A Scot to the Heart by Caroline Linden

Drew rode into Edinburgh late, later than he should have been on the road, but heavy rain had made the journey agonizingly long.

Felix Duncan leapt up at his entrance. “There you are!”

“Had to go by way of Aberdeen. A bridge near Croy was washed out.” He peeled off his dirt-caked coat. “What’s happened?”

It had been six days since Duncan’s letter reached him in Ardersier. It had taken the messenger three days to get there from Edinburgh. Nine days without information had nearly driven him mad.

Duncan followed him into the other room. “I wrote to you as soon as I heard a whisper of Fletcher’s name. The sheriff was reluctant to act on rumor—the deacon sits on the bloody town council—but things have got worse. Fletcher tried to see Browne, who’s claiming the pardon, in prison—”

“What?”

“Aye. He was allegedly there to see a lad in for nicking some bread from a grocer, and asked to see the famous thief, recently caught. The keeper refused and he wasn’t pleased by it. The next day he left Edinburgh on an early coach, with no word to anyone. Told his servants and foreman he would be gone a few days and gave them leave.”

“That looks guilty as sin.”

Duncan made a grimace of agreement.

“And what of Ilsa?” Drew splashed water on his head. His back strained and ached at the motion, and he thought longingly of lying on the comfortable bed under the eaves. Instead he lowered himself into the chair and pried off his boots for the first time in two days.

His friend hesitated. “It’s not gone well for her, in town. The sheriff thinks she must know something. He sent his men to search her house, which led the whole town to believe she’s an accomplice. The rumors are licking like bonfire flames at her feet.”

Quietly he swore. “Agnes?”

“Has been to see her,” confirmed Duncan. “Including just today. She had to argue her way into the house and declares she practically shoved the butler aside to gain entrance. She thinks Mrs. Ramsay is about to flee town herself, to find her father and bring him home to prove his innocence.” He cleared his throat. “And, coincidentally, escape the gossip, I imagine.”

Drew rubbed his face with both hands. “Damn.” He glanced up. “Agnes is sending you word, eh?”

Duncan flushed. “She turned to me for advice in your absence, and she’s the only one Mrs. Ramsay will speak to. I offered Mrs. Ramsay my support and assistance directly, which she politely declined. But I’ll tell you this—she’s frightened, and with good reason.”

Drew nodded. “Thank you.” He levered himself up and went to the desk. “Take one more note to Agnes for me, and I’ll be in your debt.”

The carriage was waiting early the next morning. Mr. MacLeod took out her trunk and helped the driver stow it. Ilsa, who had not slept, pulled up the hood of her cloak, hugged her white-faced aunt good-bye, and stepped outside, eyes down. It was the first time she’d left the house since that horrible day Liam intercepted her, and she felt exposed and vulnerable just descending the steps.

“Ilsa! Ilsa, wait!”

She flinched. There went her hope to leave quietly and unnoticed. Why oh why hadn’t Agnes respected her wishes?

“Have you come for Robert? Thank you,” she said as Bella St. James, the fastest of them, flung herself in front of the carriage.

“Wait, please,” the girl begged as her sisters dashed up, out of breath and, in Winnie’s case, hatless. “You can’t go off like this, you can’t!”

“I must,” she said in a low voice. “Please keep your voice down.”

Winnie squeezed her hands together, looking anguished. “You can’t think anyone blames you!”

Oh, but they did. Ilsa had Mr. MacLeod send out a boy to buy all the papers, and there was rampant speculation that Ilsa and perhaps Jean, too, had urged Deacon Fletcher to flee. The St. James girls must know it. She looked at Agnes in reproach, feeling betrayed.

“It’s not right—it’s not fair!” cried Bella.

“Life seldom is.” Her voice sounded brittle to her own ears. “Go home, please.”

“Drew is back,” whispered Bella urgently. “If you’ll only wait—”

God help her. “I have to go,” she tried again.

“We worry for you.” Agnes, the turncoat, stood an arm’s length away, pale but composed. “We don’t want you to race off into danger.”

She lowered her voice even more. “We discussed this yesterday, and nothing has changed for me. Can you not do me the courtesy of trusting me to know what I must do and not do? Have you no faith in me?”

Agnes was blinking hard. “We have faith in you,” she said, her voice quiet but trembling with emotion. “We are your friends, and we don’t want you to get . . . hurt.”

Ilsa swallowed. Arrested, was what Agnes had almost said. Their concern made her eyes sting, but they didn’t understand. How could they? They probably didn’t notice the faces peering from neighboring windows, but she did; she was used to them now, because she’d seen people stop outside her house to gawk and whisper. She’d seen the sheriff’s officers stroll up and down the street several times a day, casting watchful eyes upon her door. She knew Mr. MacLeod had disposed of numerous items left on the steps, though he never would tell her what they were.

She was glad her friends didn’t know about all that, but it reminded her that she couldn’t let them dissuade her from the only course of action open to her. “Thank you for taking care of Robert. He would be so lonely with only my aunt.”

Agnes bit her lip and glanced at her sisters. Tears slipped down Bella’s cheeks. Winnie’s gaze flitted from Agnes to Ilsa and back, as if begging one of them to relent. Ilsa’s heart ached. She didn’t want to part on bad terms with such dear friends.

She bowed her head and murmured, “Tell your mother I am terribly, terribly sorry for the damage to her shop. Tell your brother . . .” She paused. “Tell him I said good-bye.” The word made her throat thicken, so she shook her head and said quickly, “No, don’t. Don’t tell him anything. I must go.”

“Ilsa, please wait—talk to him—” whispered Bella.

Mr. MacLeod held the carriage door open and she climbed in, feeling both protected and imprisoned in the box of the carriage. The St. James girls drew back, whispering furiously among themselves. A small throng of people had collected across the street, avidly watching. Ilsa settled herself in the carriage, determined to ignore them even if their scrutiny made her skin crawl. The thief’s daughter, she imagined them whispering. Fleeing with the stolen funds, no doubt. Perhaps they ought to lock her in the Tolbooth to bring her vile father out of hiding. This town which had been her home all her life had changed into something different in the course of a few days.

A thump on the back of the carriage made her jump.She knocked on the side panel. “Go!” The carriage started forward, then stopped, and the door opened again, giving her a jolt of alarm that she would be dragged from the vehicle by an angry crowd.

To her amazement Andrew St. James swung inside, closing the door behind him with a snap.

For a moment a wave of relief, longing, hope, even joy rose up inside her. It seemed an eternity since she’d laid eyes on him and now here he was—somehow he’d made it back to town and raced to her side.

When it was too late.

“What are you doing here?” was all she could gasp. She knocked on the side of the carriage again. “Go!”

“Don’t do this.” He reached for her hands. “Don’t go. Tell the driver to stop the carriage.”

Ilsa recoiled. “What?”

“Ilsa,” he said urgently. “Listen to me. You can’t help by running after your father.”

She stared at him. How she had wished Drew was here, and now what he was saying . . . “That’s not your decision to make.”

He exhaled impatiently and dragged one hand through his hair. It was getting long, and there was stubble on his face and dark circles under his eyes. “I’m trying to persuade you, not command you.”

“With what argument? You leap into my carriage and tell me to stop without so much as asking why I might have made this choice—”

“Why did you?” His head came up, his eyes intent on hers.

Ilsa flushed, thinking of the cruel stares and the horrid little book and Liam’s mortifying display. She had no wish to describe that humiliation. “I have good reason.”

“And I have good reason for asking you not to go. Will you listen to me?”

Jaw tight, she turned her head to stare blindly out the window. She couldn’t refuse him and yet this was not what she had so desperately wanted from him.

“Leaving, particularly this way, at this time, looks very bad,” he began carefully. “It suggests you know where he went.” A pause. “Do you?”

She glared at him in outrage.

Drew sighed. “It also makes people think you’re part of his plot.”

“He didn’t do it,” she said through her teeth.

“Right.” Drew nodded. “Supposing that’s true—”

“Get out!” She lunged for the door. “If that’s what you have to say, get out of my carriage!”

He stopped her, his hand covering hers. “Not until you hear me out. Ilsa, I want to help you—I am here as a friend.”

“By persuading me to sit back and let my father go to the gallows? That is not a friend,” she said before she could stop herself.

He went still, something flickering in his eyes. “I never said that.”

“Supposing that’s true,” she said mockingly, throwing his words back at him.

His eyes closed in defeat. Ilsa gave another rattle at the door, and his hand convulsed on hers. “Let me go with you, then.”

She swallowed the word yes. It came so readily to her lips with him. “Why?”

“Please.” His free hand opened in appeal, then closed into a fist. “Please don’t charge off alone, into God knows what, because you’re frightened and hurt. I won’t stop you but, please . . . let me come with you.”

Frightenedandhurt. How small those words felt to describe the days of anguish she’d suffered. She knew it wasn’t his fault and she didn’t want to argue with him—she still longed to throw herself into his arms and hear him tell her it would all come out well, somehow—but her heart and nerves had been shredded raw, she hadn’t slept in days, and it was too much.

“Why?” she demanded bitterly. “You have no idea what’s been said about me and my family this week, how our supposed friends and neighbors have turned on us, called me and my aunt accomplices, liars and thieves as bad as Papa—”

Drew held up his hands as her voice rose. Agnes had warned him that Ilsa had been through hell in the last two weeks, that she looked haunted and tense and was not herself. He still wasn’t prepared for the changes in her. Three weeks ago she’d been bright and carefree, smiling dreamily in his arms, the picture of poised elegance and beauty—except when she whispered in his ear to ride her harder and bit the side of his neck as they combusted together.

Today her eyes were red-rimmed, sunken, and shadowed. She’d lost weight and she looked as exhausted as he felt. She wore a plain gray dress, as opposite her former garb as possible, and he felt how her hand shook beneath his as she wrestled for the door handle.

“I won’t,” he promised, trying to gentle his tone. Saints, he was tired, and in consequence he was doing this very badly. “I won’t stop you.”

Her throat worked. “Why would you even want to come with me?”

“Because I care for you!” He plowed his hands into his hair, striving for calm and logic when his brain seemed to be tripping over itself. “Because I’ve been mad with worry since Felix Duncan sent a man pelting up to Fort George to warn me there were dangerous rumors about your father. I got on my horse and raced back. I don’t know what you’ve endured, beyond what Duncan and my sisters poured out on me last night—and I’m not sure I even understood half of what they said, since they spoke all at once.”

She inhaled sharply. “Did you send them this morning? To stop me?”

He looked up in dismay. His sisters had roused him and Duncan from their beds early this morning, clamoring to know what he’d learned during the night. Winnie and Bella had been loud opponents of everything he proposed to do, certain that he was mucking up his one chance to help Ilsa. Agnes had listened to him, and to Duncan, but when her sisters ran out, saying they would stop Ilsa if he would not, she went with them. He’d told them not to go, not to cause a scene for Ilsa’s sake, and still they’d bolted from the room before he was fully dressed. “I tried to hold them back. They would have had me break down your door in the middle of the night to keep you from going.”

Ilsa turned her face to the window, where the scenery had shifted to the farms and meadows that lined the road south. They were almost free of Edinburgh. If she tossed him out now, he would have a miserably long walk.

Her next words cut deep. “You said you would return within a fortnight,” she said, her voice wobbling.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, cursing himself for giving in to all the entreaties to stay for one more farewell dinner. He hadn’t thought there was reason to hurry. “It took longer than I expected.”

She nodded stiffly.

“If I had known—or suspected—I would have rushed back,” he added.

“No,” she said. “Of course you shouldn’t have. It is not your problem, nor your fault. I know you could not have changed anything had you been here.”

But he heard the pain. Perhaps he couldn’t have changed anything, but she wouldn’t have had to endure it alone. He was in love with this woman, and when she needed him, he’d been drinking with his mates a hundred and seventy miles away, in perfect ignorance of the ordeal she was facing.

“What happened?” He’d heard from Agnes and his sisters, from Felix Duncan, from the sheriff-clerk and the procurator’s deputy. None of them could tell him what he most needed to know.

A single tear slid down her cheek. Hastily she swiped it away. “A nightmare.”

With a harsh sound he caught her hand and pulled her across the carriage into his lap. Ilsa resisted for a moment, but he wrapped his arms around her and she melted against him, her hands creeping around his neck.

“There,” he breathed, holding her close and stroking her hair. “I’ve got you, love. We’ll sort it together.”

It felt so good to hold her again, even like this. For a long while she simply let him; Drew murmured mindlessly, assuring her that he wouldn’t leave her again, that they would survive this, that she didn’t have to carry the burden alone.

“What did you mean?” she whispered eventually. Her fingers had curled into his neckcloth, like a child, and his jacket beneath her cheek was damp. “You said I should not go alone into God knows what. What do you fear?”

He shifted her in his arms. “Never mind that.”

“Tell me,” she said, in the same numb voice. “If you want to go with me, be honest with me.”

He shifted her weight and tried to choose his words with more care than before. “I only meant that you don’t know whom or what you’ll encounter, and what they might do to you.”

“I only want to find Papa.” She sounded drowsy.

He rubbed her back, wishing she would sleep so he could, too. He’d snatched no more than an hour of sleep before his sisters beat down Duncan’s door. Now that he was with her, holding her, exhaustion was pulling hard at him. “Are you entirely certain he’ll want to be found?”

Ilsa jerked upright, her head cracking against his chin. “What? Of course! He is my father—!”

“And he left without telling you where he was going.” Drew froze, suddenly wary. Christ, why had he said that? “He didn’t, did he?”

She stiffened. “That’s twice you have suggested I know where he went and even helped him flee. What do you mean by that?”

“Where did you tell the driver to go?” he countered, his mouth once more running ahead of his tired brain.

She set her jaw. “Do you think my father is guilty?”

He didn’t give a damn about William Fletcher. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me!” she cried.

“I’m not interested in him, guilty or innocent,” Drew growled stubbornly. “Only in you.”

“You said you wanted to catch the thieves.” She put her hands against his chest and pushed. “You proposed the King’s Pardon. The sheriff listens to you, the procurator-fiscal, the lord advocate . . .” Her gaze jumped to his, her eyes widening. “Did you follow me today to help them find Papa? Is that why you are here? You were determined to find the thieves . . .”

His muscles turned to stone, and he set her back on the opposite seat. “No.” The word was hard and bitter on his tongue.

Ilsa pressed a hand to her mouth as though she would be sick. She blinked rapidly and he tensed to fling open the door and help her out. His own eyelids felt gritty from lack of sleep, and the carriage was warm, rocking back and forth over the well-worn road. When Ilsa leaned back, pale but more composed, he exhaled a sigh of relief.

“I can’t make you trust me.” He opened the window next to him for some air. “But I’m not lying. I’m not here at the behest of the procurator or the sheriff.” He let down the shade on the other side to block the morning sun. “Agnes said the sheriff’s officers came to your house.”

“They searched it.” She leaned her head against the wall of the carriage, the energy visibly draining from her. The smudges under her eyes looked even darker when her eyelashes fluttered closed.

Drew sighed. “Try to rest,” he said gruffly. They could talk later. He had leapt into her carriage on faith and instinct, and that would have to be enough for now. Gently he spread the folded lap rug over her.

She blinked at him with unfocused eyes. “This is a nightmare,” she mumbled again.

He cupped her cheek and brushed away the track of her tear with his thumb. “It is,” he whispered. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.