Page 19 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
She spoke directly to Maeve. “What can I do?”
“Mistress Catherine, ye should return to your bed,” Laird Carlyle said in his deep, gruff voice.
Ignoring him, she took a cup from Maeve, got down on her knees, and offered it to the boy who stood apart from the others, hugging himself, chin to his chest. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, and he was biting his lip so hard she expected to see blood. Every exposed bit of skin was covered in dirt, but at his wrists, she couldn’t mistake the raw marks of rope burn. Who could do such a thing to a child?
“Have something to drink,” she said gently.
His wild gaze darted from the other children to Laird Carlyle to the cave itself. But Catherine remained patient, until at last he stared briefly into her face. She offered only a kind smile, but didn’t pressure him.
When he took the cup, it was with shaking hands. Greedily, he drank the water, then lowered the cup and stared at her as if he could read her face like a map. She felt embarrassed, remembering her bruises, but she let him look as long as he needed. When he said something in Gaelic, Catherine looked around for Maeve to translate, but instead saw the plaid and bare knees of Laird Carlyle. She looked up to see him frowning down at her, hands on his hips.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“He gave ye his thanks,” Laird Carlyle said.
Maeve set platters of oatcakes out on a table. Several of the children rushed forward to begin eating. The little boy beside her waited, looking around with the wary intelligence of one who’d had to survive by his wits. At last, he took slow steps toward the table, reached out for an oatcake and nibbled cautiously, looking about as if someone might snatch it from him.
Catherine rose and continued to watch the children. “They’re starving,” she murmured to Laird Carlyle. “Where did you find them? They can’t possibly be your ‘shipment.’” She emphasized the word.
At first the chief said nothing, causing impatience and frustration to build up inside her. Was she never to know anything about these people who’d taken her in?
He cleared his throat. “Scotland’s own poor and orphaned bairns are being sold as indentured servants to the colonies and West Indies plantations. But ‘indentured servant’ is just another word for slave, when ’tis done for no reason beyond filling greedy men’s purses.”
Though the words he spoke shocked and appalled her, the ugly bitterness in his voice made it sound incredibly personal, beyond righting an injustice. She tucked that idea away to consider later.
She put a hand to her chest, staring at the five children who ate oatcakes as if they hadn’t seen food in a long time. She shuddered with nausea. “These children . . . they are the shipment your man warned you about?”
He nodded.
“And you rescued them.”
He nodded again, without filling in any details. Was he a man who downplayed his own bravery, or was he simply protecting his methods and his men from the danger she might present?
“How did you learn about this barbaric practice?” she asked.
From beneath lowered brows, he watched the children guzzle cider and cram more oatcakes into their mouths before being gently admonished to take their time. Then he looked to Catherine, and she saw the way he studied her, took her measure. She lifted her chin, and though she wanted to babble something, anything, to prove herself to him, she said nothing. He either trusted her, or he didn’t. There was a connection between them, a pull of awareness that seemed so very foreign to her—but then, how would she know? Yet she felt caught in this intimacy with him, though they were surrounded by people.
And as if he felt the need for privacy, he gestured toward the little stream, away from the people gathered to tend to the children. Catherine followed, and though they were on display, it felt as if they shared confidences all alone. They stood beside the footbridge but didn’t cross it.
“It happened to one of my own clan,” he said heavily. “A poor farmer came to me, complaining that his son had been abducted. I thought surely the lad had simply run away, but the father actually saw, far down the glen, two men take up his child and ride off with him.”
“How terrifying,” Catherine whispered, searching his eyes, which seemed to see far away.
“He went to the nearest villages, but no one had heard anything like it. So he came to me, his chief, because I should be able to help.”
She said nothing, fearing that this particular story did not end well.
“By the time I found a trail to follow, ’twas too late. The boy was gone, hidden away somewhere, and there was no proof as to what had happened. The Lowlanders thought we were simply telling tales to cover our negligence. They usually side with the English, and think we’re but savages,” he added harshly.
Catherine flinched. Was she one of the English he so obviously despised?
“I discovered that other children had gone missing, one or two every month or so, always the ones with no families, or ones too poor for their families to do anything about it. It started with orphans on the streets of Glasgow where the children could easily be sold to agents from the colonies. But when that supply wasn’t enough, poor children were chosen, stolen away from their parents’ arms. ’Tis far more difficult a crime to hide. But the magistrates—with the sheriff’s support—paid them no heed, were silenced with coin by the wealthy who only gained riches as those poor lads and their families suffered.”
Catherine’s mouth had sagged open the more he talked, and now felt so dry it was difficult to swallow. The suffering of the children seemed unimaginable. Stolen from the only place they’d ever known, sent on a dangerous voyage across the ocean, forced to work—and she imagined the conditions under which they toiled would be foul. She shuddered and placed a hand over her mouth, struggling to control her nausea.
Laird Carlyle took her elbow as if to steady her, and with relief she let herself consider him for a moment, rather than the fate that was befalling innocent children. This was the most she’d ever heard the man speak, and his words rang with disgust and hatred. She was forced to reevaluate what she’d been thinking about him. He’d confessed his suspicions about her, and she’d been offended, but he didn’t know her—she didn’t know herself. And what were his suspicions, compared to the fact that he’d rescued her, just like he’d rescued these poor children from a terrible fate? “Laird Carlyle,” she said, “have you been rescuing children for long?”
He shrugged. “Several years now. ’Tis why we’re living in these caves. I spoke out, tried to bring the case to the Court of Session, and they had me imprisoned.”
