Page 96 of Taming the Highland Misfits
The Laird took another sip of wine, and Alex began to wonder if he would ever get to the point, or if he would still be here at midnight.
“One evening, he went into a place called ‘The Black Fox’, and although he did not find his quarry, he did find someone else.” The Laird paused again as if to draw out the suspense of the moment, then said, “He saw Laird Murdaugh’s heir sitting with another couple of men, all of them completely inebriated. The stupid idiot was telling the world and his wife his plans for the future.”
“So? He may be the heir to Kilkenrigg, but he is not yet the Laird.” Alex was curious, but not worried yet. “Anyway, what a man says when he is under the influence cannot be trusted.”
Alex’s uncle gave him a cynical smile. “Have you ever heard the sayingin vino veritas,Alex?” he asked. “It means literally ‘in wine, the truth’. In other words, a man’s true character, and his secrets, will come out when he is drunk. It never fails. Some people become angry, some happy, others miserable. Some fall asleep, and some talk. Aidan is one of the talkative ones.”
Alex gave an inward sigh, trying to keep the impatience he felt from showing on his face. His uncle had drunk three glasses of wine. Ifin vino veritaswas true, his uncle was also one of the talkative ones. He gritted his teeth and waited for him to get to the point, but he was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen.
At that moment, Jamie interrupted them. “Uncle Lachlan,” he said cautiously, “you know that Aidan is a dishonest man anyway. Do you remember the time when he told you that he needed money for a business he wanted to start–a horse breeding venture, I think–and his father would not give him the money?”
“I have never heard of this business,” Alex admitted. “Please tell me about it.”
“That is because the business never existed,” Jamie said. There was a fierce frown on his normally placid face. “It was a fiction, a complete falsehood from beginning to end. He thought Uncle was too stupid to check up with Laird Murdaugh. I do not know what Aidan would have done with any money if he had got it, but I am willing to wager it would not have been used to start a business.”
Alex digested this information for a moment, then met his uncle’s eye across the table. He had completely run out of patience. “What were you going to tell me in the beginning, Uncle? You said that Aidan had been talking about the future.”
“Ah, yes.” The Laird frowned and leaned forward as he spoke, as if he was concentrating hard. “Well, when I say ‘future’, I mean the future as he sees it, and it is a grim picture he paints. He was talking about a time when his father was no longer here. I suppose that means he will be dead, but whether by natural causes or by Aidan’s or one of his agents’ hands I have no idea. At any rate, the plan I heard him discussing–or should I say,announcing–was a scheme to subdue our clan, the MacNeills, then go up against the Baxters.”
“I do not understand.” Alex was baffled. “Why would Laird Murdaugh let me marry Freya if he wanted to take hostile action against us? It makes no sense.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Of course, if Aidan is waiting for his father to die–or kill him–then he need not consult his father about anything.”
“I do not think Aidan Murdaugh is capable of sense,” Scott chimed in from across the room. “If I were going to hatch a fiendish plot, I would not be announcing it to a bunch of strangers in a crowded tavern. The man is a complete bonehead, and he is altogether too good a friend of Gerald Patterson for my liking.”
Laird MacNeill nodded slowly. “Now there is a nasty piece of work,” he observed. “I have met that man many times, and I would not trust him under any circumstances. He is a clever man, but it is a low kind of intelligence; I should rather call it cunning. To be honest, he makes me shiver with revulsion every time I am forced to be near him.” He shuddered as if to illustrate the point.
“I think Aidan is influenced by him to such an extent that you could almost say that he was under his spell,” Jamie remarked. “Indeed, I would go so far as to say that he is evil.”
The Laird, Alex’s cousins and brothers all murmured in assent, and Alex was surprised to see that everyone else agreed with him. He was reassured by the knowledge that it was not just he who thought Gerald Patterson was a rotten specimen of humanity.
“I wonder why Laird Murdaugh tolerates him?” he wondered aloud. “Surely he can see what kind of man he is?”
His uncle gave a cynical laugh. “He might know the badness inside him,” he remarked, “but he might choose to ignore it because he is very good at his job, and as long as he is doing no actual harm to anyone–well, you can understand why. A good employee is hard to find.”
“As far as I can see the people to blame here are Patterson and Aidan,” Alex said tensely. His stomach was twisted with tension and his heart was beating so hard he feared the others might hear it. “There is one more thing I have to tell you, Uncle. I realise now that Patterson must have already started scheming, but I did not want to alarm everyone by bringing it up. He waylaid me the other night and warned me against marrying Freya. He said that dreadful things would happen if I did so.”
“Did he elaborate?” the Laird asked.
Alex shook his head. “He did not tell me what the consequences would be, just that they would be terrible.” He sighed in frustration and ran a hand backwards through his hair in a gesture of agitation. “He told me to go back to my own clan, and he left shortly after that. I was glad, because I would have been tempted to hurt him badly if he had stood there for much longer. Aidan is weak-willed and easily swayed, and Patterson is an expert manipulator.”
“That he is,” his uncle agreed. “And what does Freya think of all this? You have hardly spoken of her.”
At the sound of her name, Alex smiled, almost against his will, and he felt warm inside. For a moment, his anxiety disappeared as he visualised her pale grey eyes shining, her mane of wild red hair free in the breeze, and her face lit up in a beaming smile. “Freya does not know what Patterson said to me,” he replied. “I thought I had better keep it to myself for the time being. Now I think I must go and warn her and Laird Murdaugh while there is still time.” He jumped to his feet, but Laird MacNeill caught his arm before he could leave the room.
“What are you going to do?” he asked anxiously.
“First, I am going to see the Laird, Uncle,” he replied grimly. “Then I am going to find Freya and tell her everything that has happened. If I feel that she is not safe there, may I bring her here?”
Laird MacNeill got to his feet, walked over to his nephew and hugged him tightly. “Of course you may bring her here,” he said warmly. “I will help in any way I can, Alex.” Then he laughed softly. “Bring her maid too, though. I am not an expert on how to dress and undress ladies–anymore!”
The hint of suggestiveness was not lost on Alex, and the moment of lightheartedness lifted his spirits for a second. “Uncle, I will pretend I did not hear that,” he said, laughing. However, the moment was gone almost instantly, and the feeling of impending doom settled on him again. He looked outside and his heart sank. The sun was setting, it was almost ten miles to Kilkenrigg and rain was threatening; it would be impossible to ride in pouring rain and darkness.
“Wait till morning, Alex,” Callum, his youngest brother, said. “It will be much safer. Your horse could slip and fall in the mud and you could both be badly hurt–or worse. Stay here.”
Duncan came up to join him and both of them looked at him appealingly. Gazing at their anxious faces, Alex suddenly felt ashamed, but very glad to know that his brothers loved him. It was a good feeling.
“I am not so stupid as to go out on a night like this,” he assured them, putting an arm around each of their shoulders. He felt trapped; all his instincts urged him to leap onto his horse and ride back to Freya, but that would have been, if not suicidal, then completely foolhardy.
“Good,” Duncan, always the more talkative of the two, said, grinning. “We have a score to settle, you and I. You won five shillings off me during our last chess game. I want to win it back!”
