Phoebe almost collapsed with relief at the familiar sound of Slade’s voice. He’d come after her. Dear God, he had come for her. Despite her wobbling legs and trembling hands, her spirits lifted, stretching the sides of her mouth and unclenching tight muscles.
After a hard swallow, Phoebe managed to speak. “Where are the coaches?” she said to Slade.
“On the road, just up ahead. What happened? Did the redcoats attack a rebel village?” Slade asked, his tone tight with worry as he eyed the woman and child and the direction they just come from.
“Yes. But we must get these two to safety now,” Phoebe said.
CHAPTER 31
Later that night, in the Black Hog’s Tavern and Inn’s large busy dining room, Slade eyed Fifi, who sat next to him at a corner table laid with aromatic powsowdie soup, roasted saddle of mutton, vegetables, breads, cheeses and tarts. The golden light from a ten-candle chandelier high on the ceiling and decorative candle filled cast-iron wall sconces mingled with shadows in the crowded dining room with multiple tables. Those shadows did nothing to hide Fifi’s pale complexion and her unusually stiff countenance. When his eyes fell on her soft, supple mouth, he glanced away, redirecting his mind from their kiss at the billiards table and the heat tightening his body. Mingling with that heat was ice growing under his skin, born of fear and worry. What in Hades had she been thinking going to that burning village? She could have been hurt. Many of the dining room’s occupants were now discussing the English’s horrendous attack on that very village, and the resulting senseless deaths. It was the English’s way of controlling the Scots, through force, abuse, and killings.
Just then a flash of red made Slade lift his head to look across the packed dining room to four English redcoat soldiers who had just entered. The conversations and clinking of cutlery from theapproximate ten dining tables at which either families or groups of men dined ceased to a charged silence. A Highlander, dressed in trews in the colors of the Mackintosh clan, well-known Jacobite sympathizers, who sat at the bar across the dining room, spat on the wooden floor, his rancorous stare directed at the redcoats.
“Who the devil invited them in here?” His voice boomed across the dining room.
The tallest and most ruthless looking of the redcoats snapped his gaze towards the Mackintosh clansman. “Watch your tongue, before I separate it from the rest of your body. Your dress is illegal. Tartans were outlawed.”
The Mackintosh clansman slammed his goblet down on the bar and shot up from his stool, his ruddy, bearded features twisted into a snarl. “I don’t give a shite about English law!”
Before he could reach for his pistol, the bartender and proprietor, a large, round man with a kind face and rosy cheeks, spoke up from behind the bar. “Please, please, gentlemen. All are welcome here. If you have the need to fight, take it outside away from the women and children. Please, I beg you.”
His ardent plea seemed to break through the haze of anger and hatred sizzling between the Mackintosh clansman and the redcoat. A young nervous yet smiling waitress immediately approached the redcoats and guided them to one of the last remaining vacant tables, redirecting their attention. The noise in the dining room slowly returned to its previous pitch.
Slade redirected his attention to Fifi. His concern at her leaving their traveling party earlier to go to the rebel village returned. He purposefully clamped his mouth shut lest words he regretted escaped. He’d spoken once before in anger to Sylvia a decade ago causing her death. He’d been young and selfish then. Now, he’d rather cut out his tongue than do it again.
Slade swallowed against the flashbacks from the day he and Sylvia had argued. The guilt hit his midriff; its strike sharper than a blade. Its blackness almost overpowering. He let the acute force spread over his skin, seeping into his bones. And for a few minutes it was a decade ago, the night he’d found Sylvia’s limp body and had carried her all the way to her mother’s house. The woman had screamed, howled, and condemned him to hell. The realization had hit him then; he was to blame.
The pain, guilt, and hopelessness of it had made him want to take a flintlock pistol to his own cowardly temple, to stop the unbearable bleakness of it from ripping him apart. Instead, he’d spent the next three years drowning himself in whisky and opium.
But by some divine act he had managed to pull himself out of the mire and muck of self-loathing and guilt to join the Scots Guards instead.
Earlier, after arriving at the inn, Slade and Fifi had both given the rebel woman and child coin for food, a room and passage on the public coach. The woman had said she would seek her brother out in the neighboring village at first light.
Slade now reconsidered why Phoebe might have been at the village. From her abilities he’d glimpsed at Hortons shooting range, she was clearly trained. But even with the Movement’s training, she could have been hurt or even killed. His heart nearly stopped. It filled his head with such bleak blood-curdling thoughts he had to breathe through the resulting physical pain.
The rebellion wasn’t as clear cut as Scottish rebels versus English redcoats. Even though most Highlanders supported the rebellion, there were many loyalists among them. Yes, many Scottish clans fought on the side of Prince Charles Edward Stuart at Culloden, but so did Irish and French mercenaries, the Edinburgh Regiment, and countless Army deserters. And the British Army had English infantrymen, cavalry, and dragoonswith artillery, but their battalions were manned by Scots and Irishman. Some call the rebellion Scotland’s rejection of the 1707 Union with England which essentially put Scotland under English rule. Others said Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, should be on the throne instead of the current Hanoverian king, George II. But Slade called it for what it was—a young rebel Prince’s arrogant fight for the throne, using religion, royal blood, romanticism and braggadocio.
Lucia, who sat across from Slade and Fifi, put down her soup spoon and eyed Fifi, concern lining her forehead. “It was courageous of you to save the woman and her child, but what if you’d been injured?”
Slade glanced at Fifi, eager for her answer.
“I saw the woman and her babe running and had to help, that’s all there is to it,” Fifi said to Lucia with a shrug, affecting an air of nonchalance.
But Slade could tell by the way the long, slender fingers of her left hand fidgeted in her lap that she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
While on the road in their moving coach earlier, he’d nearly come undone when he and Peter had turned back and realized the coach carrying the women had vanished. Slade immediately had their driver stop and turn back. Once they’d caught up to the coach with the women, the footman had unintelligibly babbled on about protection and his mistress. It was only when Slade had impatiently threatened to strangle the man, after Phoebe’s horse had come back alone, that he’d gotten a straight answer. Slade had gone on foot after Fifi then, thinking a horse would be a hinderance among the trees. Peter remained to protect Lucia and her maid. When Slade had caught up to Phoebe, it had been evident from the distant smoke the English had attacked, but his only thought then had been to get Phoebe, and the scared woman and bairn to safety.
He'd left the Movement after the war, and even though Bullfinch had sanctioned his plan against Bolingbroke, he wasn’t officially reenlisted into the Movement. He would do all in his power to protect Phoebe, but if she was a spy, and he was certain she was even though she hadn’t confirmed nor denied it, then this was her mission, and knowing the Movement, their secrecy, and rules, he was staying out of it while still keeping an eye on Phoebe. Now that he thought about it, the Movement’s secrecy would certainly be a reason for her silence. This only cemented the fact in his mind, that she was indeed a spy for the Movement.
Peter, who sat next to Lucia across the table, put his goblet down and eyed Lucia then Fifi. “The important thing is that you are safe, Mistress Dunbar. But I must agree with Lucia—you could have been hurt. And why didn’t you tell anyone where you were going?”
“Please forgive me for causing you all to worry. I only wanted to help the woman and her child, and not place anyone else in danger. I should have been more careful,” Fifi said, a remorseful smile touching her lips.
Slade put his tankard carefully on the table and turned to Fifi. Part of him wanted to understand why she’d done it. But more importantly he wanted to make sure she never did it again. The thought that she could have been hurt was slowly unhinging him.
“I’d like you to promise me that the next time something like this happens, you will tell me before doing anything,” Slade said, his cool tone belying the turmoil of cold worry and hot anger racing through his veins.
Fifi was silent for a few seconds, staring down at her soup. She turned to him, her expression tense and contrite. She opened her mouth as if to speak but closed it instead and simply nodded. His eyes narrowed with suspicion at her acquiescence.
