“Roadblocks?” Things were beginning to look up. The girl was too canny to be caught in a roadblock, but it would suit his purposes. She couldn’t move freely. She and her cohort shouldn’t be too difficult to track. “I’ll take my chances. I’m known up at the castle. That’s where I want to go.”
He was swaying on his feet, not so much from the punch from Dugald’s hefty fist, but because he’d had so little to eat in the last twenty-four hours. He stayed only long enough to satisfy his hunger and thirst, then he was up doing again. In short order, he was mounted and making his way east toward the castle. He hoped he
would
come to a roadblock. The men there would be on his side, and he’d soon form a posse to hunt the girl down. He had a good idea where she would make for. She’d make for the inn at Braemar where he’d first come across young Thomas. This was surely the route she’d planned to escape her pursuers. Beyond Braemar there was nothing but moors and mountains except for one track going south to Pitlochry, then on to Perth.
She’d be easy to catch on the barren moors, but he hoped to catch her long before that.
There was a barrier up ahead, a farmer’s wagon blocking the road. He’d come to a roadblock. Alex touched his heels to his mount’s sides, and the horse bounded forward.
There were only four men at the barricade, and though they weren’t a cheerful lot, they were pleasant enough until he told them his name. In the next instant, their expressions went from shock to belligerence, and four pistols were raised and pointed straight at him.
“You’re to come with me, sir,” said the policeman in charge. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. “Colonel Foster would like a word with you.”
Alex didn’t like Foster any more than Dickens did. The colonel had responsibility for the soldiers, and he was highly conscious of the chain of command. But he wasn’t in command of Alex or Dickens. Their section chief was Commander Durward, and in his absence they reported to one another.
“What’s this about?” Alex asked.
“I couldn’t say, sir. All I know is that Colonel Foster would like a word with you.”
Alex looked at each man in turn.
Boys,
he thought,
and still wet behind the ears.
The guns that were pointed at him, however, were just as lethal whether they were in the hands of striplings or veterans.
He tried again. “I don’t report to Colonel Foster but to Mr. Dickens.”
The officer in charge shrugged. “I’m just following orders, sir.”
Something was seriously wrong. He could feel it in the fine hairs on the back of his neck. They were practically standing on end.
“Fine,” he said, “then take me to the colonel.”
The officer in charge seemed relieved at Alex’s response and designated two of his companions to escort him to the castle. They fell in on either side of him, and the barrier was moved to allow them to pass.
As they jogged along, thoughts of Foster and the girl quietly slipped away, yet his mind was crystal clear. At first, he hardly knew what was happening. All he felt was a presence: Gavin. He did not possess his brother’s gift. He could not put thoughts into people’s minds as Gavin could. So what was Gavin trying to tell him? Listen . . .
There were no words. All he knew was that he was riding into danger and that Gavin was there.
The young policemen who delivered Alex to Foster’s office lost no time in making their escape. And who could blame them? The colonel radiated all the warmth of an ice-berg, not to mention that two stern-faced soldiers in Highland battle dress were stationed on either side of the door.
As soon as the policemen left, one of the soldiers ordered Alex to raise his arms, then proceeded to search him for concealed weapons.
“He’s unarmed, sir,” the soldier told Foster.
Foster gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk. “Take a seat, Hepburn.”
Alex complied, his gaze never faltering from the man on the other side of the desk. Foster was in his early fifties, red-haired, red-faced, and with great beefy hands. He was also as thick as a plank, and in common with other stupid people who had risen to a position of authority on the strength of their years of service, he tended to be a bit of a bully.
“Shouldn’t Dickens be here?” Alex asked mildly. “I’m under instructions to report only to him.”
The colonel beamed at him. “Oh, that’s very good, Hepburn, but not good enough. We have a witness, you see.”
“A witness to what?” Alex kept his tone polite.
“To the murder of Chief Inspector Dickens,” replied the colonel.
“
What?
”
Foster repeated what he’d said.
Alex stared at the other man without really seeing him. His mind was numb with horror. He was remembering how much he liked and trusted Dickens. He had risen through the ranks of the police on merit alone. In another year, he was going to retire with his wife and live the life of a country gentleman.
As his mind began to clear, he looked at Foster and wanted to choke him. He was in charge for now, and he was relishing his newfound powers.
“Tell me how it happened,” he said, breaking into Foster’s harangue.
“Don’t play games, Hepburn. You know how it happened. You and your brother are in this together. He stabbed Dickens in the back with a letter opener that he found on Dickens’s desk, then you helped your brother escape. But we caught him, and now we’ve caught you.”
“
My brother?
” Alex demanded angrily. “My brother doesn’t even know Dickens. Why would he want to kill him?”
The colonel slapped his beefy hands on the flat of the desk. His eyes were bulging, and he was breathing hard. “Because he was part of the plot to kill the queen. I presume Dickens became suspicious, whatever, and your brother killed him. We have witnesses, so don’t think you can argue your way out of this. He murdered Dickens, then you procured horses to spirit him away. That makes you an accomplice, Hepburn.”
Alex gave a mirthless laugh and shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong. My brother was assisting me. Where is he? What have you done with him?”
The colonel linked his fingers and squeezed them tightly together, a very telling sign, in Alex’s opinion. Rage was turning Foster’s face purple. “Your brother,” he said, “is in solitary confinement. Why don’t you make things easy for him and easier for yourself? Tell us what we want to know, and we’ll leave him alone. Until we hang him, of course.”
Alex resisted the urge to spring at the other man and break his neck. He steepled his fingers and forced a superior smile. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Foster,” he said. “I don’t report to you. Commander Durward is my chief. I’ll report to him and to no one else. I presume you have sent a telegram to Whitehall informing them of our situation?”
“I’m in charge here!” roared Foster. He was sucking air through his teeth. “You got away with insubordination with Durward, but you damn well won’t get away with it with me.”
He squeezed his linked fingers till they showed white. “This is what I think happened,” he said. “Your brother was part of a plot to murder the queen. He didn’t know about our decoy queen. His shot went wild and hit one of the guests, a Mr. Ramsey, to be exact. Maybe you knew what your brother was going to do and maybe you didn’t, but from the moment he fired that shot, you chose him over us. You made up a story about a blond-haired woman. However, when I talked to Mr. Ramsey this morning, he said that he did not see her. I don’t believe she exists. Dickens became suspicious. Your brother stabbed him to death, then you made your escape.”
Alex’s voice was terse with anger. “You’re out of your mind!”
Foster suddenly thumped the flat of the desk with his clenched hand. “So tell me, Agent Hepburn, where in hell have you been? And don’t waste my time with fairy tales. There was no blond woman taking potshots at the queen. You didn’t pursue her, as your brother wants us to believe. You were running away.”
Alex kept his mouth shut.
He didn’t want the girl to fall into the hands of this unscrupulous opportunist who didn’t care whom he crushed to get to the top. Foster wouldn’t make allowances for Thomas’s youth either.
Thomas? Who in blazes was Thomas? Alex had to keep reminding himself that Thomas and the girl were one and the same person, and the girl was an enigma.
“You had better tell me what you know,” said Foster, “or I’ll make things very unpleasant for you.”
“I’ll tell you for the last time,” replied Alex in a bored voice, “I have special clearance. When Durward returns, I’ll report to him.”
His words acted on the colonel as he hoped they would. “Teach him a lesson in manners,” Foster told his guards.
They were big-fisted, heavyset men, but for all that, Alex knew that he could disable them in a fight. They hadn’t been taught the tricks of an assassin’s trade as he had. He didn’t want to disable them. He wanted them to take him to his brother so that he could devise a way to get Gavin out of the castle. The only way that was going to happen was if he took a beating and convinced the colonel that he was in no condition to escape.
He came at the soldiers as though he were a gentleman boxer trained to follow the Marquess of Queensbury rules. The soldiers laughed at him, as well they might, but he got in a few punches before he allowed them to do much damage. The fist in his solar plexus drove the air from his lungs, and he keeled over and lay writhing and groaning on the floor.
Only then did Foster get up from his desk and come to stand over him. “You see here, gentlemen,” he said, “the best that Her Majesty’s Secret Service has to offer, God help us,” and he kicked Alex in the back, hard. “A stint in the army is what these glamour boys need. Put him in the nursery with his brother.”
The kick in the back had Alex writhing in earnest this time. He felt dizzy, disoriented, and horribly nauseated.
They hauled him up and supported him by linking their arms under his, then they dragged him away.
Mahri wanted to put as many miles between herself and the Hepburn as fast as she possibly could. They were hampered by the roadblocks that forced them to keep to the trees—the great forests of Scots pines that marched like an army over the slopes. It gave them excellent cover but slowed their progress. They’d gone only four miles, and it was another four to go before they reached Braemar. She was tired, she was hungry, and her spirits flagged. She was still thinking of the Hepburn, wondering whether he had recovered from his concussion or whether, contrary to Dugald’s opinion, he was sinking into a coma.
According to Dugald, the Hepburn . . .
He shouldn’t be called “the Hepburn” because he wasn’t the chief of his clan. Mr. Hepburn was all that he was entitled to. Dugald had elevated him to a chieftain as a mark of respect. A warrior, Dugald called him, basing his judgment on what she had told him of her encounter with the man. He’d even laughed when she’d told him about the spanking he had administered. And she’d thought Dugald would be on her side!
She didn’t think of the Hepburn as a warrior so much as a worthy opponent. A gentle warrior, perhaps. An honorable warrior, certainly. She could vouch for that. When he’d stripped her of her boy’s clothes and discovered that she was a female, he hadn’t tried to seduce her.
But he’d wanted to.
Just thinking about his expression when he’d seen her naked made her toes curl. At the time, she’d known real fear. Would she ever forget the way his eyes had darkened when he’d captured her in his stare? She’d thought
rape
,
violence
,
a forced seduction
. Then he’d turned into a bad-tempered slave master and started finding fault with her.
A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth.
Her smile gradually faded. She would never see him again, not unless fate took a hand in things, and the fates had not been kind to her in the last little while. But if they should meet again in the not too distant future, would he remember her?
A blast of wind made the tall pines sway alarmingly, jerking Mahri from her thoughts.
“Whisht!” whispered Dugald, holding up his hand.
Mahri reined in her mount and looked down the slope to the road. “I don’t see anything,” she said.
“They’ve taken the barriers away. There’s no a policeman in sight.”
“That’s good for us, isn’t it?”
“Let’s find out.”
They came to a row of houses just off the main thor oughfare. It was too small to be a village but, naturally, it boasted an alehouse. To Mahri’s surprise, the taproom was doing a brisk business, and she wondered where all these well-dressed men had come from.
“Policemen,” Dugald observed under his breath. “I’d venture that they were manning the roadblocks, and now they’re off duty. Ah, there’s someone I know. Stay close by me, and not a word out of ye, mind.”
He ordered two dinners and one tankard of ale to go with them, then he directed Mahri to a small table and told her to wait. She watched as he approached the bar counter and tapped one of the customers on the shoulder. The stranger was all smiles and thumped Dugald on the back.
Mahri’s dinner arrived, the ubiquitous Scotch broth and a slice of meat pie. She was so hungry that even if a fire had broken out, she would not have left the table until she had consumed every bite.
Snatches of conversation reached her. Balmoral was mentioned, but the talk was mostly of the weather. It had been a scorching month except for the last few days, and now some of the patrons were worried. The older men talked of the great flood and how it had washed away their homes and livelihood. The younger men listened respectfully, but Mahri could tell that they weren’t really interested.
A few moments after Dugald returned, his piping-hot dinner was brought to their table. “Here’s how things stand,” he said. “There are no roadblocks because the Hepburn has been taken into custody. It was him they was after. Seems like the policeman in charge at Balmoral got himself stabbed in the back, and there’s a witness says the Hepburn brothers did it. They’re both locked up at the castle.”