Highlander Unbound

by Julia London

  Yet there he was, flesh and blood. Ellen watched him walking with a woman. Two small boys trailed behind them, arguing and occasionally hitting one another. He was heavier than when she’d known him, his jowls fleshy like a soft-bellied country gent. With the woman on his arm, they strolled casually down the lane toward her, pausing to look in the different shop windows and seeming, Ellen thought angrily, perfectly at ease. Seeming like a gentleman who had earned the right to be happy, one who had, presumably, lived an honorable life. He did not look like the dishonest bastard that he was.

  How astounding it was to be looking at him now, she thought, as he casually moved closer. How astonishing, after all those years of pining for him, praying and hoping that he would come back, that she could be so frightfully happy that he hadn’t. The blackguard had plunged her into hell, but Ellen was suddenly quite certain that it might have been far worse had he come back. He had never loved her, not like Liam. He had no honor in him at all, as did Liam. In fact, he was blatantly insignificant compared to Liam, reprehensible and pathetic.

  The stabbing pain that rent her heart, then, was not for Daniel, it was for Liam, and she marveled at how much she missed him. More than all the days and weeks and months and years she had missed Daniel. Which only made her guilt soar to the point that she felt quite ill again.

  Whatever possessed her to step in Daniel’s path, she likely would never know, but there she was, suddenly darting around people just to stand in front of him, to see his expression. She was not to be disappointed; he recognized her almost immediately, and just as immediately tried to put a gap between him and the woman on his arm by dropping her elbow and stepping away from her.

  “Daniel,” she said, the name bitter on her tongue.

  “My lucky stars, if it isn’t Ellen Farnsworth! What a delight!” he said, and smiled that charming smile that had ensnared her as a girl. Except that now she didn’t see it as charming in the least—she saw it for the oily, rapacious smile that it was. “Are you in Cambridge now?” he asked cheerfully, as if there were no history between them, as if there were no child between them, as if he had not forsaken her.

  I’m nowhere now. I have no home. “London,” she managed to choke out as she looked at the straining buttons of his waistcoat, the stained neckcloth. The trousers, threadbare at the pockets. Scuffed boots. He was paunchy, and his fleshy face showed none of the signs of beauty she had once seen in him. God in heaven, what had she ever loved about this man?

  “I must say,” he said, taking another step away from the woman and two boys, “that I’m rather surprised—”

  “I’m quite sure that you are,” she said acidly, and hearing her tone, the two boys stopped their fighting and looked at Ellen.

  “Daniel?” the woman behind him mewled, and for the first time, Ellen looked at her. She was nondescript and rather plain in the face. Her figure was square, undoubtedly made so by the two little hellions now hanging on her skirts. Two ill-mannered urchins who could only be Natalie’s brothers. That thought sent a cold shiver down her spine.

  “Oh!” Daniel said, laughing, unable to distance himself from his wife. “Rather impolite of me. Darling, this is Miss…?”

  Ellen said nothing, just looked at him, let him guess.

  “Ah…well, Miss Ellen Farnsworth. And this, of course, is my wife, Mrs. Goodman.” He smiled thinly at his cow of a wife. “Miss Farnsworth and I were acquainted many years ago, one summer when I was in London.”

  “Acquainted?” Ellen echoed, incredulous. “I beg your pardon, but is that what you tell yourself so that you might sleep? That we were acquainted? Do you mean to say that you never pause to consider what a despicable rake you were, preying on a naïve debutante?”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Farnsworth!” Mrs. Goodman snapped indignantly, her back stiffening as she moved to stand next to her husband. One of the boys squeezed through the gap between his parents and stood directly in front of Ellen, looking up at her curiously, almost gleefully.

  Daniel laughed nervously, pulled his son back and behind him, then tried again to step away from his plain wife. “It’s a long story, dear,” he said dismissively over his shoulder, then looked at Ellen again, his lecherous gaze wandering her body. “Are…are you in Cambridge long, Miss Farnsworth? Might we have a chance to renew our acquaintance?”

  Ellen’s shout of laughter startled several passersby. “You must be out of your mind! I shouldn’t renew my acquaintance with you, sir, to save my very life! Haven’t you any idea what you did—” She caught herself, stopped there, the image of Natalie suddenly looming in her mind.

  “What I did?” he asked, laughing nervously, his eyes darting to everyone around them. “Why, I’m certain I’ve no idea what you mean! Your very own cousin Malcolm has never given me cause to believe that you were anything but perfectly well!”

  He knew. The rotten bloody bounder knew! No. No, no, no, she would not sully Natalie’s life any more than it had been with the likes of him. She could now readily accept what she had known all these years, in spite of the lies she had tried to tell herself. She had been used by this man. Terribly. Unconscionably. The attributes she had ascribed to his character had been hopelessly naïve and dead wrong. He had used her up and tossed her aside, and she would die before she would allow this…this snake to do the same to Natalie. As far as she was concerned, he had given up his right to Natalie when he abandoned her mother more than ten years ago.

  “I beg your pardon, madam, but I cannot possibly imagine what you think my husband has done to you,” the woman chimed in.

  “Mary, hush,” Daniel snapped, then turned that oily, loathsome smile to Ellen again. “Clearly, there has been a terrible misunderstanding, Miss Farnsworth. Perhaps if you would consent to allow me to call on you on the morrow—”

  “Shut up, Daniel,” Ellen said easily, and turned her gaze to his wife, who looked at Ellen as if she were a madwoman. That was quite all right, really. She was a madwoman. Mad to have ever fallen in love with him. Mad to have ever pined for him. Her mother and father had been quite right. He was nowhere near good enough for her, not then, and certainly not now. “I’d be quite careful if I were you, Mary,” she said calmly. “For if you sleep with snakes, you will most surely get bit.” She turned away then, ignoring the woman’s cry of outrage and Daniel’s patronizing, “My dear Miss Farnsworth, please don’t dash off in such bad humor! You’ve clearly misunderstood!”

  Ellen kept walking, her head high, her indignation raging, oblivious to everything and everyone in her path. She should have felt liberated, freed at last from the heart sickening memories. She should have been relieved! At peace.

  But she wasn’t any of those things.

  No, she was sick unto death, because she knew, with all certainty, that she was, in her own despicable way, just like Daniel. She had betrayed a man who loved her deeply, just as Daniel had betrayed her. She had left him without explanation, just as Daniel had left her. She was no better than the snake she had left slithering behind her, and she had never despised herself as much as she did at this moment.

  Ellen continued on to the dry goods store, bought several provisions, then dragged herself back to the small hotel, her heart shattered, her mind blank.

  Natalie was pacing the floor. “The coach leaves soon, Mother,” she said anxiously as Ellen walked into the room and tossed aside her cloak.

  “I know,” she said softly, and continued to the bed, where she withdrew the money pouch from her pocket and dumped the contents on the coverlet. Staring down at the roll of bills, Ellen felt the nausea roil about in her belly, threatening to erupt. How was it she had ever managed to convince herself that she had reasonable cause to do what she did? Even if that money gave her the freedom she craved, even if it freed Natalie from a certain untenable future, it simply did not belong to her. It was Liam’s money; Liam’s hope. It belonged to him, and she had betrayed his trust…did she really think she could steal from him, too?

  �
�Mother, what are you doing?” Natalie cried. “We’ll miss the coach!”

  Ellen sighed, sank onto the edge of the bed, and held out her hand for Natalie. Reluctantly, the girl put her small hand in her palm. “Do you want to go to France, Natalie?” she asked softly.

  Natalie dropped her gaze, looked at her boots. She did not answer for a long moment, but finally said, “No,” her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Then we shan’t go,” Ellen said emphatically. “I’ve a better idea.”

  Natalie’s head snapped up; she looked at her mother suspiciously. “May we go home? To London?”

  Ellen shook her head and gave her daughter a smile that shone straight from her heart. “No, Natalie, not London. We are going to Laria.”

  Twenty-nine

  In Norwich, the clerk at the public coach station did not remember seeing a woman and young girl coming from King’s Lynn. “The King’s Lynn coach and one from Thetford come at about the same time every day,” he said to Liam. “I can’t rightly say if I would have noticed, what with all the hubbub.”

  Hubbub. Mary Queen of Scots, did all of life pass these clerks by? “Ye’d have noticed this one, ye would,” Liam insisted. “Tall, quite bonny. The lass just like her mother.”

  “I’m sorry, I do not recall,” he said, and started to turn away, but Liam put a hand on his arm.

  “Think again,” he said low.

  The clerk looked at his hand, then at Liam, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “I beg your pardon, sir, but does the lady know you are trying to reach her?”

  His frustration was getting in the way of good soldiering, and Liam instantly retreated behind a forced smile. “Ah, I see ye’ve found me out, no?” He put a hand to his nape, rubbed it. “All right, then, here ’tis. The truth is that the lady and I, we’ve had a wee falling out. I’ve no’ been as…er…constant as I should have been.”

  “Ah,” the clerk said, nodding, exchanging a purely male smile with Liam.

  “She’s, ah…a wee bit miffed with me, then,” he said, looking sheepish.

  “I completely understand, sir.”

  “What of the coaches bound for the sea?” Liam asked, before the clerk could understand anything more.

  “The sea, you say?” he asked, fully in Liam’s camp now, and wrinkled his brow as he looked at his log. “It really all depends, sir. Your, ah…friend might have taken a coach to Ipswich if she had in mind to cross the sea—” He paused, looked over Liam’s shoulder and whispered conspiratorially, “Do you think it’s as bad as that?”

  Liam shrugged, feigned a helpless look. “I canna rightly say. The female brain is no’ something I’m adept at understanding.”

  “No man is, sir,” the clerk snorted. “Ipswich would be the logical direction if she thought to eventually cross the sea. But if not Ipswich, I’d suggest perhaps Yarbrough. But she’d not find more than a fishing boat there, so it’s quite possible she might have journeyed to Cromer, or Sheringham, for a little sun by the seashore, although the cliffs—”

  “The coach to Ipswich,” Liam interrupted him, before the clerk gave him a discourse on the many coastal attractions. “When does it depart, then?”

  “Twice daily, sir. At nine o’clock in the morning, and then again at three. Shall I reserve your fare?”

  He almost agreed, but stopped himself. What, was he to chase her to Ipswich, now? On no more grounds than this man’s guess? This chase, he was beginning to see, was more and more absurdly unreasonable—he couldn’t be entirely certain she had even come this way at all, much less go traipsing after her to God knew where. For all he knew, she had gone to Peterborough, or Cambridge. It was possible she never even left King’s Lynn, a bloody annoying thought that had occurred to him once he was miles from there.

  “Sir?”

  Liam looked up. “Suppose she had come to Norwich and simply asked after lodging—which inn would she have been directed to, then?”

  “The Westwick Arms, just round the corner there and toward the center of town.”

  “Any other?”

  “Not that I would recommend, no sir.”

  Liam straightened, dug in his pocket for one of his last crowns and tossed it on the counter. “Thank ye kindly…and if ye happen to remember aught else, ye can find me at the Westwick Arms.”

  “Good luck, sir,” the clerk said, pocketing the crown.

  Aye, good luck. He was fairly certain he’d spent all the good luck he was going to get. Liam tipped his hat, adjusted his knapsack, and walked out of the station in the direction the clerk had indicated. This was preposterous! He was down to his last few pounds, had nothing to show for it but a hole in the bottom of his boot. It was loathsome to even think of going home like this, empty-handed and having failed so miserably in his mission. But what else could he do? Spend his last few pounds in some mad dash across the English countryside after a woman? Particularly when he had no clue, no real intuition, no evidence of where she might have gone? She could be in Scotland for all he knew!

  Face up to it, then, ye goddamn fool! Ye’ve been handed a good drubbing and ye’ve no one to blame but yerself for thinking with yer jock instead of yer soldier’s mind, ye bloody imbecile!

  Oh, aye, he had quite bungled this one, hadn’t he? By the time he reached the Westwick Arms, Liam’s already foul humor was worsening. He marched up to the desk clerk, dropped his knapsack, and put both hands flat on the counter before him.

  The young man behind the counter seemed quite startled; he reared back, blinking big doelike brown eyes. “M-might I assist you, sir?” he asked, his wide-eyed gaze now traveling Liam’s scar.

  “Aye, ye might. A room, and be quick about it, then.”

  The man hastily pulled out a ledger, asked his name, and peeked up at him as if he expected him to come across the counter at any moment. He handed Liam the key and asked timidly, “Will that be all, sir?”

  Liam took the key and leaned forward until he was just a few inches from the cowardly clerk. “No. I am looking for a woman in the company of a wee lass, about so tall,” he said, indicating with his hand Natalie’s height. “The woman, she is bonny, with lovely blond hair and a fair complexion. Has she sought lodging here?”

  “I, ah…I’m not certain sir. I could, ah…I could check the names on our register.”

  “Farnsworth. Miss Ellen Farnsworth.”

  The man opened the ledger in which he had just registered Liam and ran his finger down a list of names. When his finger reached Liam’s entry, he looked up, shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we’ve no one by that name.”

  Ah…she hadn’t used her own name, of course. What name, then? “Peasedown!” he snapped.

  The man frowned, but ran his finger down the ledger all the same, squinting this time. “Umm…no Peasedown.” He moved to shut the ledger, but Liam slapped his hand on it, forcing it open again.

  “Look again! Fitzpatrick! Allen! Miller! I donna care what name, just look again!” he shouted, jabbing the ledger with his finger. “A bonny woman with a wee lass! Is that so hard to recall, then?”

  The man gasped as he took a timid step backward. “I beg your pardon sir,” he said weakly, his eyes now wide with terror. “But I do not believe we have an unescorted woman with a small child staying at this establishment.”

  Liam slapped the countertop, muttered a Gaelic curse beneath his breath that essentially condemned the young man to the life of a toad, and before the toad could hop off and summon help, he pivoted sharply and ascended the stairs to the room he had paid to let with what was almost his last pound.

  Fortunately, Cambridge being the intellectual town that it was, there was quite a well-stocked lending library and there were two fine bookstores, which were all Ellen and Natalie needed to find Loch Chon. Poring over maps of Scotland, they finally found it and, their heads together, stared at the little blue mark northwest of Glasgow.

  “Do you think it is very far away?” Natalie asked, tracing her finger to th
e edge of the map, which represented the very top of England.

  “I do believe it is,” Ellen said thoughtfully.

  “Then shouldn’t we set out soon?”

  Ellen smiled at Natalie. “I think we should set out straightaway.”

  They departed Cambridge the very next morning.

  It was, however, a long, arduous journey north, full of different sorts of people (and smells, Natalie helpfully pointed out), badly rutted roads, and stark, windswept landscapes. But by the time they reached Scotland, the barren landscape was giving way to gently rolling hills where sheep grazed and dark ponds glistened in the weak sun. The climate was colder, and the trees had turned brilliant shades of red, yellow, and purple. Ruined castle keeps dotted the landscape here and there, giving rise to Natalie’s active imagination, and she regaled Ellen (as well as their fellow passengers) with tales of her princess, who, it seemed, led a rather extraordinary life, fighting off the English when she wasn’t bearing children, withstanding capture several times over by fierce knights, and being forced against her will to marry (Ellen counted four such unfortunate events), then finally succumbing to true love and happiness with the last knight (who resembled Liam, Ellen couldn’t help notice, what with the scar). Together, princess and warrior reclaimed the princess’s castle, where she, her knight, and at least a dozen children resided happily ever after.

  For once Ellen didn’t mind Natalie’s fantasy, for the girl was as happy as Ellen had seen her since leaving Cornwall more than two years ago. She stayed glued to the small coach window, studying every feature of the landscape, pointing out all sights of interest to her fellow passengers. They all looked when so prompted, and Ellen began to appreciate the stark beauty of Scotland. It was easy to see why Liam loved it. Easy to understand why he had found London so confining.