Page 5 of Highland Sword
“He’s playing you for a fool.” Sebastian scowled as Sparrow edged past a group of street urchins.
“I need him.”
“You think he’ll stand before a magistrate and testify against the Home Office? He won’t. This is a bloody mistake, and you know it.”
“He’s already given me more for this case than I had.”
“Too trusting, as always. The cur is using you to slip out of the grip of his English paymasters. Either that, or he’s settingyouup.”
His brother fell in step with Aidan as they started along the busy thoroughfare. The two of them were the only survivors of the father and four sons who’d gone off to fight against Napoleon, though Sebastian had lost an arm at Waterloo. After the war, Aidan quickly found that opposing the English government in politics and in the courts was a dangerous business, and his younger brother took it upon himself to become his protector. Aidan trusted Sebastian’s judgment, but right now, the Chattan brothers’ lives depended on Sparrow’s testimony.
“We came. I spoke to him. And I have you beside me. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“You need to be smarter, or I’ll be beside you on an English gallows.”
A woman carrying a basket filled with wet clothes nearly careened into Aidan, but his brother pulled him out of the way.
“Come now. What did the bard say? Screw your courage to the sticking place—”
“How about if I screw my boot in your ear?” Sebastian scoffed. “I fear nothing.”
“Watch him there,” Aidan said as Sparrow turned down a side street. They quickened their steps.
By the time they reached the corner, the villain was some distance ahead of them. He was moving with a determined step, turning his head neither left nor right, like a wounded soldier lurching back toward his own lines. He was clearly laboring for breath, his shoulders rising and falling as he moved.
“He’s moving as if the Grim Reaper is on his tail.”
“He’s thinking we’re his only chance,” Aidan replied. “He wants to get his things before we change our mind.”
“If he turns into that alleyway halfway down, I still say it’s a trap.”
“Don’t you think using this rogue to trap us in the middle of the day in an alley is a wee bit far-fetched?”
“You’ve forgotten High Street in Edinburgh. Midday.”
He was right. In plain daylight. A ship’s master who’d had his ship seized for transporting Africans to sugar plantations in the West Indies had attacked Aidan with a knife. Sebastian knocked him down with a single blow and disarmed him.
“And how about the Crown & Anchor? London.”
That was in broad daylight as well. And within shouting distance of the Temple Bar. Aidan was on his way tomeet his brother when two footpads attempted to waylay him. Sebastian had seen them from the doorway of the tavern and came to his aid. They turned out to be servants of Lord Horsley, another Tory foe whose nose Aidan had figuratively tweaked.
“The alley next to the Palace at Westminster. What time of the day was that?”
Blast. “And in every case, the two of us fought off the blackguards. Except at Westminster, where I was holding my own fairly well until you showed up.”
Sebastian’s answer was another grunt.
The truth was, Aidan could have been beaten to death that day. He couldn’t prove it, but he was certain those assailants had been hired by the Home Office.
Aidan definitely had his enemies. And he knew he was more than just a burr under their gilded saddles. He was part of a reform movement that could unhorse the power of those in charge entirely. Many people in London, powerful men like Lord Sidmouth and his cronies, thought nothing of using a club or a dagger to eliminate foes like him.
“We’re at home. We’re in the heart of the Highlands. There are more sympathizers for the cause here than in the streets of…” He paused, motioning to a woman who was striding along in Sparrow’s wake. “If she’s unafraid of these back streets on her own, then I say the two of us have no reason to worry.”
Now that he’d noticed her, Aidan paid closer attention. A grey dress was visible beneath her long coat. A single dark braid of hair hung like a rope from under an oversized knitted tam. She carried nothing in her hands, which he noted were fisted as they swung at her sides.
She moved with the smooth, lithe ease of a youngfencer, but she had a purposeful manner in her gait. Aidan glanced ahead at Sparrow and realized she was closing quickly on him.
The informer’s words came to him, along with his own thoughts—there were many people who would readily take the sword of justice into their own hands.
