‘Take me there.’
The man held his hand out again, and Bryce glowered. ‘You have taken enough of my coin and patience. Take me there now if you know what’s good for you.’
The man took off walking, cursing under his breath, and Bryce followed, seething with anger and disappointment. Could Maren be the whore she had always denied being? Would it be better not to go to the tavern and uncover the truth about her? Why not let sleeping dogs lie and continue in blissful ignorance of the woman who shared his bed, who his heart yearned for when he was without her, who stirred his conscience as much as his loins?
Hypocrite, fool.Had he not shared the bed of many a whore? Who was he to judge with his schemes and seductions, and had he not cuckolded many a husband? Maren was no worse than he, and with her courage, wit and strength, happen she might be a good deal better.
***
The Groggy Mare was no better or worse than any establishment of its kind, save for the stink of fish wafting up from the docks. It was nought but a pocket of dank gloom lit by lanterns casting a greasy light over its patrons. They were poor and down on their luck, and the women who vied to get coins out of their pockets were a sad, scrawny lot who had seen kinder times. The place reeked of desperation and poverty, and the only lively patrons seemed to be a huddle of redcoats in one corner, who called out for more ale amid lewd comments and cursing over a card game. The English bastards seemed to multiply and thrive in hard times, like vermin.
Maren would have stood out with her bonnie face and bold demeanour. Someone would remember her. Bryce scanned the low-beamed room and smiled when his gaze fell on a familiar face.
He would not have thought it possible for Angel to look worse than she had in a jail cell, but she sported a purple bruise down one side of her face, which clashed horribly with rouged cheeks and a mouth scabbed by a split lip. A bow around her neck did nothing to render her bonnie as she draped herself over an ugly man, swaying, well in his cups.
‘Lass, do you remember me?’ said Bryce, standing over them.
She smiled, and a feral light shone in her eyes. ‘Indeed, I do, Sir. Come and found me at last, have you?’
Angel peeled herself off the man, and he staggered sideways and keeled over onto the floor. No one paid him any mind.
‘I have indeed sought you out, Angel,’ said Bryce.
She draped a dirty hand down his chest. ‘And very glad I am about it too.’ She smiled, revealing gapped teeth between chapped lips.
‘It seems you have been roughly handled since last we met,’ he said, eyes going to her bruise.
‘Tis nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘And I don’t mind if you want to do the same.’
He pushed her away gently. ‘I do not. I need information and nothing else.’
‘Pity,’ she snarled, her face hardening and taking on verminous guile.
‘I can pay you, lass. Come outside, away from prying eyes.’ Bryce took her by the arm and steered her out of the tavern and around the corner into an alleyway. The bones of her arm lacked flesh to cushion them. She was not smooth and pert and buxom like Maren. Angel was a skeletal, repulsive thing.
Her mouth set in a pout, and she glowered at him. ‘I suppose you have come asking about Maren, like all the rest. Lose her, did you?’
‘What do you mean, all the rest?’
‘Oh, men are always asking after that one. She has a way of ensnaring them with her swaying hips and come-to-bed eyes. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us, but all we are doing is trying to survive. Who is she to judge – bitch of a Jacobite that she is, with all manner of intrigues and comings and goings from her lodgings?’
‘Where did she lodge?’
‘Why, above the tavern, of course. The landlord is a friend of her family so he gives her special rates. Mayhap he gives her something else too.’ Angel smirked as if she had wounded him, and she had.
‘What did you mean about men asking after her – redcoats, patrons, who?’ said Bryce.
‘All sorts. But Maren is hard, I’ll give her that. She’d have no truck with the patrons pawing at her. She once smashed a jug of ale over the head of one man who got too free with his hands. Vicious she was, like a wildcat. You’d not go too near. And always telling me, I should leave my man, Jock. ‘Get a better life for yourself. Men are poison,’ she preached. Easy for her to say. Life wears on some more than others, but she would not see it.’
‘Why do you think she was a Jacobite?’
‘Couldn’t abide redcoats, she said.’ Angel narrowed her eyes. ‘Yet she sought them out, laughed and joked when they came in, flirted too, especially when they were in their cups. She would hang on their every word.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘And I don’t think it was to get coin from their pockets, more like secrets.’ She glanced about her as if wary that someone might be watching.
‘What are you saying?’
‘Get the blinkers off your eyes, fool. Maren was a spy for the Jacobites. Why else would that villainous one come asking his questions - the black Devil with the sneering smile?’
‘Was his name Lawson?’
