by Amanda Scott
“I’m just curious to know what has stirred you to such a pitch that you seem to be changing everything about yourself.”
“Faith, as if you were not one who said—more than once, I believe—that I must learn to be more femin… that is, to behave more like a lady!”
“Behavior is one thing, Robby. Attire and hair arrangements are other matters. Did Rosalie persuade you into all those plaits looped about your ears today?”
“ ’Twas Janet first, with my plaits twisted into a crown, which I could not bear,” she said grimly. “Then Rosalie told Corinne that we should try twisting them at my nape instead. That was better, but today she asked Corinne to do it this way. She said I should wear a veil, too, but I don’t like to wear things on my head.”
“Then don’t,” he said, as if it were that easy. “Do you hate all the garments that Rosalie is having the Hawick seamstress make for you, too?”
“I like the clothes better than what they’ve done to my hair,” she admitted. “Rosalie gave me some lovely saffron-colored silk that Mistress Geddes is making into a gown much like a kirtle, although it is to fasten behind. The bodice will have fancywork, and its sleeves will have silk-covered buttons. Rosalie assures me that the dress will suit any formal occasion, although I don’t know when I’ll attend one.”
“Beltane is coming,” he reminded her. “Things are not all so bad, then.”
“I’d liefer not complain, but I’ll tell you how it has been,” she said. “Sithee, I don’t know what is fashionable and what is not, so I feel as if I must listen to everyone and try to please everybody except myself. I try to follow Rosalie’s advice, especially. But when I look in a mirror, I don’t see me anymore.”
Dev bit his lower lip, and his eyes gleamed suddenly with humor.
“What?” she demanded, feeling her temper awaken despite her relief that the hard look had left his eyes. “You are laughing at me again, Dev, and I won’t have it. All these plaits feel as if imps are pulling my hair all day. Rosalie said I’d get used to it and that I must accustom myself to dressing like a lady. Corinne says—”
“Never mind what they say,” Dev interjected. “Ignore them, Robby. They are all daft, even Janet. You were perfect as you were, even in those damned breeks and that too-big-for-you leather jack. Why, you are so beautiful that if I were in any position to wed, I’d have asked you to marry me straightaway.”
“What’s this I hear?” Lady Rosalie exclaimed as she pushed the door open and strode in, beaming at them both. “Marry! How wonderful! Prithee, forgive me for intruding at such a tender moment, but I could not be more delighted. You are perfectly suited to each other. I own, though, I dared not hope that this could happen until much later on. But this is utterly splendid!”
“Oh, no, Cousin Rosalie!” Robina exclaimed. “It is not what—”
“Not another word!” Rab snarled in her ear, silencing her.
As she stood, agape, Rosalie said, “Blethers, dearling, I heard the man. And, if he wants to marry you straight-away…” She shifted her gaze to Dev, adding, “Surely, you did not propose to her like that only to say that you meant naught by it, sir. I’ve seen how you look at each other whenever you’re in the same room. You were made for each other.”
Fighting to collect his wits and noting that Robby was still agape—as if some powerful force had muted her—and that Tad and another serving lad were peering wide-eyed at him over Rosalie’s shoulder, Dev drew breath and decided on diversionary tactics.
Dismissing the lads with a wave, he said mildly to Rosalie, “Did you have a reason for coming here, madam?”
“I did, aye,” she said, “although I cannot think now what it—I vow, sir, your proposal has muddled my brain. Oh, aye, Greenlaw sought you earlier, but you had not returned from your ride. Evidently, a messenger came here earlier from Ormiston. One of the maidservants told me that she thought she’d seen you come in here, so I meant just to peek in to see if she was right. Then I heard—”
“Is aught amiss at Ormiston?” Dev demanded, knowing she might chatter on until she ran out of breath.
“Nay, for the messenger rode on to Hawick. He came only to tell us your father will arrive on Friday. He’ll be delighted to learn of your betrothal, I’m sure, so we could plan the wedding for Saturday. ’Tis the eve of Beltane, when new home fires are lit, so ’tis the ideal time for a wedding. Buccleuch has a new priest, too. Since Coklaw lacks one, and since I must send word of your betrothal to Scott’s Hall, perhaps you would like…”
She paused then, eyeing Dev hopefully, but he was still collecting his wits.
Her twin having fallen silent after his outburst, and Dev now silent himself, Robina said, “By my troth, Cousin Rosalie, I do not see how you—”
“Don’t quibble, lass,” Dev said quietly. “I did give her cause. But, my lady,” he added, facing Rosalie, “I think you inferred more than either of us meant to say. In any event, you will agree that Robina and I have much to discuss. I’d be obliged if you would put off sending word of any kind to the Hall or elsewhere until we have talked again.”
Rosalie frowned but said, “I’ll leave you two to talk. But you must realize, sir, that if what I heard was not what you meant to say, you have no business being alone with her. I suspect it’s not the first time you’ve taken advantage this way, either. Do you deny that?”
“No, madam.”
Robina stifled a gasp, fearing that he might try to explain why he had been privy with her at other times. But he said no more.
Rosalie nodded. “I’ll leave you alone then, but I suggest that you talk quickly. People are gathering in the hall for supper, and when they see the pair of you emerge together, they will talk.”
Robina watched her go and waited until the door shut behind her before she said, “She’ll send Ned Graham to tell Lady Meg, Dev. I feel sure of it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dev said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “To think that I feared we might be overheard in the wee room and thought no one would hear us in here. Robby, two of the serving lads were right behind her.”
“Do you think she did it purposefully?”
He grimaced. “I’ll admit that I’d like to think so. It would make me feel less of a dolt. But I’ve seen enough of Rosalie to know that she says what she thinks and is not one who listens at doors. She is impulsive enough to draw a conclusion and act on it without due reflection, though.”
“Then what are we to do?”
“I’ll do whatever you want to do, lass,” he said in that same quiet way. He looked steadily into her eyes, as if he expected to see her thoughts.
The look warmed her but also made her nervous. She said, “I cannot make that decision, Dev. I know you don’t want to marry me or anyone else.”
“It would save me from Anne Kerr,” he said lightly.
“What has Anne Kerr to do with this?”
“My lord father hoped to announce our betrothal in a sennight or so,” he said. “He invited the Kerrs to celebrate Beltane with us and was kind enough to tell me of his plan after he summoned me home.”
Robina felt as if her heart had stopped. She could barely draw a breath but managed to say, “But are you betrothed? Why did you not tell me?”
“We are not betrothed, nor had I any intention to be,” Dev said. “In troth, I think Father had gone off the notion himself before I left for Scott’s Hall. He’d already issued the invitation, though, so Kerr might be expecting a betrothal. I suggested that my brother Lucas might suit Anne better.”
A gurgle of laughter escaped her. “You didn’t!”
“I did. The lady Anne is much too staid and cheerless for me.”
“Even so, you do not want to marry anyone else, aye?”
“We can discuss that later,” he said. “The one thing Rosalie said that is true, thanks to her declaration and the two lads who heard it, is that people will talk.”
“Perhaps I should hang my head and look browbeaten. Then
they’d assume you’d just been taking me to task again. That was your purpose in bringing me here, aye?”
“Not to browbeat you, Robby, but to try to understand you better. We must discuss this all later, though, because I agree that Rosalie is unlikely to keep her belief to herself. Nor is she likely to admit that she was mistaken about what she heard.”
“But if we can keep her from telling Lady Meg and Wat—”
“Sakes, she won’t need to send word if she tells her equerry or anyone else at Coklaw. I’d wager that Tad and Alf have already told people in the kitchen, come to that. You know how quickly such news spreads, throughout the Borders.”
She did know. What she did not know was how they could overcome Rosalie’s error. She did not want to marry Dev.
“Then what man do you want to marry, Beany? A Douglas? Who could live up to your standards if Dev does not?”
Rab’s question was unanswerable. She did not realize that tears had welled in her eyes until one trickled down her cheek.
Dev brushed it away with a thumb. “Don’t cry, lass. I meant what I said. I’ll marry you if you want me—nay, if you will have me. A man could do worse, much worse.”
She wanted to smack him. As the thought crossed her mind, her hand flew up, but he caught it easily and held it. “Naughty,” he murmured. Then, ruefully, he said, “I’ll admit that I provoked it, though. What a daft thing to say to you!”
“You should have saved it to use in persuading your father,” she said. “What if he hears about it before he arrives? Would he not forbid you to marry me?”
“No,” Dev said. Again he looked rueful.
“But if he expects you to marry Anne Kerr—”
“I should not have mentioned that,” he interjected, meeting her gaze. “Father knows that I would not agree to that. Furthermore—although I wager this will seal my fate with you—he was the first to suggest that I should be Warden of Coklaw, when I told him that Archie wanted to install someone here.”
Robina frowned. “But why, if he’d decided you should marry Anne Kerr?”
Grimacing, Dev said, “Because of your Ormiston estate. Sithee, it was originally one of ours and got caught up in the cross-border land-swapping years ago.”
“Is that why you’re willing to marry me now, to get the Ormiston estate?” The disappointment she felt nearly overwhelmed her.
“Sakes, lass, do you think so little of me that you can believe that?” he demanded. “Even if splitting Ormiston off from Coklaw made sense, what manner of guardian would I be to take such base advantage of Benjy as that?”
“I… I didn’t think of that,” she admitted. “I know you would not betray Benjy like that… or Rab.”
“Or you,” he said, his tone gentle again. “You are just as important as they are.”
“I know that you loved Rab as a brother,” she said, looking into his eyes again, “and that I—”
“If my feelings for my own brothers are aught to judge by, I cared much more about Rab than that,” Dev said. “We understood each other so well from the first time we fought side-by-side that talking was rarely necessary.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I remember how often you would just look at each other and smile, or how you would both roll your eyes at the same time.”
“Usually at something you said that struck us the same way,” Dev said. “Rab said once that you were jealous of our friendship, but you need not have been. We both cared equally about you, too, Robby.”
“You have told me yourself that I remind you of him, but I am not Rab, sir.”
Dev’s eyes lit with laughter. “If you were Rab instead of Robby, I promise you, we would not be having this conversation.”
“Well, of course not. Even so—”
“Look,” he said, “we cannot stand here like this any longer without causing a stir, even if it is only a stir of impatience from those waiting to eat supper.”
Pulling a handkerchief from inside his jack, he mopped her face with it.
“At least you haven’t blackened your lashes,” he muttered.
“Rosalie wanted to. She did pluck my eyebrows.”
“Well, don’t let her muck about with your hair, or Corinne either. I like it best in a single plait. That’s how I’ve always pictured you in my mind when I’ve not been here.”
“Faith, did I haunt your mind?”
He grinned, shaking his head. “Let us go to supper, you pliskie bairn.”
“I’m not a bairn.”
“True, but believe me, ’tis safer for me to think of you so,” Dev retorted.
Her emotions were in such turmoil that she could not think, let alone imagine what he meant by such a statement. However, she lacked energy enough to argue or to demand more answers from him, so she went meekly past him when he held the door for her, and took her place beside Lady Rosalie at the table.
“It is about time,” Rosalie said. “What did you decide?”
Dev began to say the grace-before-meat, saving Robina from having to answer at once. By the time he finished, she’d decided to elude the question by changing the subject to one she knew Rosalie could not resist by asking her what new rumors she had heard.
Dev heard Rosalie’s question and was glad that Robby managed to avoid answering it. Honor demanded that he let her decide, but he understood, too, that the decision was a burden he should share with her.
Lady Rosalie’s misunderstanding unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. He suspected that she might have put him in the wrong on purpose.
Women, in his experience, were always matchmaking. His mother had certainly pressed his older sister, Gellis, to marry and had seemed to think that any man of property would do for her. Perhaps similar thoughts were in Rosalie’s mind.
But he was not a man of property, and she must know he was not.
Or did she know him only as a knight and believe that all knights did own property? Many knights did but more did not.
In any event, Robby deserved a man who could take care of her and keep her out of trouble, a man with sufficient wealth that she would never again have to keep her kirtles until she wore them to rags. Never again should she have to put up with well-meaning women who wanted to change her. She should just be herself.
Most women and girls he had met, other than Lady Meg, were too likely to agree with whatever a man said. Such women bored him. Robby rarely agreed with what any man said, and she was never boring.
She knew her own mind, and when she disagreed with him, he could always see that she had reason. Not always good reason, perhaps. He was able to visualize a stream of occasions when her so-called reason for whatever she’d done had led to strong argument between the twins.
He had often sided with Rab but not always. Heaven knew Rab could be as reckless as Robby could, and more so. Dev remembered thinking that he had been the voice of reason then, and sanity. He grinned at the thought. Devilish sanity, perhaps, which at least once had stirred Rab to try to knock him on his backside.
Unsuccessfully, but he and Rab, grappling wildly, even furiously, had ended in a horse pond, thanks to a fierce shove from Robby. All three had laughed… afterward.
Recalling her suggestion that he’d agreed to marry her because she reminded him of Rab, he smiled. He had scoffed, even laughed at the image that had leaped to his mind then of Rab in a wedding gown, repeating his vows.
In truth, though, he understood what she’d meant, because he had known her almost as long as he’d known Rab and they had all gotten along well together.
So, did he equate Rab and Robby in his mind, or in any other way?
“What be ye thinking on, Dev?” Benjy asked. “Ye look powerful vexed.”
“Then I beg your pardon,” Dev said. “Did you want to say something to me?”
“Only that I ha’ been talking wi’ Greenlaw about being a laird, and he said I must learn me numbers. A good laird doesna depend on his scribe or some monk to keep his accounts for him,
Greenlaw said.”
“Not without knowing how to look them over for himself and understand what they mean,” Dev said, realizing that he ought to give some thought to the boy’s education.
“Greenlaw tells me so much about Coklaw and such that I canna keep it all in me head. Could you teach me about numbers and accounts?”
“I can, aye,” Dev said, hoping he was not overstating the truth. His responsibility for accounts at Ormiston had been nil. So, although he was good with numbers and could read and write, he had not the least notion how one set up the accounts for an estate and had been expecting to learn such things from Greenlaw.
It occurred to him that his father would likely have something curt to say if he were to admit that failing to him. Greenlaw would not.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Dev said. “I need to learn more about Coklaw’s accounts, and since Greenlaw has been keeping them for years, he can teach you and me at the same time. Then I’ll know just what you should know.”
“Good,” Benjy said. “I’d like that. Greenlaw gets hecklesome if I forget.”
“I can get hecklesome, too, if you fail to heed what he or I tell you.”
“D’ye think I dinna ken that fine, Dev? ’Tis just that some things take longer to stick wi’ me than others do.”
“I know what you mean, laddie. I’m that same road myself.”
Asking Lady Rosalie to share any new rumors with her had opened a floodgate, so Robina was able to eat her supper in peace, needing only to glance at her occasionally and say, “Art sure of that, cousin?” or “Mercy!”
She could hear Dev chatting with Benjy, although not what they said, and her thoughts drifted back to the inner chamber and Rab’s odd behavior, first snarling at her not to speak and then demanding to know whom she would marry if she did not marry Dev. It had sounded as if Rab thought she ought to marry Dev. Rab thought the sun rose and set with Dev, though. She did not.
If it weren’t for the fact that she and Dev seemed to have been in conflict with each other from Easter night forward, she might have welcomed the idea. She liked him well enough when he was not telling her what she must and must not do, and she knew him better than any other eligible man.