The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [184]
She shrugged, exasperated. “Why are you standing here? You’ve got to go after them!”
“Me? Why, for God’s sake?”
“Because you can ride fast! And because you’re big enough to make her bloody come back with you! And you can keep it quiet!”
When he did not move at once, she stamped her foot. “Are you deaf? You have to go now! If he takes her maidenhead, she’s stuffed more ways than one. The bugger’s got a wife already.”
“What? A wife?”
“Will you stop saying ‘What’ like a bloody parrot?” she snapped. “Yes! He married a girl in Perthshire, five or six years back. She left him and went back to her parents, and he came to Derwentwater. I heard it from—well, never bloody mind! Just—just—go!”
“But you—”
“I’ll manage! GO!” she bellowed, her face scarlet in the glare of the sinking sun.
He went.
HIS FIRST IMPULSE was to go back to the house, to the main stable. But that would take too long—and embroil him in awkward explanations that would not only delay his leaving but rouse the whole household.
“And you can keep it quiet,” Betty had said.
“Aye, fat chance,” he muttered, half-running for the barn. But if there was any chance of keeping this from becoming an open scandal, he had to admit that it probably lay with him, little as he liked it.
There was no possibility of pursuing Wilberforce on one of the farm horses, even were they not knackered from the day’s work. But there were two fine mules, Whitey and Mike, who were kept to draw the hay wagon. They were broken to the saddle, at least, and had spent the day in pasture. He might just …
By the time he’d reached this point in his thoughts, he was already rifling through the tack in search of a snaffle and, ten minutes later, was mounted on a surprised and affronted Whitey, trotting toward the road, the three stable-hands staring after them with their mouths hanging open. He saw Betty in the distance, limping toward the house, her entire figure emanating indignation.
He felt no small amount of this emotion himself. His impulse was to think that Isobel had made her bed and could lie in it—but, after all, she was very young and knew nothing of men, let alone a scoundrel like Wilberforce.
And she would indeed be stuffed, as Betty inelegantly put it, once Wilberforce had taken her maidenhead. Quite simply, her life would be ruined. And her family would be badly damaged—more damaged. They’d lost two of their three children already.
He pressed his lips tight. He supposed he owed it to Geneva Dunsany and her parents to save her little sister.
He wished he had thought to tell Betty to seek out Lord John and let him know what was to do—but it was too late for that, and he couldn’t have waited for Grey to come, in any case. The sun had sunk below the trees now, though the sky remained light; he’d have an hour, maybe, before full dark. He might reach the coaching road in that time.
If Wilberforce meant to reach Gretna Green, just over the Scottish border, where he could marry Isobel without the consent of her parents—and without anything in the way of questions asked—he must be taking the coaching road that led from London to Edinburgh. This passed within a few miles of Helwater. And it had inns along the way.
Not even an eloping scoundrel would try to drive a gig all the way to Gretna at night. They’d have to stop overnight and go on in the morning.
He might catch them in time.
IT WAS A GOOD deal safer to ride a mule in the dark than to drive a gig, but still nothing a sane man would want to do. He was shivering—and not entirely from the cold, though he was wearing only a leather jerkin over his shirt—and cursing in a manner that would have outdone Betty, by the time he saw the lights of the first posthouse.
He gave the mule to an ostler to water, asking as he did whether a gig had stopped, with a well-dressed man and a young woman in it?
It had not, though the ostler had seen such a conveyance go by, just before dark, and thought the driver an idiot.
“Aye,” Jamie said briefly.