The Pride of Lions (11 page)

“We are outside of Wakefield,” Montgomery announced, his cloaked form suddenly filling the coach door.

Catherine was startled upright, amazed to discover that she had actually managed to doze off, even more amazed to see the dusty purple hues of twilight framing Montgomery’s shoulders.

“I would appreciate it if you ladies would remain inside the coach until I have completed arrangements with the innkeeper.”

“And the Magistrate?” Catherine asked hopefully, rubbing her eyes.

“Unfortunately, that will have to wait until morning.”

“Well … as long as there are clean sheets on the bed
and a hot bath waiting in my room,” she grumbled. “And food. I am famished.”

He stared at her a moment. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Catherine leaned back on the seat. She felt grimy and dusty, but somehow elated to have the worst behind her. Three or four days, a week at most, and Hamilton would be in Wakefield to rescue her. With her annulment in hand they would not delay in making new vows, proper vows this time between two people who loved each other and belonged together for all time.

She heard the returning crunch of boots on the hard ground outside and gathered the folds of her skirt and petticoats in anticipation of disembarking. The door swung wide again, and Montgomery reached a black-gloved hand inside to offer assistance. Primly she accepted it, and daintily she ventured one petite foot out onto the coach step, but that was as far as she got before stopping dead and gaping in horror at the “inn.”

The building was no more than a run-down country cottage. The walls were mud and mortar, the roof was thatch, rippled like the surface of a pond. Wooden shutters leaned drunkenly from the oilcloth windows, and there was more smoke escaping through cracks in the roof and walls than from the half-rotted chimney.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Her voice cracked with fury.

“On the contrary. The landlady takes her hospitality very seriously. It may not be much to look at from the outside, but I am assured of the tastiest meat pasties in two counties and the best black ale in all of England.”

“A tavern. You have brought me to a
tavern
?”

“You shall have a clean room for the night. It will not be as fancy as you may be accustomed to, but—”

“The walls could be painted with silver and the floor with gold,” she hissed. “The King himself could be lodged in the next room, for all I care. I will not spend so much as a single
hour
in this hovel, much less challenge providence by sleeping under that roof.”

“My dear Mistress Ashbrooke—” He slipped his hand
under the crook of her arm, but she jerked back angrily. “All right, then, my dear Mrs. Montgomery—” His arm curled around her waist and he lifted her clear off her feet, crushing her to a shocked silence against his chest. “You can either walk through that door and up to your room under your own power, or you can be carried up the stairs like a sack of grain.”

She gasped. “You’re hurting me.”

“Madam, you do not know the meaning of the word,” he said silkily, “but if you would care to learn …”

His voice was as ominous as the dark gleam deep in his eyes, and Catherine pushed her fists against his chest to break his hold. “You are even more despicable than I had imagined. Morning cannot come too soon to please me.”

“I share your sentiments completely, madam, but until then you will behave yourself. You will walk inside the inn and you will smile pleasantly at Mistress Grundy, for she is quite beside herself at the thought of providing for a lady of
quality
.”

Catherine bristled at the sarcasm and wrenched out of his grasp. Deirdre, stepping out of the coach behind her, clutched the portmanteau she was carrying tighter in her arms and joined her mistress in staring at the posting house.

“Faith, Mistress Catherine … is it here we’re expected to sleep?”

“So I have been informed,” Catherine replied tartly, her gaze clashing with Montgomery’s. “But only for the one night. Tomorrow we shall endeavor to find
respectable
lodgings where we need not tolerate
any
manner of vermin.”

She took Deirdre’s arm for support as they walked toward the lighted doorway. An effort had been made in some century past to plant a garden along the pathway, but the weeds had long since taken over. Inside the rickety door, the prospects were no less discouraging. The lower floor was an ale room, dark and airless, smelling of rancid food and unwashed bodies. A fireplace occupied
one wall, hung all around with pots and cooking utensils and vile-looking strips of dried meat. A dismal fire was producing more smoke than light or heat. The ceiling sagged threateningly between thick-hewn beams, and a narrow flight of steps—more like a ladder than a stairwell—rose from the center of the room, dividing the public tavern area from what she supposed to be the living quarters. She could only suppose, because there was a sagging rope bed visible behind a sheet of canvas hung to provide privacy.

Of course, there could be some other purpose for the bed and curtain being there, something to do with providing
hospitality
to the patrons, but she did not care to contemplate it.

She took a reflexive step backward, only to come up hard against Montgomery’s body. She flinched from the contact and spun around to glare up at him, convinced he was doing this deliberately. Out of spite, perhaps? Or revenge for the humiliation of being forced to marry her?

“I wish Hamilton had run you through. I wish it with all my heart.”

“Perhaps next time.”

“You doubt there will be a next time, sir? Lieutenant Garner is not so easily pushed aside. If he says he intends to finish what he started, you had best believe he will.”

“In that case, perhaps I should give him a good reason,” he murmured. “Perhaps we should finish what we started out in the garden last night.”

Catherine gasped and stumbled back out of his reach. A very short, very stout, very red-nosed woman scurried out of the taproom and executed a clumsy curtsy.

“Milady. I’m ever so sorry for the mess ’ereabout. We wasn’t expectin’ ’Is Lordship ter bring a lady back with ’im. I’ll ’ave the linens in yer room changed in a lick.”

“Her Ladyship would also appreciate a bath, Mrs. Grundy.” Montgomery’s smile oozed charm like snake oil. “Is that possible?”

“Wa-a-ll, I trow I could send up a washtub.”

“That would be fine.” Prodded by a gentle nudge from a black-gloved hand, Catherine moved toward the stairs. The banister, as such, was a frayed length of ship’s rigging, which she held gingerly as she placed her feet carefully on each cracked and sagging riser. Deirdre, who had observed the exchange between her mistress and presumed new master, followed at a discreet distance, her knuckles white where she gripped the portmanteau that contained all of Catherine’s personal articles and jewelry.

The upper floor, Catherine discovered, was partitioned into four small rooms, none of them as large as her dressing room at Rosewood Hall. Having braced herself to expect the worst, she was somewhat relieved to find the tiny bedchamber surprisingly clean. The walls were wood, not canvas, and whitewashed; the bed was old, but solid and draped in a canopy that was not more than a decade old. The only other furniture was a small spindle-legged nightstand and stool. There was no rug to cover the bare planks of the floor and no curtain on the high square window.

“I’ll ’ave the washtub sent up right away,” Mrs. Grundy said, offering another lopsided curtsy.

“Please … do not trouble yourself,” Catherine murmured. She caught a warning glance from Montgomery and added, “I’m much too tired to bother with a bath tonight. A simple wash will do fine.”

“Aye, I know what ye mean, milady. Never ye mind. I’ll send yer up some nice ’ot broth and mutton pies ter fill yer belly.”

Catherine forced a smile. “That would be lovely.”

She peeled off her gloves and tossed them on the faded coverlet, dimly aware of the landlady excusing herself and bustling off down the stairs again. She leaned her brow on the bedpost and sighed, suddenly weary beyond all recollection.

“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” Montgomery asked. “And you must admit, the room is reasonably clean.”

Catherine straightened and faced him. “I will admit,”
she said quietly, “that I would prefer not to have to look at your face again until the morning.”

After a brief hesitation his husky laugh pricked the fine hairs across the nape of her neck. “It would be my pleasure to oblige, madam.”

He bowed with a flamboyant swirl of the black cape and departed, leaving Catherine to stare at the closed door. She heard his boots echo on the floorboards and mentally cursed every step he took, hoping against hope a plank would give way and plunge him to his death below. The footsteps went only as far as the room next door, however, where they were met by the scrape of a chair and a muffled greeting.

Deirdre, seeing the weariness on her mistress’s face, set the pormanteau aside and hurried over to check if there was water in the cracked pitcher that sat on the nightstand.

“Oh, Mistress Catherine, I do wish there was something—”

“
What the bloody hell did you bring her here for?
”

Both Catherine and Deirdre were startled by the outburst and turned to stare at the partition wall. They waited, holding their breaths, but whatever was said next was ordered into more reasonable tones by Montgomery’s sharp reprimand. It was Catherine who noticed a bright sliver of light halfway up the partition—a knot in the wood or a crack from aging—and, curious despite herself, she tiptoed over to the wall and pressed a rounded violet eye to the gap.

Deirdre was plainly shocked. “Mistress Catherine!”

“Hush. I just want to see who he is talking to.”

There were
two
other men in the room with Montgomery. One was of medium height, rangy-looking and thin, as if he had not had a good meal in some time. His cheeks had only the sparsest of dirty brown hairs covering them, making him appear to be not much older than Catherine. The second man, who’d had his back to the wall, paced forward in thought, turning at the far wall to
provide a glimpse of his face. He was almost as tall as Montgomery, but lean and graceful in his movements, with the somber, contemplative features of a man who might have been a poet or a philosopher. Both of the strangers were dressed casually in loose-fitting home-spun shirts, leather jerkins, and plain breeches.

“She won’t be a problem after tomorrow,” Montgomery was saying as he moved away from the door and stood directly in Catherine’s line of sight.

The philosopher leaned into the light and inspected the fresh cut on Montgomery’s temple. “Her husband give you that?”

“It was … a slight miscalculation on my part. Nothing to worry about. We should be more concerned about the rumors we heard in London. They were true. The colonel tells me several regiments are making preparations to move north; they expect to have their orders by the end of the month.”

“So they suspect something?”

Montgomery nodded grimly. “They know our friend is not in Normandy anymore, and they don’t believe for a minute he has gone back to Rome. Some are even convinced he has already crossed the Channel with an army.”

“The colonel told you this?”

Montgomery removed his tricorn and tossed it on the bed along with his greatcoat. “It was a risk, meeting up with him in Derby, but the reports he passed on were too important to trust to regular couriers. He’s concerned—with good reason—that the English army knows too damned much about our business. Too damned much for the information to be coming from their people alone.”

“Information goes both ways,” the philosopher said quietly.

“Aye, an’ the colonel’s no’ one tae talk, bein’
Sassenach
himsel’,” the younger man noted.

Catherine lifted her eye from the peephole, momentarily taken aback at the sound of the broad Scots accent
and the vilification placed on the word
Sassenach
—a vulgarism used by the Celts to denote anyone of English birth.

“Is something wrong, Mistress?” Deirdre asked in a whisper.

“Shhh. I … don’t know.” She leaned forward again, pressing her ear instead of her eye to the crack in the wall.

“… much longer can you expect to use the name Montgomery?”

“As long as it remains useful, although I was beginning to grow rather fond of it. For that matter, I must confess I was beginning to grow fond of everything to do with Raefer Montgomery’s lifestyle.”

“Then it’s long past time ye came home, cousin. Yer brithers need ye, yer clan needs ye, an’ if that’s no’ reason enough, happens we should be smugglin’ yer father, Old Lochiel, back tae Scotland, no’ you.”

“Perhaps you should be, Iain,” Montgomery agreed. “And for your troubles he would have been the first man the English arrested and hanged without the benefit of a trial.”

“What makes ye think ye’ll fare any better? There’s still a price fixed on yer heid—ten thousan’ crowns, the last I heard. When the Duke o’ Argyle kens ye’re back at Achnacarry, like as not he’ll double it.”

“I would like to be there when he does,” Montgomery said flatly. “The look on his face alone would be well worth the trip.”

“I, for one, would prefer to look inside his head,” came the more reasonable voice of the philosopher. “You can be sure he’ll do more than simply raise the reward.”

“Aluinn’s right,” the younger man agreed. “He’ll do somethin’. The duke has a long memory, an’ so do his clansmen. They’ve no’ forgotten how ye cut down the sons o’ a powerful laird an’ lived tae tell about it. Furthermair, it’s no’ so much the Duke ye’ve tae worry about, but the third whoreson ye let live.
He’ll
be the one who’ll stir the whole bluidy lot up again. He’ll have every Campbell wi’in
a hundred mile screamin’ that ye got away wi’ murderin’ his brithers. He’ll have them sharpenin’ their
clai’mors
an’ searchin’ every road an’ rut that leads tae Achnacarry.”

“The Duke of Argyle will control his clansmen and his nephew,” Montgomery said flatly. “A raid on Cameron land now, after all these years, would unite the Highlands faster than if Prince Charlie landed with the hundred thousand Frenchmen he has promised. The English government would not be too pleased with the Campbells either, since they know my brother Donald is the last nail holding the lid on the powder keg.”