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“Which you promised me you wouldn’t mention.”
“And I won’t. It will be up to you from now on. I’ll keep my word.” He went on, “But now that we’ve settled that, I should go on and do my duty by filling you in on what happened at the castle. Caleb said you’d want to know. Five dead. Two guards, three MI6, damage to the gates and the stones of the courtyard and fountain. The front door was scorched and will have to be replaced. They didn’t get inside the castle. No damage to the paintings in the gallery or any of the furnishings. The attack only lasted a short time and then they were gone. MacDuff notified the local police and Her Majesty’s Coast Guard, but Bohdan’s forces were gone before they caught up with the two yachts.” He was silent for an instant. “And we know what happened with the staff resident houses outside the gates.”
“Yes, we do.” She shivered. “The entire attack was terrible. My fault. I should never have been there.”
“Caleb doesn’t agree,” he said. “He’d staged an attack on one of Bohdan’s prime assets in Italy to lure him into a trap. He’s sure that triggered the strike on the property.”
“Of course he is. He’s mistaken. I could have said no. For that matter, I could have said no when he called me and told me how things had gone wrong in the Congo. I didn’t do it. I could have walked away. And I should have remembered that Felicity might be vulnerable. I keep thinking about her. Have you heard anything about the investigation?”
“No, but I’m sure MacDuff is questioning Nojer. We might know something soon.”
“Maybe. I made wrong choices. But I’m not the one who had to pay.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, you had to pay, too. You could have been killed.”
“But that was my choice. You can’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. For the most part I enjoyed being sent to the Run to fetch and carry for you.”
“Even Kilgoray?”
“I admit Kilgoray was a challenge. But that was even rather interesting. And I liked doing the Fiona research. Though I preferred digging deep on Farrell MacClaren. I found I could identify with him.”
“Digging deep? How deep?”
“Ah, I knew I could intrigue you. I told you that I was almost there before we left Jamie’s house. But thanks to Maisie bouncing me on my noggin, I had a little more time to loll around and make more phone calls.”
“It was the sniper, not Maisie to blame,” she said absently. “Almost there? What about MacClaren?”
“What about him? Which would you prefer? Sit up there in the mountains feeling sorry for yourself, or have me tell you about MacClaren’s adventures in America?”
“I’m not feeling sorry for myself, I’m feeling sorry that I couldn’t—” She broke off. “What are you up to, Rodland?”
“Obeying instructions. Caleb doesn’t like the idea of you being depressed. I’m supposed to distract. I thought this might do the trick.” He paused. “He’s frowning at me again, but I told him that he was to leave me alone if I was going to do this. He didn’t like that.”
“But I’m certain you liked saying it to him.”
“You take pleasure where you find it. Do you want to hear about MacClaren or not?”
“You know I do.”
He nodded. “Because you’re curious. Farrell MacClaren grew up on the border. He was a town boy; his father was an alcoholic, and his mother died when he was ten. He was always a brilliant artist from the time his mother gave him a pad and pencil when he was a toddler. But he was a wild kid and he spent most of his time roaming the countryside drawing and selling his work wherever he could. That’s where he met Fiona. She was the daughter of gentry and four years younger than he was. But she was as wild as MacClaren, and they found something in each other that they evidently could find nowhere else. They became friends.
“But when MacClaren was seventeen, he ran away from home and took passage on a ship to New York. When he reached there, he earned his living the way he’d earned it all his life. On the street corners and in bars sketching. He even started to paint and saw his work begin to come to life. But he couldn’t afford the paints and time it took so that led him to another adventure. He started to work for the railway. First in New York and Boston, but then he realized they were building railways all over America. Sometimes the pay was better if you went out west. He found it far more interesting. Cowboys, Indians, and gold miners, and buffalo…”
“And Cowboy Bob catching the dangerous train robbers,” she murmured.
“Yep, you got it. MacClaren started to do the illustrations for the dime novels. If you check the credits on that novel, it was written and illustrated by D. B. Ward. That was one of the first novels MacClaren wrote and illustrated. He sent a copy to Fiona as a present.”
“He kept in touch with her?”
“She was both family and friend to him. Neither of them could give up that tie. MacClaren traveled all over the West and had adventures and love affairs and did everything that young men dream of doing. He made his living doing the dime novels and occasionally he painted a portrait or landscape. But principally he was involved with life and learning how to best live it.” He shrugged. “And then he heard from his old friend Fiona about Jamie’s plans for her. Now, how could Cowboy Bob ever let that happen to the only family he’d ever known?”
“He came back to her?”
“And because they were both clever and determined, they managed to find a way to fool Jamie into hiring MacClaren to paint Fiona’s portrait. But somewhere along the way friendship became love and they had another problem to face when they realized that Jamie would never permit Fiona to break off with Graeme. He’d hunt her down no matter how long it took. What a conundrum.”
“And?”
