What Happens in Scotland

by Jennifer McQuiston

“No.” Georgette cleared the embarrassment from her throat. “I mean, no, you are free to associate with whomever you want. Servants just need to be more careful about what they say in public. Your comportment reflects upon your employer.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun,” Elsie muttered, but any further inappropriate words she may have planned were captured in a sneeze that shook the maid’s whole body.

  Georgette sighed. It was the third such reflexive sneeze in the past hour. Either Elsie was catching a summer cold—which seemed unlikely, given the unseasonably warm weather—or it was yet another reminder that in addition to finding Mr. MacKenzie, they also needed to locate the butcher and return the kitten.

  She looked around, taking note of her surroundings and searching the crowd for either a large, blood-spattered butcher or a man with a brown beard and eyes the color of absinthe. To their right, a man climbed up a ladder to string colored paper lanterns along the Blue Gander’s broken front facade. His height and beard looked about right for Mr. MacKenzie, but when he finished his task and turned around to face her, she could see his face was too thin, his eyes too blue.

  Disappointment settled over her. Moraig seemed larger than it had this morning, possibly a town of several thousand people. How was she supposed to find MacKenzie when everywhere she looked there were brawny Scotsmen with beards? If she had to go about staring into every resident’s eyes, it was going to be a long afternoon, indeed.

  “Are they preparing for some sort of celebration?” Georgette asked, nodding toward the paper lanterns.

  “ ’Tis Bealltainn, miss.”

  “What is Bealltainn?” The word sounded foreign on Georgette’s lips, but carried a hint of the local dialect her ears were coming to recognize.

  “The May festival.” Elsie offered Georgette an impish smile. “There will be dancing tonight, and a bonfire. Lots of dark corners, and opportunities for stolen kisses.”

  Georgette grimaced. Bealltainn sounded like just the sort of activity she usually avoided.

  Then again, so was the evening crowd at the Blue Gander.

  She pulled Elsie south along Main Street, heading in the direction she had plunged that morning. The smells and sounds she remembered from the dawn’s dash to freedom had shifted, and instead of frying dough and market voices raised in trade, the unmistakable scent of roasting meat and the sound of hammers filled the air. Preparations for Bealltainn appeared in full swing, which made it all the more imperative she find MacKenzie and the butcher and escape before the impending revelry made it an impossible task.

  “Tell me more about Mr. MacKenzie,” she directed Elsie as they walked, the kitten bundled tight against her chest.

  The maid offered her mistress a knowing gaze, her hazel eyes shining in amusement. “I thought you were anxious to be done with the man.”

  “I am.”

  She was. But the curiosity Georgette felt about him was like an electric current in her veins. She hummed with the need to know more. “In order to find him as quickly as possible, it would help if I knew more about him. Where he goes. What he’s like.”

  The maid shrugged. “What else is there to tell? The man is handsome as sin, and there will be throngs of women grateful you don’t want him.” She grinned. “When I think about how he tossed the butcher through the window . . . well, what I wouldn’t give to wake up to that one in my bed.”

  “The butcher?” Georgette asked, trying to follow the maid’s erratic train of thought.

  “MacKenzie.” Elsie’s lips stretched wider. “Once you’re done with him, of course.”

  A flash of jealousy turned Georgette’s stomach, end over end. She clutched the kitten tighter, confused by her body’s unexpected reaction. What did it matter if Elsie sighed like a love-struck schoolgirl in need of a kiss whenever she mentioned MacKenzie’s name?

  Georgette didn’t need his kiss—she needed to be rid of him.

  “Treats women well, that one does,” Elsie continued, oblivious to her mistress’s unanticipated turmoil. “Never seemed close to settling down, though, until you showed up.” She leaned in closer. “Of course, there’s the rumors.”

  Georgette pursed her lips. She could well imagine the rumors that would trail a man of Mr. MacKenzie’s obvious . . . virility.

  Elsie looked right, then left. “Some kind of tragedy. In his youth,” she whispered.

  “That doesn’t sound so sordid,” Georgette whispered back, though she really had no idea why they were speaking in such low, hushed tones.

  Elsie scanned the people on either side of them before stepping closer to whisper behind a cupped hand. “It was apparently quite the town scandal some years ago. A girl got herself with child, and claimed someone else was the father. MacKenzie claimed it was his.”

  Georgette stilled, trying to imagine such a terrible thing. “What happened?”

  “That was before I came to Moraig. But the way I hear it, the girl pitched herself over a bridge soon after, and MacKenzie went a little mad, fighting any scrapper who cared to take a swing at him. Gave him a bit of a reputation. But I don’t see the problem. Sometimes a body needs to use their fists.”

  “Not in London,” Georgette said, weak at the thought. She couldn’t imagine ever facing a scenario in which she could strike someone.

  “Well, perhaps you need to get out more, miss.”

  Silence descended. Really, what was there to say after such a personal, tragic bit of gossip?

  They walked on. Georgette thought about the laughing rogue who had beckoned her back to bed this morning, tried to imagine him as a hurt young man taking out his frustrations on anyone close enough to suffer his fists. Her heart squeezed for him.

  “He’s the son of the Earl of Kilmartie,” Elsie offered next.

  “The son of an earl?” Georgette exclaimed. She had trouble reconciling the hard musculature she had ogled this morning with the soft, pampered life of a peer. Why, she had thought the man was a footman! Shouldn’t they be referring to him as Lord MacKenzie? Her cheeks burned in surprise and mortification before her mind leaped to a new destination. “Will we find him at the castle, then?”

  Elsie shook her head. “He’s not the heir. Lives in town. And the earl doesn’t come anywhere near the Blue Gander. But MacKenzie’s different. You’d hardly know they were kin. Seems more like the common folk, with his skulking about and that great, shaggy beard.”

  That description of the beard seemed in keeping with Georgette’s memory, at least. “Should we try his house in town then?” she pressed, unwilling to let even a single opportunity to find him slip by.

  “I don’t know.” Elsie pursed her lips and glanced up at the sun, which hovered just overhead. “This time of day, I think he’d be working.”

  Frustration pulled at Georgette with a thousand tiny fingers. Sorting this out with Elsie was like conversing with a soothsayer, each new twist to the conversation revealing hidden depths. She sighed. Clearly the girl had not told her everything she knew about MacKenzie. “What is his profession?” she asked, wondering if it might not be easier just to torture the information out of her new maid.

  “He’s the town solicitor,” Elsie said with an air of distraction. She turned her head and smiled invitingly at a gentleman who passed by to their left. It wasn’t MacKenzie—this man’s beard was longer and speckled with gray, but he leered at Elsie in a way that very much brought to mind the way MacKenzie had looked at her this morning.

  Georgette gave herself a hard mental shake. She was seeing the man in every shadow, but inching far too slowly toward seeing him in the flesh. If he was a solicitor, he wasn’t a gentleman, at least not in the sense she was used to. And it was still difficult to reconcile the muscled physique in her memory with such a bookish profession. But this, finally, was a clue worth following.

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?” she de
manded. “Presumably he has an office we could visit.”

  “Aye, he lets an office in north Moraig. Serves his clients ginger water and cakes, even the guilty ones.” Elsie pulled her attention away from the retreating gentleman and skirted an awkward pause. An uncharacteristic blush stained her cheeks. “I mean . . . so I’ve heard.”

  “Elsie.” Georgette stopped dead in her tracks. “What aren’t you telling me?” A fearful suspicion became tangled in her mind. “Have you interacted with Mr. MacKenzie in a manner more significant than serving him a pint of ale?”

  Elsie shrugged in that odd, one-shouldered affectation she so favored. “Once or twice. In my old position, of course.”

  “Your position? You mean, at the Blue Gander?”

  “Before that.” Elsie jutted her chin out, but Georgette could hear the hesitance in her voice. “I used to work . . . behind the Gander.”

  Georgette’s hand fell away in shock. “You are a prostitute?” she asked, her throat going dry. Her feet were frozen, but her thoughts were anything but still.

  Had Elsie done that? With the man who was currently—if temporarily—Georgette’s husband?

  “Was.” Elsie shifted her balance from foot to foot. “I was a prostitute. And not a prostitute, really. I just stepped out with the occasional man who caught my eye.”

  “In the alley,” Georgette pointed out. “That’s not precisely a traditional place for courting.”

  “There’s no need to look at me like that,” Elsie said, peevish now. “You knew about it last night, when you offered me the position. And it is not as bad as you think. It was a right fine life, until MacKenzie intervened.”

  Anger flashed through Georgette. She did not want to judge Elsie for her choices, no more than she judged herself for falling prey to her first ill-designed marriage. If the maid had chosen to do those things, there was no doubt in Georgette’s mind she had done so willingly, or at least tolerably. But the man in this sordid story . . . it was entirely too tempting to judge him.

  Even if he did serve his clients cakes and ginger water.

  “Did Mr. MacKenzie have need of your . . . services?” Georgette’s voice roughened with distaste. “Or abuse you in some way?”

  Elsie’s eyes widened. “Oh no, miss, you have it all wrong.”

  “He tried to prosecute you, then?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Elsie’s face twisted. “He helped me, last spring when the town rector charged me with public indecency. Stood up with me at my court hearing, and didn’t charge me a ha’penny either. MacKenzie looks out for those of us who find themselves on the wrong side of things. But he said he couldn’t protect me if I kept at it, and helped get me the job serving pints at the Blue Gander instead.”

  The relief that stole over Georgette at learning of MacKenzie’s good deed disturbed her almost as much as the earlier concern that he might have been someone worth hating. She shook herself from the thought. It would not do to develop any kind of attachment to the man, or to feel solidarity with his methods.

  One did not feed or pet the creature one planned to set free.

  “I am not ashamed of what I was,” Elsie went on, eyeing yet another passing gentleman with a feral gleam of interest. “I enjoy men. And they enjoyed paying me for a romp.”

  That made Georgette blink. She had no comprehension of what made the servant’s color run so high, or caused her to use the word “enjoy” and “men” in the same breath. Coupling was a quick, fumbling act, performed as nothing more than a conjugal duty. To be sure, she had dreamed of more. It seemed there should be more to it. It seemed there should be more to her.

  She felt again that quickened step to her blood, the awareness of self that had so surprised her this morning when she had faced the audacity of Mr. MacKenzie’s bare chest. Perhaps there was more to her.

  Pity she couldn’t explore it further.

  The kitten stirred against the fabric of her walking dress, mewing its irritation at waking to find a wool-clad human holding it instead of its mother. Georgette tucked the kitten up against her chin as she sorted out what to do next. It occurred to her she might need to change up her priorities. The little thing’s life would be in jeopardy if she didn’t provide for it soon. She scanned the street for a tea shop or café where they might request a bit of warmed milk. “We should probably try to find this kitten something to eat,” she told Elsie.

  “I wouldn’t mind a spot of food myself.” Elsie patted her hip suggestively. “Need to keep my figure up in case this ladies’ maid position doesn’t suit. But I thought you wanted to find MacKenzie right quick.”

  “I do.” Georgette took a deep breath. The need to locate her mysterious Scotsman had thickened into something indistinct, complicated by the surprising turn in the conversation with Elsie. It seemed she was dealing with more than a rogue in her bed—the man she sought had layers she had not anticipated.

  She wanted to find him with new urgency now, and not only to demand an annulment. She wanted to soften her memory of the man as a rakehell with the heroic image Elsie had painted of him. She wanted to offer an apology for her unladylike behavior this morning, courtesy of the chamber pot. And even if it was inappropriate, even if it was dangerous, she wanted to experience that awful stirring in her stomach at the sight of him, just once more before returning to a staid life in London.

  “And as soon as we eat,” Georgette said, her heart already tripping in anticipation, “you must show me exactly where Mr. MacKenzie’s office is.”

  Chapter 10

  DAVID CAMERON WAS as hard at work as James had ever seen him.

  Which was to say Moraig’s magistrate was bent over a manger in his father’s stables, arse to the rafters, surrounded by a puddle of skirts and enjoying his afternoon a little too much.

  For a moment—a disturbing, anger-driven sliver of time—jealousy roared through James’s limbs. He imagined he would find both his horse and his pretend wife here, used to ill-form by his former friend. It would not be the first time Cameron had taken something from James, only to discard it when he grew bored.

  He almost hauled the man upright and called him out. But then James caught sight of falling-down brown hair and a white servant’s cap, and realized the woman in question was not the blond-haired thief who now occupied a place front and center in his memory.

  The anger leached away, leaving him drained and shaking. Dear God, if the thought of finding the woman he sought under this man threatened to send him into a flying fit of rage, it was no wonder he had acted so impulsively last night.

  But of course, this was not just any man. This was David Cameron. And the insult would have been too great to ignore.

  The smell of straw and leather hammered his senses as he considered what do to with the indelicate situation he and William had just blundered their way into. The black mare pulled hard against the reins, as if instructing him to walk away. Beside him, William shuffled his own impatience. “Should we do something?” his brother asked, his voice a low whisper. “Save her, perhaps?”

  A woman’s gasp of pleasure reached James’s ears. “No. I don’t think she objects.” He took a step backward, intending to withdraw to the brighter sunshine outside and wait for the pair to be finished. Even though they hadn’t been friends for years, James recalled the man’s proclivities from their days at Cambridge.

  This was Cameron. Surely it wouldn’t take very long.

  “Well, I object.” The grim line of William’s jaw conveyed his censure as clearly as his words. “He’s tupping the wench in broad daylight. It doesn’t matter if she is willing. Any woman worth the trouble of wooing is worth a proper bed. The baron would have his head.”

  At the mention of Cameron’s father, James paused, one foot in retreat. That, at least, was something he knew and remembered all too well. Living in your father’s house carried a price. Made you constantl
y question what you were doing, how you conducted yourself, whom you spent time with. Whom you loved.

  It was part of the reason James had left Moraig for Glasgow eleven years ago, burying himself in an apprenticeship with a tyrant of a solicitor. If nothing else, it was a choice he had made for himself. Cameron had escaped Moraig a few months before James, using his father’s money to purchase a commission in the army. But Cameron had discarded more than the dust of Moraig when he left, and therein laid the rub.

  They had both returned to Moraig in the past year, each by his own circuitous path, each for his own reasons. James was the prodigal second son, determined to shrug off his past and change the prevailing opinion of the townsfolk through hard work and self-reliance. Cameron was playing at the heroic second son, with a chest full of damned medals he apparently used to get servants to lift their skirts.

  Patrick Channing was the quiet spine between James’s and David’s more raucous pages. With his history of friendship with both James and David, Patrick had unwittingly disturbed the rigid peace that had just started to spring roots in Moraig.

  Not that Cameron couldn’t do a perfectly good job of disrupting that peace himself.

  James lifted a finger to his lips and shook his head, motioning to William to back up. He pulled on the reins, trying to turn the horse around, but the mare chose that moment to nicker to some unseen inhabitant of the cavernous barn. A shrill neigh answered her back. The horse’s ears swiveled forward, and she began to dance at the edge of her lead, scattering sawdust and shaking the boards beneath her feet.

  With his injured head and still-throbbing shin, it was all James could do just to hang on to the horse. Stealth, at this point in the game, was out of the question.

  The woman beneath David Cameron gave a squeak of surprise. James saw her shove at Cameron’s broad chest. “Please, Mr. Cameron. I . . . I need to get back to the house.”

  The girl was definitely a servant, to show such deference, even in the middle of a torrid embrace. Probably his mother’s parlor maid and forbidden fruit, if the girl’s pale cheeks and worry-filled eyes were any indication.