The Adventurer (15 page)

“We took the trunks up to the study,” said Fergus, as if reading Calum’s thoughts.

Calum nodded, thinking he’d stay just a wee while in the hall, to oversee the divvying of the goods, then he’d slip off to spend the rest of the night poring through Belcourt’s books in search of Uilliam’s whereabouts.

“ ’Ave a drink o’ ale with us, Laird?”

Calum turned to the beaming face of Hamish Beaton. It appeared from the redness in his cheeks, and the spark in his eyes, he’d been nipping at the ale cask himself. He was a young lad, no more than sixteen, who before the rebellion had passed his days working alongside his father on a farm of some two hundred acres near Glen Moriston. His nights had been spent vying for space on the small box bed he shared with three of his eleven brothers and sisters. Now, little more than a year later, they were all of them gone, his father killed on the battlefield at Culloden, his mother lost to the harshness of winter without the shelter of their home, only after watching each of his brothers and sisters succumb to illness, starvation, or both.

Hamish himself had been at the nearest point of starvation when Calum had first found him, locked deep in the stinking, rat-infested hold of a government prison ship. It had taken a sennight of M’Cuick’s barley bree and milk-and-whisky possets to even bring the lad to his feet again, shakily as it was. Though he looked little more than a bag of bones now, it was a far cry better than he’d been all those months ago.

“My thanks, Hamish,” Calum said, and patted one bony shoulder as he took the tankard and swallowed down a healthy swig of it. The ale slipped easily down his throat and the tankard emptied quickly, only to be refilled twice over.

Calum felt the tensions of the day start to ease. As he sat watching the others, he let the ale and the brandy they’d begun using to toast their success melt away his disquietude. He ate a little, some cheese and a bite or two of M’Cuick’s haggis. He made his way among the others, exchanging nods, listening to stories, until he finally reached the far corner of the room where M’Cuick and a handful of others stood, huddled around something.

“Laird,” said M’Cuick upon noticing his arrival. “Will you look at tha’? Have you e’er afore seen such a peculiar-looking apparatus in your life?”

The group parted to reveal a chair of sorts made of finely carved and gilded wood and upholstered in rich red velvet. It was actually two seats joined together at a center armrest, but instead of standing side by side like a bench or a settee, these two had been joined with each facing the opposite direction from the other, a sort of Z-shaped double chair.

“Wha’ do you suppose it could be?” asked Hamish, his eyes alight with adolescent wonder.

“D’you suppose it’s some sort of Sassenach instrument of torture?” someone else suggested.

Calum circled the chair to get a better view. “Nae, it is too ornately carved and its wood too dear for such an elementary purpose.”

“I know!” called out another, Hugh perhaps. “I’ll bet it’s used for someone who’s reading and who doesn’t want someone else reading over their shoulder ...”

“Och, you
eediot,”
said M’Cuick. “Wha’ would you ever know about reading?”

This started a volley of comments and suggestions from the others as to what, exactly, the furniture maker could have been thinking when he’d created such a unique and bizarre-looking chair. The crowd around the chair swelled as everyone pressed forward to see it and offer their opinion of what could be its use, until finally M’Cuick stepped upon the hearthstone so that he towered over the heads of the others. There he stood, simply stood, and waited for the others to fall silent so that he might be heard by all.

“I know what it is,” he proclaimed with all the fanfare of a trumpet blare.

Everyone turned, watched, waited. The fire crackled in the hearth behind him.

“ ’Tis for the poor mon who weds himsel’ to a trolliebags of a wife, so as to keep him from having t’ look at her a’day!”

A roar of manly laughter erupted, rocking the room, only to be silenced in the very next moment by the sound of an unfamiliar and all-too-feminine voice.

“Actually, Malcolm, its purpose is just the opposite of that.”

Calum swore he could hear every jaw in the place drop and every head turn to where the lass, his alleged mermaid, stood suddenly framed in the doorway.

The room had fallen so silent, one could have heard a pebble bounce along the length of the stone floor.

Apparently undaunted at having the attention of some fifty or more gruff-looking men trained upon her, the lass walked calmly into the room. She parted the sea of male bodies with but a lift of her brow and tilt of her rose-tinted lips.

Calum stood and watched her. The firelight from the hearth glowed on her pale skin, setting her dark hair aflame with shades of rich red and bronze against silky endless black. She had changed from the traveling habit she’d worn earlier that day, into a gown that was cut low over her breasts, revealing a lovely expanse of skin that only set off the brilliance of the stone she wore more to advantage. Beneath the elegant cut of the gown, she wore a shimmery green skirt that was set with brilliants and glassy beads. It sparkled in the firelight with every movement of her body, swishing around her legs. Calum caught the whispers of the others rippling around the room.

She’s the mermaid ...

’Tis legend ...

Clach na MacAoidh ...

So her fabrication had already reached the others, Calum thought, and from the looks on their faces—wonder, awe, reverence even—a good many of them appeared to have fallen for it, too.

Every man who stood in that room was feasting on her with his eyes, feasting, too, on the size and brilliance of that stone. Calum found himself taken with an immediate and overwhelming unease. Though they were his men and he had instilled a code of honor among them, what stood before them now was the very worst combination of temptations.

A priceless treasure, and a beautiful woman.

Calum felt a tugging on his shirtsleeve. It was only then he managed to tear his eyes away from her to look at the slight figure standing at his side.

“Laird? Laird? Is it true? Is she really”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“is she truly a
mermaid?”

Calum ruffled Hamish’s mop of hair. “Now how could she be a mermaid, lad? Hae you e’er seen a fish walk down a flight of stairs?”

“But look at her dress, Laird. Mungo says that’s her green tail skin, and if we can steal it, she’ll not be able to swim away.”

Calum chuckled. “Just you leave the lass—and her tail skin—to me, eh?”

But his levity fell off the moment the lass came to stand before him.

“Good e’entide to you, lass.”

“And to you, Mr. Mackay.”

“ ’Tis quite a pretty frock you’ve got on.”

“I’m afraid other than my traveling habit ’tis all I have. Your men took my trunks when they ransacked the ship.”

Beside her, Hamish was staring up at her as if she truly were some mythical creature come to life before his eyes.

It was easy to see why. She was so lovely that she even had Calum’s own breath hitching in his throat.

He noticed the two men standing closest to him trying to suck in their stomachs before she might chance to notice their swelling girths. Most of the others in the room were just staring.

Staring, and wanting.

It was the very last thing Calum needed.

“The chair is called a tête-à-tête,” she said. “It is a French courting chair. ’Tis the latest fashion in Paris. It allows young courting couples to converse facing one another—tête-à-tête—rather than turned one up close against the other, which can be a bit too intimate for some of the more protective papas.”

The men continued to stare at her as if she’d just recited a magic incantation.

It was M’Cuick who finally got hold of his fleeting wits.

“Och, leave it to those Frenchy frogs to come up wit’ something quite as kae-witted as tha’. Wha’s a mon t’do wit’ it after he’s wed the lass, eh? Chop it up for kindling? Nae, I’ve a better use for it than tha’. I’m thinking it would make a fine chair for arm wrestling.”

The lass stared at him. “Arm wrestling? But—”

Where moments before she had held them all in thrall, they all but ignored the lass now, immediately won over to M’Cuick’s idea.

“C’mon, M’Cuick, you old sod. Let us show these lads wha’ a real man’s about, eh?”

It was Mungo, and he was rolling up his shirtsleeves in preparation for the first match.

M’Cuick, all too happy to oblige, started untying the strings of his apron.

Wagers were struck as a circle formed around the chair in anticipation of the match.

“But, wait!”

It was Hamish who spoke, his lad’s voice struggling to rise above the din of the others. “What’ll the prize be for the winner?”

“Aye,” agreed Hugh. “There’s got t’ be a prize.”

The men glanced around. Since they all shared in the wealth from the raids, none of the booty seemed an attractive enough reward.

“What about the chair?” offered Hamish.

“Wha’ the de’il would I be doing wit’ a dae-na-gude piece o’ fluff like tha’?” Mungo countered.

Opinions were given, and just as quickly they were rebuffed.

“Wait, lads ... wait! Listen t’me now ... I know just wha’ should be the prize!”

It was M’Cuick once again, and he stood on the hearthstone as he had moments before, waiting for his audience’s full attention.

“The winner,” he said a moment later, giving a grin, “gets a kiss from the bonny lassie.”

Tell a bunch of men they are vying for a pretty parlor piece and they would rather spend their time drowning in ale.

But tell those same men, men who hadn’t been in the company of a woman in ...

... in so long they couldn’t even remember, that they were wrestling for a kiss from a pretty woman, and utter pandemonium breaks loose.

“Aye!” came the collective cheer.

They would have toasted the idea with a round of ale, but they were already tussling just to be the first to get into the chair, shoving, cursing, pulling hair even. It wasn’t a matter of who they were going to get to wrestle first, but rather who they were going to convince
not
to.

The lass, Calum noticed, was standing by quietly chewing her lower lip, those blue eyes as wide as if a pack of wolves had gathered before her and were inching forward to take the first bite.

“Lads!”

Calum rarely yelled, and the uncustomary sound of his voice raised above their own had them halting mid-scuffle, some still holding fistfuls of another’s shirtfront.

“Hae any of you considered tha’ the lass might not be so willing to bestow this prize?”

All eyes shifted at once from Calum ... to the lass.

She glanced quickly at Calum, caught with indecision. She would certainly refuse. There was no earthly way this Sassenach lass was going to—

“I will.”

Now it was Calum’s jaw that went dropping.

He clamped it shut as his men let out a whooping bellow of approval.

And it was then Calum realized there was no earthly way
he
was going to allow anyone to kiss the lass ...

... other than him.

“I’ll be sitting first,” he said, shirking off his coat and shooting a glare of unspoken warning to them all at one time. “Who’ll challenge me?”

Now, instead of rushing for the chance, they stood mute and still as statues. No one dared oppose him.

Calum was just readying to disperse them all, send them back to their ale for the night, when a voice suddenly called out from the back of the room, strong and sure.

“I’ll face you.”

It was Fergus.

Calum should have known.

If anyone was going to come forward to challenge him, it would only have been him.

Fergus Bain came across the room at a saunter’s pace, absorbing the stares of the others like a great oak collecting the rays of the sun, all the while keeping his own gaze fixed upon Calum. Calum knew that look, knew the defiance that sparked behind it. Though they were as close as if they had been born blood brothers, like brothers, there had been times throughout their upbringing when Fergus would suddenly and unexpectedly challenge Calum’s place, a reminder to him that while he might be the clan chief’s nephew, his place in the Bain family hierarchy was at best inadvertent.

When Calum had been a lad, five or six years old perhaps, he had fallen, as most five- or six-year-old lads do, only the fall had been severe enough to have left Calum with a fractured arm. Summoned by his cry, Uilliam had raced to help him, taking a hollering Calum into his arms and then walking him slowly, gingerly, all the way back to the house to tend to him. Unfortunately, it had happened on the very day that Uilliam had promised to take Fergus out deer stalking for the first time. Instead of packing up their muskets and heading for the moors as father and son, Uilliam had spent the afternoon splinting Calum’s arm with a stout slat of wood and then sitting by his bedside through the night to watch for any signs of a fever.

It wasn’t that he ever set out to favor Calum over Fergus or Lachlann, but Uilliam had taken a clan oath to serve as Calum’s guardian. It was an honor that he had graciously accepted and that he earnestly carried out. Sometimes, unfortunately, it came at the expense of his own two lads.

Fergus had been just a lad of four, and Lachlann not yet born, when Calum had been delivered to the Bain household. There had been no warning, no hint of Calum’s coming aforehand. Calum’s uncle, the Mackay chief, had simply brought the just-toddling infant to the Bains’ modest croft, and then had just as swiftly left him there to be raised. For a lad who had had his father all to himself those first formative years of his childhood, it must have been difficult, Calum realized, for Fergus to have had to share Uilliam’s affections so suddenly and so unexpectedly. But he’d done his best to accept and get on, with only occasional lapses of jealousy.

He’d certainly made his feelings known the day Calum had broken his arm. It had been just as Uilliam had finished tending to Calum’s splint that he’d realized Fergus was nowhere to be found. Fergus had orchestrated other schemes in an effort to draw his father’s attention away from Calum before, but they had been nothing compared to the magnitude of what he would do that day. He stayed away for three days and nights, hiding out in a cave that was close enough to hear his father’s worried voice calling out for him but far enough away not to be found. He timed his return well. By the third day, Uilliam had settled the blame for it all fully upon himself so that when Fergus finally did surface, tired and hungry and shivering with cold, he was quite assured of his father’s favor for some time afterward.