“Well, I’m not sleeping in there with the lads,” she said, indicating the hidden room behind them.
“I reckon ye can sleep atop the bed,” he returned. “We can straighten up the covers if trouble comes calling.” He remained fairly certain that the only question was when trouble would arrive, but with the coach overturned and his head bashed in, Mary had done the only thing possible to gain them some time.
Moving with exaggerated care, as if she thought he might break, she stood again and walked over to the bed. “You want me to sleep here?” she mused, touching the quilted coverlet. “All by myself?”
“Lass, dunnae tease me tonight,” he protested, hoping that closing one eye would stop the room from spinning, then opening them both again when it didn’t.
She regarded him for a long moment, her silhouette lined with silver in the moonlight. “I won’t lie down to sleep unless it’s with you by my side, Arran,” she said finally, and lifted the folded blanket from the foot of the bed. Then she dragged the other chair set on the opposite side of the hearth over beside his, curled into it with a sensuous grace that even a dead man would have appreciated, and pulled the blanket over both of them.
Well, it wasn’t a declaration of undying love, but as she reached over to take his hand and twine her fingers with his, he decided that for tonight it was enough.
He awoke with a start, not certain what he’d heard, but knowing that something was amiss. Through the squint of his eyes he could see the first light of dawn edging into the east-facing window. Beside him Mary breathed softly. Ignoring the keen ache of his skull he held his breath, listening.
Then he heard it again. A horse whinnying, the sound immediately echoed by a second animal. The Campbells had caught up to them.
“Mary,” he whispered, pushing to his feet and grabbing onto both arms of her chair to keep his balance.
She awoke immediately. “Are they here?”
“Aye. I think so, anyway. Wake up Peter. Stay back away from the windows.”
She rose with an ease that made him slightly jealous and moved quickly and quietly into the storage closet. Arran gathered up the blanket and refolded it before he set it back across the foot of the bed. His head felt clearer, but his left eye remained blurry. If they had to flee either on horseback or in a coach, he would likely find himself unconscious again. Thank God Mary had thought to seek out her estranged aunt.
“Do we bring oot the weapons?” Peter asked, tucking in his rough-hewn work shirt as he emerged from the closet.
“Nae. First we’ll try Mary’s way.” He sent her a quick smile as she glided back into the bedchamber, then returned his gaze to Peter. “Move the chair back across the hearth, will ye? Quietly.”
“Aye.” The footman lifted Mary’s chair and carefully carried it back where it belonged, even placing the feet back into the divots left in the blue carpet laid out there.
“Is everything else inside?”
Her green eyes wide with obvious worry, Mary nodded. “Along with some bread and water. Hurry, Arran. If it’s my father, he will search the house for us.”
Downstairs a door opened and closed quickly. As much as he preferred a straight-up fight to sneaking about, this way held much less risk for the woman he loved. And he wasn’t precisely at his best this morning. With one last look about the room, he motioned them toward the storage closet. “Let’s go, then.”
Going down onto his hands and knees to crawl through the absurdly wee opening made his head pound all over again, but he clenched his jaw and did it anyway. If nothing else, having a coach whack him on the skull would discourage him from drinking too much in the future; this particular aching head was not something he cared to repeat, no matter how fine or plentiful the spirits.
Once they were all inside, Mary nudged him out of the way and leaned out to pull the stack of hat boxes in front of the opening, then quietly lowered the door, closing them in. Even with the lantern lit it seemed dim, but he wasn’t willing to risk any light being seen through some crack in the wall.
Sitting back, he shook the still-snoring Howard until with a sputtering curse the coachman sat upright. Arran favored him with a pointed look, and he subsided. “Bloody Campbells,” he muttered. “Begging your pardon, my lady.”
Evidently Howard was part of their clan, now. “From here on, we’re quiet as church mice,” Arran murmured, then took Mary’s arm to draw her up against his side. With a slow breath, sending up a quiet prayer that everything would go as they hoped, he leaned sideways and blew out the lantern.
Settling in as comfortably as he could against the unfinished wall, he put his left arm around Mary’s shaking shoulders. “I’ll nae let anything happen to ye, lass,” he breathed against her hair.
“I’m more worried about you,” she returned almost soundlessly.
“As long as no one falls asleep and begins snoring, we have nothing to fear, I reckon.”
In the past his family had once—or more than once—been accused of being Jacobites, of supporting James and then Bonnie Prince Charlie’s claim to the throne of England. Some of his ancestors had been Jacobites. Because of that, most of the houses in the Highlands boasted so-called priest holes for hiding Scots being sought after by Sasannach soldiers. And now they were in a half-Sasannach household hiding away from the clans, including his own.
With his free right hand he reached into his coat pocket for the pistol he’d placed there. No, he didn’t want to harm her father or any other Campbell, because that would hurt her. Neither, though, was he surrendering Mary. Not to anyone—Campbell, MacLawry, or Saint Bridget and all the heavenly angels.
Chapter Sixteen
Sarah Mallister sat on the edge of her bed and waited to be surprised.
As much as she would have preferred to be dressed in her finest gown with her hair pulled up and blush on her cheeks, the sun hadn’t yet shown the merest sliver over the eastern hills. Under normal circumstances she and Sean would have remained in bed for at least another hour.
“Sean, don’t pace,” she whispered.
Her husband stopped halfway between the bed and the door. “Have you considered that perhaps we should be hiding ourselves behind that wall?”
“They’ve known for nineteen years where to find us. And frankly, I’m more looking forward to this than I’m worried about it.”
Stepping more quietly, he moved over to sit beside her. “If we can manage it, I’d like to punch Fendarrow in the nose, myself.”
She smiled, nervous anticipation running through her. “I don’t think a little suspicious hostility would be out of place. He’s never bothered to come calling before, after all.” Sarah took her husband’s hand. “Just remember that this isn’t about us. It’s about protecting our young guests.”
Of course her niece had only come calling because their coach had overturned and Lord Arran had been injured. They had literally had nowhere else to go. But they had come instead of waiting about to be caught, and she’d made the acquaintance of a brave young lady she would otherwise never have met. And a MacLawry. For goodness’ sake, she wasn’t certain even she would have had the courage to fall not just for a member of clan MacLawry, but for the MacLawry’s younger brother.
Susan’s knock came at the door, more strident than usual. “Come in,” Sarah called, and the door cracked open.
“Mrs. Mallister,” the housekeeper said a trifle unsteadily, “you have a caller.”
“At this hour?” she asked, sending the servant an encouraging smile. She wasn’t certain whether they could be overheard or not, but it was a small and quiet cottage, and so she would assume a visitor could make out every word she spoke. “Is it Mrs. Lester? I asked her to send me word when Sally went into labor.”
“No, ma’am. It’s … It’s Lord Fendarrow.”
“What?”
“That’s the name he gave me. And there are at least a dozen men with him.”
“Good heavens!”
“Fendarrow? Wh
at the devil does your brother want of us?” Sean demanded.
“I have no idea,” Sarah returned, not having to feign the trepidation in her voice. “Do you think something’s happened to my father? Why else would he come here, Sean? It’s been nineteen years!”
“We’d best go find out. Tell him we’ll be down in a moment, Susan. I’m not meeting him in my nightshirt.”
The maid curtsied. “Should Levitt offer them tea?”
“Not until I find out what he wants,” Sean said loudly, offering her a reassuring smile.
Susan shut the door again, and Sarah let out her breath. “I’d nearly forgotten that I don’t actually want to see him,” she muttered, standing and hurrying for her wardrobe.
Her husband strode over to take her arm, turning her to face him. “Just keep in mind why he’s here,” he whispered, and kissed her. “I, for one, have no intention of allowing him to do to someone else what he did to you.”
With a smile she kissed him back. “What he did to me doesn’t matter, because he couldn’t separate us. Now stomp angrily into your boots, and let’s get this over with.”
They hadn’t had a chance to warn their guests that trouble had arrived, but Sarah hadn’t heard as much as a squeak coming from down the short hallway. All she could do was presume that they knew, and that they’d closed themselves into the hidden room. The rest would be up to her and Sean.
Her hands shook a little as she shed her night rail and donned a plain green and yellow muslin, then brushed out her hair and pinned it into a simple knot. Sean dressed in his dark, conservative banker’s clothes, and then together they left the bedchamber and descended the stairs.
Levitt hovered in the front entry, looking annoyed that he’d only had time to don his trousers with his night shirt hastily tucked into the waist. If given the choice the butler would have remained dressed all night, poised to greet their visitors. That, though, would have raised far too many suspicions, at a moment when they couldn’t afford any at all.
“Mrs. Mallister, Lord Fendarrow is in the front room,” he said. “Two other gentlemen are in there with him. Another nine are in front of the house, watering their horses.”
“Horses?” Sarah repeated, frowning. “He didn’t come in a coach?”
“Not that I could see, ma’am.”
She squared her shoulders. “Well. Let’s go see what’s brought Walter Campbell all the way to Manchester on horseback, then.”
When she stepped into the sitting room her gaze went to the sharp-faced man with the slicked black hair who stood by the far window. The resemblance to a young Walter was striking. For a moment she felt like the eighteen-year-old girl who’d begged her older brother not to allow her to be cast out of the family. Sarah shook herself. This man might resemble the Walter she’d last known, but he wasn’t her brother. A nephew, more likely. Perhaps the nasty Calder that her niece had described. She turned her head.
“You look older,” a dry, precise voice said. Seated in Sean’s favorite chair, a lean, gray-haired man crossed his ankles and gazed at her over steepled fingers.
So much for niceties. “What’s happened?” she asked, facing him directly. “Is it Father?”
A muscle in his cheek jumped. “No. The last I heard, His Grace was well.”
She nodded, swallowing. That couldn’t have been sympathy she fleetingly saw on his face. More likely he was worried that perhaps he’d guessed wrong about his daughter’s whereabouts and he’d come here for nothing. “Then why are you here? I’ve kept my word; I haven’t left Manchester since we purchased this house, and Sean only went to London last year for business.”
“Stop prattling on, will you?” Walter pushed to his feet. “I’m going to ask you a question, and you are going to answer me completely and truthfully. If you lie, if you keep anything from me, I will know—and I will burn this house to the ground.”
“I will not be threatened in my own house,” Sean growled, taking a step forward.
“I’m not speaking to you,” Walter commented, his gaze remaining on his sister.
Sarah was fairly certain this scene would have played the same way even if they hadn’t been hiding runaways in their closet, even if they had been genuinely surprised to see a dozen Campbell clansmen milling around her house. She put a hand out, stopping her husband’s advance even as the two younger men in the room moved up to flank her brother. “Ask your question, then,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I have no reason to lie to you about anything.”
“I don’t know about that, Aunt Mòrag,” the one who looked like a younger version of Walter said.
“Whose boy are you, then?” she asked.
“Your sister Bearnas’s.” He sketched a lazy bow. “Charles Calder, at your service.”
“Don’t bother introducing yourself, Charles,” Walter broke in, his scowl deepening. “You won’t be meeting her again.”
“For heaven’s sake, Walter, stop threatening us and ask your question!”
“Very well.” For a bare moment he clenched his jaw, but she had no idea if it was anger or embarrassment or worry. Given her own experience with him, she tended to believe it was embarrassment. “A week ago my daughter, Mary, was kidnapped by Lord Arran MacLawry. We came across their wrecked coach last night, not five miles from here. And so my question to you, Sarah, is: have you seen them?”
She put a hand to her chest. “Mary? Oh, no! That’s horrible! I—No, of course I haven’t seen her.”
“How would you know?” Charles Calder asked slyly. “You haven’t seen her since she was two years old.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sean broke in. “We’ve spent nineteen years here, looking at the same neighbors. The last stranger to come through here was that fellow selling Paris silks. What was his name? Something Chambers. And that was three months ago. And so yes, we would know if we saw a strange woman about.”
“For the last damned time, banker, I am not talking to you.”
Sarah stepped between her husband and her brother. “Sean is telling you the truth. If we’d seen anyone being dragged about by some man, I would certainly remember it.”
“So she didn’t come to find you and ask for aid?”
“If she did, I certainly would have done what I could to help her. Whatever’s happened between us, I have nothing against your daughter. And to be taken against her will—she must be terrified. Have you gone to see Robert Daily?”
“No, I haven’t. The difficulty I have with this,” her brother said after a moment, “is that I don’t see where else she could go but here. I daresay Mary would find it irresistible, especially after their coach rolled over. She would hope to find you sympathetic to her plight, and that you would harbor them until they could find other transportation.”
“And then there was the blood we found there. One of them is injured.”
She looked at her nephew, using every bit of wit she possessed to follow only the clues they gave her, to reach the conclusions she would logically come to given what they were saying. “I—This doesn’t sound precisely like a kidnapping,” she said hesitantly. “I thought you meant she would come here to ask for my help in getting back home.”
Walter closed the distance between them and put a finger under her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “It is precisely what I say it is. Now. Are they here?”
Sarah met his gaze squarely. “They are not,” she enunciated the same way he had, not having to pretend the uneasy quaver at the end.
“Then you won’t mind if we look for ourselves.” Releasing her, he angled his chin toward the depths of the house.
Her nephew left the room and headed back toward the small kitchen, while the second young man none too gently set Levitt aside and opened the front door, whistling. Immediately another half-dozen men, some of whom she recognized as her own relatives or husbands of her former friends and allies, tramped into her house.
“After what they’ve done to you, Sarah,” Sean roared, his face flushing,
“I will not have these … Campbells in my house!”
She turned around to face him, not certain how much of his anger was feigned. Not much of it, she would guess. “Sean. Let them paw through our things. It’s the only way they’ll go and leave us be.”
“Yes, it is,” her brother agreed.
“And I hope you realize,” she continued, facing the Marquis of Fendarrow again, “that I would never do anything—anything—that would give you reason to appear on my doorstep.”
“Perhaps not.” The second young man returned to the sitting room, and Walter walked over to the doorway. “And perhaps you would leap at the chance to cause me harm. Either way, Donnell here will keep you company while I go see what sort of life you’ve made for yourselves. At the least I imagine it will be amusing.”
And yet you’re the one whose daughter has run off with a MacLawry, she wanted to say, but kept her mouth shut. Instead she grabbed her husband’s clenched fist and pulled him over to sit on the couch beside her. “I suppose we should be flattered that he thinks we’re so clever,” she muttered, knowing Donnell could hear her.
“I’d be flattered if he fell down the stairs and broke his bloody neck,” Sean grunted.
She snorted. “If I ever had any doubts that I chose the right man to give my loyalty to, this has answered it. I really do hate the Campbells, you know.”
“As do I. All but one of them.” Slowly he uncurled his fist and grasped her hand in his.
“Thank you for that, but I happen to be a Mallister.” And hopefully soon the one other Campbell for whom she had very recently developed a surprising affection would be a MacLawry.
* * *
If she’d had a pocket watch, Mary wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see that four or five or six hours had passed since they’d taken refuge in their little hole in the wall. She didn’t think she’d ever sat so still for so long in her life, but it still didn’t feel like enough. She slowed her breath, tried to slow her heartbeat—which was quite difficult considering that the entire right side of her body touched Arran.
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