Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (12 page)

The Reverend Talent had planted himself across the foot of the stair like a solid oak tree—
Quercus robar,
her father would have classified him, tall and dependable. It was the gravely responsible Reverend Talent who tended, body and soul, to the crofters who seemed to be pouring out of the highlands, dispossessed of the hill farms their families had inhabited for generations by what the powers that be were calling “clearances.” Wholesale evictions were what they were, made by landlords eager to “improve” their agricultural yields by turning arable land into more profitable pasturage for sheep. West Kirk workhouse was about as far as people made destitute by dispossession could get.

And it was there that Quince’s ill-gotten gains were turned into very well spent assistance. She loved the deeply ironic symmetry of it all—stealing from the very people who owned the land and had dispossessed their crofters so they could make more money, and using that stolen money to finance a new start for those same crofters.
 

Justice was indeed blind, and daft to boot, if you asked her. Which nobody did. Nobody except, it seemed, the reverend. Who made her decidedly nervous.

“Lady Quince,” Reverend Talent repeated, doffing his round-brimmed hat to hold in his large, capable hands. The reverend was attired in his one and only costume, which was what he wore every day—the black suit and white linen collar of the sober clergyman. “We have not seen you at Saint Cuthbert’s for quite some time, my lady. I hope you have not been in ill health? We have been greatly missing your… prayers.”

Quince suppressed her agitation, as well as her irritation. The reverend may have been young and stodgy, but he possessed the age-old ability to appear to be saying one thing while meaning entirely another. Quince did not go to West Kirk to pray. She had only ventured into Saint Cuthbert’s to slip money—a vast deal of money over the past three years—into the poor box. She had never intended for anyone to know the money came from her. Although she was not particularly religious, she knew her bible well enough to adhere to the admonition to do good by stealth.
 

Unfortunately for her, the good reverend seemed to be annoyingly good at sussing things out—almost as good as Mama, and Strathcairn, for that matter. But she obliged the clergyman’s sense of propriety by speaking in the same way—she was as fluent in double-speak as she was in outright lies. “My apologies, Reverend.” She made her curtsey of respect, and tried not to let her gaze wander past his shoulders into the crowd, where her cavalier was hopefully looking for her. “You must have me confused with another.”

“Ah, good. Yes.” The tall young vicar twisted his hat in his hands, and lowered his voice, as if he were imparting a strict confidence. “I must admit that I came tonight in the hope of seeking you out, my lady. I cannot help but notice that your visits—for which we are, and always have been supremely grateful—have fallen off of late. I grew worried for your… health.”

Her health was fine—it was her state of reawakened guilt that was not. By jimble, it had only been a few days since she had decided to cease her pilfering. But to the reverend who, in his defense, had destitute mouths to feed, she supposed it might well have been a year.

But she was not about to explain that she had traded opportunistic thievery for kisses to a vicar. “I cannot think what you mean, sir.”

“Ah, I understand.” He glanced around at the costumed crowd. “You wish to remain anonymous. I don’t want you to think we are ungrateful,” he hastened to add in an exaggerated, overly confidential whisper. “It is only that the need is so great at the moment. So many new petitioners every day. We have, it seems, gained a reputation as something of a savior for the dispossessed at Saint Cuthbert’s. And while it is gratifying that our modest successes have helped so many people and families in need, our very success has outstripped our ability to help.”

Though Quince had over the past three years contributed what felt like a fortune—and a very hard, dangerously earned fortune it was at that—the money she gave wasn’t enough. It was never enough. And on days like today, when the reverend’s pale gray eyes implored her, the small amount she stole felt like it was never
going
to be enough.
 

“You have been such a great supporter,” he continued in his sermon-like way. “I suppose I’ve come to rely on you, and your generous donations. And I should hate to turn away someone in true need. And there are so many. So very many. So you see why we are especially in need of contributions?”

She did see. It was why she was able to look herself in the mirror, and sleep at night—doing good for people in desperate need. But it was really just an excuse, the do-gooding.

Talent sighed at her silence, and throttled his hat within his hands, before he launched one last appeal. “We received three new families, with at least three children each, one with four—thin, peaked looking children—just today.”

It was Quince’s turn to sigh. The amount she had yet to place into the poor box—the take from Strathcairn’s silver buttons and Fergus McElmore’s snuffbox—wasn’t enough. And the plain truth of the matter was that she would never have enough if she kept on the way she was going—pocketing small items that lost half of their value the moment they were melted down for safety’s sake.
 

But certainly she could not do more. For all her bravado and enthusiasm, she was only an opportunistic thief—an amateur. And she could not even do that effectively with Strathcairn snooping around, mucking everything up.

Which he did at that very moment, looming up behind the reverend like the ghost of sins past. Which was a feat—the looming—as she had thought the reverend so tall. But Strathcairn was taller. And far more flinty-eyed behind his black mask.

“Clever Diana.” Strathcairn’s voice was as cool and polished and London-ish as it had been that first night. “Does this clergyman importune you, or are you shielded by the armor of chastity?”

Quince bit her lip to keep from making any sort of expression—only Strathcairn could manage to woo and insult all at the same time—but his tone made her put up her chin. “It is a very good thing I ken my Shakespeare, sir. And the answer is nay. The vicar was just leaving.” She didn’t want anyone, least of all Strathcairn, associating her with Reverend Talent. It would never do for anyone to think her religious—it would absolutely ruin her reputation as a flibbertigibbet.
 

She shifted her gaze back to the clergyman. “I’m sorry for your troubles, Reverend. Good evening.”

Poor Reverend Talent took his cue, and with an awkward bow in her direction—oak trees didn’t bend easily, did they?—he took his leave of them.

Which left her with a wildly attractive, but wary cavalier. No, not a cavalier.

Oh, holy burning bonfires.

Strathcairn was dressed as a
highwayman
, with a brace of pistols bristling from his belt.

It was as if a beacon had been lit in her brain, lighting her way, heating her blood. There it was—the brilliant idea that would solve all her problems, salve her conscience, and please the vicar to no end—the way to infinitely more money.

“Who was that mon?” Strathcairn’s green eyes probed from behind his mask, making him look hard and dangerous. Just as she liked.

But she could not attend properly to his attractiveness for all the shouting in her head—a highwayman. “A vicar,” she answered at last.

“A friend?”

A highwayman. A masked thief who stole outright from the rich. In the dead of the night.

“An acquaintance.” She could feel her heart thumping against her throat. “Jealous?”
 

“Appalled.” His glittering eyes softened behind that severe mask. “Flirting with a vicar.”

“Aye.” What was appalling was that she had never thought of it before, that she had gone on so long thinking herself competent, satisfied with the pittance from her little bits and bobs. “You’re a highwayman.”

“Aye.” He dashed his cape off one shoulder, and set his fists onto his hips, showing off a smashing pair of flintlocks, matched and well balanced and perfectly lethal from the wicked look of them. Then he pulled them from his waist, holding the barrels up, giving her the full brazen stand-and-deliver effect.
 

Oh, holy highway robbery. That was the way to do it. A gun in each hand—one for the coach, and one for the driver—and the reins between her teeth.
 

She could picture it all in her mind’s eye, from the way she would sneak her dark mare out of the stable, down to the set of pistols her father kept tucked away with his court sword in his book room, and the black leather gauntlets she would wear to protect and disguise her small hands.

“And what do you think?” Strathcairn was asking. “Not exactly a thief, but more dashing.”

“Very dashing. I think it’s brilliant.” Her heart was beating so fast it was a wonder it didn’t jump right out of her bodice, and run amok about the room. She was as excited and unnerved as she had been the first time she had realized she could take people’s forgotten things and get away with it. “I think
you’re
brilliant.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, lass. That’s an awfully attractive gown you’re almost wearing.”
 

Quince barely heard his backhanded compliment. She had rather be wearing his highwayman’s costume. Out on the roads. Right now. “How kind of you to notice.”

“Every mon in the place has noticed your magnificent bodice.” An equally magnificent frown was etching its way across his forehead beneath the hat.
 

The dark intensity of his tone wrenched her wayward mind back to the present. Strathcairn was
flirting
with her. And she was going to make her hay while the sun shined, and flirt back for all she was worth. “One does one’s best. But I admit I am rather taken by the sight of you thus. I might quite look forward to meeting you on some misbegotten stretch of lonely heath.” Aye. She could imagine just the place—a suitably darkened patch of wood on a moonlit night. Like tonight.

Strathcairn’s frown disappeared as a smile slid across his face, treating her to the full flash of that marvelously mischievous grin of old, and it was as if she had been bludgeoned by that five penny slab of butter, knocking what was left of her good sense right out of her. Making her reckless. Filling her with the jangle of excitement.
 

He spread his hands wide, and made her the courtliest of bows. “One does one’s best.”

One might do better than one’s best, if one had the nerve. If one planned and was careful, one might do the impossible. The unexpected.

It was all coming crystal clear, showing her the way forward—a black domino, a wide brimmed hat, and a long, dark cavalier’s wig—there were easily such things in trunks in Winthrop House’s attics.

She could do it. And who would stop her? The roads of Scotland had been full of daring highwaymen half a century ago, long before she had been born. But nobody had played Captain MacHeath upon the roads of Edinburgh in years—and certainly nobody with an expensive pair of Manton patent dueling pistols fresh from London. Which were only needed for show, as there were no patrols—the garrison up at the Castle never seemed to do anything but march up and down the parade grounds.
 

It was indeed a brilliant idea. A terribly brilliant idea. It would be daring and totally unexpected.

Tonight she would get everything she wanted—kisses and thrills and gold.

The excitement—the sheer brazen possibility of it all—gave her that intoxicating rush of blood through her veins. She felt lit up from inside—all reckless enthusiasm.
 

And here was the perfect way to exercise it.
 

“Take me outside, Strathcairn. It’s time to stand and deliver.”
 

Chapter Seven

Her words were exactly the sort of talk Alasdair had been waiting to hear. He had spent an interminable few days forced to sit in stuffy rooms with magistrates and solicitors shuffling papers back and forth, and arranging with unwilling bureaucrats for off-duty soldiers from the Castle to assist him in his searches, when all he could think of was wee Quince Winthrop. And her acrobatic, laughing mouth.

So stand and deliver he would. At his first opportunity.
 

The heat of anticipation spread through his body with all the subtlety of a bonfire, goading him into action. “Wit and not wardrobe,” might have been her motto, but the motto of the family Strathcairn was
Incipe
—Begin at Once.