Page 16 of A Highlander for the English Widow

“She’s my sister!” Lillie wailed. “He beat her and then he cut me and he said that I should never return tae him. He said that if I came back he would cut my throat and he said that naybody would want me now and that I would be alone forever. I was running away from him when ye found me. I thought that I could find some food in the market, but I… I’m never gaeing tae see her or the others again. He’s gaeing tae find me. I just know he’s gaeing tae find me…and he’s gaeing tae kill me.”

Her words were drowned out by her sorrow as she fell forward and leaned into Amanda’s ready embrace. Amanda’s arms folded around the poor girl, stroking her back to try and comfort her. Logan watched intently at this display of maternal instinct and was almost brought to tears himself. However, there was a question he needed to know.

He walked up to them and lowered himself to his knees. Being as tall as he was, there was no trouble in him meeting the girl’s eyes, if her eyes were on show. Her face was buried in the crook of Amanda’s neck. Her small body shuddered as she wept.

“Lillie, I need ye tae listen tae me very carefully. I know this is difficult for ye, and I know ye are sad, but I need ye tae tell me who this man is. What’s his name?” Logan asked.

Lillie raised her head and sniffed away the tears. Her eyes were bleary and a trail glistened from her nostrils.

“His name is Bram MacGavin,” she said.

Logan became tense. His jaw clenched, and his hands curled into fists. In the presence of the child, he managed to stifle the curse words that wanted to pour from his mouth in a wave of fury. He rose abruptly and told Amanda that he needed to speak with her as soon as she was done with Lillie, and then he marched out of the room.

Damn that Bram MacGavin. Damn him!

11

Amanda could hear the terseness in Logan’s voice. There was something worrying about it. This Bram MacGavin must certainly have been a man to be feared by the way Logan reacted. Amanda had never heard of such villainy before. Imagine taking advantage of poor children to have them do their bidding and then hurting them whenever they showed a desire to stop! It was incomprehensible and Amanda wished she had the skills of a warrior so that she could go and give him a piece of her mind. There were too many cruel men in the world who thought they could use other people as they saw fit, and the ones who suffered were always the ones who did not deserve it.

She held on to Lillie tightly, supporting the girl’s small body as it clung to her. Amanda closed her eyes and felt every shudder that passed through Lillie’s body, every sob that crawled out of her throat, and every tear that flowed from her eyes. It broke her heart to know that a child was feeling this way. She wished she could have done more to soothe Lillie’s ills.

She wondered if this was how Logan had felt when his wife had fallen ill during childbirth. The thought flashed through her mind in an instant.

The longer Amanda embraced Lillie, the more she found herself yearning in her heart. This was exactly the kind of thing that she had been missing from her life. It spoke to her maternal instincts; she knew this must have been what it was like to be a mother. In this moment Lillie was entirely dependent on Amanda for comfort. Lillie had nothing else in the world. There was something intoxicating about this level of dependency and longing, and Amanda found that she did not want to let go.

She also knew that she was not this child’s mother and it would only make her feel worse if she continued in this way. Amanda patted the child’s back and then leaned back.

“It’s going to be fine. You rest here and have a drink while I go and talk with Logan about what we’re going to do next.”

“Dinnae leave me, please,” Lillie asked.

The plaintive tone of her voice struck a chord within Amanda’s heart. She rose from the bed anyway and poured Lillie a glass of water before reassuring her again that she wasn’t leaving her, she was only going for a little while so they could find a way to stop this Bram MacGavin and help all the other children that Lillie had been forced to leave behind, including her sister.

Amanda stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her so that Lillie did not have to overhear what was being said between the adults. Lillie had fallen to the bed and curled up into a tiny ball. All Amanda wanted was to get in bed with her and hold her until the sorrow and the pain went away, but she also knew that there were more important things that needed to be done.

Logan was pacing up and down the hall, while Deirdre and Ann looked anxious.

“It’s horrible, absolutely horrible what that girl has been through,” Amanda said. “I can’t believe these kinds of things still happen in this day and age. What about her parents? Would they not have gone looking for her?”

“I doubt she haes parents. People like Bram MacGavin prey on the poor. There are plenty of children who find themselves turned out of home and are forced tae fend for themselves. Maybe their parents died, maybe they were just unwanted, but either way, they are in need of food and shelter and coin, and they dinnae know what they should or should nae dae tae earn it. That’s where people like Bram MacGavin come in,” Logan said.

Amanda noticed how he spat the name of this man.

She was horrified to think about the children of the land being turned out of their homes and forced to live on the streets. As someone who had always craved to have a child of her own, she couldn’t ever imagine throwing one out and making them fend for themself. She wished there was a way to gather them all up and give them a home where they didn’t have to worry about surviving. Such a thing was too much of a burden for children to bear. And at the heart of this web was Bram MacGavin.

“Who is this man?” she asked.

Deirdre made a choking sound and threw up her hands, while Ann was shaking her head. Logan spoke in a dry, clipped voice. Amanda could hear the tremors of anger in his words.

“Bram MacGavin is a notorious criminal who haes been operating in the area for as long as I can remember. There is naything he haes nae dirtied his fingers with. I hae tried tae catch him many times over. I hae raided his bandit camps. I hae stopped his men while they were holding people up on the road. But never hae I been able tae get my hands on the man himself. For a time I hae even wondered if he exists at all. I never thought of him using children. It explains sae much—how he’s able tae get things past us without us seeing it, how he is able tae make these deals. Naybody would suspect the children.”

“Where does he live? He must have a camp somewhere, surely?” Amanda asked.

“He moves the camp. He’s clever like that, canny. Aye, it is nae sae easy tae find him. But this time I will. If he thinks he can use children and get away with it then he haes another thing coming.”

“I just can’t believe nobody has spoken up about him before,” Amanda said.

“He strikes fear intae the heart of everything he touches, including the people who work for him. They would rather die than feel his wrath. He is a vicious man. But even if people dae talk, Bram moves his camp before we can find him. I would nae be surprised if he is on the move now. As soon as Lillie left he probably upped sticks and found somewhere new tae live. It’s nae even worth asking her where she left him.”