Page 5 of Keeping Kate
“No one seems to know exactly who she is, what happened, or what she looks like. This ruse of fairy magic, here in the superstitious Highlands, is clever, I suppose,” Alec added wryly. “Even pragmatic soldiers believe it. Go on. What was stolen from you?”
“Maps and chocolate.”
“Maps and—what?” Alec lifted his brows, surprised.
“One of my duties is to make cartographic drawings for General Wade to chart the Highland roads his crews are constructing. I had several maps on a table, and those were gone. And a tin of chocolate powder was missing. Our family’s preferred variety of chocolate drink, if I may say so, sir, is Fraser’s Fancies Imported Cocoa Powder. I understand your family manufactures it. Most excellent.”
“Thank you. I will convey your compliments.” Alec did not want to discuss, much less think about, the Fraser chocolate import business just now. “How do you know this girl took these things?”
As a knock sounded on the wooden post between the tent flaps, Alec glanced up and the lieutenant turned. A woman peeked through the flaps, a bulky plaid wrapped over her head and form against the wind and rain, worn over a shabby green dress. Holding a basket filled with folded linens under one arm, she spoke in Gaelic and pointed toward the bed, then the basket. Her hand was swathed in a moth-eaten fingerless glove.
“The laundress,” the lieutenant told Alec. “I have seen her around camp. Harmless. A bit dim, to be honest.”
“I see. Miss, come back later, if you please.”
She came inside regardless, mumbling in Gaelic and waving a hand to indicate she would be quick, pointing to the narrow cot. She went toward the bed, set down the wicker basket, and began to tug the blanket and bedsheets off.
“Miss, we are busy here,” Alec said.
“She does not understand English,” Heron told him. “A few local women tend the chores in this camp, and not one can speak comprehensible English. They do their tasks well enough, but come and go as they please without regard for manners or protocol. I suppose they do not understand our routines and expectations.”
“Or do not care, is my guess,” Alec said.
The woman hummed to herself, plump and clumsy, dropping linens on the earth floor and picking them up to shake the dirt off. Glancing toward her, Alec noted that under her clothing, she had a curving shape but was perhaps not as plump as he first thought. A glimpse of a pleasant face under the shadow of her plaid showed a younger woman than he expected.
She took a clean sheet from her basket and snapped it out to spread it over the mattress. The crisp scent wafted through the tent, pleasantly dissipating the musty smells of grass and earth.
“Miss,” Alec began, “please, not now.” The woman ignored him.
“It is of no use, Captain,” Heron said. “So long as we set up military camps in Highland areas while General Wade’s road-building campaign continues, we must hire help from among the locals. Many of them only speak the Irish tongue, and while they are genial, and the women can be bonny,” he added, “they are a stubborn and superstitious lot.”
“To be fair,” Alec murmured, “Highlanders are also a generous, polite, hospitable sort. And they say there is no more handsome race on earth, so they say.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I was raised a Highlander.”
“I, ah, beg your pardon, Captain,” Heron mumbled.
“Now,” Alec continued, “I presume the sentries check the identities of all women entering this camp, given the events of the last several months?”
“Of course. And they are often kinfolk, sharing the work among themselves.”
“Not reassuring, given the bonds among Jacobite families.”
“We have only had two, ah, incidents in this company that I am aware—myself and Colonel Grant.” Heron cleared his throat. “Ever since the colonel met the notorious woman himself, he is determined that no female may go in or out of camp without identifying herself. He was furious about his experience. Still is. He says she was a harlot and threatened his life. I will add he was not crowned with a pistol butt, sir, but she put him to sleep. An embarrassment for any man, let alone Colonel Grant.”
“I read his testimony. His pride was more wounded than anything else,” Alec said. “To continue, Lieutenant, how do you know the girl took the maps and the cocoa?”
“She complimented my drawings and expressed interest in the chocolate, even made us each a cup with boiled water and sugar. Said she was devoted to chocolate and must have some.”
Having tucked in clean bed linens, the laundress lifted the blanket to shake it out. The movement rustled the papers on Alec’s desk, and several scattered to the ground.
“Tcha,” she muttered, reaching to snatch up the pages, stepping on some and crumpling others as she bent to the task. Her hands were swallowed up in the sleeves of a large dress under a plaid cloak. Alec noticed slim, pale hands in the fingerless gloves.
Mumbling in Gaelic, she slapped crushed pages back on his desk and bent to fetch the rest. Alec leaned down to do the same, and their heads knocked with an audible sound. She gasped and glanced up at him.
Beautiful eyes, he saw, of an extraordinary silver color. He stared, and his mind flickered over a memory. Had he seen her somewhere before?
“Sorry,” he murmured, stretching out a hand to touch her plaid-swathed head. An odd ripple plunged through him, an instant need, a craving. Had it been so long since he had been near a woman that even a frowsy Highlander croft wife would do? Dear Lord.
She rose quickly, and Alec turned back to his work. “Pardon, Lieutenant. We were saying.” Alec picked up the broadsheet to look at the image of Katie Hell again. “So the vixen snatched your pistol? Why was that?”
