against him, the brush of her skirt, a dozen inadvertent touches … he noticed them all.

  She moved on to his arm. “Who were the Highlanders who came to our rescue that day at Stoneyfield House?”

  He’d asked himself the same question. He didn’t know them. Outlaws perhaps, down from the hills to steal cattle or horses. Reckless as it was attacking British soldiers, they’d shown admirable courage. He intended to ask Searc about it. The Innes and Ross clans, as well as the Frasers and others, were all increasingly eager buyers for weapons he smuggled into the Highlands. But Searc and his agents handled the business side of those transactions.

  He shook his head. “I wish I knew. But I’ll find out. I owe them a great deal for what they did.”

  “That wasn’t the only help they’ve given us,” Isabella said, wiping her fingers on a piece of cloth. “They’ve been here.”

  “The same men? In this house? Are you certain?”

  “They keep to the shadows outside. I didn’t know who they were, but I began seeing them right after we came here. When I looked out the window, they’d be watching the house, standing in pairs or alone.”

  Cinaed wondered if they were members of the army of men S
earc employed to keep his house safe. If not, he had to already know about them. Nothing went unnoticed by him.

  “That changed yesterday. One of them came forward.”

  He waited for her to say more.

  “Yesterday was market day in town, so Jean went up to High Street, thinking she might hear something. Talk of what happened at the inn, rumors, news that might be coming from Fort George about John. Anything.” She backed away from the bed and leaned against the table, facing him. “While she was at the market, a man approached and gave her a message about John and about my family.”

  He recalled Isabella’s hesitation to leave Stoneyfield House without learning more about John Gordon. She wanted to know where her sister and stepdaughter were hidden. “The man gave Jean a letter?”

  She shook her head. “According to Jean, he said that John Gordon is still at Fort George. He’s only told the authorities that he shared a coach to the Highlands with a woman who called herself Mrs. Murray and he knew nothing else about her.”

  He knew this was only the start. The soldiers interrogating the man would torture him until they’d forced whatever confessions they wanted out of him. Cinaed had been barely alive, but he remembered promising the old woman that he’d help to free her nephew.

  “I need to talk to Searc. He can gather together enough men for me to—”

  “John is being moved,” she interrupted. “The Highlander told Jean that her nephew was being sent to Edinburgh next week.”

  “What day?” he asked, already relieved. It would be far easier attacking a prisoner escort than breaking into Fort George.

  She shook her head. “He didn’t know.”

  They could find out. Searc had ears in every corner of Inverness. British officers, merchants, men at the courthouse, dock workers at the new harbor—information was eagerly bought and sold. And like a crate of oysters, the fresher the merchandise, the more valuable to the buyer.