“There are pirates roaming the seas!” Poor James looked genuinely alarmed. “Besides, the sea makes me sick as a dog.”
The sea made him ill?
A wave of homesickness swept over Glynis, leaving a sense of hopelessness in its wake. She had always lived on the sea and had no notion how much she would miss it. Even when she was married to that despicable Magnus, she could hear the sea from her window and walk on the shore every day.
Glynis’s attention was brought back to the present by the sudden damp heat of a heavy hand on her thigh.
“Ye are a pretty thing,” James said, leaning close enough for her to see the spittle on his chin. “And I believe I’m just the man to tame a wild Highland lass.”
CHAPTER 23
Alex walked the city streets in the bleak hours before dawn. Occasionally, women of the night called out to him from doorways. No one else was out at this hour save for thieves and groups of drunken young men looking for a fight. But with his claymore strapped to his back and dirks hanging from his belt in plain sight, no one gave Alex trouble.
After tossing and turning on the too-small bed at the tavern, Alex had given up on sleep. He wished he could talk with Glynis about the problem of this wee girl Sabine claimed was his daughter. Glynis would give him honest advice. But he could not very well wake up her relatives’ household by pounding on their door in the middle of the night.
When the first streaks of dawn speared through the sky, he unfolded the paper that Sabine had given him and read the directions written there. What in the hell was wrong with Sabine keeping the child in the most wretched part of the city?
Alex turned down a close and held his plaid over his mouth and nose as he walked farther and farther down the hill. He was nearly to the sewage-filled loch before he finally reached the place. He pounded on the door with murder running through his veins.
A woman opened the door just wide enough for him to see her greasy hair and careworn face. Her eyes grew wide as she took him in.
“Alexander MacDonald?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“Aye.”
When the woman opened the door wider, Alex ducked his head and stepped inside. He found himself in a low-ceilinged room lit by a single, smoky lamp. There was no one in it but the two of them.
“Where is the Countess?” he asked, though he had realized as he walked down the close that Sabine would never ruin her delicate slippers coming to this desperate place.
“I never saw the lady,” the woman said. “Her maid said ye would be the one to pay me.”
One brings deceit.
“Their ship has sailed?” Alex asked, though he already knew it had.
The woman nodded. “Aye, at dawn.”
“And the child?”
“I have her, but ye must pay me first.”
Sabine had known that, regardless of whether the girl was his or not, Alex would not be able to leave a child in this squalid place with no one to care for her. At least, he hoped Sabine had known that when she abandoned her daughter.
A ragged strip of cloth hung over the doorway to a connecting room, and he suspected the child was there. Though Alex could have fetched her himself, the woman deserved her pay. He dropped the coins into her waiting palm.
His heart raced as the woman disappeared into the blackness behind the curtain. What in God’s name was wrong with him? He was fearless sailing into a squall or charging into battle, and yet an unfamiliar frisson of terror traveled up his knees over meeting a wee bairn.
Before he had time to prepare himself, the woman flipped back the cloth and reentered the room leading a child by the hand. Sabine’s gift to him.
Alex had never lacked for words in his life, but he was too stunned to speak. Looking at the child, he had the oddest sensation that he was seeing a feminine version of himself as a wee lad. Her hair was the same white-blond his had been as a bairn, and she was long-legged as a newborn colt.
“She’s a strange child,” the woman said. “Can’t speak a word.”
“Maybe she has nothing to say to ye.” Alex noticed how dirty the child was, and a horrible thought occurred to him. “How long have ye kept her here?”
“Since she was brought to me a couple of months ago,” the woman said. “As ye can see, I’ve taken good care of her.”
God have mercy. The child must have been here since Sabine arrived in Edinburgh. That had probably sucked the words right out of the poor wee thing. Alex remembered how desperate he had felt in that cell after just a couple of hours, and he could have wept for the child.