She had to get up! She had to get to Quinn! It was the morning of July thirty-first. Tomorrow Quinn and Ian would die, unless she could do something to stop it.
Calm down, Maggie ordered. Just wait and your strength will return.
For how long? another voice in her head asked, plaintiveand anxious.
“Not long,” she said aloud. “I will reach Quinn in time. I will!” She threw an anguished look at the sky. “Please, dear God, let me reach him in time!”
Maggie stopped and leaned on the crude staff she’d fashionedfor herself from the branch of a dying oak tree. It was too big around and made her fingers ache, but at least it gave her the support she needed to put one foot in front of the other. She could go no farther, at least not without stopping to rest.
It had taken her the whole of one day and part of the next to walk from the cairn to this hill near the cottage. She had cried and cursed her weakened body every step of the way, sometimes having to lift her legs with her hands to force another step forward. She had felt a little better in the last hour or so, and now stood at the top of a knoll, trying to catch her breath.
The sun had already set and twilight was settling over the land. She looked down at the dark waters of Loch Lomond with tears in her eyes. How proud Quinn would be that she had actually found her way here by herself.
There was not one part of her body that didn’t ache with pain. She had hobbled over hill and glens without sleep, without stopping, and now her heart pounded painfully as she turned away. It was August first, but the book had not given the time of death. She could still make it. Quinn was still alive. He had to be.
The world spun around for a minute, and Maggie stumbledto a rock and sat down, her head in her hands. Exhausted,she fell asleep and soon was dreaming of Quinn.
They were standing outside a little cottage, two little boys were playing nearby, and she and Quinn were gazing into one another’s eyes with love and adoration. Then suddenlythe dream twisted. Quinn stepped back from her, his face suddenly cold, almost gray, emotionless. As she watched, he turned into a pillar of dust. The Highland wind came tearing through their little valley and blew him away.
Maggie jerked her head up, gasping, the horror of the dream clinging to her even as she tried to shake it off. She stumbled to her feet, and gripping her staff, started walkingonce again. She had planned to go to the cottage to rest, to eat something. But it had taken her too long, and this dream was an evil premonition.
She had to press on. The duke’s home wasn’t that far from the cottage, and now that she was feeling better, she could make better time.
In the dark.
A flood of fear rushed through her mind.
How can I do this? How can I find my way to the manor in the dark? What if I fall down some ravine? What if I’m too late?
“Stop it,” she hissed aloud, and forced her backbone to straighten. “You’re fine. It’s not that dark and the moon will be up soon. You can find the manor. You can make it. Just start walking, damn it!”
Maggie drew in a deep breath, released it slowly, and started walking.
It seemed to take forever, but she finally arrived at the manor house and went to the stables. Bittie would know where Quinn was, and she hurried as fast as she could, her legs and back screaming their outrage.
But when she reached the stables and went inside, she found Bittie sitting on a barrel, his face streaked with tears. Maggie’s fear kicked into high gear when she saw the big man reduced to this sorrow. She rushed toward him, her legs trembling as she leaned on her staff.
“Bittie,” she said. “What is it? What’s happened?”
He turned grief-stricken eyes upon her. “They were caught,” he said. “Captured afore they ever left the grounds. Quinn had a plan. ’Twas a good plan, but they caught ’im and the lad.”
Maggie’s legs gave way, and she sank to the floor at his feet. “No,” she whispered.
“Aye.” He reached his hand to her as he began to weep again. Maggie took his hand and leaned her head against his knee, staring at the ground, thinking quickly. She would come up with another plan. She would find a way to set them free!
“We’ll get them out,” Maggie said, squeezing his hand as she pushed herself up from the dirty stable floor. “This isn’t over.”
Bittie’s heavy head came up at that, his bleary eyes filled with horror as he clung to her. “Och, lass, I thought ye knew.” His woeful voice sent a chill down her spine. “Quinn is dead.” His lower lip trembled. “He and Ian are both dead.”
Maggie jerked her hand from his, her throat tight, her breath ragged. “No . . .” she whispered. “It isn’t true.”
Bittie leaned forward and covered his face with both large hands. “Aye,” he said, " ’tis true.” And he began to cry again.
Maggie lay in the hayloft where once she had lain in Quinn’s arms. She stared up at the window above, now closed and latched. She had held Bittie while he cried, too shocked, too disbelieving to shed her own tears.
But his grief had convinced her. Quinn and Ian were dead. Bittie didn’t know how they had died, but there was speculation that their breakfast porridge had been poisoned. All he knew was that they were alive before breaking their fast, and dead after. They had been dead when she stood looking down at Loch Lomond, hope in her heart.
At her request, Bittie had gone to send word to Rob Roy to come for Ian’s body. As far as she knew, Quinn had not been in contact with any of the MacIntyres in many years, but Bittie said he would send word to the clan as well.
Maggie knew she should stay hidden. If Pembroke saw her, he would likely put her in the gaol for playing at being a highwayman, but she was numb to those kinds of threats and really didn’t care what happened to her now. But as always,her sense of responsibility to her sisters rose up insideof her, and so she put a shawl over her head before trudging wearily to the kitchen to find Jenny.
The two women had fallen into one another’s arms, then Jenny had led her sorrowfully to the small chapel, called St. Mary’s, on the manor grounds. The bodies had been placed there temporarily. But when she got to the door, Maggie couldn’t go in.
Instead, with a choked sob, she turned and ran back to the stables and the hayloft, where she wept until she retched, until there were no tears left to weep. Now she lay in the hayloft, empty, hollow, her mind wandering.
“Maggie,” came a whisper from below. With effort, she rolled to her knees and crawled to the edge of the loft to look down into Jenny’s eyes.
“I am here,” she said.
“And so is Rob Roy MacGregor,” Jenny said. “He has come to claim the—the—laddies. I thought you would want to know.”
Maggie closed her eyes, her voice echoing hollowly. “Where are they taking them?”
“I dinna know,” she said. “To Craigrostan, perhaps.”
“I must go with them,” Maggie said. She stood and brushed the hay from the skirt and blouse Jenny had providedher. Once down the ladder, Maggie started to move past the little maid, but to her surprise, the girl stopped her, one hand on her arm.
“Please, Maggie, dinna risk yerself. Quinn wouldna want ye to do so. Please.” Her voice was insistent, and Maggie put her arm around the girl and gave her a hug.
“Thank you, darling Jenny. I promise I’ll be careful.” She started to walk past her and then turned back. “Do you know what happened? What went wrong?”
Jenny shook her head, her blue eyes sorrowful. “Nay. James was not on duty last night, but had been assigned to guarding one of His Grace’s guests on her return trip to Glasgow. All I know is that Quinn tried to break Ian out of the dungeon, and was captured.”
Maggie nodded. “If you—if you hear anything more, will you come to me?”
Jenny put her arms around her and held her close. “Aye, darlin’ Maggie,” she said. “That I will. Now, will you guard yourself from harm?”
She shook her head. “I must be there, Jenny. No matter what.”
&nb
sp; “Aye, but could ye not disguise yerself somehow?” The girl’s round eyes filled with tears. “I couldna stand it if something happened to ye, too.”
Maggie was too weary to argue. “A disguise? What do you suggest?”
As if she’d been waiting for the go-ahead, Jenny moved quickly to a pile of clothing on top of a barrel. “I brought one of Cook’s old skirts and a blouse. I was thinkin’, perhapswe could stuff it with rags and make ye look larger. If ye kept a shawl over yer head, I think t’would make a good disguise.”
Maggie’s shoulders slumped. She didn’t want to sneak around. She wanted to rush up to Pembroke and beat her fists upon him until she had no more strength. But Jenny was right: If Pembroke spotted her, there would be hell to pay, and she’d never see her sisters again.
“All right,” she agreed, listless. “Will you help me?”
“Aye,” Jenny whispered.
“I have come to claim the body of my cousin, Ian, and his friend, Quinn.”
Rob Roy MacGregor made the proclamation from the back of the golden brown horse he rode. Maggie hid at the back of the crowd of servants gathered in the duke’s court-yardto watch the meeting between the laird and the man who was reported to have stolen over one thousand pounds from him.
Rob Roy was decked out in what was surely his best plaid, as well as a leather jacket and tilted black bonnet on his head, garnished with three feathers as befit a chieftain. Word had it that Montrose was threatening to have him arrestedfor daring to come forward to claim the bodies of the two outlaws. Maggie would have been worried if she hadn’t known the history of the soon-to-be notorious Rob Roy.
Behind Rob Roy sat another of his clan on the driver’s seat of a wagon. Another hundred or so men surrounded him and the wagon, on horses, or on foot. Their faces were grim.
Phillip Pembroke and the Duke of Montrose glared up at Rob Roy, their figures rigid with anger. Pembroke, tall and thin, standing beside the shorter, dumpier Montrose, reminded Maggie of Laurel and Hardy, but she wasn’t laughing.
With a shawl over her head, and a thoroughly padded bottom and front, Maggie wasn’t worried about being recognizedby anyone, as long as she kept her head down. But when eight of Montrose’s men began walking toward the crowd, each group of four carrying a still figure wrapped in white cloth between them, Maggie almost gave herself away.
She had expected the men to be brought out in wooden coffins, and too late, remembered that the practice didn’t come to the Highlands until much later. Seeing the actual bodies of the man she loved and his best friend encased in shrouds sent a shudder of grief through Maggie that she could barely control. She gripped her hands together in front of her, her fingernails biting into her flesh until they drew blood. The crowd parted and let the impromptu pall-bearerswalk past, but Rob Roy stopped the men, moving his horse to block their way.
“And so,” Rob said as he gazed down at the bodies, “ye dinna even have the decency to give the lads a trial, nor a public execution, but murdered them without a second thought.”
“These ruffians were highwaymen!” Montrose said tersely. “They acted against the law and against the Crown! Killing was too good for them.”
“Dinna forget the words of the Good Book, James Graham,‘Ye reap what ye sow.’ ”
“Guards!” Pembroke motioned to the unit of men standing nearby. “Arrest this man!” He glared at Rob Roy. “You’ll not threaten the Duke of Montrose while I live and breathe.”
Montrose raise his hand. “Nay, Phillip,” he said, glancingup at Rob Roy. “Ye have what ye came for MacGregor. I suggest that ye leave now, before I remember a certain debt that is owed.”
Rob Roy’s face turned almost as red as his hair. “Ye will be repaid for that which was stolen from both of us,” he stated, his shoulders squared.
“So ye say. Now take yer leave, while ye still may.”
Pembroke folded his arms over his chest and stepped forward. “By your leave, Your Grace,” he said to Montrose, “but I would like to escort this riffraff from your estate.
“Thank you, Phillip,” Montrose said, “see to it.”
“We will be honoring our dead this day,” Rob Roy said. “I trust your ‘escort’ willna be present there at our most holy of ceremonies.”
Pembroke stepped forward again. “What? You will not wait the traditional three days’ time? Why the rush to disposeof your ‘honored dead’?”
Rob Roy turned his gaze slowly from Montrose to the smirking man. “Dinna ever suppose that ye know what are our ways,” he said. “Ye will never know, neither our ways, nor any other. Ye have no country, and from what I hear, no family that will claim ye save for the duke, and that becauseof obligation.”
It was Pembroke’s turn to flush scarlet. “When His Grace puts a price upon your thieving head, I will take great joy in severing it from your neck.”
Rob Roy nodded, acknowledging the challenge. “And I shall cast a stone at yer grave someday.” As Rob and his men moved out, Maggie slipped away from the mob, and as soon as she was clear, ran back to the stable. She would find a horse and ride to Loch Lomond, to bid her love good-bye.
seventeen
By the time Maggie reached the loch, the bodies of the two men had been placed in two separate boats half in the water,half on the shore. Behind them Loch Lomond was dark and foreboding, with a stormy sky above promising rain and rocky sailing upon the black waves.
Maggie had discarded her disguise in the stables and dressed in the jogging pants and T-shirt she’d worn from her own time. Over that she put the skirt and blouse Jenny had lent her, and her own green jacket. Once she told Quinn good-bye, she would return to the cairn.
But it still didn’t seem real. Even now, as she stared at the stone-cold faces of Quinn and Ian, it didn’t seem real. The winding cloths had been taken off the faces of the men, and from a distance, the two looked like porcelain statues, pale and lifeless. She fought back a sob, and suddenly,Maggie knew that she had to tell Quinn good-bye, no matter what the cost.
She pushed through the crowd and stumbled out beside the boats, falling to her knees beside the one where Quinn lay. He was beautiful, even in death. She lovingly gazed at his face, memorizing each and every feature—his strong jaw, his chin with the slight cleft, his aquiline nose, his full lips, his dark, arched brows over closed eyes, his lashes making dark crescents against his alabaster skin.
It seemed that any moment he would open his eyes and she would see the emerald sparkle that she knew so well. Tears flooded down her cheeks as she brushed one long wavy lock of hair back from his face, remembering all the times he had done the same for her.
Openly crying now, she leaned down and kissed his cold lips. The crowd around the banks of Loch Lomond began to murmur. She didn’t care. Nothing mattered. Quinn was gone, and with him, her world.
“Oh, Quinn,” she whispered, and collapsed to her knees once again, doubled over as she sobbed her heart out.
In another moment, Bittie was there, lifting Maggie from beside the boat as she continued to sob uncontrollably.Through her tears she saw Rob Roy climb into Ian’s boat, as a man in a long robe climbed into Quinn’s.
“Where are they taking them?” she whispered to Bittie, trying to get control over her tears.
“To an isle in the middle of the loch, where they once played together as boys,” he answered. He seemed much calmer now. “Rob is acting as their next of kin, and the man is a priest.”
“They’ll have a ceremony there, I suppose,” she said dully.
Bittie frowned down at her. “Aye. All is arranged, lass. I’m sorry about before, in the stable. I thought ye knew.”
“It’s all right,” she said, leaning against him for comfort,“I understand.”
The man in Quinn’s boat lifted his hands and began to pray. The people around Maggie bowed their heads and her heart cried out to God, too. But the only word she could form inside of her was Why? It was the same question she had asked when her parents were killed.
She had not found an answer then, and she couldn’t imagine receiving one now, but she prayed anyway. The pastor or priest—she wasn’t sure which—finished praying and sat down in the wooden boat.
Bittie’s beefy arms held Maggie tightly beside him, as another Scot in each boat pushed the vessel away from the shore and dipped a long paddle into the dark water. Maggie watched, her heart breaking.
Then, from behind the crowd came the sound of the pipes. Her tears began to flow again as she recognized the tune; it was one of Quinn’s, called "MacIntyre’s Sorrow,” and that was when it hit her. She would never see his face again, never kiss him, never touch him, never have his children,never grow old beside him.
Her legs gave way and only Bittie kept her erect as she began to keen, crying out her pain, sending it across the loch, her sorrow sending Quinn on his way. Several other women joined her, sobbing their grief, when suddenly, one by one, the sounds ceased.
“Whist,” Bittie said. “Look.”
The crowd began to shift, and Maggie looked up, her cries fading as she saw that the loch had gone suddenly still, though storm clouds still raged above, and the hauntingnotes of the pipes echoed across the water, now spread before them like a sheet of black glass.
Maggie closed her eyes, letting the last notes of Quinn’s music wash over her soul, vowing to never forget, to never stop loving the man who had given her so much. She would spend the rest of her days remembering and loving Quinn MacIntyre.
The two little boats sailed across the huge loch until they could no longer be seen. She turned to Bittie, her voice quavering, but her resolution firm.
“Good-bye,” she said, as the crowd around them began to disperse and talk softly. “Thank you for all you’ve done for me, and for Quinn.” She reached up and pulled the big man down to her so that she could whisper in his ear. “You were a good friend to both of us,” she said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He blinked back tears.
“Och, lass, I loved him like a brother.” He gazed down at her sadly. “We’ll miss him, and Ian, too. Do ye know what ye will do now?”
Highland Rogue Page 25
