Page 3 of Highland Crown
Trouble. Isabella plied the needle to the stocking. Trouble had been a constant companion to her from the moment Archibald brought them all back to Scotland, to their house on Infirmary Street near the surgical hospital. In Wurzburg—thanks to her father’s tutelage and influence—she was living a quiet and productive life as an accomplished physician and surgeon, well-versed in the science of medicine, privileged among her sex for being allowed to practice in a profession dominated by men.
Archibald had promised all would be the same in Edinburgh. Neither of them pretended that theirs was alove match. It was a marriage based on respect. It would meet their mutual needs, for her sister and his daughter would be provided for. She could practice medicine in his clinic and lead the same kind of life in Scotland. But he’d only spoken half the truth; he said nothing of the other part of himself.
He was a political idealist, a reformer, and his nationalist consciousness had reawakened the moment he stepped foot on the soil of his homeland. From then on, her husband led two lives. One, as a respected and learned doctor who was sought after by Edinburgh’s elite. And the other, as an activist whose evenings were constantly filled with secret meetings and radical efforts to change the repressive direction of the government in London. But that covert life of his, Isabella wanted no part in. She was Scottish by birth, but she’d lived nearly her entire life away from this land. Scottish nationalism and reform were lost on her, for she’d dedicated herself to one passion: medicine.
The collapse of embers in the fireplace tore away a barrier in her mind, and suddenly she was back in her house in Edinburgh. Back in the midst of the mayhem of that fateful day in April.
It had been a day of strikes. Weavers had ordered a shutdown of the city. Shopkeepers shuttered their windows and doors. Protests has been organized in Glasgow and in smaller towns as well.
The government’s response was direct and brutal. Troops on foot and horse attacked without warning, riding down and beating protesters in the street. After the clashes, eighteen were carried back to the clinic in their house with severe injuries. They hadn’t enough room forall the patients. Bleeding men lay moaning on the floor, in the hall, on the table in the kitchen. Some were not conscious.
Archibald saw to those wounded lying in the front rooms. Morrigan worked at her father’s elbow. Isabella set the broken leg of a six-year-old boy, an innocent bystander knocked down by the mob trying to disperse and trampled on by the ironshod hoof of a cavalry steed.
She’d just put the boy upstairs on her own bed when the sound of shouts and pounding outside drew her to the window. Red-coated militia crowded the street in front of the house.
“Soldiers!” Maisie cried, rushing into the room. “Here. Demanding to be let in!”
Sharp, clawing fingers of fear took her throat in a viselike grip. Isabella was no fool. She knew what was happening on the streets of the city. She was well aware of the identity of some of the wounded they were tending to downstairs at this very moment. She knew the roles these men were playing in the unrest.
“Grab your cloak,” Isabella ordered. “Go down the back steps and wait by the kitchen door while I fetch Morrigan. You two must leave the house.”
As she raced toward the stairs, the sound of the front door splintering from being battered open was followed by shouts. Her feet barely touched the boards as she flew down the steps.
The front rooms—always a place of order and healing—were a battlefield. Tradesmen and women fought fiercely against the invading soldiers in blue and red jackets. She’d never seen such brawling. More shouting. A gunshot.
Pushing through the chaos, she found her husband sprawled against a wall, blood spreading across his white shirt and waistcoat. He’d been shot in the chest.
“Why?” she screamed at the men who continued to pour into the house. She crouched beside Archibald, pressing both hands to the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood.
“You can’t help me,” he breathed, pushing her hand away. He looked behind Isabella. “Take her from here. Go. Please.”
Fighting continued all around her, but she worked relentlessly to save her husband’s life. Time stood still, and the air took on a nightmarish hue. Though Morrigan was right beside her, the young woman’s keening cries had a distant, muffled sound. Still, Isabella struggled. But it was too late. Archibald knew. He shuddered, faded, and was gone.
How she was able to get to the back of the house, pulling Morrigan behind her through the bedlam, Isabella could not later recall. But Maisie was waiting for them in the kitchen, standing before the barred garden door. Before Isabella could pull it open, someone outside began knocking. There was no escape. They were surrounded.
“Don’t forget what I told ye,” Jean’s barked order cut into the memories and jerked Isabella back into the present.
She took a deep breath. The knocking was real. The haunting chaos of Edinburgh dissolved in an instant. Isabella peered through dim firelight at the door.
Jean crooked a finger at her again before pushing to her feet and shuffling toward the entrance.
Isabella’s stomach clenched. Had they found her? The farther they’d traveled away from Edinburgh, the more days that passed, her worry of getting caught only increased. The accusations of her involvement, the news of the bounty on her head, overtook the travelers and raced ahead of them. Eyes of strangers followed her. She feared being taken at every roadside stop. And the suspicion of her husband’s friends that she’d be a liability to them if she were captured only magnified the fear. Long before they’d reached Inverness, word had spread that both sides wanted her.
The door creaked, and the old woman put her shoulder against it to stop the tempest from shoving it open wide. Jean nodded to whoever was outside and stepped out into the storm, pulling the door shut behind her.
Isabella left the sewing on the chair and moved away from the fire. Near the foot of the cot sat her bag. Her faithful and courageous Edinburgh housekeeper had hidden the three women in her son’s dank, airless dwelling in Cooper’s Close in Canongate and delivered her medical instruments a few days after the attack on their house.
The door was the only entrance into the cottage, and Isabella was trapped. Two windows cut through the thick walls. A stiff leather hide hung low on the wall near the fire, and she wondered if it might provide access to a woodshed or an animal pen. She picked up her cloak and bag but stopped.
It was foolish to think about running. Even if she were able to get out that way, where would she go? She didn’t know the country around her. Her sister and stepdaughter were somewhere in Inverness. Their nextmeeting was to be aboard a sailing ship bound for Halifax. But even that part of their plan was vague. The only thing Isabella had any confidence in was that John was coming back for her.
All of their futures lay in the hands of John’s colleague Walter Scott.SirWalter Scott now. A generous man, he claimed he needed to repay a debt to Isabella, using his own funds and risking his own liberty.
The door pushed open again and Isabella stood still, holding her breath and letting it out only when she saw Jean come back inside alone. The old woman latched the door behind her.
“Someone knows I’m here?”
“They don’t,” Jean said, going back to her place by the fire. “And that’s all the better for ye.”
