Chapter Seven
“Ineed afavor,” Gunn proclaimed, once he and Malcolm settled in the pub, glasses of whisky on the table and lit pipes in their hands. Swirls of cherry smoke floating above their heads.
“Whate’er ye need. I’m your man.”
“’Tis about Jocelyn.”
Malcolm barked out a laugh. “Nay, I couldna have guessed that.”
“Funny.”
“Ye are enamored with the lass.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I am no’,” Gunn said nonchalantly, trying to throw Malcolm off of the feelings Jocelyn was bringing to the surface.
“Ye forget who ye are talking to. ’Tis plain as day. And obvious o’er dinner. Ye couldna stop your eyes from wandering o’er to her throughout the meal.”
“Mayhap.”
Malcolm puffed on his cigar and blew out a series of small smoke rings, where they loftily floated through the air, widening before finally dissolving. “She’s bonny. Seems smart.”
“Verra.”
“Alright. I’ll leave ye to your delusions that ye have no interest in the lady.” He sat up in his chair. “Back to business. What do ye need?”
“I want to ken her background. Where she’s from. What happenstance led to her arriving here, alone. No husband. No chaperone.”
“She seems old enough to get away without a chaperone. Widow mayhap?”
Gunn nodded. “The thought crossed my mind. When she arrived, she was nursing bruises. They were fading, so they had happened quite some time before, but she was definitely beaten.” He shook his head, clenching his jaw. “She gave me a tall tale of being clumsy and running into a door. All those bruises? Nay. There was no chance that was the source. If ye look closely ye can still see some of them, though she tries to hide them.”
“Did ye tell her ye didna believe her?”
Gunn traced a rivet in the wooden tabletop with the tip of his finger. “Nay, I didna want to scare her away. Her eyes when she arrived were weary. And she was so thin. And broke.”
“So ye gave her a job, a place to stay, and meals?”
Gunn bobbed his head from side to side. “Aye and nay. She wanted to pay for the room, but I just couldna in good conscience let her pay full price. She had mayhap two coins. I wasna about to take her last coins. So, I offered her the room at a discount. I didna think she would appreciate it to be free.”
“That makes sense. What about the meals and the job?”
“As I said, she was far too slim. She looked liked she’d missed more than one meal. I threw the meals in with the cost of the room.”
Malcolm laughed. “So those were free.”
“Nay. I told her they were included with the room.”
“But they arena.”
“Aye, but she doesna need to ken that. She approached me the next day for employment. It wasna something I was e’en contemplating. But she said she was in desperate need of work.Out of her offers, she mentioned that she kenned books and ledgers. Numbers. Ye’ve seen the state of my business. I’ve needed to go through the books for a long time to figure out what has happened to it. I gave the task to her and told her I’d include room and board—and pay her a salary.”
Malcolm’s brows shot up. “Really? Ye do have it bad.”
“I doona. I dinna want to see her suffer any further. She’d obviously already had a rough go of it. I didna want to add to her burdens.”
“So instead ye added to your own?” Malcolm continued when Gunn didn’t answer. “All right. What information do ye have for me to go on?” Malcolm pulled out a small piece of paper he always kept on him and a charcoal pencil.
