by Hope Tarr
“Oh, Jack,” she cried, wrapping her arms about him and vowing never again to let him go. “Oh, Jack, thank God.”
“It’s gone,” he said simply, pulling down his makeshift mask, and to her relief he dropped his bucket to the ground and wrapped both his arms about her.
Arms linked, they turned to watch the fire in its final throes. The exhausted men joined them in keeping vigil, watching in mute horror as the cottage exploded into fiery hail and the walls of wattle and daub withered to stumps. When the roof puckered and then caved with a great, rushing roar, signaling that it was well and truly over, only then did Jack let himself turn away.
Duncan cleared his throat, a signal to the others. Dividing his gaze between Jack and Claudia, he said, “The lads and I will take our leave now. But if it’s a place to stay ye’re in need of, Dorcas’s and my door is open.”
Alistair came up, mopping his brow. “And I, er, suppose Milread wouldna mind if the lass were tae share her room at the inn for a while.”
Jack swiped the back of his hand across streaming eyes, then nodded. “You’re a rare friend, Duncan. And I thank you as well, Alistair.”
Gaze knowing, Duncan said, “Dinna do anything foolish, lad. The law is here for a reason, ye mind.”
“So I used to believe,” Jack replied and the bitterness burning into those words shocked even him. “But now I’m no so sure.”
Milread had agreed to mind the animals while they were away. But as accustomed to laying fires as she was, she’d not be so careless as to neglect to bank one before leaving.
Duncan clapped Jack on the shoulder. “A cottage can be rebuilt but once a life is lost, ’tis lost forever.” He stooped to pick up his bucket and lantern and then turned to go.
One by one the others took their solemn leave. Jack waited until the last man had departed, then he turned to Claudia and fell into her open arms.
“Oh, lass, what a muckle mess it all is,” he said, voice breaking.
And then he laid his head into the curve of her shoulder and sobbed out his heart’s hurt while Elf stood by and licked the top of his sooty hand. Later, when the storm of feeling had subsided, he refilled their buckets and together they walked about the smoking rubble to douse the last of the sputtering flames.
The cottage and all within were lost, of course. The byre, too, had burned to the ground, except for the remnants of door, its split boards bearing the marks of the mare’s hooves. They’d been fortunate to find both horse and cow wandering the field a short distance off. Both animals now were safely tethered with Beelzebub and the gelding.
Claudia looked up from brushing off the blackened spine of a book and, cocking her head, said, “Jack, did you hear that? It sounded almost like…like a cat.”
Beyond weary, he upended his bucket over the smoking remains of the charred chimney piece before answering, “Aye, I thought I heard it, too, but to be sure ’tis only our wishful fancy and weariness and mayhap the wee brownies out to trick us for disturbing their nests.” He started for the well to refill the bucket.
Meow.
They spun about to see One Eye, black fur singed and white paws grayed with soot, stroll toward them from the direction of the chicken coop.
“One Eye!” Jack cried, dropping the bucket and running toward the cat. “Och, but I’d never thought to set eyes on you again.”
Obviously happy to see him, too, One Eye dropped the furry morsel he’d carried between his jaws at Jack’s feet. Too relieved to scold him for hunting, Jack bent to pick up the cat and saw the dropped “morsel” move.
“Heather!” Claudia exclaimed, taking the unspoken word from his astounded mouth. Apparently too caught up in her enthusiasm to recall that she was supposed to be terrified of mice, she bent and scooped the little beast into her open palms without a qualm.
Cradling the cat in his arms, Jack pressed an unashamed kiss atop the beast’s singed head. “You’re a hero, One Eye. I dinna ken how it is you did it, but I’m that proud of you, lad.”
Their spirits were dampened, though, by the discovery of the hawk’s cage, the metal melted and holding nothing beyond a few burnt feathers.
“Oh, Lady, my puir lass,” Jack said, fresh tears sliding through the grime on his cheeks.
He used the handkerchief not to wipe his eyes but to wrap about the scalding metal. In that way he carried what was left of the cage to the vegetable garden where he found a trowel not too badly melted and used it to dig a grave in the charred earth.
“Soar high, my Lady,” he said, knocking the last shovel of dirt atop the little mound and then bending to smooth it with his hands. “For as Father Angus says, in Heaven all things are made right and all hurts healed, and I maun believe that one wee crippled wing willna present half so much of a challenge to God as it did to me.”
Holding his cat in her arms and his mouse in her pocket, Claudia felt the hot tears slipping down her cheeks. Blinking them away, she stood silently by Jack’s side, taking in the devastation. “Can you be certain this was not a chimney fire? Perhaps Milread forgot…”
Scouring his face with the corner of his shirtsleeve, Jack shook his head. “The byre burnt, too, yet there’s nay sign of a fire trail betwixt the house and it.”
Lifting her lantern to look beyond him, Claudia saw that he was right. The path and grass that bridged the two foundations were more or less unmarred.
“’Twas no accident, but arson pure and simple,” Jack said, broad arms opening to span the desecration, all that remained of his cherished home.
“Who would do such a thing?” But even as Claudia voiced the question, the obvious answer arose. “Callum,” she said, shaking her head, for if she’d ever wondered at the depths of Jack’s brother’s obsessive hatred, the proof stood all about her now in heaps of steaming rubble.
“Aye. If I had any doubts, I’ve done with doubting now.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small scrap of fur, charred about the edges. Face registering distaste, he held it out for her to see.
“A rabbit’s foot? But what—”
“’Tis Callum’s good luck charm, or so he likes to say,” Jack answered, pocketing the severed limb once more. “He never goes anywhere without it, yet I found it just now on yonder path. And inside, about the area of the hearth, I found what look to have been a pile of cloths reeking of pitch.”
“But if he’s hated you his whole life, why choose now to…to do all this?”
His face set in grim lines, he took the lantern from her and then her hand in his and started steering them up the path and away from the wreckage. “I dinna ken the answer to that yet, mo chride, but before this night is o’er I mean to find it out.”
Chapter Eighteen
Flaxen hair tied up in curling rags, eyes and nostrils rimmed in red, and wearing a voluminous men’s dressing robe with patched pockets and multi-colored sleeves, Milread rushed forward to greet the grubby-faced arrivals and their animal menagerie crowding her bedroom. “Och, but tell me it’s not so—the cottage—”
“Lost,” Jack finished for her, face grave. He set One Eye down on the floor to prowl.
She stuffed her fist into her mouth to stifle a sob. “I was just there, this verra morn tae milk Grizel and tend t’other beasties.” Tears brimming, she looked from Jack to Claudia. “And I didna so much as lay a twig in that grate, I swear tae ye I dinna.”
Claudia came up on the barmaid’s other side and gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “We know you did not, chérie, but someone…” She hesitated, glancing over to Jack, “Someone did.”
Milread thought for a moment and then her hazel eyes, heavy as they were with cold, opened wide. “Callum?” When they nodded in unison, she said, “’E’s a devil, I’ll grant ye that, but surely ’tis low tae sink, even for him?”
“Mayhap,” Jack said and left it at that.
Milread looked from Claudia to Jack. “How can I help?” she asked, and Claudia’s heart warmed at the knowledge that not only was thi
s good, kind soul Jack’s friend but hers, too.
He raked a hand through his grime-streaked hair. “Most of my savings went with the fire, but I’ve a bit set aside in an Edinburgh bank. It will take some days to get to it, though. In the meantime I’ll be needing somewhere to stable the horses and the cow.”
“Dinna fash. Grizel’s milk will more than pay for her board, and we’ve plenty o’ empty stalls in the stable.” Jack started to protest that he didna want Alistair’s charity, but Milread only shook her head, sending a curl unraveling from its wrapper. “Och, I give that man charity every time I take him between my legs. Leave Alistair tae me.”
Jack reached down to stroke Elf’s head where a patch of fur bore the fire’s scorch. “I ken it’s a lot to ask but Elf and One Eye—”
“Will bide here wi’ me.”
“Thank you, lass.” Jack hesitated, then said, “There is one more I need you to keep safe for me,” and something in his voice prompted a thread of apprehension to weave its way down Claudia’s spine. He turned to her, eyes earnest and square jaw set and said, “I need you to bide with Milread for a while.”
Claudia shook her head. “Wherever it is you are going, I will go, too.”
He shook his head. “Nay, you willna.”
She dug in her heels. “You have no right to tell me where I may and may not go, Jack Campbell.”
“Aye, I do. You’re still my prisoner, mind.”
She slammed her palms against his chest. “Jack!”
Wrapping a hand about her wrists, he held her still against him. “Though even if you werena, sure as if we’d been by a priest joined, ’tis your loving me and me you that gives me the right. That selfsame right you brought to bear in keeping me from going inside the cottage I claim now in calling on you to stay.”
Sensing defeat, she shook her head. “You are going into a different kind of fire, but perhaps one that burns just as dangerous.” Tears pricking her eyes, she leveled her gaze on the amber eyes peering out from his blackened face. “You are going to confront Callum.”
It wasn’t a question nor did he deny it. “I’ve lost much this night—Lady and my books and the money are but the start of it. For ten years that cottage has been no so much my haven as my hiding place, somewhere I went when I needed to pretend that the great wide world beyond didna exist, that it couldna touch me. But now it has touched me, Claudia, no just the ugliness but the beauty also. You’ve touched me. And whether for good or for ill, I’ve done with pretending and with hiding, too. This reckoning between my braither and myself, ’tis long overdue.”
“Then let me come with you, let me—”
“Hush, mo chride, and hear me out.” Hands on her shoulders, he held her away from him. “Of all I’ve lost and stand yet to lose, the one thing I couldna bear is for aught to happen to you. Please, Claudia, say you’ll bide here with Milread until I return. To do what I must calls for a clear mind, and I canna have that if I’m worrit that some harm may come to you.”
Claudia had thought she hadn’t more tears to shed but the wetness on her cheeks told her she’d been wrong about that, too. “And you think I could bear it if something happened to you?”
“Wheesht, woman, and do you think to get rid of me that easy?” His mouth lifted in the lopsided smile she’d come to love. “Now that you’ve said you love me, I mean to be around a good long time if only so I can give you cause to say it again and again.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said, and seeing that his mind was made up, she did the only thing she could do. She laid a hand on either of his gritty cheeks and pulled his face down to hers for a kiss.
Milread’s clearing her throat had them drawing apart. “Och, but it’ll be morning and the pair o’ ye still standin’ in the middle of my floor sighing o’er who’s tae go and who’s tae stay.”
Jack pressed a kiss onto Claudia’s forehead and then stepped back. “She’s right. There’s nay point in my putting it off any longer.” He started toward the chamber door.
“Hold! No so fast.” Milread padded over to the far side of her bed and bent to cram a hand beneath the mattress. After a moment’s poking around, she withdrew a flintlock pistol and small drawstring bag. She walked over to Jack and handed both articles over. “I’m no sayin’ tae use it, mind, but if the need should arise…”
“With luck I’ll bring it back tae ye as shiny clean as it looks to be now.” He tucked the pistol into his belt and dropped the bag of lead balls into his sporran. Then he engulfed his childhood friend in a hug. “You’re a braw, lass, Milread,” he said upon breaking away, “and the verra best mate a man could want for.”
Milread cracked a grin but, looking on, Claudia didn’t think her suddenly tearing eyes were due to a head cold. “So ye keep telling me, though all my rare charms ha’ yet tae snare me a man under fifty odd.”
The McBride cottage was a good forty minutes’ walk from Alistair’s but with nearly three decades’ worth of wrongs to redress and a temper spiking to boiling with every step taken, Jack arrived in half that time. The door wasn’t locked nor did he bother with knocking. The fetid smell of roasting flesh fouled his nostrils the instant he stepped over the threshold, and he had to steel himself not to gag. It had been more than ten years since he’d last set foot in this place and yet, looking about, it might have been but a day. The dust lay thicker, perhaps, and the eating table and chairs looked to be even more littered with dirty dishes than he remembered, but the essence of the place, the invisible blackness that blanketed its four walls like a shroud, was the same.
His back to the door, Callum squatted before the hearth, using a long-handled wooden fork to prod the carcass of whatever hapless beast he’d spitted. Some manner of bird, Jack thought, then turned away and brought the cottage door closed with a slam.
“How now, braither, but this is a rare honor,” Callum said, setting the fork down and rising. Starting toward him, he wiped his palms on the front of his trews. “Join me in a wee dram whilst supper cooks?”
By the looks of him, he’d had more than one wee dram already. Nor did Jack miss the heavy reek of smoke that clung to his person as surely it did to his own.
Jack shook his head. “I found something that belongs to ye and I’m minded to return it.”
“Och, did ye now? And what might that be?”
Jack took the rabbit’s foot from his coat pocket and held it out. “’Tis yours, is it no?”
Callum shrugged. “It may be but as I lost mine some time ago, I’ve had tae search out a new lucky charm.” He tapped a finger to the feather peaking out from his shirt pocket.
Jack tossed the foot onto the table beyond Callum. “I think you lost it earlier this eve when you laid torch to my cottage.”
Callum shook his head, greasy dark hair slipping forward over one glittering eye. “Wheesht, ye maun be as daft as that Frog bitch ye bide wi’ for I’ve been here all the day and night. If ye dinna believe me, ye’ve only t’ask Da.”
The reference to Claudia had Jack fisting his hands at his sides. Tamping down his temper for the moment, he said, “As if Tam could be trusted to speak true even if he werena drunk as David’s sow.”
“Och, but let us bury the hatchet, aye, Jacko? Even if Mam did spread her legs for a Sassenach soldier, we’re braithers after all.”
Jack took a step forward, causing Callum to back up an equal measure. “Shut your mouth, Callum, or I’ll shut it for you. You’re a scourge on Mam’s memory, no fit even to speak her name.”
“No fit am I?” Callum’s smile flattened and his gaze went as blistering hot as the melted metal birdcage Jack had buried earlier. “But let us no stand about haverin’, my braither, for supper’s a’most done and there’s plenty for two.” Gaze glittering with malice, he found his smile again and said, “There’s those who’ll say hawks are for flyin’ and no eating, but I say a bird’s a bird.”
Jack felt as if an invisible fist had plowed into his solar plexus. His breath left him in a whoosh. The em
pty cage, the plucked bird roasting on the spit, the glossy feather, gray barred with black, in Callum’s pocket—suddenly it all made horrific sense. Lady!
“You bastard!” Jack launched himself forward, locking both hands in a death grip about Callum’s skinny throat.
Gasping, Callum reached up to tear Jack’s fingers away, but Jack was past pain, past caring, past thinking beyond the grief. He held on that much tighter, his big thumbs moving over the fragile windpipe.
Callum’s breath came out as a rattle. His legs folded and he sank to the floor. Rather than relinquish his hold, Jack went down, too. Callum was no match for Jack’s strength but he was agile. Somehow he managed to roll onto his side and, determined not to let him go, not this time or ever again, Jack rolled with him. They ended up on the flat circle of stones just outside the hearth, the fat falling from the cooking carcass into the fire causing the burning peat to sputter and pop.
A hoarse shout of raw anguish tore from Jack’s throat and, forgetting caution, he reached out to recapture his stranglehold.
Panicked, Callum had sent his one arm flailing about the floor by the fire and too late Jack saw why. Somehow Callum had got the cooking fork in hand. The three prongs were as sharp as knife blades and when Callum brought the fork upward and over, Jack knew he had bare seconds to wrench it away.
“Stop it, the both of ye!”
Tam’s voice coming from the arched alcove of the bedroom startled them both, but it gave Jack just the advantage he needed. Reaching up, he tore the makeshift weapon from Callum’s grasp and tossed it into the flames. He rose to stand, hoisting Callum with him. Pinning the slighter man to the far wall, he folded his free hand into a fist and barreled it straight into his brother’s face. Blood spurted; teeth flew. It felt so bloody good, so long overdue, that he hauled back and prepared to hit him again.
