Amanda Scott (23 page)

“Perhaps it is, a bit,” Maggie said, smiling at him. “But I have made the journey a number of times, you know, and found it most enjoyable. One stays in one’s carriage, and my father has been known to sleep the entire way and not remember the crossing. The horses must be unharnessed, of course, so as not to drown if there should be some sort of accident.”

“May we be as lucky,” James said with a comical look. He continued to express his mistrust of the ferry, but when they reached it, Maggie saw that he already had his sketchbook in hand and his concentration during the crossing was profound.

She looked at Rothwell and saw that he was watching his brother, looking amused. He glanced her way just then and smiled unexpectedly. Warmth leapt to her cheeks, and she felt suddenly as if they were alone in the carriage. The sound of James’s moving pencil became part of the background noise, like the gentle lapping of the water against the sturdy ferry barge or the rhythmic knocking of the bargemen’s poles against the sides as they exerted themselves against the strong, lateral current.

“What do you expect of me, Miss MacDrumin?” Rothwell asked, his voice low in his throat, almost as if the words came from within him, without prior thought on his part, impulsively.

The question caught her off her guard, but she rallied quickly, replying, “We want you to help us, sir. Papa’s people are as much yours now as his, and they are not pawns on a chessboard, you know, but human beings. Once you see for yourself that our old ways are best, you will help us to recover them.”

“But the whole world is changing,” he said gently. “I fear that if the Highlanders are to survive, they too must be willing to change. Life has become urban, with towns as the centers of thought and art as well as commerce, and Britain is the center of everything. We are fighting wars and pushing frontiers of trade, and the outside world has begun to enter the most remote corners of the land. One can no longer sit content in a village, Miss MacDrumin, chewing over local gossip and such fantastic bits of news as manage to reach it from the cities. One must keep well-informed both to prosper and to learn to cope with modern life”

“Fine words, sir, but what precisely do you mean to say?”

“That perhaps the old ways are not the best ones,” he said, “that there are other choices that might prove better ones.”

“Faith, sir, do you think it is so easy as that—one merely makes a choice? You do not know what you are talking about!”

“Don’t snap my head off. I merely suggested that there are no doubt choices that have not been considered yet. I am not fool enough to insist upon one way over another from the outset.”

He sounded eminently reasonable, but although she could not think why his words made her so angry, they did. She wanted to snatch him bald-headed, even to shake him. But the thought of shaking him suddenly stirred other thoughts, and she began to think she had spent too much time in close proximity to him that day. She had no time to dwell upon her thoughts, however, for the coach lurched onto the road again, and James snapped his sketchbook shut, demanding to know where they would stop to eat. “My stomach will be gnawing at my backbone long before Perth.”

“A medical description you no doubt learned from the admired Dr. Brockelby,” Rothwell said, grinning. But he knocked against the ceiling, and when they drew up, leaned out to discover what the driver of the second coach could tell them.

Two hours later the carriages drew up in the yard of a neat little tavern in Kinross. It boasted a coffee room with but a single table, but when the landlord learned that Matthew Chelton meant to serve them, he cheerfully agreed to lay covers for the Cheltons and the two coachmen in his kitchen, and the meal that was set before them proved to be a tasty one. Maggie took an opportunity afterward to beg a towel and cloth from the innkeeper’s wife and wash her face and hands.

Clouds had gathered again, and in the distance thunder rumbled, so neither gentleman was inclined to ride. Maria, moving toward the second coach with Matthew, looked as if the thunder made her nervous, but Maggie welcomed it, since it meant she would enjoy better company. Thus, she was a little annoyed when Rothwell seemed inclined to doze, and James opened his sketchbook the moment the coach began to move, leaving her once again to her own thoughts. Still, she felt a certain elation, knowing they were nearing the Highlands, and with each passing mile the feeling grew stronger.

James closed his sketchbook a half hour later, saying, “You look like a cat with a dish of cream.” But the next moment his smile vanished and he leaned forward to look closely at Rothwell. “Ned, what is it? Here, answer me!”

Rothwell stirred uncomfortably. He looked pale, and his voice lacked strength when he said, “I fear the food at that inn has made me ill. I feel sick, and it’s hard to stay awake.”

“Good Lord. Here, driver!” James pounded on the ceiling. “Stop the coach!” Before the coach had rolled to a stop, he had opened the door and was hanging onto the roof, unstrapping one of the bundles. He dropped it to the ground, jumped down and ripped it open, taking a flat case from the articles within. “You’ve complained of the food since we left England, Ned, but this is the worst yet. Let me help you out of the coach.”

Maggie helped too, becoming more anxious as she watched how carefully Rothwell moved. He seemed to be very ill indeed, and she had a terrifying fear that he might expire on the spot. Pushing such thoughts ruthlessly aside, she called to Chelton, peering out of the second coach, to come and aid his master.

James, ignoring everyone but Rothwell, took a bottle from his case and removed the stopper. “Swallow a good jolt of this stuff, Ned. It will fix you right up.”

Rothwell obeyed, screwing up his face in distaste. “What the devil are you dosing me with? It tastes like poison.”

“A concoction of dried rhizomes and roots of ipecac,” James told him. “It will cure what ails you, I promise.”

Rothwell’s face grew ashen, but the look on his face became one of pure dismay. “James, you wretch! Help me to that ditch. Miss MacDrumin, have the goodness to go away. Far away.”

For a moment, Maggie did not understand his meaning, but then she realized his predicament, and managed to turn her back before he relieved himself of everything he had eaten. His retching made her feel ill herself, but once James and Chelton had helped him make himself presentable again, and helped back into the coach to rest, she felt fine. With their coachman’s help, James replaced the bundle on the roof, but Maggie noticed that he brought the flat black case inside with him.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked as he put the case beneath his seat alongside the two smallswords.

“Oh, I think so. I’ll keep the ipecac at hand, but I’ve rarely known anyone to need a second dose. Ned may continue to feel uneasy for a time, but he will most likely sleep now.”

“What else do you keep in that box?”

“That’s my remedy box. I gathered the things in it with the help of Dr. Brockelby, who also showed me how to use most of them. I’ve got any number of useful remedies, and never travel without them. One never knows when they will be useful.”

Impressed, she asked him to tell her more, and once he assured himself that Rothwell was comfortable, he described his experiences with the London doctor in such a way as to make her wish one moment that she could learn such things herself and the next to be grateful she had no need to do so.

Rothwell recovered quickly and took particular care after that to eat only simple dishes prepared as they were in England. Thus, except for the Cheltons, whose time together did not seem to Maggie to be pleasing either of them much, the next few days proceeded pleasantly if uneventfully. The clouds disappeared, they made better time than even Rothwell had hoped, and Maggie began to believe the coaches would make it all the way to Laggan, the tiny village at the foot of the Corriearrack.

The roads were bad, but the scenery became increasingly magnificent, and she happily identified flora and fauna for her companions and pointed out leaves already turning color for winter and drifting to the ground. A stronger chill touched the air, for it was now October, and the wind increased, warning of storms to come, but the day they left Blair Atholl and made their way up Glen Garry’s steep incline was a fine one. They seemed to have it all to themselves, too, for they had not passed another vehicle or a horseman for hours.

The road followed the sparkling waters of the river Garry. Hills rose on either side of them, the upper slopes thick with evergreens, the lower with willow and aspen, the leaves twinkling with sunlight as they rustled on silvery branches. The air was redolent with the scent of pine. The lead coach had been rocking more than usual and when it suddenly stopped altogether, Maggie, who thought they had been luckier than anyone deserved, to have got so far without an accident, was certain their luck had run out at last. Rothwell was unperturbed, but James, letting down the coach window to look out, said in dismay, “There’s a child lying in the road ahead, apparently injured. I must help him.”

He grabbed his remedy kit from under his seat and stepped down from the coach just as a number of armed men burst from the nearby shrubbery and a deep voice cried, “Hold where ye stand, English, and hand o’er yer baubles or forfeit yer lives!”

S
EEING THE BOY LEAP
to his feet and vanish into the thick shrubbery, Rothwell said in an undertone, “Say nothing, Miss MacDrumin. I doubt they will harm us.” He kept his eye on James, unsure of how he would respond, for despite all his wanderings through lower-class neighborhoods of London, Rothwell doubted that he had much experience with criminals.

Putting his right hand in his coat pocket and gripping the small pistol he carried there, Rothwell moved to step from the coach. When the same deep voice commanded him to remain where he was, he said plaintively, “My good fellow, you must realize we have been cooped up in this deuced uncomfortable coach for hours, rattling over your wretched roads. I vow, I shan’t even complain about being robbed of my last penny if you will only allow us to stretch our legs. The lady will no doubt succumb to the vapors if she is not allowed to breathe a bit of fresh air, for she is very much shocked by this outrage.”

“Ye’ve a wooman wi’ ye? Coom out then, lass. We’ll nay harm ye.”

Rothwell had not so much as paused in his descent from the coach and stood now, looking around with an air of languor, his hand still in his pocket, his fingers curled around the pistol grip. His coachman, he noted swiftly, kept his attention on his horses, and the second fellow seemed willing to follow his wise example. Rothwell cursed his own stupidity, knowing that once again he had underestimated the Scots. Aware of the ban against Highland weapons, he had thought there would be little to fear, and so although his drivers carried blunderbusses, the weapons—like his sword and James’s—lay useless beneath their seats.

There were four bandits, all wearing masks and thick knitted caps, and it looked as if the smallest one, standing silently some distance from the others, must be the leader, for only that one carried a firearm. Rothwell’s experienced eye told him the flintlock pistol was ancient, but the steadiness with which it was held spoke of proficiency in its use. The others wielded wicked-looking cudgels, and one man, much larger and more burly-looking than the others, seemed particularly menacing.

“Yer purses, gents.” The large one was doing the talking. “Hand ’em over, if ye please.”

Rothwell, hearing a small gasp behind him, glanced into the coach and saw that Miss MacDrumin was sitting on the edge of her seat, looking wide-eyed. He gave her a reassuring smile, but in her fear, she seemed to have eyes only for the slender bandit with the pistol, the one he realized now must be the leader of the group. James, too, was watching that one. To his credit, James had done nothing rash and looked at Rothwell now as if he awaited instructions, making no move to hand over his valuables. Nor did Rothwell intend for him to do so.

The burly fellow, losing patience, stepped toward James, whereupon the leader, apparently dismissing Rothwell as being of no consequence, turned to keep the pistol aimed at James, and in turning, presented his profile to Rothwell, the large flintlock held steadily out in front of him, away from his own slim body.

Rothwell’s shot echoed from the nearby hills, and as the flintlock went flying, the leader shrieked with pain. The burly man halted instantly in his approach toward James and spun around on his heel. The boy who had lain in the road ran from his place of concealment toward the leader, but the two other men hurled themselves furiously at Rothwell, their cudgels held high.

“Hold!” James’s bellow and the sudden appearance of a pistol in his right hand stopped one of them, and Rothwell was able to deal with the second, avoiding the cudgel with a twist of his body and throwing the fellow neatly over his hip. When he straightened, he saw James watching the leader, who still stood, rubbing a bloody hand against already filthy breeches. James held out his pistol, saying abruptly, “Take this, Ned. You are a better shot than I am, and I want to look at that hand.”

The unfired pistol was thrust into Rothwell’s hand, as Miss MacDrumin descended from the coach to stand beside him. The other men had put down their cudgels, and they also watched James. The boy, tugging at the leader’s sleeve, trying to look at the injured hand, was gently set aside, and the leader watched warily but silently as James approached.

To Rothwell’s astonishment, instead of looking at the hand as he had said he would, James reached out and snatched away the mask and cap. Fine, very long flaxen hair spilled forth. The leader was female, a young and rather pretty female, at that.

She glared at James and jerked away from him.

“Keep your distance, ye filthy Sassenach, or I’ll spit ye where ye stand.”

“With what?” James asked curiously, his voice carrying easily over the murmur of the river and the restless movement of horses. “Your pistol lies yonder, and your fingernails are bitten to the quick. Let me see your injured hand.”