Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Peter Gilling looked up from his seat in the inn’s tavern as the large woman slipped into the nearly empty common room.
If he’d been a gentleman he supposed he would have stood up and invited her over for a pint, but firstly he wasn’t a gentleman, and secondly he didn’t like the way she looked down her nose at Lord Arran.
The MacLawrys could trace their ancestry back before Hadrian, back to the Vikings and the blue-faced Celts, and the maid sneered at Lord Arran for taking the lass he wanted and making off with her.
Of course he’d chosen a Campbell, which was both daft and dangerous, but Peter meant to follow Lord Glengask’s instructions: protect Lord Arran, and see him safely back to the Highlands.
Everything else was secondary. Well, almost everything else was.
If he’d had a way to inform the marquis about both Lady Mary being stolen away and the route they were taking he would have done so, but he couldn’t send the information without telling someone else the words to write down.
And Lord Arran was adamant that no one else know what they were about—for good reason.
He finished his beer as Crawford left the tavern and returned upstairs.
It was time he went back outside to watch the road for Campbells and Gerdenses and Dailys, as well.
Moving past the wide bar, he waited until the one serving lass turned away.
Then he reached over to pick up the letter Crawford had left for the morning’s mail coach.
He put it into his coat pocket as he left the inn.
What the letter said he had no idea, but he could guess.
And whether or not he found a way to contact the chief of clan MacLawry, he wasn’t about to tell the Campbells where they were, or allow anyone else to do so.
Not while he had anything to say about it.
* * *
From the way Captain Evers from the local militia kicked up his feet for the country dance, Arran thought the lad might have had some Scottish blood in him. Whose and which clan he had no idea, so he kept as much distance as he could between the half-dozen red coats in the ballroom and himself.
“Mrs. Fox comes from money, I think,” Mrs. Castleman noted from several feet away. “I paid Mrs. Noland a shilling to braid up my hair, and it isn’t near as fancy as that.”
Arran put a smile on his face and turned away from watching Mary dance with the village’s baker.
“She and her mother were both lady’s maids,” he said conversationally into the murmur of gossiping, trying not to sound stiff with the stiff Sasannach vowels.
“Her mistress didn’t allow servants to marry, so here we are. ”
This seemed to be the best gossip Mrs. Castleman had ever heard, because she closed in to seize Arran’s right arm. “That’s horrid!” she exclaimed with obvious delight. “Did you work for the family, as well?”
“In a roundabout way,” he returned, actually pleased he’d been able to use the tale he’d constructed during their ride today.
“I was employed as their solicitor.” In tiny villages like Wigmore, the solicitor was frequently the wealthiest, most educated man about, and he’d needed to explain two horses, a coach, a driver, and a footman.
As long as no one asked him to solicit anything, he figured the story would suffice.
And it was far enough from the truth that it would hopefully do nothing for any pursuers but cause more confusion.
A tall, bony woman clutched his other arm. “Which family was it?” she asked, batting brown eyes up at him. “The Morrisons, I’ll wager. Lady Ludlow once chased one of her daughter’s suitors down the street with an axe. Or so I heard.”
“He couldn’t say, Fanny, I’m certain,” the innkeeper’s wife countered. “If the family found out, poor Mrs. Fox would never find employment again.”
“True enough, Mrs. Castleman,” Arran said, extricating himself from the females as the country dance squeaked to a finale. At least one of the fiddlers had been drinking too much ale, and they were sadly in need of a piper or two. “And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to dance with my wife.”
Mary met him at the edge of the dance floor. She was out of breath and grinning, and at the sight of her and her sparkling green eyes he decided that being here with her tonight was worth the risk. Worth any risk.
“Were you seducing Mrs. Castleman?” she asked, taking the glass of lemonade he offered her and drinking half of it down.
“Nae. She does make a fine meal, but only one lass will do fer me,” he returned, straightening the lace of her left sleeve so he’d have an excuse to touch her.
“Is that why you didn’t dance?”
So she wanted to talk facts. Perhaps she was concerned she wouldn’t be able to resist him if she listened to his flirting. He liked that explanation better, anyway. “I was jealous that the baker asked ye to dance,” he said aloud. “Ye crushed my own dream of plates and platters of free biscuits.”
Mary laughed. “I had no idea you’d set your cap for him.”
God, he wanted to kiss her smiling mouth.
In a quaint Sasannach village like this one, though, such scandalous behavior—even between a husband and wife—would definitely get them noticed and remembered.
“Actually, some of the lasses were speculating that ye were a lady, what with yer fancy hair and pretty speech.”
She grimaced. “You told them the story, then?”
“Aye. I figured I should say someaught before they stumbled too close to the truth.”
“Do you think Crawford made my hair too fancy on purpose? She is accustomed to following the latest fashion.” She grimaced. “I should have realized. I’m sorry.”
“Dunnae apologize, my bonny lass. I’ve been imagining taking out the pins and running my fingers through yer autumn-colored hair all evening.”
In response Mary found a speck or two of lint on his sleeve that suddenly needed to be plucked at. “Truly?” she murmured, blushing prettily.
“If ye dunnae know by now how very fine ye are to me, then I’ve nae chance at all to convince ye to marry me.”
“I’m beginning to realize that I enjoy it when you flirt with me,” she admitted in her usual straightforward manner.
“And do ye enjoy me kissing ye, Mary?” he asked, moving a half step closer to her as most of the village of Wigmore milled around them.
“You know I do. I just don’t know if you’re the best solution for my troubles.”
“If ye dunnae leap, leannan, ye’ll never know if ye can fly.
” As if to support his statement, the ramshackle orchestra launched into a waltz.
Arran reached out his hand, holding his breath until Mary curled her fingers into his.
Perhaps arguing with her wasn’t the wisest tack to take, but she valued honesty, and he valued her.
“This isn’t leaping,” she commented, placing her other hand on his shoulder.
“It is if ye do it right,” he countered with a grin, slipping his free hand onto her waist, then taking a long step forward to set her off balance. With a gasp she clutched at his hand, holding tightly as he dipped her backward, then swung her upright and into the energetic waltz.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to be doing anything that would attract attention to ourselves, Arran,” she chastised, that breathless grin touching her face again.
“Devil take it. I’m waltzing with the lass pretending to be my wife.” Or rather, the lass who would be his wife if she felt for him half of what he was beginning to feel for her.
As they twirled around the room to the energetic tempo the orchestra had set, everything else faded into the background.
Everything but the lass in his arms. When they’d first met she’d had every reason to fear and despise him.
They should never have been able to converse long enough to discover they had anything in common, much less that they liked each other.
“Describe Glengask to me,” Mary said, her gaze lowering to his mouth. “The house, not your brother.”
“It began as a fortress,” he answered, fleetingly wondering if he would ever set eyes on his birthplace again, “so the walls are three feet thick. She stands four stories tall, gray and white and overlooking the river Dee. My grandfather had windows carved into the ground and first floors after Culloden. He said we’d lost the war with the Sasannach, so we might as well be able to watch the sunset. ”
“That’s very Scottish,” she observed, her smile deepening.
“Aye. Whether he meant to or not, he made Glengask a lighter place, inside and oot. ‘They took our ability to fight, but they didnae take our eyes,’ he said.” He gave a brief smile.
“My grandfather had a great many sayings. Anyway, being set on his arse made him turn his attention closer to home. To our cotters.” He hesitated.
The way his clan had dealt with those dependent on them remained a major bone of contention between the MacLawrys and the Campbells.
Pointing it out now while she swayed in his arms seemed extremely foolish.
“Anyway, to answer yer question directly, Glengask is a large, lovely, loud old sprawl.”
“But your grandfather didn’t decide to fight the Clearances because of some windows, Arran. What happened?”
So much for diplomacy. But then Mary did tend to pursue the heart of the matter—except where her own heart was concerned.
“I think he couldnae accept that we’d lost. And unlike the other clans, he’d taken to investing his fortune in Scottish businesses in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
That left us with cash as well as land. We didnae need to graze sheep to pay our Sasannach taxes.
He always said the clan had kept us strong, and now we were beholden to keep the clan strong. ”
“He did have a great many sayings, didn’t he?”
“Aye.”
“What you just told me is a very different version of the tale than the one I grew up hearing.”
“Is that so? What did ye hear aboot the devil MacLawrys, then?”