Page 81 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
How could I be so foolish as to think this man would stick to any bargain?
“How can I trust that ye even have me son?” he asked.
Disappointment stole over Captain Bolton’s face.
I have him, he’s lyin’, just as I suspect––
Captain Bolton reached into his pocket and removed something from it. He tossed it down onto the little table that the two men had been sitting at.
The Laird looked down. His heart fell.
It was a large silver pin––the sort used to hold the plaid of a Highlander’s great kilt together––depicting a stag crossed with an arrow. It was the same pin that the Laird himself sported at that very moment.
He looked up with burning eyes at the hated Captain Bolton.
The Captain smiled, as if the Laird’s evident distress was as sweet to his eyes as honey was to the tongue.
“Look familiar?” he asked.
27
Charlotte stood, flanked by two Highland guards, under the pavilion, waiting for her father to bring forth Edward from his camp. Despite the situation she found herself in, despite the fact that she was about to be returned to her father, she was smiling.
At least Edward will be free. He deserves nothing less.
In front of Charlotte, some fifty meters away, stretched the front line of English troops, drawn up into battle formation. Casting an eye over her shoulder and looking between her two guards, she could see that the Highlanders were similarly drawn up and waiting. Men on both sides shifted uneasily. Both those dressed in red coats, and those attired in kilts, fingered their swords and spears nervously.
“Ye’ll be back off home soon enough, lass,” Laird MacAlpein said gruffly to her, as he strode up with a couple of guardsmen of his own flanking him.
Charlotte noticed that the leader of the MacQuarrie clan was not able to meet her eye.
“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, I’m rather afraid that is going to be the case. Still, as long as Edward is returned unscathed, I shall not feel too ill-disposed about it.”
The Laird cleared his throat awkwardly, but did not say anything.
“You realize that you are the first man whose demands I have ever seen my father capitulate to,” Charlotte said. “Whatever happens after this, I must admit to be impressed on that score if nothing else.”
“Aye, yer faither is nae kenned fer his reasonableness, that is fer certain,” the Laird replied. “There is much said about Captain Bolton,” and the Laird spat at the name, “but fair-mindedness is nae one o’ those things.”
Charlotte’s eyes scanned the rows of soldiery. Standing as close as she was to the front lines of both armies, she got some ideas of how little she would enjoy being in the middle of a battle.
Hopefully, with this exchange, every man here will be able to turn on their heel and go home.
“Where is he? Where is he? Where is he?” she heard the Laird muttering to himself.
Charlotte’s own eyes continued to patrol the massed ranks in front of her.
Where is he? Please, Father, do what is right and make the trade. Surely. You care enough about me to do at least that?
After a tense minute—throughout which the Laird grumbled and griped to himself in a constant stream of, what Charlotte assumed was, Gaelic cursing—there was movement in the ranks of redcoats. With a rattle of spears and swords and shields, the rows of the red-clad troops shuffled aside, and a prisoner was led forth.
“Oh,Edward...” Charlotte said, her heart breaking, not caring one whit that the Laird could hear her plaintive cry.
Captain Bolton led the small procession. His face was carefully blank; betraying neither satisfaction, annoyance nor any other emotion that Charlotte thought that he was probably feeling at that moment.
He will not be enjoying having to deal with a man that he sees as little better than an animal.
Behind her father, a large man was being led, limping, towards the pavilion. Both of his hands were shackled, and each of these shackles was tethered to a length of chain held by an English soldier on each side of him. He was dressed in rags, as if he had been hastily dressed by his captors, and there was a dirty cloth bag over his head. A ruff of sandy blonde hair stuck out from the bottom of it.
