“Aye,” Hamish agreed, agog and wide-eyed. These men before us embodied everything his childhood fantasies had promised, and more. He’d modeled himself on the stories of the Highlander warriors I’d read him as a small boy, on their strength and their bravery, having never seen anyone like that on the backstreets of Edinburgh. And here they were: real and fierce. Hamish had been carrying his toy swords around since he was barely old enough to walk, but he’d never seen anything like this. I couldn’t help thinking he’d found his element here in these Highlands, and we’d barely just arrived. I wasn’t sure why this realization, though hardly surprising, caused a ripple of unease in me. I realized in that moment that I was entering new territory that would very likely change not only my outlook but the entire course of my future.
Then again, that’s exactly what I’d intended all along, by fleeing the city. A new life, for him, at least. And here, in this very place, I could feel that new life beginning to unfold, reaching and affecting us both.
The women took a seat at the table next to ours and the men sat at a large round table near them. The server attended to them immediately.
One of the women noticed our interest and she caught my eye. She appeared to be the youngest of the three, and she was, even from this small distance, quite strikingly beautiful. Her eyes were a brilliant shade of cerulean blue that matched her dress, and her hair was a shiny, rich dark brown. She appeared equally interested in my own appearance, taking in the snug fit of my dress and my slightly windblown dishevelment. She smiled, and behind a thin veil of shyness, I could detect genuine interest, and a light note of concern. Clearly I was unaccompanied by any escort aside from a small boy whose eyes were glued to her guards even as he continued to wolf down his food as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
My position, as a woman traveling without protection, was clearly not only inappropriate, but dangerous. Especially from the vantage point of such privilege. I guessed that these women were returning to their Highlands clan after a short trip to Edinburgh on business of one sort or another—which had more than likely involved copious amounts of shopping. They were practically sparkling with fresh grooming and the newness of their garments.
I felt a million miles removed from such splendor. My dress was fine enough, aye, if somewhat constricting, but I had in fact been on the run for upward of five days, had eaten little, slept on hay wagons or in open fields and, now for the first time, felt the accumulating effects of all the tumult of recent weeks to my very bones.
In fact, I should have been counting my blessings. I was alive, and so was Hamish. And I held on to hope that Cecelia, too, was holed up in some safe haven, being fed a meal as fortifying as ours. For her sake, and her son’s, I resolved to somehow beat Sebastian Fawkes at his own game, to get my revenge by saving her, and saving myself.
I noticed then that Hamish had left the table. Curiosity had overcome him. He was circling the soldiers, keeping a not-so-subtle distance from them, and arousing the interest of the young woman in blue, as well as the other two.
They watched my nephew for a moment, taking in his outfit, and his beauty; it was true he had been exceptionally blessed in this way.
“Would you like to touch one of the swords?” the young woman in blue asked him.
Hamish, alas, lacked any hint of bashfulness. He was a straightforward boy who was quite aware of his angelic face, his sun-touched hair and his long, graceful limbs. He had used his looks to his own advantage upon many occasions, a practice I had not only encouraged but taught him. “Aye, milady. I’m the son of a doctor, not a warrior. I’ve seen plenty of scalpels but never a sword.”
Ah. I felt an equal amount of pride and dismay at his quick response. He was already spinning our tale.
“Lachlan, would you mind terribly?” the young woman addressed one of the guards. “The lad is so sweet.”
The guard named Lachlan eyed Hamish for a moment, and I detected his mild annoyance, as though he was lamenting the fact that he wasn’t out-of-doors spearing things, instead finding himself relegated to guard duty and the unappealing assignment of entertaining a vagrant boy. Even so, it was clear enough that Lachlan would not refuse whatever request the young woman made of him. He obliged, unsheathing his colossal weapon in one easy swipe, holding it up in front of Hamish’s rounded eyes.
I’d never seen Hamish so awestruck. He reached up tentatively to touch his fingers to the flat side of the blade.
“Don’t touch the blade, lad, or you’ll be picking your neatly sliced fingers up off the floor,” Lachlan said with persuasive eloquence.
“I wasn’t going to touch the blade,” Hamish replied, miffed that the soldier would think him so dim-witted. “I know it’s sharp. It wouldn’t be much use if it wasn’t.”
Several of the other soldiers chuckled at this and I felt a ripple of shame that Hamish would respond with such impertinence. Lachlan, however, appeared more impressed by Hamish’s answer than angered. Strength and bravery were their currency, I supposed. Hamish understood this and had just bought himself a hint of this soldier’s respect. Clearly, despite his small size in the face of these enormous, armed men, my nephew was not intimidated. And there was a shiny-eyed eagerness to him that Lachlan could not help but respond to.
“I’d offer to let you hold it,” Lachlan said, “but the sword outweighs you.”
More laughter from the men.
“Here,” Lachlan continued, retrieving a large knife from its holster at his belt. “You can hold this one.”
Now that Hamish was well and truly engaged, the young woman in blue took the opportunity to make light conversation. She was clearly somewhat overcome with curiosity about my obvious predicament. Her blue eyes gleamed with bright interest, and her shiny brown hair waved prettily around a pale face that was highlighted by the subtle paint of pink on her cheeks.
“I’m Christie Mackenzie,” she said. “This is my sister, Ailie.” She motioned to the woman on her right, whose beauty was equal to her sister’s but somehow more reserved. Christie’s beauty had a fresh, mischievous appeal while Ailie’s conveyed composure and sophistication. Ailie smiled politely. Her hair was darker than Christie’s and her eyes were a deep shade of indigo blue. “And this is our friend Katriona,” Christie continued.
Katriona was perhaps as many as ten years older than the two sisters, and her manner was markedly less friendly. Her smile was so forced that if taken out of context, it might have been mistaken for a grimace, perhaps from a mild case of indigestion. She was not as beautiful as the sisters, but it could be said that she was exceptionally well presented. Any beauty she might have possessed was eclipsed by the pinched, rigid impatience that set her face, and by the youthful radiance of the two women she traveled with. The ill fit of my dress did not escape her notice, nor did she appear particularly pleased by Hamish’s precocious joy as he held Lachlan’s glinting knife.
“I’m Amelia Taylor,” I said. “And this is Hamish.” I stopped myself from giving Hamish’s correct surname just in time. We were pretending to be siblings, I remembered. “My brother.”
Christie asked the question she must have been dying to ask all along. “And you travel alone?”
“We had an escort, of course,” Hamish answered, with such sincerity I suffered a pang of guilt that overshadowed any pride that might have accompanied it. The lad was gifted. I should, as his guardian, be grooming him for a career in stage acting and if he hadn’t been so staunchly adamant about his decision to become a soldier, I might have considered setting our sights for the theaters of London as a hideout, rather than the remote expanses of the Highlands. My guilt only compounded as I recalled telling him that it was likely that we would be reunited with his parents more quickly if we were particularly convincing in our storytelling. “But