by Amanda Scott
He glanced at Dow as if he would say more to him but evidently decided against it, strolling into the stable instead.
“’Tis good to see ye, m’lady,” Dow said. “I see that ye’ll soon be a mother.”
“Aye, but I want to hear news of Annan House and Dunwythie Hall, if you please. I did just learn that the lady Phaeline is staying at the Hall.”
“Aye, sure,” he said, “Or so they tell me. They do say her coming surprised everyone, because she does prefer the view o’ the Firth from Annan House to that o’ the river Annan from the Hall. Mayhap she just wants to see that all is in order for the lady Mairi’s return to Annandale next month.”
“Mairi is coming so soon?”
“Aye, before the end o’ July wi’ her husband, the Laird o’ Trailinghail, and doubtless their bairn as well. Sithee, they do live at the Hall most o’ the year now. They spent a month at Annan House last winter and a fortnight again in April, afore they left again for Trailinghail. That be his lordship’s estate in Galloway.”
“I do remember that, aye,” Fiona said, as an image of Robert Maxwell rose in her mind. She had teased Mairi about him when the man had visited the Hall with Will. That had been the first time either had laid eyes on the two men and the only time Fiona had seen Maxwell. Certainly, neither she nor Mairi had thought they were meeting their future husbands that day.
“The baroness and her lord husband mean to return to celebrate Lammas here, same as they did last year,” Dow told her. “That be the first o’ August.”
“Did they do so last year? No one told me.”
He frowned. “Someone ought to ha’ told ye, m’lady.”
“Did you say they have a child?”
“Aye, sure, a braw little lad they named Thomas after your lord father.”
“Do you go up the dale from here or down?” she asked next.
“I ha’ come from Annan, m’lady. I mean to visit the Hall from here.”
She looked around and saw no one near enough to overhear her. “Then, prithee, would you take a message from me to the lady Phaeline?”
“I would, aye,” he said, nodding. “What would ye have me say to her?”
Fiona had not thought that far ahead. What could she say after two years of silence? She wanted to say she was sorry, that she had made a dreadful mistake, but surely, one did not confide such personal messages to the knacker. She could write a little if she could acquire the necessary materials, but she had never seen such items at Spedlins. Moreover, if they existed, they were in Old Jardine’s chamber.
At last, she said, “Prithee, tell her that we are… that is, that I am in good health here and… and hope she is the same,” she said at last. “Now, perhaps you had better tell me about this nostrum you have brought for my good-father.”
Kirkhill had not visited Dunwythie Hall before. He thought it an imposing pile, perched as it was atop a low hill overlooking a sharp bend in the river Annan. Woodland covered the base of the hill, but the woods ended well short of the high curtain wall, and the round castle keep was tall enough to command a panoramic view of the Roman road a mile away and any other possible approach.
No one could get near it from the river at this time of year, because the Annan tumbled in a heavy, frothy boil down to the Solway Firth, some fifteen miles or more to the south. He knew of a ford north of the castle and another one south of Spedlins Tower, both doubtless well guarded in these days of recurring unrest.
As he and Joshua approached the tall gates, Joshua drew ahead to announce him to the guardsmen on the wall-walk above. The name Kirkhill of Kirkhill was sufficient. The gate swung slowly open, and they rode into the yard.
Gillies came running to meet them and see to their horses.
As Kirkhill dismounted, he said to the most senior of them, “Prithee, inform your porter that I should like a word with her ladyship if it is convenient for her to receive me. Tell him also that I have ridden here from Spedlins Tower.”
“Aye, me lord, I’ll tell him straightaway if ye’ll come wi’ me. Our baker has fresh buns on the hob if your man there would like one. One o’ these other lads will show him round to the kitchen.”
Kirkhill glanced at Joshua, who had dismounted, and knew that he would likely learn more in the kitchen than Kirkhill would in the great hall or solar.
After consultation between the obliging gillie and the porter at the door, the latter escorted him to a pleasant chamber with sunlight streaming through two tall, narrow, southeast-facing windows. Announcing him to the lady Phaeline, the porter added briskly that his lordship had come to them from Applegarth.
Phaeline Dunwythie sat on a cushioned bench in the window embrasure to his left, but she rose gracefully to her feet and curtsied as he made his bow. “I knew your father, my lord,” she said in a lilting voice similar to her daughter’s. “That is to say, I knew the late Lord Kirkhill and assume that you must be his son.”
When he assented, smiling, she added, “I believe that I have met your lady mother, too, although I confess that I do not recall her as well.”
Her eyes were darker blue than her daughter’s, but he could not tell if her hair was as dark and glossy, because the lady Phaeline followed prevailing fashion for plucking out every facial hair, right up to the edge of her beaded caul.
She wore plenty of jewelry after the fashion in the Borders, where women wore most of what they owned to declare their husbands’ wealth or—more likely in these lean days—their sad lack of it. He recalled then that she was a Douglas and kinswoman of both the Earl of Douglas and Archie the Grim, Lord of Galloway.
He would have recognized her easily as Fiona’s mother, although she looked to be no older than perhaps five-and-thirty and had retained much of her own youthful good looks. Her face was plumper than Fiona’s, her chin more rounded, and her hands were plumper, too. But she was still a notable beauty.
She said, “Won’t you take a seat, sir, and tell me what brings you to us.”
Blinking, he pushed memories of Fiona away and concentrated on her mother. Pulling up a back-stool, he sat, saying with a smile, “I thought you might like to have word of your daughter, my lady.”
“My porter did say that you came here from Applegarth. Do you mean to say that you saw our Fiona?”
“I did, aye.”
“Faith, sir, you are the first person I have met who owns to having done so. I had begun to think they must keep her locked up in Spedlins Tower. My good-son, Robert Maxwell, and my brother, Sir Hugh Douglas, rode there shortly after Fiona was taken. But Old Jardine spun them a tale—said Fiona and Will had gone riding. As anyone can tell you, if that were the case, she would have got word to me or to her sister straightaway afterward. But never a word have we had from her.”
“You said ‘taken,’ madam,” Kirkhill said with a frown. “Do you mean to say that Will Jardine abducted the lady Fiona?”
“I am sure that he must have,” Phaeline said. “See you, Rob Maxwell has never denied that he abducted our Mairi, which he did! Moreover, he and Will were friends then and met both of my daughters when they called on my husband here together, so clearly Will Jardine must have got the notion from Rob.”
“That must have been difficult for you,” he said. “Two daughters abducted at much the same time, and losing your husband as you did—gey suddenly, I believe.”
“It was horrid,” she said with a sigh. “Such a shock for my lord… first Mairi, and then just a month later, our dearling Fiona. I regret to say that he believed Fiona had run off with Will Jardine… eloped with him, in fact. He even dismissed her maidservant, insisting that the girl had helped Fiona meet Will secretly.”
“Was the maidservant’s name Flory, perhaps?”
Phaeline’s eyes widened. “Have you seen her, too, then?”
“Aye, for she still serves her ladyship, even now.”
Phaeline was silent, apparently digesting that information, before she said, “Then my lord may have been right. He did say
that Flory had admitted aiding Fiona, and he was not a man to tell falsehoods. But I did not want to believe him. Still, if she did elope with that scoundrel and marry him of her own free will, why did she not come home for her father’s burial? Or get in touch with me since or with our Mairi, who spends much of each year right here at Dunwythie Hall?”
“That I cannot tell you, my lady, for she told me only that Dunwythie died before she married,” Kirkhill said.
“Aye, well, he died the evening of the very day she left,” Phaeline said. “He collapsed whilst he was summoning horses and men to fetch her back.”
“I do think Fiona would like to see you,” Kirkhill said, suspecting that he now understood why the lass blamed herself for her father’s death. “You must have heard by now that Will Jardine is missing. Old Jardine believes he must be dead.”
“I shan’t mourn his loss if he is, or that of any Jardine,” she said. “But unless Old Jardine is also dead, his men will not permit any of our people on his land.”
“He is not dead, but he is gey sick, so I think he soon will be,” Kirkhill said.
“Forgive me, sir, but what has any of this to do with you?”
“Old Jardine sent for me,” Kirkhill said. “As you may know, my mother is his sister, and he wants me to learn what became of Will.” He did not think it wise then to tell her that Old Jardine had also named him guardian of her forthcoming grandchild, protector of his estates, and trustee for her daughter.
“Do you think you can find out what became of Will Jardine?”
“Someone will, in time. You should know, too, if you do not, that the lady Fiona is big with child,” he said.
Phaeline’s pale cheeks grew delicately pink. “I did hear about that,” she admitted. Then, in what was clearly a burst of unaccustomed personal candor, she said, “’Tis, in troth, why I made the journey here. I… I was hoping that I might hear from her if I stayed nearby at such a time.”
“Mayhap you will,” he said. “At all events, someone will send for me when Old Jardine dies. I will take a message to her for you then if you like.”
She agreed, and he took his leave, finding Joshua in the yard with a bag of warm bannocks.
“I thought ye’d be ready to leave by now,” Joshua said. “They be a-fetching out our horses straightaway. And I ha’ summat for ye to munch on the way.”
“I hope you’ve collected information as well as the food,” Kirkhill said, accepting a still-warm bun.
“I learned some things, aye,” Joshua said. He said no more until they were on the road, heading north. Then, without prompting, he said, “The baroness, Lady Dunwythie of Dunwythie, be married to Maxwell o’ Trailinghail, who be likewise brother o’ the Sheriff o’ Dumfries. He would be the same villain who were making such a stir two years ago about his right to govern all the dales o’ Dumfriesshire, instead o’ just his rightful jurisdiction o’ Dumfries and the rest o’ Nithsdale.”
Kirkhill, like most noblemen in Annandale, knew that the sheriff’s efforts had failed, in large part due to the efforts of the late Lord Dunwythie. Dunwythie’s ancestors having been hereditary stewards of Annandale, his lordship had taken understandable umbrage at the sheriff’s attempt to usurp his proper authority.
Kirkhill said, “Once a man grows hungry for power, he rarely loses his taste for it. Mayhap he expects his brother to exert influence with Baroness Dunwythie.”
“That’s as may be,” Joshua said. “Robert Maxwell’s land be in Galloway, though. I’m thinking that he’ll take good care no to stir up Archie Douglas.”
Already Lord of Galloway, the appropriately named Archie the Grim had declared his intent to control all of southwest Scotland, as his cousin, the Earl of Douglas, controlled the Scottish Borders. The Douglases were more powerful than the royal Stewarts were, so Kirkhill agreed that Rob Maxwell would tread carefully.
Even so, if Kirkhill had understood the lady Phaeline, and the sheriff’s brother had abducted the lady Mairi before wedding her, the Maxwells might still hope to force her to influence her neighbors in Annandale.
As Kirkhill finished his tasty bun, he recalled that Fiona had also mentioned her cousin Jenny, Baroness Easdale, who had married Hugh Douglas of Thornhill. So the Dunwythies had more than one strong tie to Clan Douglas, and he knew Hugh.
As Dunwythie Hall vanished into the distance behind him, Kirkhill reminded himself that kinships were complex and politics even more so. Pondering that reality as he and Joshua continued to talk, he realized that having bowed to Old Jardine’s will, he might soon find himself bemired in conflict from all sides. In any event, it behooved him to learn more about the Dunwythies and the Jardines.
Meantime, he had a few kinship issues of his own to settle at home. He just hoped that he could get the primary one resolved before Old Jardine’s promised messenger arrived to demand his return to Applegarth.
Fiona had spent most of her morning as she usually did, making sure that the kitchen ran smoothly, so that Old Jardine would not complain that his midday meal was late or inedible. Before adjourning to the solar to take her own meal there with Flory, she retired to her bedchamber to tidy herself.
As she entered the room, a pain gripped her lower back, and she reached quickly to try to ease it with her hands. It lasted only a half minute or so, but she wondered if she or the bairn had suffered more injury.
She had felt heavy and cumbersome for a sennight or more and wished the babe would make its appearance. A hefty kicker, it was doubtless healthy, but the thought of its coming was both wondrous and terrifying. She knew naught about babies or birthing. Even so, she looked forward eagerly to its arrival.
She had no sooner shut the door behind her and taken a step toward the bed than another pain came. It was stronger, lasted longer, and took no ease from the hand she put to the small of her back.
As she drew a breath and let it out, the door opened and Flory entered.
“What’s amiss, m’lady?” she demanded at once.
“Nobbut an ache in my back,” Fiona said. “But I’m carrying this great weight in front of me, so doubtless my back has a right to complain.”
“Aye, well, one o’ the women did say she had pains in her back for more than a fortnight afore one o’ her bairns came,” Flory said wisely. “I ha’ nae doots it be summat natural and nowt to fret over, but I can rub it for ye if ye like.”
“It has gone now. But, Flory, do you really think you know enough about such things? How can you? You told me yourself that although you have a younger sister, you were not at home when she was born.”
“I never seen nowt about it, but I ha’ been asking Jeb’s Jane and Eliza, and any other woman who will talk o’ such things to tell me all I must know. All o’ them ken summat about it—them what ha’ bairns, any road. How hard can it be, if folks ha’ been birthing bairns ever since there ha’ been folks? Ye do be looking pale though. Mayhap that Lord Kirkhill did upset ye more than we knew.”
“Nay, why should he? I am just tired, that’s all. It is hard at night to find a comfortable way to sleep. No sooner do I find one than the wee one starts kicking me, so I’m sure it must be a lad. No lass would kick so hard.”
“Then ye should rest after ye ha’ your dinner,” Flory said. “Your mam did rest often whenever she were with child, nigh onto every afternoon, she did.”
“I don’t like to rest in the daytime,” Fiona said. She did not elaborate, but the fact was that she tended to dream when she napped, and her dreams too often replayed the little she did remember about her last night with Will.
“Ye do ha’ bad dreams, I ken that fine,” Flory said, gazing steadily at her.
Sighing, Fiona said, “I have not told you about that night, because I do not like to talk about it. But you must have heard that Master Will and I argued.”
“Aye, sure,” Flory said with a grimace. “I hear far too often from his own louts what they think. But they be fools and rascals, every one, so dinna ye be listening to their ble
thers, m’lady. They dinna ken nowt.”
“No more do I,” Fiona said. “I cannot even tell you how I got back to this room that night.”
“Hoots, ye never said that much to me about it afore now.”
Fiona sighed. “I did not tell anyone, because… Sithee, when I awoke, I was alone in that bed of mine and Master Will’s, and…” She hesitated.
“Ye told me as I came in that ye’d just wakened, and ye asked where Master Will was,” Flory said. “Ye nearly always do that, though, whether he has been a-sleeping wi’ ye or no. That morning it were the same. What were no the same were them bruises on your face and your ears being all red, as they were… and—”
“And pain all through the rest of me, too,” Fiona said. “I remember how you looked when you saw all the bruises. But you did not even ask me about them.”
“I didna ha’ to ask,” Flory said. “It were no the first time, after all.”
“Nay, it was not,” Fiona agreed. “Then you said that no one had seen Will, that he must have gone out gey early. And you tried to help me dress.”
“Aye, but though ye insisted on getting up, ye could scarcely move,” Flory said with a reminiscent grimace.
“Because my head hurt so, and my side. Sithee, he had hit me there, too.”
“Sakes, me lady, I could see what he’d done,” Flory said, turning abruptly away to open a kist near the service door. As she bent over it, sorting through the clothing inside, she added, “I could see how much he’d hurt ye and that ye were fretting that he might ha’ hurt the bairn, too. But the way that wee one were a-kicking ye, we decided he were fine. Ye, though… ye were none so fine. Sakes, but ye still be a-trying to hide how much he did hurt ye.”
“I could not and cannot let on to Old Jardine,” Fiona explained. “He would say I’d deserved it, because he always takes Will’s part. Moreover, he would have gone on and on about it whenever he got the chance. Will can do no wrong.”
“According to the old master only,” Flory muttered.
“Aye, but then, when Will stayed away, Old Jardine began to suggest that I’d done something to him. I didn’t dare tell him then how much Will had hurt me. I know he’s just worried about Will. But when he quizzed me about what happened, I could not bring myself to talk about it. I still don’t want to.”