Chapter 18
Mary’s door was still locked. She rattled the handle, calling through the keyhole for Whitman, but there was no answer.
Male voices filled the stairwell. Her father’s answered—Halsey was also there. Then came the shrill tones of Aunt Danae, begging to know what was happening.
“Captain, sir!”
The small voice came from behind Mary. Ewan had the panel open, a bundle in his arms, and eyes full of fear.
Mary rushed to him, going down on her knees. “Ewan, who are those men? What do they want?”
“Soldiers, sir,” Ewan said. “Me gran said they’ve come to arrest your da for spying. Everyone’s running off, even Gran.” He shoved the bundle, a large plaid wrapped around something, into the room. “Come with me, Captain. I’ll see ye right.”
Mary pulled open the cloth, finding inside a worn woolen skirt, a small pair of buckskin breeches, a bodice of coarse brown material, and a short, stiff corset. This was the garb for women working menial labor, and Mary knew she didn’t have much choice but to wear it. She couldn’t crawl through a dirty passage in her silk and lace, or even her thick dressing gown.
“Hurry, sir,” Ewan said.
Mary rose and ducked behind the petit point screen that stood near her dressing table. It usually took Whitman and one other maid to assist Mary into her gowns, but these garments went on rather easily. The corset laced in the back, though—she’d have to have Ewan do it up for her.
A key rattled in the door, and the lock clicked. Mary froze. Soldiers coming? She remained hidden behind the screen, and Ewan, wise lad, had closed the hole again.
The door swung opened. “Mary?” Aunt Danae whispered, then she gave a cry of alarm. “Mary, where are you? What on earth . . .”
Mary rushed out from behind the screen, and Aunt Danae put her hand to her heart. “Oh, my dear, there you are. I thought . . . But what is this? Ewan? Whatever are you doing?”
Ewan had pulled the panel off again, and was sitting on his heels in the opening, hands on his knees.
“Ewan has a way out,” Mary said, holding the corset closed behind her and making for Aunt Danae. “Can you lace me?”
Without argument, Aunt Danae had Mary turned around and began to thread the laces through the little linen-and-bone corset. “What way out?” she asked as she worked.
“Passage outside, m’lady.” Ewan ducked through the opening and stood up, crumpling his cap in his hands.
Aunt Danae gave him a startled look, then another one at Mary, who pulled the brown bodice over the corset. Then Danae eyed the hole in the wainscoting again. “Clever lad. Do go with him, Mary. Make for the Bancrofts. They’ll look after you.”
Mary fastened the bodice with its ill-made hooks. “What about you, Auntie? Are they arresting Papa? Will they take you too?”
“They say your father is passing information about the Jacobites to the English army. I don’t know why they’re bothering to arrest him—I imagine dozens of people are passing flurries of messages to London. They’re taking him and Lord Halsey to Holyrood. Me as well, I suppose. But I want you gone. At once. You’ll be safe with the Bancrofts. Please.”
Mary tugged on her stoutest pair of boots, snatched up a pair of leather gloves, and tucked a purse full of coins into her corset. “Auntie, I can’t leave you to face them.”
“My dear, I’ll never fit through that hole. I’m twice your girth. I’ve weathered worse storms than this, but you’re too young and vulnerable, and I don’t want to see—” She broke off and pointed a finger at Ewan “You take care of her, lad, you understand me?”
Ewan snapped off another salute. “Aye, sir.”
Aunt Danae looked startled, then nodded. “Very good. Now go before they storm up the stairs.”
Mary threw her arms around Aunt Danae and kissed her firm cheek. “I will see you soon,” she promised.
She turned to follow Ewan, her heart heavy. There was no telling what the victorious, celebrating Jacobites would do to her father and aunt, how long they’d be kept. Surely Malcolm would be able to find out, be able to do something about it. Mary remembered how the Scottish soldiers had turned away, pretending to ignore Malcolm’s party as they’d ridden through the streets and out the gates to the wharves. Mal would know, wouldn’t he, how to keep the worst from happening to Mary’s family?
Fear and uncertainty made her stomach roil. Mary gave Aunt Danae one last look, then ducked into the passage after Ewan. Ewan closed the panel behind them, and the darkness was complete.
Ewan’s passage was full of grime, old nails, and other things Mary did not want to think about. They moved carefully on hands and knees, but the way was narrow, smelly, and damp. The ceiling was low enough to scrape Mary’s back if she didn’t bend all the way down and go at a lizard’s crouch.
The passage led to somewhere in the middle of the house, ending in a stairwell of rickety steps. Once upon a time, these must have been servants’ stairs, but walled off when inhabitants had modernized the house. The fact that servants had scrambled up and down this precarious wooden staircase, carrying fuel for fires and buckets of water, gave Mary new pity for them.
The stairs creaked alarmingly as she descended, following Ewan. Mary clung to the walls, happy she’d thought to grab her gloves.
They made it to the bottom without mishap. Ewan opened a small door into a tiny passage that ran alongside the kitchen garden. He led Mary through this passage, which turned sharply behind another house, and finally emptied into the next street.
The darkness helped them slip unnoticed through lanes and emerge once again onto the street where Mary’s father’s house lay. The house was surrounded now by both Highland soldiers and curious neighbors. A plain carriage sat before the front door, and as Mary watched, her father was bundled into it, his hands behind his back.
Halsey was pushed in after him. The first carriage rolled away, and another took its place as Aunt Danae was led out. The soldiers looked as though they were being polite as they handed her in, her hands unbound, but they were not letting her go. Mary’s eyes stung with tears as the carriage rolled away into the darkness.
Ewan tugged her hand. “This way, sir!”
Mary made herself turn from the house she’d lived in all these months and follow him into the streets.
Soldiers were everywhere, laughing, shouting, drinking, celebrating their victory at Prestonpans. Ewan led Mary through streets crowded with horses, carriages, Highlanders, and inhabitants of the city.
Ewan disappeared suddenly into a side lane for a heart-stopping moment, then reappeared with an empty basket, which he put on Mary’s arm. Mary nodded her approval, though she didn’t like the idea of him stealing it. But with the basket, Mary looked like any other woman of the town, going about her early morning errands.
In this way, Mary slipped through the city, blindly following Ewan, who promised he was taking her to Malcolm. All was well until they passed a tavern, which spilled men onto the street. One of the Highland soldiers there broke away from the swelling mob, saw Mary, and moved toward her.
“Come and celebrate w’ me, lass,” he said, his broad face red with drink. “Bring the lad too. I dinnae mind.”
His friends laughed loudly. Ewan seized Mary’s sleeve, trying to pull her along.
The man’s heavy hand landed on Mary’s shoulder, hot through her thin shirt. “Don’t run away, love. I’ll make it worth your while. More coin to bring your man tonight, eh?”
He spoke a broad Scots, from the far west, but Mary understood him well enough. She knew, though, that if she responded in any way, he’d know she was English as soon as she opened her mouth. With her fair hair touched with red and rough clothes, she might pass for a Scotswoman, but she’d never be able to speak like one.
Mary tried to shrug the man off and follow Ewan, but the soldier tightened his grip. “Come on, then, woman.”
Mary swung around, using the momentum to send her heavy wicker basket straight into the Highlander’s stomach—whump. The Scotsman lost his hold on her, cursing as he doubled over.
His friends laughed uproariously. Mary spun to run after Ewan, but another pair of hands landed on her shoulders.
She was pulled around to face another Highlander, this one very tall, with dark red hair and a face flushed with rage. He looked her up and down, then gripped her face and turned it to the light, studying the bruise and cut her father had left.
Malcolm let go of her, grabbed hold of the Scotsman who’d first accosted her, and punched him full in the face.
“She’s me wife, ye daft cob.”
That brought astonishment and more laughter to the others. “Wife? Aye, is that what you’re calling her, Mackenzie?”
“Bloody drunken . . .” Mal swung back to Mary, seized her by the arm, and Ewan by the neck. “I’m agog to hear this story. I’ll lay into ye, boy, if ye’ve had a hand in procuring her.”
“Malcolm,” Mary managed to splutter.
“Later.” Malcolm marched them down the lane into the fog and dim glow of sunrise. “After I get ye off the street, ye ken?”
Malcolm didn’t trust himself to speak as he pulled Mary along. Nor did he want to hear her explanations while they twisted and turned through the crowds. Those rising to begin the day mingled with those ending their nights, and the streets were teeming.
Mary could be out here for no good reason. He’d told Naughton to make certain she stayed put inside her house, where she’d be safe. The bruise on her face, as well—that hadn’t been put there by the drunken soldiers. The wound was at least a day or two old.
Something had happened while he’d been busy keeping Duncan out of trouble. Malcolm needed to get her indoors and shake out of her what.
Mary scuttled along beside him, her head down, asking no questions. She looked exactly like a servant being dragged away to be chastised by her master, and beneath his anger, Mal wanted to laugh. She was good.
They reached the Mackenzie house. Malcolm pulled Mary through the front door, nearly running into Naughton, who’d opened it for them.
Naughton sent Ewan a glare from his thin height. “Lad, you’re filthy. Ye shouldn’t be coming in by the front door.”
“My fault,” Mal said impatiently. “These two aren’t taking another step until Mary tells me why she’s roaming the streets dressed like a farm worker.”
Naughton, Ewan, and Mary all started speaking at once. Mal heard Naughton’s calmer tones saying something about Ewan and messages, Ewan going on about soldiers, and then Mary, frantic and angry at the same time.
“Stop!” Malcolm shouted. When he wanted to, he could roar as forcefully as the duke. The word vibrated through their shrill voices, and all three fell into a startled silence. “Mary—tell me.”
Instead of calmly spilling out the story, Mary glared at him in fiery anger. “Did you do this? You have said again and again you’d do anything to make me come to you—did you force the arrests so I’d have no choice?”
Mary’s anger made her beautiful, her blue eyes full of sparks. Her words troubled Mal, however.
“Who did I force to be arrested?” he demanded. “I told Ewan to make ye stay put. Not roam the streets dressed like a French peasant, with all the full-of-themselves Jacobites wandering about. What did ye think they’d do?”
Did she look chastised? Not a bit of it. Mary gripped the basket as though she would ram it into his stomach, like she had the drunken lout at the tavern.
“My father and aunt have been taken by the Pretender’s men. Lord Halsey as well. Likely they’d have arrested me too, if I hadn’t fled. My aunt can’t be held prisoner. She’ll be unable to bear it, and she’s done nothing wrong!”
Malcolm stared at her. “And ye think I did this?”
“Is this how you plan to rid me of Halsey?” Mary snapped. “By confining my family? If so, you can get out of my way. I’ll take myself to prison with them. I’d rather.”
“Dinnae talk such shite, woman. I would never send your da and aunt to be locked up, no matter the reason.” Mal stopped, grim rage replacing his agitation. “But I know someone who might.”
He stepped around Mary, ignored Naughton, and leapt up the stairs, two at a time, heading for his father’s chamber.