Page 125 of A Scot Is Not Enough

“This very window is where it happened.” Lilly slapped the bent bars she’d stretched her arms through the night before. “Pried these bars off, they did, from the street below. Then they stormed Gatehouse, firing pistols, swinging cudgels and the like.Two warders were nearly blinded by the powder and shot.” She smirked. “That’s why they leave ole Lilly alone.”

As far as Cecelia could tell, those bars were the only part of Gatehouse Prison anyone had bothered to repair.

“A prison break...” she mused. “Will they try to free you?”

Hinges squeaked down the hall. Lilly was nose to the air like a hunting hound.

“Do you smell that?”

“Do you mean mildew and rust and the street below?”

Cecelia smelled Lilly also, but she was too polite to say so.

Lilly crossed their cell and jammed her face between bars. “No. I smell fresh bread.”

One wall of their cell was bars bolted floor to ceiling. A lone torch lit the stone hallway, necessary even in the morning light. Male voices and footsteps echoed from down the hall. Cecelia sprang to her feet and ran to the bars, her ankle chains clanking.

“Alexander?”

A hulking Highlander came forward. “No, Rory MacLeod.”

She grabbed the bars, hope trickling out of her. The bare-knuckle brawler’s visit was unexpected. He looked worse for the wear, waxen faced with worrisome dark circles under his eyes and his brown wool coat sagged like old laundry. The broad-shouldered Highlander had to have lost at least a stone since she last saw him. Being shot and left for dead would do that to a man.

It was, she decided, the Countess of Denton’s effect.The woman was a spider stealing life from everyone who trespassed her web.

MacLeod took her shock in stride. “I brought some food for you.”

He hefted a basket. Fresh-baked-bread’s goodness wafted through cheesecloth covering it. The warder, a youth barely eighteen, stuck a key in the lock. Behind him, two older wary-eyed warders pointed pistols at Mr. MacLeod’s back.

“Pass it through, nice and easy like,” an older warder said.

Cecelia took the basket, and the young warder slammed the door and cranked the key. She hugged the basket, trying to read Mr. MacLeod’s eyes.

Why was he the first man to visit her?

MacLeod looked over his shoulder at the men behind him. “I gave you a half guinea each.”

The older, grizzled warder jerked his chin at the basket. “That was to deliver the food.”

“And to visit my friend.”

The second warder lowered his pistol. “Eh. What can he do? We searched ’im and we searched the basket. The lady’s locked up, she is, and I need to take a piss.”

“Go take your piss, Higgins.” The grizzled warder kept his pistol on MacLeod. To the younger warder, “You, watch at the end of the hall. He so much as twitches wrong... come and get us.”

“Aye, sir.” The freckle-faced warder gave a wide berth to MacLeod. “Five minutes.”

Lilly licked her lips. “I could hold the basket while you and the gentleman have a visit.”

“The food should be enough to last a few days,” MacLeod said.

Cecelia passed it to Lilly. “Go on. Take your fill.”

Lilly scurried to her cot, hugging her prize. The mean-spirited warder slunk off, banging his cudgel on bars on other cells.

“Go on as you were. Nothin’ to see here.”

MacLeod touched a finger to his lips until the squeaky door at the end of the hall slammed shut. Cecelia gripped the bars and held her breath. He tipped back and checked the hall door.