“Aye.”
“When you left Scotland, how was work going on the cottage next to the keep?”
“The walls were going up. I must thank ye, Jack Pike.”
“Why?”
“For finding a way to get Margaret a snug place to sleep. Since I cannae.”
Jack waved his hand, again embarrassed by being thought he was a better man than he was. Because for him, the cottage was for Helen. And she had traded her dirk for it.
“It’s Lady Kinmarloch’s doing, not mine.”
“Aye. We owe her so much. My Margaret widnae be here.”
Jack looked at Duncan’s face. The giant was staring down the hill, trying to see the place where they had left Mags and Helen.
“What do you mean?”
“My lady was the one who got Margaret out of the fire.”
What Helen had said on Jack’s first day in Dunmore. The village that had been burned by the Duke of Dunmore’s men. The sick girl in one of the cottages, not evacuated because that part of the village was in Kinmarloch and the people there had been given no warning. The girl who had lived but whose leg had been burned.
Jack cleared his throat. “Helen rescued Mags.”
“Aye. ’Twas terrible.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“There was nae time. People were crazed and running and screaming. I dinnae know Margaret well. She was just thirteen and I was sixteen, thinking myself a man. She was a child to me, then. Word of the fire spread to our forge, and my father and I got to the village just as my lady came up on her horse from her keep. She was trying to calm the people, to count them, to make them collect their families together. Then someone remembered Margaret, feverish in her aunt’s cottage. I dinnae know why, but the rest of us dinnae move. But my lady ran like the devil himself was behind her and went into that cottage, the roof aflame, and dragged Margaret out.”
There was a long silence.
“When it should have been me. Or any of the able men there. So, I will do anything for the Countess of Kinmarloch.”
Jack looked at Duncan and the young man was looking at him with a look Jack knew well. The look of a soldier for his enemy.
“Margaret sleeps heavy and is an innocent. But I have ears and I know what passed between ye and my lady two nights ago.” Duncan’s hands hung loosely at his sides but his body was poised and tense. “My lady can do as she likes. If she wants ye, that is her right. She is a countess and shouldnae be deprived just because there is nae man good enough for her to wed in Kinmarloch. But I am still her honor guard, even here. Even in London.”
“Yes.”
“Just so ye know.”
There was a silence.
“Is the Duke of Dunmore good enough for her, Jack Pike?”
Jack took a deep breath. “No.”
“I dinnae think so. How could he be? But she is set on him. And willing for the rest of us. She dinnae care about herself.” Now a smile twitched Duncan’s mouth and his body relaxed. “So, I am glad, for once, she has taken something for herself. Something more than a hambone.”
“What’s that?”
“Ye, Jack Pike.”
Twenty-Two
Helen brought her knees up to her chest and looked at the river and the boats going by. She had not cast up her accounts since she was a child.
