Page 23 of Highland Crown
All these mad thoughts had to be the result of exhaustion. Isabella couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept. Jean, on the other hand, appeared to be holding up fairly well.
The older woman stationed Isabella just inside the door with their travel bags, giving her curt directions. She was not to ask or answer any questions, under any circumstances. She was simply to wait until they found out the whereabouts of her nephew.
Jean crossed the wide room to the innkeeper, who sat closeted behind a wide serving plank, puffing away at a pipe and reading a newspaper. Behind him, a half-dozen casks lined a wall, and above him, empty tankards for beer hung from hooks.
Standing in the shadows, Isabella held her cloak over her arm and cast furtive glances about the room. Of the dozen or so tables, only two were occupied. The trio of farmers who’d entered before them had joined a fourth farmer. Cards sat on the table, but no game had yet commenced. By a window, two more men who appeared to be traveling merchants sat engaged in a serious conversation over an open ledger book. A waiter in a worn black vest and apron, with greying hair that stuck up like that of an angry hedgehog, leaned against a wall near a wide fireplace. He was critically eyeing a young potboy who was carrying a pitcher of beer over to the farmers. A small, smoky fire burned in the fireplace with a kettle hanging above the flames. The smell of roasting mutton and potatoes wafted in from some distant kitchen.
The waiter reluctantly pushed away from the wall and slouched over to Isabella. In a somewhat peevish tone, he asked if she’d care for a table, but upon receiving a shakeof her head for his trouble, the man stumped back to his original place.
As they traveled up through the Highlands, John Gordon had taken care to choose which inns or houses they stopped at, which door they used to enter or exit, and where they ate. Always securing a private dining room for their use, he’d made sure the three women had been constantly shielded from public attention. Standing in the tavern now, Isabella felt exposed and vulnerable.
One of the farmers was watching her, and she could catch occasional snatches of talk between the men. She understood Jean’s insistence on her remaining silent. The native Gaelic language of the Highlands had been outlawed seventy-five years earlier—after the Jacobites’ defeat by the British—but more than a few native words still peppered the conversation. In addition, the accents were rich, and the way they pronounced words was very different from the way she spoke. She’d be singled out as an outsider the moment she opened her mouth. And she could already tell that Duff Head wasn’t alone in its dislike of strangers. The longer she stood waiting by the door, the more hostile the looks.
Isabella was relieved when Jean shuffled back to her. The look of disgust she fired over her shoulder signaled her dissatisfaction with whatever answer she’d received.
“Arrive without welcome. Leave without farewell,” Jean spat disdainfully. “That’s the way of it with this owner.”
Leave without farewell.Isabella tried to comprehend the meaning of the words. If John Gordon was gone, where could he be? She never should have sent the captain away. She should have waited to know for sure thatJean’s nephew was definitely at the inn. The complication of where they would go from here and how she could reach the girls pricked her with needles of alarm.
Jean sat herself on a bench at a nearby table.
“Is John here?” she asked, joining her.
A half-dozen fishermen poured through the door, boisterously calling for beer and filling the space in front them.
“Aye. That he is. Or this poor excuse for an innkeeper thinks so, but he says he can’t be too sure until he speaks with his wife.”
“I thought you said you knew the man.”
“I did. The last owner.” Jean spat on the floor. “This vile toad and his wife run the place now. Says the auld fellow passed away over a year ago. I don’t think John knew this inn was being run by the likes of this one. When I asked him if he remembers my nephew, the fool brazenly said he only remembers guests by the size of the tips they leave.”
Isabella hoped John was generous with servers.
“How long ago were you here?”
Jean shrugged. “Maybe two years since.”
Or maybe three or four years, Isabella thought, already recognizing Jean’s tendency to forget things.
“So where is the innkeeper’s wife?”
“He doesn’t know where she’s gone off to. Says she’ll be back soon enough. Though how he knows that is beyond me.”
Isabella reached into her cloak for a money purse she kept there. “Why don’t you go back and offer him something? Perhaps a shilling will help him remember if John Gordon is staying here or not.”
“We’re not giving him anything,” Jean said firmly, putting her trembling hand on top of Isabella’s and stopping her from producing any coins. “That greedy toad’ll take the money and still be of no help. I could see the way he was looking at me. Just an auld fishwife beneath his notice. I offer him yer money, he’ll take it and immediately forget the reason I gave it to him.”
“Perhaps I should speak to him.”
The old woman’s stern shake of the head spoke of the pointlessness of such suggestion.
“Don’t make things worse, mistress. We’ll just wait here. Be patient.”
An impossible feat. Isabella wished she could summon some of Cinaed’s cool confidence. In that wild moment when they’d been discovered back at the cottage, he’d known exactly what he had to do. And he’d done it. While she could function perfectly in a medical emergency, this violent new life she’d been thrown into required different skills. Perhaps while she’d been learning surgery, Isabella thought, she should have learned other uses for a knife.
A headache gnawed at her, and she rubbed her temples. She tried not to think of his recitation of the names of all those men who’d already been swept up unjustly.
The feel of his broad back against her cheek, she’d not forgotten. Nor the reassuring hold of her hand. The image of Cinaed standing by the cart was back. The man’s blue eyes matched the early-morning sky. Or that rare blue of the ocean in summer. They enthralled her with the promise of finding treasures in their depths. The long curls of his dark hair framed the strong angles of his jaw and the effect, combined with the growth of beard, was alluring.
