The fact someone had just tried to kill him—again—confirmed the danger Burton posed more effectively than any courtroom confession. Georgette was in grave danger, and he had a mission to complete.
He swiped a hand across his aching jaw and lumbered to his feet. He trusted Patrick’s judgment. If his wound looked worse than it was, he was wasting time here. He turned back to the saddle.
Patrick’s hand on his shoulder pinned his feet to the ground. “You are in no condition to ride, friend.”
“I don’t have a choice!” James exploded, whirling on the man as his world tilted sideways. “Georgette is in danger, and every second I waste is a second I don’t have!”
Patrick’s eyes squinted in confusion. “Who, pray tell, is Georgette?”
“My wife.” James meant it. He felt it, deep in his bones. She was his.
She only needed to realize it.
“Ah.” Patrick’s eyes narrowed further. “So you found the mysterious Mrs. MacKenzie. I take it your morning’s labors were fruitful then. Where is she now?”
“Kilmartie Castle,” he choked out. “William is protecting her from her cousin and . . .”
“Then you have time for me to at least examine you,” Patrick interrupted gently. “I can’t tell from looking at it if the bullet is lodged somewhere in that thick skull of yours, or if it has severed something important.”
James heaved out a sour breath. His limbs screamed at him to be put to better use finding the magistrate. But his head leaned toward something more rational. Finding Cameron in the midst of Bealltainn would be no easy task. Perhaps a moment’s steady thought while Patrick cleaned up the bullet wound would be time not wasted. He could use the time to sort out a plan and map out his route for Cameron’s likely haunts.
Patrick added, “If you care for this woman, you should spare a minute to make sure you can return yourself to her intact. If William is guarding her, you can be sure she is safe.”
Damned if Patrick wasn’t the calm, annoying voice of reason. James nodded reluctantly. His friend lifted James beneath the arms and propped him against one shoulder. “I’m going to need to shave off some facial hair, to get a better look at the injury,” Patrick said. “Do you want me to merely trim the one spot, or the whole beard?”
James stumbled once and then righted himself. It was a prospect almost as worrying as his concern over Georgette. He had worn his beard for eleven years, ever since the rift with his father. Childish, in some ways, but given how much he physically resembled his father, it had served as a daily reminder he was his own man.
“Do it,” he said. “The entire beard. I find I’ve grown tired of the thing.”
“About bloody time,” Patrick muttered, hefting James’s weight more firmly on his shoulder and groaning under the strain. “Weigh as much as an ox, the lot of you. You’re a Kilmartie, sure enough. It’s time you started acting like one.”
GEORGETTE BURST OUT of the cottage into darkness, her heart pounding a dent in her chest. With Randolph secured by a length of twine she had found around a bundle of kindling, she now faced the decision that had been percolating in her head for the last five minutes.
It was a full mile back to Kilmartie Castle. Then would come the half hour of explanations it would take to convince James’s scowling, suspicious brother she was telling the truth.
And all the while, James could be lying somewhere, injured.
She choked on a sob. Worry for him, and what she might have lost, cemented her decision. She climbed on top of the gray mare Randolph had left tied to a tree and kicked the reluctant animal into a canter toward town.
She made it three miles without finding his body broken on the road, but her luck ran out as the lights of Moraig came into view. She almost trampled a dark object lying in the middle of the moonlit path, and she had to pull up the winded mare and circle back.
She dismounted, and her heart caught up in a tight knot as she recognized James’s money purse, the one she had warned him could tumble far too easily from his coat pocket. He had passed by here, then. Picking up the purse, she knelt in the dark road and panned a hand around the spot. It was dark and moist, as if something had recently soaked into the dust.
Something sharp and smelling of copper. Blood.
Her stomach churned in despair, pushing a wave of bile high into her throat. She clapped a hand to her mouth. Vomiting would not help either of them.
“James!” she screamed, but was answered by nothing but gentle forest noises and her own strained breathing. She looked around wildly. There was no sign of the man or the horse. Whatever had happened to him had been swallowed by the night.
The remaining evidence of trauma, however, was irrefutable.
Terror made her vault back onto the horse and put her heels mercilessly against the mare’s flank.
Another half mile and she found herself blocked by the Bealltainn crush. She could see now why they closed the street to horse and carriage traffic. Even had they permitted horses beyond the wooden barriers that had been put up across the street, it would be impossible to navigate one through such a mob. She swung off the horse before it even came to a walk and then released the gray mare with a slap to her rump. The mare trotted off into the darkness. With any luck, it would make its way to a kinder owner than Randolph had proven to be.
She dove into the crowd, shouldering her way through while looking for a familiar face or landmark, someone she could beg for help. The competing smells of smoke and unwashed bodies pressed in at her, and her panic kicked up as she realized how difficult this was going to be.
She needed to find someone she knew, but the crowd was nothing but a mass of strangers who turned away when she tapped on their shoulders, or else leered at her with ale-laced breath. Beyond the wall of bodies, the bonfire was a fearsome thing, at least fifteen feet tall and billowing smoke. The sound of stringed instruments warming up somewhere near the center of the Main Street crowd grated in her ears. That the townsfolk were here, swallowed by gaiety while James had been shot not a mile away, seemed the cruelest of ironies.
Twenty hard-fought feet into the crowd, she finally spied someone she knew. Joseph Rothven was standing along the edge of a wooden dance floor, tapping his foot to the music. She recognized his lanky build and hunched shoulders, so characteristic of a young man who had attained his full height but not figured out what to do about it. He was staring up at several couples who were already dancing to the mismatched strains of instruments not yet fully tuned.
She plunged toward him and grabbed on to his coat sleeve. “Mr. Rothven,” she panted, trying to catch her breath, which seemed to have been set free along with the horse. “I . . . I need your help.”
He turned to her, his face momentarily confused before sinking into a delighted smile. “Lady Thorold! Have you come to give me another lesson?” He looked around, scanning the congestion of Main Street. “We’ll need to find an alley for privacy.”
Georgette braced her hands on her knees, filling her lungs with great gulps of smoke-filled air. The reminder of what she had purportedly done with this young man did little to calm her screaming nerves. “I . . . I need to find the magistrate,” she gasped over the low roar of the bonfire and the nightmarish band. “Can you tell me where to find him?”
Joseph nodded. “Aye, he’s in the Gander. Saw him there not ten minutes ago, when I stopped by to say hello to Miss Dalrymple.” He grinned, his teeth flashing in the light of the fire. “Are you sure you don’t have five minutes to show me again? There’s one bit that still confuses me, and I don’t want to disappoint Miss Dalrymple later tonight when I have a go with her.”
But Georgette was already spinning away, propelled by fear and a distinct sense of nausea. She didn’t want to know what she had done with this boy, didn’t want to think about anything but finding the magistrate and demanding he muster a group of sturdy men
to scour the woods for any sign of James.
But her feet slowed. That was a cowardly sentiment. Whatever else she may have done last night, she had at least been bold enough to seize the moment and own her truth. She tilted her head back in the young man’s direction. “Mr. Rothven,” she whispered. “What, exactly, did I show you how to do last night?”
“Waltz,” he shouted back, a grin on his face. He motioned with open eagerness to the wooden dance floor. “You taught me how to waltz.”
Her shoulders collapsed, weak with relief. “I don’t think you’ll need another lesson,” she told him. Her former life might have left her ill-prepared to teach a young man the physical pleasures of intimacy, but it had certainly equipped her to instruct a gangly youth how to dance.
She elbowed her way toward the Blue Gander. The establishment rose above the crowd like a watchful tower. Her lack of memories from last night slowed her feet as the individual letters of the sign came into clearer focus.
She had sworn she would not go back. This was no quick visit like this afternoon, when she had been leaning on James for strength and courage. She would be entering the public room this time, the very site where she had conducted herself in a regrettable fashion last night.
She drew a deep breath, her feet inching forward. She had hog-tied her cousin, not half an hour ago. If she could do that, she could certainly brave the public room at the Gander.
Chapter 28
THE CROWD THINNED toward the edges of the street, giving her courage and a straight, clear shot. And so she ran the last fifteen yards to the Gander, taking the steps two at a time before bursting through the doors in a clatter of heels. She tossed her unbound hair from her eyes and skidded to a stop in the ale- and whiskey-soaked air of the place.
A stool scraped across the floor in the sudden, settling silence. Twenty pairs of eyes turned to take her in. Several heads dipped in recognition, as if it was just another night at the Gander to have her come bursting through the doors.
“A round for the prettiest lady in Moraig!” one man shouted, raising his cup.
“A round for the only lady in Moraig who ever set foot inside the Gander!” shouted another.
An approving chorus followed. Pewter tankards pounded on tables, and whistles filled the air. Georgette hovered uncertainly, one foot across the threshold of the barroom.
They thought she was a lady?
“She’s without her husband, lads. I suppose that means there’s a chance for the rest of us tonight,” came a disembodied voice from across the room.
“Come and sit on my lap, like the good lass you were last night.” A portly older gentleman patted the front of his trousers with frightening familiarity.
“I . . . ah, no thank you.” She took a solid step into the room. Just as she had feared, the men all stared at her. Her boots seemed to drag, toes-down, along the floor.
And then she realized they were staring in appreciation, not condemnation.
They smiled at her. Nodded their heads in encouragement. And not one of them regarded her with what she would call disgust, or even disrespect.
For the first time since hearing about her escapades of the previous evening, she wished she could remember. What would it have been like to command this masculine crowd? They hung tonight on her every word and gesture, and she had done no more than walk through the door. She became more sure of herself with each step. The self-induced embarrassment was still there, but it had been shoved into a distant corner. There were more important things to address here, and what she had done last night to enthrall this crowd was not among them.
She put her hands on her hips and met their spellbound gazes squarely. “I’m here for a different purpose tonight, gentlemen.” She turned in a circle. “Can someone please tell me where might I find the magistrate?”
“Right here.” A gentleman rose up from a lone corner table.
Georgette had the fleeting impression of smartly cut clothing and dark blond curls, but her eyes quickly focused on his face. His aristocratic features seemed wildly out of place amid the rugged beards that defined the pub’s other clientele. Worse, his eyes seemed to scour her with open appreciation.
“Stand up gents,” he drawled, not taking his eyes off her. “There’s a lady in our presence.”
Chairs and stools scraped from across the room. Man after man leaped to his feet, and caps were swept off heads in alarming succession, but she moved past them to stop in front of magistrate. “I desperately need your help, Mr. Cameron.”
He offered her a wolfish smile. “I am always willing to help a lady in need.” His gaze dropped to her bodice. “As I was all too willing to demonstrate last night.”
“I don’t want to talk about last night.”
“I’m not surprised.” One brow rose in question. “I doubt MacKenzie gave you as much enjoyment as I would have.”
Georgette slapped a hand down on the table, anger and desperation humming in her limbs. “I need your help to find my husband, Mr. Cameron.”
An uneasy expression replaced his earlier leer. “Sit down and explain yourself.”
She sat down. All around her came the sounds of the men sitting again, and the gradual resumption of their conversations. Cameron, obvious gentleman that he was, sat down last. He regarded her with a sideways grin. If James had been here, she was quite sure the man would have had a fist planted in his face by now. But James was not here.
Which was precisely the reason she was.
“My husband is missing.” Worry made her words shake like a leaf in the wind. “And he . . . he may be injured.”
Cameron leaned back in his chair. “Your husband, is he? That does not match my memory of the events of last night.”
“We were married later, by the blacksmith. And regardless of what role you may have played in the events here last night, I need your help again. Tonight.”
Cameron spread his hands in apology. “If this is about the summons, Lady Thorold, I am truly sorry. Normally, I would not be bothered to help the man. But MacKenzie insisted upon it, and he had enough evidence—”
“This is not about the summons, nor the marriage, nor any rift between you and James,” she interrupted. “He’s been shot, and I am desperately worried for his safety.”
A terrible sound gouged at her ears, and the cold sensation of ale splashing onto her stockings and skirts sent Georgette twisting in her seat. Elsie stood to one side. She wore an old stained apron that no ladies’ maid would have ever been permitted to don, not even when performing the most mundane of chores. One hand was cupped over her mouth. The tray she had been carrying listed sideways on the floor amid now-empty tankards that had not yet come to rest.
“He . . . he’s been shot?” the maid exclaimed, her voice muffled by fingers.
“I don’t know.” Georgette’s gaze returned to Cameron’s sudden hawk-eyed interest. “I . . . I don’t know what to believe. I saw . . .” Her voice hitched.
“What did you see?” Cameron’s voice probed at her, cold and demanding.
“Blood.” She swallowed. “A lot of it. On the road between Kilmartie Castle and Moraig, about a mile east.”
“No body?”
She shook her head. The tears came then, tears she had been holding back. Her whole body began to shake. Dear God, if James had been killed because of her, she could not live with the guilt. She was more than half in love with the man. To think what she might have lost felt like a casket being closed over her while she still breathed.
“No horse?” Cameron pressed.
“No sign of that either,” she choked out.
Cameron stroked his chin. “So he may have been able to ride to safety. You did not pass him on the road?”
“No. And I traveled the route he would have taken had he headed back to Kilmartie Castle.”
“We should check there, tho
ugh.” Cameron was already pushing his chair back. “He may have taken a different route, if he feared for his safety.” He picked up his hat and his gloves. “I’ll find him, do not doubt it.” His jaw hardened. “I owe him that, at the very least.”
“Wait . . .” It was all well and good for Mr. Cameron to dash off to check for James at Kilmartie Castle, but James’s brother was already suspicious of her role in this. Would William believe the message?
Or would he think it was a devious trick?
“Let me write them a note.” She motioned to Elsie. “I need a pencil and a piece of paper, as fast as you can, please.”
The maid produced both from somewhere and Georgette wrote down a quick explanation, praying it would not be needed. With any luck, James would be at Kilmartie Castle, alive and mad as a wet cat at her absence. She prayed it was so.
The alternative was too dreadful to contemplate.
As Cameron departed with her hastily scribbled missive in hand, Georgette collapsed head-down on the table. She felt dull inside, a penny gone to tarnish. What was she going to do? She had spent two years mourning a dead husband who did not deserve two weeks of her time.
What sort of penance would she owe a husband she not only loved, but who had quite possibly been killed because of her?
Elsie put a steady hand on her shoulder. “Mr. Cameron will find him.”
Georgette lifted her head and offered the maid a grim smile through her tears. “He’s my only hope right now.” She exhaled, long and shuddering, and then reached out and squeezed Elsie’s hand. “Why aren’t you outside, dancing with Mr. Rothven?”
The maid’s face clouded. “I . . . I need a job, miss. And I wasn’t sure if I still had one with you, after I broke Mr. MacKenzie’s window and then left you in such a state.”
Georgette would have laughed, had her heart not been so sore. “ ’Tis all right,” she told the sorrowful maid. “Mr. MacKenzie and I have come to an understanding. You have a position with me.” For as long as I remain in Scotland.
What Happens in Scotland Page 26
