by Lois Greiman
Cairn rolled onto his back and forced himself not to wince at the stab of old pain in his thigh. Shit, she’d seen enough weakness in him already. If he were a proper lord, he would have killed her twice by now.
“My liege, are you—”
“I’m fine,” he said, and pushed himself to his feet. His men were already dragging Tatiana onto hers.
“My apologies, my lord. Forgive me. I should have tackled her myself. I should have—”
“Take her to my carriage.”
“Your—Your carriage, my lord?”
Cairn stared. Peters swallowed.
“Yes, my liege,” he said, and, pulling his pistol from its holster, directed it at the girl. “Outside,” he ordered.
Cairn swore. “She’s not a damned cannibal.”
“But—”
“Put the gun away.”
“But—”
Cairn swore again, more vehemently this time, and Peters holstered his weapon with haste.
They left the ramshackle hut together, with the lieutenant holding the girl’s upper arm like she was a damned murderer. Which she …may not be. Though he had to admit she had shown considerable improvement in her fighting skills. Still, she looked so small, a strange meld of fairy goddess and waif. Soft and…
He felt Burr’s gaze on him and turned with a frown. The giant was standing not two feet away, staring at him with raised brows.
“What are you looking at?” Cairn asked.
Burr smiled. “So you don’t worry about folks believing you’re getting soft, aye?”
His temper flared. “Want to try me, old man?”
Burr laughed out loud, then tilted his head toward the two women by the table. They seemed to be frozen in place. “What do we do with them?”
Cairn glared at the two. Who were they? How were they important to Megs? Damn! She’d been ready to give herself up for them. The idea made him fidgety and mad as hell. Loyalty was not a trait he wanted to find in her. It was bad enough that he’d found it in Peters. It made life damned inconvenient.
“Bring them along,” he said.
Burr’s grin widened. “In your carriage?” he asked, but there was no reason to answer. Burr knew better than to push his luck too far.
Outside, the bays worried at their bits. The carriage rocked in their fractious wake. Cairn gritted his teeth and approached the door.
Peters bowed from the behind the front wheel. “She is inside, my lord.”
“I can see that.”
“Yes, of course, my lord.”
Damn, he thought, and, gripping the handle, pulled himself inside.
She sat in the very center of the tufted red seat. Her face was inscrutable and her hands clasped in her lap, like a praying nun or a scolding schoolmistress. Nothing at all like a thief, but like someone in power who was currently displeased.
“What do you plan to do with them?” she asked.
He watched her. She had an exotic look to her, not like most Teleerian maids, who tended to be fair and seem plump whether they were or not.
“I’ll have an answer,” she insisted, drawing his attention back to her question.
“If you’ve got a yearning to worry about someone’s continued survival, you might put some thought into your own, lass,” he warned.
She pursed her lips. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
His chest hurt where she’d stabbed him just a few days ago. He refused to rub it. “Some think it wrong to threaten their laird—bad deportment, as Bert would say.”
“Some think it bad form for the laird to execute his subjects for no reason.”
“Execute…” he began, and gritted his teeth against the bays’ boisterous jolt into their collars. “Is that what I should do to you, Megs?”
She winced. Beneath the soft mocha hue of her skin, she seemed to pale slightly.
“My name is not Megs.”
“Still?”
She ignored him, glancing out the window instead.
He should let her stare, of course. Should cease such worthless dialogue, but her distance irritated him. “Gem seems to think you’re Megs,” he said.
She was quiet, as if considering that. “What do you plan to do with them?” she asked again.
“Are you suggesting that I should not execute you and your friends, Megs?”
“They’re not my friends, and I’m not Megs.”
“But you’d give yourself up for them.”
“That would be foolish,” she said, and faced him, her expression unreadable, “since I had only just met them.”
But he knew the truth, had seen it in her eyes when she’d held him off with a pistol. She would have given her life to keep the others safe.
God damn it!
“So the girl, Gem. Does she often risk her life for someone she’s never met?”
“I believe she, too, may have mistaken me for the one you call Megs.”
“May have.”
“Yes.”
It occurred to him that their conversation was foolishly polite, as if they were traveling in luxury to some grand ball instead of jolting through knee-high ruts behind four murderous stallions. Did she make every situation seem like this? “But you’re not Megs,” he said.
“No.”
“And you didn’t steal my brooch.”
“No.”
“And you don’t know Wheaton.”
“No.”
“So you can’t help me find him.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then you’re little good to me, are you?”
She raised her chin a notch.
“But maybe your friends will be of more assistance. The girl, at least, seems like someone who might be persuaded to help.”
“They know nothing about me, MacTavish.” Her expression was strained. “Leave them be.”
“Because they’re good, lawful citizens.”
She glanced out the window again, watching the country gallop along beside them.
“Like you,” he added.
Her brows lowered slightly as if she were deep in thought. Her hands were still clasped in her lap.
“They are like me in many ways,” she said. “Far more so than I knew.”
“You’re all thieves?” he guessed.
“I am not—” she began, then paused and glanced at her hands again. “I did not steal your brooch.”
Damn. If she weren’t such a liar, she might be convincing. “But you’ve stolen other things,” he said.
She raised her chin and met his gaze again. “Tell me, MacTavish,” she said, “why do you think people become thieves?”
Wasn’t this supposed to be his interrogation. Shouldn’t he have pulled out the cat-o’-nine-tails or at least the thumb-screws by now? “You tell me,” he said. “Why did you become a thief?”
Her gaze was enormously steady, her eyes strangely old. “Because I had no choice.”
“So you admit your guilt?”
“I suppose I do.”
He wanted to strangle her. “But you’re not sure.”
“I am sure of this much,” she said, and in her face he saw deep sorrow. Good God, what an actress. “One would not choose such a life if one had other options.”
He wanted to laugh at her, but in that instant he saw that a pinkish stain had seeped through the shoulder of her shabby gown. Blood! Something cramped in his stomach.
“What happened?” He nodded toward her shoulder, trying to keep his tone casual.
She glanced at it, then away in a dismissive manner, but her face was pale. “Perhaps a thief is no better a friend than a nobleman.”
“Destroyed your belief in honor among thieves, did they?” he asked, and, reaching out, tugged her sleeve downward. It only slipped a bit, but even so he could see that the skin was red and irritated above a swath of bandage.
His teeth hurt immediately. “What happened?”
“I am told it will heal well.”
“By whom?”
<
br /> “Aunt Ned has some skill as a physician.”
“Aunt Ned.”
“Lady Nedra I believe you called her.”
“Why?”
“Most probably because that is her name.”
He ground his teeth. “Why did she tend your wound if she doesn’t know you, Megs?”
“I asked the same question myself.”
He waited, then counted to ten in Latin. Actually he counted to nine, for although he was an excellent mathematician, language was not his forte. Bert was eternally distressed. Apparently great lords were supposed to be able to cipher and speak.
“What did she say?” he asked.
“It is what she does,” Tatiana said. “She helps people.”
Silence echoed inside the coach, accentuated by the crunch of the wheels and the too fast step of the horses’ hooves.
“Do you think…” She paused, but it seemed as though she were talking to herself. Outside the window, beside the muddy road, a ragged boy tended his sheep. His face was dirty and solemn as he watched them pass. “Do you think if you are of noble blood, you are inherently a superior being?”
Inherently. He liked that word. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a clue what it meant, but he was careful not to scowl. He had a dictionary at Westheath. And Bert, ever thrilled to instruct.
“Or wealth,” she said. “Do riches make one noble?”
“Perhaps I would say yes if I had not been born a penniless bastard.”
She eyed him carefully, and though it would have taken a pretty fine rack master to make him confess the truth, he felt a little nervous under her scrutiny.
“Is that why you steal, lass, because the rich are inherently better?”
“It seems to be a myth perpetrated by the rich.”
Perpetrated. “Is that yes or no?”
She shook her head. “Perhaps there was a time when I believed such a thing.”
“And now?”
“Now I believe it is difficult to be noble when one is hungry.”
“Some think if we do not keep them hungry, they will rise up and overtake their…” He paused, remembering his own ragged childhood. “Betters.”
“Betters.” She watched him carefully. “Better than who? A lad who protects his sheep with his life? An old woman who risks all to tend another?”
“So wealth doesn’t mean superiority.”
“No more than poverty means depravity.”
Depravity. Balls! “And what has made you come to such a deep conviction, lass? Tell me, have you seen the light?”
If she realized his sarcasm, she didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she glanced out the window again. “I once had a friend.”
God damn, her stories were slow. He’d hate to rely on her in a battle. But there was an unlikely scenario. She was damn poor in a fight, being the approximate size of a cricket, as she was. Still, she was a cricket with steam in her craw, as Burr would say.
“He was born of a noble family,” she said, and found his eyes with hers. It was strange how she always managed to make him feel at a slight disadvantage, just a bit off-balance. Damn! And how the hell did he have time to formulate complete sentences in the time it took her to draw a breath. “He was handsome, dark, and witty.”
An itch started to form at the back of Cairn’s neck.
“He was neither demeaning nor obsequious. Or perhaps he was demeaning to everyone equally. Whatever the case, he believed that every person was of equal value. We would oft debate just that point.”
“When you weren’t fucking him.”
The coach went silent. Why the hell had he said that?
She scowled at him as if coming back to the present and disliking the reality she found there.
His chest ached dully, but not so much as his thigh. “I’ve heard others extol Wheaton’s virtues,” he explained idiotically.
“Wheaton! I—”
He gritted his teeth. “Don’t!” He held up one hand. “Don’t lie again, lass.”
“I have never—”
“Don’t lie again, or I’ll flog you meself,” he gritted. Damn the pirate talk.
She pursed her lips, sad and small and still defiant. “I have never met a man named Wheaton.”
He cursed with feeling, but just then the carriage jolted to a halt.
Peters’s face appeared in the window, as pale as ever and as nervous as hell.
“My apologies, my lord, but we have arrived.”
“Arrived?” MacTavish growled, staring at the man.
Peters paled even more, but he managed to speak. “At Pikeshead, my lord. I assumed…”
Damn it all! Cairn tightened his fist against the foolishly tufted seats. He should leave her there, of course. Should shove her from the carriage and whistle a tune all the way back to Westheath. “Drive on,” he ordered.
“Your pardon, my lord?”
“I said, drive on,” he gritted.
“But surely you wish to deposit—”
“Damn it, Peters, if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life chained to a slave ship in Madagascar, you’ll tell Galen to put the whip to the horses.”
“But what of the two women, my lord?”
Cairn glanced at the girl across from him. Her expression was stoic, her eyes unreadable, but her lips…Damn her fat, trembling lips.
“Take them with us.”
“To Westheath, my liege?”
“Now!”
“Yes, my lord,” snapped Peters, and rode ahead, probably to inform the driver of their lord’s lunacy.
A chuckle sounded from outside the window. Cairn turned back only to find Burr there, leaning a gargantuan forearm upon the pommel of his huge, dappled steed.
“To Westheath, aye,” he said, and winked at Megs. “Good thinking, lad. ’Twill be a better place to do the flogging.”
Cairn considered reaching through the window and dragging the giant from his horse. But they were already on the move, and Burr was as tough as old boot leather. And perhaps he had proven himself a big enough fool without letting some overgrown Norseman beat him senseless.
Chapter 15
“I ’m not going to hurt you,” Cairn said. The girl called Gem stood in the middle of the solar at Westheath Castle. She looked filthy and out of place against the bright tapestry that adorned the wall. “Not if you answer my questions.”
The girl nodded, shifted her gaze to Burr, and nodded again.
“What’s your name?” Cairn asked.
The girl smiled. “Me name be Gem as I’ve told you afore.”
He smiled back. They were oh so civilized. “I meant your given name,” he said, and motioned to an old man who carried in a silver tray. Even from his vantage point Cairn could smell the fresh lemon patties.
“’Tis the name what was given me,” Gem said. “Might you think I took it?” She laughed. Her eyeteeth were crooked, slanting in toward each other, but she had a dimple in her left cheek, and her eyes were damnably bright, as if she were always one step ahead of your average bastard laird.
“The name your mother gave you,” Cairn explained.
“Didn’t have no mother,” Gem said, eyeing the tray that old Roland lowered before her.
Cairn smiled again, lest his carefully won patience slip into the abyss of his slowly simmering anger. “I would have thought that impossible.”
She tilted her head at him. “Is them treats for me?”
“How’d you get in?” Burr rumbled.
Cairn turned toward the Norseman. He stood beside the door, one gargantuan shoulder resting against the wall.
“What’s that?” Gem tensed as she narrowed her eyes and turned toward the giant, all congeniality gone.
“How’d you get in?” he repeated. “To the castle.”
“You brought me. Don’t you remember?”
Burr gave her a level stare. She swallowed as if she were facing a hooded henchman. Triton’s balls! Cairn was the damned laird of the isle. Menace oozed from h
im. He was sure of it. But she could lie to him outright and not blink an eye. What was it about Burr that made her swallow her tongue. Of course it might be that he was the approximate size of Mount Hess.
“Oh. you mean when I came t’ get Megs.” She shrugged. Her gown was nothing but rags, her hair was still tangled, and he was pretty sure there was a distinctive odor wafting from her person. Something between rotting mackerel and sheep dung.
“I walked,” she said.
“You walked,” Burr repeated.
“Aye.” She fidgeted a little. “About them treats…” she said, but she directed her question to Cairn when she spoke.
“Help yourself,” Cairn said, then, “Why?”
She snatched up the closest dessert and shoved it into her mouth. “She’s Megs,” she said, speaking around the delicacy.
He merely stared.
“Magical Megs.”
Cairn was careful not to blink.
“Go on,” she scoffed. “Sure, you’ve ’eard of ’er. She can steal yer eyeballs clean outta yer head and never even disturb yer sleep.”
He nodded, making a face of admiration.
“How’d you get past the guards?” Burr asked.
“They was lookin’ elsewhere.”
“So this Megs…she’s clever,” Cairn said.
She nodded. “And tough. Tough as an old ’ore.”
Burr shifted his weight. She glanced toward him and back. The whites of her eyes showed clearly.
“So she’s good in a fray,” Cairn said.
“She could kill you just as easy as look at you,” she said, taking another patty, though her mouth was still full with the last one.
“But she didn’t,” Cairn said. “Why?”
The girl shrugged. “’Tis ’ard to say with Megs. ’Oo knows what’s in ’er mind?”
“How well do you know her?”
She was still eating, munching away like a cow in a wheatfield. But she shook her head. “Ain’t nobody knows ’er real good. She keeps to ’erself, she does.”
“So you know her as good…as well as anyone?”
She shrugged and licked her fingers “Don’t know.”
“How about Lady Nedra? How well does she know your Megs?”
Her chewing ceased, though her mouth was still full. “Ned don’t know her atall,” she said.
