Page 10 of Romancing the Scot
Oh mother, adieu forever . . .
I am now on my dying bed . . .
If I had lived I’d have been brave . . .
I droop my youthful head . . .
Our bones do moulder . . .
Weeping-willows o’er us grow . . .
Hugh battled to suppress, for the thousandth time, his bitter anger at the French tyrant and his bloody war.
He stared at the woman, wondering who was missing her now. Like the mother in the poem, who was waiting for her, anguishing over what had become of her, not knowing if she was alive or dead?
Hugh hadn’t even known his wife and son were suffering until it was too late. Amelia had brought their precious child across the water to Spain without sending word to him. As Hugh and his light cavalry fought their way across Spain, she was waiting for him in Vigo. While he and his men protected the flank of the British Army on that horrible retreat through snow and freezing rain, Amelia and his three-year-old boy were dying of camp fever, wracked with pain, gasping for air, and clinging desperately to life. But it was no use. They died there in the seaside village near Corunna with no one to care for them, no family to comfort them, in the squalor of that godforsaken place, cut off from help and overcome with pestilence.
And he’d not been there when they needed him.
Hugh cursed the French again, as he had a million times. Later, in the fields of France and Belgium, he’d made them bleed for it, even as they continued to cut down his comrades around him. So many times he’d thrown himself into the thickest fray of battle, never caring if he lived or died. How many times had he wished hehaddied?
The woman drifted into a restless sleep, if that’s what it was. If she died now, he didn’t want to see it.
Hugh strode out of the room and stopped. Looking down the hallway at the long-unused rooms of this wing, he felt the pain coursing through him with the same fierceness it had the day he learned of his wife and son’s deaths. This part of the east wing had once been a place of joy for him. No longer. He still came up here, in spite of the pain it brought him. He had to. It was all he had left of them.
He looked back at the door where the woman lay, gamely struggling to breathe. She was a fighter, to be sure. But he couldn’t fathom how she’d come to be in that blasted crate.
He descended the stairs and went out into the yard. A light rain was still falling, though the lightning and rumbling thunder had long ago moved off to the east.
He followed the drive down past the stables to the carriage barn and went in.
Staring at the open crate, Hugh tried to calculate how long she must have been trapped in there. The basket was shipped from Antwerp. Someone had nailed the box shut. How was it possible that she would go unnoticed, unless she had intentionally hidden in there? She could have been drugged or knocked out and secreted in the basket. If that were the case, she’d been left in there intentionally to die. Or perhaps someone else had failed to intercept the shipment and let her out before she’d left Antwerp. The possibilities were numerous, but none of them left him feeling any easier about it.
Hugh inspected the crate. Nothing out of the ordinary struck him. Looking into the balloon gondola, he considered the torment of being confined in such a space. It was amazing that she’d survived at all.
Something caught his eye in the bottom of the basket. Several coins. Climbing in, he picked them up and held them to the light.
American coins.
Chapter 4
For over four decades now, management of Baronsford had resided in Walter Truscott’s capable hands. A cousin to Hugh’s father, Truscott was widely respected as the reason the Penningtons’ estate served as a model of care and accomplishment in this corner of Scotland.
Hugh was kept abreast of everything, but his position in the judiciary kept him busy. So Truscott oversaw the work of the steward and the farm managers, and made all operational decisions, whether the issue pertained to the home farm or the tenantry. No cottage was built or mill repaired without his authorization. No livestock was bought or sold, and no field was plowed without his knowledge. No farmhand was hired or fired without his final approval.
It had been Truscott’s suggestion to offer a job to Darby after he wrongly spent time in the local jail. Having made arrangements with the Lennox steward, Walter had offered the blacksmith a position at Baronsford the morning after being released.
Upon returning to Baronsford after two days in Edinburgh, Hugh found Darby had taken them up on the offer. Standing by a stable door, Truscott gestured toward the nearby smithy.
“Hard worker, intelligent, and capable in his trade,” Truscott told him. “He’ll be an asset for us.”
“You never guess wrong, Walter.” Hugh handed his horse over to one of the grooms. “Living arrangements for him?”
“Taken care of.”
The French Wars and migration by many workers to cities like Edinburgh over the past two decades had diminished the numbers of cotters who worked and farmed around Baronsford, as well as the population of Melrose Village. More and more Irish vagrants were showing up in the area, but many cottages sat empty.
“He’s also requested a few moments of your time,” Truscott said. “Says it’s important that he speak with you. I thought it might be less intimidating for him if you heard what he had to say out here, rather than in your study.”
