Urging her mount up the slippery mud path to the castle, Tess’s distress continued to grow. Lady Evelyn had always complained of her husband and her life in the Highlands, and yet this seemed infinitely worse.
There was so much of her mother that she needed to understand.
“Please stay close to me until we at least see Lady Evelyn.”
Colin obviously shared her concern. Tess nodded to him and continued up the short hill to the drawbridge spanning the pit that surrounded the castle wall.
Inside the walls of the old fortress, she peered about nervously at what looked to be dozens of armed Burnetts standing guard. Despite the rain, torches had been lit and the smoky fires filled the confines of the small courtyard. Tess suddenly felt smothered.
A set of wooden steps led from the muddy courtyard to the main entrance of the keep, and she and Colin brought their horses to a halt near it.
“I believe we have arrived.” Colin said brightly, obviously trying to ease the tension. Tess didn’t miss the way his sword sat loosely on his back, though, or the way the daggers at his belt and in his boot were close at hand. She knew, however, that there was not much the handful of them could do against this army of men. She placed her hands on his shoulders as he helped her down from the horse. Her feet sank up to her ankles in the mud.
Colin must have seen her first, and Tess followed the direction of his gaze. The willowy woman stood just under the overhang of the main entrance, her hands folded tightly at her waist.
A feeling of joy rushed through Tess. Eleven years of separation meant nothing, and she was once again a young child hungry for her mother’s affection…and for her approval. Tess forced herself to be dignified, though, and she started toward the steps.
Despite the mantle of fur around her shoulders, Lady Evelyn was still as thin as Tess remembered her. She couldn’t see her mother’s eyes or the expression on her face. She had to hold a hand above her face to block the rain to continue looking up at her mother.
“Welcome, Theresa Catherine. So you have finally come.” Something in the woman’s tone made Tess pause before taking the first step. It lacked any hint of joy, and there was a waver in it that made Tess think that perhaps she was afraid. But afraid of what? Of Colin? Of Tess herself?
She stood for a moment and stared up at the woman and then glanced at Colin, who was still waiting to be recognized.
“What are you waiting for? You will come into the Hall.” Without waiting for them, Evelyn turned and disappeared through the door.
Disappointment slapped Tess across the face. The happiness of a moment ago soured in her throat.
“Let’s go inside.” Colin murmured in her ear. Taking her by the arm, he encouraged her up the steps.
A spiral stairwell inside took them up to the Great Hall of Ninestane Castle. It was a high, wood-paneled chamber with a great fire burning in a fireplace at one end of the room. Servants moved about the smoky hall, and a half dozen armed Burnett warriors glared at the Highlander. A few feet from their mistress, a number of ladies-in-waiting watched attentively. Evelyn, however, was standing alone by the dais when Colin and Tess crossed the room.
“Jenny will take you to your bedchamber, Theresa. You can clean and change for dinner.” Dismissing her with a wave of her hand, Evelyn indicated that Tess was to follow a servant who stepped forward. She turned to Colin next. “You will take your men around to the west wing to the kitchen. You all will be fed, and then you will start back to the Highlands…tonight.”
Tess shook off her shock at the abrupt treatment and spoke up as brightly as she could. “Mother, ‘tis wonderful to see you after so many years.” She took Colin’s arm and presented him. “Please allow me to present Colin Macpherson, the youngest son of Lord Alec Macpherson and Lady Fiona Drummond Stewart. He is the brave nobleman who found me on the Isle of May.”
Lady Evelyn looked coolly from one to the other for a long moment.
“If you think there is a reward to be collected, Highlander,” Evelyn said shortly, “you are mistaken. Sir David sent enough men to escort my daughter back. ’Twas at your own choice to travel so far—”
“M’lady, he is not here to collect any reward,” Tess shot back. Her greatest fears had materialized. “’Twas because of this man and his family’s compassion and generosity that I stand before you now. I owe him my life.” She sensed Colin was about to make an objection, so she looped her hand through his arm and held it tightly. “He is not here to be paid for anything he has done. He is here because he cared enough to come and make certain I am safely settled. He is my friend, and it gave me great pleasure to know that you would have an opportunity to meet him, too.”
There was an instant of silence as all color drained from her mother’s face.
“You are speaking nonsense, Theresa Catherine. Befriending a Highlander!” She looked with disdain at Tess’s wet and muddy attire. “Up to your room this instant. I want you out of those filthy clothes. Already you are a disappointment. I can see I shall have a lifetime of instructing ahead of me to correct all that you are lacking.”
Tess stared with disbelief at the thin and rigid figure by the dais.
Colin spoke his first words since arriving in the hall. “If you will give us a moment, m’lady, perhaps we can start over. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how accomplished your daughter is…in spite of…nay, because of her time on the island.”
“Accomplished in what way? In shearing sheep, mending a fishing net, being a simpleton? I read the letter you people sent me. She is obviously incapable even of exercising good judgment.”
“And how capable you are of good judgment!” Colin fired back. “To make such a detailed assessment of your daughter with just a moment’s look and a few exchanged words.” He shook his head. “If your idea of accomplishment consists of insensitivity and arrogance, how fortunate Tess is that fate plucked her from your bosom at such a tender age. Aye, she was indeed blessed.”
“Who are you to speak to me!” Evelyn whispered furiously.
Tears then splashed onto the woman’s eyes, but she did not wipe them away. She turned from Colin and fixed her gaze on the floor at her daughter’s feet. Once again attuned to her mother’s ways, Tess watched Evelyn’s temper turn to sorrow.
“I cannot believe I am to be treated so heartlessly. A grieving mother. My life shattered by the belief that her only child was lost…forever. The endless nights of prayer and anguish. The days of lonely reflection. The loss of hope. The despair that I should be the only one left.” She turned tearful, accusing eyes on Tess. “And then the news that you were alive. And what do you do? Instead of coming directly to your own kin…to your mother…you decide to go and hold court with strangers in the Highlands. You chose them over me. And then…then you expect me, your mother, at my age and in my condition to come and pay homage to you.”
“M’lady, ’twas not like that!” Tess blurted out. “’Twas not out of disrespect that you were invited there.”
“If you hear me for a moment,” Colin added calmly, “you will understand that I recommended that Tess come to Benmore Castle first, in part because we did not know where you were residing at present. As your daughter says, there was no disrespect intended.”
“Say what you will, I have been deeply wounded.”
Tess opened her mouth to say more, but Evelyn raised a hand for silence and turned sharply to Colin.
“Sir, you have done your duty and delivered my daughter safely to me. Now, you will take your leave immediately. I have no wish to be disturbed any longer by the presence of filthy Highlanders in Ninestane Castle.”
Having dismissed him, she turned back to her daughter.
“And you, Theresa Catherine, are now under my protection. You will do as I see fit. And just so that you understand the magnitude of my disappointment, my plan has been to present you at Court and negotiate a suitable marriage on your behalf. But that can only happen after you have been properly instructed in the wa
ys of the gentility. And ‘tis abundantly clear to me that Sir David and I have a great deal of work ahead of us.”
“But Mother, I—”
“That is the end of this discussion. You will do as you are told. I will receive you in my chambers once you changed into more suitable attire. Say goodbye to your Highlander. You shall not be seeing him again.”
With a withering glance at Colin, Lady Evelyn turned and glided from the hall.
Angry and frustrated, Colin ran a weary hand over his face and stared after the woman. This was not exactly how he’d imagined this meeting would go. The setback of not being able to explain everything properly had his blood boiling.
By the saints, he thought, he hadn’t helped any by losing his temper with the woman, either. He was clearly the devil himself, as far as Tess’s mother was concerned, and he was at a loss regarding how to remedy that now.
“That is not the way I imagined things would go.” Tess’s sad whisper drew his attention. Her face was flushed. Her beautiful eyes were brimming with tears. “Will you ever be able to forgive me for bringing you into the midst of it?”
“I wanted to come. And now, more than ever before, I am glad that I was here.” He gently touched her face.
“I remember everything about her now, Colin,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back to Ravenie. That is where I belong. Will you take me back to the Highlands with you?”
“I will.” By the main entrance to the hall, a dozen Burnetts had taken up their positions. He remembered the army of them in the courtyard. They would have no chance of fighting their way out. “There are complications that we need to straighten out, though.”
He glanced again at the door. Tess’s eyes followed the direction of his look.
“You must stay here tonight with your mother. Perhaps if you were to speak to her again when things are calmer…once I’ve left the castle.”
“And where will you be?”
The servant who was supposed to escort Tess upstairs moved nearer to them. There was no doubt in Colin’s mind that everything that was said here between them would be reported to Lady Evelyn.
“I’ll return to the Highlands.”
Tess bit her lip, but a sob escaped nonetheless. He pulled her tightly into his arms.
His words were a rough whisper in her ear. “I shall somehow get a message to you, tomorrow or the next day at the latest. I’ll not leave the Borders without you, even if I have to lay siege to this castle myself.”
Tess gave a small nod, but when they pulled out of the embrace, the sadness was still there.
CHAPTER 17
Jenny, the serving woman, was small and thin and spoke scarcely two words as she led Tess up a winding stone stairwell to the bedchamber where she was to stay.
“They’ll bring up yer things.” The servant retreated unceremoniously toward the door.
“Will someone come after me to show me the way to Lady Evelyn’s room?” Tess called after the woman.
“She’ll send for ye when she wants ye,” the older woman said curtly from the landing. Without another word, she disappeared down the steps.
Tess wondered if anyone would really try to stop her if she were to run down these same steps and out to the courtyard. Perhaps Colin had not yet left. Going quickly to the door, she stopped as the sound of footsteps reached her ears. A second later, two large men come around the bend of stairs. One was carrying her small trunk. The other stopped and placed the torch he was carrying in the wall sconce on the landing. He didn’t move even after the first one had wordlessly dropped Tess’s things in her room and walked past her at the door and down the stairs.
The guard looked at her without any feeling. She was being held prisoner.
Colin’s promise of sending word—of not going back to the Highlands without her—was Tess’s only source of hope as she closed the door to her small room.
The only furniture in the room was the bed, and a narrow archer’s slit in the wall served for a window. The opening was covered with a piece of skin that flapped in the chill breeze. The wood floor was not even covered with rushes.
Tess had taken one step toward her trunk when she heard a bar drop in a latch on the outside of her door. She whirled and tried to pull the door open, but to no avail.
Her mother was indeed keeping her prisoner.
“Are the Highlanders gone?”
“They are, m’lady. And just as ye ordered, a company of Sir David’s men are following them to make sure they’re not hanging about without ye knowing.”
“Very well. Now, then, I want you to take her some food.” Evelyn spoke impatiently to Jenny as she sat before the large looking glass while another maidservant brushed her hair. “And see to it that she has a brazier for her bedchamber and water for washing…if she asks for it.”
“She was asking to see ye,” Jenny said.
“Harder. Brush harder,” Evelyn ordered, ignoring the comment.
“She thinks ye’ll be sending for her this night,” the serving woman persisted.
“Well, she is wrong. I won’t be having anything to do with her until Sir David gets back.” Evelyn worriedly touched the dark circles under her eyes. There were grim lines turning down the corners of her full lips. Her jaw was taut. Her pale blue eyes seemed to have lost their luster. She looked old, and it was Theresa’s fault.
“What should I be telling her?”
“That she is being punished for her heartless behavior toward me.” Evelyn met the old servant’s gaze in the mirror. “Tell her that all mercy lies in the hands of Sir David Burnett. Tell her that she should work on improving her manner for when she meets him.”
“How about if I just tell her that yer ladyship will send for her when ye’re ready?”
Evelyn turned sharply in her seat to scold the old woman, but Jenny quickly slipped from the room.
“The devil take you, too,” she said harshly. “Just wait until Sir David hears about your insolence!”
The thin gray light of dawn filtered through the narrow window, and Tess drew her knees tighter to her chest. An untouched trencher of food sat on the trunk at the foot of the bed. The traveling clothes that she’d washed the mud from herself hung from a single peg on the wall. Neither the chamber pot nor the basin of water that she’d used to wash up had been removed from the room.
Last night, Tess had waited until long after all the noises of the castle had died away before giving up hope on Evelyn sending for her. And for the rest of the night, she had lay awake on the narrow bed, staring vacantly at the red glow of dying embers in the brazier and trying to make some sense out of her situation.
During her years on the Isle of May, she hadn’t been able to remember her childhood. But now she had a clear recollection of how things had been. Her nurse Elsie had been the one in charge of raising Tess. Lady Evelyn’s role had been to scold, to correct, to be critical of everything and everyone around her, and to list Sir Stephen’s numerous flaws daily to the young Tess. Her mother had been unhappy then, and Tess guessed that not much had changed in her mother over the years.
But what were they going to do to her now? What was the reason for locking her up like this? Jenny and another servant had brought the food and water and brazier to the room last night. Neither had said a word. Jenny had refused to answer any of Tess’s questions.
Her greatest worry lay with Colin. What if they had imprisoned him in the same way that they had locked her away? Even worse, what if they had hurt him?
A heavy door squeaked on old hinges somewhere down the steps. A few moments later, she heard snatches of a conversation outside her door. Quietly, Tess placed her feet on the cold wood floor and stared anxiously at the door.
After what seemed like an eternity, a bar lifted on the far side. Tess stood as the door swung open just enough for Jenny to enter. The heavy oak door banged shut behind her.
The woman was carrying a single platter that she placed next to the untouc
hed trencher from last night. She made her way around the room, checking the chamber pot, adding a block of peat to the small brazier.
“Good morning,” Tess offered, knowing that, despite her own frustration, this woman was not the cause of her troubles.
Instead of answering her, the servant cast a furtive glance at the door and made a gesture that someone might be listening there. Tess’s spirit lifted as she realized that she might have an ally, after all, at Ninestane Castle. While fanning the flame in the brazier, the woman motioned to her to speak. Tess nodded her understanding.
“Look,” she said loudly, “I’ve waited long enough. Why are they holding me like this?”
“I cannot say, mistress,” the servant replied before dropping her voice to a whisper. “Yer Highlander’s back. He sends word that he will be waiting for ye, tomorrow at dawn, past the village and up the river a wee bit…at the place where ye first stopped when ye saw the castle.”
“But how will I get out of here?” Tess whispered back.
“Ye and I will be changing places when I bring yer food in the morning. The guard who’ll be watching tonight—” She pointed at the door. “—he’s fond of his ale and his sleep. And this early in the morning, no one will stop ye if ye go down the stairs, out through the kitchens and head straight for the village. Servants and workers go back and forth all the time this early in the morning.”
“Bless you, Jenny.” Tess clutched the old woman’s hand. “Is there anything I can do for you.”
“I’ve been paid well already by yer Highlander, mistress. Also, I have been with yer mother long enough to know ye’ll be far better off far away from here.” The old woman’s face grew serious. “For sure, though, ye’ll be wanting to be out of here before Sir David arrives. The master can be a fierce one, and I’m thinking ye’ll not be liking him one bit.”
Tess and the Highlander Page 17