Several twigs snapped inside the forest before Freya. Her heart jolted in her chest and her entire body went rigid, on alert - ready to fight. The cracking and snapping within the trees increased, like an army of soldiers heading her way.
Freya's breath panted between her lips. Sweat prickled her brow. Her body was cold and hot all at once.
She wouldn't run. She wouldn't turn her back for them to shoot her as she fled.
No, she would fight.
The bushes rustled.
Her heart galloped like a runaway beast, but she stayed in place. She would fight.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
A figure emerged from the bushes, a flail of white limbs and white hair flying wildly about a white face. The figure shrieked and ran toward her.
Confusion stunned Freya into place. This was no army. This was a wraith. The eyes were wide and haunted, the mouth gaping, eager to suck the soul from her body, the shriek high enough to puncture her ears.
Realization jarred Freya and the fear holding her still released her just as abruptly. This was not a wraith, it was a frightened old woman clad in a dirty shift.
Freya ran forward and caught the old woman as she pitched forward. She was like a bundle of dry sticks in Freya's arms, all skinny limbs and weighing near nothing.
“Help me.” The woman licked her cracking lips. “Help me.”
“Aye, I'm here,” Freya said. “Ye're safe.”
The woman's thin arms and gaunt face were covered in scratches. Her shift was torn in several places and once-fine lace trailed from the hem in tattered tendrils. Her face crumpled and sobs hiccupped from her throat. No tears though. She had clearly been too long without drink.
How many days had she been in the woods?
“They're all dead,” she moaned. “I should have stayed to help, but they insisted I run. I dinna know they would...I dinna know—”
“Ye're safe now.” Freya pulled her cloak from her own shoulders and ignored the bite of cold as she wrapped the woman in it. “Let's get ye some water and food, aye?” She helped the woman stand and held her skinny ribcage to offer her support.
“Thank ye, child.” The woman held onto Freya with the strength of a kitten. “I need to see my son,” she whispered. “He...he needs to know.”
Hope flickered through Freya. She'd been so stunned, so overwhelmed by the woman's survival, at the state of her, she hadn't even considered...
“Who is yer son?” she asked.
“Ewan Fraser,” said the woman Freya had been seeking. “Captain Ewan Fraser of the 42nd Black Watch Regiment.”
***
Ewan had never been so eager to enter a brothel.
Despite all his discipline and control, his hands trembled and his palms were slick with perspiration.
The note from Freya had said to come see her. Not that everything was well and good or that she was angry for having to venture into the country on his behalf.
She wanted him to see her.
Tessa was behind the bar, as usual. Her pretty smile wilted somewhat when she saw him.
A menacing stab pierced Ewan's heart and his knees went soft.
Tessa pointed to the office door mutely.
Sounds faded away, muffled as if plunged underwater. His heartbeat, however, echoed in his ears in heavy thumps.
He opened the door without knocking and found Madam Freya perched in a chair beside the hearth, staring into the flames. A whisky bottle sat on the desk before the uncomfortable chair he'd sat in before. Beside it was one glass.
“My mother.” He could barely speak the words.
Freya pulled her attention back to him. There was no playful coyness to her expression now, not even the glower of hatred. Her full lips were thinned with severity, her smooth brow puckered.
“Yer mother is safe,” Freya said slowly.
Relief buckled Ewan's knees and pulled free the rope of tension constricting the air from his chest. And yet...and yet there was more.
“But...” he pressed.
“Please sit,” she said.
“I dinna want to sit.”
She rose and met his gaze levelly. “Sit.”
He lowered himself to the chair. Freya closed the door, which he'd left open in his haste, and strode toward him. She pulled the top from the whisky with an audible pop and poured a sizable portion into the cup.
“Yer mother is safe,” she repeated. “But yer home is gone. It's been burned.”
Ewan stared at her for a long moment, his ears having heard but his mind still processing. “The servants?” he asked.
Freya lowered her eyes. “Dead.”
Ewan was glad then for the hard chair beneath him, for the support to hold him up as his world fell away.
Dead.
Their faces came to him, carried on the wings of fond memories from a sad childhood made brighter only because of their love. The cook who'd always seemed to know the hardest days and made them softer with special treats baked for him, his mother's lady's maid who had innocently flirted with him as a young man and bolstered his fledgling confidence, the steward who had pulled coins from his ears and soothed his mother's worries through all those uncertain years. The stable master who had filled in as a father after Ewan's own had been denounced and killed.
All dead.
Ewan stared forward, his body and mind numb, yet his heart was an explosion of blinding pain. It was almost worse having everything be so numb, so that he could feel the hurt in his chest that much more. “How?”
Freya was silent a beat too long. Ewan jerked his gaze up at her. “How?”
This time she met his stare. “Redcoats.”
Redcoats. The English.
The very men he worked with.
The hurt in his heart erupted into something blazing and far more powerful - rage.
Freya shifted closer, an action Ewan hardly registered. Her hand curled around his, soft and warm against the clammy chill of his own. She pushed something against his palm, something cool and slick.
A glass.
“Drink.” The command was quiet but firm.
Ever the soldier, he obeyed. He put the glass to his lips and swallowed the amber liquid in one large gulp. It burned down his throat, searing a path into his churning stomach.
Warmth started at the base of his neck and melted over him, bringing with it a sense of quiet.
“Where is my mother?” he asked.
“She's safe.”
“Where is she?” Unspoken threat edged his tone, but he didn't care.
Freya took the glass from him and filled it. This time, it was she who tossed it back with a single swallow. “She's with my family.” She pulled in a deep breath. “My mother has a healer who visits her regularly and can see to yer mother. My sister has a heart so kind, she makes nuns look wicked. Yer mother is safe and being cared for.”
Ewan's heart flinched. “My mother needs a healer?”
Freya filled the cup again and put it back in his hands. “She escaped the redcoats, but she remained in the forest for some time, we believe possibly a fortnight.”
Ewan sat with the glass forgotten in his hands. His mother, his delicate, frail mother with skin so thin the veins showed through, and a frame so slight a stiff wind could sweep her away - his mother had lived in the woods for a fortnight.
Her survival was nothing short of a miracle.
“I want to go to her,” Ewan said.