The Adventurer (13 page)

In order to keep herself safe, Isabella knew that she’d need to keep her identity a secret from them. At the moment, they weren’t at all sure who she was. So she had led Mackay to believe that she was a mermaid, this “Maris” come to bring the stone back to the clan. It was the only thing she could think to do.

He didn’t want to believe her, she knew. In fact if pressed, she had little doubt that he would deny having considered it even for a moment. But much as he might deny it, there was a part of him—however small—that wasn’t totally convinced that she
wasn’t
a mermaid.

And as long as he wondered, even that little bit, she knew she would be safe.

Isabella stood just inside the low doorway, taking in the castle kitchen, taking in, too, the man who had obviously made the place his lair.

He was as tall, if not taller, than a good many of the trees in her father’s knot garden, but where they were elegant and shaped with a gardener’s topiary precision, this man was broad across the shoulders beneath the linen of his shirt, naturally imperfect, and without the slightest hint of ornamentation.

His hair was long, thick, and peppered with gray. He kept it tied back with a bit of leather, yet even then it escaped about his bearded face, falling over his dark eyes. His shirtsleeves were rolled back over huge forearms that at that moment were kneading a ball of dough in a wooden bowl. A kettle simmered happily over the fire behind him, and various trenchers of chopped ingredients were set about the top of the center table.

In contrast to the rest of the castle, the kitchen was surprisingly clean and outfitted with most everything a kitchen would need. The aroma coming from the room was positively divine. It was all the best of baking and simmering and stewing mixed together, and it wrapped itself around her like the warmth of a soft cloak.

“Whatever it is that you’re making, it smells wonderful,” she said.

The man turned, startled by the sudden sound of her voice. Wrist deep in floured dough, he stared at her. He didn’t say a word.

“I was ...” Isabella chanced a step farther into the room, into his lair. “I finished with the breakfast you gave me and thought I’d bring my dishes down from the hall.”

He just continued to stare at her. Finally, he tossed his head in the direction of the corner basin. “You can leave them in there.”

His voice was gruff, but not loud. It put her in mind of a bear’s growl.

Isabella crossed the room and set the dishes in a washbasin that was already nearly filled with other dishes and pots that needed washing.

“The food was very good,” she said, again attempting conversation with him, hoping to appeal to his pride as a cook. “The tea was especially tasty. I wonder ... would you have any more?”

His hands worked the dough for a few silent moments, kneading, turning, pressing. “I’m for fixin’ a fresh pot soon as I get these bannocks on the fire.”

Isabella watched him a few moments more. “Could I ... perhaps ... help you with them?”

He looked at her and the answer in his eyes said he wanted to refuse. But a moment later, something changed in his expression. It was the slightest softening of his dark eyes, an easing in the lined angles of his face. He took up the ball of dough in his hands and slapped it onto a floured bit of space on the center table. Then he took up a wooden rolling pin that had obviously been well used, and held it out to her. “D’you ken how to roll?”

“Indeed.”

She hadn’t lied. Throughout her childhood, Isabella had spent hours in the kitchens at Drayton Hall. She would pick berries in the gardens to bring to the cook, Dora, for her cakes and sweet pies. And she would sit and take tea while the workings of the place went on with an almost mechanical precision. And as she’d grown older, Isabella had become intrigued by the workings of the place, and had found herself inventing excuses just to go and watch as Dora would toss handfuls of ingredients into her great wooden bowl, seemingly effortlessly, that somehow, magically, were transformed into delectable culinary creations.

Eventually, Bella had dared to ask if she could help. At first, Dora had refused. Isabella soon learned how territorial cooks could become about their kitchens. Also, as the daughter of a duke, there was a very definite line between those who performed the work and those for whom the work was performed.

But Bella had gone to her parents and expressed her interest to them. The duke, always one who held great store by learning, had agreed for purely educational reasons. A future wife, after all, could only benefit from a thorough study of the kitchen she would one day govern in her own home.

Bella had taken to the task with a natural enthusiasm.

To her, it had been like another form of artistic expression.

While her sisters had found pleasure in other things—Elizabeth in books, Catherine playing the spinet, Mattie in the garden, and Caroline, well, Caroline in anything that could get her into trouble—in cooking, Isabella found a new and different outlet for creating. She loved the idea of taking that which was grown from the earth and combining different aspects, such as the sweetness of strawberries or the tart of a lemon, to create something new and unique. Her first real attempt had been a treacle sponge pudding and lemon custard that had put quite a smile upon her father’s face when he’d tasted it. She had been fourteen, and the sense of accomplishment that first endeavor had given her hadn’t diminished since.

Isabella started rolling out the bannock dough into the shape of a large flat round, glancing at the cook for an approving nod. He showed her how to shape each bannock with her hands, and then place them on the flat iron
gridheal
that he then hung on a hook at the side of the fire. She stood and watched it bake, rising, browning. Then she took it from the fire and set it on the table to cool.

When she’d finished, Isabella turned. “Is there anything else, Mr. ... ?”

“ ’Tis M’Cuick,” he said, cutting some potatoes into a large pot.

“M’Cuick,” she repeated with a half smile. “Is that your Christian name, or your family name?”

“My family name, but everybody calls me by it.”

“What is your Christian name?”

He looked at her. “ ’Tis Malcolm.”

“I much prefer that.” Isabella smiled. “It suits you.”

“ ’Tis what my wife called me.” He blinked and his expression shifted, softening. “Afore she died.”

Isabella recognized the sadness that had crept into his eyes, clouding them. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, but his voice was heavy. “Nae, ’tis naught to be sorry for in the telling of my name. Truth be told, I miss hearing it.”

“Would you mind if”—she hesitated—“perhaps I were to call you ‘Malcolm,’ Malcolm?”

His hands went still, one holding a potato, the other the knife he’d been using to slice them. Finally he said, “That would be just fine, miss.”

Isabella smiled. “And you may call me Bel—” She faltered. “Maris. My name is Maris.”

Malcolm looked at her. She knew he didn’t for one moment believe that was her name. Still, he said, “Maris it is then, miss.”

He looked about the cabinets and shelves that lined the whitewashed walls. “I’ve all different sorts of things, spices and herbs and such, for flavoring, but I’m not quite certain what to make of them. I’ve a book, but it doesna do much for Scottish dishes ...”

Isabella rummaged through the nearest shelf, pulling out some of the herbs she had seen Dora use.

“For instance,” he went on, “wha’ would you add to better flavor the powsowdie?”

Isabella absently opened an earthenware jar of thyme and gave it a quick sniff. “Powsowdie? I’m afraid I don’t quite know what that is.”

Malcolm had moved on from the potatoes and was fixing the pot of tea he had promised. “Oh, ’tis there in the pot.”

Isabella looked to see the huge black pot sitting in the washbasin. She reached for the lid, pulled it away, and had a look inside.

The “powsowdie” looked back.

She shrieked, clanging the cover back down. “What is that?”

M’Cuick looked up from the teapot, with an expression that could only be called blasé. “I tol’ you, lass. ’Tis the powsowdie.”

“It is a head, Malcolm!”

He nodded. “Aye, a sheep’s heid. Hae you ne’er had the powsowdie afore?”

Isabella closed her eyes, trying to banish the image of that glassy-eyed stare from her mind as she swallowed back the wave of distaste that was sweeping through her stomach. “No, I have not.”

“Och, lass, ’tis good. An auld Scots tradition. We a’ways hae it when the lads come back from a successful mission on the seas. And tha’ heid is a fine one, indeed. Singed the wool off it myself afore I soaked it in tha’ pot through the night to make it tender. No’ all you need do is tweak out the eyes and split it down atween its ears so we can ...”

He glanced at her. “What’s troubling you, lass? You’re looking a wee bit green. Dinna the cheese I gae you wit’ breakfast agree wit’ you? It can be a wee bit strong, I’m told.”

Isabella took a deep breath. Then another. “Please,” she said, her voice shaky as a twig, “may I please have some tea?”

“Certainly, lass. Just finished brewing it. Here you are.”

Isabella took the cup, breathed in the tea’s scent, and readied to tip the cup to her lips when—

“What is in this tea?” she asked, thinking if they kept a sheep’s head in a pot for supper, there was no telling what they passed off as tea.

M’Cuick looked at her, confused. “ ’Tis tea, lass.”

She glanced at him. “Just tea? No special ingredients? Entrails? A hoof perhaps that went into the brewing of it?”

Malcolm chuckled softly and shook his head. “Nae, lass. Jus’ the tea. A fine gunpowder sort, too. All the way from China.”

Isabella lowered into a chair and sipped tentatively at the stuff, praying it would settle her churning stomach. She glanced up once, caught sight of the pot once more, then turned her chair so that her back was to it.

For the better part of the day, Bella and M’Cuick prepared a feast together. Keeping a good ten feet between herself and the powsowdie pot, Bella showed him how to stir the custard so it wouldn’t burn over the fire, while he taught her the trick of shelling winkles.

They chatted while they worked, first about casual topics, but then Isabella began to turn the conversation toward her captor, and his reasons for bringing her there, hoping to glean some sense of just who Calum Mackay of Wrath really was.

“Malcolm, how did a man like you end up with a band of lawless pirates?”

“Och, but they’re no’ pirates, lass. Not in the sense you’re thinking.”

“But look around you,” she said, referring to the bounty that surrounded them. There were valuable, highly taxed coffees and teas, exotic pineapple fruits, and platters of silver on which to serve them. “Everything here belongs to someone else.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Och, but Mackay, he’s got verra good reasons for what he does, Miss Maris. Honorable reasons, too. Aye, if it weren’t for him, I’d be on the other side of the ocean right now, slave to another man.”

Isabella considered his words. “You were one of the Jacobites?”

“Nae, lass. Tha’s just it. I ne’er came out for either side in the rebellion because it was said if I dinna fight, I winna be punished later. I had a family to protect.”

His voice was growing heavy again. Isabella sensed a need in him to talk about it. “What happened, Malcolm?”

“I lived close by to Drummossie Moor.”

“Where the battle of Culloden was fought?”

“Aye. I could hear the cannon fire from my field, but I ne’er went near the place. I had to keep the bairns and my Mary safe. After the battle the wounded started coming, looking for help. They were in a fearsome way, all cut by bayonets and shocked from the cannon shelling. My Mary and I, we ne’er asked them whose side they’d fought on. We only sought to treat their injuries and ease their pain.”

“Of course,” Isabella said. She would have done the same.

“The government soldiers soon arrived. Some of the men we’d treated were Jacobites. They said we were all rebels. They killed all the wounded, and then they ...”

His words dropped off as his eyes grew red, glossy with tears. He pressed his lips tightly together, biting back the emotion that had seized him. Isabella reached out and took his hand.

He looked up at her. She had never seen such anguish, such obvious heartbreak, as she saw in his eyes at that moment.

“They killed my Mary, and then my daughter and our son. They shot us all, only I wasn’t given the chance to go with them. I lived. I lived hearing them die. It is a sound I can never forget.”

Isabella covered her mouth with her hand.

“I went after them,” M’Cuick went on. “I went after them to kill them, but they caught me first and threw me into a prison hulk as a rebel. Nae matter how I tried to explain, that I hadna taken a part in the fighting, I were sentenced to transportation to the Colonies. I dinna care. My life was o’er. Without Mary and the bairns, I dinna care what happened to me. I prayed I’d die in that stinking ship’s hold, begged the dear Lord to give me some disease, the typhus, so I could join my Mary in heaven. We were on the seas, just rounding Peterhead, when I heard a commotion above us on the deck.” He looked at her. “ ’Twas Calum Mackay. He’d come to free us. I thought I had wanted to die, lass. But the moment I saw him, saw him standing on that deck with his sword gleaming in the sunlight, I knew I wanted to live. I wanted to live because that is what Mary would have wanted.”

Isabella was silent, trying to understand. “So Mackay only raids to free prisoners from transportation ships?”

“Aye, lass. King George, he thinks that by ridding himself of every last Scot, he’ll no’ have to wirra about another rebellion. They call it ’the cleansing o’ the glens,’ miss.”

Isabella had heard of this from her sister Elizabeth’s letters, but now, hearing it thus, she recognized the injustice of it.

It was an injustice that Calum Mackay apparently intended to rectify.

“What about all this then?” she said, referring to the spices, the silver, the casks of French brandy, all of it stolen. “If he’s not a pirate, then where has all this come from?”