DARE THE WILD WIND (28 page)

But
Cam wasn't among them.  Brenna's eyes strained, looking for a bright russet head, for the familiar breadth of Cam's shoulders.  Heedless of warning shouts from the guards, she darted under the corner of the platform toward the roped enclosure. 

Wordless, the Scots fell back as one by one she scanned their features.  Why hadn't she remembered? 
Cam had been carried off the
Medusa
on a stretcher.  She saw a cluster of men unable to stand, makeshift canes next to them, their wounds still swathed in filthy bandages.  Fighting her dread, she searched the gaunt, bearded faces.  But none of them was Cam's. 

"There must be some mistake.  There has to be some mistake." 

Drake had kept stride with her, fending off the guards.  He drew her back a little and shot a look at Wolcott.  "Summon the officer in charge." 

Thomas turned, but there was no need.  The captain of the guard strode angrily toward them.

He blistered the air with profanity.  "What is this foolery?" he roared.  "Who gives you  leave to defy officers of the King?"     

"I am an officer of the King," Drake snapped with cold authority. 

"You speak to the fourth Earl of Stratford," Wolcott broke in sharply.  A little of the captain's outrage wilted.

"Begging your pardon, my lord," he said, choking back some of his choler.  "It's not my place to interfere with a gentleman of your rank.  But I'm charged with conducting executions."  He threw a glare at Brenna.  "I can't brook any disorder."

"This girl is hardly a threat to the business you conduct," Drake said, his voice curt.  "Inf
ormation is all I require from you."

"About these sorry sods?" the captain retorted with a glance full of contempt for the prisoners. 

"About Cameron MacCavan
. Lord MacCavan.  He was brought here from Tilbury."

The captain's face creased in a frown, and Brenna's breath constricted in her chest.  Had
Cam been taken somewhere else?

Then recognition lit in his eyes.  "Right enough, your lordship.  Scarce knew his own name."

Brenna's vision swam at the captain's sudden rictus grin. 

"He swung with the first lot this morning.  What there was of
him to hang."

                                     *****

A shrieking denial howled in her brain, and then a crystalline silence whirled up to envelop her, surging to drown the stream of ugly words that assaulted her. 

Brenna fell, plunging endlessly down through a yawning rent in the earth, to a place without landmarks or shore.  Periodical
ly distant voices buzzed like summer insects in her ears, swirling

away like leaves on an autumn flood.  For an eternity, oblivion engulfed her.  Then, abruptly, the timeless sea heaved, and she was rudely disgorged.  She tried to shut her ears to an insistent voice that dragged her up, but it wouldn't be ignored.
 

"Brenna."  The
voice repeated her name.  "You must wake up."

With enormous effort, Brenna lifted lids grained with sand.  Eleanore Wittworth's face drifted into focus above her.

Eleanore reached out and shook her.  "Don't slip back.  Sit up and speak to me."

Raising her head was beyond Brenna's power, but she opened her eyes and stared at the woman bending over her bed.

"There, that's better.  You must take some nourishment."

Brenna turned away. 
Cam was dead.  Hung like a criminal, so weak from his wounds he hadn't been able to climb the steps of the gallows.  And tossed like rubbish into a cart atop a pile of other bodies, taken off to be buried in a mass and unmarked grave. 

Those bitter words were the last she had heard.  She had been denied a last glimpse of
Cam, even in death.  But she saw it with a hideous clarity, the gibbet and the rope and Cam's neck twisted at a grotesque angle, breath and life gone from his body.  She shut her eyes, trying to ward away the horrifying image, willing herself back into the numb world she had left.

"Enough of this nonsense," Eleanore persisted in a sharp insistent voice.  With the aid of a hovering maid, she propped Brenna's shoulders against two fat pillows.  "You've had nothing to eat or drink for days.  A cat has more sense."

Eleanore seated herself on the edge of the bed, a spoon in one hand and a bowl
of steaming soup in the other. Brenna gagged at the smell, and tried to push her away. 

"I don't want anything."

"Small wonder the Earl finds you so exasperating.  I won't be balked, you k
now.  I don't often spoon feed my guests, and I expect them to show proper appreciation when I do." 

Brenna started to answer, and Eleanore slid the spoonful of broth expertly inside her  mouth.  The taste was strong and briny, and Brenna sputtered before she could swallow.  Elean
ore smiled.  

"I'm quite good at this, after all.  I've nursed an entire household through the fever, and three children through every illness an infant can contract."

Somehow the spoon was moving smoothly from the bowl to Brenna's mouth, and Brenna had lost the energy to resist.

"Am I in
Inverness?" she asked in a dull voice, no longer certain of geography or anything beyond her own name.

"You're still in
London, in Grosvenor Square.  We left Inverness just a few days after you did."  Eleanore guided another sip of soup into Brenna's mouth.  "Scotland isn't a pleasant place at the moment.  Geoffrey felt we'd be more comfortable here."         

"How long have I lain here?" Brenna asked.

"Near onto a week," Eleanore said more gently.  "You've been very exhausted and very distraught."

Fresh loss and pain washed through Brenna,
and Eleanore waited a tactful moment before she spoke. 

"The Earl brought you here.  He said you'd been set upon by ruffians, that when he recognized you, he stepped in.  And that he offered you his coach and his services when you told him you were trying to reach Kennington Common.  When you collapsed, they found you were carrying my letter.  Lord Stratford didn't think it would be seemly to take you to his house, so he appealed to me to take you in."

Drake Seton had omitted to mention the night she spent at his house on the
Strand.  But Brenna could guess his main purpose was to be rid of her. 

"I only seem to make trouble for you," Brenna said when she finished off the broth.  "As soon as I can dress, I'll go."

"Dear child, you're far too weak for that.  And none of us would permit it."

Brenna remembered Drake's threat to keep her confined until Malcolm could reach
London.  But Malcolm no longer mattered.  She had only one last task in London.  "I'd like to see Thomas Wolcott."

"The Earl's aide?" Eleanore said in surprise.  "Lord Stratford has paid a call daily to ask after you.  Surely you'd like to speak to him first?"    

Brenna sat up straighter in the bed, bolstered by the broth and h
er old resentment of the Earl. 

"Even you  must guess we don't get on.  And I'm enough in his debt already."  She smoothed the counterpane that covered her.  "Thomas Wolcott has been kind to me.  The favor I want to ask of him isn't the sort I could ask of the Earl."

Eleanore gave her a searching look.  "I think you're mistaken in that."  She rose from the bed.  "I'll send for him, of course.  But it's very likely the Earl will arrive to pay his respects before the afternoon is out."

The maid announced Drake Seton soon after Brenna had bathed and changed.  Her fasting and days in bed had left her unexpectedly weak.  Enthroned against plumped pillows, Brenna was clad in a beribboned
negligée
over a fresh night rail of Holland fine with cambric sleeves and point lace edging.  The curling, burnished mass of her hair had been brushed back and tied loosely at the nape of her neck.

There was a knock at the door, and Drake strode in, dressed for court, in a flaring cobalt blue coat and breeches of finest silk.  A frothy lace jabot spilled over a gold
embroidered vest cut away at the waist, and above red heeled shoes, his muscular legs were cased in blue silk stockings clocked in gold.  His hazel eyes examined her, and if Brenna hadn't known otherwise, she would have interpreted the expression on his face as relief.

"How do you feel?" he asked as the maid withdrew.     

"Well enough," she said in a flat, lifeless voice.  "It appears I created a spectacle at Kennington Common.  You have my apology for inconveniencing you."

She waited for his usual cutting response.  But for once he didn't mock her.  "I've dealt with greater difficulties," he said, his face closed again.

An awkward, unaccustomed silence fell between them.

"Lady Wittworth tells me you've asked to speak to Thomas Wolcott."  His bluntly
  cut features were oddly watchful, and his gaze probed hers.

She looked down for a second at her hands.  "There's some
thing I want to ask of him.  If you can spare him for a few hours."

"Perhaps if I knew the service you required of him, I could be persuaded," Drake responded, a faint caustic edge to his voice.

She glanced up again.  "It's only an errand."

"I wasn't aware you'd become fast friends."

In spite of herself, Brenna bristled at his tone.  "I only want him to take word to the inn where I've been staying."

"To the in
n, or to someone lodged there?

The suspicion in his voice was too much to be borne.  "To the girl I traveled with from
Scotland," she snapped.  "It was Fenella I was looking for when you dragged me off in your coach."

His expression altered.  "Why didn't you tell me then?"

"And have you kidnap the both of us?" Brenna tossed back.  "We were separated, and when you challenged the men chasing us, Fenella was able to slip away through the crowd.  She signed to me that she'd meet me back at the inn.  As long as she was free, I thought she could go on looking for
Cam and Iain."

"Iain?"

"Iain MacCavan. 
Cam's..." her voice caught, "Cam's cousin.  We all grew up together.  Fenella was promised to Iain, just as I was..."  She closed her eyes, unable to finish.

A flicker of recognition registered in Drake's eyes.   "He was one of the men captured with Lord MacCavan?" Drake supplied in a quieter voice.  Brenna nodded.      

Her fingers traced the leaf and petal stitchery of the counterpane, emerald and jade and brilliant blue.  "I can't leave Fenella alone in
London, whatever Malcolm plans for me.   She has no money, and I've seen how the English treat the Scots."

Drake said nothing for a second.  "Then you want Thomas to find her and bring her here?"

Brenna's head lifted, and her eyes met his.  "And discover what's become of Iain."

                                       *****

  "Praise God I'm only married to a Viscount," Eleanore said after Drake departed. "I shouldn't like to deal with a man of the Earl's moods.  He looked black as thunder a few minutes ago, and just now he was civil as a schoolboy." 

That was a side of him Brenna had never seen, but she agreed heartily with Eleanore's sentiments about the Earl.  "I hope he won't find it necessary to inquire after my health again."

Eleanore sent her a surprised, reproaching look.  "He's exerted a great deal of effort on your behalf."

"Only because he enjoys bullying everyone who crosses his path."  Brenna swung her legs over the edge of the canopied bed. 

Eleanore took a quick step toward her.  "My dear child, do you think you should be doing that?  You're still very weak."

It was true, but Brenna knew her strength wouldn't return if she continued to behave like an invalid.  For herself, it didn't matter.  Nothing could now.  But she had to think of Fenella. 

Malcolm wouldn't help her.  She had to devise some plan to provide for her.  Fenella still had the opal ring Brenna had given her before they set out on their journey, but selling it wouldn't keep her for long.  And it would be months or more before it would be safe for Fenella to return to
Scotland, for any ordinary Scot to be safe from the Duke of Cumberland's marauding army.

"I feel a bit stronger now," Brenna said.  "I have to find something."

Eleanore took her arm, prepared to steady her if she faltered.  "The jewels sewn into your petticoat?"

Brenna whirled toward her.  "No one's taken them?"

Eleanore's answer was a wry smile.  "Fortunately, we pay our servants well enough to avoid real thievery.  But, in this case, I felt a certain discretion was in order."

"You have them?"     

"Your  maid has been with us for a good many  years.  She found your cache before she sent your things out to be laundered.  She brought what she found to me."  She paused.  "The Earl told me why you wanted to see Thomas Wolcott.  I was afraid to ask you about Fenella earlier
    afraid something dreadful had happened to her."