Page 53 of Keeping Kate
Downstairs,Kate winced at every creaking the wooden floor made as she tiptoed through the empty, darkened public room. If the dragoons discovered her leaving, things would go worse than if she had stayed with Fraser. She moved steadily toward the front door and found it locked.
Nor was it simple to open. The latch did not turn, but required a key, which was not tucked anywhere nearby that she could find, though she even stood on her toes to check the doorframe above. Then she recalled that the innkeeper had carried a large ring of keys at his belt. Surely it was there. She leaned her head against the door in frustration.
Dim light, the first of dawn, and cool air leaked through a window beside the door. She peered at the lock, bending close to examine it. She knew this sort, just as she knew the lock in the prison. For this, she would need a narrow, straight tool and a little time. Glancing about, she walked through the main room and found a nest of spoons and two-tined forks in a box on a shelf. Snatching a fork, she ran back to the door.
Jiggling the hasp, listening for the mechanism inside, she finessed the fork tines into the keyhole and angled it. All the while, she watched the empty room, the stairs behind her. She especially listened for footsteps from above, where her Highland officer slept with one hand shackled to an open manacle.
As a girl, she had watched Duncrieff’s blacksmith at work making locks, bolts, tools, kitchen implements. Such puzzles and mechanisms fascinated her, and she watched and learned, even helping the smith and his apprentice with some tasks. But her father had discovered that and ordered his daughter out of the smithy, even as he had ordered her sister Sophie out of the gardens where she happily mucked. Chief of his clan, he wanted his two fairy-blessed daughters to be as much the conventional ladies as they could be, wanted them to marry well, and for love, when the time was right.
But that time never came, for her father had been arrested for rebellious activities with MacPherson of Kinnoull and a Cameron chieftain. He had been fortunate, only exiled to France while Cameron was imprisoned and MacPherson executed. She and her family had spent years in France and Flanders, and Kate and Sophie had been educated in a convent. But when their father died, Kate and her brother Robert, the new chief of Clan Carran, had returned to Scotland, while their mother remained in France and Sophie chose to stay in the convent for another year.
Now, Kate knew if she could get away, she could find her sister and their brother too. Sophie had returned months ago, marrying Connor MacPherson of Kinnoull, the son of the executed MacPherson, their father’s dear friend. Robert had returned to Duncrieff. All the while, Kate had become involved in Jacobite activities.
But here and now, she felt a powerful need to go home. She twisted the fork fervently, desperately, and heard a satisfying click as the ratchets turned and released. Catching the hasp, she opened the door and slipped outside into the mist before dawn.
The air was fresh, cold, and damp as she lifted her face to the fading stars. She had snatched up her plaid as she left the room and wrapped that around her now, grateful for the warmth and the dark cover it provided as she crossed the yard quickly.
Reaching the pale strip of stone road that ribboned past the inn, she ran northward for a while and then left it to head west over the moorland to the wild hills.
