Hugo and the Maiden

kindly old man. “I’ll have my answer one way or another come morning.” He disappeared around the corner of the house.
“Fucking hell,” Hugo cursed under his breath. A favor? Just what did the old gimmer want from him? What could he want? Money? Hugo had already offered him that.
Hugo stared across the firth, the distant mainland visible under the partial moon. His mind played out his escape: he would row across—it was not far, two miles he’d heard a local say. It was a beautiful, calm night, so he’d have no problems. If the headland was as rugged as Stroma—and there was no reason to believe it wasn’t—the cliff faces would outnumber the beaches and it might take him a while to find a place to land the craft. And then he would begin his six-hundred-plus-mile walk to London.
Hugo groaned. It sounded like a bloody nightmare.
He stared at the silent, dark stone house. But what if the vicar was wrong? What if he couldn’tsave Hugo when the men came to take them?
He thought about Mr. Pringle’s eyes—they were faded and old and did not see clearly, but they’d held a degree of certainty Hugo did not think was feigned. If the vicar said he would set him free, the man would.
“Bloody hell,” Hugo grumbled. He glanced around and noticed that—while he’d been dithering—his sore, bleeding feet had already led him back to the meeting house.
It must be a dream. He, Hugo Buckingham, a man who never trusted a soul, would trust this ancient vicar he’d met not even five days ago?
“You’re a mad bastard, Hugo,” he whispered as he dropped onto the meeting house steps and removed his shoes before opening the heavy door on the right, wincing as it gave a low but audible groan.
Hugo barely took two steps into the darkness of the meeting house when his head exploded.

Chapter 9
As usual, Small Cailean was waiting outside the cottage door at dawn to carry the porridge out to the meeting house.
“Good morning, Cailean. Thank you for helping me today.”
Cailean gave him an abstracted smile, his thoughts obviously on the man who was currently occupying far too much time in both their thoughts.
Martha had woken up early that morning, determined that today she would not follow Hugo Higgenbotham around like a lost puppy.
He was a convicted criminal; he only flirted and teased her because she was female, not because he had any real interest in her; and he would be gone in less than two days.
So, those were three good reasons to avoid him.
Armed with her new resolve, she marched to the meeting house and then stopped abruptly. The cracked oar that she used to stir the laundry was jammed through both handles of the double doors.
“What in the world?” she muttered.
She turned to Small Cailean. “Why don’t you put that on the step,” she spoke in a gentle and calm tone even though the hairs on her neck prickled.
After they’d both put down their burdens, Small Cailean had to yank hard on the oar to free it.
“Will you wait for me over there?” Martha pointed to the corner of the building. “If anything happens, I want you to run as fast as you can to the village, all right?”
His face crumpled and his chin wobbled; Martha hated herself for frightening him. She laid a hand on his massive shoulder, which was trembling. “It will be all right, Cailean. Really. Go ahead,” she prodded, waiting until he was cowering beside the building before opening the door.
Martha didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the sight that greeted her.
◆◆◆
Hugo had been saying the same word for hours, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck …”
Except his mouth was stuffed with a rancid rag and he was gagged so it sounded more like: “Fuff, fuff, fuff, fuff …”
Here he was yet again, tied up and naked. Would the humiliation never end?
And the worst of it? It was all his fault. He should have ignored the vicar’s bloody conscience-twisting offer—since when did he have a conscience?—and just kept walking. The old man wouldn’t have stopped him, why hadn’t Hugo just stuck to his plan?
And he should have known Parker and Devlin were up to something. He would have known it if he’d not spent his time agonizing about robbing the islanders and sniffing around the vicar’s far-too-interesting daughter.
Hugo had to give Parker and Devlin credit; he’d not heard a sound before they fell on him in the darkness.
“Sorry to steal the togs right off your back, mate,” Devlin whispered in Hugo’s ear while Parker bound both his knees and his ankles together with his own bloody braided rope. “But I’m sure you know ’ow it is because I saw you eyeballin’ my boots these past few days.”
The man was correct; Hugo had considered stealing his boots but gave up the plan when he saw that Devlin slept with them on his feet.
Once they’d stripped and bound him, they laid him on the cool flagstone floor in front of his sleeping bench. “Don’t want you to fall off an ’urt yourself,” Devlin whispered.
After that, he heard them tie up Franks and the boy, Lorn, neither of whom put up a struggle. Hugo could only assume the other two would be similarly stripped and bound.
So, there they lay, just like three game cocks, stripped, plucked, and trussed.
He enjoyed the briefest of moments contemplating the expression on Miss Pringle’s face when she opened the door in the morning. But his amusement was short-lived. What if the men went into the vicar’s house and stole something?
Or worse, what if they did something?
Hugo squeezed his eyes shut against the images that crowded his head, his temples throbbing with impotent rage and no small amount of worry.
He didn’t know a damned thingabout Devlin or Parker—they could be forgers, or they could be murderers or rapists.
Don’t borrow trouble, the voice in his head advised, good advice for a change.
Besides, surely the men would be more interested in