The Scot and I Read Online Free Page B

fear. Where would Thomas Gordon have taken the woman in this isolated corner of the Highlands? Her brain was frozen.
    She gave a start when Hepburn spoke to her.
    “You needn’t fear me.” He sounded annoyed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
    “Fear you?” She remembered in time that she was Thomas Gordon, and she set her chin. “I’m not afraid of you!”
    “Then why are you trembling?”
    “I’m not trembling. I’m shivering. I’m not used to this cold mountain air.”
    She didn’t hear his response. Something had caught her eye. There was a peat cart in the courtyard, at the side door to the cellar, and three brawny Highlanders were unloading peat for the inn’s fires while two others leaned nonchalantly against the wall, conversing in Gaelic. Hepburn had noticed them, too.
    “Smugglers?” he intoned, and shook his head.
    She shrugged. She wasn’t going to betray Dugald’s friends to an officer of the law.
    “You needn’t glower, Thomas. I’m not interested in smugglers. I’m not an excise man.”
    Smugglers. Excise men. Her brain began to thaw. She knew now where she would have taken the woman. It might work. No. It would work, if her nerve held. “We take the bridge,” she said, “to the north road.”
     
     
    There was something different about the boy. Alex knew the smell of fear, and the boy’s fear had trickled away as they jogged along this old drovers’ road. They were on their way to the White Stag, a former change house that was now, with the coming of the railroad, off the beaten track. Change houses and stagecoaches were going out of style.
    Darkness pressed in on them from every side, but it wasn’t completely unrelieved. Moonlight glazed the dense stands of trees that flanked the road and filtered down to show them the way. They weren’t alone. Smugglers were abroad, plying their trade in contraband whiskey. He heard snatches of Gaelic coming from the underbrush, and occasionally they encountered the odd traveler. Not that he understood a word of what was said.
    The boy spoke Gaelic. When they were hailed by riders, he returned their greetings. About the only Gaelic Alex remembered was uisque beatha , and a few odd phrases. His grandmother, the Witch of Drumore, would be sadly disappointed.
    Something stirred at the back of his mind, something about the boy. What was it? He was from Aberdeen, yet he spoke Gaelic. A small point. He himself was Highland bred, and his Gaelic had died away from lack of use.
    Lights winked at them through the trees as they approached their destination. This was where the boy said that he had delivered the woman, to the White Stag. Had there been time, Alex would have plied him with questions. He wanted to know how the boy had met the woman and how much she had told him. He wanted to know what he had received for services rendered.
    He and Gavin had counted two riders who had split up and gone their separate ways, so they had split up, too. All going well, they were to meet at the family’s hunting lodge and possibly turn their captives over to Dickens at the castle. Alex liked and trusted Dickens. He would deal fairly with the boy. He couldn’t say the same for Colonel Foster, who had temporarily taken charge when Durward had been called away. The colonel was all spit and polish and liked to throw his weight around. But he wasn’t in charge of Dickens or Alex.
    He hoped the boy was on the periphery of this conspiracy, that his only involvement had been to wait for the woman and escort her to the change house. He didn’t want to make war on boys, and this beardless boy seemed too young to be let off his leading strings. Where were his parents? Who was looking after him? If they only knew the reputation of the man whose hands their stripling had fallen into, they would be shivering in their boots.
    Reputation was not reality. The boy would come to no harm with him. As for the woman, that was a different matter. He knew her kind. He’d met her like