Page 48 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“I t’s not going well for her,” Hamish said, pacing the length of the taproom in the inn he and Brendan had called home for the past few days.

His brother watched him from a table where he ate his evening meal.

Beside him sat Marshall, acting as if he had a more positive outlook about these proceedings than Hamish.

“Mrs. Gilly has not yet given her testimony,” Marshall said calmly, finishing off his pint of ale.

The innkeeper looked at them from time to time, frowning.

Their appearance had dampened his trade somewhat.

Although the taproom was normally a crowded place in the evening, it was sparsely occupied now, and Hamish wondered if it was because Marshall was a minister.

Or was it due more to the fact that the three of them were solidly on Mary’s side?

“People are beginning to believe her guilty,” Hamish said, finally sitting.

“I’m afraid that is my fault,” Marshall admitted. “I should not have asked to address the court.”

“You only wished to help,” Brendan said.

“Do you think Gilly was murdered?” Hamish asked Marshall.

“Mercury poisoning is a terrible way to die. But it’s just as possible that he could have had a tumor, or some other digestive disruption of the bowel.

It’s not uncommon, especially in a man his age.

” He stared off into the distance. “I would have liked to see his liver and intestines,” Marshall said, sounding entranced at the idea.

“But she didn’t know Gordon was getting treatment from the physician,” Hamish said.

“So she says,” Brendan said, a comment that caused Hamish to stare at him. “I am only voicing what other people will be thinking, Hamish.”

“She didn’t know.”

“Your loyalty to Mrs. Gilly is commendable,” Marshall said. “But you have no proof that she didn’t poison him.”

“She didn’t,” he said firmly.

Hadn’t they seen the look in her eyes, the expression of dawning horror when she realized what had happened? He’d been watching her carefully and knew the moment it had occurred to her that she might have accidentally contributed to Gordon’s death.

“The responsibility of another man’s death is a heavy burden to bear,” Marshall said. “Only God can absolve her of it.”

Hamish nodded, wondering if the good minister was about to launch into a sermon. Thankfully, Marshall focused his attention on Hamish’s arm.

“Is your lame arm the injury you sustained during your imprisonment?” Matthews asked.

Hamish wondered if Brendan had told Marshall of his time in India. What else had his brother divulged? He nodded, deciding not to clarify that torture had been responsible for the damage to his arm.

“May I examine you?” Marshall asked.

“Here?” Hamish glanced around the snug taproom. Although the room was deserted except for the three of them, it was hardly an appropriate place.

“I only ask you to roll up your sleeve, Hamish,” Marshall chided.

Hamish would much rather that Mary treated him, but he didn’t demur. He stood, removed his coat, and rolled up his sleeve before sitting again.

“Have you any movement in it?” Marshall asked, after examining the scars on his arm.

“No, but I’ve begun to feel tingling in my fingers. I owe it to Mary’s assiduous treatments, I think. She insists that I massage it with a salve three times a day.”

“Have you done so?”

“Not recently,” he said wryly. “There have been other things on my mind.”

“You will never get better unless you do,” Marshall pronounced.

Hamish took another sip of his whiskey. “Mary thinks that a few applications of your electrical machine might help.”

Marshall looked delighted. “She truly has studied my experiments, then.” He immediately launched into a description of how the stimulation might render the muscles fit again.

Hamish listened with half an ear, his thoughts on Mary. He couldn’t forget the look on her face as Charles had given his testimony. She’d looked stunned at the information the apprentice had divulged.

“Charles knew,” Hamish said abruptly.

The two men turned to look at him. “Charles said that he watched Gordon take the medicine from the physician, at the same time Mary was giving Gordon his nightly drinks.”

“And he said nothing?” Brendan asked.

“Indeed,” Marshall said. “Why?”

“He benefited by Gordon’s death,” Hamish said. “It was easy for him to simply sit back and allow Gordon to be poisoned. His hands were clean. Should anyone suspect foul play in Gilly death, he can claim ignorance.”

“A fact that does not make him guilty of anything in the eyes of the law,” Marshall said. “Or the physician.”

“Mary is equally as innocent.”

“But I’m very much afraid Mary will be the one punished, whether it’s proper or not.”

Hamish remained silent, having already come to that conclusion. He consulted his pocket watch again, and wondered how long until he could put his plan into motion.

Ian MacRae held his wife tight to him as he stood on the bow of his flagship, the Ionis . After all these years, he still preferred solid ground beneath his feet.

“Did you ever think, love,” he asked softly, “that we would come back to Scotland again?”

She pulled back and looked at him, smiling. “I suspected that we might one day, especially after Alisdair decided to settle here.”

“We were different people then,” he said.

She laughed gaily. “Oh, I think we’re the same people now, Ian, only much, much older.”

“Do not remind me,” he said crossly, and then smiled to mitigate the effect. “My bones ache in the morning, and I’ve a shoulder that can tell the weather.”

“I will not recite a litany of my complaints to you, my dearest,” Leitis said. “Otherwise, you might cast your eye toward a much younger wife.”

It was his turn to laugh. As if he would ever want anyone other than this woman who had shared his life for more than thirty years.

True, there had been times when they’d not spoken to each other for days on end.

Occasionally, they’d shouted at each other, and once he’d even taken a chair, lifted it, and put it down on the floor so hard that a leg had snapped.

Leitis MacRae infuriated him at times. She was opinionated, strong, and determined. She was also his best friend and dearest companion, and the one person he respected and trusted above all others.

The sky was gray with storm clouds, and he thanked Providence that he had an experienced captain aboard. He might design and build ships, but he still didn’t like to sail them, a fact that amused his five sons.

It had been a busy voyage, one beset by bad weather.

He’d been a fool to travel so late in the season, but it seemed an ideal time to return to Scotland.

Alisdair had sent word that Gilmuir was nearly complete, and that any memento a member of the MacRae clan would like to send back to Scotland would be gratefully accepted and held in a place of honor in the clan hall.

The request seemed like a call for them to return to Gilmuir.

Here they were, all these years later, sailing along the coast of Scotland in the Ionis, sails half furled.

“We should be entering Loch Euliss in a day or so,” he said, having just returned from a briefing with the captain and first mate. “We’ll see Gilmuir in a few days.”

“And Alisdair,” Leitis said. “It’s been so long. We have grandchildren to meet, Ian. Does it seem possible?”

He studied her in the faint light of the afternoon sun.

Her hair had whitened at the temples, and there were streaks of gray through its thickness.

A few creases surrounded her eyes, and a few more were visible around her mouth, but otherwise, she didn’t look her age.

Or perhaps it was simply because she was Leitis, the woman who’d been in his heart since he was a boy.

“You’ll never look older to me than you did on the day I met you,” he said. “I was nine, I believe.” He bent to kiss her gently, touched by her tender look.

He’d expected his return to Gilmuir to be filled with memory, and that it was.

He’d also expected to feel a soft, reminiscent sadness, but right at the moment, all he felt was joy.

He’d lived the life he wanted with the woman he adored, and now he was returning to the place of his childhood, a fortress his eldest son had restored and made whole again.

“We should have sent word of our coming,” Ian said.

“As I recall,” Leitis teased, “you were intent on getting here.”

“Intent on getting the voyage over, you mean.”

Out of habit, he looked around for Douglas, and seeing him standing talking with the first mate, he felt somewhat reassured. Of all the MacRae sons, Douglas was most difficult. He’d wanted his own way since he was born. Nor had the events of the past months made it easier to deal with him.

Barely seventeen, he was well on his way to becoming a man. He’d proven that he was as virile as any MacRae.

Frowning at that thought, Ian determinedly put his youngest son out of his mind and turned back to his wife.

Mary heard the muffled sound of voices outside her cell.

Night after night the guard and his cronies drank and wagered on a toss of a coin, activities she doubted would please Sir John if he knew.

Their drunken jests had been her lullaby many nights, the sound of their companionship oddly comforting, however.

She walked to the window, placed her palms on the high sill, and braced her forehead against them. She didn’t want to remember Gordon and how horribly he’d died, didn’t want to feel the surge of guilt that accompanied each recollection.

Sometime later, she heard the bar in front of the door slide back and tensed in response.

Slowly, she turned to face her visitor, hoping that she had the courage to refuse Charles.

But the figure that gained shape and substance as he came forward, a lantern in his hand, wasn’t Charles or Mr. Marshall, but the one person in the world she didn’t wish to see.

Hamish seemed to know it as well. He closed the door and put the lantern on the floor. Reaching out, he placed a hand on her shoulders, let it fall when she stepped back.

“Did Sir John send you? Or Mr. Marshall?”

“Neither,” he said, his voice one she’d longed to hear all these lonely days. “The guard, I’ve found, has a predilection for Mr. Grant’s whiskey. In exchange for a cask, I get five minutes with you.”

In the faint glow of the lantern, she watched his face. She’d always thought him a master of control. Rarely did he reveal his emotions, but it was different now. His brown eyes sparkled, and there was a faint smile on his lips, as if he were certain of being welcomed.

“Why are you here, Hamish?”

Instead of answering her, he moved his hand to her cheek. He was warm where she was frigid, her skin feeling as if she were made of ice.

Stepping back once more, she looked at his left arm. “Are you doing the exercises I gave you? You must massage your arm every day so that the gains you made aren’t lost.”

“Mary,” he said, “I didn’t come here to talk of treatments.”

She frowned at him. “Then tell me why you’re here.”

“Have you forgotten those weeks at Castle Gloom?” he asked.

She was tired, and frightened, and so chilled that it felt as if she’d never be warm again. She told him a truth that might have been wiser to keep hidden.

“I’ll never forget those weeks,” she admitted in a voice barely more than a whisper.

“And me? Have you forgotten me?”

A more dangerous question, and one she’d be wiser not to answer. “No,” she said simply.

“Then why wouldn’t you meet my eyes all day, Mary? And why won’t you look at me now?”

“Haven’t you heard what they’re saying about me, Hamish?”

“Do you think I care what anyone says about you?”

“You should, but then hermits don’t care what other people think, do they?”

“Do you?”

“I find, oddly enough,” she told him, “that I do.” To know that anyone could so easily believe her guilty of murder was painful.

She had looked out at the sea of faces and only a few had smiled back at her.

Elspeth, and her family, Betty, Cook, and a few others, but not as many as she had tried to heal.

She felt almost like a stranger among her neighbors, or someone who’d been labeled an enemy.

She turned and walked back toward the cot.

“Did you know?”

There was no point in pretending to misunderstand him.

“That Gordon was taking the doctor’s potion as well as mine? Of course I didn’t.”

“There, I’ve asked and you answered. As far as I’m concerned, you’re innocent.”

She whirled and faced him again. “What makes you believe me so much more easily than anyone else?”

“Because I know you,” Hamish said, the hint of his smile disappearing. “Or did you think the only thing we shared at Castle Gloom was our bodies?”

She wanted to go to him and put her hand in his, let him pull her into his arms. She wanted to be told that this nightmare wasn’t real, but of course it was. She was too ashamed, too deeply shamed, even to look at him. However much she wanted to remake the past, she couldn’t.

She heard him move behind her and prayed that he wasn’t coming close. Or if he did, that he wouldn’t touch her. Now she needed to be strong, as stoic as he had been during his captivity. She couldn’t afford to think of good memories, or feel any regrets.

“I won’t let anything harm you, Mary.”

“It’s too late for that,” she said listlessly.

The door opened, and the guard stood there glowering at both of them. Hamish turned and made his way to the man’s side.

“You’ll remember your promise, then?” the guard asked. “Another cask of the same whiskey tomorrow?”

“I’ll bring it myself,” Hamish said, “as long as nothing of this meeting gets back to Sir John.”

The guard grinned. “He’ll not hear a word of it from my lips.”

Hamish turned to look back at Mary. Without speaking further, he removed his cloak and returned to her, draping it over her shoulders.

“I won’t let anything harm you, Mary,” he said again.

Suddenly, he was striding to the door and gone, leaving only the cloak still warm with the heat from his body. For the first time since she’d entered this cell, she felt warm.

Slowly, she sat on the edge of the cot and buried her face in her hands. Only then did she cry, for the future, in fear, but most of all for the loss of Hamish.