Just in Time for a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  “It’s from her, isn’t it?”

  “Never you mind, eh?”

  Nab rolled his eyes.

  With a happy tug, Duncan removed his grand-da’s sporran and put the new one in its place. Then he emptied the contents of the first—his broken pen, a pencil he’d picked up somewhere, a slip of paper, Undine’s twist of paper—and placed them inside the second.

  “I’m going to be gone till nightfall,” Duncan said, “perhaps a wee bit longer.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s not what you think—not that you should be thinking anything, ye evil-minded mumper. I want ye to earn the other half of your pay today. Nose around. Without revealing why you’re asking, see if can find out who in Castle Kerr keeps a bow in easy reach.”

  “If you’re going where I think you’re going, an arrow will be the least of your worries. Rosston will be aiming a mortar in your direction.”

  “Hm.”

  “Hm, yourself.”

  Duncan tugged the sporran in place and headed for the door. “Take care, laddie. I’m on my way to see Jock about a few things.”

  “He was up working most of the night last night.”

  “Well, ye ken the man never stops working.”

  “Oh, he stops. I saw him with a whore a couple of days ago behind the tavern in town. He was hopping around like a man with a hot coal in his boot.”

  “Perhaps she was giving him a dancing lesson.”

  “If so, that’s the third lesson she’s given him this month. My cousin works in the stables there.”

  “Some men are verra slow learners. Now, shoo.”

  * * *

  Duncan looked at the small assemblage of belongings on Jock’s desk and clucked his tongue.

  “Coins, a small knife, a pencil, a bannock, a hunk of cheese, and, when Lady Kerr is done, the battle plans,” Duncan said. “Is that enough?”

  “I think the man must have a love letter from his sweetheart too, don’t you?”

  Duncan eyed Jock with curiosity. He didn’t appear to be a man with much interest in love. On the other hand, he didn’t appear to be a man with much interest in dancing either.

  “I think a wee note would be appropriate, aye. Er, shall we have Abby draft it?”

  “Oh, no, we can do it fine. Anyway, her hand will be on the attack plans. It canna be on the love note too. We can’t have Colonel Bridgewater thinking the chief of Clan Kerr is in love with her courier.”

  God forbid. Or a man of even less substance.

  “All right,” Duncan said uncertainly. He was no expert at love letters—or of thinking like a woman, an activity he’d found to require considerably more intuition, diplomacy, and quick wit than he’d ever possessed.

  Jock drew a sheet of paper from his drawer and slid it toward Duncan.

  “Me?”

  “My hand is pretty well-known here.”

  Duncan swallowed and reached for the quill. Dipping it in the inkwell, he said, “What exactly do you think Archie’s lass would say to him?”

  Archie was the name they had bestowed on their yet-to-be-gotten body. Duncan had already begun to think of him as a man of great determination and bravery, willing to sacrifice for the good of his countrymen.

  “We need the lassie’s name first, aye?”

  “Why?” Duncan asked. “Oh, aye, for the signature at the end. How about Catriona?” His girlfriend’s name at university.

  Jock shook his head. “Sounds a bit wild.”

  Duncan couldn’t disagree.

  “Jean,” Jock suggested.

  Duncan’s mother’s name. “Too old-fashioned, aye?” He would definitely not be able to craft a love letter with his dead mother’s face lodged in his brain.

  Jock shrugged. “Jenny?”

  “That’ll do.” Duncan began to write:

  Dear Archie,

  Now what? He gazed at the paper, utterly devoid of ideas.

  “Come, lad,” Jock said. “You’re young. All this flowery language should still be in your head.”

  Duncan rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder and put the pen to paper.

  I am writing to you today, my darling,

  He paused. “Do ye think she kens Archie well enough to call him darling?”

  Jock pursed his lips. “Are they engaged to be married?”

  Duncan pictured Archie volunteering to deliver the battle plans to the nearest allied clan chief, and Jenny pacing the river near her home, worrying for her absent love. “No, but I think she knows they’re going to be. He’s saving to get her a pair of earbobs before he asks—those red ones lassies seem to like.”

  “Rubies?”

  Duncan shook his head. “Too expensive. The other kind.” He snapped his fingers twice, trying to force his brain to unlock the word.

  “Garnets?” Jock offered.

  “That’s it!” Duncan had had great success with a pair of garnet earrings for one girl and a dainty garnet bracelet for another. There was something, he thought, about the warm crimson of the stone…

  With a thoughtful noise, Jock settled back in his chair. “She should call him darling then.”

  I am writing to you today, my darling, because I was thinking of you

  “‘—and the last time we were together,’” Jock offered.

  Duncan nodded.

  and the last time we were together. I smiled enough then to provide me with smiles for the rest of the summer. I’m counting the days till your return.

  “That’s when he’s going to ask, ye ken,” Duncan said.

  And dearest Archie, please know I do not regret a thing.

  Duncan smiled a little at that. He could almost see the empty field in which the two had done their joining, feel the sun on his face. He hoped Abby had no regrets about him. It seemed the best possible assurance a woman could give a man.

  Jock leaned forward. “Do ye think they have…?”

  Duncan nodded. “I do.”

  Jock laced his fingers together and tapped his thumbs against his lips. “Aye. I think ye may be right.”

  Hurry back to me. I cannot bear to think of you walking the hills alone.

  All my love,

  J.

  Duncan tapped the corner of the paper, unwilling to meet Jock’s eyes. He hoped poor Archie had enjoyed a love as sweet as Jenny’s before he died.

  “Those bloody soldiers better not pass this around,” Jock said, with an avuncular scowl.

  “They won’t. They’ll be too busy hightailing the battle plans to Bridgewater.” Duncan sprinkled sand on the paper and shook it off. Then, folding the paper and running the edges back and forth over an account book to simulate wear, he looked at the collection on the desk. “What else would a man have in his sporran?”

  Jock said, “’Tis more than I have in my own.”

  “It needs a touch of the inexplicable. It’s almost too perfect. The English were—” He stopped himself. He could hardly be telling Jock the English were expert at sniffing out German spies during World War II because the Germans insisted the IDs and paperwork their spies carried be perfect. “The English will be quick to spot anything that looks too good. It’s the mistake or spot of inexplicableness that will make the deception believable.” He looked around and spotted the loose button on his cuff. With a quick tug, he jerked it free and tossed it with Archie’s other possessions.

  “See,” Duncan said. “Inexplicable.”

  Jock laughed. He brushed the items into a small rough cloth sack and looked at his clock. “It’s too early to head to the woods. Do you have a pistol? The soldiers are unlikely to engage us with fists, ye ken.”

  “Aye, I have a pistol—and a sword.”

  “Good. We may need both. Bridgewater has quietly spread the word that a band of marauding Scots may be just
what is needed to convince the queen to lift her ban on an attack. He’d be happy to slaughter us all and say his troops were under siege. Our best bet is to avoid the soldiers altogether, which is going to be a hell of a lot harder in daylight. They want Scotland, and nothing will stand in their way. Lady Kerr’s canal will just be the fruit on the tart.”

  “Since you’ve mentioned the canal,” Duncan said, stretching his long fingers to quiet the low-level fear tingling through his body, “what can ye tell me of the estate and its taxes?”

  Jock’s brows went up. “We pay what we owe, though it kills me to see it done.”

  “So you havena been hit with a big wallop recently?”

  “Och, no. Just the same slow bleed. I dinna know how they expect us to feed our people and grow when they take as much as they do.” Then, sensing that he had not put Duncan’s curiosity to rest, he added, “Would you like to look yourself? ’Tis no more than you’d find in the royal tax rolls.”

  “Could I?”

  “Ye may.” He pulled a large blue leather book from his shelves and put it in front of Duncan. “This is every year since 1511. Before that, the Gordons owned the estate.”

  “And what happened to the Gordons?”

  “Ye dinna want to know.”

  For close to an hour Duncan followed the Kerr accounts, from the Scottish defeat at Flodden (debts unpaid and a near bankruptcy for the estate), through a visit by Mary, Queen of Scots (“bedstead, ebony inlaid with silver and pearl, worthy of Her Majesty, £2,3”) through the fourth Lord Kerr’s elevation from baron to earl (investiture ball, commissioning of a set of solid gold plates with the revised coat of arms), to the present day (the failure of the canal, divestiture of land in Arran and Argyll, and the sale, piece by piece, of the gold plates.)

  No outrageous outlay for taxes (though taxes, as Duncan knew, had been quite high) and nothing obviously amiss. Just a slow descent into near bankruptcy that began around the beginning of Abby’s time as chieftess.

  He closed the book and sighed. If Lachlan’s hint about taxes had been more than the words of a man out of his senses, Duncan found no evidence to support his assertion, or of any sort of monetary mismanagement, in the accounts.

  “An amazing overview of the family’s history,” Duncan said, handing the book back to Jock, who had spent the time going through correspondence.

  “You canna tell the story of the lowlands without telling the story of the Kerrs.”

  Duncan looked at the clock. The witching hour. “Shall we head out to see how the next act unfolds?”

  “Let us hope Shakespeare is’na involved. I shouldna care to find myself dead on a field like Hotspur.”

  Thirty-five

  “I’d like to talk to my father alone,” Abby said.

  Molly, who had been smoothing his quilt, made a quick curtsy of acknowledgment. Abby’s opinion of the girl’s talents had not eroded since her hiring a few months ago, but her sense of the girl’s trustworthiness had. Though Abby could point to no missing flatware, no beau skulking in the woods beyond the castle walls, no sniggered impertinence, the sense was undeniable, and she had to force herself to return the girl’s smile.

  Lachlan had had a particularly bad morning, howling about Moira and thrashing in his bedclothes until one would have thought the castle was being burned to the ground and his bed used as tinder. Her burliest footmen had tied him into place, and he had finally exhausted himself into the sweaty, vibrating quiet she found him in now.

  “I want your blessing, Da.”

  His eye, the one good one, searched her face. Did he see her? Did he understand what she was saying?

  “I know you don’t think I listen to you enough,” she said. “But you always said a good chief must make decisions, and if the decisions are right, so much the better. Well, I have a made a couple of decisions. The first involves the clan. We canna go on the way we have been. The money is…well, it started going bad with the canal and hasn’t gotten any better since. And now the English want to have their way with us. We’ve concocted a plan that will put them off for long enough to secure a loan for the canal if it works. But the plan is risky. If we’re caught, the army will unleash itself upon us and the rest of the borderland clans. We will be held up to every clansman as an example of what happens to those who defy their English keepers. I will lose the support of my fellow chiefs, and the era of Kerr influence will be at an end.”

  She tucked the thin brown cloak more tightly around her. “The plan is a good one, though. You’ve met the man who thought of it. MacHarg is his name. He is…” She gazed at the base of the nearest bedpost. “Well, he is not the man I first thought him to be. He may not be skilled in the way we think of it, but he is loyal and true—and sometimes foolish, that is certain—but he fights with the heart of a true Kerr.”

  Her father jerked at his bindings hard enough to thump the bed forward.

  “I’m no fool, Da. I had you for a father and Moira for a mother, after all. And I am beginning to trust the decisions I make. They may not be the decisions you’d make, but they work in the world in which I exist now. I’ve built a strong ally in Rosston. He is not the man I thought him to be either. We know the plan we are attempting is risky, and we have agreed that if one of us doesn’t make it, the other will take the leadership of both families. We have left letters stating as much, and, for my own part, I am prepared to do what it takes to make his men obey me if it comes to that.”

  The tension in Lachlan’s shoulders seemed to relax but nothing emerged from his questing lips.

  “As for the other decision, Da, it seems I am to be married. Soon, I think, though I dinna know to which groom. A wee bit strange, isn’t it, for a bride to stand so close to the altar she can smell the candles burning and still not know the name of her husband?”

  She allowed herself to think of that long walk up the aisle, and how different she would feel in one case versus the other.

  “I know my heart,” she continued, “and I know my responsibility. In this instance, they are not the same. Oh, I know if ye could, ye would tell me nothing is more important than my responsibility.” Her throat caught, and she pushed away the stinging in her eyes. “But I tell ye this,” she said, voice rising. “Ye loved my ma more than I’ve ever seen a man love a woman. So dinna tell me I have to give that up. ’Tis not fair.”

  His face betrayed nothing. She didn’t know if he even heard her. Och! Why did she even bother? Every discussion with him made her feel like she was arguing with herself.

  “I will make this decision when I have to, and for once it will be without reference to anyone’s desires but my own. If you can keep your own counsel, so can I.”

  Then suddenly, it was the old Lachlan, dark eyes burning like peat fire, and he growled, “Then why are ye here?”

  The tower had two windows. One looked fifty miles east along the border, across the lands of the Armstrongs, Elliotts, and Nixons, the clans who had joined with the Kerrs in repelling the English for nearly half a millennium. The other looked south, to England and the army whose breath she felt on her neck every moment of every day. She turned from one to the other, wondering where her fate lay.

  “I’m prepared to make these decisions alone,” she said. “’Tis the first time I’ve been able to say that and mean it. But I love ye, Da. I have never known a better chief. Will ye not tell me that I have earned the right to lead this clan?”

  He made a noise—disgust? agreement? imminent belch?—and closed his eyes. She waited. When he did not speak, she gave up and was nearly to the door when he said, “Come back.”

  Abby found a place on the bedside stool. “What is it?”

  He extended his bony hand, the hand that had once seemed so strong and large to her, and clasped her arm.

  “Ye have my support,” he said, voice thick. “Ye always have. Whatever ye do, I’ll be standing at your
side and so will the ghosts of every Kerr chief before ye.”

  She had longed for the words since the day she took her oath, and air filled her lungs as if a crushing weight had been lifted from her chest. “Oh, Da.”

  He leaned forward, and she met him halfway, her cheek against his forehead. She basked in his reassuring warmth.

  “Now promise me whatever happens ye’ll take care of your ma and your sister,” he said. “You’re a braw lad, Bran. You’ll make a bonny chief.”

  Thirty-six

  Duncan barely recognized the slim figure in the hooded cloak and white bonnet, standing alone among the trees. The Abby of his experience commanded attention in every situation—on horseback in battle, marching purposefully with her bow, certainly naked at Candle Pool. It wasn’t her beauty or captivating eyes or the way her breasts sat round and high that drew the eye, though all of those had left indelible marks in Duncan’s mind. But when she wore the mantle of her office, it was as if her gender melted away, leaving only the power, the determination, and the spirit.

  But this Abby was foreign to him. It was as if someone had drained the sunshine out of one of Van Gogh’s fields, or the pink out of Cézanne’s peaches. Her natural luminescence had dimmed almost to the point of darkness. He hurried to her side.

  “Abby, is everything all right?”

  “Lady Kerr, if you please. Or Chieftess. You’re late. Where is Jock?”

  “He wanted to finalize something before we set out. He said he’d be only a moment or two behind me.”

  “A moment or two we don’t have. Do ye have the items for the man’s pockets?”

  “Aye.”

  “I have the orders. We are to travel two miles to the south, to where lightning felled two of the tallest oaks, then another mile to the southwest. That’s where Rosston and our body will be. That puts us in the heart of the Debatable Lands, and no more than a mile or two from the border.” She looked at the pistol tucked in his belt. “Ye ken ye cannot take that. You and I are on a leisurely hunt for deer,” she said, tapping her bow. “One does not shoot deer with a pistol.”