Chapter 9
The day was ideal for an outdoor gathering.
White rags of clouds raced across a blue sky, even the lowest of them far above the summit of Arthur’s Seat.
Sunshine flooded the world as soon as each cloud passed, and the park was lushly green, with dark grass underfoot and the lighter green of young leaves dappling overhead.
A banner with the name of the League for the Advancement of Scottish Women had been hung up between two trees.
Mrs Roberts had arranged for a small wooden platform to be set up in one of the sunny clearings near the main path through the park.
It was just large enough for two people to stand upon, but not three.
“Perfect for an execution,” Miss Fairchild quipped nervously. “I worry that half this crowd would like to see us all beheaded.”
Catriona had to admit she had a point. There were plenty of onlookers.
Many of the women had come expressly for the event to hear from the group and give support.
But there were others—both men and women—who clearly thought this was more of a theatrical side show, a farce.
And there were definitely a few men who were enraged by the day’s topic.
One had shouted obscenities until a guard employed to keep the peace steered him to the edge of the park.
(Cat suspected the man’s infraction was not intimidating her colleagues, but rather upsetting the park’s passersby with coarse language.)
Cast also looked around anxiously to see if Thane or any of the other men had come.
She was still hopeful that she’d be back home within the hour, and Thane wouldn’t even notice her absence.
She planned to sneak back into the garden and then through the glass doors to the parlor.
Then she’d pretend to have been there all along.
She didn’t see anyone, so she assumed her subterfuge was working. She felt a little smug. The threats against her life were quite overblown, after all.
Mrs Roberts had opened the proceedings and was just finishing a rousing speech, to the cheers of most fervent attendees in the front.
“Your cue!” Miss Fairchild said, pushing Cat toward the stage. “Knock ’em dead!”
Cat took a deep breath and stepped onto the little platform. Mrs Roberts took her hand, and raised their arms together, to some applause and a few catcalls.
Mrs Roberts announced Catriona as the next speaker and then climbed down. Clutching her copy of her speech, Cat looked over the crowd. It was more intimidating when she was elevated like this, where everyone could see her and judge her. For a moment, she wanted to turn and flee.
But no. That was not what she came here to do.
She inhaled, smiled, and said, “Thank you all for coming to listen to the voices of your friends, your sisters, your daughters, your mothers. It takes great courage to listen to new ideas…but I hope that by the end of the day, you’ll all recognize that what we ask is only what everyone here would ask for themselves.
We wish to be treated fairly. We wish for our voices to be valued at the same level as the men of this country.
That is all. For it is an essential fact of Nature that there is virtually no difference between the sexes when—”
Someone in the crowd shouted, a loud male voice. She thought it must have come from one of the angry men toward the back, so she tossed her head and tried to ignore it.
“Er, no difference when it comes to survival—” A sudden crack broke through the air, and Cat gasped as something whistled past her.
Then everything seemed to happen at once. Mrs Roberts screamed in alarm, a huge form knocked Cat down and pulled her off the platform, and the crowd shifted and pulsed and split apart all around her.
“What…”
“Stay down!” Thane’s voice ordered, right by her ear.
Oh, God, he was the person who’d come flying at her! Cat could barely breathe with Thane’s weight on top of her. This was far more intense than the first time, when they’d at least both been standing.
Perhaps Thane realized that too, because he rolled off her and grabbed her by the shoulders, helping her to her feet.
“Keep your head down,” he muttered. Thane flung his light-colored coat around her and ran for the nearest gate. Another crack echoed behind them.
“Lord, they could hit somebody—” she said, shock making her mind slow.
“They’re trying to hit you!” Thane sounded so angry that it silenced her, and she let him push her into a carriage for hire. He shouted the directions at the driver sitting above and hopped in as well, sliding next to her on the bench.
“Slouch, as low as you can,” he ordered, pushing her downward.
“What, on the floor?”
“Yes! Duck your head.”
She understood then that the hired carriage had no curtains to pull closed, not like her family’s own well-appointed vehicle.
She sank onto the floor, gathering her skirts tight around her legs, trying not to think of all the boots and shoes and bare feet that had stepped there.
With her head down, she couldn’t see where they were going, or if anyone was following them.
Thane said nothing useful, only telling her to keep low every time she tried to ask what was happening.
The carriage took a hard right turn, knocking Cat from her precarious crouch, so that her knees hit the floor. Well, that’s the end for this dress, she thought, hearing a seam rip somewhere. She let out a laugh, more from shock than amusement.
“What,” Thane said, sounding distracted. He was peering out the window, not focused on her.
“Nothing,” Cat muttered. “It’s just that my clothing fares poorly around you.”
She looked up, realizing that she was kneeling at his feet, and he was staring at her with an expression she’d never seen before.
* * * *
“Get up here. On the bench.” Thane looked away, trying to catch his breath as she scrambled up. Christ, Cat on her knees was an image he’d never get out of his head.
“You said I should hide,” she protested, fussing with her black dress.
“It’s safe enough now. Whoever the shooter was, they couldn’t have followed us fast enough.”
“They don’t need to follow, do they? They know where I live.” She sounded scared and small and miserable. And he hated it.
“I can’t believe you snuck out like that.” Anger and the lingering hit of lust made his next words harsh. “You deserved to get shot.”
It was a mean thing to say, and he waited for the retort, the furious protest. But Cat only gave a soft moan. He looked over to see her hunched over and crying, clutching at the little charm at her neck, the same one that Brodie always carried.
“I know,” she whispered. “I was stupid. I should have died.”
“Cat, don’t—” Whatever he meant to say was forgotten when he saw something bright red on the back of her hand.
He pointed at the spot. “What the hell happened?”
“What?” She looked up, confused, and then down at the growing streaks of red dribbling onto her skin. “Is that blood?” she asked, as if from very far away.
“Were you hit?” he asked, reaching out to touch her, run his hands over her body.
The moment he grazed her upper arm, she winced and cried out.
“Christ, you’re wounded.” He whipped out the square from his pocket and held it to the spot.
Cat shrank away. “It hurts!”
“Of course it hurts! Stay still. When we get you home we’ll see how bad it is. Just breathe slowly. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I don’t know.” Her face was ashen, but he couldn’t tell if it was from an injury or just from the shock of what happened.
He very lightly ran his free hand over her torso and her other arm, then down her legs. She didn’t even object, which he took as a bad sign.
“Do you think you were hit twice?” he asked. Hell, when would this carriage get to the house?
“I…I don’t think so. It would hurt a lot, wouldn’t it? Have you ever been shot?”
“Aye, few times,” he said shortly. “Believe me, you notice.”
“Then why didn’t I?”
“Well, there’s sometimes a delay. And you weren’t expecting it.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to tackle me either. And I hurt from that.”
He restrained his impulse to yell. In a strained tone, he explained, “I had to get you out of the shooter’s sight line.”
“Do you think anyone else was hurt?” she asked, worry clouding her eyes.
“I don’t know. I hope not. Probably the man fled as soon as he realized he wasn’t going to get another clear shot.”
“Did you see him?”
“No. But maybe someone else did. We’ll work on that later.”
Just then, the carriage clattered to a halt.
Thane helped Catriona out, thrust some coins at the driver, and then hurried up the walk.
He felt acutely exposed with their backs to the street, so he put his arm around her shoulders and kept her as close to him as possible to make her a more difficult target.
Though, he thought wryly, Cat’s stalker probably would be happy to hit them both.
Considering that he’d opened fire outside a busy party and then later amid a crowd in a park, the man clearly didn’t care about collateral damage.
When Thomas the footman finally closed the front door after they got in, Thane heard himself give a sigh of relief.
“Were you out, miss?”Thomas asked, confused because all the servants had been told in no uncertain terms that Miss Ross was meant to stay at home.
“It’s not important now, Thomas,” Thane said. “Will you send for the family doctor? Miss Ross may need some medical care.”
The footman’s eyes went wide and he rushed out the door.
Meanwhile, the housekeeper had come in, taking in Cat’s appearance—including the blood—with an admirable calm.
“Bring her down the hall to my room. We’ll want hot water, and the kitchen will be close.”
Thane was evicted from the housekeeper’s little office the moment after Cat sat down in a chair. (The removal of some of her clothing meant that no male could be let near her, with the notable exception of the doctor.)