The Harlot (Taskill Witches 1)

When he got down there he found the place busy with land workers. Boisterous and red-faced, they had talk of rebellion on their lip

s as they conferred.

The curious excise man, Mister Grant, was also back from his daily visits and already seated at the counter. Gregor avoided him and his probing questions, and took a seat in a dark corner instead. He gestured for some ale. After the tankard had arrived, he remembered Jessie’s strange comment about Mister Grant preferring men in his bed.

It struck him oddly, because Mister Grant was indeed engaged in a somewhat surreptitious conversation with a dark-haired man, a fieldworker by the looks of him. As Gregor watched, Grant touched the other man’s hip, and they exchanged whispered comments.

It was not an unfamiliar sight to Gregor. His time at sea had proved that lust and indeed affection could develop in what most people would consider the most unlikely of circumstances. As an unworldly nineteen-year-old he had first witnessed two men in the act of mutual pleasuring and riding rump. Roused from his deep slumber by a sound different from the usual creaks and groans of the ship, he had cautiously opened one eye and caught sight of them.

One shipman had approached a fellow countryman in his hammock. At first Gregor had assumed they were engaged in some sort of fight, for it looked as if they were tussling, but soon after he realized it was a mutual exchange much more pleasurable. They had their hands down one another’s breeches. They grasped each other’s rigid cocks and worked them up and down, stopping occasionally to wet their palms with spit. That was a trick he himself had already learned, and it confirmed the true nature of the encounter. Quickly they both came off and then, to his utter astonishment, embraced. They did it gruffly, but as if they were man and wife.

During the exchange, one or two other slumbering souls lifted their heads to peer toward the noise, perhaps thinking it a rat, and then turned away, apparently not disturbed by this lewd act. Thus it was that Gregor had come to terms with such things. The following day he’d seen how the two men sought each other out, and then began to understand the ribald comments of the older men as they spoke about them.

The two men pleasured each other often, and another night as he lay on his side, half-asleep, Gregor caught sight of them again seeking each other out. This time they left their hammocks and withdrew to a corner where the light did not reach them, wherein one dropped to his hands and knees and bared his arse. Gregor had peered into the deep gloom where they had taken shelter, and witnessed the second man anoint his cock with spit and then drive it into the kneeling man’s arse. Both men appeared to gain a great deal of pleasure from the exchange, which involved a lot of grunting and heaving and slamming together of hip and arse with breeches hanging down around their knees. Gregor himself had grown stiff and was forced to toss off his own seed beneath his meager blanket.

He subsequently thought upon it at great length and was sure he did not wish to join them, but he felt a certain sense of envy and recognized that he wanted to find some outlet for his own lust. Thankfully, he was guided by some of the older men when they reached safe harbor. There he was introduced to whores aplenty and had his eyes opened to the world and its infinite array of provocative pastimes. The fairer sex was indeed his preference, and he sampled it as often as he could, bedding women at every port.

Thankfully, he’d gained more direction and had soon risen among the ranks of the men he worked with, due to his ability to read and to understand maps. Fisticuffs were a daily occurrence over matters trivial, and often enough it was a reaction to the small number of men who kept close company with their own sex. Some found it unholy, others threatening. The more sensible turned a blind eye.

Gregor had discovered that most men were prepared to defend their own preferences in matters pertaining to carnal gratification, but were all too quick to point a finger at others whose tastes did not align with their own. Tolerance in such matters was the more sensible option, and he’d learned that at a young age.

That same familiarity between men was reflected here in the staging inn in Fife, where the excise man and his companion exchanged secret touches before they drew apart and the younger man left. Jessie was right, or so it appeared, but how in God’s name did she know?

Gregor attempted to shrug it off, but that, among other questions about his unruly cohort, continued to haunt him. Jessie was a canny sort and that was why he’d pursued her. She was wily, sharp and observant, although sometimes she was so hotheaded she barely paused to think. How did she know Mister Grant preferred to bed a man than a woman? Remembering the way she had looked that morning, he mused again on the fact that she had gained entry to Balfour Hall with apparent ease. She’d said she had arranged it to be so. How?

Many things about Jessie were a mite odd, and now that he had a little distance from her and the task was under way, he could not to stop thinking about her and her curious ways. They called her a witch. They wanted to hang her for it. She certainly had a bewitching side, but that was not what they meant. Did she truly have some ability?

Moreover, why did thoughts of her fill his head? He had never kept such close quarters with a woman for such a sustained length of time. It must be familiarity that had brought about this unusual state of concern in him. For the past several days they had been apart only when he had gone about his business in the afternoons. She was present to greet him when he returned, and there was comfort in that. He’d found himself looking forward to the sight of her face while she gazed upon whatever trinkets he’d brought back for her.

That was why her absence felt so odd. It was the nature of the task, he told himself, because she was up there at Balfour Hall and he was not. They had agreed not to meet until the following night, and none of his questions would be answered before then. Soon thereafter, he gestured for a second draft of ale.

Gregor peered into his mug, brooding on what he had done. It ailed him so—even more than he’d thought it might—to have left her there at Wallace’s mercy. Recalling the way Ivor Wallace had been, Gregor felt his gut knot at the thought that Jessie was there, and he had made her go. No amount of reasoning made him feel any better, in fact quite the reverse. All he wanted to do was fetch her back.

“I want to do this,” she had stated as they parted. It was the money she desired. She was more sensible than he after their time together, or so it seemed.

“Excuse me, it is Mister Ramsay, is it not? Gregor Ram say?”

Gregor jolted in his seat. It was the excise man, the one Jessie had said was their neighbor.

The man smiled and took off his tricorne, straightening his wig as he did so. “I knew it was you. I recalled just today when I was riding past Craigduff. I saw your father’s old place up on the hill, and I thought, that is who it is, it is young Gregor Ramsay.”

“No,” Gregor stated, unprepared for an interrogation while he already had so much on his mind. “I do not believe I know you.”

The man frowned. “It was a long time ago, aye, and I am older than you. I grew up in Craigduff, but my aunt took me in when my parents passed on. She has the cottage next door to your cousin, Margaret Mackie. I remember you and your father, Hugh, well. He used to bring you round to visit Margaret when you were a lad.”

It was true. There was no denying that this man remembered him. And it was bad news, for Gregor did not want to be remembered in Craigduff—not yet, at any rate.

“I went away to work for the crown, when I had learned enough. I was sad to hear of your father’s demise on my return.”

Whether it was the mention of his father, or just because Gregor was tired of pretending, he did not want to deny it.

The excise man lifted his wig and rubbed his hand over his thinning blond hair. “I have less hair than you might remember.”

“Forgive me. I denied the truth merely because I do not wish to draw attention.” Mustering a suitable reason, he surprised himself by stating something that was actually the truth. “It is difficult for me when people mention my father.” It was. It struck him then how cruel he had been to Jessie when she had done so in good faith.

“I understand.” The excise man responded with a sympathetic glance.

“Please join me.” Gregor gestured at the seat opposite, for he sensed it was company the excise man wanted most of all, and some company might take his own mind off Jessie. It would do him good to pass an hour or two with another soul instead of brooding over what might be going on up at Balfour Hall.