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Jane finished packing up and was settling in the passenger seat of the Range Rover when Rodland opened the driver’s door. “All finished,” he said. “I turned Jocko over to Caleb, who looks as depressingly dashing as Zorro, or maybe some desert sheikh on his favorite Arab stallion. It isn’t fair, you know. I never looked like that on Maisie. I guess there’s something to say about horses, though.” He waved as Caleb passed them on Jocko. “See what I mean?”
She did, and it was causing her to experience a sudden vivid physical memory of what had happened at the lake this morning. Dressed in jeans, with the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to the elbow, Caleb did look lean and tough and vibrantly sensual. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have looked nearly as good on Maisie, either,” she told Rodland soothingly. Then she frowned. “He’s going on ahead?”
“He said that he wanted to check out the woods to make sure they’re safe for you.”
“From snipers? He’s the one who’s vulnerable. He could be picked off with no problem. We have all this metal around us.”
“Well, I don’t think we should worry. He knows what he’s doing. He’ll see them before they see him. He managed to take down that general’s bodyguards as well as the bastard himself before he escaped Bohdan’s army.”
“I don’t care, I do worry. And he promised me that he would—” But he probably thought he had nullified that promise when he’d talked to her earlier today. No way. “I have to talk to him.”
“I suggest that you wait until these woods start thinning out before you start in pursuit. We might get in the way,” Rodland said. “Just in case I’m wrong about Caleb.”
“You’re probably not,” Jane said. “I remember that most of the threat of attack should be over by the time we approach the road. That should be time enough for me to call him.” She added grimly, “Unless he’s dead.”
He gave a low whistle. “There’s always that possibility. You don’t mind if I opt out of any discussion you have with Caleb?”
“Why should I? You’re not worried. He’s not worried.” She leaned back in her seat. “And I’m going to try to follow your example. Until I see him. Didn’t you say that Caleb wanted you to entertain me by telling me the rest of MacClaren’s story? He’s so good with plans that I think you should just go along with it.”
“Are you certain?” he asked warily. “I don’t believe you’re in the mood.”
“You’d be wrong. I want MacClaren’s story to be happy and successful and hopefully brimful of ways to sting the bad guys.” She paused. “As long as it includes Fiona in a way that has meaning and doesn’t leave her to trail after MacClaren like a lost puppy dog.”
“Some of it you’ll have to judge for yourself. You have the letter. I can only tell you what I know about MacClaren.”
“And the last thing I heard was that he’d talked Jamie into letting him paint Fiona’s portrait. But the chance of Jamie letting her have anything to do with him other than that was nil. True?”
He nodded. “She was gentry. He was a penniless artist. So they had to find a way to work around it. Not easy during that period. They decided to play a waiting game. Jamie wanted that portrait, and he didn’t know much about the artistic process. So MacClaren showed some of the razzmatazz he’d learned while he was in America and pretended that the portrait wouldn’t be any good if he didn’t take a long time to create it. That gave him and Fiona months together, and as long as they played it cool, Jamie wouldn’t object. But money became a problem, and since MacClaren was doing Fiona’s portrait for a pittance, he told Jamie he’d contracted to do murals for the railway to make ends meet. That gave them the opportunity to go up to the hills and stall even longer while he painted the murals. Graeme was in Europe on an extended business trip, and Jamie suspected nothing. It was a good time for them. Fiona even managed to go to the rail yards with him once when he officially turned over the murals to the owners of the company. But the good times ran out and they couldn’t stall any longer. Other clients of the railway were trying to hire MacClaren to paint similar works for them.” He shrugged. “And Jamie wanted his portrait. He needed money and Graeme, Fiona’s fiancé, was due to come back from Paris. He planned on showing him the portrait and then making the final wedding arrangements to clinch his deal with him.”
“They were in a corner,” Jane murmured.
“Not yet. But they could see it coming. They were already making plans, and MacClaren had started to look for ways that they could be together. But every way was going to be dangerous for Fiona if anyone knew that MacClaren was part of those plans. She was a woman in a man’s world, and Jamie had total control of her. And he had enough power as the laird’s brother to arrange for an accident to happen to anyone who got in his way if he chose. That put both of them in actual danger.”
“But you can’t tell me that either of them would let themselves tolerate that kind of treatment,” Jane said. “They’d fight back. She’d been fighting all her life, and so had he. It might have been in different ways, even in different hemispheres, but now that they’d come together again, they’d fight together.”
“It seems you’ve decided to write your own story,” Rodland said with amusement. “You don’t mind if I chime in?”
“If you can give them something to work with. I’ve not been happy with all this male-dominance crap.”
“Well, it was more subterfuge than outright battle, but it worked for them. Not that you’ll approve.” He glanced slyly at her. “MacClaren finished the portrait, and it was a great success. He took the agreed fee from Jamie and then booked passage to go back to America. He was gone a week later.”
“No,” Jane said definitively.
“Yes. I tried to tell you that it was a different time and mind-set. He settled in Buffalo, New York. But after a few weeks he got restless and moved to Denver, Colorado. That was the last place where he could be traced. Though there were rumors he might have gone on to Sacramento, California.”
“And you’re saying he just left Fiona in the lurch and went back to wandering the frontier?”
“What else could the poor lad do? Fiona was betrothed the week Jamie and Graeme got together after he returned to Scotland. Everyone said she appeared perfectly contented and was charming to Graeme. The nuptials were arranged to take place six months later. Graeme was completely happy with the arrangement because he became besotted with Fiona. He couldn’t believe it when she disappeared. He was the one who wouldn’t give up looking for her. He was totally humiliated that she’d jilted him, and at one time he even paid a visit to America on the wild chance that MacClaren had something to do with her disappearance.”
“Wild chance? He didn’t find her?”
“Not as far as anyone knew. Graeme had an unfortunate fall from a train crossing over a bridge in the northwest territory of Montana. No one knew how it happened. He never made it back to Scotland.”
“And he didn’t locate MacClaren?”
“Didn’t I mention no one heard from him after Denver? Why would he be in Montana?”
“You tell me.”
