Chapter 36
Will Mackenzie slipped through shadows, his eyes burning—there was so much smoke, and the wind carried it straight over him.
He’d watched, from a corner of a wall, as his father took Alec’s pistol and shot his brother Duncan dead. Will had sworn he could hear the pistol’s retort even through the roar of cannon and musket fire. The distinct pop of the black powder tore a hole through his heart.
Duncan, gone. Damn the stupid, brave, blustering, pain-in-the-ass bastard.
Now Lord Will Mackenzie was heir to the dukedom of Kilmorgan. Damn ye, Duncan, look what ye’ve done t’ me.
Will hated tears. They got in the way when a man had to slip out into the night or read a message that might mean the difference between life and death.
He wiped his eyes, blinking, as he ran. He hadn’t been able to see, around mists and the soldiers that surged between him and the field, what had happened to his father, Mal, and Alec. But Mal would make sure they were all right. Mal was a genius at surviving and ensuring others did too. Mal would return to Kilmorgan, take Mary somewhere safe, and live happily ever after.
Will had a fondness for Mal that ran deep. The little runt got away with everything. He deserved the love he’d found with Mary.
A dragoon lieutenant came riding out of the smoke straight at Will. The man had his pistol drawn, which made sense, Will thought. A saber wouldn’t work with the angle he’d have to approach Will, who ran along a wall at the edge of a farmer’s field, but a pistol was good at close range.
Will watched the dragoon clamp his legs around his horse, turning him and urging him forward at the same time. The dragoon pointed his pistol as he thundered by, and fired.
At nothing. A pistol ball struck mortar where Will had been. Will rolled from where he’d slammed himself to the ground, came up behind the dragoon, grabbed the man by knee and thigh, and tore him out of the saddle.
As the dragoon climbed to his feet, steadying himself for a fight, Will vaulted into the saddle, turned the horse, and galloped into the mists, disappearing like a ghost before the dragoon could so much as shout.
Alec Mackenzie dragged his father to Gair Murray’s small ship, which rocked in the twilight at the end of a pier. The duke was flagging, his strength gone. Alec held him upright, pulling him along, fearing he’d not get his father to safety before the man collapsed and couldn’t be moved.
Alec heard shouting, gunshots, the clang of steel. A knot of British soldiers were trying to commandeer the ship, and Gair and his men were fighting hard. It spoke volumes about how much Mal had paid Gair that he was still there at all.
The duke came alert and drew his dirk, showing he was not yet ready to cease fighting. He and Alec charged down the pier, Alec’s claymore raised.
The bulky form of Padruig, Gair’s mate, slammed himself in front of them. He shoved Alec toward the ship at the same time he fired two pistols, one into each soldier that had been coming for Alec and the duke.
Padruig tossed the pistols behind him into the boat and pushed Alec at the gangplank. “Get aboard.”
The duke was fighting madly with more soldiers who’d run down the dock. He was laughing, enjoying it. Alec grabbed his father by his plaids and hauled him around. The duke’s eyes were full of fire, but he followed Alec and leapt down the gangway to the deck.
Padruig landed after them. The boat was already moving, the ropes cut, the gangplank quickly lifted.
“We need t’ wait for Malcolm,” the duke shouted.
Alec had his hand on his father’s arm. “Mal’s not coming, Dad.” His chest was tight. “I saw him go down.”
A soldier with a bayonet had plunged it straight toward Mal’s body. No one could have survived a blow like that, not even Mal. A moment later, Alec had dodged a sword blade coming for him, then had gained his feet and dragged his father away. Alec had looked back, hoping he’d see Mal spring up again, shouting and cursing in his wild way, but Mal never appeared.
Alec had known that if he did not take his father to safety, the man would die a sure death. If Mal could get away, he would. Their father couldn’t, not on his own. And Alec’s daughter waited, across the stretch of water, for him to come. Alec had made the gut-wrenching decision and pulled his father away.
“Get them below!” Gair shouted. “Let’s see if we can avoid the whole bloody British navy, damn and blast it.”
Padruig sheathed his sword, ignored a pistol shot from the mooring that barely missed him, and led them to a cabin below. It was Gair’s cabin, which stretched across the entire stern, its small lights showing murky darkness behind them. Padruig, without word, left them.
The duke collapsed onto the bunk, his claymore and dirk falling from his hands. Alec braced himself against the sudden roll of the ship, pulled out Gair’s whisky decanter, and poured two glasses. He brought one to his father, who took it between shaky fingers.
“To Duncan,” the duke said, raising the heavy cut crystal glass. Gair could put his hands on the best of everything. “And Mal. Damn the bloody English.”
“Aye,” Alec said. He drank, the whisky burning.
The duke thunked his empty glass to the table and heaved a sigh. “Angus,” he said irritably, “where the hell are we going?”
Alec chilled, and he poured another swallow of whisky down his throat. “Paris,” he said. He set his glass next to his father’s. “I’m Alec, Dad. Angus is dead.”
The duke put a hand over his eyes and sat thusly for a long moment. When he raised his head, his expression was weary. “Aye, I know. It comforts me t’ say his name.” He slowly sat up straight. “Paris, eh? Does this mean I get to meet me granddaughter?”
Alec’s bleak heart warmed at the thought of his daughter, Jenny. He hadn’t seen her in months, and his entire being craved her. He would take her in his arms, kiss her little face, and never leave her again.
“Aye,” he said. “God help her.”
The duke barked a short laugh, and then they were silent, as the waves of the open sea took the boat toward their destination.
At camp, word went around who Mary was, and she was greeted more as a released prisoner than a woman who’d run away with a Scotsman. She was taken to a large house where the commanders had set up base and given a room, food, and coffee. A few of the men in charge knew her father and promised to send him word that she was well. They were deferential to her, as such men would be to the daughter of an important peer.
Captain Ellis returned after midnight. Mary was still awake, unable to sleep, unable to do much but pace.
Ellis gave her a polite bow when he entered the sitting room she met him in, but Mary was too stiff and agitated to curtsy in response.
“Duncan’s body is ready to be taken back to Kilmorgan,” Captain Ellis said. “I have made sure you will not be hampered in any way as to that.”
“Thank you,” Mary said sincerely. “And the others?”
Ellis hesitated, but the look in his eyes told Mary all she needed to know. “I never found their bodies. I’m sorry.”
Mary’s heart pounded swiftly, her throat closing up. “What are you saying? That they escaped?” But she knew he didn’t mean that.
Ellis let out a sigh. “Mary, there were so many. His Grace of Cumberland has ordered that the Jacobites be given no quarter. The wounded are being killed instead of tended to, those likeliest to live taken off to trial and execution. No Jacobite Highlander is going home alive from this.”
Mary stared at him. “But he can’t. They surrendered. The war is over, and Prince Charles is gone. They should be left in peace.”
Ellis shook his head. “Not this time. The fear is that the clans will try to rise again—they did a good job of it this time, until the end. Cumberland wants to crush the rebels once and for all.”
Mary couldn’t answer. Ellis was saying that even if Malcolm had managed to elude death, he’d be pursued, cut down or arrested, taken to London, hanged. Her breath wouldn’t come, and blackness danced before her eyes.
Captain Ellis caught her as she collapsed. She found herself seated on a couch, the captain’s steadying hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Mary. So sorry.”
Still the tears would not come. “You believe they’re dead, then.”
Ellis slid a paper from his pocket. “Culloden’s men are making lists of those dead or taken prisoner as they go through the field. I was able to get a partial one.” He unfolded the paper and held it out to her.
Mary didn’t want to look at it. As on the battlefield, she thought that if she didn’t see, the worst would not have happened. She’d go home and believe Malcolm alive, somewhere out in the world, the brollachan causing trouble wherever he went.
But she had to know. Mary had told Malcolm she was resilient, stronger than he realized. She could not go through life wondering, waiting for him, always uncertain.
She took the paper from Captain Ellis. It was a list of names, a long list, so many Mackenzies. She’d heard that much of the extended clan had perished at Dunrobin Castle, but the number at Culloden looked large to her eyes.
They’d been listed in alphabetical order:
Mackenzie, Alec William
Mackenzie, Daniel Duncannon
Mackenzie, Daniel William (Duke of Kilmorgan)
Farther down the list was:
Mackenzie, Malcolm Daniel
And finally, near the bottom:
Mackenzie, William Ferdinand
Mary pressed the paper to her face, and closed her eyes.
Mary took Duncan’s body back to Kilmorgan. Captain Ellis obtained leave to go with her, and she fetched Ewan from Inverness along the way. She and the Kilmorgan servants gathered to lay Duncan in the family tomb next to his mother and brothers.
Captain Ellis had never found the bodies of the others, though he’d diligently searched. They’d likely already been buried, he’d been told, in a grave with so many others.
Mary asked the stonecutter from the village, who’d come to carve Angus’s name beneath Magnus Hart Mackenzie to add the others, in order of birth.
She waited, watching, while he carved out the name Malcolm Daniel Mackenzie.
Mary traced the letters, her fingers memorizing the feel of the words. She heard the whisper of his voice in the soft Highland wind—
Nothing will ever keep me from you. Not Death himself. I promise ye that.
Mary left Kilmorgan the next morning, and went home to Lincolnshire.
Malcolm slipped through the mists and the shadows, running, crawling, flattening himself against the ground.
He’d survived the battlefield by a piece of damned, bloody luck. When Mal had come to, surprised he wasn’t dead, he’d been underneath an Englishman, the bayonet that had killed the man digging into the ground half an inch from Malcolm’s ribs.
Rain had been falling in the darkness, mists swirling around him like ghosts. He’d heard voices, Cumberland’s soldiers wandering the field, looking for survivors. Mal had heard the occasional crack of a pistol or laughter, and English voices. That slid right into him like a knife through butter. Skewered with his own claymore. Nice blade. Will take it home to show the wife.
Mal had lain motionless, one of the dead, until there was relative quiet around him. And then, inch by inch, he’d crawled, the dead Englishman still on top of him, out through the dark, the way slow and perilous.
He’d wormed himself along through black mud, dizzy from the blow that had knocked him cold, muck seeping into his mouth and nose. He halted when anyone neared, fearing they’d lift the English soldier off him and shoot Mal through the head just to make sure he was dead.
At the edge of the field, he’d found trees. Once under their cover, he’d quietly rolled the English soldier over, undressed him, and stolen his clothes, pistol, bullets, dagger, and few coins in his pocket. Then he’d laid the man out for his fellows to find, and slipped into the darkness.
Mal refused to let himself think. His brothers and father were gone, perhaps all dead. It was over.
Mal’s only thought, the driving force in his world, was that he needed to get to Mary. She was safe at Kilmorgan, but she wouldn’t be for long. Cumberland’s men were spreading out, searching the Highlands, killing anything in plaid. She was in danger—as was everyone on Kilmorgan lands. He’d make his way home and run with Mary to France.
Everything Mal had tried to avoid this past year—everything he’d vowed he’d not let happen—had happened. He’d become a traitor to the crown, and his only destination, if Mal remained in Scotland, was the end of a rope.
He was already a long way from Culloden when he watched from the shelter of a copse three Highland men be surrounded by soldiers and bayoneted. They died bravely, did those lads, but they died.
Malcolm played the brollachan again that night, burning a wagonload of supplies, but not before stealing some food and brandy. The commander’s tent went up in flames; the horses broke free and ran. One lieutenant came tearing out of the woods where he’d been helping himself to a young woman, his trousers halfway down his thighs. He gibbered about strange lights in the woods and a wild animal that had attacked him. As he spoke, more tents caught fire, and the lieutenant screamed.
You’ll like this story, Mary, Mal thought, as he took the young woman to the safety of her family.
He reached Kilmorgan after many days of erratic travel, mostly at night, slowed by rain, cold, and dense darkness. Mal went a long way west, around the firths, to come at Kilmorgan from the north. The English were searching into the west and the islands, since Charles Stuart was rumored to have escaped that way. Mal wouldn’t chance seeking out help from Rabbie or Calan Macdonald, knowing that he’d only endanger those men, whom Mal hoped had wisely fled.
He came to Kilmorgan on a blustery day. Mal didn’t approach the house that was the distillery directly—he hid and watched to see if soldiers had come to arrest him. He saw no sign of uniforms, but carts stood in the courtyard outside the distillery, waiting to take things and people away. Good.
Mal left his shelter and made his way silently down the hill, slipping into the house without announcing himself.
Ewan saw him first. Malcolm had started up the stairs just as the lad ran out of the kitchens with a bag of something bulky.
Ewan let out a shriek. He dropped the bag, which proved to be full of oats. Malcolm caught it before it fell to the floor, then Ewan launched himself at Malcolm.
“Me lord, me lord, we thought you was dead!”
The retainers rushed out to see what Ewan was yelling about. There were shouts, cries, and hearty relief. “Lord Malcolm. Ye’ve come!” “Aye, I thought you were a ghost.” “What happened to ye, lad? We’ve gone and buried ye!”
Malcolm waved them all quiet and pried Ewan’s clinging arms from around him. “Where’s Mary?”
Everyone talked at once until Malcolm held up his hands again. “Stop it! Ye’re makin’ me ears ache. Ewan—where is me wife?”
“Gone, sir.” Ewan swallowed, his young face serious. “She put up a stone to ye and your dad and brothers, then she went home to England.”
Wise of her. If Mary thought Malcolm dead, if she understood what was happening in the Highlands, she’d go to ground in the safest place she knew. Her father would take care of her, would not let one hair on her head be harmed.
On the other hand, it was unlike Mary to leave people in trouble. She was very loyal, and she’d come to be fond of Ewan, Jinty, and the others. So why had she left the duke’s retainers here, believing no one was alive to come home for them? She might have reasoned that they’d find safety deeper in the Highlands on their own . . . or Mary had returned to England to preserve someone more than only herself.
The thought took hold of Malcolm, and would not leave him.
“You lot, clear out,” Mal said to the others. “Take anything ye need from this place—it’s yours. Ye’ve worked for it. But scatter. Burn your plaids and go anywhere far from here. They’re calling him Butcher Cumberland for a reason.”
Jubilation waned, faces paled, and they gave him nods. Malcolm left them to it, but took Ewan aside.
“You, lad, I have a commission for ye.”