by Border Lass
When they entered the graveled yard outside what had once been the cloister, the abbot appeared in the doorway of the chapter house in his long, unbleached, and undyed Cistercian habit. Its hood was down, revealing his long, darkly tanned face and wispy, tonsured hair.
The damage, now that they could see into the inner precinct, was more appalling. In the old days, Isabel had told Amalie, the Cistercians had not allowed anyone within the abbey’s wall. But of late, that strict rule had eased. With the wall still broken in many areas and its cloister destroyed, the inner precinct now began at the chapter house and was marked with a low stone wall of its own.
Much of its area was charred rubble, but the chapter house and other restored buildings were clearly habitable and occupied.
The restored guesthouse stood within the damaged outer wall, not far from the graveyard but some distance outside the marked precinct.
As the abbot moved with dignity to greet the princess, and Garth quickly dismounted to assist her, Rosalie looked around in dismay.
“Faith,” she exclaimed. “Whatever happened here?”
Isabel glanced back as she dismounted and said, “The English burned the abbey five years ago. As you can see yonder, the villains destroyed the beautiful abbey kirk, even knocking down its walls. Its rebuilding alone, they say, will take a quarter of a century or more.”
“But to have destroyed all this is sacrilege!” Rosalie protested.
The abbot said, “Aye, my lady, but all is as God wills.” Returning to Isabel, he said, “Your men will camp by the river as always, princess. If they require food or other assistance, they need only ask. We want them to be comfortable.”
“Thank you,” Isabel said. “The plantings are coming along well this year.”
The abbey fields and tidy orchards had been burned, as well. But the monks and lay brothers had soon replanted them and now, five years later, most of the trees were heavy with fruit.
Recalled from her musing by a word from Lady Averil, Amalie dismounted quickly without assistance and hurried to the guesthouse to attend to her duties.
The princess’s ladies enjoyed an early supper in the hall of the guesthouse. The food that lay brothers in hoodless, undyed robes provided for them was plain but sufficient. Their own men had set up their encampment and were cooking their meal over their own fires.
After supper, as the lay brothers bore empty platters away and dismantled the trestle tables, Isabel excused herself. “You will forgive me,” she said, “if I leave you now to visit the graveyard.”
“May I walk with you part of the way?” Amalie asked.
“I’d enjoy your company,” Isabel said, raising a hand when Susan stood, looking eager to join them. “The rest of you may amuse yourselves until I return.”
“With permission, madam, Rosalie and I will retire,” Lady Murray said. “We must be off in the morning, and Sir Garth has said he wants to make an early start.”
Amalie made no comment then, other than to bid her mother and sister goodnight. But as she and Isabel walked along the tidy, stone-lined pathway to the graveyard, she said, “Sir Garth had better say his prayers tonight if he expects to get my lady mother off to an early start.”
Isabel chuckled. “Is your mother always a lie-abed sort?”
“She did not used to be,” Amalie said. “But even before Meg married, she had begun to take her days in a more leisurely way. She is still quick to criticize any error, though, so I am certain she still keeps Elishaw running smoothly.”
“Indeed, I should think she would,” Isabel agreed as they reached the little wicket gate in the low stone fence that surrounded the graveyard. “You will not want to come further with me, so I’ll take leave of you here. Do not wait for me,” she added. “You are safe on any grounds near the abbey. I often roam through the orchards or the meadows. The river path is pleasant, too.”
The graveyard being nearer the orchards than the river, and a break in the abbey’s wall inviting her to go that way, Amalie decided to walk up to the nearest one, where she soon found pear trees bearing ripe fruit.
Certain the monks would not object, she picked a ripe one, wiped it on her skirt, and bit into it. The juice ran down her chin, making her grin. With no one looking, she did not hesitate to wipe it off with her sleeve.
She wandered happily amid the trees, enjoying the peaceful evening twilight.
The moon peeked over the northeastern horizon as she was thinking she ought to return to the others. But as she turned back the way she had come, she saw that Isabel was still in the graveyard, sitting quietly on a stone bench.
Not wanting to disturb her, Amalie skirted the abbey wall instead and found a path heading toward the river. Moonlight painted the water silver, and to her right, below where the track they had followed curved around the abbey wall, small fires dotted the hillside above the riverbank.
The moon seemed to rise quickly. It was nearly full and cast enough light for her to see that her path crossed the track ahead and continued to the river.
At the intersection, she did not hesitate. She was not ready yet to give up her peaceful evening and rejoin the other women.
A soft, warm breeze blew toward her from the river. The path was smooth and well tended, the moonlight on the river magical. The low “hoo-hoo” of an owl, clearly calling to her, gave the increasingly dark landscape a delicious eeriness.
She fixed her eyes on the sparkling flow of water and breathed in the herbal scents of the trees and the low shrubbery along the riverbank.
A wide grassy patch between two large, shadowy clumps of trees and bushes beckoned her. She stepped off the path, already curving to follow the river’s course, and walked toward the water. She could see several ducks—coots by their sounds and, by shape, at least two hooded mergansers. They floated in the moonlight as if it were day, riding the river’s slow but powerful current. As she moved nearer, a large figure stepped out of the deepest shadow of the shrubbery to her left.
She opened her mouth to protest his springing up again, for although his back was to the moon and his face shadowed, she had not one second’s doubt who it was.
Before she could speak, he raised a finger to his lips and then pointed.
Obligingly, she kept silent and followed the line of his pointing finger to the opposite bank, where two small deer drank peacefully from the river, their slender forelegs splayed at water’s edge, their hindquarters higher on the bank.
Warm delight filled her soul as she watched them. They were beautiful, and the moonlight dappling them with silvery splashes as overhanging shrubbery moved in the soft breeze made them more so.
She waited until they had drunk their fill and vanished before she said without looking at him, “Must you keep springing up like this? It is only by God’s grace that you did not frighten me witless.”
“Take care, lass, lest I return a similar rebuke that you’re sure to find tiresome.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, realizing that at such an hour even the tolerant Isabel would say that she ought to be inside with the other ladies. She also sent a prayer of thanks aloft that her mother and Rosalie had retired.
“I see that I need say no more,” he said. “I might do so anyway under other circumstances, but in troth, I’m glad to see you.”
His words stirred something deep inside her, an odd mixture of delight and panic. Her teeth pressed harder on her lip until she realized she was hurting herself, and licked it to soothe the hurt.
He started to say more, stopped, then cleared his throat and began again. “I want to speak to the princess, but she was still in the graveyard when last I looked, and I did not want to seem to hover.”
“Nay,” Amalie said. “She does not like people to watch her there. I walked with her to the gate and then went for a stroll in the orchard. She told me to.”
“But now you are here,” he said, putting a hand on her left shoulder. His touch was gentle, but the warmth of his hand penetra
ted the sleeve of her tunic and seemed to continue right through the rest of her, making her feel warm all over.
“Why did you want to speak to her?” She was astonished that the question came out clearly, almost calmly, because she could scarcely think.
Part of her wanted to pull away from that hand and run from the magical moonlight and the beauty of the river, and certainly from him. But another part wanted to stay, to find out what he would do next.
“I want to kiss you,” he said softly.
Garth saw her eyes widen. In the moonlight, her pupils were enormous, looking like the dark pools bards and seanachies sometimes mentioned when they recited romantic ballads. Her lips were parted and looked swollen, as if they would welcome kissing, but she looked startled, uncertain, almost frightened.
He had been astonished to see her, and his first impulse had been to stride out and confront her, even shake her for walking about all alone in the night. Did she not realize that an encampment full of lusty men sprawled nearby? Not that he or doubtless even the odious Boyd would allow such a thing to happen, but if the lass never trusted any man, what the devil had possessed her to risk it?
His right hand still rested on her left shoulder.
Even so, the thought of grabbing her, nay, touching her in any way, stirred his body to a hunger that was unlike any it had revealed before. When she’d touched that pointed little tongue of hers to her lips, he’d had all he could do not to pull her to him with both hands and kiss her senseless.
Even now, even though he knew he’d be wise to go slowly with her, he had to fight the temptation to teach her that her actions had consequences.
But his admission that he wanted to kiss her had not turned her away.
Nor did she look unwilling.
Still, the part of him that kept urging him to protect her warned him now that he could easily misstep.
These thoughts sped swiftly through his mind in the split second before he said, “I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
Her lips parted more. Her wee tongue peeped out again.
He bent closer, looked her in the eye.
“You’ll have to say aye or nay, lass. I know what I want, and if you tease me, I’ll throw caution aside, but—”
She leaned forward and lightly kissed his lips.
When she would have jumped back, he stopped her simply by firming the hand that still rested on her shoulder and pulling her back. Had she resisted, he might have released her. He would never know though, because she did not.
Although her own behavior astonished her, Amalie could not have resisted had she wanted to. But the plain truth was that she did not want to. Nor did she protest or resist when his free hand came to her other shoulder and one strong arm slid around her to pull her closer to him.
He had straightened enough that she had to tilt her face up to his, but she did not mind that either. His lips were soft against hers for a brief time, then not soft at all but hungry and demanding.
She had a momentary sense of danger, a qualm that might have been distrust. But as if some fiber of her body had warned his of that qualm, the hard, muscular arm across her shoulders eased upward at the very moment she might have tried to pull away. Instead of doing so, her body relaxed, even pressed a little toward his.
He moaned softly but eased his hold more, then ended the kiss with a sigh, making her look at him in surprise and—dared she admit it, even to herself?—surging disappointment.
“What is it?” They both said the words in the same breath.
His eyes danced. “We should go.”
“Is that why you sighed so heavily?”
“Nay, that was because I did not want to stop, but I recalled your lack of experience and also where we are. The good brothers would be wroth with us if they should find us here like this. The abbot might even order me to leave.”
She felt a shiver up her spine, realizing that she ought never to have let him kiss her. She did not care a whit for any lay brother or even the abbot himself, because she knew that no one at Melrose would do anything to upset Isabel.
And Isabel knew her. She would know that whatever Amalie had done, she had done out of innocent foolishness. But she had also led Garth to believe she would welcome his advances and thereby had done both him and herself a vast disservice.
Men—gentlemen and noblemen—who did this sort of thing with young ladies of good family expected those ladies, or their families, to demand that they marry. Garth had annoyed her as often as he had made her laugh, but she liked him even so. And she had not been able to resist the chance to learn what it would be like to kiss him. To have done so under such circumstances, though, was unfair.
She could not marry him or anyone else.
Before her yearning to kiss him again could provide her with reason to keep silent, she said, “My behavior just now may have given you the wrong impression, sir. I will not marry you. I have not changed my mind about never marrying.”
He chuckled and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Sakes, lass, I was counting on that. God knows you have made your position clear enough on that point.”
Her right hand tensed to strike, but common sense intervened before she did. Not only were his hands still on her shoulders but she was the one at fault. He had asked for permission before he had kissed her.
That made his behavior even worse. But, faith, she had kissed him first!
Nevertheless, the chill in her voice should have been perfectly audible to him when she pushed his hands from her shoulders, stepped back, and said, “If you wanted to speak to Isabel, you are too late. The moon is shining down on the entire graveyard now, and she is no longer there.”
Garth was aware of the chill in her tone and the touch of injury as well. He was sorry he had hurt her, and sorry, too, when she stepped back. He had responded instinctively, recognizing the likelihood that if he disclaimed interest in more than kissing her, she would be less likely to withdraw further from him. As experienced in the chase as he was, and as skilled with skittish creatures, he knew that a touch of rejection was likely to reassure her and would not increase her apprehension.
He liked her too much to risk letting her think for more than a moment that he expected to marry her. She was amusing and interesting, even fascinating at times. And the fact that she was so determined never to marry presented a uniquely intriguing challenge. The plain fact was that he had no desire yet to entice any woman into marriage. He had been a villain to kiss her, but thankfully, he had stopped before he did anything more. Sakes, the kiss had been as innocent as a kiss could be. He had barely tasted her soft lips. They had tasted of pear juice.
“I can see that Isabel has gone in, lass,” he said. “I did not intend to accost her in the graveyard, in any event, or as she returned. But the monks would frown on my entering the guesthouse without an invitation from her.”
“So you want me to seek her out for you.”
“If you are not too angry with me.”
“I am not angry, sir. I know it was my fault as much as yours. I don’t know what I was thinking, but they do say that a full moon makes people behave badly.”
“The moon is past full, lass, and you did not misbehave,” he said gently. “But I’d be grateful if you would find Isabel for me. I can wait outside the door, and she can invite me into that wee anteroom that serves as an entry hall for the guesthouse. The abbot will expect even a princess to have a chaperone with her whilst she talks with a man, though. So ask her if you may perform that service. I’d as lief not have to reveal my plans to anyone else.”
“You never said why you want to speak to her. Did you not tell her in the garden that you mean to go to Threave?”
“I did, aye, but we talked in haste, and it has puzzled me how to talk to her without revealing to others that I’m acting as more than a serving knight. But if you will serve as my messenger now, and as chaperone if need be . . .” He waited.
“I can do that,” she said. “But what if one
of the lay brothers or monks or the abbot sees us before I get inside?”
He grinned. “Why, I shall tell them that the youngest and naughtiest of Princess Isabel’s ladies apparently failed to notice that darkness had fallen and was lost in thought by the river when I came upon her there. So, performing one of my duties, I am returning her to the guesthouse with a stern warning not to do such a foolish thing again. I shall look very irked, I think, to have been put to such trouble.”
“What a good thing you told me you never tell lies, sir. In troth, I am not sure what else I should call that, but I am sure—”
“The only part that might be untrue is the part about being irked, although even that will be true if you continue with that thought,” he said. “I did meet you in just such a way, and if you have not realized yet that you ought not to have wandered so long or so far, Molly-lass, I can certainly make that fact plainer to you.”
She grimaced. “Perhaps we should go now.”
“Perhaps we should.”
Still savoring pear juice, he did not trust himself to stay longer with her.
Chapter 12
Amalie was not sure if she was more annoyed with Garth or with herself, but she did not want to pursue that thought, so they walked silently to the guesthouse.
As they approached the front door, she wondered with a rush of anxiety if it might be bolted. But when he reached past her and lifted the latch, it opened easily.
“I’ll wait here,” he murmured. “If she’s gone to bed, just come and tell me.”
But Isabel was still in the guesthouse hall, sitting by the little fire with the ladies Averil, Nancy, and Sibylla.
“Bless us, Amalie, are you just coming in?” Nancy asked.
“Aye, my lady,” Amalie admitted, avoiding the lady Averil’s gimlet eye but sure that the older woman would have something to say to her later.
“Come and warm yourself by the fire,” Sibylla said.
“Thank you, but I’m not cold.” Making her curtsy to Isabel, she said, “May I trouble you for a private word, madam?”