Amanda Scott (36 page)

The thought of what she was about to do, and its potential consequences, nearly stopped her where she stood. She might kill him. She knew that if she did, Kintyre and Duncan between them could protect her in any Scottish court, but she was not certain they could protect her from the British Government. This was no time to think such thoughts, however. She pushed the door wider, and this time, she saw Bridget stiffen, then look at her.

Panic rising, Pinkie shook her head in warning.

Instantly Bridget recovered, and her gaze darted to another corner of the room, as if she sought escape where there was none. She said too loudly, “I am not accustomed to undressing before a man, sir, nor am I accustomed to undressing without my maid to help me.”

“I’ll be happy to maid ye, lassie.” He stepped nearer.

Bridget shrank away from him.

Without giving consequences another thought, Pinkie darted forward, raising the poker and bringing it down on the back of his head as hard as she could.

He dropped without a sound in an ungainly heap at her feet.

Bridget’s hand flew to her mouth. “Faith, what have you done?”

“Don’t stand there asking stupid questions,” Pinkie snapped. “We’ve got to get out of here as quickly as we can.”

“But where will we go?”

“We’ll worry about that when we get free of the house.”

“How can we? He’ll only come after us as soon as he wakes.”

“Hush; let me think.” Looking swiftly around the room, she said, “Fetch the sash from your wrapping gown. I’ll see what else I can find. We must tie him up.”

Resorting at last to tearing strips from the bedsheet, they soon had Sir Renfrew bound and gagged. Pinkie did not know whether to be glad or sorry when he regained consciousness as they were leaving the room. His glare was murderous.

“Oh, hurry,” Bridget implored her. “If he gets free—”

“He won’t,” Pinkie said, “and if we are lucky, no one will dare put a head in this room till quite late tomorrow. But we cannot run out the front door in these clothes. They will spot us in a trice. Let’s see what else we can find.”

They hurried downstairs, but as Pinkie turned toward the nether regions, Bridget ran across the hall to the room where they had dined. Pinkie began to follow, but Bridget returned almost at once, tucking a paper into her bodice. “The settlement papers,” she said. “I don’t want him to tear them up, or lose them.”

Shaking her head, Pinkie pushed her toward the kitchen. Their search ate up more precious time, but she decided it was worth it when they found breeches and shirts hanging to dry near the kitchen fire, quilted jackets and several pairs of boots near the scullery door, and knitted caps on a rack above them. The clothes bagged on them, and when they had changed, they looked at each other and laughed.

Bridget said, “If I look as dreadful as you do…”

“Never mind,” Pinkie said, bundling their dresses, chemises, and shoes together and tying the bundle with laces from the remaining boots. “At least we no longer look like women. Take care now, and follow me.”

“I don’t know about this, Penelope…”

“Call me Pinkie; it won’t sound so feminine if someone overhears you.”

“And you’ll call me Bridge, I suppose. It won’t matter, though, in the end. That horrid man is my husband. Can he not simply order Michael to send me back?”

“If I’m not mistaken,” Pinkie said, tying the last knot and shouldering the bundle, “he will not remain your husband for long, since he did not consummate the union. I know a little about such things, because I’ve heard Duncan and Mary discuss them. I think you can easily obtain an annulment under these circumstances. Then it will be as if that ceremony never took place.”

“If that’s true, I take back every wicked thought I ever had about you, and every wicked deed,” Bridget declared.

“What deeds?”

Bridget looked at the floor.

“Would they have aught to do with the way Mrs. Thatcher’s servants treated me and Nan, or the information you flung in your brother’s teeth? I read your note.”

Bridget winced. “Aye. I was angry then, about your parents. I know I ought not to have—”

Pinkie sighed. “Who else did you tell, Bridget?”

“No one, I swear, and I am most dreadfully sorry now, but—”

“This is no time for excuses or recriminations,” Pinkie said. “I should have told your brother myself. It was wicked of me to marry him without telling him.”

“But—”

“Not now, Bridget Let’s just get out of here.”

The moon had not yet risen, and the temperature had dropped considerably, bringing a chill to the wind that blew across the kitchen yard, but the sky was clear and filled with stars. By their light, the two young women hurried toward a nearby thicket, expecting at any moment to hear voices shouting them back. They made the cover of the trees, then had to pick their way carefully.

“Which way?” Bridget whispered.

“Keep moving away from the house,” Pinkie said. “Recall that he told his men to watch the sea. They won’t watch this side so carefully.”

“But we must get to Mingary.”

“No, it’s the first place he will search. We need protection, men-at-arms. We’ll make for Balcardane instead.”

“Faith, do you know the way?”

“No, but if we head for that ridge we saw behind the house, we can follow it until we find someone to ask.”

“They’ll tell!”

“Not if we only ask the way to Loch Linnhe,” Pinkie said patiently.

They pushed their way through shrubbery and followed trails that Pinkie knew must have been made by deer or other woodland creatures. An hour later, for what seemed like the hundredth time, Bridget said, “I don’t like this; I’m cold.”

“Hush,” Pinkie muttered, as she had every time before, turning her head to be sure Bridget heard her. As she turned back, she bumped into what was unmistakably a burly human body. Large, strong hands clamped down on her shoulders, and the only reason she did not scream was that the scream got caught in her throat.

“Now, where d’ ye think ye’re going, me lads, sneaking aboot like thieves?”

For once Bridget kept silent, while Pinkie tried to think of something sensible to say. They were too close to Dunbeither House for him to be other than one of Sir Renfrew’s men.

From nearby came a pony’s whicker and sounds of a hoof pawing the ground. Pinkie felt her captor jump. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Never mind that,” he said hastily.

Somewhat reassured by this odd exchange, she said, “We need help. Sir Renfrew Campbell brought us to Dunbeither House against our will. We escaped, but we need to get farther away, and quickly. Can you help us?”

“Where is himself?”

“I do not think we should tell you that. I have risked much already in telling you what I have.”

“Bless ye, I’ve no love for himself. I just want tae ken he’s no hot on yer heels the noo.”

“He is not, nor will he be before tomorrow—hopefully, late tomorrow.”

Before she realized his intent, the man snatched the cap from her head and pawed at her hair. “Bless me, ye’re no lad; ye’re a lass. Be that un a lassie, too?”

“Aye,” Pinkie said, “and if you will help us, we will see you well rewarded. Our families are powerful and will be grateful to you.”

“Ye’re the twa lassies himself brought home off his ship the day.”

“Aye, we are. Please, will you help us?”

There was just enough light to discern his shrug. “I’ve no call tae love him, but I’ve kinfolk hereabouts. Still, ye can come along as far as I’m going the nicht.”

“Where?”

“Ah, now, that would be telling; but come along this way.”

They followed him, and soon came upon a pony laden with bundles.

“What is it carrying?” Pinkie asked, feeling one of the bundles. “It feels like a bag of bricks.”

“Aye, then, and so it is, for I’ve kinsmen who will pay for them. The master willna miss them, I’m thinking, and I’ve sharp need for the gelt.”

“We want to reach Loch Linnhe,” Pinkie said. “Do you travel that way? We must know, you see, because if you go another way, you cannot help us.”

“Aye, then, I’ll tell ye. ’Tis over Shielfoot way to Loch Sunart I go, and into Glen Tarbert. Gin ye follow the glen, she’ll tak’ ye straight on to Linnhe.”

“Faith, but that’s perfect,” Pinkie said.

“What is your name?” Bridget asked.

“Gabhan MacGilp,” the man said. “What’s yours, then?”

It took Sir Renfrew a good part of the night to free himself, but he lost no time after that. Shouting for his men, he sent one group riding toward Fort William in search of the runaways, and another with MacKellar to ride the rough shore track to Mingary, while he ordered still others into boats to sail to Kilmory with him.

Waking the innkeeper there, he demanded horses for his men, and an hour and a half later, arriving at Castle Mingary, he demanded admission.

When MacKellar’s group arrived hours later without having caught sight or sign of the two young ladies, Sir Renfrew joined his forces and led them through Glen Tarbert to Loch Linnhe, intending to make for Balcardane Castle.

The wind blew steadily through the night, but the gentle, wooded slopes of Glen Tarbert sheltered the travelers from the brunt, so the rolling, white-capped gray waves that greeted them when they reached the western shore of Loch Linnhe early the next morning came as a shock. Clouds that had hidden the starlight long before they had reached Shielfoot had lingered into the morning, and darker ones billowed ominously in the northwest.

“How on earth will we cross?” Bridget demanded wearily as she slid down from the pony she had been riding.

Pinkie glanced at their companion, a young cousin of their friend MacGilp. Long before they met up with his kinsmen, Pinkie realized that Bridget’s stamina was flagging and the girl would not make it all the way to Loch Linnhe if she had to walk. MacGilp agreed, so he had offered her his pony, as well as a young cousin to guide them through the glen. “I’ve only tae say I lent him the beast,” he said. “There be none that’ll quibble wi’ that. They’ll just think I wanted tae move the poor thing oot o’ the master’s sight, lest he set his own brand tae it, like he did tae me cow.”

Though their intent had been to take turns riding, Pinkie let Bridget keep the pony, deciding that the girl needed it more than she did.

Young Geordie MacGilp was only fourteen or so, but by Highland standards, he was full grown. Receiving Bridget’s demand with a long, thoughtful look at water and sky, he said, “We’ve boats here on the bay.”

Pinkie said, “Can you get us across, then?”

“Aye, I can do that, right enow, but where be ye bound, ma’am?”

“Into Loch Leven, if you can get us there, and then to Balcardane Castle.”

“Nay, then, I canna do that wi’ the wind blowin’ straight down the loch as it is. We’d be blown about like a teacup in a storm. I might could get ye tae Kentallen, but I’m thinking that would take a couple o’ hours. I’d ha’ tae tack back and forth, ye ken, agin the winds.”

Pinkie shivered with cold and fear. She had felt comparatively safe in the darkness, but with the gray light of dawn had come recurring fear that Sir Renfrew had freed himself long since and was hot on their heels. Even if he had ridden to Mingary first, once he caught their trail, he would ride faster than they had, because he would have light. That he could not know for certain where they were bound was all they had to protect them, and they did not know how great a force he could muster to follow, or how many parties he had sent out and about to search for them. If anyone saw them on the loch and realized who they were, Sir Renfrew or his men would catch up with them long before they could reach Balcardane.

She said impulsively, “What of Loch Creran?”

“Aye, that’d be gey easier,” he said. “We’d ha’ the wind behind us.”

“Then that is where we will go,” she said.

“Where is that?” Bridget asked. “Why would we want to go there?”

“It’s just beyond the south end of Loch Linnhe, where it meets the Lynn of Lorne,” Pinkie said. “More to the point, Sir Renfrew is unlikely to think of riding that way, and both Balcardane’s Dunraven and my brother’s castle are there.”

Bridget looked at the darkening sky. “There’s a big storm brewing, Pinkie.”

“Aye, I can see that, so the sooner we get across, the better. Where is your boat, young Geordie?”

“Yonder.” Gathering the pony’s reins, he led them to a sheltered area where several boats had been pulled onto the shingle above the tide line. Tying the pony to a bush higher on the shore, he pointed to one of the boats.

With effort, the three of them were able to launch it, and Geordie swiftly put up the sail. After that, skimming before the wind, it took but twenty minutes to cross the loch and reach the entrance to Loch Creran. Entering on the incoming tide posed no difficulty for their helmsman, and once off the larger loch and past the Oban-to-Appin ferry crossing, the wind diminished. Rain began to fall, but another twenty minutes brought them to the dock near the water gate at Shian Towers.

Pinkie scanned the top of the high wall until she spied a lookout. Knowing the man would not recognize her in her male clothing, she pulled off her cap to free her hair despite the rain, and waved at him.

“Where are we?” Bridget asked when the man waved back.

“Shian Towers.”

“Why here? If Dunraven belongs to Balcardane, won’t there be more men and arms there?”

“Aye, but we’re safer here, I think,” Pinkie said, jumping out of the boat with the bundle she had carried from Dunbeither House. Then, turning to help Bridget, she said to Geordie, “Our thanks is not nearly sufficient payment for your help, lad, but I promise to tell his lordship all you did for us. Will you at least come inside to dry off and have something hot to drink before you return?”

“Nay, then, for I left the wee beast tied on the shore, and I must fetch him home before some thievin’ reiver steals him.” He waved, and before Pinkie and Bridget had passed through the water gate, his boat skimmed around a bend in the loch and out of sight

“Safe at last,” Bridget said with a sigh as they walked toward the main entrance and the servant shut the water gate behind them. “Is there a fire where we can dry ourselves, and perhaps some food?”