“I know how to interrogate a soldier,” he said from behind her.
For a second she contemplated pretending she hadn’t heard anything and making a run for it. “Brian Maxwell isnae a soldier,” she said anyway, still moving for the door.
“Exactly. I would have made things worse. Thank you, Fiona.”
That slowed her down. “Ye’re welcome, Gabriel.”
“Are you with anyone?”
That stopped her in her tracks. “I beg yer pardon?” She turned around. “Why have ye been kissing me if ye think I’m with someone else?”
For a moment his expression didn’t seem at all amused. “Because if there is someone, you might want to warn him.”
“Aboot what?”
“That I don’t share. That’s me, being civilized.”
“Impossible man.”
His grim smile looked at least as frustrated as it did amused. “You have no idea.”
And now perhaps he might be able to use his soldierly ways and point her toward an invisible sheep thief, and then he could go away before she forgot why his presence and his kisses and why having someone here who could cut through clan pride and solve problems was such a very terrible idea.
***
“Missing sheep,” Kelgrove muttered, kicking his gelding into a canter to match Union Jack’s pace. “We rode all the way to the middle of the Scottish Highlands because Miss Blackstock didn’t want to admit she can’t find some bloody sheep?”
“She didn’t say they were missing. She said they’d been stolen,” Gabriel returned, sending Jack toward the overgrazed pasture. Considering Lattimer boasted three large flocks and a dozen smaller ones, this wasn’t much of a starting point. At the moment, though, it was the only one he had.
“I could lose my pocket watch and say it was stolen, just as easily,” the sergeant replied. “That doesn’t make it so.”
That was the second time Kelgrove had implied—or rather, suggested—that Fiona had lied about something. Gabriel didn’t think she had done so, though he still believed she hadn’t told him everything. All the same, Kelgrove’s statement annoyed him. “I’m not easily fooled. Would you agree with that?”
“I would emphatically agree with that, Your Grace. As I recall, it took you less than a minute to work out that Private Simmons had gone off to meet some lightskirt, and he had not, in fact, fallen asleep on watch as he’d claimed.”
Gabriel had never understood why Simmons had put forward the lie, since leaving his post and falling asleep on watch were both hanging offenses. The only thing he could figure was that the private had preferred to be remembered as a laggard rather than as a rogue. The lad’s mother had been Irish Catholic, as he recalled. He’d needed to know, though, whether he’d had a spy or an ill-fated fool on his hands. In the end, Simmons had died because he was a weak-willed idiot who couldn’t resist a twopenny whore.
That, though, was years past and far too long ago for him to even bother with wishing there had been a different ending to the tale. “When you’re agreeing with a point I make,” he commented, “you don’t need to bring up examples where I ordered a man’s death. My point is that Miss Blackstock wasn’t lying. Someone’s stealing sheep.Mysheep. I’d wager a year’s salary that something else is afoot, as well, but this starts me on the hunt, at least.”
The overgrazed pasture came into view, and he slowed Union Jack to a walk. Adam drew up beside him. “That’s a generous amount of shit,” he noted, as they rode through the newly sprouting grass toward the narrow center of the valley.
“Yes, it is. The rock slide that separated the flock came from up there,” he said, gesturing at the steep slope to the left where darker soil and rock not yet blasted by the weather carved a raw wound all the way to the top of the gorge.
Whether it looked natural or not, the placement was so perfect that he had to suspect the slide had been started intentionally. Twenty feet to the left or the right, and the sheep and their shepherds would have been able to navigate past the tumbled boulders. The best way to determine for certain whether the mess had been ill luck or encouraged misfortune would be to climb up to the top of the cliff and take a look at where it had begun. Gabriel swung out of the saddle, did a quick survey of the rock on either side, then headed up the firmer-looking left edge of the slide.
“Your Grace,” Kelgrove called, his voice breaking at the edge, “that is not a good idea. Come down and I’ll take a look.”
“You don’t even like to climb ladders,” Gabriel replied, grabbing for handholds as he ascended.
The slide had occurred well over a month ago. In that space it had rained several times, and he knew from personal experience that the wind had been active, as well. There might well be nothing to see even if someonehadhelped the slide along. If he was going to find anything, however, the odds were better today than they would be tomorrow or any day thereafter.
“But Your Grace, you—”
“Shut up and look for anything down there that could point to this being intentional,” he grunted.
“I… Yes, sir.”
While his sergeant continued to complain about having a commanding officer who took far too many chances, Gabriel continued upward. Fiona hadn’t known precisely when the slide had happened, but from the look of both the slope and the wide swath of torn-up ground below it had been large, sudden, and violent. Any sheep on the far side would have been fairly easy to snatch, and no one would have been able to climb across the unstable debris for days after it fell, lowering the odds of anyone finding tracks that didn’t belong.
