My Lord Jack

by Hope Tarr

  With lightning speed, he whipped about, the bottle missing him by inches and slipping from her clammy grasp. Thrown off course, she careened forward. Strong arms banded about her, hauling her upright. She drew a sputtering breath—and inhaled the crisp, clean scent of evergreen.

  In the darkness Jack hissed, “Wheesht, woman, if I’d kent you meant to brain me, I’d have thought twice before coming to fetch you.” Before she could answer, he brought his mouth down on hers for a swift, desperate kiss.

  When she could breathe again, she whispered, “How did you manage to find me?”

  Despite the season, he wore no coat over his shirt, which was damp and clinging. She slid her hands over him, the broad shoulders bunched with muscle, the hard biceps of his arms, the tautly muscled belly, making sure he was real, making sure he was indeed there and not a fiction of her fraught mind.

  “Before I left, I had one of the servants point out which room was yours. Then I waited ’til dark and came back through the east entrance. Fortunately for me ’tis guarded only by His Lordship’s dogs, which are no verra well fed—that man really ought to mind how he treats his animals. A few strips of meat tossed from my saddlebag and we were all fast friends.”

  She smiled against his shoulder. “But how did you get inside?”

  Raising his hand, he sucked on the knuckles. Although it was too dark to see the damage, Claudia caught a whiff of drying blood.

  “I took the keys off the butler. He dinna care to give them up at first but I, er, persuaded him ’twould be a verra good idea if he did.” Flexing his hand, he elaborated, “He’s tied up in the kitchen along with the housekeeper and one of the footmen.” He set her from him and reached for her hand. “But we’ve no time to waste. I’ve the horses waiting beyond the stables but I’ve nothing more to feed the dogs.”

  “Do not worry.” Glancing across to the shadowy shape that was the abandoned supper cart, she smiled into the darkness. “I have something from His Lordship’s chef that they will appreciate just as well.”

  That night Lord Aberdaire’s guard dogs dined very well indeed. Having made it past the canine gauntlet with nary a snarl raised except for Elf’s, Jack and Claudia rode hard for the next three hours, stopping in Edinburgh only long enough to water the horses. When there were no signs of pursuit, they dismounted to walk the horses, keeping to the cover of a hedgerow-bordered field, Elf only too happy to lapse into a stroll alongside them. Hands tucked inside her cloak to guard against the cold, Claudia said, “It seems my father has decided that I am more trouble than I am worth.”

  Jack made a scoffing sound low in his throat and threw an arm about her. “A lot he knows but then I suppose a title and a brain box dinna necessarily go together.”

  Wise words indeed for it had been her craving for acceptance, for respectability and position that had caused her to turn a blind eye to the treasure that lay within her grasp all these many weeks.

  Wondering what she had ever done in her miserable life to deserve the devotion of this kind, good man, she wound an arm about his waist and said, “You risked much to come back for me.”

  He stopped walking and turned to regard her. It was not yet light but the moon was full and brilliant, as were the stars, and in the shaft of pure white light that fell over them she could see the fierce caring written into every weary line of his tired but handsome face. “I’ll warrant ’twas no more than you risked when you wrote that wee note telling me to leave,” he said, voice soft and gaze softer still. “Aberdaire must have held something over you, something verra dear, for you to write such a thing.”

  Oh, yes, Jack, something very dear indeed. She tightened her arm about his waist. “Someday I may tell you, chéri, but not today. Not today.” When he nodded and kept on, she couldn’t resist asking, “But what of you? How could you be so sure he forced me?”

  He hesitated, considering. When he turned to her again, the moon was no longer just above them and his face was a mask of shadows, but she could hear the smile in his voice when he answered, “Like you, mo chride, I may answer that someday but no today. No today.”

  “Luicas, lad, drink up,” Callum urged from across the trestle table. “Ye’re fallin’ behind and there’s plenty more where that came from.” He picked up their empty whiskey glasses and held them high. “Ho, wench, look sharp. These fishes are swimmin’ out o’ water.”

  From across the crowded taproom Jenny scowled. “Hold on your breeches, Callum McBride. “Wi’ Milread abed upstairs wi’ the headcold and Claudia still away, ye’ll ha’ tae wait your turn.”

  At the mention of his sister’s name, Luicas ducked and flattened his shoulders against the booth’s high back. “She doesna like me tae drink strong spirits,” he explained, a flush riding his cheeks. “Nor does Master Jack. He says ’tis deeds that stand as a man’s true measure, no how much whiskey and ale he can stomach.” Jack, always Jack.

  “Does he, now?” Schooling his features to cover his hatred, Callum reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out the pewter whiskey flask he kept with him for just such emergencies. After a quick look about to make certain Alistair’s back was turned, he poured a generous measure into their two glasses.

  “Och, but your sister’s no here tae see, is she, nor Jack, either. And as they say, when the cat’s away…” At Luicas’s blank, bleary-eyed look, he explained, “What I mean is that wi’ your master still in Edinburgh, there’s nay reason ye shouldna have a bit o’ fun, now is there? A bit o’ fun and a bit o’ talk, that’s all we’re havin’, aye, Luicas?” The boy nodded solemnly and took a cautious sip. It was only his second drink but already his face was ruddy.

  Anticipation thrummed through Callum. Hiding it, he settled back against the seat. Sipping his drink as though he had all night, he confided, “I’m no a traveling man like ye and my braither are, Luicas. Tell me, d’ye fancy Edinburgh?”

  “Aye, I do.” Thin shoulders squared as though he was feeling manly indeed, Luicas reached for his drink. Bolder now, he took a long swallow. Eyes watering, he managed to choke down the whiskey and then rasp, “The little I’ve seen o’ it, that is.”

  “How so, lad? ’Twas yer second time there, was it no? Is yer master such a slave driver that he doesna gi’ ye leave t’ amuse yourself?”

  “Nay, ’tis no like that at all,” Luicas answered without hesitation, and inwardly Callum seethed at how quick the brat was to leap to Jack’s defense. “I was tae take Mistress Claudia out tae the shops along the Mile and such but as it came about…” Here he paused, spiny shoulders dipping forward, and then admitted, “But we…I ne’er got beyond the inn.”

  “The inn?”

  Luicas nodded and then, looking dejected still, bent to slurp more whiskey. “On account o’ Mistress Claudia bein’ wi’ us, Master took a room on Blackfriars Street and left me there tae guard the lass and take her about. Only…only…” Face growing rosier by the second, he set down his glass and burst into silent tears.

  “Only what, lad? Come now,” Callum coaxed. Biting back his distaste, he reached across the table and laid a consoling hand on the shuddering shoulder. “It canna be so bad as all that.”

  “Oh, ’tis, Master Callum, ’tis worse,” he wailed, covering both hands over his streaming face. “For I let him down, ye see. Master trusted me tae guard the lassie, but I…She…she got away.”

  Heart pounding, Callum could scarcely contain himself. “She escaped, d’ye mean?”

  Luicas dragged his sleeve beneath his snotty nose. “Aye, locked me up inside the wardrobe and then took the horse and left for…for Linlithgow I think it was.” Sniffing back tears, he brightened and then reached for his glass. “He brought her back, though, Master did.”

  The expression of hero worship on that young face was enough to make Callum want to retch, but he forced himself to say only, “He did, did he?”

  “Aye, went after her on Beelzebub and carried her straight back.” The boy’s expression darkened. After downing the last of his
whiskey, he leaned in to whisper, “In the three years I’ve been wi’ him, ne’er once has he laid a hand upon me but by the sounds comin’ from their room, he maun ha’ beat her but good.”

  Jack beat a woman? Callum couldna credit that the lily-livered bastard would have the stomach for it. “Ye saw him strike her?”

  “No exactly,” Luicas admitted. Casting his gaze downward, he traced a finger about the spillage from his drink. “But I heard ’em in the next room, her especially, for she let out such piteous moans.”

  “Moans, ye say?”

  The boy nodded. “Aye, and such sighs and whimpers, puir lady, as tae make me sorry for her in spite o’ her lockin’ me up. And then there was the creakin’.”

  “Creakin’?”

  “Aye, the mattress I suppose it was, for he’d thrown her down upon it, and him atop her, and when last I did see ’em they were thrashin’ about like a pair o’ wild beasties. Puir lass,” he said again, this time around a broad yawn, “I hope he didna hurt her tae bad though she shouldna ha’ run off.”

  Callum tipped his glass back and finished off his own whiskey. “Nay, Luicas lad, ye’ve the right of it. She shouldna ha’ run off.”

  Jack and Claudia rode throughout the night and following day, not stopping until they reached Selkirk to refresh themselves and the horses at an inn on the cobbled High Street. Jack’s village was but an hour’s ride from Selkirk proper, and his cottage lay less than a league beyond it. Once more in the saddle, Claudia looked across to him, riding beside her, and marked how the lines of fatigue seemed to be lightening with every mile traveled. Claudia, too, was eager to reach not only their journey’s end but also the cottage; the latter, she realized with a start, she’d come to view as her home. Though neither she nor Jack had made mention of their domestic arrangements, she more than suspected the blanket cordoning off the bedroom would come down that very night. And that when she slipped beneath the starched sheet and quaint quilt, Jack would join her.

  Lost in happy anticipation, Claudia started when Jack abruptly reined in his horse in the middle of a thicket.

  “What is it?” she asked, wondering why they were stopping so close to home.

  Nostrils working, he answered, “Smoke. A great fire, for mark how the air’s thick with ash.”

  Now that she thought of it, her eyes had begun to water a short while back, but she’d attributed it to fatigue.

  He relaxed, the worry lines lifting. “Och, but what an idjut I am. ’Tis the thirty-first of December. It must be the Burning Out of the Old Year.”

  “The Burning Out of—”

  “An old custom that dates to ancient times, like as no to the Druids. To drive out evils and bring fertility to the crops and cattle for the coming year, a great bonfire is lit at half-past nine on the last night of the old year. Now, of course, ’tis little more than an excuse for merrymaking, for bringing on the drums and the dancing and the whiskey.” Turning back to look ahead, he said as if thinking aloud, “They must be eager indeed, for though ’tis dark, it canna be more than five.” He hesitated. “Will you be wanting to go, then?”

  Smiling, she shook her head. “Non, Jack, tonight I want only to be with you.

  As they cleared the copse and came out onto the hillside, it was silence and not drums and laughter and stamping feet that greeted them. Their hilly perch afforded a bird’s eye view of the glen below and from it they saw that the cloud of bitter black smoke funneling heavenward came not from any open field but from Jack’s cottage.

  “Hold here,” he shouted to Claudia and then urged Beelzebub down the slope, a barking Elf running ahead.

  Claudia didn’t hold, of course, though she followed at a slower pace, the air growing blacker and heavier the closer she came to the cottage. By the time she reached the charred remains of the fence post, the air was so thick with smoke that she had to take the linen handkerchief Jack had given her to cover her nose and mouth.

  Jack’s cottage was wreathed in orange flames and black smoke, the burning roof spitting cinders onto the scorched yard like a hissing cat and sparks popping from the chimney flue like kernels of roasting corn. Squinting through the smoke, Claudia spotted Jack just ahead. He slid from Beelzebub’s back and hit the stone path running.

  “Jack!” she screamed when she saw he was headed for the burning cottage. “Jack!” Her foot tangled in the stirrups, and, cursing, she fought to free it.

  She half slid and half fell from the saddle, her cloak twisting about her as she hit the charred ground. Shoving herself up on scraped palms, she found the handkerchief on the ground beside her and then scrambled to her feet.

  He was halfway to the cottage now, Claudia’s cries for him to stop no doubt drowned by the fire’s roar and Elf’s wild barking. The dog leapt up, grabbing a great mouthful of his clothing as if to pull him back. But nothing, it seemed, would stay him.

  “Jack!” Claudia called out again, but if he heard her, he gave no sign of it.

  Choking, the linen handkerchief now black, she ran after him, the ground searing her soles.

  Reaching him, she caught at his arm, the little protective square of blackened linen fluttering to the ground.

  He shook her off as he had the dog, turning on her with fierce, feral eyes. “Go back, Claudia.”

  The flames flaring from the windows and door brought to mind a furnace, the temperature so intense Claudia felt as if her skin were melting. “Jack, y-you must not…g-go in there,” she said around a spell of coughing. “The roof…it c-cannot hold.”

  A flaming missile shot toward them. Cursing, Jack launched himself at her, carrying them out of harm’s way just as the fire hit home in the very spot where they’d stood.

  His breath a rasp in her ear, he said, “I must. One Eye, Heather, Lady—they’ll die otherwise.” He set her from him and started toward the charred entrance.

  Frantic, she cried, “It is you who will die. You, Jack.” Rushing up behind him, she grabbed his arm with both her hands and all her might.

  “I must…I must save them,” he said and jerked free.

  Sinking to her knees on the scorched grass, tears streaking her gritty cheeks, she screamed, “Je t’aime, Jack. I love you, Jack! I love you!”

  It was then that the resistance, the fight, left Jack. The animals trapped inside that burning building were, barring Milread, the only friends he’d ever known and his sole family since his mother’s death. The books he’d gathered over the years were, in their way, old friends, too. And then there was the cottage itself, the haven he’d built for himself with his own hands and the only true home he’d ever had. But when he looked back at Claudia, when he saw the love shining from her reddened eyes and the tears cutting through her soot-caked cheeks, he knew he couldn’t take so much as one more step toward that burning building. She’d said she loved him, and suddenly he knew that whatever else happened he wanted to be around to hear her say those words again and again, day after day, for the rest of his life.

  And so even as the tears for all those dear lost little lives fell fast and furious, even as great choking sobs wracked his chest, he took a step toward her, then another and another until she was in his arms or rather he was in hers.

  “Come away, chéri,” she said, wrapping her slender arm about his waist. “Come away and do not look back.”

  Leaning into her strength, he managed a nod. Arm-in-arm, they picked their way through the singed yard to safety. They were almost to the fence when Elf’s frantic barking had them raising their heads.

  Eyes tearing, Claudia pointed to the hillside ahead. “Jack, chéri, do you see that?”

  “Aye, I do.” Blinking stinging eyes, he could just make out the queue of bobbing bright lights snaking toward them. But as the lights drew nearer, he saw that they hailed not from the inferno at their backs but from the lanterns of the half dozen or so men making haste to reach them.

  At the head of the pack was Duncan. Reaching them first, he said, “When Dorcas first said sh
e smelled fire, I told her she maun be daft, but that woman has a nose like a bloodhound.” Gesturing with his empty water bucket to the men at his back, he said, “Point us tae the well, lad, and if it isn’t burned yet, we’ll offer what aid we can.”

  Jack shook his heavy head and prayed that Duncan and the others crowding around them would attribute the tears wetting his cheeks to the smoke. “’Tis too late.”

  Duncan’s high brow lifted and in a carrying voice he said, “Och, we’re Scotsmen, are we no?” We’ll no be bested by a wee fire, at least no wi’out a fight, will we lads?” A hearty cheer went up. Looking about him at the earnest faces of the neighbors who’d turned out to help—Duncan, Peadair and Pol, his cousin young Rabbie Campbell, and even Alistair—and then at the sweet, sooty countenance of the wee woman holding steadfast at his side, Jack felt a lump thicken his throat.

  He released Claudia’s hand, turned back to the blazing cottage and poked an arm through the thickening wall of smoke. “Verra well. ’Tis that way, just beyond the house to the left.”

  Duncan’s mouth curved into a smile. “Ye heard him, lads. Tae the well!”

  Stationed at the well, neck clothes tied about their noses and mouths, the men formed a bucket brigade. For the following hour they fought a losing battle with the flames. Jack had accepted their help on the condition that he and he alone assume the most dangerous position: that at the very end of the line and nearest to the burning cottage. Staying safely behind the fence where she’d sworn to Jack she’d stay proved to be the hardest promise Claudia had ever had to keep. Fingers digging into the charred wood fence rail, she watched her beloved, stripped to the waist and broad back gleaming with sweat, hurl bucket after bucket of water upon the hungry flames. And still the fire raged.

  When the cottage door exploded in fiery hail, knocking back everything and everyone in its path, Claudia had never felt more helpless. And when, frantic, she at last spotted Jack’s large form limned in angry orange light striding toward her, she could have fallen to her knees and wept with gratitude and relief.