by Amanda Scott
“Come you in, child, and shut that door.” Strachan was alone, and he did not appear to be angry. When she had closed the door, he bade her be seated and sat himself in a chair nearby. The room was full of light from the inner courtyard that glinted upon the delicate manuscript chains and the gold tooling of the leatherbound tomes. There was a brief silence while his lordship gazed searchingly at her, as though he wondered how to begin, but at last he cleared his throat with a great “harrumph” and said, “You have no cause to fear me, lass.”
She lifted her gaze from her lap, looked at him, and smiled. “I do not fear you, my lord.” It was true. Now that she was face to face with him, she was no longer afraid. The bone-chilling note she had heard in his voice earlier was gone, and there was nothing in his expression now but kindly compassion.
“I wanted to speak with you, Mary Kate, because much though it mislikes me to have done so, I have involved myself in your affairs. I have a need to explain my actions to you.”
“What have you done, my lord?”
“I have forbidden him to beat you,” he replied bluntly.
Stunned by his words, she was silent, thinking it would not become her to express her extreme gratitude for such timely intervention. It was as though he read her mind.
“You have no cause to thank me, lassie.”
“Have I not, sir?”
“No, for he is all the angrier at being frustrated. One way or another you will suffer more for my interference than if I had left well enough alone, but I did not consider your welfare.”
“No?” She was puzzled now.
“My lady sets great store by you, lass,” he explained, “and we leave for the capital in less than two days’ time. At best, even at the slow pace we shall maintain, she will tire easily, and I do not want anything else to distress her in the meantime. Her contentment is of paramount importance to me.”
“As it must be to us all, sir,” Mary Kate assured him. “Whatever happens next between Adam and me shall not be laid at your door.”
“Bless you, lassie, but I fear you will have your work cut out to make your peace with him.”
She smiled ruefully, agreeing with him.
“Tell me why you left,” he said abruptly. When she opened her eyes in dismay, he added, “I will not usurp his authority further, but I do want to know what caused you to run away as you did from the safety of my house.”
The rapid change of subject had caught her by surprise, but she made a heroic effort to cover her confusion. “I…I only went for a ride, my lord, and was taken unaware by the reivers.”
“Cut me no whids, lass, else I will become angry. I want the short tale, if you please.” His voice was gentle, but there was a stern note in it now, and her cheeks warmed in response.
She saw no point in persisting to refute the theory that she had been running away, but although she had no wish to reveal her jealousy or the pettier difficulties between herself and Megan, he would not be gainsaid. He encouraged her with a tact of which she had not known him capable, and little by little, falteringly, and not without a few tears, a good part of the tale was told.
When she had finished, he sat for a moment, elbows on the arms of his chair, silently regarding the tips of his fingers where they formed a tent before him. Then he looked up, and for a brief moment she was chilled by the icy glint in his eyes. It vanished when he caught her gaze upon him.
“You explain much,” he said slowly. “I had seen some of the pliskie nonsense for myself, but I had no conception of its scope. Now that I do, I can promise you that you need distress yourself no longer.” He stood up and moved to open the door for her. “I think it best that you return to your bedchamber for a time, lassie. It might appease my son somewhat to find you there should he return before supper is served. However,” he added, giving her a direct look, “since you have already missed your dinner, you are to come down to sup whether he returns or no.”
“Where has he gone?”
“I have no notion,” Strachan replied with a twinkle. “He has been in a state of high emotion for some twenty-four hours now, and when I had done with him, he flung out of there in much the same resentful manner he was used to assume on such occasions when he was but a lad. In those days, depending upon what had transpired between us, he either took long walks through the woods, or wore some poor horse out, riding all out over the hills. Today I’ll warrant it would be the horse.” He grinned. “He has grown overlarge for skelping.”
If he expected her to smile, he missed his mark. The portrait he had drawn of Douglas’s probable state of mind overpowered any other thought she might have had, and she hoped her husband would choose to take a long ride, and particularly that he would remain away until after supper. “Regardless of his father’s instructions, she would not dare to defy him should he take it into his head to command that she keep to her bedchamber and miss the meal altogether, a command she knew him to be perfectly capable of issuing. And Strachan would not countermand such an order, for he had made it clear to her that he would usurp his son’s authority no further. Therefore, it was with dismay rather than pleasure that she met Ned Lumsden on his way down the great stair. He stood aside to let her pass.
“Ned, has Sir Adam returned, then?”
“Nay, my lady. Not to my knowledge.”
“You did not accompany him?” Somehow she had assumed without thinking about it that he had, merely because he had been with Douglas before.
Ned grinned. “Wouldn’t I have liked to do that very thing,” he said, “but Adam said this time was too dangerous and ordered me to remain behind. Threatened to flog me himself if I disobeyed him.” He shrugged. “What would you? He was in a rare kippage, and I believed him. So here I am.”
“But where did he go?”
Ned hesitated. “You must not trouble yourself about his safety, my lady, for he has his own men with him. He has ridden out to retrieve the ransom.”
Mary Kate stared at him. Douglas had been so grim and uncommunicative at the bourock that she hadn’t even thought to ask him about the ransom. It was enough that he had found her. But now it appeared that a ransom had been paid, and in an effort to retrieve it Douglas would take on the reivers with but twenty men at his back.
“Dear God in heaven.” The color drained from her face, and Ned reached out a steadying hand, as though he feared she might swoon. He assured her hastily that each of Douglas’s men was worth ten of the brigands and told her again not to worry. “Easy for you to say,” she retorted, “but this is my fault. If I had stayed here, he’d have had no reason to pay them at all.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Ned agreed gently, “but it isn’t only the ransom, you know. He made them certain promises.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “He didn’t! Surely he never arranged for those dreadful men in Roxburgh to go free?” Douglas might have paid the money, but she found it difficult to believe that he would agree to their other demands.
Ned was grinning. “Perhaps I had better explain,” he said. “After the business in the window hall yesterday, he came down to dinner, saying you were ill. Megan had recovered her composure by then, so there was no reason for my aunt or uncle to disbelieve him. His lordship even mentioned noticing that you had been somewhat subdued in spirit on the walk back from the kirk. They had gone on out to the terrace immediately, you will remember, so they heard nothing of what transpired betwixt—Well, in any event, after dinner Adam took me aside and—” He broke off again, coloring.
“Oh Ned!” she cried, immediately contrite. “I am so sorry. He accused me of dousing Megan deliberately, and I didn’t even try to deny it. I think he suspected the truth all along.”
“Aye,” he agreed, pulling a face. “At the very least of it, he retained some suspicions, and he was not pleased that I had lied to protect you. But to pass over that part as quickly as possible,” he went on with a wry smile, “he dozed on the terrace after dinner, and when he awoke, Megan suggested a walk in
the garden. Afterward she watched whilst we played tennis, and no one realized you were missing from the house until the ransom demand was delivered. Adam sent word immediately that his men would be wanted directly after supper. Then he and Willie Jardine went in search of your trail, so as to be ready to leave as soon as the others had supped.”
“He searched all night?”
“Aye, he thought the reivers would most likely leave you somewhere whilst they collected the ransom, but he wouldn’t take the chance of not finding you—especially since he couldn’t be certain that the men wouldn’t keep you with them—so he made arrangements with his lordship to meet the brigand chief at dawn in his place. As it happened, that was after you had been found,” he added, “but his lordship could not know the search had been a success, so he agreed to their demands. The ransom he paid was a large one, so when he promised that they would be reunited with their compatriots before two days were out, they didn’t think to study upon his words. They had refused to tell him where you were, but they did agree to release you. He promised upon the word of a Douglas, you see, and they knew to trust his pledge.”
“But then Adam must mean to set them free!”
“Think, my lady.”
“His lordship promised to reunite—oh!” She grinned at Ned as the meaning of the careful wording came to her. “Adam means to capture them all and reunite them in Roxburgh Tolbooth. But, how dangerous!”
“Not a bit. ’Tis meat and drink to him, my lady. Surely, you never thought yourself wedded to a carpet knight.”
“Of course not, but I don’t want him hurt, all the same. Especially since this was my fault.”
“He’s been searching for this band a long time,” Ned said gently.
She nodded, acknowledging the truth of the statement, then forced a smile to her. lips, knowing Ned well enough by now to be certain he would worry if he thought she did.
He returned her smile, visibly relaxing before he remembered that he had been on his way to inquire if his lordship had duties for him. Reminded, he took himself off in some haste.
Mary Kate continued up to her bedchamber, where she curled up like a kitten on her bed and soon fell asleep. She had been dozing for nearly two hours when she was disturbed by a timid scratching on the door to the gallery. Neither Douglas nor Annie would knock, so it was with a note of curiosity in her voice that she called out permission to enter.
The door opened slowly, and after a long pause, Megan stepped reluctantly inside. Her demeanor had changed a good deal since Mary Kate had answered Lord Strachan’s summons to the bookroom sped along by her taunting smirk. Now, the young woman’s usually flawless complexion was stained with blotches of color and her eyes were red from recent weeping. Her proud head was lowered, her chin trembled, and the look she cast Mary Kate was miserable, even beseeching.
16
“MAY I HAVE SPEECH with you, my lady?” Courtesy as well, Mary Kate thought, wondering what this was all about. Megan hadn’t called her by title since her arrival.
“What do you want?” Her tone was sharp if not actually hostile. Barely glancing at Megan, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, smoothing her skirts, then reached up to tuck straggling ends of her hair back into her net.
Megan came farther into the room, shutting the door behind her. “I have come to make an apology to you.” Her voice trembled, but she seemed otherwise in control of herself, and Mary Kate suddenly remembered Lord Strachan’s promise. “I have behaved badly,” Megan went on, “and I have come here because I must tell you how sorry I am.”
“Very affecting, Lady Somerville,” Mary Kate said scornfully. Not doubting for a moment that Megan had chosen her words as carefully as Douglas had chosen the words of his message to the reivers, Mary Kate reveled in the other young woman’s discomfort, wishing Douglas himself could see it. How the tables had turned, she thought. Megan couldn’t possibly know that he had ordered his wife to make just such an apology to her, and now the shoe was on the other foot, exactly where it belonged.
Wanting nothing so much as to make her erstwhile adversary crawl, to humble her to her knees, Mary Kate went on in the same scathing tone, “Since I am quite certain that it was his lordship who demanded that you make this apology, I find it difficult to believe in its sincerity. No doubt he said things to you that you were sorry to hear, but I do not believe for a moment that you are truly sorry for your behavior to me.”
“Mary Kate, please!” To her dismay, tears began streaming from Megan’s eyes, and she stepped forward to sink down upon a low footstool before Mary Kate.
Mary Kate recoiled instantly. Although she had wanted to find Megan at her feet, to enjoy just such a display of humility, she now found it intensely distasteful. A woman so proud and beautiful as Douglas’s cousin should not humble herself to anyone, any more than Douglas or his wife should.
Megan struggled to control her tears. “My uncle has commanded that I return at once to Somerville,” she said wretchedly. “I am to be sent home to my husband in disgrace.”
“Sent home?” Mary Kate was astonished. “What about Margaret’s wedding?”
“Uncle said that that must lie with Sir Reginald to decide. But oh, Mary Kate, I know he will not permit me to go. He will be so angry, and he will say that since I have had my chance and mismanaged it, I deserve not to go. And he will be right.” She brushed tears away with the back of her hand and slumped woefully on the footstool. “I have no one to blame for this wretched turn of events save myself.”
Shamefaced and speaking haltingly, Megan described what had happened when she had been summoned to the bookroom not long after Mary Kate had left it. “I foolishly believed that somehow my uncle had heard of your rudeness to me yesterday and intended to make you apologize to me,” she confessed reluctantly.
Instead, she had found her uncle in a naming temper. He had accused her of insensitivity, rudeness, lack of hospitality, and—worst of all—of disgracing the proud names of Douglas and Somerville. He had ranted on and on for some time in that vein, and Megan assured Mary Kate that her ears were still ringing from the peal of his upbraiding, although the scene had taken place a good while before. She had spent the intervening time miserably, alone in her bedchamber, trying to decide what course might be the best one to pursue.
With a catch in her voice, she insisted that she had never expected her mischief to lead to such an end, that she had wanted only to see what sort of reaction her harmless flirtation with Douglas would evoke from Mary Kate, and she willingly admitted that she had allowed the business to go much too far. Now her uncle was adamant, and she could not appeal to Douglas for assistance. Even if he would agree to speak for her, she explained, his father would never listen to him.
“I am afraid of my husband,” she admitted quietly. “My uncle promises to write him a letter, detailing my many unkindnesses to you. I—I am to take it to him when I return. Such a message…” She paused, gulping, visibly exerting control over rapidly rising emotion. “Such a message will enrage him beyond anything I have ever seen, I am sure of it, and his temper is formidable.”
“You make it sound as though you fear for your very life,” Mary Kate said suspiciously. “I doubt it can be as bad as that.”
Megan managed a weak smile. “No, but it will be grievously uncomfortable, nevertheless.” She threw Mary Kate a sapient glance. “Only consider how Adam would react if our positions were reversed.”
Mary Kate fell silent. To imagine the Douglas fury were she ever to present him with such a message as Lord Strachan had promised to send with Megan was not difficult. His anger with her now would be as nothing compared to it, for the discord between herself and his cousin had been a matter easily kept within the family, a disagreement between two mere females, at that. Douglas had been angry when she had insulted Megan, but not angry enough to beat her. To be sure, he had been angrier, and still was, over her abduction by the reivers, but only because he thought she had come to grief thr
ough willful disobedience to his commands.
It was her safety that concerned him presently, just as it had been the day she had impulsively left the castle and ridden toward Jedburgh. That incident and her more recent difficulties would remain, for the most part, private matters between the two of them. If, on the other hand, she were to misbehave under someone else’s roof and he were to learn of it from a third party, the matter would no longer be a private one.
Remembering how straitly he had warned her against making their affairs public, she could have no doubt that he would be enraged if such a situation ever arose, convinced that others would see in her actions a reflection of his inability to control her behavior. Bad enough, then, to have to face Douglas’s wrath in such a case. But what about Sir Reginald, who had a reputation for being a harsher, more insensitive man to begin with? The thought of Megan’s probable punishment made Mary Kate wince. Suddenly she no longer wanted vengeance of any sort.
“I am sorry for you,” she said quietly.
“Please believe I never meant this foolishness to go so far, Mary Kate. You were right to say that it was my uncle’s words that made me sorry, for until then I had been selfishly heedless of your pain. I amused myself at your expense, and besides being foolish, my behavior was wicked and thoughtless. I am truly sorry, both that I have hurt you and that I have caused this trouble between you and Adam. I think I must have been jealous,” she added frankly, “and perhaps at times I did intend more than simple mischief. I am not proud of myself, but I never meant such dreadful things to happen to either of us. When Adam received that message from your captors…well, you cannot think how I felt.”
She paused with a reminiscent grimace. “I promise you, the news made me physically ill, and at that moment, if I could have brought you back merely by confessing to him what I had been doing and suffering the consequences of his fury, I’d have done so and gladly. But then he brought you home safely, and everyone made such a fuss over you that I reacted childishly again when my uncle sent for you. I saw your fear when the message came for you, and I thought you were finally to be scolded for causing such an upset.”