Chapter Nine
Drumloch Manor
John Montgomery galloped down the drive to the groomed path at the lake, where Aunt Eleanor always took her morning stroll. Rain or shine, she packed her two silly lapdogs into the coach, drove to the bridge, where she was let out with her walking stick, and circled once around the lake.
This morning there was a crisp autumn chill in the air, and John sniffled before he trotted up beside his aunt. The dogs yapped and barked at him, and his horse reared up and nearly threw him.
“Quiet, you rascals!” the dowager commanded, pointing her stick at them. “Or I’ll boil you both for dinner.”
The dogs continued to growl at John and his skittish mount, but anything was better than their incessant yapping.
“Have you come with news?” the dowager asked, shading her eyes to squint up at him.
He dismounted and walked beside her. “Nothing yet. Not a single word from anyone.”
They had sent a few of their own men in various directions to search for Catherine, and the magistrate had his people searching as well—those who had survived the Highlander’s escape.
“I am confused, John. How could our girl go missing twice? You don’t suppose this Highlander is the same one who abducted her before? Perhaps it is a scheme to hold her for ransom, now that the inheritance is finally within reach. But no one ever asked for money the last time.”
“It’s impossible to say,” John replied, “for we haven’t the slightest idea what happened five years ago, or how she ended up in Italy. You have your theories, of course.”
“That she simply ran off, for some kind of wild adventure?”
He removed a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed the perspiration on his brow. “Yes, but that does not explain her memory loss. Nothing seems to explain it, other than a spell of madness.”
“But we mustn’t ever say such a thing to others. It’s enough of a scandal without adding talk of lunacy. If she is declared mentally unfit…”
“The inheritance will be lost.”
The dowager tapped her walking stick lightly along the gravel path. “Are you paying Dr. Williams well enough?”
“Aye. More than enough, and he knows it.”
“That, at least, is helpful.”
The horse nickered and tossed his head behind them, and they walked on in silence.
John watched the two dogs scamper ahead of them, then turned his gaze to his aunt.
She had a stern face, lined with years of bitterness and hostility.
As a child he had always found her intimidating, and he continued to feel that way now, even though he was earl.
He stopped on the path. “Aunt Eleanor, I must be frank.”
She stopped and turned, and the dogs circled back to wait at her side.
“You know how I feel about Catherine,” he said. “I want nothing more than to bring her home, safe and unharmed, but I cannot accomplish that if I do not know the whole story. For that reason, it must be said … I sense there is something you are not telling me.”
His aunt regarded him with chilly disdain. Her lips curled into a thin, hard line, and the dogs began to bark and snarl. She lifted her walking stick and jabbed him with it, hard in the chest, so that he was forced to take a step back.
“There is nothing,” she said harshly, “that you need to know. Leave me be now. I must walk.”
With that she stalked off, and the dogs growled at him viciously before turning to follow her, tails wagging in the morning sun.
John mounted his horse. The corner of his mouth twisted in annoyance.
Catherine was out there somewhere, most likely in the clutches of a brutal Highlander with dangerous intentions.
John had seen what the dirty savage tried to do to her in the stone circle, and he’d heard the particulars of the Highlander’s violent escape from the prison coach.
Meanwhile Catherine’s inheritance was at risk as well. If anything happened to her, the funds would be sent to Edinburgh, forfeited to the Jacobite cause.
That John could not allow.
As he galloped off in the other direction toward the manor house, he wondered if it was possible to physically shake the truth out of his wretched old aunt. Someone needed to stand up to her for once. And those exasperating little dogs, too.