Highland Sword (Royal Highlander #3) - May McGoldrick Page 0,2
for them.”
The Highlander didn’t care about details. He wasn’t interested in subtle messages. On their last trip to Inverness, he’d called on every printing house in town. Whether the proprietors were being handsomely paid or were simply too afraid, no one was admitting anything. No one would confess they’d had anything to do with the scurrilous caricatures, though each of them was quick to point the finger at someone else.
Morrigan wasn’t surprised when one shop owner suggested the flyers weren’t even being printed in Inverness. Searc Mackintosh, the little bulldog of a man who had a piece of every illicit business transaction on the east coast of the Highlands, had his men questioning printers in other cities. The more Cinaed’s name and popularity spread through the northern lands, the more virulent the campaign against him would become.
Morrigan was no politician. Still, she knew that while one person was drawing the caricatures, many stood to profit from planting the seeds of distrust regarding the son of Scotland. And not just the English military commands at Fort George and Fort William. The bloody aristocrats who were evicting thousands of families week after week, month after month, burning whole villages … they too had much to gain.
Perhaps not today, but someone would eventually pay the price. Of that, she was certain. It wasn’t only the Mackintosh clan that were ready to defend their beloved native son. Many others in clans across the Highlands believed in Cinaed. In what he stood for.
“Searc wants to leave no later than noon. I need to help the men load up the carts. Stay close, lass.”
Morrigan understood what the Highlander was telling her. He wanted her within a stone’s throw of Searc’s house. Coming to Inverness with the Mackintosh fighters was a privilege that she’d earned, and she wasn’t about to jeopardize it. She was smart, capable, and strong. And too restless to remain cooped up within the stout walls of Dalmigavie Castle.
She gestured down the crowded street toward the center of town. “I’ll not go farther than the bookseller’s shop.”
Blair gave her a final nod and turned away.
As she watched him stride off toward Searc’s house through the bustling throng of carters, vendors, and ragged, tired refugees, Morrigan thought of how much her life had changed in these recent months. She was fortunate to be standing here. The outwardly quiet life she’d been living in Edinburgh had been destroyed in a single afternoon’s attack. A hussar’s bullet had killed her father as he tried to protect his patients in his own surgery, and then they’d fled north.
Her stepmother Isabella was now married to Cinaed, and a bounty was being offered for the two of them. As a result, anyone connected to them was at risk of being taken by the British authorities.
Morrigan bent down and picked up one of the torn flyers. This one showed Cinaed, again as a fat king with his crown askew, seated in a throne that was being carried through a crowd of people by clan chiefs with the faces of wolves. Ahead of them, a passage toward a distant palace was being cleared by club-wielding brutes. On all sides, scores of people were looking on in fear and anguish. She felt her frustration rising as she looked from the sheet to the poor, harried Highland folk passing by this side street in the Maggot. They were trying to turn the people against Cinaed … those who needed him most.
“Sparrow?” the deep voice of a man called from a few paces off. “Robert Sparrow.”
Morrigan didn’t turn, but as she slid the flyer into her jacket, the reply came from someone closer to her.
“Aye, by my auld heart.”
She stiffened.
“You two are a welcome sight to these sore eyes.”
A trap door in her stomach opened, and her heart fell through it.
The name was strange to her, but she’d have known the voice if he’d whispered from the very gates of hell. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder. He was older, worn by the years, but she recognized him. Hell was where he belonged, with the rest of Satan’s legions.
An old, painful sensation swept through her, a knife sliding between her ribs and into her chest. Cold lethargy slithered like an oily liquid through her body, seeping into spaces between her bones and her flesh. Numbness oozed into every joint, and pooled chill and dark in her belly. Then came fear. Her heart raced with the onset of memories. She forced herself to breathe.