“So ‘tis healing, then? No more inflammation or pus?”
Addison shook his head. “No’ that I can see. Ye should heal from this with naught but a savage scar as a reminder. I did no’ believe so a sennight ago. I figured ye for dead and was nearly ready to look through your pockets for loose change.”
A touch of humor in the lad. Sawny’s lips tugged into an appreciative smile before his eyes flicked to the door. “Do your chaperones no’ await ye? Is that why ye are no’ rushing to leave?”
The lad shrugged again. “Nay. They think ye yet sick and harmless and let me come on my own. A guard stands at the door leading up to the keep, so even if ye did manage to overpower me, ye’d no’ get far.”
It seemed like the lad was going to say something else, but his lips closed and he was quiet again.
“What happens to me now? Do ye know?”
That was the real question. By Sawny’s estimation, he’d been in this cell for longer than a fortnight. Spring was wasting away, and summer was nipping at its heels. He was supposed to be married by now, and not for the first time, he wondered what Adaira was doing. Was she still crying over his loss? Had her parents arranged another political marriage for her already?
Adaira’s unfortunate position as the daughter of a powerful chieftain was Sawny’s most pressing concern. If he did not leave this prison soon, another marriage would be arranged for Adaira, and if he ever did escape, she would be as far out of his reach as she was now.
He would be in an entirely different type of prison, but a prison all the same – one much darker and more dismal than this, without Adaira in his life.
Addison trailed his finger along a divot in the stones. “I think he means to let ye heal more until ye are fully hale once more, then he means to break ye to extract the information he requires from ye.”
Sawny’s face twisted slightly at Addison’s reply. “Fully hale? Why? Would he no’ believe it easier to break me if I’m already weak?”
Poor Addison looked extremely uncomfortable with that presumption. He kept his eyes averted. “I think he fears that if ye are no’ fully healed, that ye might pass out or die and he’d no’ have his information.”
Addison glanced at the door and Sawny followed his gaze. The lad had been in the cell too long, and even if there was no guard outside the door, the guard at the end of the hall would surely be wondering where the lad went.
Time was not on their side.
“Do ye know why he needs this information? Seems odd that he picked me for this means of obtaining information. Why no’ someone more closely involved who would be sure to know about the letter?”
“I think ye were an opportunity. Had ye no’ been alone, I dinna think he would have tried. Ye happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he likes that ye are a Keppoch. Fits his desire for revenge. As for why he needs it, I overheard a man shouting at him in his study. Kelso referred to the man as —”
“Slippery John,” Sawny finished for him. He might not want to play at politics, but that did not mean he had not been dragged into this game of crowns.
Addison nodded. “An insulting but apt description, from my view of the man.”
The lad rose suddenly and stepped to the door, lifting the platter from the floor as he went.
“I must go. I shall tell Kelso ye are still ill to buy ye some time, and I’ll return with your evetide meal. Perchance I will have more information for ye then. I’ll try –”
He paused and looked over his shoulder to the barely cracked-open door. Without another word, he shouldered the heavy door open and slammed it shut behind him.
Though the lad’s words had been clipped and at times puzzling, Sawny had a better understanding of what might be going on with Kelso MacIntosh.
The man appeared to be as much a prisoner as Sawny, a prisoner to the dictates of Slippery John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane, Laird of the Highland Campbells, and staunch supporter of the Hanover pretender king. Sawny vowed to ask Addison more when he returned, but he guessed that John was demanding his chieftains find the letter or find out if the MacDonalds had it and had tired of chasing his tail.
Thatwas dangerous. If Slippery John was going to such lengths to find the letter or information, that meant they still did not have it, and they would start threatening MacDonalds to find it.
If he escaped, he would warn the MacDonalds and all their allies to travel in groups. He’d no risk another Highlander falling into Campbell or MacIntosh hands.
Nay,when.
Whenhe escaped.
Sawny looked at the sunlight window slit.
He would not let even the suggestion of expiring in this prison enter his mind.
When he escaped, he would warn the MacDonalds and wed Adaira before the sun set.
