The fortune-teller’s tent, fully enclosed in bright red fabric, lay a few yards to the right of the jumble sale table. People lined up outside the tent, ducking in one at a time to have Juliana read their palms for a penny.
It was a fine idea, that tent. Elliot would like nothing better than to slip inside, pull the curtains closed against the world, and shut out all but himself and his beautiful wife.
Something cold and wet touched his palm. Elliot looked down at the red setter, who thumped her tail and grinned hopefully up at him.
“No scones here,” he said. “Sorry.”
He scratched her head. McPherson was generous to give him the dog, or at least let her live with them for the time. Elliot had decided to call her Rosie.
“How much is the pig?” a small voice asked.
Elliot looked down to see a girl child, her red hair as bright as Rosie’s, staring up, wide-eyed, at Elliot, who towered over her.
What must she see? A huge man with close-cropped light hair, a hard face, and eyes like winter ice. Couldn’t be a very pleasant thing for a child. Priti didn’t mind Elliot, but Priti was used to him, and his daughter was worryingly fearless.
Elliot came around the table and crouched down to put himself at the girl’s eye level. Giants weren’t as frightening face-to-face.
Elliot lifted the little porcelain pig from the table. “This one? For you, nothing. Consider it a gift from Mrs. McBride.”
The little girl shook her head decidedly. “No, me mum says I have to pay for it. It’s for the church roof.”
Elliot recognized Highland strength in her eyes—she was afraid of Elliot the tall McBride, but she would have her pig and contribute to the church roof, damn anything in her way.
“How much do you have?” Elliot asked her.
The girl opened a rather dirty palm with two coins on it. Elliot took one of them.
“A farthing for a pig. A perfect price.”
He deposited the pig into the girl’s hands. Satisfied, she gave him a big smile, turned around, and scurried back to her mother.
“Ye have the touch, ye do,” a male voice said.
Elliot rose to his feet and faced the grin of his sister’s stepson, Daniel Mackenzie.
Daniel was eighteen, broad and tall like his father, though he hadn’t quite grown into the massive man Lord Cameron was. Daniel’s body was still a little lanky, but in a few years’ time, the son would closely resemble the father.
“I used to have the touch,” Elliot corrected him. He rearranged a few things on the table to fill in the gap where the pig had been.
“I’d say ye still did. Ye’ve been recruited then?”
“Commanded. Got used to it in the army.”
“No general can compete with our ladies, though, can they?”
“I’ve never met one who could.”
Daniel’s grin widened. He resembled his father, yes, but he didn’t have the darkness in his whiskey-colored eyes that Cameron once had, a darkness that had been driven away by Ainsley. Elliot still saw the shadows in Cameron but not in Daniel.
But then, Daniel was young, and life hadn’t thrown tragedy at him yet. Elliot had been much the same at eighteen.
Daniel looked over the collection of knitted pen wipers, doilies, an odd assortment of porcelain figurines, a clock that had stopped working, books without spines, and whatever other things people had found in their attics and contributed to the cause.
Daniel lifted the clock and looked at it with a practiced eye. “Ye have your work cut out for ye.”
“Mrs. McBride will want it all gone.”
“I’ll take this off your hands at any rate.” Daniel peered inside the clock. “I always need spare parts.”
“For clocks?”
“For whatever gadget I’m trying to put together. I’m an inventor. I already have a patent on a new pulley system for trams.”
A sharp mind. Elliot’s mind at eighteen had been filled with visions of glory in the regiment, of conquering a nation, of the praise of a beautiful woman when he finished.
“Five shillings for it,” Daniel said, digging into his pocket and dropping the coins in the money box. He shrugged at his extravagance. “It’s for the church roof, I’m told.”
“I thank you,” Elliot said gravely. “My wife thanks you. The church roof thanks you.”
Daniel chuckled then studied Elliot with the same scrutiny he’d given the clock. “How is married life, eh? Ainsley said she’s relieved you’ve got someone to look after you.”
“Did she? But my sister enjoys playing nursemaid.”
“Aye, she does. She’s me mum now, and is good at it. I like to call her Mum in front of people. It makes her wild.”
Ainsley was only eleven years older than Daniel. Elliot shared a grin with him.
He glanced again at the fortune-teller’s tent, where lads from the village were waiting for the lovely Juliana to run her fingers over their palms, and his grin vanished.
“Daniel,” he said. “Help me shift this lot.”
Daniel followed his gaze to the tent. “Aye, Mrs. McBride is doing well in there. Promised me all kinds of riches and beautiful women. She’s got the touch too.”
“We’ll sell everything on this damned table,” Elliot said. “The minister will die of happiness.” And then Elliot could go into the fortune-teller’s tent and kick out the eager crofters’ sons.
“The fair Juliana might kiss us,” Daniel said. “Me on the cheek, of course, like a good auntie.”
“Shut it, and sell things,” Elliot growled.
Daniel joined him behind the table. For the next hour, the two of them held up objects and, like the best hawkers in Covent Garden, cajoled people to come and buy them. Daniel was good at it, and Elliot lost the avoidance of people he’d had since his imprisonment and remembered what it was to be young and brash.
“A pen wiper, dear lady,” Daniel said, holding up a round piece of knitting for a woman with a basket on her arm. “Why not two, or three? Ye have more than one pen, surely.”
“A glass vase, lad,” Elliot said to a young man. “To put wildflowers in for your lady. Ye can barely see the crack here. Ye fill this with flowers from yon meadow, and she’ll be baking ye oatcakes in no time.”
The table quickly became popular, the villagers drawn to Daniel’s and Elliot’s outrageous style. The ladies, in particular, flocked to them, blushing under Daniel’s blatant flirtation.
The contents dwindled, and the tin box for the money filled up. When Elliot and Daniel were down to the last two or three items, they decided to hold an auction. They sold an old bonnet for thirty shillings, the most dismally cracked porcelain vase for twenty, and a pair of misshapen antimacassars for a guinea. Daniel raised his hands at the end.
“We’re all done, ladies, thank you! And the minister thanks you.”
“Yes, very well done, brother dear.” Ainsley came out of the crowd, her little girl, Gavina, on her arm. She kissed Elliot’s cheek. “Juliana will be pleased.”
“’Tis what he’s hoping.” Daniel chortled.
Elliot secured the lid on the box of coins and handed it to Ainsley. “The villagers were generous.”
“Of course they were. Two handsome Highlanders in kilts begging the ladies to give them their coin? They could not resist. You wouldn’t even have had to give them the things. Which, by the way, they’ll simply bring back to contribute to next year’s jumble sale.”
“Och,” Daniel said in dismay. “I might go to America instead.”
“If I’m recruited, you are too, lad,” Elliot warned. He gave Daniel a thump on the shoulder, left the table, and headed for the fortune-teller’s tent.
No one was waiting outside it at the moment—the villagers had all collected at the jumble sale table and hadn’t drifted back to the tent yet.