The Scottish Prisoner

“He came looking for me,” she said frankly. “Strode into my father’s bookshop one day with fire in his eye. I nearly fainted. So did he, when he saw I was with child.”

She smiled, but it was an inward smile now, one of reminiscence.

“He took the most enormous breath, shook his head, then walked round the counter, picked me up, and carried me straight out of the shop and into a coach Harry had waiting outside. I was most impressed; I must have weighed eleven stone, at least.” She glanced sideways at him. The dimple was back. “Are you dreadfully scandalized, John?”

“Dreadfully.” What he was really thinking was that it was a mercy that Benjamin so strongly resembled Hal. He took her hand and tucked it comfortably into the crook of his elbow.

“Why are you thinking of poor Esmй?” she asked.

“Oh … just thinking that it wasn’t like Hal to marry a boring woman.”

“I am reasonably sure that she wasn’t boring,” Mi

“Well, I know she was beautiful—quite beautiful—but as to her character …”

“Self-loving, narcissistic, and anxious,” Mi

“Really.” He absorbed that for a moment. “Getting attention. Do you suppose—I mean, if Hal’s told you that much, I imagine you know about Nathaniel Twelvetrees?”

“I do,” she said tersely, and her hand tightened a little on his arm. “Do I think she had an affair with him for his own sake, you mean? Or in order to regain Hal’s attention? The latter.”

He looked at her, surprised.

“You seem very sure. Is that what Hal says?”

She shook her head, and a lock of hair fell loose and drooped beside her ear. She thrust it back without ceremony. “I told him so, but I don’t think he believes it.

“She loved him, you know,” she said, and her mouth tightened a little. “He loved her to distraction, but it wasn’t enough for her—she was one of those spoilt girls for whom no amount of devotion is ever enough. But she did love him. I read her letters.” She looked up at him. “He doesn’t know that, by the way.”

So Hal had kept Esmй’s letters, and Mi

“He won’t hear it from me.”

“I know that,” she said, “or I wouldn’t have told you. I don’t suppose you’re any more anxious to see him fight another duel than I am.”

“I didn’t see him fight the first one. But what—why ought he—oh. Never mind.” There must be something in Esmй’s letters, some clue regarding yet another admirer, that Hal hadn’t noticed but Mi

She didn’t say anything, but paused, taking her hand from his arm, and squinted balefully at a bush of some sort, turning back the rusty new leaves with one finger.

“Greenfly,” she said, in a tone boding no good for either the greenflies or the gardener. Grey made an obliging noise indicating concern, and after a further glower, Mi

“This Mr. Fraser of yours,” she said, after they’d walked a few moments in silence.

“He’s not actually mine,” he said. He’d intended to speak lightly, and thought he had, but she shot him a glance that made him wonder.

“You know him, though,” she said. “Is he … dependable, do you think?”

“I suppose that would depend upon what one expected of him,” Grey replied cautiously. “If you mean, is he a man of honor, then, yes, he is. Certainly a man of his word. Beyond that …” He shrugged. “He is Scotch, and a Highlander, to boot.”

“Meaning what?” She was interested; one brow arched upward. “Is he such a savage as people say Highlanders are? Because if so, he apes the gentleman to an amazing degree.”

“James Fraser apes nothing,” he assured her, feeling an obscure sense of offense on Fraser’s behalf. “He is—or was—a landed gentleman, and one of breeding, with substantial property and tenants. What I meant is that he has …” He hesitated, not quite sure how to put it into words. “… a sense of himself that is quite separate from what society demands. He is inclined to make his own rules.”

She laughed at that. “No wonder Hal likes him!”

“Does he?” Grey said, feeling absurdly pleased to hear it.

“Oh, yes,” she assured Grey. “He was quite surprised—but very pleased. I think he feels slightly guilty, too,” she added thoughtfully. “At making use of him, I mean.”

“So do I.”

She smiled at him with great affection. “Yes, you would. Mr. Fraser is fortunate to have you for a friend, John.”

“I doubt he recognizes his good fortune,” Grey said dryly.

“Well, he needn’t worry—and neither need you, John. Hal won’t let him come to any harm.”

“No, of course not.” Still, the feeling of unease at the back of his neck did not go away.

“And if your venture should be successful, I’m sure Hal would see about getting him pardoned. He could be a free man then. He could go back to his home.”

Grey felt a sudden stricture in his throat, as though his valet, Tom Byrd, had tied his stock too tightly.

“Yes. Why did you ask about him—about Fraser, I mean—being dependable?”

She lifted one shoulder and let it fall.

“Oh—Hal showed me the translation Mr. Fraser made of that page of Erse. I only wondered how faithful it might be.”

“Have you any reason to suppose it isn’t?” he asked curiously. “I mean—why shouldn’t it be?”

“No particular reason.” She chewed her lower lip, though, in a thoughtful sort of way. “I don’t speak Erse myself, of course, but I recognize a few words. I, um, don’t know quitehow much Hal told you about my father …?”

“A bit,” Grey said, and smiled at her. She smiled back.

“Well, then. I saw the occasional Jacobite document, and while most were in French or Latin, there were a few in English, and even fewer in Erse. But they all tended to have some internal clue, some casual mention of something that would assure the recipient that what they were holding wasn’t merely an order for wine or a merchant’s inquiry about the contents of his warehouse. And one of the code things you saw mentioned quite often was a white rose. For the Stuarts, you know?”

“I do.” For a vertiginous instant, he saw—as clearly as though the scene had sprung from the earth at his feet—the face of the man he had shot on Culloden Moor, his eyes dark and the white cockade in his bo

Mi

“Well, this bit you brought Hal has the words rуisнnн bhбnin it. It’s not quitethe same, but it’s very similar to the Scottish words for ‘white rose’—I saw them often enough to know those. And Mr. Fraser put the word ‘rose’ into his translation, all right—but he left out the ‘white.’ If it’s there to begin with, I mean,” she added. “And perhaps the Irish is sufficiently different that he didn’t see it, if it isthere.”

They turned, as though some signal had been given, and started back toward the house. Grey swallowed, trying to quiet the thumping of his heart.

It was clear enough what she meant. The poem about the Wild Hunt might be a coded Jacobite document of some sort. And ifit was, Fraser might have recognized that fact and deliberately suppressed it, perhaps to protect friends affiliated with the Stuart cause. If that were the case, it raised two questions, both of them disturbing.

To wit: had Siverly a Jacobite co

“Only one way to find out,” he said. “I’ll ask him. Carefully.”

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