When finally a shadowy figure emerged around the side of the house, we didn’t know if he was friend or foe.
“It’s all clear,” Mr. Stuart exclaimed. “They turned tail and ran.”
But for how long?
I breathed a whimper of relief, turning Figg toward the cabin. At the doorway, I slid from her back, nearly taking a tumble into the dirt as my foot twisted in the stirrup. Untangling myself, I stumbled into the cabin, only remaining upright by grabbing hold of the door frame. Trevor was already inside, helping Gage to his feet.
“Should he be doing that?” I gasped, rushing forward. “Should he be getting up?”
The right side of Gage’s face was blossoming into another nasty contusion, and there was dried blood at his hairline. I reached up to run a hand gently over his scalp, searching for the cut.
When I peered into his eyes, looking for any sign of disorientation, the warmth with which he regarded me arrested my attention. For a moment, all I could do was stare into them, fighting the emotions surging inside me, making me want to throw my arms around him and weep. I felt I should say something, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Fortunately, Gage did not seem to be similarly affected. “I’ll survive. Thanks to you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I inhaled shakily and smiled, pressing my hand against Gage’s cheek below the bruise. He might be feigning indifference to his injuries, but just the fact that he was capable of even making such an effort cheered me.
However, his tight smile quickly began to wobble and he swallowed. “I’d really like to get out of this stinking cabin.”
I wasn’t sure how I had not noticed the stench of the place until then. It absolutely reeked of urine, and sweat, and whiskey. It was enough to make a person gag. I slid Gage’s other arm over my shoulder, despite his protest, noting his sharp intake of breath. He was in more pain than he wanted to admit. Trevor and I took several steps forward to escort him from the building, but the shadow of a figure huddled behind the open door brought me up short.
Gage followed my gaze to the scraggly-haired young woman cowering there. Her green eyes were very wide in her grubby face. “Ah, meet Bonnie Brock’s sister.”
At the mention of her brother’s name, the girl’s eyes darted to Gage.
In all my worry over Gage, I’d completely forgotten about her. “Maggie?” I guessed, recollecting that was what her brother had called her.
She didn’t respond, but I could tell I was right.
“Come with us, Maggie,” I told her gently, and continued carrying Gage from the building.
While Anderley took care of our horses, Mr. Stuart accompanied the rest of us into his farmhouse and fetched water and linens. I ordered Gage to sit on the settee while Trevor and I tended to his wounds. I bathed the cut on his head and examined his facial bones for any breaks. His knuckles were scraped and his wrists were raw and bloody from the rope used to bind his hands. The little finger on his left hand was also broken, and I did my best to immobilize it with two small wooden sticks and a bandage. I also wrapped his ribs, hoping it would help with some of his pain until we reached a surgeon. There were various other scrapes and bruises, but fortunately nothing more serious than the broken finger and ribs.
Once Gage was settled back on the settee as comfortably as I could make him without the aid of laudanum or some other opiate, we could see to other matters. Mr. Stuart had made tea, and I fixed a cup for both me and Gage, turning down our host’s offer of a liberal splash of brandy, though I noticed he added some to his cup. Trevor stood by the fireplace, periodically feeding more of the scraggly bits of wood Mr. Stuart had gathered for kindling into the fire.
Everything about the house was old and moth-eaten, and I suspected Mr. Stuart had rented it only because of its isolated location. It smelled of must and mildew, a scent that seemed to particularly irritate Anderley, for he wrinkled his nose in disgust every so many minutes as if a foul wind blew his way. Or perhaps it was Maggie’s odor he was offended by. The girl perched on the edge of a chair near the door, as if uncertain what to do—whether to make a run for it or stay here, where it was at least mildly warm. She truly was young—sixteen, I believe was what Bonnie Brock had said—and she looked thoroughly lost and disillusioned.
“Now, Stuart,” Gage declared, losing none of his bravado, even reclining on a settee with a pair of broken ribs. “Perhaps you fill in some blanks for us.”
“Mm, yes,” he replied nervously, his cup rattling as he set it back in its saucer.
“We know you hired these Edinburgh body snatchers from Bonnie Brock’s crew. And we know it was your plan to ransom the bones of Ian Tyler of Woodslea, Sir Colum Casselbeck, Lord Buchan, and Lord Fleming back to their descendants.” Gage’s eyes sharpened. “What we don’t understand is why?”
Mr. Stuart stared down at his lap, where he worried his hands.
“Please don’t tell me you did this merely because of those erroneous charges of treason brought against you and dismissed back in 1817,” Gage added wearily.
“Only partially,” Mr. Stuart admitted. “I mainly did it because of my Evie.”
“Your wife?” I guessed, remembering what my uncle had told us our aunt Sarah had confided in him.
He nodded.
“What about your wife?” Gage demanded, impatient for answers. I couldn’t blame him. No matter how relaxed he pretended to be, I could see the lines of pain radiating from the corners of his mouth whenever he inhaled deeply.
“Evie was the daughter of General Vladimir Romejko-Hurko. I met her in Vitebsk in 1811 when I was in the employ of Prince Alexander of Wurttemberg. The Tsarina had arranged for Evie to marry another of her generals, and I was to marry Evie’s sister Marianna, but . . .” he shrugged “. . . we fell in love.” He shook his head. “We knew it was useless to protest, so we fled to London.
“I didn’t have much,” he admitted, his face flushing in embarrassment. “You see, by that time I’d discovered my Russian banker had gone bankrupt, and the firm in London where I’d invested the other half of my inheritance had also failed several years earlier. When I reached London, I learned that one of the bank’s members had absconded to America with the rest of my funds. I was quite angry. And as a result, I was somewhat indiscreet.”
“How indiscreet?” Gage asked.
Mr. Stuart grimaced. “I sent a hostile article to The Sunday Review and accused the then Prince Regent of authoritarianism, and . . . reminded him that ‘thrones can be taken away by man, just as happened to that race which by birth had a stronger claim to the British scepter than any of his own family.’”
I winced. That could not have gone over well with the Hanoverian Prince Regent.
“You’re speaking of the Stuart kings, of course, and your grandfather, Bonnie Prince Charlie, who should have been one,” Gage deduced.
Mr. Stuart nodded and tilted his head to the side. “Needless to say, I thought it best to leave London.”
That was an understatement if I ever heard one.
“Scotland seemed a logical choice, and here we could be wed at the Border without questions and without a license. By that time Evie was expecting our first child, and I thought it best to live simply for a time, but my wife was proud of my heritage. She told everyone about my ancestry, and for a while it seemed to work in our favor.”
“Most Scotsmen would be thrilled to meet a descendant of the Stuart kings,” Trevor guessed, kneeling to stoke the fire. “And there are more than a few closet Jacobites living north of the Border.”
“Exactly.”
“But you have no real claim to the throne.” Gage’s eyes narrowed as he studied the middle-aged Frenchman. “Even if your grandfather had wed his mistress, Clementina Walkinshaw, and legitimized your mother, you are still a bastard.”
I was surprised to hear Gage lay it out so baldly, but perhaps he had a right to after all he’d been through tonight.
Mr. Stuart inhaled as if t
o protest, but then deflated as if realizing it was useless. “You’re correct. My parents never wed. But I have never made a claim to the English or Scottish thrones. I’ve made no pretension to such a thing.” He scowled, staring at the floor in front of him. “Unfortunately, not everyone understood that.”
He looked upward, as if what he had to say next was particularly painful. “I became friends with some particularly influential Scotsmen. Or, at least, I thought they were friends.” His brow furrowed. “But apparently they were only interested in monitoring my movements. And when they saw their chance, they had me press-ganged on a ship setting sail for America.”
I pressed a hand to my stomach. “But your wife and child?”
He nodded, pushing a hand through his hair. “I could accept their zeal to protect their country if they truly believed I was there to cause trouble, but what I could not forgive was their treatment of my wife and child.” His voice hardened. “We’d been renting a home from one of them, but after they disposed of me, they evicted my enceinte wife, leaving her to wander the streets of Edinburgh with no food, no money, and no way to support herself. And they told her . . .” He swallowed. “They told her I’d left her for another woman.”
His eyes were haunted. “By the time I was finally able to return, I discovered she was buried in a pauper’s grave. She and my son.”
I covered my mouth in shock and horror. I couldn’t imagine the pain and the anger he must feel. How could those men, those gentlemen, have done such a thing to an innocent woman?
But, of course, I already knew the answer. No male descendant of the Stuart line of kings could be allowed to live. The fact that Evie was carrying Mr. Stuart’s child had made her just as dangerous to them. Perhaps more, because of her noble birth. And so they had hardened their hearts to her and cast her out, monstrous as that was.
“And that’s why you had their graves disturbed?” Gage guessed.
Mr. Stuart nodded dejectedly. “I tried to forget. I . . . I tried to forgive. But then they trumped up those ridiculous charges of treason against me . . .” he shook his head “. . . and I just couldn’t let it go. But by the time I could do anything about it, Ian Tyler had already passed away.”
“But I thought you said the only men involved in 1817 were Lord Buchan, Sir Colum, and a Lord Demming.” When he didn’t reply, I arched my eyebrows in scolding. “Or did you lie?”
He flushed sheepishly and dropped his gaze to the tattered rug at his feet.
I sighed. What was one more lie next to everything he’d already revealed?
“And so you waited until the last of them had died,” I surmised. “Until Lord Buchan finally passed away a little over a year ago.”
He met my gaze. “If I couldn’t get my revenge in life, then I would have it in death. This way no one else would be hurt, unlike my Evie. Except . . .” he paused, his mouth pressing together tightly “. . . I didn’t count on that caretaker at Dryburgh Abbey. I told the body snatchers not to harm anyone, to only take the bones, but . . . they didn’t listen.”
I glanced at Gage, curious to see what his reaction was to this story, but I had difficulty deciphering whether he was reacting to Mr. Stuart’s words or the pain from his injuries.
He stared at the Frenchman through heavy-lidded eyes. “You tried to stop, didn’t you? After Lord Buchan, after Dodd’s death?”
Mr. Stuart clasped his hands together like he was praying, his eyes pleading with us to understand. “Yes. I tried to stop. But these men I’d hired, they would not let me. I’d already made the mistake of telling them there would be four ransoms, and they wanted the money from the last. I told them to bribe the watchman at Beckford. That it would confuse the investigators.”
Gage grunted as he pushed himself more upright, and I reached out to help him, but he held me off. “What makes you think they would have let you stop after Lord Fleming?”
He shook his head. “I knew they wouldn’t. But they could not continue without me. They do not know which graves are lucrative to steal the bodies from. Not without my marking them.”
“With red sealing wax?” I guessed.
He nodded. “That is why I waited to send the ransom note until today. I’ve booked passage on a ship that sails from Berwick tomorrow.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “If I leave the country, they cannot force me to help them.”
He rose to pass the paper to me before retaking his seat. I held it out so that Gage could see. It was indeed boarding papers for a ship leaving Berwick on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of January 1831.
“Well, that explains why you chose today for the ransom,” Gage admitted. “But it doesn’t explain why you waited so long to send the ransom note. It says here, you purchased this ticket four days ago.”
Mr. Stuart’s face flushed a pale shade of pink. “I hoped that by sending it too late, you and Lady Darby would not arrive in time to follow the mare. That I could keep you out of harm’s way.”
I glanced at Gage in question.
“Yes,” Mr. Stuart said. “The Edinburgh men saw you follow the mare when you paid the ransom for Lord Buchan. They were determined to be ready for you, to teach you a lesson this time.”
“So you tied my handkerchief to the yew tree to warn us,” I guessed.
He nodded.
“You could have sent us a message,” I pointed out crossly.
A furrow appeared between his eyes. “Yes. You’re absolutely right. But I’d hoped to leave the country undetected, or at least unapprehended,” he admitted. “I was worried that if I sent you a letter, you and Mr. Gage would search me out directly.”
I didn’t tell the man that we’d already been doing so, and neither did Gage.
I sighed, leaning my forehead on my hand. So what was to be done now?
Before I could ask aloud, the sound of a pair of fast-moving hoofbeats could be heard outside the window. We all rose to our feet, including Gage, even though I protested.
“Have they come back?” Maggie gasped in terror, her hands pleating the front of her dress as she backed farther into the room. It was clear, if nothing else was, that she would not be happy to see them.
“Stay back,” Gage ordered me and Maggie as he, Trevor, and Anderley moved forward to peer through the ragged curtains on the windows.
I gripped the frightened girl’s hand, holding my breath as the horse slowed and then stopped. I listened carefully to be sure, but yes, it was only a single rider.
“Trevor,” we heard a man yell. “Trevor, are you in there?”
I exhaled in relief and offered up a silent prayer of gratitude. It was only my cousin Jock.
The men hurried to the front door, and I moved to follow them, but Maggie resisted. I looked back at the girl and smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s just my cousin,” I told her. She still looked unwilling to move, so I squeezed her hand where it held mine. “Everything is all right now. I promise.”
She stared into my eyes, searching for reassurance. “Ye . . . ye promise?”
“I promise,” I repeated.
She nodded, and reluctantly let me lead her toward the entry hall.
Jock had launched into some elaborate tale with large, sweeping hand motions, but when he saw me standing at the back of the group, he got directly to the point. “Kiera, we caught ’em.”
I heard Maggie’s breathing hitch and then even out.
“Where?” I asked.
“Just ootside Kilham. We’d just ridden oot o’ to join you here, when they came tearing oot o’ the moor like something was after ’em.” He grinned widely. “Wi’ six o’ us, it was rather easy to round ’em up.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. Finally Dodd’s murderers had been caught. There would be no more body snatchings, at least for ransom. I glanced toward Mr. Stuart where he stood beside me. Now we only had to figure out what to do with him.
It was decided that Trevor would return with Jock, to report on the events that had transpi
red and to assist in whatever way was needed, while Gage, Anderley, and I finished up here. I didn’t object, wanting above all else to stay by Gage’s side. Though I didn’t miss the significant look that passed between Gage and Trevor as I led Maggie back into the house.
“You’re going to come with us,” I told the girl. “And then we’ll make sure you’re returned safely to your brother in Edinburgh.” She stared up at me with bright eyes. “Unless you don’t wish to return to him,” I added, unsure how to read the girl’s expression.
She nodded, and I could see clearly now she was biting back tears. “I do,” she assured me. “Though he’ll pro’ly beat me black and blue. I ne’er should’ve left.”
I pressed my other hand over the one she still held. “I doubt he’ll beat you,” I said. “I think he’ll simply be glad to have you back.”
She sniffed, comprehension dawning in her eyes. “Did he send you after me?”
I nodded, and the tears she’d been holding back spilled down her grimy cheeks. I offered her my handkerchief, the one Mr. Stuart had returned to me, and she immediately buried her face in it.
Gage darted a glance at the weeping girl sitting in the corner when he reentered the room, but I shook my head, telling him all would eventually be well. At the moment, there was nothing we could do.
“Well, Mr. Stuart,” he declared, turning to face the Frenchman. “What do you think should be done? Do we hand you over to the authorities?”
Mr. Stuart stood dejectedly, his hands at his sides. “I suppose you must.”
Gage tilted his head in thought and I joined him in his study of Mr. Stuart.
How did we know everything he’d just told us wasn’t one big elaborate lie? After all, he was a consummate actor. I could easily imagine him fibbing his way out of a difficult situation. Like that bit about meeting Davy Crockett.
But in regards to something this serious, and with such intricate detail? It was hard to imagine he’d made all of that up.
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