The Madam's Highlander

by Madeline Martin

There hadn't been a pistol shot fired. Surely that meant—

  A fist came at her face and landed full force on her eye. Her head flew back and she sagged against the man holding her. The world blinked around her and her footing was no longer steady.

  She was being tipped back. Her head swam with thick, muddy thoughts. Don't scream. Don't scream.

  Her arms were roughly pulled behind her and something squeezed around her neck.

  The jingling of a belt being unfastened entered her awareness and alarm shot through her. She was going to be raped.

  Her body writhed against the man holding her, but the vise around her neck only tightened. Her efforts were in vain. The man pulled down his pants and in the blur of her vision, she caught the brilliance of his pale moonlit skin against the black of a starless night.

  The weight of her skirts lifted. Cold air scrabbled over her skin like greedy fingers. She was vulnerable, exposed. Helpless. Angry tears burned in her eyes and the knot in her throat had little to do with being choked.

  Ewan had been angry with himself for having taken her maidenhead. She was all the gladder for him doing so now. Better her first time be with a man she loved than like this.

  The man shoved at her knees and jerked them painfully apart. Her muscles seemed to splinter beneath for the force of him. She wielded her final weapon of defiance – her hatred. She glared up at him and said nothing, not even when a shadow loomed over him.

  ***

  Ewan exploded forward, propelled by the force of glowing-hot rage. He hooked the man's neck with his manacled hands and yanked him back. The man was pulled from Freya with a rasping cough choking out of his throat.

  He was still naked from the waist down. Ewan kept his gaze locked on the man's wide brown eyes, unable to even look at the man's nudity, to acknowledge the disgusting intent.

  All this had been Ewan's fault, and by God he would see it to rights.

  Ewan drew his arms up, hands clasped together to lock the manacles into place, and brought the double fist of metal down hard on the man's face. A deep, popping crunch came from beneath Ewan's fists and blood gushed down the man's face. He sputtered, sending a spray of blood spattering onto the darkened porch.

  A hearty smack sounded from several feet away where Freya had been left with the last man. The redcoat Ewan fought kicked him in the side where the bullet wound still healed. Pain exploded into white flickering stars before Ewan's eyes.

  Before Ewan could recover, the man shoved him and scrambled to his feet.

  Ewan blinked against the pain and regarded the half-naked man standing over him. With a pistol.

  The man cocked the weapon and it fired with a deafening explosion.

  Only nothing emerged from the man's weapon. Nothing tore into Ewan's body save the pain already blazing at his waist. Confusion grappled him for a mind-numbing second until the half-naked soldier fell to the side, revealing Freya behind him, gripping a pistol. A curl of gray smoke licked up from the muzzle and trailed into the icy air.

  “Ewan.” There was alarm in her voice, fear.

  For him.

  He shoved aside the pain at his side and forced himself to sit up. Blood spattered her dress. “Are ye hurt?”

  “Nay.” She sank beside him. “Are ye?”

  He shook his head. “There were four men. Where is the last one?”

  Freya's eyes went wide. “In the house.”

  She helped him to his feet and together they ran inside where firelight flickered shadows throughout the room. A dark stain streaked the floor and led to the body of a redcoat.

  “Ewan?” His mother peered up from where she lay beside the man.

  Ewan's heart lurched. Blood. Everywhere was blood. His mother's chest and face were smeared with it, her gown stained and soaked.

  “Ma.” He fell to his knees at her side. “My God, Ma. I'm so sorry.”

  She waved a frantic hand at him to shoo him away. “No' me, lad. This bastard.” She jabbed her finger at the man staring blankly into nothing.

  A gunshot rang out, immediately followed by the most unexpected of sounds - an infant's indignant squall.

  Ewan's mother shoved at him, surprisingly strong despite her bony arms. “Go!”

  Ewan leapt to his feet and ran in great limping steps with Freya to where Marian's door was still closed. The lusty cries continued, interrupted only by enough time to draw a wee chest full of air. Ewan pushed a hand back to stay Freya and burst into the room.

  Marian looked up from where she lay on the bed, her face pale and glistening in the candlelight. A red-faced babe screamed in her arms, its curled fists shaking with rage.

  “Ma?” Freya said cautiously.

  It was then Ewan noticed Freya's mother staring down at the ground on the opposite side of the bed. There lay two redcoats - the body of Captain Crosby, and that of the final attacker.

  “He saved us,” Freya's mother said. Blood dotted the wiry curls at her temple and showed bright red against the otherwise brilliant white of her cap. “The man was going to shoot Marian, and out of nowhere came a gunshot. And it was him. Captain Crosby.”

  Marian cradled the babe to her breast where it gave several snuffling grunts. “Thomas,” she keened softly. “Thomas.”

  A long, low groan sounded from Captain Crosby.

  Ewan dropped beside the Englishman. “It's my arm,” Crosby gasped. “But I'm so very tired. I don't...” His breathing came in labored pants. “Get the girls to the carriage.” He turned his gaze up to Ewan despite the obvious effort it took to do so. “Save them.”

  “No,” Freya gasped. “We canna leave without ye.”

  “Aye, Captain Crosby.” Ewan nodded and rose like a soldier at attention, ready to follow those final orders.

  “We canna leave him.” Freya shook her head.

  But Ewan would have none of it. Their bags were already packed, loaded in the carriage in wait for Marian's labor to end, for a chance to escape. Only now the women could truly escape. They at least would be safe.

  Ewan had done much damage in staying with them. He would not make the same mistake again.

  “I need ye to focus right now, Freya.” He spoke in the calm, even tones he used with new recruits when faced with danger, the balm for fraying, uncertain nerves. “Get the ladies gathered up. Help Marian and my ma change. I'll go see to the carriage driver and ensure he’s fine and ready, aye?”

  Freya's chin set with the stubborn determination he loved so much about her. She turned away, like any good soldier, to do what was requested of her, starting first with Ewan's mother, while he headed from the house. Readying the carriage driver would be the easy part. The difficulty lay in saying goodbye.

  ***

  The driver was fine, aside from an uncanny ability to sleep through a pistol fight.

  Within half an hour, Freya had succeeded in loading the generous carriage with their meager belongings. The mothers sat tersely beside one another, Ma holding her feisty grandson, whose indignant cries reverberated off the small cabin. Marian lay draped over the opposite seat, her brow warm and sweaty, her eyelids drooping as she waned in and out of wakefulness, forever calling for Thomas.

  Freya stood beside the flimsy door of the carriage waiting for Ewan.

  He approached with a more pronounced limp. She could hardly see him out of her injured eye and instead regarded him with her good one.

  “Ye can help me hold Marian upright,” Freya said. “I think I'll get tired doing it the whole time by myself...” The jest faded on her lips.

  His gaze was solemn. Too solemn.

  “Ewan.” Her voice pitched and a dagger of fear cut into her heart. “Nay, please. I only got ye back when I thought I'd lost ye.”

  “I'm sorry, Freya.” His voice caught and he pulled his stare away.

  “Dinna ye do that.” Freya grabbed his face and made him look at her. Tears shone bright in his eyes, and her aching throat clenched with an impossible knot. “Ye look at me and ye tell me ye're no' c
oming with us.”

  The skin around his eyes drew tight. “I'm no' coming with ye.”

  Tears poured hot down her cheeks, but she didn't bother to wipe them away. “Then ye look me in the face and tell me ye dinna love me.”

  “But I do love ye.” He clenched his jaw. “Dinna ye understand? I'm doing this. For ye. For all of ye. Even Crosby.”

  “If ye loved me, ye'd come.” Freya's voice whimpered into a whine, but she couldn't help herself.

  “I love ye so damn much, I have to stay.” He grabbed her face then and stared down at her for the span of a lifetime, his gaze moving over her face, memorizing, loving.

  She tried to shake her head, to argue, but even in the depths of her shattering heart, she knew it was pointless.

  Ewan rested his forehead on hers. “I love ye, Freya. Dinna ever doubt that.” Then tenderly, he tilted her chin upward and closed his mouth over hers, a loving, beautiful kiss which made her heart glow. Glow, and then shatter into a thousand useless pieces.

  He pressed a hand on her lower back, nudging her into the carriage.

  Lily regarded her son with wet eyes despite her stony expression. “I will see ye when ye're free, my son.” She nodded with more confidence than Freya could ever feel.

  Ewan nodded. “Aye, ye will. I'll find the lot of ye.” He watched Freya take her seat. “Love always finds a way.”

  The he closed the door with a soft click and rapped on the wooden side.

  It lurched forward. Freya's body swayed in time with the carriage, her soul too limp to even afford her muscles the energy to fight the savage rocking as the carriage traveled over the rugged terrain.

  “Thomas,” Marian murmured softly.

  “Who is Thomas?” Freya asked, not taking her gaze from where Ewan's form grew smaller in the distance.

  “Dinna ye know?” Ma said. “Thomas is Captain Crosby's Christian name.”

  Freya pulled her long stare from Ewan to regard her sister.

  Marian's sweet face crumpled with obvious pain. “Thomas.”

  The aching knot returned to Freya's throat and she resumed her vigil of Ewan's disappearing form. She and Marian had both left behind the men they loved.

  It wasn't until she could no longer see Ewan in the distance that she finally gave into the gritty burning in her eyes. She leaned her torso over Marian's sagging form and cried until her world fell into a blissful black.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Freya was thinking of him again. It was a hurt she couldn't help but gingerly prod. A hurt that had not diminished in the six months since it'd been sliced open.

  She settled back in the overstuffed chair in her office at Molly's and regarded the neatly organized line of journals, the sparse furnishings. It was too perfect. Too right. A restlessness inside her stirred, edgy and insistent. It left her with the sudden desire to sweep her arm over the shelf of journals and send them scattering them to the floor, their pages floating to the ground in an errant display of destruction.

  Instead she gripped the edge of her desk, as if doing so might keep her from spiraling away from the world.

  She should be happy. Molly's was doing well, as it always had done in the past. The mothers had taken to enjoying educating the women who sought Freya's help, though they'd insisted on relocating the makeshift school to a separate location. Even Marian had found a place at a nearby church to aid wounded soldiers.

  It was perhaps the only charitable task Marian had taken on with an ulterior motive, for Freya knew her sister sought a certain wounded redcoat in particular.

  Not that Freya could blame Marian. After all, what would she give to have Ewan back?

  The familiar squeeze gripped her heart and threatened to crumple her into a ball of pain at his loss. How could it be almost more painful at six months than it had been when it happened?

  Freya gripped the wood harder and let the sharp edges of the desk bite into the tender lines of her fingers and palms. She would not cry.

  Her eyes tingled with wet heat.

  She would not cry.

  Ewan’s image swam into her mind, the affectionate look in his loving gaze, the dimple that showed only for her. Her throat drew tight.

  Damn it. She would not cry.

  Outside her office door, the cacophony of conversation and laughter indicated Molly's was beginning to pick up into a full night. She could not allow herself the weakness of her pain. No, she would need to keep it curled tight in her heart until she was alone with the solace of her cool pillow and the embrace of silence.

  The door flew open and Alli appeared in the doorway. Her mouth worked, opened and closed, opened and closed, but nothing emerged. Tears shone bright in her eyes and alarm fired through Freya.

  She leapt from her desk. “What is it? Marian? The mothers?”

  Alli shook her head, mouth open.

  “What is it?” Freya asked impatiently.

  “It's him,” Alli whispered.

  Freya's knees went soft. Her heart pounded. She couldn't hear for all the damn roaring in her ears. Surely she hadn't heard right. “What?”

  Alli's mouth worked to say the most beautiful name in all the world. “Ewan.”

  Freya pushed past the younger woman. Outside was a tangle of soldiers and whores, silk and uniforms, flirtation and desire. And there, in the midst of all of it, was Ewan wearing a plaid of earthy colors and a crisp white leine. His skin was more tanned, as if he'd ridden through the long summer days, and his face had been scraped smooth to reveal his clean, sharp jawline.

  Freya whispered his name and her heart crashed into her throat. Then, despite the pinching shoes and impossibly laced corset and all the damn people watching, she ran to him.

  Ewan laughed, his teeth a stark white against the darker skin of his face. He opened his arms and caught her against his powerful chest and then, finally, finally, finally he enfolded her in the full embrace of him. He overwhelmed her in the most wonderful ways - the warmth of his skin beneath the fine leine, the spicy, familiar scent of him, the strength of his muscles squeezing her. Tears clogged Freya's throat and she buried her face in his chest to keep them from being seen.

  “Freya.” Her name rumbled against her cheek. “Freya, Freya, Freya - my beautiful Freya.”

  His fingers found her chin and gently drew her face up to him. He studied her with the same savoring care he had the night he had put them in a carriage and disappeared from view.

  “There was a time I dinna ever think I'd see ye again.” He swallowed. “I'm so verra glad—”

  His voice broke and he bent over her. He captured her mouth in the most exquisite kiss, his lips warm and full, his smooth chin soft against hers, and the tenderness, the love humming between them. She slid her hands up over the back of his neck and pulled him closer to deepen the kiss with the sweep of her tongue. Excited warmth pulsed through her body. She wanted him. She needed him. She never wanted to be without him again.

  A cheer rose up around her, an intrusive reminder they were not alone.

  They broke apart and, in spite of herself, Freya's cheeks grew hot. Ewan's own face tinged a shade of red, an endearing quality in a man as very handsome as he.

  He held her face in his hands, capturing all her attention despite their apparent audience. “I want ye, Freya - now and forever. I want to grow hay with ye, and I want to grow children with ye. I want a life with ye.”

  His blue gaze stared earnestly into her, as if he shared his soul with her. “Will ye be my wife? My real and true wife.”

  Freya drew in a choked breath. “Aye. Aye, I'll be yer wife.”

  Ewan grinned down at her, showing her that beautiful dimple of his, and he captured her in one of his powerful, wonderful hugs once more. Another cheer rose around them, followed by the choke of a sob. Freya turned to find Alli watching them with tears shining bright in her eyes.

  She fanned her face with her book. “Ye just said ‘Aye’ to Captain Nay.” She blinked her impossibly long lashes in a notice
able attempt to stay her tears. “It's like something out of one of my stories.”

  Freya laughed and turned her attention back to Ewan. “How? What happened, how did all this come to pass that you're home to me?”

  Ewan turned to look behind him where a lanky, dark-haired man stood. The man wore a tailored jacket and breeches of fine brown wool, very good quality. One of his sleeves had been rolled up and pinned near the shoulder to keep the empty sleeve from swinging loose.

  Even in the absence of the red coat, it took only a moment to recognize him.

  “Captain Crosby,” Freya breathed.

  He glanced around at the semi-nude women and the obvious display of lust and sex on sale. His face twitched and he seemed to curl into himself. “If I might have a word with you. In private.”

  “Of course.” She waved him forward but regarded Ewan, hesitant to let him go lest she never have the opportunity to touch him again. As if letting him go now would make everything a dream. “Will ye come with us?”

  He smiled down and kissed her once more, softly. “I need to see my ma, lass.”

  Panic nipped at her heart and sent it into frantic beats. “Ye'll come back?”

  “The devil himself couldna keep me from ye.” Ewan caressed her cheek. “Trust me, he tried.”

  With a final kiss, he slipped from her sight and left her standing beside a very uneasy Captain Crosby.

  He cleared his throat. “In private.”

  Freya nodded and led the way to her office. He scuttled after her like a church mouse surrounded by barn cats.

  She waited until they were in the confines of her office with the door closed before speaking. “Captain Crosby. I dinna know what ye did to save Ewan, but I canna thank ye enough.”

  He bowed his head. “It's Thomas, my lady. I'm no longer a captain.” He nodded to his missing arm. “Seems they haven't much need for a one-armed man in the military. Nor does the Black Watch have a need for a man who leaves his duty station in Edinburgh to uncover a crime among the officers of the English army.”