Page 12 of The Madam’s Highlander

Ever the soldier, he obeyed. He put the glass to his lips and swallowed the amber liquid in one large gulp. It burned down his throat, searing a path into his churning stomach.

Warmth started at the base of his neck and melted over him, bringing with it a sense of quiet.

“Where is my mother?” he asked.

“She's safe.”

“Where is she?” Unspoken threat edged his tone, but he didn't care.

Freya took the glass from him and filled it. This time, it was she who tossed it back with a single swallow. “She's with my family.” She pulled in a deep breath. “My mother has a healer who visits her regularly and can see to yer mother. My sister has a heart so kind, she makes nuns look wicked. Yer mother is safe and being cared for.”

Ewan's heart flinched. “My mother needs a healer?”

Freya filled the cup again and put it back in his hands. “She escaped the redcoats, but she remained in the forest for some time, we believe possibly a fortnight.”

Ewan sat with the glass forgotten in his hands. His mother, his delicate, frail mother with skin so thin the veins showed through, and a frame so slight a stiff wind could sweep her away - his mother had lived in the woods for a fortnight.

Her survival was nothing short of a miracle.

“I want to go to her,” Ewan said.

“That isna necessary.” Freya put a hand on his shoulder. The scent of a sweet and pleasant perfume followed the gesture. Hers.

“It is necessary,” he insisted. “What if she—”

“She won't.” Freya said the words with ferocity.

“I must go to her,” Ewan said again. “I will go to her.”

The madam brought her young face level with his and met his gaze with her extraordinary blue eyes. “If ye go to her, ye will be deserting the Black Watch.” She said it slowly, as if he were an idiot. As if he didn't know.

But he did know - more than she could ever possibly imagine.

“Ye'll be considered a traitor,” she continued. “And ye'll be shot.”

A traitor.

Like his da.

A traitor.

Like the redcoats who he'd promised his life to, his unquestioned loyalty. Like the redcoats who destroyed his home and harmed his mother.

He lifted the glass to his lips and took another blazing swallow. Leaving the Black Watch would make him a traitor - the very word he'd worked the whole of his life to avoid. His everything had been devoted toward being a good soldier, to being a loyal subject of the English crown who ruled over both England and Scotland. He'd besmirched the Scottish, his own brethren, for their wild ways and their faith in a man deemed by so many as the pretender. But would the alleged pretender lay to waste his own men?

A traitor.

A rebel.

A Jacobite.

Ewan’s heart thundered in his chest. His cheeks were hot, not only from the drink, but also from the precipice he teetered over. “I'll only be shot if I'm found,” he said. “I hereby renounce the Black Watch.”

And everything he'd ever believed in. Even if it meant he had become the very man his father had been.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Will ye help me?” Ewan looked up at Freya.