by Sophia James
‘Can you hold that arm?’ she panted, grateful when he nodded as she pulled on the other one. In towards the bank they swam, slowly, the current on this side as strong as she had felt in any water. The mud was beneath her feet and then gone again, deeper green. Bottomless.
The branch hit them both, unexpectedly swirling in the eddy of a side channel, and then the older child was gone, knocked away by the sheer force of it all.
Hands reached for Donald, though. Soldiers’ hands, strong hands. Safety.
A choice now?
Save one or save them both?
She simply let the warmth go and fell backwards, floating with the current downstream, voices further away and lost in silence. Then it was just her!
He was lying in the water face down when she got to him and she kicked for the side. More debris hit them, a smaller branch cracked against her upper arm and another against her shin. Tears smarted with the pain, but she refused to panic. Not now when they were so close. Twenty yards, and then ten, and finally the mud beneath her feet, thick and deep, but solid.
Turning him over when she had gained a good footage, she beat his chest as she had seen her father do once to the body of a man who did not breathe.
His coughing reassured her and she sat on the bank hacking, trying to take the air she needed and thankful to be alive. Finally they were able to speak, both their voices croaky with the amount of water they had swallowed.
‘You…saved…me?’
‘Who are y-you?’
‘Callum Elliot. I am the…eldest son of…the Laird of the Elliots.’
Lord! Grace almost laughed. Elliot was the man who had insulted her in the forest, and from a clan with no love lost for the Kerrs.
Blood ran across his left cheek from a deep cut where the log had glanced off him and his hair fell across it, picking up the colour, sun-bleached tingeing pink.
‘If you had not b-been there, I might not have b-been able to save Donald.’ She needed to give him back his confidence.
He looked up at that, the blue in his eyes the exact same colour as a midnight sky. ‘The boy? His name is Donald? I have seen him before in the woods between our keeps.’
‘He is about y-your age and an adventurer as well, so it is little wonder you two should have crossed paths. I am Grace, by the way.’
Despite the shift she wore being almost see-through and the absurdity of the situation, he held out his hand, and she took it.
Already they could hear calling from a distance, the sound of soldiers and then Dexter. For a second she thought she heard Lachlan’s voice, deeper than the others and closer.
‘I cannae let them find me here. If my father ever knew…’ He stood up and sat down again just as quickly.
‘I don’t think that you h-have a choice, Callum,’ she answered softly and laid her arm around his shoulder as she called back.
Lachlan slashed through the trees like a man possessed, though when he saw her he stopped and took breath, the fierce anger on his brow replaced by a different sort of fury. Dexter had no such qualms, his big tongue lolling across both her face and Callum’s.
‘For a woman who is frightened of her own shadow, you seem surprisingly good at risking your life to save others.’
‘When did you c-come?’
‘Just in time to see you let go of my soldier’s hands and float off down the river.’
‘Callum is hurt.’
‘Callum?’
‘The Laird of Elliot’s s-son.’
‘Gods!’
Not the reply she might have expected. She felt the child tense at her side.
‘The Laird of the Kerrs will not h-hurt you, Callum. You do not have to w-worry at all.’
Her voice carried and she thought she saw her husband smile as he came forwards, stripping off his Highland sark and placing it across her head. His plaid was the only thing shielding his nakedness.
‘My soldiers are right behind,’ he explained; the bulging strength of his muscles in the afternoon sun was breathtaking. The linen fell across her skin as a sheath, warm and dry. She coughed as he brought her to him, roughly, the line of his finger tracing that of her jaw.
‘You will have a bruise here,’ he said, ‘and here,’ he added, the mark on her neck sore as she pulled away.
Still he did not let her go far, his hand resting on the line of her bottom, the water from her shift marking his plaid with darkness.
Mary and Eleanor crowded around Callum, giving him praise for his bravery and offering a blanket. Grace was pleased that they did so, because reaction to everything had suddenly set in and she found herself shaking as uncontrollably as he did.
‘I—I d-don’t k-know why…’
Lord, she could barely speak or walk and as Lachlan lifted her up against him she did not struggle, but placed her hands around his neck and cuddled in, comforted by the smooth feel of his skin against her cheek and the beat of his heart in her ears. Dexter followed closely behind and she smiled.
Heaven!
She was there.
Alistair Elliot arrived at Belridden with a contingent of his clan that was hardly threatening, a small band of women and some elderly people. No soldiers were in sight at all, though Lachlan said that they would be camped beyond the keep.
The woman riding beside the laird had been crying, her face blotched red and she held a handkerchief to her eyes as they came within the castle proper. Callum’s mother! She could tell this was so when the boy broke free and ran towards her, towards them, his family, and was enclosed in love as the strangers dismounted and folded him into their arms.
A lost child was now found! Grace saw how Mary brought her arms about Donald in response.
‘Kerr.’ Elliot’s voice was deep as his glance scouted across his son. ‘I would thank ye for the life of my oldest son.’
‘Dinna thank me. It is my wife you are obliged to.’
‘She can swim?’ The edge of amazement was easily heard.
‘She can, and just as well that she could, aye?’
‘I had nae breath, Ma. She turned me over and beat it into me.’ Callum’s interjection was loud.
‘H-Hardly beat…’ Grace began, but Lachlan stopped her with the pressure of his hand as the Chief of the Elliots bent down on his knees.
‘I am indebted to you, Lady Grace, and should there be any favour that you may ask of my clan, you just need say it.’
‘I d-do not think I h-have one r-right now…’
‘He did not mean at this moment, Grace, but as a future insurance.’
‘Of c-course.’ She felt the blush of blood spill across her face.
‘My wife would also like to give you something,’ Alistair Kerr added as he stood again and the woman with the red eyes came forward, her fingers soft when she took Grace’s hand in her own.
‘This is a ring I was given as a new bride, my Lady,’ she began. ‘A ring of great fertility, it is said, and for me it has been so as Callum is the oldest of three other children. Wear it and you shall have as many bairns as I have and as quickly.’
Slipping it on to Grace’s finger, she brought her into her arms in a hug that was all gratitude. ‘Thank you for the life of my son,’ she whispered, before pulling back, a new stream of tears falling.
The older woman behind suddenly began a chant in a language Grace had no notion of, the words tumbling over each other in a torrent, the tempo and volume increasing as she gathered in the emotion, and finishing with her taking soil from a bag she carried and pouring it at Grace’s feet. A tiny pile of black wet earth lay against the dust of the ground before the keep, seeds mixed within it.
‘The grandmother of Callum says that ye are of the soil of the Elliots. She says her hearth is your hearth and her grain is your grain. She says that the next girl child born to the Elliots clan will be called Grace and that when her grandson is the great warrior that his father is, he will protect you, too.’ Lachlan translated the song easily, his voice deep across the wailing
keening cry of the old woman and when it was done Grace inclined her head in thanks.
Now it was Lachlan’s turn. ‘Your son is a brave lad too, Alistair. It was he who jumped in to the river to save the life of one of the Kerr children and without his valour another child could have easily drowned.’
Pride swelled the chest of the Chief of the Elliots. It was a giving that was not all one-sided then, Grace thought, thus an easier gratitude to bear. The tension eased palpably and Grace took a moment to take a proper look at Callum’s mother’s gift.
The silver ring was engraved with a diamond pattern and encrusted with rubies, four different stones denoting great fertility. One for each child, Grace imagined, and smiled. The sheer possibility of everything was exhilarating.
Two hours later as she retched into the bowl for the second time in as many minutes, she wondered if it was the river water that had made her so sick.
Lizzie’s hand across her shoulder was comforting and she was glad that Lachlan had escorted the Elliots back to their border and would not be home until at least suppertime, for she did not wish for him to see her like this.
‘When I was carrying my first bairn I was sick in the same way as you are now, my Lady.’
Grace shook her head, not wanting to acknowledge any such possibility.
He needs to love me first. He needs to tell me that he loves me, that he loves us. Not just a breeding wife after all, but a loved one.
But Lizzie was having none of it. ‘If the case proves true, my Lady, give the news to no one else, no one save for your husband, for there are those here that would not take kindly to the promise of Lachlan Kerr’s heir.’
‘Who, Lizzie? Who w-would hurt a child?’ Grace remembered back to the day Lachlan had taken her into the forest to teach her the art of self-defence. He had given her the very same warning.
‘His brother.’ Two words. Grace felt a shiver of fear run down the spine of her back. ‘If Malcolm Kerr is still alive, he would want the Belridden lands back as his own.’
Grace’s heart, already hammering fast, picked up the pace again as she remembered back to the day when the one they spoke of had lost his footing and toppled into a gully beside the river at Grantley.
‘I have heard talk.’ Lizzie’s expression was grave. ‘Your husband has heard the same talk, but to protect ye will hear none of it. If he knew that I had been giving you such information…’
‘I promise I will s-say nothing.’
‘And ye will be careful? For the bairn’s sake as well as your own?’
A wave of nausea stopped her from answering and she felt the sweat building between her breasts and under the heavy fringe of hair at her forehead.
Lord. Her lies were closing in on her and if Malcolm Kerr was found to be alive, she knew exactly the accusations that he would level at her.
Murder and deceit. And everything would be ruined.
Lachlan rode home along the forest paths after escorting the Elliot clan off his land. He rode with Connor and Ian only, the three of them picking their way silently through the glades and always wending south-west, the sun in his face as it fell towards the Cheviots, lighting the land red.
Red.
Like Grace’s hair and the colour of the rubies in the ring that the wife of Elliot had bequeathed her. For fertility? His fingers gripped tighter on the bridle and he tried to remember if she had had her woman’s bleeding here in Scotland. He did not think so. He counted back the days since arriving at Belridden, for that was when he had known her first, intimately.
A little over four weeks.
Could she have fallen with child already? The secrets between them were mounting and he could do nothing. Nothing save to try to protect her.
Chapter Twelve
Grace was restless. Lachlan still was not home and it was well past the hour of ten, darkness already fallen and the land blanketed in shadow. She had come up to his room because it was higher in the tower and, lifting the leather from the window, she looked out, searching for a light and listening for the sound of horses or shouts from the guards in the ramparts as the lost soldiers returned home.
Not that they were lost exactly, for no one seemed worried save for her. It had begun to rain heavily, slanting rain accompanied by strong breezes. Dampness permeated the castle, clinging as it was to the side of a ridge and raised up enough to feel the full brunt of the gale, wrapped in the cold mists of the Borderlands. Grace brought the blanket draped loosely across her arms to make a shawl of it over her shoulders and shivered.
‘Where are you, Lachlan?’ she asked of the empty shadows and wished that he would come so that she could sleep.
Just sleep?
She turned the ring on her finger and smiled.
His room was a large one, a writing desk to one side full of papers and manuscripts. Ink and quills sat at the other end, and carefully placed red wax, for his seal she supposed and looked for it, determining that it must be in one of the three drawers under the table. She wondered what else he kept in there, but did not dare to open one in case someone came. Besides, her innate sense of good etiquette would hardly allow such snooping.
Instead she pulled out his chair and sat, the comfort restful and relaxing. She imagined him here, looking at the room from this particular angle, at the wooden shelves that held his swords and the cupboard for his clothes. Standing, she walked over to open the door. A number of shirts were folded inside it, as were plaids. And there at the back lay English clothes, fine clothes of velvet and brocade. Clothes from his life before this one and from the time when he had served his king in far-off places. In Acquitaine and Brittany. In the castles that had held a child king that nobody wanted, a royal minor who had brought chaos to the land of strong and greedy men.
Scotland.
Home.
She reached out and touched the linen of his sarks and felt…reassured, though when a knock came on the door she jumped back and closed the portal of the wardrobe quickly.
‘Come in.’ The door opened and Lizzie stood there, her face suffused with worry.
‘Please, my Lady, ye need to come now, for it is dangerous to stay up here and alone. If you came down to the Great Hall, I am sure that you would be safer. In company it will be safer.’
Seeing Lizzie’s obvious fright, Grace followed the woman out, then shock hit hard as a hand snaked out to connect her full on the temple and all that she felt was a whirling blackness.
‘If ye keep still, no one will hurt you, my Lady.’ Lizzie’s voice. Close. Blending with the pain in her head and the ache in her hands, tied to a tree in the woods, and Lachlan’s mistress berating the stranger in front of them.
‘Kenneth MacIndoe said he would be here,’ Rebecca raged. ‘He said if we brought Grace Stanton here that he would come and bring the gold.’
‘Well, he cannae come as he is still in York.’
‘And we cannae stay past the dawn, for if anyone should find out that we brought her…’
‘Hush, niece.’ Lizzie held up her hands. Niece? Her niece? Rebecca was Lizzie’s niece and Kenneth MacIndoe was Malcolm Kerr’s servant, the man who had seen the truth of Ginny’s shame. Everything she had feared was happening.
‘B-but you tried to w-warn me, Lizzie?’
The quick shake of the woman’s head was baffling as was the noiselessly mouthed, ‘Help!’
Help against what? Against whom? When a trail of soldiers came into the glade, Grace realised that she would never escape. Nay, she had to hold her ground and hope…Hope Lachlan would come…Hope Lizzie might help…Hope that when Kenneth MacIndoe finally saw her, he would not kill her for her lies.
The world narrowed in its options and the rain set in hard, the blanket her maid positioned across her hair no shelter at all against the cold of autumn sleet.
‘We are to bring her down to the Watchlaw Castle,’ a tall, red-haired man said, ‘by the way of the Tyne, for it should be swollen from the rains before nightfall and will hide any sign o
f our passage.’
‘And Belridden? What of those who are still loyal to us at the keep?’
‘The others will join us in a week and then we will take it. Did ye leave the ring, Rebecca?’
‘Yes.’
Ring? Her marriage ring? Grace saw that it was no longer on her finger and worry strengthened.
‘Get Kerr’s wife on the horse, then.’
Two soldiers dismounted and came towards her. Loosening her ropes, they threw her up on the back of a large white steed before retying her wrists to the pommel. One of them then got up behind, his arms encircling her body roughly. She tried not to lean back, tried to keep space between them, tried to stay as still as possible as the horse moved on.
This was no moment to let her unease of riding run rampant. With Lachlan she had felt safe enough to express fear. With this man she stiffened and bit down on protest.
An owl called out in the forest, once, twice and then three times. The group stilled, tilting their heads towards the sound and pulling out swords.
Don’t let it be Lachlan, Grace prayed. Please do not let it be him, for she knew he rode with two others only and this group numbered well above thirty. Even he could not win against such numbers.
There was a sound of breaking twigs and the rustle of leaves and then Dexter’s face poked through the last row of small saplings, his bark of joy loud as he saw her and rushed to her side, warm, alive, the lolling red of his tongue against her shoes.
The laughter of her captors cut the tension and she was pleased when the dark-haired man who was the leader gestured for them to move on, the dog forgotten in the mêlée. With care she turned and watched him follow, her only friend amongst these strangers.
Within an hour they laboured under high cliffs of limestone and Grace knew that this was nowhere near the edge of the Kerrs’ land, nowhere near the place where her husband had shepherded the Elliots from his holding. Feeling for the rosary in her pocket, she began to recite the words of salvation beneath her breath.