If they were stopped and searched the pistols beneath his dress would give the game away. But he had refused to leave the house without them, coming so close to an inconvenient fit of rage that Flora at last acceded to his demand. She could only suppose that if he were searched thoroughly enough to reveal the pistols the fraud would be revealed in any event. She glanced around, her saddle creaking.
Campbell and Scott walked several paces behind, wearing Donald's and her stepfather's cast-off clothes covered by loose plaids. She had told them more than once to walk proudly, as members of the clan, not humbly, prepared at any moment to knuckle their foreheads. Still the young men slouched along in the manner that they no doubt expected of their own tenants.
Flora looked ahead. There, the Cuillins were appearing through the murk. Their dark stone seemed more storm cloud than rock, save for the line of razor-edged peaks which etched the sullen sky.
Below the mountains lay Loch Eishort. And yes, thank the Good Lord, an English ship rose and fell to slow leaden surge of the waves. From a mast fluttered the Union Jack, the emblem created by combining England's flag with those of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland-the latter as much a thorn in the English side as Scotland itself. Now, Flora wondered, would the Scottish saltire be removed from the brave red, white, and blue banner?
The party made its way down a steep, muddy slope to a rocky beach. The horse slipped and scrambled. So did Cumberland. At one sloppy patch he went sprawling, his skirts riding up to his plump, breeks-clad thighs. Cursing, he gained the beach, splashed through a tidal pool, and clambered upon a rock. His emphatic gestures earned no response from the ship's crew, although Flora caught the dull gleam of a telescope trained upon them from the quarterdeck.
Campbell and Scott waved their plaids up and down. Cumberland hitched up cloak and dress, produced a pistol, and fired it into the air.
Flora's horse started at the sudden report. She reined him in and peered toward the ship, hoping that the men's actions would not be interpreted as provincial insolence and thereby attract a cannonade.
Many men were now gazing over the ship's gunwales. Officers gestured. Sailors lowered a boat. Others pointed weapons toward the shore.
"You have returned to your own," Flora told the duke. "I shall take my leave."
Captain Campbell stepped forward with a bow. "Please make our compliments to all those to whom we have given trouble."
"Indeed," added Lieutenant Scott, with a bow of his own.
Cumberland laid his meaty hand on Flora's knee. His wig had been left behind, and his hair hung lank around his face. His eyes, half concealed in folds of flesh, gleamed up at her. "If you should happen to find yourself in London, Miss MacDonald, I should provide you with a small establishment of your own and as fine an assortment of gowns as any female could wish."
She opened her mouth to offer a polite response, realized just what he was offering, and shut it again. A tug on the reins and she was free of his presumptuous hand, with the bonus that her horse's hoof pressed Cumberland's foot into the sand-not, alas, against a rock. He jerked back with a vicious oath.
"You are very welcome," she said to the other officers, and to the Duke of Cumberland she said, "I hope, Your Grace, that you will never find cause to appear in this part of the world again."
"God forbid, woman, God forbid."
Amen, Flora added to herself.
He turned toward the approaching boat, favoring his foot, but shook away Campbell's supportive hand. Ripping off his outer clothing, the duke stamped them in disgust into the sand and seaweed. No hope of returning the dress to Betty, then.
Flora urged her horse toward the path. Behind her she heard the boat's keel scrape against the sand, and the voices of Campbell and Scott identifying themselves and their superior. In return came the greetings of the ship's officer, and then something she had not expected to hear at all, laughter, quickly shouted down.
She gained the top of the hill, prodded her horse into a trot, and did not look back.
Armadale, Isle of Skye, April 20, 1746
Her mother greeted Flora at the door, the candle in her hand guttering in the wind. "Come sit yourself down by the fire. I'll tell Betty to bring bread, cheese, and porter."
In the parlor Flora found Allan waiting. Politely he stood up and offered her his chair. She folded her aching limbs into it and extended her icy hands toward the fire burning hot and fragrant above the stack of peats.
"I'm pleased to see you returned safely," he said.
"I fell in with a troop of MacLeods, and they escorted me home."
"Our-guest is now safely aboard ship?"
"Aye. He is that."
"And not grateful for our help, I daresay."
"Not especially." She did not tell Allan about the duke's last offer, or else her cousin would have hunted him down and shot him where he stood. "And you? I trust you slept well?"
"Much too well. When I awoke the dawn was past. But when I hurried to make my appointment on the field of honor I found the door locked. Your mother would only open it when I gave her my word not to follow you." Allan shook his head. "There was no need to lock me in, Flora. If Cumberland chose to flee this battle, just as he fled the battle at the Spey, it is no reflection upon me."
"Very true."
"However, it would be better if we never told anyone that part of the story."
Flora considered the leaping flames reflected in Allan's eyes. Please God he would never realize that her entire plan had been intended to protect him from himself, even to denying his rank to the duke and his men. If she could hardly bear to see her dashing cousin humiliated, neither could she tolerate his anger. And he would be irrational enough to be angry, not grateful. "I shall never speak a word of it. Although I daresay no one will have enough interest in the story for me to speak at all."
"Like as not," Allan conceded. "Cumberland, I suppose, will return to the war on the Continent. A pity he proved unsuccessful in performing the task for which he was recalled to Britain. An enemy on its northern border will distract England from its task in Europe, to quell the power of France. But that need not concern us." Allan laid his fingertips gently on side of her face. "Now, Flora, I have been speaking with your mother…"
She leaned into his touch with a sigh as much resigned as relaxed. In time she would marry him. He was quite the handsome fellow, with ample charm of manner and speech. But, more important, he needed her.
From James Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Kingdom of Scotland with Samuel Johnson:
Isle of Skye; September 13, 1773.
Last night's jovial bout disturbed me somewhat, but not long. The room where we lay was a room indeed. Each bed had tartan curtains, and Mr. Johnson's was the very bed in which the duke was to have lain in Armadale, but which he abandoned in his flight.
At breakfast we spoke to Miss Flora of her acclamation in Edinburgh, where the prince jested with her, chiding her for helping his enemy. She told him, she said, that she would have done the same thing for him had she found him in distress.
It was not the escape that had destroyed Cumberland's reputation, Mr. Johnson opined, but his abandonment of the field, both at the Spey and at Armadale, where the field was but a village wedding. And his appearance before his sailors attired in women's clothing had only added insult to eclipse. " 'Billy the Lily' Cumberland," said he with a chuckle. "I hear that during his retirement in Bath, where he confined his strategizing to the game of whist, wags were given to presenting him with lilies. He would then rant and rain curses down upon all present, until he was at last carried away by a burst blood vessel."