The blood was rising in Jamie’s face, and his left hand folded into a fist.
“What was it the balgair said? That he thought of becoming a landlord himself?”
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.” I looked hard at the battered surface of the desk, as though the gaudy letter was still there. “And he said he has the original document. Not ‘the government’ or ‘Lord Germain.’ Him.”
The British government was in fact in the habit of confiscating rebel property and bestowing it on their own lackeys—they’d done it all over the Highlands, after Culloden, and Jamie had saved Lallybroch only by deeding it to his ten-year-old nephew before Culloden.
A moment’s silence.
“Do I think he has more than those two men with him?” he asked, but he wasn’t asking me, and immediately answered his own question. “Aye, I do. How many, that’s the question …”
Whatever the answer was, it propelled him to his feet, a look of decision on his face. With an underlying layer of intent ferocity that I had no trouble distinguishing. I felt much the same, shock and fear fading into fury.
“That bastard!” I said.
He didn’t reply, but thrust his head out into the hall and bellowed, “Aidan!” in the direction of the kitchen.
BOBBY HIGGINS TURNED up first, his pale face flushed with alarm and excitement. He wasn’t a good horseman but could ride well enough on an open trail—and since the bear, he had resumed carrying a musket.
“Ian will be coming down, quick as he can,” Jamie told him, hastily saddling and bridling Phineas, the fastest of our three saddle horses. “And I’ve sent the lads to carry word to the Lindsays, Gilly MacMillan, and the McHughs. They’ll spread the word further, but they’ll come on here by themselves. You come wi’ me, and when we’re sure of the track, I’ll send ye back here to tell the others and lead them on to join me, aye?”
“Yes, sir!” Bobby said it by reflex, straightening his back. Once a soldier, always a soldier. Jamie clapped him on the shoulder and put his own foot in the stirrup.
“Away, then.”
He blessed whoever was in charge of the weather, be that saint or demon, for the rain had held off, and it was no trick to follow the trail of Ulysses and his two men on the muddy ground.
It shortly became evident that there were more than two men with Ulysses; Jamie and Bobby came upon a spot nay more than a mile from the house, where the marks in the churned-up mud made it clear that Ulysses had joined a band of twenty men, at least; maybe more.
“Go back to the house!” he shouted to Bobby, and waved a hand, encompassing the small clearing. “Tell Ian to bring as many men here as he can and leave word for the rest; a blind man could follow this lot!”
Bobby nodded, pulled down his hat, and set off uphill, leaning perilously back in his saddle, reins clutched to his chest. Jamie grimaced, but waved reassuringly when Bobby looked back over his shoulder. He only needed to stay on the horse as far as the house.
“Even if he falls off and breaks his neck,” he muttered to himself, reining round, “they can follow our track this far. If it doesna pour.” He looked upward, into a dizzying swirl of black clouds, and saw the flash of silent lightning. He counted ten before the roll of distant thunder reached him.
“Trobhat!” he said to Phin, and they set off downhill, following the black hoofprints still showing clear.
THE MOUNTED BAND was moving briskly, but not fleeing. And while there were sprinkles of rain on his face, the storm had not yet broken. Jamie kept well back, always with an ear behind him for his own men coming.
And come they did, to his unspoken but vast relief. He heard them and reined uphill to meet them out of earshot of the troops he was following—he supposed they must be regular British troops, for Ulysses wouldn’t go through the mummery of pretending to be a British soldier if he weren’t one. If they were, though, he’d have to go canny. He wasn’t wanting a physical fight; his infant militia weren’t up to taking on trained soldiers yet.
The back of his mind had been keeping its peace to this point, but now it took the opportunity of his relaxed vigilance to ask him just what the devil he did want.
He wanted to get Ulysses alone, with a dirk in his hand and five minutes to use it, but failing that, he wanted to catch up to the man and go through his saddlebags, both for the damned letter—why had he not been quick enough to stop the man taking it?—and for the original grant, should Ulysses be carrying it. Which meant cutting him out of his own companions and sequestering him somewhere, briefly. He would have given the rest of the fingers on his right hand to have Young Ian with him now, but he didn’t dare wait.