Rose In Scotland Read Free Page A

spoken before demanded in a baffled tone.
    Hugh thought of the English major who had been his first commanding officer after he’d been made a sergeant.
“Explain nothing,”
the man had advised, giving Hugh’s shoulder a companionable slap.
“Simply issue the orders and act as if they had already been carried out.”
    “It is enough,” he said, taking another sip of ale. “Now I would speak of the clan. Tell me how fares everyone.”
    There was an uneasy silence and another exchange of looks, and Hugh braced himself to prepare for anything from an insult to a dirk in the back. Finally a man Hugh recalled from his youth set down his own tankard and began speaking.
    “We are better off than many of the others,” he said, tugging at his beard in a gesture Hugh well remembered. “The seizure was limited only to yer father’s house and lands, and the rest of us were let be. The sheep and cattle are well, and so ’Tis enough meat we have to sustain us. Many of the crofts are in sad want of repair, but we have nae the money to see to it.”
    Hugh thought of the money tucked away in his things. Despite his meager salary he’d managed to put aside a considerable sum, and then there was the money he’d won as part of the booty seized in battle. All in all it was several thousand pounds, enough to repair a hundred crofts and see to the most immediate needs of the clan. Unfortunately, he feared, the money would be needed to buy back his land and title from an English court that would doubtlessly listen better to a man with bags full of gold than to one with pockets to let.
    “Talk to the other clans,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “Offer a trade of meat for the material to help in the repairing of the crofts. That will help them as well as us. What else?”
    “We’ve several widows and women without their men to help them,” Lucien Raghnall, a man who had been Hugh’s close companion as a lad, volunteered warily. “They stand to lose all if their taxes are nae met by year’s end.”
    Hugh said a mental good-bye to a goodly part of his money. “They will be met,” he said. “Are there other matters to discuss? How many men were taken from Loch Haven?”
    “Besides yer father, uncle, and brother, there were ten others,” Angus MacColme said, the bitterness fairly dripping from his words. “And half a dozen more dragged off by the press-gangs that followed the soldiers, my own Donald included. Dragged from his own home, he was, and taken away as if he was nae mair than a runt to be slaughtered!”
    Hugh was silent, his heart aching at the thought of any man under the hell of impressment. Army life was bad enough, often unendurable at times, but it paled in comparison to what befell a man impressed into His Majesty’s navy. He’d heard stories horrible enough to give him nightmares, but now he grudgingly accepted there was naught he could do to help the men so cruelly taken away. The best he could hope for was to learn if they even lived, and he doubted that would provide scant comfort to those left behind.
    “James told me there was no word on the fate of the men arrested,” he said, focusing on the things he felt he could do something about. “Is that so? Were inquiries made?”
    “Aye, inquiries aplenty,” another man said heatedly. “For all the good it did us! Even yer sister could learn naught when she went there, and ’twas proper determined the lass was, too. Threatened to storm the prison herself and see to their welfare, she did, and was almost clapped into irons for her pains. But she didna backdown,” he added with an approving nod.
    Hugh winced at the admiration in the man’s voice. ’Twould seem James had not exaggerated Mairi’s heroics, and he shuddered at the image of a flame-haired hellion dressing down some staunch and sour magistrate in a black robe and powdered wig. Well, he was home now, and the first thing he meant to make clear to his sister was that she was