Andrew stood up on one of the rocks, firing an imaginary rifle. “Take that, Butcher Cumberland. See what you get when you rile a Highlander.”
Sinclair left Bertie to climb to Andrew. “Don’t fall while you’re trying to fight the Battle of Culloden again. And keep in mind we lost, more’s the pity.”
“Wouldn’t have if I’d been there,” Andrew vowed. He made more shooting noises.
Cat rose from her seat, tucking away her notebook. “We should help father lure him down, or we’ll never get our tea,” Cat said, resigned. She took Bertie’s hand. “Can we go higher? I want to see.”
Bertie kept a firm hold of Cat’s hand as they climbed up to Andrew and Sinclair. The castle had been built on a rocky outcropping, giving the defenders a good view over the valley. They’d have seen attackers from miles away, and any opposing army would have been hard-pressed to reach it without harm.
The castle had fallen, so Daniel had told Bertie, not to attackers, but to bored English soldiers after the war with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and to time.
The black rocks were slippery. Andrew stood on a half-ruined wall, Sinclair holding the back of his jacket as Andrew shot at imaginary Englishmen.
Cat, next to Bertie, trod on a slab of loose stone, and lost her balance. Her foot went off the stone, her leg in its knit stocking and fashionable boot catching on a jagged rock below.
Bertie clung to her, and Cat scrambled for solid ground. She was almost up again when her other foot slipped on the snow, and Cat began to plunge downward.
With a cry, she grabbed desperately for Bertie. Bertie, heart pounding, seized Cat with both hands and pulled her to safety, but Cat lost hold of her doll.
The doll’s pink china face beamed its perpetual smile as it slipped over the black rocks, and fell, end over end, tumbling down, down, down, toward the jutting stones, gorse, and half-melted snow many feet below.
Chapter 24
A high-pitched keening sounded over the valley. Bertie jerked around, wondering what sort of creature could make such a noise, but the next instant, she realized it was Cat.
The little girl ripped herself from Bertie’s grasp and flung herself down on the stones, reaching desperately for the doll that continued to roll her merry way down the nearly vertical hill. The doll was battered from rock to rock, pieces of porcelain flying from her face to litter the hillside.The doll’s wild tumble came to a halt on a rock jutting over the cliff, where she lay like a dead thing, her arms and legs dangling over empty space.
Cat’s desperate keening wound into words. “Mama! Mama! Mama!”
Sinclair leapt back down toward them, carrying Andrew. “Cat. Sweetheart.”
Cat reached toward the doll, her empty hands opening and closing. “Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama! . . .” Her words choked her, the girl barely able to draw breath. “Mama . . .”
“Bleeding ’ell.” Bertie stripped off her hat and her coat, jammed her leather gloves more firmly over her fingers, and started scrambling down the tumble of boulders toward the limp body of the doll.
“Bertie!” Sinclair’s deep voice bellowed over the continuing cries of his daughter. “Get the hell back here! Bertie! . . .”
Bertie climbed down the rocks, hands and feet finding niches to steady her along. She knew she was mad to do it—one slip, and she was over the cliff, down the pretty hill to the rocks below. The view that had seemed so beautiful from the top would kill her.
“Mama! Mama . . .” Cat’s continued cries penetrated the silence, punctuated by another crack from the guns across the valley.
“I have to be daft,” Bertie muttered to herself as she sought the next solid rock with the toe of her boot. “I belong on city streets, I do, trying to make ends meet and keep meself out of trouble. What the blazes am I doing climbing down a mountain in Scotland to rescue a doll?”
Bertie knew, however, that she wouldn’t climb back up without it. If Cat had been any other little girl, an ordinary child Bertie didn’t know well, she’d have told Cat to sod the bloody thing and have her rich father buy her another.
But Bertie had come to know Cat in the last weeks, and she understood exactly what the doll was to her. Bertie’s mother’s locket swung against her skin inside her bodice—she knew good and well she’d be climbing down these rocks if she’d dropped it.
Not everyone had Bertie’s climbing skills either, honed from a childhood of getting herself up the sides of buildings and through tiny windows to let her father in a discreet side door. Her dad would never take very much during these jobs, just one or two things that might not be missed right away. By the time people realized they’d been robbed, they couldn’t be sure when it had been done or who’d been nearby at the time.
Bertie was a bit past those childhood days, however, and no longer as agile. It had taken everything she’d had to climb up the scaffolding after Cat and Andrew the first day she’d met them. This going was harder, and the rocks seemed determined to cut her hands, the damp to make her slip.
Almost there. At the top of the hill, Cat continued to cry frantically; Sinclair was cursing, his hands full with keeping Andrew from climbing after Bertie.
The doll hung face downward, its pretty silk dress caught on a rock, which was why it had ceased its tumbling. Bertie had to inch her way toward it, holding hard to stones that cut her gloves. She knew she’d never climb out onto the jutting rock—she’d have to hang on here, and reach . . .