Maid of Deception

by Jennifer McGowan

  “Have you, now?” Father asked. He gazed up at the sky, which was just now darkening into twilight, and I rolled my eyes. Idly I focused on the second set of ribbons in my hands, weaving them back and forth so they became a sort of wild fairy braid. “You are a young, intelligent, beautiful woman, with all the world before you. Your failures, as you call them, have been merely to bow without ceasing to every whim of the Queen. Do you really want to spend your life as I have, with the yoke of the court around your neck?”

  “I need to marry well for the family,” I said stiffly, not glancing back to him. “You of all people know this.”

  “You need to marry well, yes,” Father said. “But for yourself, and not for us.”

  “Oh, Father, leave off.” I could not forestall the bitterness in my words. “Of course I must marry for us. Who else will refill our coffers? Who else will keep the family from starvation?”

  He quirked a brow at me. “The Queen did not do so much damage with her progress as that, Beatrice, for all that I complained.”

  “Of course she did!” I spluttered. “We are bankrupt now. Don’t you see that? We have nothing in the household accounts!”

  “Beatrice, sweetheart, I keep the accounts short and our own house ramshackle to discourage our dear monarchs from knowing our true financial position. I thought you knew that.” At my blank look, he sighed. “Very well, I will sell more gold. ’Tis all the same to me, though it is quite pretty at that.”

  “Gold!” I snapped. “What is this about gold? We have no gold at Marion Hall.”

  Now it was my father’s turn to look at me, amazed. “Beatrice, are you daft? Of course we do. The well is filled to the brim with it!”

  “What well?” His shocked countenance merely served to infuriate me, and I racked my brain for ideas. The one that surfaced, however, made no sense. “The well in the labyrinth?”

  At his grin, I shook my head, lifting a hand to cut him off. “No. That well poisoned Mother, and then you shut down the labyrinth in full. There is nothing in that well but death and sorrow!”

  Father’s face had dropped during my tirade, and his stare made me uncomfortable now. Uncomfortable and confused. “You saw her dance. Dance and laugh. I remember that,” he said, his words coming more slowly now.

  “Then everything turned to darkness!” I snapped. “As well you know. She was never the same!”

  “And I sent you away.” Father’s face was ashen now. “That you might find friendship in other houses.” He shook his head, glancing away. “You were so sad, Beatrice. So sweet but so sad, and your mother—well, her mind had left us by then.” He frowned, then drew in a deep breath before looking at me directly.

  “Ah, Beatrice. Your mother’s ills did not come from a hole in the ground. They came from a hole inside her. She was given to dark times even as a girl, but I cared for her anyway. Even when she went away in mind and refused to allow me to touch her, I wanted to protect her—and so I did. But the well in the heart of the labyrinth wasn’t filled with poison. It was filled with pale gold.”

  He took my puzzled stare as an excuse to keep talking. “Marion Hall was built on a pathway used by the druids since time immemorial. The Gold Road, they called it, because it was used to transfer uniquely colored gold that had been mined in Ireland, carried to Wales, then transferred through England on its way to the Continent. As it happened, the druids had a lovely habit of giving thanks to their gods by submerging their gold in water along the path of their journey. I knew all of this but never gave it a moment’s thought, and there was never any written record of any such a sacred site at Marion Hall. Still, there was that damned enormous labyrinth. There had to be some reason it’d been built.” He smiled then, the light back in his eyes. “The Marion Hall labyrinth is centered on one of these devotional wellsprings, but there were no records at all about gold being there—just that the mad baron had been driven to build the thing. When the hedgerows went up, the gold had long been covered over, I suspect, but in the course of our work to clear the labyrinth, we found the old well, and I thought I’d clear out some of the stones that I could see at its base. Rock after rock came out, and—well—”

  “You found a well filled with pale gold,” I said. All of those years . . . all of my fears. For nothing. “And you never told anyone.”

  Father grinned at me. “Secrets held can be more profitable than secrets shared,” he said simply. “And in truth, somewhere along the line I convinced myself you knew. You never had any problem buying a new dress or pair of shoes, after all.” He raised a hand to ward off my quick retort. “But what this means is that you need to think about your own future now, not merely the family’s. I married to protect your mother, but also for the money, prestige, and position such a marriage brought me. I have well benefited from all of those. But I want more for you, my dear. Security, yes, but more than anything else, love. That is what I wish for you.”

  I thought of what lay ahead for me, in Londontown, as my father rambled on and we made our way across the Lower Ward and into the Middle Ward. Another betrothal to another lying courtier. “I think perhaps you wish too much.”

  “Do I?” he asked idly. He stopped. “Ah, here we are.”

  I looked up. We’d made our way to the Hundred Steps, but that was not what had my heart stopping midbeat.

  Alasdair MacLeod stood tall against the northern sky, his face unreadable in the gloom, but his eyes fire bright.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “A walk with you, my lady?”

  I stood there, transfixed, as my father seemed to melt away into the background. Then I took Alasdair’s arm after hastily transferring my knotted ribbons to my left hand. Alasdair turned and escorted me down the Hundred Steps of Windsor Castle. It was a lovely setting in the full day, dropping down over a wooded hill and ending at the Castle Gate. From there the land flowed out and away from Windsor, until gradually reaching the Thames. But the evening seemed to become too heavy all of a sudden, and I wondered at Alasdair’s silence even as we stepped quickly and quietly down. He breathed more easily only after we passed the gate at the base of the steps.

  “Did you—wish to speak with me?” I finally managed, and his responding laugh was low and sure.

  “It would be a start, I suppose.” He stopped me then, in the lee of the castle, where some brave soul had erected a stone bench for visitors to take their leave next to a babbling brook. There was a curious silence to the wood, and I did not want to break it. But Alasdair began to speak anew.

  “Our betrothal is broken,” he said, and I felt the clamor of darkness rise up once more within me, my father’s words chased away. I cannot be embarrassed over this yet again! It was not to be borne.

  “I am aware of that,” I said in a rush, cutting him off. “I do not fault you for it. My actions were inexcusable, and you have responded in a way that was right and just and perfectly understandable. And I wish you great—happiness, back in Scotland, truly I do. I would prefer that you would leave off discussing the whole business, however, and—”

  “Beatrice.” Alasdair raised a hand in supplication. “I love you deeply, but please be still. For once.”

  I blinked at him. “I’m sorry?”

  “You think so far ahead that you cannot ever remain properly in the moment,” he said, touching his finger to my chin. “Whereas, when I am with you, I hope only that this moment will never end.”

  “But—” I began, and his finger drifted up, to rest upon my lips, effectively silencing me.

  “I have loved you since the moment I first laid eyes upon you, Beatrice, that day in the Presence Chamber when you were presented so beautifully to us, an English jewel for all to covet. The light broke over you like it was afraid to share your brightness, and you captured my heart so completely with your practiced smile and laughing eyes, it was all I could do to keep breathing.”

  “But you were mocking everything—all of us!—and especially the French,” I protested. “You bar
ely glanced my way.”

  “Well, the French provide much reason for mockery,” Alasdair said. “But don’t ever mistake my laughter for disinterest, my lady. I decided immediately that you would be mine, and I have never swerved in that resolve.” He smiled at my bewilderment. “It is tough to move a Scotsman who lives upon solid rock.”

  “Until you saw me with Cavanaugh but a few days past,” I said, unable to stop the hurt in my voice, though I was the one who’d done everything I could to push Alasdair from me. “Then you had no problems walking away.”

  Alasdair shook his head. “Och, my lady. Cavanaugh would have been a dead man before he’d ever gotten a chance to ruin you.” He said the words quietly, but that did not dampen their steel. “You pride yourself on your lies, but I have seen the heart of you. I have seen your family, the children of your household. And I have heard their tales. To them you are not merely the fierce lady of the court. To them you are humble and loyal and true. You would do anything for your family, even sacrifice your own life.” I made to protest, but the look in his eyes stopped me. “I know every line of you, Beatrice, every glance and whisper, every movement. I have made you my life’s work in the short time that I have been a guest of your mighty Queen. You could no more lie to me than you could stop your heart from beating. You must know that.”

  I pulled away from him, sudden anger pricking the joy that I so wanted to set free within me. “And yet you stood there laughing with the Queen—whom you must know hates me—at the mere possibility of ridding yourself of me? What am I supposed to think about that? Is your love not sufficient for you to remain betrothed to me? If not, then what sort of love is this?”

  Alasdair’s smile was slow and sure. “It is the love of a Scotsman, who hews to the old ways,” he said. “I doona care for your traditions much, but I suppose they are yours. If I could get you by betrothal, that was all the same to me. Jane let drop your Queen’s interest in our relic, an’ it’s an interest I was happy to fan, in my own fashion.” He lifted his brows at me and shrugged. “What? If giving your Queen a tinker’s forgery of our famed Fairy Flag would free you from such a farce, then I would prefer to make you my own according to a custom that means far more to me.”

  “That snippet of the flag was—a forgery?” I asked. Meg was right! Even though I’d been the first to warn the Queen of the flag’s questionable provenance, when I’d watched Alasdair give her the gift, I’d believed in him completely. Clearly, so had Elizabeth. “You tricked the Queen?”

  “You should know by now, my lady, I’d never give away something truly precious to me,” Alasdair said. “It’s not the way of the MacLeods to let beauty slip our grasp.” His words were softer now, huskier. “Beatrice. My dear, daft, determined love. When one of my family gives his heart, he gives everything. In accepting this troth to you, I granted you my soul and body and mind as well. None of that has changed. None of that will ever change.”

  He reached down and pulled the clump of ribbons out of my hand, and the second collection of ribbons from my belt. “We have our own tradition on Skye, that a man may bind himself to a woman for a year and a day. In my country it is to see if the woman still meets with the man’s liking after that time.”

  The wrongness of that idea managed to cut through my haze, at least. “Charming,” I said dryly.

  He grinned at me. “If she does, then they are wed. If she does not, then he may return her to her family, with neither blemish nor stain upon her reputation.”

  Oh, that is outside of enough. “But that is preposter—”

  “A moment, my lady.” Alasdair chuckled at my outrage. “That is my country, and this is your own. And as such I think a blending of the traditions is called for.” He unlaced the ribbons, smoothing each one out, until they hung in two loose bundles. “I would handfast myself to you, Beatrice, for a year and a day. But the burden of proof that we suit will lie not upon you but on me. If at that time you still wish us to wed, I will come for you. I will take you from your courts and kings, and take you off to the Isle of Skye for a proper Scottish wedding.”

  “It’s so far away,” I murmured, held by his touch.

  “ ’Tis. And your father lamented loud and long over this before we came to an agreement I should hope would please you well.” He leaned down to brush a kiss over my forehead. “Once the celebrations are past in Skye, we shall return to Marion Hall. That house is too large not to have a family of its own to fill it.”

  I looked at him, stunned. “Marion Hall? You would live in England?”

  Alasdair held my gaze, his eyes dark with emotion.

  “For you, my lady, I would live in the shadow of the devil himself.”

  “But I have lied to you and betrayed you at every turn!” I protested, hating myself for now finally giving voice to my duplicity, when all I needed to do was agree. But Alasdair had to know. Had to realize what and who he was committing himself to. “We cannot suit, Alasdair,” I said. “I was attentive to you only because I was ordered to be. I disliked you from the start.”

  “Did you, now?” He grinned then, and I stamped my foot in irritation.

  “I did!” I said, balling my fists into my hips. “I only spoke with you on orders of the Queen.”

  “And when we were in the labyrinth of Marion Hall, by the gold-laden spring, and you returned my kiss. Were you under orders then as well?”

  “I— Well, I—”

  “And on the North Terrace, when I sheltered you from the wind and held you close, were you merely following the directives of your Queen?”

  “You don’t understand. That was—”

  “And naught but three days ago, when you wept yourself to sleep on that same terrace, and I picked you up in my arms and all you could say was my name, over and over again,” he said, his words barely audible. “Whose command were you bowing to then?”

  I blinked at him, my mouth going dry with surprise. “That was you?” I whispered. “You carried me?”

  “I would carry you to the ends of the earth, my lady. One day you’ll understand that.” He held up the ribbons and called out into the darkness, “A hand with this, indeed?”

  And then the woods seemed to give up its secrets, and four Maids of Honor stepped forth, silent and beaming each of them—the grinning, forthright Jane; the knowing, sly Meg; the completely transported Anna, always in love with love; and finally the ethereal, magical Sophia. They came up to me and took the ribbons from Alasdair. “Wouldn’t want these to go to waste,” Meg said.

  My father emerged from the shadows then, his grin filling his whole face. “A year and a day is not so long, is it, Beatrice? Time enough to serve your Queen, and evade what men she would tie you to?”

  At Alasdair’s rumble I nodded, surprised to feel my eyes filling with tears. “I’ve spent most of my life evading the dictates of the monarchy,” I said, half-laughing. “I suppose I could spend another year.”

  “I will return to Skye and prepare my family and men for what we must do to save our land and its treasures,” Alasdair said. “And then I shall come back to you.” He held out his hands, and showed me how to interlace my fingers with his, as the Maids of Honor carefully tied and knotted two dozen ribbons between us, sealing the contract. “I pledge my fortune to you, my lady. I will bring to you all that you and your family need.”

  “What I need is you,” I whispered.

  “Then it appears we are in luck.” He stared back at me, fierce and strong and steadfast, his love for me seeming to burst from within even as we stood there, hand in hand, linked together inextricably by two dozen strips of cloth and a fate that seemed unwilling to be denied. “Lady Beatrice Elizabeth Catherine Knowles,” he said. “In a year and a day, when I come for you, will you be my wife?”

  At that moment, under the starlit sky, there was only one response.

  “Yes,” I whispered back.

  We tarried a few minutes more in the great shadow of Windsor Castle, and in the even broader shadow of m
y Queen and country. Monarchs had made my family what it was, and monarchs would rule whatever my family would become. And because of that, as had been every generation before me, I was indeed indebted to the Crown.

  So for the next year and one day, to Elizabeth Regnant, Gloriana most high, I would give all of those things my noble birth had already claimed for the Queen: my talents and my loyalty, my skills and my unstinting service.

  But from this point and ever onward, to Alasdair MacLeod I would give the only thing that had ever been mine own.

  My heart.

  ࡅ ELIZABETH BEMIS-HITTINGER, BEMIS PROMOTIONS

  JENNIFER McGOWAN was born in Ohio, grew up in Montana, and studied in Paris. She fell in love with the Elizabethan era as a college student and is now an unrepentant scholar of that period, happily splitting her time between the past and present. An RWA Golden Heart Award winner and multiple finalist, Jenn is the author of Maid of Deception, Maid of Secrets, and A Thief Before Christmas (a Maids of Honor e-short story). She lives in Ohio. Visit her (and the Maids of Honor) at jennifermcgowan.com.

  Also by

  Jennifer McGowan

  Maid of Secrets

  A Thief Before Christmas

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Stark

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Michael Frost