Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(96)

“Funeral, milord.”

“Funeral? Whose funeral, then?”

“The traitor, milord.”

“What traitor?”

“Donna rightly know. The chief said I was to fetch you.”

“I am fetched. Take me to him,” Duncan said, and signaled his men to remain with the boat.

He followed the lad down a wooded path, then up a hill to a small chapel. There were several people gathered there in the adjoining cemetery, and as they neared them, Duncan could hear a woman sobbing and wailing, unnecessarily loud, “Me poor Davy!”

MacColl was the first to greet him, striding down the path, his expression grim. “I beg your pardon, milord, that you should come at this inopportune time.”

“What’s so inopportune, then?” Duncan asked, squinting at the people gathered around what he presumed was a grave. “Who has died?”

“Aye, well, there was a traitor among us, Davy Livingstone, but he is no more.”

“Davy,” Duncan repeated. “I donna know a Davy.” Not that he knew many of the Livingstones, useless lot that they were.

“Aye, no, you’d no’. He was no’ a friendly lad,” MacColl said. “But he was a devious one, as it happens. You were right, laird, you were. Bernt was making whisky, and Davy stole it right out from under him, he did.”

Duncan blinked. “What?”

“He betrayed them all, the Livingstones,” MacColl said darkly. “Stole their ship, their whisky, their chief, then fired on the royal ship. Aye, well, he came home to roost, that he did, and without Bernt. Bernt is gone, milord. But justice has been served.”

“What?” Duncan all but shouted. He was shocked that his instincts about Bernt Livingstone had been right. What did it mean, gone? Would he have the bounty for having found the thief? And what of the praise his uncle, chief of all the Campbells in these hills, would heap on him? Duncan could well imagine the look on Roy’s face, who did not believe Duncan would find any stills. But how in bloody hell was he to present his uncle with a dead man?

“Aye, no one is as shocked as his kin,” MacColl said low. “We’d never have guessed it, no’ a one of us, but it was wee Davy Livingstone.”

Duncan was dumbfounded.

“Ah, you’ve come just in time, laird, that you have.”

Duncan turned around—it was Duff MacGuire, the actor. Duff handed him a dram of whisky.

“What’s this?” he asked, and looked around Duff. That was when he noticed the rough-hewn coffin, the freshly dug grave. He moved closer...and noticed the distinct smell coming from the coffin, too. That was death if ever he’d smelled it. Granted, he’d never smelled death, but that scent turned his stomach.

“To Bernt Livingstone,” Duff announced. “Recently departed but forever in our thoughts.” He lifted his cup. “Seems fitting we drink the whisky that ended Bernt’s life, aye? To Bernt!”

“To Bernt!” the rest of them shouted, and drank. And then the sobbing commenced again.

“What in hell has happened here!” Duncan demanded, and whipped around to MacColl. “If there are two dead men, I see only one grave. Is it Bernt Livingstone you bury?”

“No, milord. Bernt was lost at sea. This is Davy Livingstone, who met justice for his crime,” MacColl said, looking surprised by his outburst. “We had no choice, did we? He stole from his clan, he mutinied against his chief.”

“I donna understand,” Duncan said. “How?”

“Aye, it’s true, laird,” said a tall, lanky man. “’Twas my ship he stole, took it with the blackguards he’d rounded up in Oban. A mutiny it was!”

“Mutiny?” Duncan’s head was beginning to spin.

“Aye,” said Mr. MacLean, the accountant. “He tricked our Bernt, he did. I beg your pardon laird, I’d no’ speak ill of the dead, but you know verra well, I suspect, that Bernt could be a wee bit...overtrusting?”

“Aye,” Duncan readily agreed. A fool that man was.

“Davy tricked him, convinced the old man that he might sell his ill-begotten spirits in Oban. In the dead of night, they took Gilroy’s ship,” he said, pointing at the tall, lanky fellow, “and loaded the wee bit of whisky Bernt had made in the stills, aye? And set sail for Oban.”

“Oban,” Duncan said.

“But Oban was no’ his true destination,” Duff said. “He and his lads took the ship out to sea, bound for Denmark, and there they fired on a naval ship, lost Bernt and watched that old bucket sink.”

“No’ an old bucket,” Gilroy muttered.

“Came limping home, he did, with naugh’ to show for his thievery.”

“And the stills?” Duncan asked.

“Destroyed, milord. After what happened, it seemed fitting.”

Duncan suspected a trick. He’d never found the bloody stills, so how could he be certain they were gone? He couldn’t. This sounded like a fantastic scheme Bernt Livingstone would concoct to avoid paying his rents. “How is it that I’ve never heard of Davy Livingstone, then?” he asked, eying them warily.

“Never around much, that one. Liked the public house in Oban. None of us knew him well enough to know he’d forged a bad agreement with Anders Iversen. None of us could have guessed he was bound for Denmark.”