Page 69 of A Scot on the Rocks

Jamie pointed toward the lower road, where a stone bridge crossed the burn beside two cottages.

“Excisemen favor roads, bridges, gates, and anything that forces people through a narrow place. That way they can watch more ground with fewer men.”

“Robertson in particular,” Jamie added, following the bridge with his gaze. “He’s begun putting his men where he thinks I’ll go rather than where anyone with sense would go. A tiresome improvement in his character.”

“Robertson?”

“An excise officer who’d gladly put my head above his mantel if the king would permit it. He once searched a cart of turnips because I was standing beside it.”

“Were you smuggling anything?”

“Turnips. Sixteen of them, if I recall. He counted twice.”

She laughed, but Jamie kept his attention on the road a moment longer. Robertson had been at the bridge twice this fortnight and had spoken to men who ordinarily escaped the Crown’s notice. Jamie didn’t mind being pursued, he’d chosen his trade knowing the risks. He minded a clever officer learning the names of men who depended upon him.

She followed the road with her eyes, then looked toward a narrow hollow that ran beneath a broken wall farther up the slope.

“That route.”

He looked to where she was pointing. “What about it?”

“You use that path.”

Olivia nodded toward the grass. “Something heavier than sheep has been moving through there. See the worn line along the wall?”

Jamie followed her gaze. The mark was faint, broken in places by longer grass, though once she pointed it out, he saw the flattening.

Then she added, “And you keep looking at it.”

He sat back. “I do not.”

“You do.”

Did he? “How often?”

“Three times since we stopped.”

He looked back toward the hollow and realized, with some annoyance, that she was right.

“How did ye notice that?”

“I grew up in a pub.”

Jamie waited to see what else she might tell him of her life.

“People check whatever they’re trying to hide. Men sneaking liquor looked toward the bottle whenever Grandma came near. Card cheats watched the pocket holding an extra card. People who owed her money kept looking at the door.”

“And ye noticed all that while ye were a wee lass?”

“I was doing my schoolwork behind the bar. You watch people when they’re more interesting than math.”

Jamie laughed softly and looked toward the route again.

She pointed higher on the slope toward an abandoned sheep fold nearly lost among the heather and tumbled stone.

“What about there?”

“For what?”