Imposter Bride (35 page)

“And where do you choose to meet?”

“Here at Highclyffe, upon the green. I want no
public spectacle made of this!”

“Twenty paces,” Ramsay replied. “And your
second?”

Edward turned to the constable. “Keener?”

“Me?” The constable stepped back. “‘Twould be
highly—”

“Or you get nothing for your trouble these past
weeks,” Edward snapped at him. “Nothing!”

The constable’s face soured as he was being asked to
participate in something he normally would have forbidden.

“There will be no witnesses,” Edward put in. “No one
to see.”

“No physician?”

“No one. I don’t want anyone to think this madman
has the slightest cause to call me out. Better that his nonsense be
put to an end, quickly and privately, here in Scotland.”

“But if someone should get killed, there will be the
authorities to answer to—”

“If I get killed, you can throw Ramsay in jail
forever on any charge you like, for all I care. If he is killed,
we’ll dump his body in the lake and no one will be the wiser. I’m
the law around here, anyway.”

The constable glared at the ground, uncomfortable
with the circumstances.

“Come, Keener.” Edward paced the floor behind him,
his voice tight with impatience. “You’ve worked hard for this. And
I will reward you handsomely.”

Ramsay crossed his arms. “What’s the trouble,
Metcalf—no friends in Scotland?”

Edward shot him a dark glare. “Hardly the case. I’ve
no peers here. Keener?”

“All right!” The constable swiped the air with his
left hand, as if brushing away his misgivings. “All right. I shall
act as your second, as long as there are no witnesses. And only a
single shot.”

“And you, Ramsay?” Edward sneered. “What fool stands
with you?”

“I will.” MacEwan stepped forward. “I’ll act on Mr.
Ramsay’s behalf.”

All three men stared in surprise at the small older
manservant.

“You?” Edward drawled, incredulous.

“Aye.”

“Thank you, MacEwan.” Ramsay patted him on the
shoulder. He had thought to ask Puckett, but MacEwan was the better
man for the job, having a personal stake in the matter.

“Then you’re out, MacEwan,” Edward spat. “Out of a
job. Both of you. You and the wife.”

“Wouldn’t work for a blackguard the likes o’ you,
anyhow,” MacEwan retorted. “See you at dawn,
your lordship
.”
He drawled the last two words, mocking his former master, and then
left the parlor, following close at Ramsay’s heels.

At the front door, Ramsay found Mrs. MacEwan
waiting, perched on the seat of a small cart drawn by a pony. The
cart was piled with their meager belongings, and Ramsay wondered
what they would do to support themselves after of years of service
to the earl.

“Where will you go?” Ramsay asked.

“We’ve family in Dunure,” MacEwan answered. “Jessie
will go on ahead. We’ll get by.” He turned to his plump wife.
“Jessie, d’ye have the box I asked you to find?”

“Aye.” She reached into her cloak and drew out a
small wooden container that had been resting on her lap, concealed
from view. She gave it to her husband, who offered it to
Ramsay.

“We thought these might belong to you, sir.”

Curious, Ramsay took the box in his hands. It was
heavy for its size. He opened the latch and lifted the lid to find
two dueling pistols with ornately filigreed barrels and elegant
bone grips upon which were carved boars heads, the MacMarrie clan
symbol. The weapons were cleaned and oiled to perfection, obviously
the work of the older man before him.

“I’ve hidden ‘em for years. They belonged to your
father,” MacEwan put in. “I thought you should have ‘em.”

Ramsay glanced down at the older man, barely able to
suppress his tears. “I am speechless, MacEwan.”

“May they serve you well in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

“You might take ‘em out beforehand and get a feel
for ‘em. They’re a bit temperamental.”

“I intend to. Thank you, MacEwan.”

“Bless you, Captain Ramsay,” Jessie MacEwan said,
tears in her eyes. “God bless you and save you.”

“Thank you.”

He tucked the dueling pieces into a pouch on his
saddle and then mounted his horse. He was weary to the bone, but
knew he would not sleep until his work here in Scotland was done.
Edward Metcalf must be killed. There was no other way to stop the
man, other than shooting him through the heart. No court in England
would find the earl guilty of the crimes Ian was sure he had
committed.

Clearing Sophie’s name, however, was even more
important than stopping the earl from killing again. In fact, he
would scour the banks of the lake once more before he returned to
the inn, in hopes of finding some small sign of the woman he had
loved and then had lost all too soon.

For the second time in her life, Sophie woke up in a
chamber she didn’t recognize, and in a bed she hadn’t remembered
crawling into. Even stranger was the feeling that the bed was
moving, accompanied by a persistent jangling. She rose on one elbow
and felt every muscle and bone in her body protest. Her head was on
fire and felt far too heavy for her neck, and something pressed
upon her chest, making her struggle for each breath. Then she
remembered her jump from the fortress and her plunge to what she
had assumed would be certain death. Obviously she hadn’t died or
drowned, for she had not awakened in the afterworld.

It was then she remembered why she jumped: abject
heartsickness and complete betrayal by the man she had fallen in
love with. She swallowed and closed her eyes, forcing herself not
to allow the black hopelessness to flood up around her again. Her
life had been spared for a reason, and having been given a second
chance, she must forget the past and press on.

Glancing around, Sophie realized she was not in a
bed chamber either, but in a small caravan packed to the roof with
boxes and bags crudely labeled “ribbons” and “buttons” and “tins”
and the like, and which was swaying and jingling with every turn of
the wooden wheels on the muddy rutted road. She must have been
found by a tinker.

Across the narrow aisle was a tiny table, spread
with the plaid blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders in what
seemed a lifetime ago, and upon a rickety chair was draped her gown
and underclothes, drying to a crisp in the chilly air.

Sophie looked down. The bed she lay in was narrow
and hard, and piled high with hand-stitched quilts made of velvet,
silk, and satin squares, an obvious attempt to keep her warm
without the benefit of a fire. She sat up and looked beneath the
heavy covers to find herself stark naked. Who had undressed
her?

But as she sat up, she was beset by a fit of
coughing so violent that she couldn’t catch her breath. She hunched
over, hacking and gasping, her head splitting with each cough, and
during her distress she felt the caravan lurch to a stop.

Tears flooded her eyes as she struggled to breathe,
and she could see nothing but a big dark blur of a shape climbing
into the back of the caravan and looming above her.

“Here, take a whiff o’ this.”

Something was thrust beneath her nose. She managed
to take a sniff, and was instantly assailed by the sharp smell of
camphor. The oil worked its magic, however, and cleared her lungs
enough for her to sit up straight and wipe her tears away.

“I figure you took on a lot of water,” the dark
shape remarked. “In your lungs.”

Sophie blinked and tried to focus. She couldn’t tell
if she were in the presence of a man or woman. She coughed again,
and once more the shape bent closer and held the vial just under
her nose.

“Thank you,” Sophie gasped.

“Thought you were going to leave us for a while,
miss.”

“I thought I had.” Her tears cleared enough to allow
her to glance at the person before her. She raised her eyes to take
in the tall frame, the wild gray hair, the floppy brimmed hat and
long wool cape of her rescuer. Even so, she could not ascertain by
voice or sight if the person was male or female. She ran a second
glance across the person’s face, which was craggy and wrinkled and
spotted with moles sprouting hairs.

“Ye all right now, dearie?”

She nodded and coughed into her fist. “Much better,
thank you.”

“That water’s got t’ come out.”

She nodded again, guessing the person across from
her was a very tall and uncommonly plain woman.

“You’ll just have to keep coughing for a while. It
will hurt ye soon. We might have to bind your ribs.”

Her rescuer reached into the folds of her cloak and
pulled out a silver flask, which she handed to Sophie.

“Take a swig o’ this. It’ll warm your cockles.”

Sophie obeyed and tried not to grimace as the fiery
whisky burned down her throat. Her arms shook uncontrollably as she
handed the flask back to its owner. She sank against the pillows
and pulled the quilts up to her chin.

“Ye all right?”

“Much better.” Sophie managed a smile, but she was
so weak she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her eyes open for
long. She draped an arm over her burning forehead to block the
light that hurt her eyes.

“You’re a MacMarrie.” The old woman said, nodding at
the plaid. “Haven’t seen the MacMarrie tartan for twenty long
years. Thought you were all killed off.”

Sophie said nothing. She was once again in the
predicament of having to conceal her identity—both of them this
time. She couldn’t possibly pass herself off as a Scot, but what
were her choices? In her muddled mental state, she decided to allow
silence to speak for her and let this unusual tinker draw her own
conclusions, however inaccurate they may be.

“Ye could be fined for wearing that tartan,” the old
woman continued. “I wouldna be so brazen were I you.” The tinker
took a swig from her flask and let out an appreciative sigh.
“Although the MacMarries was always a bit o’ that, to be sure.
Gutsy and stubborn, the lot of ‘em.”

Sophie closed her eyes and coughed again, this time
holding her ribcage. When her coughing fit subsided, she looked up
at the female tinker.

“Where are we?”

“On the road to Dunure. Been travelin’ most of the
night.”

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“I was camped by the lake. Don’t sleep much what
with my joints achin’ when it’s cold. I was sittin’ by the fire,
warming my bones, when I saw you in the water, sailing by like a
ship on the Clyde.”

“Sailing by?”

“Aye. There’s strange currents in Loch Lemond. ‘Tis
connected to the sea, ye ken, and the water has a swift current at
times. Some say there’s even sea monsters in the lake, trapped for
all time. But I’ve yet t’ see one.”

“Sea monsters?”

“Aye. Lucky ye weren’t snapped up.”

Sophie shuddered. So she’d jumped into the lake and
had been swept away by the undercurrent. Apparently, she had lost
consciousness but had managed to keep from sinking. She couldn’t
remember a single moment of the time she’d been in the water.
Perhaps she had died after all, chilled by the frigid waters of
Lake Lemond, dragged along by the undertow, and had been revived by
this old woman. All she knew was that nothing short of a miracle
had occurred to allow her to wake up, alive once more.

“How’d you come to be in the loch?” the tinker
inquired.

“I don’t recall,” Sophie replied, almost truthfully.
She remembered jumping, but that was all. “I must have slipped and
fallen in—”

“Dinna fret. It’ll come back to ye. And when ye
regain your wits, we’ll get ye back to your kin.”

“I’m in your debt,” she murmured, her eyelids
drooping, unable to remain awake.

“Ye rest, child.” The woman hovered over her,
looking down at her. “Can’t have the last of the MacMarries fadin’
away now, not after what ye’ve all been through.” She heard the
tinker take another drink of whisky. “By St. Andrew, ‘tis a fine
day.” The old woman’s voice above her grew soft with wonder. “That
it is. The MacMarries have returned.”

Ian spent the afternoon in target practice in the
west meadow of Lady Auliffe’s estate, getting to know the feel and
kick of his father’s pistols, and discovering, much to his relief,
that they were amazingly accurate at twenty paces. While loading
one of the weapons, he saw three crows flutter into the tree at his
right, and thoughts of his father’s death swirled up at the sight
of them. He lowered the pistol, and a slight wind buffeted his hat
as he watched the birds settle in the bare branches of the beech
tree.

Ordinarily he might have thought of raising the
pistol and taking a shot at one of them. But this time, his arm
remained slack at his side. He suddenly realized he didn’t abhor
the sight of the birds any longer. Their presence did not flood his
heart with hatred this time.

Was it because he was finally here at Highclyffe,
with a weapon that once belonged to his father in his hand? Was it
because John MacEwan recognized him for who he was and what he was
and respected him for it? Was it because this was the eve of his
final revenge on the Earl of Blethin and all that it implied?

Ian watched the crows watching him and sighed. He
knew this odd and unlikely peace did not stem from the proximity to
his childhood home, but from the fact that he had turned his sights
on something other than myopic revenge. Mary Auliffe had been
right. Allowing himself to admit to his love for Sophie had freed
his heart from the bondage of the past. He had finally loved
someone, and though he had enjoyed only a few days in Sophie’s
presence, that love had changed him forever. And now grief for her
loss was melting away the final bindings of his bitterness.

Lady Auliffe came out after two hours to fetch him
back for tea, during which he fell asleep by the fire, exhausted
from hours upon the road, searching for Sophie, and his distressed
mental state of the last few days.