Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
CINAED
A crowd gathered in greeting as the travelers rode through Dalmigavie’s gate, and Cinaed had never been so glad to see their welcoming faces. It had been an eventful month on the road, to say the least.
He’d set out to see the leaders and the folk of the great Highland clans. With every stop and from every clan chief, he heard the same thing. The Highlanders were unhappy, fearful, angry. And everywhere, the same complaint rang out. Their lads had not come home.
To fight the French, armies needed to be raised.
Now, every regiment composed of Scots and Highlanders was being moved to Ireland and to the farthest corners of the expanding empire.
And militias from the south, as well as English regulars, were moving in to fill their places at Fort William and Fort George.
The rising was at hand, and the Crown didn’t trust the Scottish soldiers’ allegiance.
Whispers of coming war in the Highlands had been drifting northward.
The Home Office was campaigning for it. English commanders in Edinburgh and the Borders were hoping for it.
The rumored visit of the queen was being taken as an open threat in Westminster.
Many believed it was far easier to crush out the sparks rather than wait and fight the inferno.
But no consensus existed. There were other voices in Parliament who were against it.
They feared the dire economic conditions of the country could turn a regional rebellion into a devastating civil war.
A revolution like the one that toppled the monarchy in France just a few decades ago.
Before Queen Caroline returned to London, she’d told Cinaed what her own agents had reported.
All opposition to war in the Highlands would be swept away if Whitehall were given a legitimate reason to attack.
If the Scots organized and threatened England the way Bonnie Prince Charlie had done, the British military would leave a trail of blood that hadn’t been seen since Culloden and the days that followed.
The Home Office needed a reason for war. One that would further divide the rich from the poor in Scotland, the aristocrat from the commoner, the Highlands from the Lowlands.
In his life Cinaed had done plenty to annoy the Crown. But there was an enormous difference between those nuisances and an action that would bring the entire British army down on the necks of unarmed people of the Highlands.
The English were trained and ready. The Peninsular War.
Waterloo. The Gurkha War. The Pindari War.
Those military campaigns had prepared the enemy.
The navy would level every port from Stornoway in the Western Isles to Aberdeen.
With the Caledonian Canal linking Oban to Inverness almost fully operational, the Highlands were cut in two.
If all-out war were to come now, untold lives would be lost. Cinaed was determined not to give them the excuse they were looking for.
How to handle an unprovoked attack, however, was another matter entirely. No clan liked to see a laird wounded without retribution.
“Lachlan’s leg is broken,” Cinaed told Isabella as he dismounted.
As the men carried the laird to his chambers, Cinaed and Isabella followed. “A half-dozen dragoons appeared to be waiting for us by Loch Laggan. Niall thinks they were from Fort William. Lachlan’s horse was shot from under him and rolled on his leg.”
“Was anyone else hurt?” Isabella asked.
Cinaed shook his head. The attack had been little more than a glancing blow.
The Mackintosh men had outnumbered the dragoons, who had fired on them and then dashed off as quickly as they’d come.
Niall had been quick to say it was an old military tactic to lure them into a trap. These raiders were the bait.
After doing what they could for Lachlan, they’d brought him back here with the hope that his leg could be saved.
“When did this happen?” Isabella asked after sending Auld Jean to the medical room for what she’d need.
“Two days ago. We rode straight here. Lachlan is a tough old bird, but this nearly killed him. Where is Searc?”
“He and Blair went to Inverness early today. They’re planning on returning tonight. Morrigan went with them.”
Cinaed nodded, but as they passed a window on a landing, she stopped him.
“You have blood on your coat.”
“From Lachlan’s mount. I’m fine.”
She wouldn’t go another step until she’d inspected his chest and back, assuring herself he was unhurt. She caressed his face. “I’ve missed you.”
He kissed her lips and held her tightly in his arms for a moment. There was so much he needed to tell her, but it would have to wait.
The fracture in Lachlan’s leg was below the knee, and Isabella set it with Cinaed’s help.
Afterward, shifts were organized. The patient needed to be watched night and day. The laird was old and weak, and there was the worry of how easily his body would be able to recover after such an injury.
It was hours later when Cinaed and Isabella were finally able to get back to their rooms.
They held onto each other for the longest time. He told her about the journey through the Highlands. Isabella shared the news that Aidan Grant and his brother had arrived at Dalmigavie.
“I think you’ll like him,” she said. “He will be a good candidate to represent Inverness-shire in Parliament.
“Henry Brougham and my mother seem to think so.”
“It’s a relief for me, knowing you’re pursuing a political solution instead of marching off to battle.”
“It may not matter what I want.” Cinaed explained to her everything he’d heard regarding Whitehall’s desire for war. “Regardless of what I do, the Highlands are a powder keg ready to explode. And I don’t want you in the middle of it.”
She pulled out of his arms. “Where else would I go?”
“I’ve been speaking to Niall about it. He feels the same way. You and Maisie and Morrigan and Fiona and her family could go to continent. Perhaps Wurzburg. It’d be far safer for you there until some sort of—”
“Stop right there,” she demanded hotly. “I’m your wife. I love you. And I’m staying beside you, wherever you are, whatever you do.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“And I am also a doctor. Do you really think I would leave you, leave the Mackintosh people, just to be safer?”
Cinaed shook his head. She could ignore it all she liked, but Isabella was still considered an enemy of the Crown.
Like him, she had a bounty on her head. No one dared to come after her here, but their family continued to be a way for Sir Rupert Burney and the authorities to get at the two of them.
If something were to happen to Maisie and Morrigan, Isabella would do anything to get them back, including handing herself in.
“If Niall can convince Maisie to go, will you consider joining her? To look after them?”
“Of course not,” she snorted. “And Niall knows better than trying to suggest such a thing to her.”
Cinaed didn’t want to be apart from his wife, but he was worried and determined that she see the seriousness of the danger around them.
“And what about Morrigan?” he argued. “The lass is planning on leading troops into battle. She trains like she’s in the king’s guard.
She’s in Inverness only because Searc and Blair are watching her every minute.
But she has a spirit that is hard to rein in.
If the situation here becomes more perilous, she’ll be impossible to protect. Do you trust her to keep herself safe?”
Isabella turned her face to the window as a breeze banged the shutter open.
“Morrigan is smart and resourceful,” she said. “Of course, I trust her.”