Every Time with a Highlander (20 page)

“And she speaks Spanish. No. More like an oversize toy—”

“Oh,
aye
,” she said, understanding.

“Oh,
no
,” he said, catching her hand. “Made of paper and glue. Filled with sweets. And one takes swings at it with a stick.”

“Oh, no.”

“Now you're getting it. Once the sweets are gone…” He held up his palms.

“We make more sweets?”

“Oh dear. I can see I've made a terrible mistake. Theoretically, yes, but when you're as old as I am, one has to make do with a few days of thin gruel first.”

“I don't care for gruel,” she said, flopping petulantly onto her back.

“Aye, well, one never knows,” he said, catching her hand and lifting it. “And I'll promise you the possibility of changing until I've tricked you into letting me put a ring on your—”

He stopped, and with an awful shock, Undine remembered.

“What's that?” he asked.

She tried to pull her hand away, but her muscles seemed to have lost their ability to respond to the commands of her brain.

“His ring,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper.

“You…
married
him?”

“It doesn't matter. It means nothing.”

He let go of her hand, and the bed went cold.

Married to Bridgewater.

If she had to help the people of the borderlands, Michael thought, why couldn't she build them a hospital or something? Why did her work have to involve putting herself in the way of a man like Bridgewater?

He stood out of the rain, under the eaves of the stables, his heart feeling like a large bruise inside his chest. He gazed abstractedly at the white-capped river, running fast, and thought that was about what he felt like doing too.

Logically, he understood her explanation of how it had happened. She'd wriggled out of Bridgewater's grasp enough times that one more time would have pushed him to the edge of flat-out suspicion. But emotionally, Michael was finding it hard to accept.

She'd sworn it didn't mean anything to her. And of course it wouldn't. She
hated
the man. Michael had no doubt about that.

But she was
married
.

There was something concrete and unchangeable about marriage—well, certainly his, at least until it changed completely—and even more in this time. One couldn't get a divorce in 1706, not easily, and in this case, not without the intervention of the House of Lords, which meant it wouldn't happen unless Bridgewater wished it to happen. It was almost as if Undine had been encased in a deep-sea diving suit. Michael could still see her and talk to her and even hold her, but there was a layer there now that hadn't been there before.

He kicked his small bag of belongings, still wedged where he'd left it, between an overturned trough and the stable wall.

Why did she call you here?

She needed somebody—anybody.

No. She needed someone with a special set of skills. More important, she needed a man she could trust.

Great. So I'm a man she can trust. Maybe what she really needed was a brother. Or a dog. Here, Toby! Good boy!

Oh, I see. So you're willing to help her, but only if she sleeps with you?

You know what? Fuck off.

Why did you come to Morebright's home?

To tell her what she needed to know.

Lord Hay had no messengers? Come, Michael. Why did you come to Morebright's home?

To help her.

So how has your job changed?

He groaned. But it had changed. It had. It didn't matter how long he argued with himself.

Was a marriage still a marriage if one of the parties went into it with no intention of it being real?

The answer was yes
and
no, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't find a way to sort that out.

He opened his hand and looked at what she'd given him.

A small twist of orange paper that, with a tear and a shake, she'd said, would take him back to the National Rose.

Undine lifted her head from the bedroom's small desk and wiped her eyes. She was glad it was night. She didn't want to see what her face looked like. Even without the moon, which seemed to have left her at the same time Michael did and been replaced by a suffocating gray rain, she could sense her herbs and potions standing in orderly rows, the tall tin for the catchweed, the delicate porcelain for the clove, and, of course, the now half-depleted twinflower in its uncorked glass. She reached for the familiar sheets of paper, only to realize she'd wet them with her tears. She could feel the dampness where the dye had run onto the cotton mat below and could smell the poke and bitter bloodroot.

What a fool she'd been.

To have opened her heart as she had—she might as well have smashed it to bits with a rock. She knew full well the imprudent lengths men and women went to when their hearts became entangled. Had she not seen men give up wealth, and women freedom? Had she not seen family dynasties destroyed? What made her think she was immune to such stupidity?

Spies have no business caring for anyone.

She looked at the ring on her finger: thick gold, inlaid with an emerald the shape of a cat's eye, and the motto of the Bridgewaters—
Paritur pax bello
, “peace is obtained through war.” She shook her head, disgusted—as much at herself as at Bridgewater.

When the ring had been put upon her finger, it represented no real burden to her. An inconvenience, aye, but no marriage can occur when one does not consent in one's heart, no matter what words were leaving one's lips. But now she might as well be dragging the chains of Prometheus beside her.

She'd forgotten not everyone built a protective wall around themselves with layer upon layer of the nacre of duty, drive, and independence so as not to be vulnerable. Michael believed a marriage vow was as binding and important as an oath of honor. He lived in a world in which words mattered and one acted with honesty and feeling. She found herself wondering what sort of woman had earned such a vow from Michael and what had broken it in the end.

With an irony too cruel to be reflected upon, her marriage to Bridgewater had meant Michael could return home. The task her spell had brought him to perform—keeping her from marrying Bridgewater—had been rendered moot. As there was nothing he needed to keep her from doing anymore, there was nothing to keep him in this time.

She'd prepared the mixture in a silence so heavy her fingers had shaken. She had no doubt the mixture would work. The tears of a naiad were said to triple the power of any spell, and she'd dutifully collected them, her back turned, so that he might have the assurance of a safe and easy passage. It was, she thought, the least she owed him.

Would he be at peace back at his theater? She wondered if magicians performed in theaters in the future and if he used his magic on actors. She closed her eyes and opened her mind to try to see him after he'd returned to his old life, though each instant spent in such an exercise was like a knife in her heart. She saw a churning orange and yellow. Change, she thought. Not pain. Not relief. And certainly not love.

But he'd survive.

And so would she.

At once, she was aware of him, and so strong was her sense of it, she nearly looked at the door. But that wasn't the source of her feeling. It came from beyond the window, and when she turned there, the sparkle of Morebright's keys in the candlelight reminded her that her time at present was not her own.

The entry hall was dark and empty as she started down the stairs. The first room she intended to search was Morebright's reception room. It was the room in which she and Bridgewater had married, which gave her a passable explanation for wanting to be there should anyone discover her, though she did wonder if women truly felt such a connection to the location of their vows that they would wish to revisit it just to reexperience the happiness of the time. She'd heard a clanswoman of Abby's say it once after a luncheon Abby threw in the ruins of the chapel on her land, and Undine had been so surprised, she'd thought the woman drunk, but Abby had insisted no liquor had been served.

Undine would certainly never be so sentimental about her quick ceremony to the loutish Bridgewater, who'd spent the entire time smiling at her like an addle-brained fool.

She stopped, horrified.

Oh God, do I look at Michael the same way?

She turned back and forth until she spotted the silvered glass of a sconce at the bottom of the steps and ran to it. She peered at her reflection and thought of that first kiss.

Great skies, I look just as addle-brained.

There's a reason to be glad he's gone
, she thought firmly, though, she considered with a sigh, she hadn't quite convinced herself.

She padded quickly across the marble floor. The footmen were making their nightly rounds. The reception room was just past the dining hall. She hadn't been in the house long enough to figure out where Morebright did his paperwork, but the reception room was where he'd met with Bridgewater.

She pulled the ring of keys from her pocket, careful to hold them still. She gauged the size of the keyholes on the double doors and then poked gingerly through the selection of keys in her hand. Most were too large. The three smaller ones were about equal size. She reached for the smallest one, but the movement overbalanced the ring and the thing fell to the ground with a horrendous clatter that seemed to echo down every hallway.

She bent instantly for them.

“Lady Bridgewater?”

She nearly jumped out of her skin. She straightened and stepped forward so that her skirts covered the keys. It was an older, dark-eyed footman.

“May I offer my congratulations on your marriage?” he said, catching the handles and swinging both doors inward so that she might enter.

They weren't even locked.

“You may,” she said, producing one of her famed addle-brained smiles. “Thank you.”

He bowed and waited for her to enter. “It must feel like a great change.”

Aye. Like I've been thrown in jail and am being readied to be burned at the stake.

She put her foot on the keys and slid them into the room, coughing repeatedly to cover the noise. The footman, light-footed for his age, had his hair pulled into a ribbon. She leaned forward to look into the man's eyes. It wasn't Michael, but she checked again, just to be sure.

“Is everything all right, milady?” the man said, uncomfortable under the close gaze.

“Oh, aye. I thought you looked familiar. I dinna see well without my spectacles, which I am loath to wear.”

“Let me remedy that.” He gathered a candle from a table, lit it from an entryway sconce, and placed it in a nearby pricket. “Will that be enough, or shall I light more?”

“'Twill be sufficient. I only wished… Well, 'tis a bit embarrassing. I only wished to sit here for a moment and remember the ceremony.”

“A momentous time.” He smiled. “My Mary's gone now, but we often visited the chapel on the estate where we said our vows. I always said that quarter hour alone made the whole year worthwhile.”

The reception room had a settee and two stuffed chairs as well as numerous tables, shelves, and books. There was no desk, nor any obvious place to hide something. On the wall, a large mural had been painted of the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, in which the English army had routed the Scots not far from here. And if she remembered correctly… Aye, there he was. Captain Simon Morebright leading his company into battle. The muralist had made it easy to recognize him. Not only was he carrying his family's flag, but he was also by far the largest, handsomest, and most heroic-looking of the men portrayed on the canvas, sitting astride a horse, saddlebags at his side, in a bright pool of sunlight, no doubt indicating God's favor. She rolled her eyes. The only thing missing was a contingent of angels led by Gabriel and his trumpet circling Morebright's head and a sign that read “Here's the hero.”

If this is what Morebright put in his reception room, she forbore to think what he'd had installed in his bedchamber.

“Do you like it?” the servant asked.

“It's something I shall not soon forget.”

“His lordship had it commissioned a few years ago.”

“He did? I would have guessed it to be a gift from his regiment, to thank him for his extraordinary bravery in the defense of our country.”

The servant lowered his head, providing the humility he imagined his master would have displayed. “No, milady. It actually hides a door to the dining hall.”

“Indeed?” She stared at the figures, looking for the outline of a door. It wasn't until she picked up the candle and drew even closer that the outline became visible in the trunks of three closely set oaks, which, of course, grew nowhere near Bothwell Bridge.

“I am amazed.”

He opened the door, and there was the dining hall and its long line of arched windows. She felt Michael's presence again but knew it was only the night, the moon, and her regret coming together to defeat her.

“There are times,” the servant said with a smile, “when his lordship finds it more convenient to adjourn to the dining room than to meet those who have come to call unexpectedly.”

Which suggested, Undine thought, that he spent time in the reception room alone.

“I'd enjoy the same thing myself every now and again,” she said. “Perhaps I can induce a muralist to come to Bridgewater's family seat.”

“Coldstream now, is it not? Or will you be returning to the estate in Cumbria?”

She would be doing neither, partly because no earthly power could induce her to retreat even farther from the borderlands with John Bridgewater, but partly because she knew events were counting down quickly to a time when she would have to leave to save herself. She and Michael had stolen the letter from Bridgewater's box, and the moment Bridgewater opened it, his not yet fully formed suspicions about her would take on a very concrete shape. If she found anything here to take, then Morebright would also be on the verge of suspecting her. In addition, she knew the spell Bridgewater was under was fading. She'd already seen signs of its wildly shifting effects. And last, but far from least, the ring on her left hand meant she was now Bridgewater's chattel to do with as he pleased, and a man like Bridgewater was not going to let a situation like that go unleveraged for long.

She shook off the horror of such a thought. “Oh, I don't know what John wishes to do next concerning a home,” she said. “I expect he'll surprise me.”

The servant nodded, and as their conversation was at its natural end, he began to back out, catching each door to close them.

“Wait,” she said. “What's your name?”

“Tom, milady.”

“Tom, I wouldn't want anyone to know I'm being so silly. Not even John.”

He bent his head and the whisper of an approving smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. “As you wish.”

The instant Tom closed the doors, she scooped the keys off the floor and began to look around. The table between the chairs had a small drawer but no lock. She looked anyway and found a folded broadsheet, a pair of scissors, a handheld lens and a number of other odds and ends, but nothing of interest, not even the broadsheet, which was four years old and concerned the necessity of approving the cost of a new toll bridge in Glasgow.

She paced the perimeter of the room and peered at the items on the shelves—porcelain doves, a box of quills, a set of cups for coffee, a small painting of Morebright's sons and late wife. Nothing looked like something the rebels would find useful.

The door in the mural was intriguing, though. Of course, there was every reason to believe a nobleman would have callers he didn't want to see, and a secret passageway provided a very handy escape. But an escape to the dining hall? Surely a man as manipulative and scheming as Morebright could have thought of something more original—stairs to his lover's bedchamber or an escape route to the outside, perhaps.

She opened the door again—one had to push it, as there was no knob to pull—and examined it. It was thicker than most doors, since it needed to be as thick as the wall, and she ran her hands along the sides and top, but she didn't feel any gaps that would suggest a hidden panel. She did the same to the frame around the door. It wasn't quite wide enough to offer a secret passage—unless you were a very thin child, perhaps—and it didn't appear to offer any secret hiding places either.

She closed the door again, marveling at the precision between the wall and the door's front. She most certainly wouldn't have noticed it without Tom's help.

Heaving a sigh, she looked again at the key ring. There were eight keys—five large and three small. One was undoubtedly for a money box somewhere and another for where silver plate was stored. A third would be for the room in which wine and whiskey were stored. The largest was probably for the house itself. That left four keys unaccounted for. Where in this place would four more locked rooms or boxes be that Morebright himself would take a personal interest in?

She gathered the pricket again to examine the keys nearer the window. There was nothing out of the ordinary about them. Some were more intricately fashioned than others, no doubt done to match either a highly stylized box or lock plate. All were brass. None had any markings to indicate what they were for or who made them.

She was just about to blow the candle out when she thought she noticed an odd ridge in the mural. Not near the door. Closer to the other side. She put her hand on the wall and ran it along the mural as she walked, intrigued. The surface was varied—a result of both the application of paint and the texture of the walls—but there were no seams. Until she reached a ridge.

Bringing the pricket closer, she found a ridge and another to match it running down the edges of Morebright's saddle bag in the painting. With heart beating fast, she followed the closest ridge up the wall till its endpoint and found another line running between the two ridges. Digging her fingernail in that, she managed to get a small door to open a bit, but it slipped back. She put down the pricket and tried again using both hands. Success. A small door, almost a shelf, angled open. Inside was a silver box about the height and width of a servant's tray with an ornate lock and handle. A shiver of excitement went through her.

She grabbed the case and sized up the lock. The first of the smaller keys didn't fit, but the second did. She opened the lid and found a sheath of papers. A number were letters Morebright had received from others, but at least three were from Bridgewater.

Undine quickly scanned the first one. It appeared to be an answer to an entreaty from Morebright to do more in the borderlands than his command would allow.

Simon, stepping beyond the orders I've been given is possible but would have to be undertaken with extreme caution… As you know, I am entrusted to make decisions when certain unexpected situations arise… The “situation” will have to be carefully chosen.

This was all she'd need to get the vote defeated! If the Scots learned of the maneuverings of one of the highest-ranking officers in England's northern armies, it would be deeply embarrassing to the Scottish lords who'd already formed a coalition with England on the treaty. All it would take was to change the minds of a couple dozen lords and the treaty vote would fail. But more important, if she made the contents of this letter known, Bridgewater would undoubtedly be removed from his command. She knew General Silverbridge, the officer in Northumberland to whom Bridgewater reported, or at least, she knew his reputation. He was a fair and honest man. If she found something that implicated Bridgewater, Silverbridge would act.

She didn't have time to thoroughly read the correspondence here. She needed to get out of the house, and then get the story to one of the broadsheet publishers in Edinburgh, who could get it distributed. The letters themselves would have to be hidden. They were more valuable and dangerous than gold. As long as they were on her person, she'd be in extreme danger. The question now was, did she take the time to pack her powders and elixirs, or did she walk straight into the night?

She had no time to consider the choices. She heard footsteps and thrust the papers deep into her bodice, put the box on the shelf, and closed the small door hidden in the mural.

When the room's door opened, Undine turned from window.

Bridgewater started.

“There you are,” she said, and ran to his side to kiss him.