Page 25 of Highlander’s Sloth

Locked In

Kirsty felt better many times over the next morning. She stretched and smiled, looking over at her husband’s peaceful sleeping face as he lay next to her.

He really can be quite adorable when he’s sleeping with good reason. It’s too bad he showed such a marked preference for doing it all day after we were married.

Not waiting for him to wake, Kirsty rose and went to look out of the window. The manor grounds stretched out neat and lush beneath; there was a topiary on the right and a formal garden set out in the Tudor style on the left. The scene looked serene enough for Kirsty to want to dress and walk amongst the thoughtfully placed paving stones dotted around the privet hedges.

She looked over at Callum, willing him to wake so they could enjoy the early morning sunshine and catch the dew on the grass amidst the trimmed flower beds, but he was still dead to the world, a slight smile on his face, so she left him to enjoy his lie-in. They had ridden many miles and slept rough for two of the nights on the road—he deserved it.

After her first days at Macanroy Lodge, Kirsty had learned to dress herself without a maid’s help. When she thought back to her days at Mac an Goill, when all she had to do first thing after waking was ring for a cup of milk and stand still while the dresser pinned her overrobe to her petticoats, she had to give a tiny laugh.

A quick look in the mirror informed Kirsty that her long night’s rest had restored her usual good looks; her hair was shining in the sun that poured through the windows, and her skin glowed. She skipped to the door, praying the hour was still too early for fat Fotheringham to bestir himself before times.

The door was stuck. Giving a little growl of frustration, Kirsty pulled and rattled the knob and then twisted it to the right and left. Then she pressed her eye to the crack to see why the mechanism was not opening. Only then was she able to see a thin band of metal barring the door’s egress. It was a bolt, and it had been drawn across the doorframe to shut them inside.

The danger of being locked in a bedchamber in a strange Sassenach’s house with their precious wagon of whisky shut up in the man’s stables did not strike Kirsty as the immediate problem. She could give a dozen explanations as to why the bolt had been drawn: the baron could have a mad wife who sometimes managed to break loose and roam the corridors at night; he had dangerous guard dogs prowling the passages; it was family tradition for visitors to be kept safe from robbers and thieves; or he simply did not trust his new guests not to run off in the middle of the night with his best silver. Any number of reasons spun around Kirsty’s head.

She decided to wake her husband and ask his opinion on the matter.

Callum gave a sleepy smile when he woke to find Kirsty leaning over him, shaking his shoulder.

“How now, Wife? What’s to do? Are ye rested enough and lookin’ for a spot of amusement afore breaking fast?”

At any other time, Callum’s sallies might have been a welcome distraction for Kirsty, but now was not the time.

“Cal!” She waited for him to sit up and rub his eyes. “We’re locked in.”

The moment she said the words, Callum sat up and bounded out of bed as though a fire was lit under him. Just as his wife had done a few moments before, he rattled the doorknob and set his eye to the crack to see out into the passage.

“Did ye hear it done now, or was the bolt drawn during the night, d’ye think?”

Kirsty shook her head. “I don’ ken.”

Callum looked around for his trews and stepped into them while Kirsty searched the floor for his stockings and boots. He had thrown them into one of the dark corners of the bedchamber the night before, and Kirsty retrieved them and carried them over to his chair, where he quickly pulled them onto his feet.

“What time is it?” she asked.

Callum went to the window casement and craned his neck to look up at the sky. It was then they discovered the windows were bolted shut from the outside too. Even if Callum had been able to smash one of the diamond-shaped window panes, it would be useless, as the casement had been nailed closed.

“I gauge it no’ more than seven or eight hours past the stroke of midnight, from the position of the sun,” Callum told her. “Perhaps it is the custom of the house to...”

He saw the look on Kirsty’s face, and Callum’s words of hope and encouragement dried up. He stepped forward to give her a hug, saying, “Let’s no’ jump to conclusions, dearest. There could be many explanations for this strange occurrence. But in the meantime, what say ye to us using the water from last night to wash ourselves?”

It was when Kirsty saw the soapy dregs in the basin left over from last night’s ablutions that a real feeling of dread filled her heart.

They were trapped like rats in a cage, and no amount of optimistic chat was going to change that fact until the baron put in an appearance and told them exactly what was going on.

They had a long wait. There was a small dressing room to one side of the room that they used if they needed privacy, but Kirsty was so thirsty, her body felt like a dried-out husk trying to hold on to every scrap of water she still had left inside her. Every so often, Callum would go to the window to check if there was anyone he could shout to down in the garden—a gardener or groom, anyone—but the grounds were as abandoned as if it had been a Sunday. He would look up at the sky and come back to tell Kirsty what time he judged it to be from looking at the sun, and it had already started to sink in the west before the young couple heard a sound coming from the door.

They did not know what to expect, but when a cluster of armed men came into the room with swords drawn and a serviceable musket in one of the men’s hands, Callum and Kirsty’s questions were answered.

The man who seemed to be in charge indicated to Callum that he should hand over his sword. There was no question of Callum disobeying; there were six of the armed men, maybe even a few more outside in the passage, and his wife was within blasting range of the musket. He obediently handed over his sword. He felt a pang as he did so; it went against his grain to surrender to an unfair fight. All his life, people had treated Callum Macanroy with respect and deference, and the only time anyone had the gall to stand up to him in a fight was if he challenged them to a duel.

Kirsty was looking at the situation slightly differently. She had been trapped in Mac an Goill with a gang of bandits outside the gates not so long ago, so she was equanimous about the men standing in front of her now.

When the sword was well out of Callum’s reach, Baron Lloyd waddled into the room, his fat face wreathed with smiles.

“A thousand pardons for the delay,” he chuckled, “but that whisky—my, oh my—but I had a little bit too much of it last night, and it made me sleep like a baby.”