Chapter 9
Chapter nine
In Which Sabotage Leads to Science, Science to Sin, and Sin to Smoke
The games had resumed, the glen buzzing with noise, pipes, and testosterone. Wanton watched from what she called a professional observational distance.
As a precautionary measure, she had positioned a large wooden shield (technically a discarded cheese wheel board) between herself and Tavish.
She had verified through field work that the proximity of a kilted male introduces unpredictable emotional turbulence.
Thus, interposing a cheese board may stabilize inner variables and delay heart combustion.
Field Note 20.1: Physical barriers reduce emotional vulnerability by approximately seven percent. Unless the subject smiles. Then all protective measures fail catastrophically.
The hammer-throw was next. Tavish stood by the throwing field—bare-armed, resolute, and unassassinated (for now). He stepped into the ring with easy confidence.
Wanton dragged the shield two inches farther in front of her. A woman could not be too careful around biceps that violated several ethical guidelines.
Field Observation 21.1: Subject continues to exhibit hazardous levels of competence. Possible correlation with elevated pulse rate in observer.
Possible solution: thicker shield.
Then her eyes narrowed. Something was wrong.
The ground beneath the throwing circle wasn’t level. The outer ring looked uneven, as though the iron rim had been pried loose.
Her mind calculated: force × trajectory × altered footing = disaster.
“Tavish, stop!” she called. “The pivot’s been tampered with! You’ll over-rotate!”
He glanced up mid-swing. “What?”
“The angle—oh, just don’t rotate!”
But rotation was already in progress.
The hammer swung. His boot slipped. He caught himself, but not before the weight grazed his arm and slammed into the dirt.
A ripple of gasps swept the crowd.
“Tavish!” Wanton bolted forward, shield forgotten, notebook flying. “Confirmed sabotage!”
He grimaced, flexing his arm.
Malcolm materialized like a man who practiced entrances in the mirror. “Sabotage, ye say? Aye—and I ken who’d be behind it.”
He turned dramatically toward the crowd. “The Sassenach!”
Wanton blinked. “Me?”
“She’s meddled since she arrived,” Malcolm boomed. “First the caber toss, now this! What’s next? Poisonin’ our sheep?”
A murmur spread.
Wanton lifted her chin. “I’ll have you know,” she said aloud, “my scientific methods are precise and mostly nonlethal.” She dropped to her knees beside the ring. “Look! The iron’s been lifted. Someone tampered with the surface!”
The crowd murmured.
Malcolm’s lip curled. “Or ye did it yerself.”
Wanton’s pulse fluttered hard enough to require medical commentary.
“S-sabotaging my own hypothesis would be an egregious misuse of data!”
Tavish knelt beside her, inspecting the ground. His calloused fingers brushed the loose iron. He nodded. “She’s right.”
Malcolm froze. “What?”
“The base has been lifted. Someone wanted the throw to go wrong.”
Agreement rolled through the crowd.
Tavish looked up at her, and Wanton regretted having left the shield half a field away. Her traitorous heart thudded triumphantly in her chest like a drummer announcing courtship.
“Ye’ve saved me again, Flùr na cuthach,” Tavish said softly. “Seems I owe ye twice.”
Her stomach performed a somersault. She slapped a hand over it. The organ was clearly mutinous.
“Well,” she stammered, “statistically speaking, I do have a high rate of prevention.”
He chuckled and reached for her elbow to help her stand.
The touch was brief. Like a rogue spark landing in a warehouse of improperly stored fireworks—illegal, ill-advised, and guaranteed to end in spectacle.
She had opened her mouth to deliver an emotionally distant thank-you and return to her shield when she saw a red line sliding down his forearm.
Blood.
“Oh, good heavens, you’re leaking,” she gasped.
Every defensive hypothesis she’d built in the last twelve hours disintegrated with the efficiency of paper thrust into a forge.
Abandoning all attempts at detachment, she surged closer, notebook forgotten. “Why didn’t you say you were injured? Sit. No—stand still. No—better idea, sit and stand still.”
Field Observation 22.0: On detecting injury, observer’s instincts shift from guarded neutrality to full Florence Nightingale, accompanied by irrational protectiveness, elevated pulse, and inappropriate fondness for the subject’s musculature.
She seized his wrist, already rummaging in her reticule for bandages, carbolic acid, and the moral authority of ten nurses. “You should’ve told me you were bleeding! Honestly, Tavish, this is why men die in wars—they never mention the perforations!”
He blinked at her, stunned. “Lass, it’s a scrape—”
“No arguments,” she said, voice crisp with righteous medical purpose. “I am operating under Florence Protocol. And Florence Protocol outranks lairdly stubbornness by a factor of ten.”