Journey to Enchantment (4 page)

Prudence was ready at last, but tongues had wagged faster than actions, and she was late when she took up her reticule and turned to be inspected. She looked, Kitty declared proudly, “complete to a shade!” and she set off, looking forward to the long-promised jaunt to Inverness, and happy because of the good news about Jock Cameron.

She was surprised to turn the corner of the hall and encounter Mrs. Cairn, standing motionless and staring blankly at Captain Delacourt's closed door.

“Did you find Señorita?” enquired Prudence.

“Oh, aye,” murmured the housekeeper, absently.

“Where is the wee beastie?”

“I, er, let her bide.”

“You did? Where?”

Mrs. Cairn seemed to come back to earth. “He had it,” she said with a shrug.

“He…? Oh, do you mean Captain Delacourt?”

“Aye. His mon heard me calling and opened the door. Señorita was … on the bed, and himself fast asleep, but wi' his hand”—her voice cracked a little—“cradling her against him.”

Prudence peered at her, but the housekeeper kept her face turned away. “He's a Sassenach, nae dooting,” she said rather defiantly. “But—but he's nae— Och, he's nae quite what I'd in me mind, forbye.” And she fled.

“Huh!” uttered Prudence and marched to her aunt's room.

Hortense was ready but busied with a large and involved chart. “I cannot like what I read here,” she said, shaking her head bodingly. “If the skies are clear I mean to go up to the roof tonight and check if my calculations are correct.”

Her long-suffering abigail, well aware that this meant she also would essay the chilly climb, moaned faintly and went into the dressing room.

“Your calculations have likely been upset by our guest,” said Prudence tartly. “From what I can gather, he's been casting some powerful spells in this house.”

Mrs. Hortense stared, fascinated. “Spells? What kind of spells?”

“I wish you will tell me. The housemaids are all but fighting one another to fetch and carry from his room. I saw that black-haired baggage, Lucy, grinning like a silly moonling when she collected his luncheon tray yesterday. Which was quite unnecessary, since his man is here for the very same purpose! And now Carrie Cairn is drooping about in the hall fairly weepy-eyed because she found Señorita on his bed ‘wi' his hand cradling her'! All he'll get of
my
hand will be the back of it, I can tell you!” She paused, scowling, then added in a near snarl, “And why must ye look at me as if I was a cannibal, ma'am?”

“I only thought,” said Hortense, averting her shocked eyes, “that you are become something … harsh … love.”

“Harsh! I am a
patriot,
Aunty Mac! And lest ye forget, yon Captain is a murdering enemy!”

“But—so young, Prue, dear. And so very weak and helpless. And … did ever you see such a fine young face? Such dreamy, dark eyes.…” Hortense sighed and smiled at her chart. “And his mouth, so tender, yet firm withal, and those black curls all—”

“Revolting!” cried Prudence, her eyes blazing with indignation. “Do you know what you are? All of you? You're nothing but weaklings! Only let him have been fat and forty, and you'd all have been hating him as you should! But because he chances to have a hands—er, to be reasonably good-looking and capitalizes on die-away airs—”

“No, Prue, how can you? I'll own 'tis very foolish of him to be English, but he is likely expiring. How can you
be
so unfeeling?”

“How can
you
so soon forget Culloden? How can you forget my dear brother, hunted and starved and exhausted when at last he made his way home! And weeping when he told us of the shame and the slaughter!”

“Oh, I do not! I do not! But we are still civilized human beings, Prue. We must not abandon all compassion. And only look how the Captain has paid for his sins, poor lad, and bears his woes so bravely.”

“Compassion, is it? To my way of thinking the Sassenach has ye all fair bewitched. And as for his bravery—fustian! Was our Rob to have been struck doon by a musket ball—”

“A shell fragment,” inserted Hortense, precisely.

“Was Robbie to have been hit, I'll lay you odds he'd not be lying about nine months later making weak little dainty gestures and saying with a martyred smile that he is ‘just tol-lol.'” She straightened the bonnet that had become tilted by her vehemence, and repeated disgustedly, “Tol-lol, indeed! 'Tis enough tae make any good Scot cast up his accounts!” She saw her aunt's lower lip sag and swung around apprehensively as a tentative cough sounded behind her.

The parlour door stood wide. His face expressionless, Lockerbie waited, gripping the back of an invalid chair. Delacourt, his dark head leaning back against the cushions, and with a smug grey cat curled up in his lap, watched Prudence with a faint, wistful smile.

“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I'd understood that Mrs. Cairn was here and I wanted to ease her anxieties about her pet.”

Prudence's breath seemed to completely elude her. She knew her face was scarlet, and wondered in a dim, anguished fashion why Fate must conspire against her in every possible way to aid this evil creature. It was useless to attempt the quelling responses that surged to her lips, and with him looking like a man en route to choose his burial plot, anything but a soft answer would probably have her sent to the stocks for inhumanity to man—if Captain Geoffrey Delacourt could be designated such! She closed her sagging jaw, strove valiantly to meet that martyred smile with a haughty glare, and was silent.

Hortense wafted up, dropping her handkerchief along the way, and trilled in fading accents that it was “so kind … so thoughtful.” She took the yawning cat he handed up to her, and asked gently, “And how are you today, sir?”

The effort of lifting Señorita had apparently exhausted him. Back went his head to its cushion once more. “Oh,” he said with a quivering smile, “tol-lol, you know.”

Prudence had kept her fuming gaze on her aunt's slender back, but at this she slanted a narrowed glare at the invalid.

The Captain's dark eyes met hers. For an instant she thought to see a dance of laughter in them, but then they were sad again, and she fancied her imagination had been at work. She tightened her lips and said nothing.

With a languid wave of his frail hand, Delacourt said, “We must not delay the ladies, Kerbie,” and the manservant began to return the chair very carefully to the hall.

Holding the lazy grey cat still, Hortense turned to rest a grave look upon her niece.

“Tol-lol,” mocked Prudence defiantly. “The Sassenach knows what one member of this household thinks of him, at all events!”

*   *   *

“Do you think they will let us through this time?” asked Hortense, drawing a shawl closer about her and peering anxiously at the road ahead.

Prudence withdrew her absent gaze from the proud sweep of the northern mountains. “I doot Papa would have let us come, did he think there would be trouble.”

Hortense had her own ideas as to her erratic brother-in-law's awareness of trouble, and pointed out that the last time they had tried to visit cousin Hilda, they had been turned back. “I do pray we'll not be stopped again. I was never so frightened as when all those soldiers closed around us.”

“That was a month ago. The English cannot expect to keep us all locked in our homes forever. And besides, they've such a stranglehold on us, they know we can do nothing, save—” Prudence checked, her brow puckering into a frown as the carriage slowed and she saw red uniforms approaching. “Now dinna go intae the boughs,” she requested, her Scots accent more pronounced as it always was when she was irked. “They likely wish only tae find oot who we are and—”

“What?” cried Hortense, immediately alarmed. “You never mean—oh!”

Two troopers rode up, faces grim and muskets at the ready. A large Sergeant came to the side of the carriage, leaned forward, and wrenched open the door. “Who travels?” he demanded curtly.

“Myself and my aunt,” Prudence replied, her nose very high. “Who asks?”

A warmer light crept into the man's cold eyes. “Never ye mind, lassie—”

“My name is
Miss
MacTavish!”

He grinned. “How'd you guess I was after a interduction, pretty girl?”

“That will do, Sergeant!” A young officer rode to join the little group and glanced into the carriage with swift appraisal. “Are you two ladies alone?”

It seemed so foolishly redundant that Prudence replied cuttingly, “Can you not see the two Highland regiments lurking under the seats?”

The Ensign's fair face flushed. Smothering a grin, the Sergeant said, “Miss MacTavish and her aunt, sir.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Perhaps we'd best have the ladies out, so we can find these—er, two regiments.”

The Sergeant grinned broadly. Hortense, terrified, gave a little cry and shrank, trembling, against her niece.

Repenting her quick temper, Prudence said, “No, please do not. My aunt is alarmed, you see. My apologies if I—”

The Ensign, unhappily aware he'd been made to look foolish in front of a Sergeant who had several times attempted to teach him his business in this hostile land, interrupted coldly, “You heard me, Sergeant. I want a thorough search of that coach.” He swung his horse and galloped off.

The Sergeant dismounted and let down the carriage steps. “If your royal highness will be so good as to step into the dirt with us simple folk.”

Prudence turned away and said softly, “Aunty Mac, you must not let them see you are afraid. Come now.”

She started to climb out. The wind sent her skirts billowing. The Sergeant bent quickly, peeped, and laughed. Clutching her skirts angrily, Prudence missed her footing. The Sergeant caught her and swung her around. With a squeal of rage she lashed out at him, catching him a good crack on one ear.

He grunted and tossed her down so that she staggered and fell to her knees. “'Twas just your kind shot down me brother from behind at Falkirk,” he growled.

“If that is so, he was … likely running away,” she gasped out, furious.

He swore and gripped her by the front of her gown, his hand thrusting into her bodice and jerking her upwards.

“I put it to you, thir,” inserted a mild, very English voice, “that that ith not the way to treat a lady.”

Keeping his grip on Prudence's bodice, the Sergeant turned to this new arrival.

Prudence tore at his hand, but he merely shook her a little, laughing as he eyed the Englishman. “And who might you be, little pretty?”

Lord Briley's tawny eyes, which had for a moment reflected anger, began to glow. “Be tho kind ath to remove your dirty hand from her gown,” said he, more or less politely.

Grinning, the Sergeant shifted his hold, but not to withdraw it. With a shriek of rage, Prudence's long nails raked hard across that brawny wrist.

The Sergeant pulled his hand clear, then turned on Prudence, his eyes murderous, his curses blistering her ears.

“Oh, now really, fellow,” protested his lordship, sighing.

Thinking back on it later, Prudence was unable to decide just how it happened. At one moment his lordship was standing beside his horse surveying the hulking symbol of military might reproachfully. At the next moment, that same military might performed three quite unexpected contortions. Firstly, it was doubled in half; secondly, it was expertly straightened out; and thirdly, it sort of squashed down upon itself until it sprawled, groaning, in the dust.

“Hey!” A trooper raised his musket.

“Heaven be praised,” cried Hortense. “Bless the braw laddie!”

“Oh, splendid!” Prudence clapped her hands, her eyes alight with admiration.

“Botheration,” mourned his lordship, inspecting one surprisingly muscular hand. “If I ain't broken my fingernail on the horrid lout.”

“Stand clear, miss,” commanded the other trooper, advancing to join his friend, his musket also levelled. “Up with your hands, whoever you are!”

“Oh, did you want to know?” enquired his lordship, turning an angelic gaze upon them. “My name ith Briley.”

“What the devil's going on here?” His young face wrathful, the Ensign rode to join them. He stared in astonishment from Briley's elegance to the burly Sergeant, who was making feeble attempts to regain his feet.

“He wath pawing the lady,” explained Briley.

“Says his name's Briley, sir,” volunteered the second trooper.

“Well, whoever you are, damn you, you are under—” The Ensign checked, frowning. “Briley? Not Major Lord Thaddeus Briley?”

Prudence's delight fled, and fear touched her.

His lordship, his pleasant countenance reflecting a brief chagrin, bowed.

“Oh, egad!” the Ensign groaned under his breath. He saluted. “Your pardon, sir. I'd not intended that my men should—”

“I am not on active thervith, you know,” interposed his lordship. “If I were”—his eyes blazed suddenly—“you'd wait a blathted long time before I'd put you in charge of any detail larger than a thentry!” He turned from the scarlet-faced Ensign to Prudence. “May I ethcort you into town, ma'am?”

“Oh,
please
do, your lordship,” wailed Hortense, tears spilling down her white cheeks. “Prudence—poor darling girl—are you—?”

Prudence took her in her arms. “I am very well, dearest. Come, we shall go home.” She glanced over her shoulder. “We are most beholden to you, my lord, and shall be grateful for your escort back to Lakepoint.”

*   *   *

Thaddeus Briley's gallantry was considerable, but it did not extend to enduring a father's gratitude. Having escorted the ladies to the front steps of Lakepoint, he fled like a startled hare, his groom clattering along behind. This behaviour did nothing to diminish Prudence's new opinion of him. “Is just as a brave gentleman should behave,” she told her aunt. “And I admire him the more for't.”