Chapter 8
The Traitor in Inverness
Night was closing over the shelter when Alistair knew the party had come back, before he saw a single face.
The shelter changed its sound.
Steps ran between the buildings, someone called for Iain, a child started crying near the roofless chapel. Then came short orders, the drag of a litter, and Diana's voice asking for warmed water.
He pushed the blanket aside.
Iain did not look up from the bottle he was measuring.
"No."
"My people came back wounded."
"Your people came back with Diana, Graeme, and Dugald. The shelter has enough chiefs already."
Alistair put his feet on the floor.
The fever had come down and left a weakness he preferred to attribute to Iain's infusion. The stitching below his ribs pulled when he stood.
"If you open the stitches, she'll sew you again," Iain said. "Perhaps with less delicacy."
"She isn't delicate."
"That wasn't a criticism."
Alistair pulled a clean léine over his shoulders and wrapped the plaid around himself, leaving the bandage clear. He was at the door before Iain could decide between force and calling Eliza, which was the more effective threat in that shelter.
Outside, night was coming down over the slopes. Low torches lit the way between the shed and one of the stone houses. Two women were walking Moira MacNair in. Calum came behind on a stick, and a boy refused to let go of the scabbard of Graeme's sword.
Diana was kneeling by a woman's litter. Her hair had come loose and fallen across one cheek. There was dried blood on her sleeve and mud to the hem of her skirt.
She looked up.
Her face went from relief to irritation.
"What are you doing out of bed?"
"Receiving my people."
"Your people will still be here when the fever comes back."
Alistair looked at the woman on the litter.
"Condition?"
"Deep cut, but it missed the lung. She lost blood. She needs rest."
"The others?"
"A ball in a shoulder, two smaller cuts, and an old woman who was too long in the cold. Iain will want to examine all of them."
Iain appeared behind Alistair.
"Iain would like to examine his own laird before he falls on one of them."
Diana stood, moved the edge of the plaid aside without asking, and touched the bandage.
"It is not bleeding yet."
The boy beside Graeme watched this.
"Does she give the Laird orders?"
"Today it looks that way," Graeme said.
Diana let the cloth go.
"Take Moira inside. I need to hear what Calum saw in Inverness."
"After he sits," Iain said.
Alistair looked from one to the other.
"Gather the council in the shed."
Diana folded her arms.
"Sitting."
Graeme turned his face away. Eliza hid a smile behind the cloths she was carrying.
A little later the shed was full.
Alistair had taken a chair at the table. Diana had ordered it. He sat because standing would have wasted useful energy. Graeme and Dugald stood in front of him, and Iain kept to the door with his arms folded. Diana and Eliza took the other side of the table.
Calum MacNair sat on a bench with a clean binding around his forehead.
"Start with the warehouse," Alistair said.
"I went to Inverness for salt and flour. I saw Malcolm come out of the warehouse by the river. The low-roofed one, near the timber quay."
"Who was he with?"
"Two men in coats too good for porters, Boyd the merchant, and an Englishman I didn't know."
Diana traded a look with Eliza.
"Boyd supplies Penelope with wine and cloth," Eliza said. "He also brokers deliveries for other houses."
Graeme set his hands on the table.
"Malcolm keeps men at the Old Bridge inn. We have word that he rents a house near the river and uses an old hunting lodge outside the burgh."
"He only needs to appear to be in all four," Diana said.
Alistair turned his eyes to her.
"Explain."
Diana came closer to the table.
"The house by the river supplies a respectable appearance. The inn serves for men who come and go without explanation. The warehouse holds what he does not want kept near Penelope. The hunting lodge is where he can receive whoever must not be seen in the burgh."
"And the map?" Graeme asked.
"I'd wager between the house and the warehouse," Eliza said. "Penelope wouldn't leave anything valuable at an inn. She also wouldn't travel out to a hunting lodge to look at it."
"Assumptions," Dugald said.
"I've followed her deliveries for eight months. I know where she has dresses stored, and wine, and letters she doesn't want near her guests."
Graeme's mouth tightened.
"Listening at doors isn't the same as knowing an operation."
"And swinging a sword isn't the same as understanding a house."
Graeme's eyes stayed on her a moment longer than the argument required. Eliza caught it. Instead of drawing back, she tipped her head a little.
Diana touched the corner of the rough map Graeme had drawn.
"Malcolm also uses Penelope as cover. Armed men going into her house draw attention. Crates and messengers do not. The traffic between the house and the warehouse will look commercial."
"We can intercept a delivery," Dugald said.
"Without knowing which one?" Diana asked. "Malcolm will change the route at the first sign of watching."
Alistair knew the conclusion before she said it, and he did not like it.
"No."
Diana turned her face.
"I have not proposed anything yet."
"You're going to propose going back."
Eliza put the cloths down on a bench.
"It's the most useful option."
"No," Alistair said again.
Diana held his gaze.
"Penelope believes I went to take an injured man to a house. Then I disappeared. The longer I stay away, the clearer it becomes that I helped you."
"She's already sent men after you."
"To find out what I am hiding, not to kill me. If she only wanted rid of me, she would not have sent Robert first."
Alistair set his forearm on the table. The stitching objected to the change.
"You're not going back to that house."
"Then Penelope will be certain I chose the MacLeods. She will go back over every conversation I heard, every letter I read, and every place I have been. Eliza will disappear from her household as well. Two absences confirm a betrayal better than any confession."
"She can have you both held."
"Or keep us close to watch what we do."
"Is that supposed to reassure me?"
"No."
Her fingers held the edge of the table hard enough to whiten the knuckles. Diana knew the risk and would go anyway.
"We send someone else," he said.
"Penelope knows my duties," Diana said. "I am her companion and her reader. I see correspondence, I receive visitors at her side, and I remain in the room when men assume a woman without a fortune does not listen."
Eliza finished for her.
"I handle the messages, the deliveries, and the rooms. The servants know me. I can move about without inventing a reason to be there."
Graeme turned to her.
"You're not going."
"Curious. I don't recall asking your permission."
"This isn't the moment for insolence."
"Later we may be too busy."
"If Penelope suspects, she'll test you."
"She tests everyone before breakfast is over."
"This is different."
"Because now you know there's danger?"
Graeme said nothing.
Eliza smiled without any pleasure in it.
"The danger was there before we met, MacLeod."
Alistair brought his attention back to Diana.
"You said Penelope watches."
"Yes."
"She saw your torn glove, the blood, and the mud."
"She did. She also saw that I came back to treat Thomas before going out again.
I can say I found a wounded man, tried to take him to the small house, and was compelled by other Highlanders to go on with him.
Eliza went out to look for me. We got away during a change of carts and took shelter until we could return. "
"She won't believe it."
"Not entirely."
"Then the plan fails."
"Penelope does not need to believe it. She needs to consider it possible that I am lying out of fear rather than out of loyalty."
Dugald grunted.
"A narrow difference."
"It is where Penelope works best," Diana said.
Alistair looked at the men in the shed. Graeme was against it for the same reason he was, though he was aiming the irritation at Eliza. Dugald was weighing the gain. Iain watched Diana with the face of a man who already knew she would not be talked out of it.
"How long?" Alistair asked.
Diana showed no sign of victory.
"Long enough to find where the map is kept and when they move it."
"That could take days."
"Then it will be days."
"No."
She took one breath.
"Would you rather strike four places with men you cannot lose?"
The clan had few fighters, too many wounded, and shelters that could still be found. A wrong attack would cost more than the loss of the map.
Alistair closed his hand on the table.
"You don't go without a way to send word."
"There's an abandoned chapel near the Inverness road," Eliza said. "I can leave messages under a loose stone by the east wall."
"A loose stone is too simple," Graeme said.
"That's why no one pays attention to it."
"I'll check the messages."
Eliza raised her eyebrows.
"Are you going into Inverness with that face?"
"What face?"
"The face of a man who intends to interrogate the stones."
Dugald coughed. Iain looked at the roof.
Alistair had no strength left for deciding whether that was humor or a threat.
"Graeme will make the link," he said. "Dugald keeps watch on the routes. Neither of you tries to recover the map alone."
Diana nodded.
"That is not the task."
"And if Penelope orders you out of the town, you go."
"If it is possible."
"Diana."
She met his eyes.
"We will leave if there is a safe route."
It was the largest concession she would offer.
The old need to turn uncertainty into an order came up in him.
Malcolm had known the clan's ways in because Alistair had trusted him.
Now he had to trust a woman who kept two names, spoke Gaelic while pretending not to understand it, and was still hiding the reason for the familiarity that followed him.
"At dawn," he said.
Graeme turned.
"Laird."
"They go back at dawn. As Miss Whitmore. With no visible escort."
Eliza gathered the cloths.
"We'll need clean clothes."
"There's a chest of things taken out of the castle," Iain said. "Some of it may serve."
"And a better story than 'we were carried off by courteous Highlanders,'" Eliza said.
Graeme looked at her.
"No one would believe the courteous part."
"At last we agree."
Alistair stood before Diana could stop him. The pain came. He stayed on his feet.
"The council is over."
Graeme walked Eliza to the door, arguing about how word would pass. Dugald took Calum off to rest. Iain collected the bowl.
Diana stayed.
"You do not trust me," she said.
Alistair pulled the coat straight over the bandage.
"I trust what I've seen you do."
"That is still not the same."
"No."
She accepted the answer without lowering her eyes.
"I will come back with the information."
"Come back without it, if you must."
Diana's hand stopped on the handle of the case. For a moment Alistair had the girl his memory still could not reach: the lifted chin, the refusal to take an order simply because it came from him.
"At dawn," she said again.
Diana left the shed.
The next morning, with the mist still over the passage between the slopes, two women left the shelter in clean gowns and English cloaks. A plain cart waited beyond the passage. A clansman would take them near the main road and be back before anyone saw him.
Diana Fraser and Eliza Fraser disappeared among the trees.
Miss Diana Whitmore and Miss Eliza Whitmore went on to Inverness.