Every time with a highla.., p.23
Every Time with a Highlander, page 23
Half a dozen steps later, he nearly tripped on something. He stooped to pick it up. It was the brown burlap of Father Kent’s habit.
Had he vanished too? Would every religious man disappear in a puff of smoke until there wasn’t a single goddamned one of them between Newcastle and Inverness? The world would be a damned sight better off for it, he thought.
That’s what he told his heart, but his mind told him that no curate just disappears, and that it was far too coincidental for this curate to disappear at the exact same moment Undine did. Undine had been talking to the boy. He was in on it too. The three of them—
Bridgewater put a hand on his heart. His heart raced, his cheeks flushed, and he started to feel nauseated. You’ve been betrayed.
Then, a worse thought occurred—far worse. What if they’d fallen in love? Was it possible the intimacy of the confessional had transformed into passion? Were they even now fornicating somewhere in the woods or garden? He listened for their animal sounds but heard nothing. He could barely breathe.
He heard a noise and turned. Simon stood at the top of the rise, his wispy hair blowing in the breeze like pennant flags on a naval ship. Bridgewater trudged up to meet him.
“Where’s your wife?” Simon said.
“Walking.”
“With the priest?”
“Aye.”
Simon made a skeptical noise. “We leave in the morning?”
“Aye. I’m to meet with Silverbridge in Caddonfoot after breakfast. Then I’ll be back to accompany you to York.”
“Bloody goddamned wrist. I feel like taking a knife and cutting the thing off myself. What about our plan?”
“Everything is in place.”
“Everything except your wife.”
Bridgewater ignored the comment. “The servants will take their carriage back to Coldstream. They’re leaving before dawn.”
“Do they know?”
“Aye. I’ve just given the instruction. Now, the men I’ve hired—”
“Clansmen?” Simon asked.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re clansmen or not so long as they look like clansmen.”
“And who will report it?”
“The driver—Tom. He knows what will happen, and he’ll be the only one to survive, so he can tell the story.”
“You told the clansmen to do it as close to Edinburgh as possible? We want the news to travel quickly.”
“Aye.” Bridgewater felt as if he were being catechized by his old history tutor, the man who made him miserable for four long years.
“Well done. This will turn the tide on the vote. I promise you.”
Four servants dead. A waste. But he reminded himself many more people would die if the treaty wasn’t signed. With a treaty in hand, England could suppress the clans quietly and efficiently. “Remember,” Bridgewater said, “nothing is to be said to anyone—certainly not anyone in the army. This is not an army matter.”
“If you weren’t so bloody concerned with a promotion, you might have proposed the idea to the army yourself. They’d have probably made you a general on the spot.”
Bridgewater gritted his teeth.
“What do you intend to do if your wife doesn’t return?” Simon asked.
“I’ll decide that when it happens.”
“Are you not concerned?” said Simon, who appeared to be taking some pleasure in Bridgewater’s discomfort. “I could send my men out to look for her.” He waited expectantly for an answer.
The thought of having one of Simon’s men finding Undine in the arms of that man and then reporting it to his master… Bridgewater shifted uncomfortably, weighing the unholy mortification against the chance to have Undine back under his control.
Simon lifted a lecherous brow. “Perhaps you’re afraid of what you’ll find?”
“Watch your tongue, man.”
“You fool! Why are you so blind? The woman has no affection for you. She can barely look at you. I thought to myself, the man must want to plow her fields more than life itself—’tis the only reason I can imagine for putting up with her serpent’s tongue and sideways glares. But my servant says you didn’t even take her to your bed after you married her. Are you incapable of the act? Is she a blind to make you appear a functioning man? Or do you prefer the company of men?”
Bridgewater’s head began to hum—so loud he had to put his hands over his ears. He felt dizzy, thought he might retch. The world seemed to be spinning, only the ground before him hadn’t moved.
“Christ Almighty, John, conduct yourself like a man.”
The spinning grew worse. The sky turned red. Simon’s face looked like a gargoyle, and then he was as big as an oak. Bridgewater fell to his knees and began to howl.
Thwack.
He flew over backward, head ringing from the blow.
“Get up,” Simon growled.
Bridgewater sucked in the clean, cool air. The night resolved itself into crisp shades of black and gray. He could feel his anger rise—anger at Simon, aye, but more at that witch. The white witch. He closed his eyes. Had he actually taken her for his wife? Had she tricked him? Had she seduced him into marrying her with her powders and poisons?
He sat up. The ceremony—swift and unfeeling—came back to him with pointed clarity. He could feel her chilly hand as he slipped on the ring. Oh God, what had he told her? What had she seen? He’d be ruined.
He climbed to his feet and let out a breath filled with cold fury. “Find her.”
Forty-nine
“Here,” Undine said, tired to the bone and shivering in the night air. “Now.”
Michael slowed his walking long enough to give her a sidelong smile. “I’ve heard of forward women before, but that pretty much tops it.”
“Ha.” Her feet ached, her shoulders hurt, and she was nearly asleep on her feet. But the patch of red clover they were walking through would make a fine pillow for her head. “If I could move a muscle,” she said, kicking a few stones aside, “it wouldn’t be to, well…”
“Do this?” He took her in his arms and gave her a thorough kiss. At once, her shoulders relaxed.
“You tempt me, sir.”
“What if I told you that you wouldn’t have to move a muscle?”
“Could you tell me I wouldn’t have to remain awake?”
He laughed and dropped his bag on the ground. “Unfortunately, there’s a rule about that in the gentlemen’s code. But if you insist…” He lifted her into his arms, laid her on the mound of clover, and then settled beside her with his back against a tree.
She sighed and closed her eyes. “This is more comfortable than the bed of the Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg.”
Michael made a noise that, if she’d forgotten, would have instantly reminded her he was Scottish.
“I’m going to assume that’s a saying of some sort,” he said.
“Oh, aye.” She smiled and stretched her legs in the coolness of the stems and leaves. “It’s a saying.”
He took her foot, and she stiffened. “What are you doing?”
Michael slipped off her mule. She cursed herself for changing for Morebright’s dinner. Her boots would have been far more comfortable. “Did the prince not perform his duty as a masseur?” he said.
“Masseur—? Oh my. What are you doing?” He was rubbing the ball of her foot between his palms. She arched her back and closed her eyes. “That’s…that’s…soul splitting.”
“Naiads have souls?”
“Of course they do. What sort of a being do you think I am?” She sniffed.
“Slippery.”
“Pardon?”
“Slippery. Like the silk on corn or the mists on water. Hard to pin down. Hard to know. Yet as immovable as Ben Nevis.”
“That’s not overly flattering.”
“It’s not? I rather like it. It’s like reaching out and never knowing if you’re going to touch velvet or the fur of a tiger.”
With one hand on the ball and another on the heel, he twisted and turned her foot, releasing more of the soreness.
“You have a taste for danger, Michael Kent.” She groaned with pleasure.
“I have a taste for something else as well.”
Despite the hour and her feet, the hollow space in her belly began to fill. “Do you?”
He removed the other mule and squeezed her tender instep. She pressed her other foot against his thigh and could feel his long muscles move under her toes. His presence was an elixir like none she’d known.
“I gave you the most powerful travel herbs I know,” she said. “Why did you not use them?”
“You sound disappointed.” There was a smile in his voice.
“It used every bit of twinflower I owned—and that’s not easy to come by.”
“It sounds like you wanted to send me as far away as you could.”
“I did.”
It was the truth, or had been then, and she couldn’t disavow it. Any man who wished to stand beside her needed to speak the truth and be able to hear it as well.
He made a small hmm and tightened the circle in which he rubbed.
“Seducing my feet will not force me to retract my statement, you know,” she said, though, in fact, she would have promised nearly anything if he promised to continue this unorthodox rubbing.
“I am aiming somewhat higher.”
She snorted. “’Twas a home-finder spell with marigold and naiad tears, and I wouldn’t have been the least surprised to find you took half the residents of Peeblesshire with you when spread the herbs.”
He held her foot between his palms in a long, apologetic embrace. “Well, that would have been a bit hard to explain. I wonder, is it even safe to have the herbs in my trouser pocket?”
“I can’t say what might happen,” she said. “I can only imagine you’ll end up being led into the performance of some very salacious penance.”
“Like rubbing your feet?”
“For a start. When I consider the power of your magic, I am half-inclined—”
“Undine, please tell me you know I hold no magical power over you. I should be very sad to have my acting overshadow the feelings—the true and unalterable feelings—you might have for me.”
He spoke soft and low, and the plea in his words unnerved her.
“The way you’ve made me feel…” She shook her head, afraid to believe. “I’ve never felt anything that so radiated magic.”
“But that doesn’t make me a magician—just a man who fell in love with a woman who he hopes has fallen in love with him.”
She looked at her hands and feet as if the answer lay in some external force. “’Tis a very powerful force.”
“The most powerful of all.”
She sat up and reached for him. This kiss was different from the others they’d shared. This kiss—as light and open as a ray of sun—sealed a promise.
“I misjudged you,” he said, “and dishonored your work. I hope I’ll earn your forgiveness.”
She smiled. “Oh, I believe you might.”
With a pleased sigh, she turned on her side and tried pushed her worries about Nab from her head. “You think he’ll be there in the morning?”
“Aye,” Michael said. “I do.”
The Tweed gurgled a short distance from where they sat. For some reason, the sound made her think of her mother and all the things she’d lost.
“Tell me about your wife,” she said.
His hands stopped, but only for an instant. “Young,” he said wistfully, “beautiful, smart—so smart.”
“Was she a director too?”
“No.” He chuckled. “Nor an actor. She taught at the local school.”
“In Bankside?”
“No, but not far. We lived in Lewisham. We had no money.”
His rubbing had slowed. She’d opened a dam somewhere in time with her question, and he was making his way slowly upstream.
She turned around, laying the back of her head upon his thigh, and he began to comb his fingers absently through her hair.
“She died.”
“I could see the pain,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“In a car crash. ‘Car.’ It’s sort of like a carriage without the—”
“I know what cars are.” She patted his knee, hoping to help him through the current.
“Right. Of course. Well, we hadn’t been married very long. Four years. She was coming home from the chemist. She needed bandages. She’d burned herself cooking a stew the day before and wanted to cover the blister. She wasn’t a very good cook, but she was determined to ‘make her mark,’ as she said. I wouldn’t have cared if we ate biscuits and tea every night. Honestly. Anyhow, the bandages were on the floor of the car—after, I mean. I remember thinking how weird it was that the crash had killed her but the bandages were still there.” He shook his head and sighed. “A lot of odd stuff goes through one’s mind at a time like that.”
She took his hand and laced her fingers in his.
“I can see her,” Undine said. “Hair the color of warm coffee. Eyes like Grasmere lake. Ready smile.”
“As I said, she was everything back then.”
“I don’t mean back then. I mean I can see her now.”
His breath caught.
“She’s quite content, Michael. They don’t have the regrets we have, you see. She’s around you at all times. She wants you to know she didn’t feel or know anything when it happened. No fear. No pain.”
Michael’s hold on her hand grew tighter, and she knew he was crying. Undine didn’t know everything she’d just said. That wasn’t how the information came to her, in neat, readable summaries. But the colors of his young wife in her head were a mix of cool and settled violets, and one said what one needed to, to bring people peace.
Undine squeezed his hand. “She also says you’re too good an actor to have given it up.”
This happened to be Undine’s own opinion, but she had no doubt it was his wife’s as well. The violets swirled and lit.
I shall care for him, she said. You may rest now.
For a long time Michael said nothing. And the next thing she knew, she was asleep. And the after that, he was asleep too, breathing steadily, arm wrapped tightly around her waist.
Fifty
Nab jerked awake to the screech of the stable doors being opened. It was still black as pitch out, and he was so tired, but he knew he couldn’t have slept more than a bit. This part of the stables’ low-pitched roof was hidden by the trees. He could lie comfortably and still observe the entrance.
He sat up, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark.
“…why we have to leave in the middle of the night, I don’t know.”
“It’s not for us to wonder. Just get the horses ready.”
The second voice was Tom’s. The first must be another servant.
“I hear old Morebright sent out a search party,” the first said. “Do ye think Bridgewater’s new lady threw him over? They were just married this evening! I don’t think my wife threatened leaving until we were married at least a year.”
“That has to be a record for men in your family.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Stop talking and get the horses, aye?”
Nab had slipped the papers through a narrow slit in the wall closest to him. He hoped the papers hadn’t ended up near where the tack for the horses was stored.
Silently, he climbed down the nearest tree, swallowing the groans his bruised ribs and legs were causing, and waited. The men worked near the far wall, and as his eyes got used to the dark, he could see part of a stall inside that would cover his movements if he was quiet.
The building was dark and smelled of hay and shit. The horses had begun to nicker and move in their stalls, surprised to be aroused at this hour, and with their noise, he ducked easily behind the stall wall. The floor at his feet was piled high with sodden straw, and in a pinch, he could dive into it, though he dearly hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. He felt gently along the wall for the slit and found it at last over some brooms leaning against the wall. The men were consumed with their efforts to adjust an uncooperative buckle.
He ran his hands gingerly over the ground, trying to avoid the wettest sections. Ugh. He wasn’t too particular, but even he was going to want to wash off in the river after this. He found the papers, which made a crackle. The men stopped talking. Nab held his breath.
“Do ye think that’ll hold?” the first man said.
“It’ll be good enough to get us to Coldstream.”
Nab slipped out the door and edged quickly around the building until he was out of sight of the house and the men in the stables. Then, he folded the papers and stuffed them in his pocket. He was flushed with the success of his mission. The words on the paper would damn Lord Bridgewater to a fate worse than death—though death would be a pleasing proposition for a man planning to stage a clan attack on English soldiers. Kent assured him the uncovering of the plan would put a nut in England’s plans for the treaty as well. But most of all, Nab was happy because he knew he’d have earned his place among the grown-ups in the secret group of rebels. He thought of his mother and how proud she’d be, and his heart ached a little. He wasn’t a child anymore and didn’t need to be taken care of, but he hadn’t been to Langholm in a month at least, and he missed her and his baby sister.
He rubbed his hands on his breeks and jogged toward the river. A quick washup followed by a walk long enough to put him out of the reach of Morebright and Bridgewater, and then he could sleep for a bit and still meet Undine and Kent in the morning.
He shoved through a tangle of low branches and a metallic click made him stop.
