After she took the payment and dropped it down the front of her bodice, she spat on her palm and offered it to him as a man might. Gregor shook her hand, gave her a slight bow and gestured along the path to get her moving.
At first she kept up with him, willingly.
Then they reached the kirk.
“Stop here a moment.” He still had to return the borrowed cassock. Glancing over the wall, he saw that no one had missed it. He clambered over the barrier and looked back at her. “Don’t even consider running off. Not unless you want to go back to the tollbooth.”
In four strides he crossed the vegetable garden, which was laden with crops, it being the height of summer, and then arranged the garment over the tree branch where he had found it and the hat hung out to air. Luck had been on his side when he’d sought the kirk earlier that night, for he hadn’t had to blackmail the housekeeper for a loan, as he had planned. As he returned the garments he left a few coins in a pocket, for the collection plate. Ducking down, he lifted his bundle from where he had left it, between the roots of the tree. When he got back to the wall he found his new cohort peering over the stacked stones with great curiosity.
“So this is where you got your costume.”
“It is. Can you think of a better place?”
She shrugged and then eyed the bundle he had retrieved.
“Stand clear,” he instructed. She moved away as he mounted the wall, but once he was on it she closed in again, stepping between his dangling legs. Settling her breasts against his thighs, she jiggled them, and then reached behind him to give his bundle a grope.
“As much as I am enjoying your attentions,” he commented, nodding down at where her breasts pressed upon his cock, “we have little time to waste. We must raise the ferryman. Once we cross the Tay we can travel faster. My mount is stabled outside the city walls at Saint Andrews.”
Still she stood there between his thighs, and seemed not to be listening. Apparently he was going to have to remind them both of their goal. He had hired her to lure his enemy and aid his downfall, not to dally with Gregor himself. He nodded at his bundle, pulling it from her grasp. “Let me save you some time. You will find nothing there worth stealing, my dear. Just a bunch of papers and a wizened apple.”
She jerked away as if annoyed.
“Some of your customers may be fools,” he commented as he dropped to the ground, “but I am not, and you would do well to remember that fact.” He grabbed her by the arm. “Come, let us leave before word of your escape is put about.”
When he began to march her off, she pulled away, standing her ground. “Wait. Where is it that we are going?”
“Fife.” He would give no more specific location than that, not until he knew he could trust her.
“Fife?” Her eyes rounded again.
“You’ll be hidden away from witch hunters and resting safely within a day,” he informed her, thinking it would put her mind at rest and hush her mouth. “I have lodgings some ten miles beyond Saint Andrews.” It was there that he had taken rooms at an isolated staging post on the way to Craigduff, the village where he had grown up. He had made himself comfortable partway between his enemy and the gateway to his life in the outside world, the harbor at Dundee, where his vessel, the Libertas, would come back to collect him in six months’ time.
“Ten miles beyond Saint Andrews,” Jessie repeated, frowning.
Perhaps she could not quite fathom that distance. He assumed she had never been out of Dundee, or if she had traveled about, knew little of assessing the distance covered. “We will be there by sundown tomorrow.”
She would be safe and out of public view, and he could prepare her for her task. For a moment he pictured her on the bed there and had to remind himself that she was not a distraction for his own pleasure, but a lure for his enemy. Gregor had no doubt he would have to remind himself often.
Still she stood her ground. “I thought perhaps we were Highlands bound, or at least heading to the north, when you took this road. Is that not the case?”
“No. It was only to return the borrowed garments.” He felt that might reassure her, but the news did not seem to please her, either.
“I only agreed because we were headed in this direction.” She had her hands on her hips now and once more looked as if she thought she had been duped.
“Jessica Taskill, you would do well to remember you owe me a rather large favor. I am at the mercy of the gallows now, too, since I have put myself at risk to rescue you.”
She glared at him, her mouth an angry pout.
Gregor’s patience had worn thin. “Consider this. You have no other option. You cannot go back to Dundee, not if you want to see another sunrise.”
Cursing aloud, she glared at him as if he had put her in this mess. “I will have to go back when this is done, for my savings are there. Everything I have earned this past year.”
“You will not need your savings after you undertake this task for me.”
“’Tis my money,” she shouted angrily. She appeared to want to vent her ire on him.
Gregor’s last thread of patience snapped. “To hell with you.”