by Amanda Scott
“I knew it,” Mary Kate breathed.
“Aye, well, that last bit is for your ears alone, lassie. You are not to repeat what I’ve said to you today. If I did not trust you to keep your tongue well caged behind your teeth, I’d not have told you so much. But I do trust you, just as Jamie trusts me and as I would have you trust me, too. Indeed, I ought to be angry with you for doubting me,” he added, placing a finger beneath her chin and making her look up at him. “I am his man and I serve only him, Mary Kate, so you see, Gillespie has his information a mite distorted. He may yet manage to stir up a wee mare’s nest, and he will certainly have to be dealt with, but I am safe enough from his threats, I promise you.”
He was so close, and she had trembled at his touch, but he did not seem angry now: Still, the atmosphere was fragile, and she believed that one wrong word would shatter his calm like a piece of Venetian glass. So it was that she did not speak, and the silence lengthened until he broke it himself.
“Is that the only reason you did not confide in me?”
She shook her head.
“Well, then?”
“I was afraid,” she said simply. “We seemed to be building a better understanding between us, and I feared to upset it. You had been so distant before. First so angry, then so distantly polite, and then after that night in our garden when you found me alone with him…well, I feared to make you angry again. When I ran away at Strachan—”
“Ran away? I thought ’twas a mere taking of the air,” he said mockingly.
She shrugged. “You will never believe that, however, nor will any of the others. Indeed, I am no longer perfectly certain that I believe it myself. I did think at the time that that was all I was doing, but I wish to put it all behind us now. If we can do that only by having it that I ran away, then so be it. Your father said I was too far south not to be running from something, and I suppose he could be in the right of it, even if I didn’t realize it then. After all, he understood about Megan when you did not.”
“What about Megan?” he asked more sharply.
“That she truly was attempting to stir coals between us,” Mary Kate said. “She admitted it, and your father made her apologize to me. He was going to send her home, but I spoke to him and he changed his mind. I had not meant to tell you about that,” she added ruefully. “The words just came of their own accord.” With a small sigh, she lifted her chin and gazed directly into his eyes. There was a look in them that she could not decipher.
After an uncomfortably long silence, he said, “So you wish to put all that has happened behind us, do you?”
She nodded, watching him warily.
“And how do you propose to accomplish that aim, madam? Am I merely to suppress my displeasure with you now that you have confessed your sins?”
Biting her lower lip, Mary Kate felt warmth rise to her cheeks. She would be foolish indeed, she thought, to expect such a thing of him.
He was waiting for a response.
“No, sir,” she said finally, reluctantly. “I would not suppose that.” When he still did not speak but waited, watching her, she added, “I don’t know what I expected you to do, exactly. I suppose I thought you would be angrier about all this. Perhaps, unconsciously, I was following Margaret’s advice. She said I ought to give you an opportunity to lose your temper and then, once I had suffered the consequences, things would get back to normal again. I did think, after your anger that night in the garden—” She broke off, swallowing hard. “But this is much worse, of course.”
“Indeed it is. So Margaret knows all, does she?”
Mary Kate chewed her lip again.
“Did my so-helpful little sister suggest what those consequences might be?”
“No, but I certainly never meant to follow her advice, either. Circumstances ordered matters otherwise, and then today I was afraid you might…well, that you would—” She broke off again, unable to put that thought into words.
“That it would mean another skelping?”
She nodded, not looking at him.
“You deserve one,” he said slowly, as though he were mulling over a suggestion. “You have behaved disgracefully, have you not? Let me see…” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “First you ran away from my father’s house, causing me a great deal of distress, embarrassment, and inconvenience. Then you insisted upon playing fast and loose with a bounder whose intentions were clearly dishonorable from the outset. You admit to having listened at doors, a habit that, though I should not myself define it as contemptible, is certainly not admirable. Next you engaged yourself in highly improper, not to mention dangerous, dealings with your would-be seducer. Then you drugged me, causing me to make a fool of myself in the presence of Lady Aberfoyle, a woman whose good opinion I value. Following upon that, you had me carried ignominiously to my own bedchamber to be bound hand and foot to my own bed by two friends who you insist have not heard a complete explanation of your reasons for wishing to do such a thing to your lord and master and yet who agreed to help you do it. Indeed, the worst of this may well be that you have kept a great deal of pertinent information from me but have involved those same two gentlemen, who have no business to be involved.” He shook his head. “Not a pretty list, madam. But then, perhaps allowances ought to be made, since you never wished to marry me in the first place.”
Shocked by the sudden, unexpected turn of his accusations, Mary Kate cried out sharply, “No, Adam! You mustn’t make allowances for that. Please, sir, you must not!” Tears sparkled in her eyes, and she blinked them back, regarding him anxiously through the mist. “Truly, I had rather you would beat me than believe me unhappy in our marriage.”
“So you are not displeased now that you will be a borderer’s countess, lass?” He spoke quietly, but there was an underlying note in his voice that was difficult for her to interpret. Rather than being a mere statement of fact, his words sounded much more like a challenge and also as though her reply was of grave importance to him. To make such an interpretation was, she told herself, probably to make too much of what was no doubt an imagined inflection. Nonetheless, she gave careful thought to her answer.
“It is not being your countess that pleases me, Adam,” she said at last. “It is being your wife. Most of the prejudices I labored under when you first expressed a desire to wed with me were as foolish as you said they were. Meeting Margaret, Megan, and your mother certainly proved to me that the women of the borders are neither as meek or as submissive as I had expected to find them.”
A smile lit his eyes. “Nay, lassie, the women of the Douglas family, at least, are rarely meek or mild of spirit. But it was not primarily the women who concerned you, I believe. ’Twas the men, was it not?”
“Aye, but most of those concerns disappeared once I had discovered for myself that there are as many different types of men in the borders as there are in the highlands.”
“Still you did not think you were valued as you deserved to be,” he said quietly.
Mary Kate regarded him steadily. “I think my certainty that a border husband would treat me as his chattel got mixed up with my jealousies, sir, till I knew not whether I was on my head or on my heels. Once I recognized the jealousy, I began to sort out my true feelings. Though you are, in truth, an arrogant knave,” she added daringly, “I have, since recognizing those feelings, known only happiness and contentment except insofar as I have managed to displease you. I fear, however, that whatever affection you may once have felt for me must have dissolved altogether by now.”
“It has not.” His voice was gruff and his hands, suddenly gripping her shoulders, were unsteady. “Dare this arrogant knave take your words to mean that you—” He broke off when, for once, his natural assurance abandoned him.
“That I love you, Adam?” she finished softly. “Aye, sir, I do with all my heart. I wanted to tell you so after you found me in the bourock that morning, but at first you were too angry and then you went away. And once we were here in the city, the time never s
eemed right for the telling. I was afraid that even to mention what I had discovered about my feelings would mean that I would have to explain the rest of the tangle to you.”
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears, but she would have said more had she not lost her breath when he crushed her against his chest in a vigorous hug. Silence reigned for a moment, though she could hear his heart pounding. Then, finding it difficult to breathe, she tried to free herself.
The pressure of his arms lessened when he realized her plight, but he did not release her. Instead, his lips brushed against her curls, and his voice came again in a low murmur. “Naughty wench. I ought perhaps to have paid more heed to the accusations you made against Megan, but what a muddle you have made of all else.”
She inhaled gratefully but spoke her next words warily, next to his chest. “Art still angry, sir?”
“I ought to be,” he declared in a firmer tone. “Lord knows, I ought to blister your pretty backside for all this insanity. “No man—or woman either—would blame me if I did so.”
“No, sir.”
“No one,” he repeated. “Most sensible persons would recommend such a course.”
“Would they, sir?”
“Aye,” he replied flatly. “I am convinced ’tis true.”
“But you follow your own course, do you not?” Mary Kate suggested demurely.
“Do I?”
“Aye, sir, I have many times observed that to be so. A true border knight does not allow himself to be influenced by the opinions of others.”
“Does he not?”
“No, sir.” She gazed up at him limpidly.
He chuckled. “Do you seek to bewitch me, lassie, with your lovely golden eyes? You cannot do it. You deserve to be punished.”
She held her breath, watching him anxiously.
He chuckled again, and his arm tightened briefly before he tilted her chin up and answered the unspoken question in her eyes. “There will be no skelping this time, sweetheart.”
She breathed more easily, but he had not finished.
“I have a better plan.” He grinned, reaching to unlace her bodice. “You are so bonny, lassie. I like it when your eyes grow wide and your lips part. I can just see the tip of your wee tongue between your teeth.” He slid the gown off her shoulders and began, lightly, to caress her breasts.
She trembled at his touch, but she made no move to resist him. Indeed, she had no wish to resist him.
His left hand moved to release the tie at her waist. “Let me think now,” he mused softly. “I think one wee bairn a year for the next twenty years ought to keep you safe at home and well out of mischief, do not you?”
“Adam!” she gasped, as much in response to the feelings aroused by his busy hands as to his words.
“By God, lass,” he muttered hoarsely as the ribbons parted and her gown fell to a heap on the floor, “I hope we have learned enough about each other now so that all the nonsense can take its proper place behind us. I love you more than I love life itself, and I can tell you that this state of affairs here and now is more to my liking.” He lifted her gently onto the bed. As he climbed in beside her and took her into his arms, Mary Kate gazed up at him lovingly, savoring the magic words he had just spoken. He loved her. He had said so, had put his feelings into words at last. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she had longed to hear such an admission upon his lips. Her kisses became more passionate as his teasing hands inflamed her body. If he desired to punish her in such a manner as this today, she reflected happily, he might do so as often as he liked and with her goodwill. Indeed, she would encourage him with every highland woman’s wile at her command.
About the Author
A fourth-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which appeared on the USA Today bestseller list. Her Scottish heritage and love of history (she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Mills College and California State University, San Jose, respectively) inspired her to write historical fiction. Credited by Library Journal with starting the Scottish romance subgenre, Scott has also won acclaim for her sparkling Regency romances. She is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award (for Lord Abberley’s Nemesis, 1986) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. She lives in central California with her husband.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Border Trilogy
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The correct pronunciation of Buccleuch is “Buck-loo,” with the accent on the second syllable.
Chapter 1
“Now Liddisdale has ridden a raid,
but I wat they had better stayed at home.”
The Borders
February 1596
TATTERED SKIRTS OF MIST shadowed the high, gibbous moon as the raiders approached the dark hamlet of Haggbeck in the shadow of England’s Cheviot Hills. A thin, crisp layer of snow covered the ground, and there were thirty riders; but their ponies’ hooves were nimble and quick, and made little noise for so many.
At a sign from their leader, a group of ten led by Ally the Bastard circled toward the common lands to collect the cattle, sheep, and horses. The main party continued into the hamlet.
The band of reivers had traveled through the night following intricate byways known to few but their leader. He was a man, legend said, who could find his way to hell and back through smoke-filled Limbo and pitch-black Purgatory. The secret haunts of Liddesdale were his refuge, the Cheviot Hills and Tynedale forests his hunting grounds, the Debatable Lands and Bewcastle Waste his playing fields.
Other men respected him as a leader of excellent head, believing his skill for penetrating the darkest night or the thickest mist unmatched by any other of his time. He knew his ground to an inch, and he had an uncanny knack for evading the watchers that the English Queen had set to guard her border.
Those watchers presented a formidable barrier, for from Solway to Berwick, from October to mid-March, by day or by night, the entire frontier remained under watch. Local English nobility and gentry bore responsibility for arming and horsing their men, as well as for inspecting the watches they set over every hilltop, ford, and dale, to guard every conceivable passage over their marches.
In times past, English wardens had sentenced to death any man who failed to resist Scottish raiders, and English landowners were still under strict orders to enforce the rules. But over the years those rules had relaxed, and nowadays English watchers who failed to raise a hue and cry against thieves faced no more than being held liable for the goods stolen during their watch.
Twice already that night, the Scottish leader had waved his men to lurking places while watchers passed within yards of them. Unfortunately, one could not count upon the Queen’s guardians to be in the same places each time. Pairs or larger groups of them patrolled together, moving from dale to ford to hilltop and back, ready to catch any careless reiver who showed himself.
The Scottish side had its guards, too, of course, and beacons on hilltops and tower roofs set to give fiery warning of English raids. However, unless a powerful lord commanded otherwise, the Scots tended to be less organized than their English counterparts, relying on other means to warn of attack or to protect against one.
In any event, that night the raiders known the length and breadth of the Borders as Rabbie’s Bairns reached their target easily. They had chosen Haggbeck in simple retaliation for an earlier English raid on the Liddesdale holdings of Curst Eckie Crosier. Curst Eckie wanted his cattle back, and if the raiders could collect more, and a few horses or sheep to boot, so much the better.
The leader raised his hand again as the riders neared the hamlet center.
“No sign of anyone waking,” he murmured to the big man riding beside him with the vicious, long-handled, curved-bladed weapon known as a Jeddart or Jedburgh ax slung over one muscular shoulder.
“Nay, Rabbie,” the man replied. “They be lazy creatures, these English.”
“Keep your voice down, Hob. They say all Grahams sleep with an ear to the wind, and we are deep in Graham territory. The river Lyne and Brackengill Castle lie just over that hill to the south of us.”
“Aye, sure, I’ll keep mum,” Hob the Mouse said in a deep, rumbling mutter. “D’ye ken where be the house with iron gratings to its windows, Rab? Curst Eckie said he heard tell of such, and I promised him we’d find it and carry them home.”
“Does Curst Eckie covet iron bars for his cottage windows?” Laughter filled the leader’s voice.
“Aye, sure, and me, as well. Ye can laugh, Rabbie, but Curst Eckie and me, we’ll ha’ the last laugh. Once we’ve got iron fixed to our windows, won’t no thievin’ Englishmen climb in through them, ye’ll see.”
“Until some thievin’ Englishman steals them back again,” the leader retorted with a chuckle. “If you must have them, you’ll most likely find them on the biggest house, there in the village center.”
One of the riders raised a trumpet, and seeing his gesture, the leader nodded. The man put the horn to his lips, and its clarion call rang through the night. In moments the hamlet was awake. Screams mingled with the shouts of angry men.
The raiders charged the cottages, some dismounting to round up women and children while others dealt with their menfolk. Scuffles broke out right and left as half-dressed men rushed out with swords drawn to defend families and property. The clash of steel on steel soon joined with feminine shrieks and the cries of children startled awake. Over all, the trumpet’s martial notes rang out with eerie clarity.