The Fiery Cross (72 page)

Spotting this refuge, our own horses were moving at a good clip; I had to pull heavily on the reins one-handed in order to keep Mrs. Piggy from breaking into a trot, which would have seriously jostled my passenger. As I hauled her back to a reluctant walk, a slight figure detached itself from the shelter of a pine tree and stepped into the road before us, waving.

“Milord,” Fergus greeted Jamie, as Gideon slewed to a reluctant halt. He peered up at Jamie from beneath the band of an indigo-dyed knitted cap, which he wore pulled down over his brows. It made his head look rather like the top of a torpedo, dark and dangerous. “You are well? I thought perhaps you had encountered some difficulty.”

“Och.” Jamie waved vaguely at me, indicating the bulge beneath my cloak. “No really a difficulty; it’s only—”

Fergus was staring over Gideon’s shoulder at the bulge with some bemusement.

“Quelle virilité, monsieur,”
he said to Jamie, in tones of deep respect. “My congratulations.”

Jamie gave him a scathing look and a Scottish noise that sounded like boulders rolling underwater. The baby began to cry again.

“First things first,” I said. “Are there any women here with babies? This child needs milk, and she needs it now.”

Fergus nodded, eyes wide with curiosity.

“
Oui
, milady. Two, at least, that I have seen.”

“Good. Lead me to them.”

He nodded again, and taking hold of Piggy’s halter, turned toward the settlement.

“What’s amiss, then?” Jamie inquired, and cleared his throat. In my anxiety for the baby, I hadn’t paused to consider what Fergus’s presence meant. Jamie was right, though; simple concern for our well-being wouldn’t have brought him out on the road in this weather.

“Ah. We appear to have a small difficulty, milord.” He described the events of the previous afternoon, concluding with a Gallic shrug and a huff of breath. “. . . and so Monsieur Morton has taken refuge with the horses”—he nodded ahead, toward the makeshift shelter—“while the rest of us enjoy the
hospitalité
of Brownsville.”

Jamie looked a trifle grim at this; no doubt from a contemplation of what the
hospitalité
for forty-odd men might cost.

“Mmphm. I take it that the Browns dinna ken Morton is there?”

Fergus shook his head.

“Why
is
Morton there?” I asked, having temporarily stifled the baby by putting it to my own breast. “I should have thought he’d be off away, back to Granite Falls, and pleased to be alive.”

“He will not go, milady. He says he cannot forgo the bounty.” Word had come just before our departure from the Ridge; the Governor was offering forty shillings per man as an inducement to serve in the militia; a substantial sum, particularly to a new homesteader such as Morton, facing a bleak winter.

Jamie rubbed a hand slowly over his face. This was a dilemma, all right; the militia company needed the men and supplies from Brownsville, but Jamie could scarcely conscript several Browns who would immediately attempt to assassinate Morton. Nor could he afford to pay Morton’s bounty himself. Jamie looked as though he were tempted to assassinate Morton personally, but I supposed this wasn’t a reasonable alternative.

“Perhaps Morton could be induced to marry the girl?” I suggested delicately.

“I thought of that,” Fergus said. “Regretfully, Monsieur Morton is already possessed of a wife in Granite Falls.” He shook his head, which was beginning to look like a small snowcapped hillock in his cap.

“Why did the Browns not follow yon Morton?” Jamie asked, apparently following his own train of thought. “If an enemy comes upon your land, and you wi’ your kin, ye dinna just let him flee; ye hunt him down and kill him.”

Fergus nodded, clearly familiar with this brand of Highland logic.

“I believe that was the intent,” he said. “They were distracted, however, by
le petit Roger
.”

I could hear a distinct note of amusement in his voice; so could Jamie.

“What did he do?” he asked warily.

“Sang to them,” Fergus said, the amusement becoming more pronounced. “He has been singing most of the night, and playing upon his drum. The entire village came to hear—there are six men of suitable age for the militia, and,” he added practically, “the two women
avec lait
, as I said, milady.”

Jamie coughed, wiped a hand under his nose, and nodded to Fergus, with a wave at me.

“Aye. Well, the wee lass must eat, and I canna stay back or the Browns will tumble to it that Morton’s here. Go and say to him that I shall come and speak to him as soon as may be.”

He reined his horse’s head toward the tavern, and I nudged Mrs. Piggy to follow.

“What are you going to do about the Browns?” I asked.

“Christ,” Jamie said, more to himself than to me. “How in hell should I know?” And coughed again.

O
UR ARRIVAL with the baby created a sufficient sensation to distract everyone in Brownsville from their private concerns, be these practical or homicidal. A look of intense relief crossed Roger’s face at sight of Jamie, though this was instantly suppressed, replaced by a bland attitude of square-shouldered self-assurance. I ducked my head to hide a smile, and glanced at Jamie, wondering if he had noted this rapid transformation. He sedulously avoided my eye, indicating that he had.

“Ye’ve done well,” he said in a casual undertone, clapping Roger’s shoulder in greeting before turning to receive the salutations of the other men and introductions to our involuntary hosts.

Roger merely nodded in an offhand sort of way, but his face took on a muted glow, as though someone had lit a candle inside him.

Young Miss Beardsley caused a great stir; one of the nursing mothers was fetched and at once put the screeching baby to her breast, hastily handing me her own child in exchange. A three-month-old boy of placid temperament, he looked up at me with mild bewilderment, but seemed not to object to the substitution, merely blowing a few thoughtful spit bubbles in my direction.

A certain amount of confusion ensued, with everyone asking questions and offering speculations at once, but Jamie’s story—edited to terseness—of events at the Beardsley farm put a stop to the hubbub. Even the red-eyed young woman whom I recognized from Fergus’s story as Isaiah Morton’s inamorata forgot her grief, listening openmouthed.

“Poor little creature,” she said, peering at the baby as it suckled fiercely at her cousin’s breast. “So you have no parents at all, it seems.” Miss Brown cast a dark look at her own father, apparently thinking orphanhood had its advantages.

“What will become of her?” Mrs. Brown asked, with more practicality.

“Oh, we’ll see she’s taken good care of, my dear. She’ll find a secure place with us.” Her husband put a reassuring hand on her arm, at the same time exchanging a glance with his brother. Jamie saw it, too; I saw his mouth twitch as though he might say something, but he shrugged slightly and turned instead to confer with Henry Gallegher and Fergus, his two stiff fingers tapping gently on his leg.

The elder Miss Brown leaned toward me, preparing to ask another question, but was prevented by a sudden blast of arctic wind that blew through the big room, lifting the loose hides over the windows and peppering the room with a spray of snow like frozen bird shot. Miss Brown gave a small whoop, abandoned her curiosity, and ran to fasten down the window coverings; everyone else stopped discussing the Beardsleys and began hastily to batten down hatches.

I caught a quick glimpse outside, as Miss Brown struggled with the unwieldy hides. The storm had arrived now in good earnest. Snow was coming down thick and fast; the black ruts of the road had all but disappeared under a coating of white, and it was obvious that Fraser’s Company was going nowhere for the time being. Mr. Richard Brown, looking mildly disgruntled, nonetheless graciously offered us a second night’s shelter, and the militiamen settled in for supper among the houses and barns of the village.

Jamie went out to bring in our bedding and provisions from the horses, and see them fed and sheltered. Presumably he would also take the opportunity to speak privately with Isaiah Morton, if the latter was still lurking out there in the blizzard.

I did wonder what Jamie meant to do with his mountain Romeo, but I hadn’t time for much speculation. It was getting on now for twilight, and I was sucked into the swirl of activity around the hearth, as the women rose to the fresh challenge of providing supper for forty unexpected guests.

Juliet—that is, the younger Miss Brown—moped sullenly in the corner, refusing to help. She did, though, take over care of the Beardsley baby, rocking the little girl and crooning to her long after it was plain that the child was asleep.

Fergus and Gallegher had been sent off to retrieve the goats, and returned with them just before suppertime, wet and muddy to the knees, their beards and eyebrows frosted with snow. The nannies were wet and snow-caked, too, their chilled udders red with cold, milk-swollen and swinging painfully against their legs. They were enchanted to be back in the bosom of civilization, though, and nattered to each other in cheerful excitement.

Mrs. Brown and her sister-in-law took the goats off to the tiny barn to be milked, leaving me in charge of the stewpot and Hiram, who was installed in solitary majesty near the hearth, contained in a makeshift pen composed of an overturned table, two stools, and a blanket chest.

The cabin was essentially one large, drafty room, with a walled loft above and a small lean-to at the back for storage. Crowded as it was with tables, benches, stools, kegs of beer, bundles of hides, a small handloom in one corner, a chiffonier—with a most incongruous chiming clock, adorned with cupids—in another, a bed against the wall, two settles by the hearth, a musket and two fowling pieces hung above the chimney breast, and various aprons and cloaks on pegs by the door, the presence of a sick goat was surprisingly inconsequential.

I had a look at my erstwhile patient, who
meh
ed ungratefully at me, long blue tongue protruding in derision. Snow was melting from the deep spirals of his horns, leaving them black and shiny, and his coat was soaked into brindled spikes round his shoulders.

“There’s gratitude for you,” I said rebukingly. “If it weren’t for Jamie, you’d be cooking
over
that fire, instead of beside it, and good enough for you, too, you wicked old sod.”

“Meh!”
he said shortly.

Still, he was cold, tired, and hungry, and his harem wasn’t there to be impressed, so he suffered me to rub his head and scratch his ears, feed him wisps of hay, and—eventually—to step into his pen and run a light hand down his injured leg to check the splinting. I was more than a little tired and hungry, too, having had nothing to eat since a little goat’s milk at dawn. Between the smell of the simmering stew and the flickering light and shadows in the room, I felt light-headed, and very slightly disembodied, as though I were floating a foot or two above the floor.

“You’re a nice old lad, aren’t you?” I murmured. After an afternoon spent in close contact with babies, all in varying stages of moistness and shrieking, the company of the irascible old goat was rather soothing.

“Is he going to die?”

I looked up in surprise, having quite forgotten the younger Miss Brown, who had been overlooked in the shadows of the settle. She was standing by the hearth now, still holding the Beardsley baby and frowning down at Hiram, who was trying to nibble the edge of my apron.

“No,” I said, twitching the cloth out of his mouth. “I shouldn’t think so.” What
was
her name? I groped blearily through my memory, matching up faces and names from the earlier flurry of introductions. Alicia, that was it, though I couldn’t help still thinking of her as Juliet.

She wasn’t much older than Juliet; barely fifteen, if that. She was a plain child, though, round-jawed and pasty. Narrow in the shoulder and broad through the hip; not much of the jewel in the Ethiop’s ear about her. She said nothing more, and to keep the conversation going, I nodded at the baby, still in her arms. “How’s the little one?”

“All right,” she said listlessly. She stood staring at the goat a moment longer. Then tears suddenly welled in her eyes.

“I wish
I
was dead,” she said.

“Oh, really?” I said, taken aback. “Er . . . well . . .” I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to summon enough presence of mind to deal with this. Where was the beastly girl’s mother? I cast a quick look at the door, but heard no one coming. We were momentarily alone, the women milking or minding supper, the men all caring for the stock.

I stepped out of Hiram’s pen and laid a hand on her arm.

“Look,” I said in a low voice. “Isaiah Morton’s not worth it. He’s married; did you know that?”

Her eyes went wide, then squinted nearly shut, spurting sudden tears. No, evidently she hadn’t known.

Tears were pouring down her cheeks and dripping on the baby’s oblivious head. I reached out and took the swaddled child gently from her, steering her toward the settle with my free hand.