by Amanda Scott
With relief, she watched the gilly shut the door after himself. At least now, if Giorsal found the Fox, they would only have to deal with her, and although Bab was not certain that she could persuade the woman to keep a still tongue in her head, she knew it would be easier if they had no other witness.
Giorsal said, “I warrant one o’ his lordship’s gillies opened yon window, thinking he were being helpful. Mayhap the fire smoked a wee bit when he lit it, and he hoped to air out the smoke afore ye came up. Had ye come at the usual time, he’d ha’ had time to shut it again and let the room warm up for ye.”
Bab did not reply. She could not have spoken had she wanted to, for while Giorsal was talking, she was inspecting the curtain she had held back as if to see whether it had been properly shaken, and Bab knew as well as if the woman had said so that next she would inspect its mate.
“Isn’t it too dark over there to see anything?” she asked hastily.
“Ye dinna want to sleep in a room littered wi’ cobwebs,” Giorsal pointed out. “Ye’d likely ha’ one o’ their inhabitants crawling over your nose in the dark.”
Wrinkling her nose at the unpleasant thought, she tried again. “I need a towel, Giorsal.”
“On the washstand rod,” Giorsal said, turning to the second curtain and whisking it back from the wall and window.
Bab gasped.
No one was there.
The Fox had vanished, and unless he had melted magically into the wall, he had flown just as magically out through the window before Giorsal had shut it. In either event, he was clearly no ordinary man, and Bab decided that if she were to learn that a Beltane witch had collected him on her broomstick and swept him away with her to the moon it would not astonish her in the least.
Half an hour later, as she lay sleepless in her bed, she realized that she had neglected to tell Giorsal to awaken her early. Indeed, upon discovering that the Fox had vanished after diving behind the curtains, she had said little to the woman, scarcely trusting herself to make ordinary conversation. Instead, she had quickly washed her face, donned her nightdress, and jumped into bed, whereupon Giorsal had drawn the bed curtains and bidden her goodnight without further comment.
Staring now into the blackness overhead, Bab tried to recapture the feelings she had experienced before Giorsal’s arrival, but she was quickly coming to believe that the whole incident must have been a dream. Remembering Giorsal’s bumping the door into her was another matter. Just thinking about that sent a shiver dancing up her spine. Had she not been in front of the door—bang up against it, in fact—Giorsal would have walked right in and set up a screech before they could stop her.
Bab had not noticed before that the woman walked as softly as a cat. But if Giorsal moved softly, the Fox had moved more softly yet. How, she wondered, had he managed to disappear like that?
She would have liked to discuss that with someone, anyone, but she dared not trust a soul with the information she had. The danger to him and to herself was too great. In any case, she doubted that the Fox would return after so near a disaster, and thus it was pointless to keep thinking about it. Despite this resolution, she still could not fall asleep though, because she jumped at every least little sound.
After she had popped her head through the opening between the bed curtains for the fourth time to see if anyone was there, she realized that she had no confidence in his behaving sensibly. At last, she got up and opened the curtains all the way, deciding that it was better to be able to see what she could by the glow of the fire, even at the risk of catching a chill when it died, than not to see anything and risk having him reach through the curtains and into the bed to waken her.
That thought made her smile. She decided that he would not really do that, but even as she reassured herself, a niggling voice in the back of her mind whispered that he certainly might. The man had nerve enough for anything.
Chapter 5
Even without Giorsal’s help, Bab awoke early, but she could not compliment herself on the achievement since she had awakened frequently during the night, wondering on each occasion if it were time yet to arise. Sunrise at this season began shortly before six, however, so when she saw that it was light at last, she jumped out of bed and splashed cold water on her face. What Giorsal would think when she came in at her usual time to wake her, she did not want to contemplate.
“I am too old to worry about being scolded by a servant,” she muttered to the ambient air as she brushed her dark curls. She had been muttering such things for years, but when one’s personal servant had been present at one’s birth, it was hard to achieve grown-up independence.
Scrambling into her favorite riding dress, an elegant rig of gray-green velvet with dark blue trim to match her eyes, she was glad she had ordered it to fit without corsets so she could ride as she liked instead of having to sit stiffly in the manner required of proper ladies, because that made it easier to dress herself. Patrick had taught her to ride astride as nearly all women did in the Borders, deeming a cross saddle safer than a heavily padded, boxlike sidesaddle, but it occurred to her that Sir Alex might assume she preferred the latter. She had never ridden with him, and his mother used the lady’s sidesaddle. His people would remember though, surely.
Twisting her hair into a knot at the back of her head, she pinned her hat in place, picked up her riding gloves and whip, glanced in the looking-glass to be sure she had not forgotten anything important, and hurried downstairs, wondering if he would be ready or if she would have to wait. Although she had said she would meet him at the stables, she doubted that he would be out there yet.
He was not in the chilly hall when she entered, but he strolled in only a moment or two later with a half-eaten apple in one hand.
“I’d forgotten Beltane means they had to put out the kitchen and hall fires before retiring last night,” he said, adding with a grimace, “They’ve let the others die, too. That’s why it’s so devilish cold in here. Even if we return by noon for our dinner, we’ll get nothing hot until someone lays all new fires and renews their flames from a Beltane needfire tonight.”
“The festival will be fun though,” she said.
He stared at her. “Faith, did you expect to attend? You’d never catch my parents at such an accursed revelry. I doubt my father will hear of your going.”
She noted that he did not suggest taking her himself, and indeed, if his parents did not attend, for her to go with him would be most improper, for it would suggest a far closer relationship than the one they had.
He looked splendid, quite unlike Patrick ever looked when he was about to hunt, because Patrick always wore plain leather breeks and a tan jerkin. Sir Alex wore an elegant doublet of cornflower blue, slashed with white silk and tied with gold ribbons. He even wore a matching hat with a pointed brim and a white plume.
“It is a good thing we are not hunting deer,” Bab said with a teasing smile. “Seeing that bright blue and gold would startle them all into the next shire.”
“Do you think so?” He looked down at himself. “I thought it was the perfect rig, myself. Blue to match the spring bluebells in the woods and gold for the sun if we see any today. I did think at first, though, that I might wear emerald green to match the new spring leaves. Do you think I should change?”
“I think you are being absurd,” she said bluntly, certain that it would take him an hour or more to change. “You need not ride with me at all if you do not wish to do so. I am perfectly accustomed to hunting with only gillies to accompany me, so I could easily do that here. Indeed, all I really need is a lad to help me retrieve the hawk if I run into difficulty and a falconer’s lad to teach me its calls and what it’s used to until I grow accustomed to the bird and the bird to me.”
“So you do intend to hunt,” he said with a sigh. “I was hoping we might just roam the countryside for a short while until you grew weary of the scenery.”
“My dear sir,” she said with asperity, “I have done enough plodding about on horseback t
his past fortnight to last me an age. I want to gallop, and I want to hunt. When Patrick told me about your father’s excellent mews, I hoped his lordship would permit me to fly one of his hawks, but since he is still not enjoying his usual good health, I feared I would see little hunting, especially since you…”
She shrugged, unable to think of a tactful way to say what she thought of him, and added only, “Well, it does seem a shame for all those birds just to be sitting there day in and day out.”
“But surely our falconer must take them out now and again for exercise,” he said. “That certainly seems a logical duty for him to perform.”
“Of course he does,” she said, striving to maintain a civil tone but wanting yet again to shake him. “They must be exercised and hunted frequently until late spring, or they will mope themselves to death.”
“All that sounds a most energetic business,” he complained.
“I think you had better stay here,” she said. “If you will summon a lad to show me to the mews, I am sure I can manage very well on my own.”
He sighed. “An excellent notion, but our chief falconer, Alasdair Mackinnon, would complain to my father of my inattention to you, so I had better go along.”
“Well, you need not. I shall speak to his lordship myself if you like and tell him that I’d prefer to go without you.”
“That would put him off his feed for a sennight,” Sir Alex said. “I shall just have to exert myself, but I am sorry that you do not want me to accompany you.”
Bab suppressed an impulse to soothe his injured feelings, to assure him that it was not so much not wanting him as feeling annoyed that she had put him in a position where he believed he had to exert himself. That impulse increased the annoyance she already felt, however, because a truly civil man who did not want to accompany her would not let his feelings show, and he certainly would not show them merely to make her feel guilty, which she was certain Sir Alex had done.
When he politely offered his arm, she would have liked to pretend not to notice, but one could hardly criticize a man for behaving uncivilly and then behave childishly oneself, so she accepted the arm with grace, as a gilly hurried to open the door for them. They crossed the bailey to the stable, where they found a lad bridling a buttermilk-colored mare, and Bab noted with approval that the saddle was exactly the sort she liked. A handsome, well-muscled dun gelding—that is to say a cream-colored one with a black mane and tail—stood ready in a nearby stall.
Her first impression was that although the mare was lovely, it was small, but her experienced eye took note of its fine lines, the alert look in its eyes, and the impatient way it pawed the ground, as if it were telling the gilly to get on with it. When she approached, the mare snorted and pushed her shoulder with its nose.
Bab chuckled and glanced at Sir Alex, to find him eyeing her in much the same alert, curious way that the mare had.
“Do you like her?” he asked.
“She’s beautiful,” Bab said.
“I feared you might insist on riding some great, thundering beast so you could show me its heels,” he said.
Stroking the mare’s nose, Bab said, “She looks as if she could manage the ground hereabouts better than any great, thundering beast could. That gelding looks to be a fine animal, too.”
He eyed it cautiously. “He’s handsome enough, I expect. I haven’t ridden him before, so we can only hope his manners match his looks.”
She refused to respond to that, finding it difficult to believe that he was as poor a horseman as he consistently suggested he was. Her brother would tolerate many faults in a close friend, but Patrick would have small opinion of any Highland gentleman who could not sit a horse properly.
Unseen, Claud watched the two mortals curiously from his perch on the well-house roof nearby. His natural instinct drew him more strongly to study Sir Alexander Chisholm, who was a connection of the Border Gordons his tribe had served for so long, but his present duty was to the lass, the MacRae, and despite some small experience with Mackenzies, he knew little about her or her family.
“I can help ye,” a seductive, familiar voice murmured beside him.
Starting, Claud stared in dismay at Catriona, who smiled entrancingly at him.
“What be ye a-doing here?” he demanded.
“Why, I am to help the Chisholms,” she said innocently. “D’ye no recall the bargain, Claud? I can tell ye much about the MacRaes if ye like.”
“I ken wha’ I need tae ken already, and that be that I must keep clear o’ ye, Catriona,” he said firmly, looking about in fear that some other member of the Clan might have seen them together.
“Nae one said ye must keep clear o’ me,” she protested, snuggling closer.
“Aye, but I must or I’m sped. I ken that right enough!”
“We’re alone, laddie,” she said, leaning closer ye to kiss him warmly on the cheek. Her plump breasts billowed above the lacy edge of her gown, beckoning. Her hand moved to his thigh.
He jumped as if he had been burned. “Dinna do that!”
“D’ye no like me anymore, Claud?”
“Aye, I do, and that’s the rub, for I canna think when ye touch me like that, and I must think, Catriona.”
“But that is just why we should talk together, Claud. Ye must tell me all ye ken o’ Chisholms, whilst in return, I’ll tell ye what I ken o’ the MacRaes.”
He shook his head fiercely. “Ye’re just going tae muddle me again, Catriona. I ha’ decided tae ha’ nowt tae do wi’ lasses till I’ve done my part o’ this business.”
“But, Claud—”
“Nay, it be nae use tae cozen me.” He looked shrewdly at her, noting that her long gauzy green gown covered her feet. “See here, Catriona, be ye a Glaistig?”
She stiffened. “Who told ye such a thing?”
“Some’un once told me ye ha’ the goat’s feet o’ a Glaistig. Do ye?”
“What a horrid thing to say! Just for that, Brown Claud, I willna help ye one bit wi’ your task, and if the Evil Host seizes ye and carries ye off, too bad!”
Catriona vanished on the words, leaving Claud to wonder if he had just made a horrible mistake or had just narrowly avoided letting her twist and distort his thinking again as she had so easily in the past.
After Bab and Sir Alex had briefly admired the horses, she said, “Do we not go to the mews? Where are the birds?”
“Alasdair Mackinnon will bring them to us here.”
“But I shall need a hawking glove.”
“Faith, but I expected you to have one tucked up your pretty sleeve.”
She wrinkled her nose at him, but the falconer approached just then through a door at the back of the stables, carrying a hooded white gyrfalcon. A minion with him carried a smaller peregrine. Bells tinkled lightly as the men moved.
Bab exclaimed in delight at the sight of the birds, but particularly the gyr. Gyrfalcons were Arctic birds and quite rare, and although she had often heard tales of their beauty and size, she had never seen one up close before. In truth, she was more accustomed to hawks than to falcons, but she understood the latter well enough, and the idea of hunting with such fine specimens as these delighted her.
“Dear me, Alasdair,” Sir Alex said. “I thought I told you to fetch a merlin for the lady and the robin hobby for me.”
Bab nearly protested aloud. Merlins were small ladies’ falcons and all very well in their way, but it was no day for skylarking. She did not care what bird Sir Alex took, but she wanted to fly the gyr.
The falconer, a wiry, stern-looking man of middle years, gave Sir Alex a direct look from under bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows and said, “Nay, Master Alex, ’twere the peregrine and the gyr ye requested. Whistle up them dogs for us now, Will,” he called to one of the gillies in the yard.
Alasdair clearly expected to accompany them. His horse would be ready in a trice, he said as he watched the lad, Will, whistle two brown and white spaniels to heel. In the meantime, perhaps Mistress MacRae wou
ld like to try on the several gloves he had in his falconer’s bag to see which of them suited her best.
Pleased, Bab quickly found a hawking gauntlet of thick buckskin that fit perfectly. Alasdair waited until she had mounted and then let her take the peregrine on her left fist. She carefully entwined its leather jesses around her fingers, glad the gauntlet was thick enough to protect her from its sharp talons and beak.
The bird was much lighter than it looked, but she could tell by the alert way it perched that it was hungry and ready to hunt.
“Will ye tak’ Duchess here on your fist, sir?” the falconer said, gesturing toward the much larger gyrfalcon.
“Dear me, no,” Sir Alex said. “ ’Tis far too fatiguing to ride whilst constantly holding one’s arm up. She likes you better than she likes me, anyway, Alasdair.”
“Aye, sir,” Alasdair Falconer said with a fond twinkle.
It was not the first time Bab had noted that Sir Alex’s servants were very fond of him, but that did little to mitigate her impatience with his affectations.
“I’d like to take the gyr then if you will permit me,” she said quietly. “I have flown peregrines before but never a gyrfalcon.”
The falconer shot her a measuring look, then glanced at his master, who shrugged. Turning back to Bab, the falconer said diffidently, “Wi’ respect, mistress, I’d like to see how ye manage the peregrine afore I let ye fly the gyr. ’Twould be as much as me place be worth did aught happen to her.”
She nodded, having expected nothing else. Alasdair was Chisholm’s chief falconer, and a man did not reach such a high position without being certain of his authority. She turned her attention to Sir Alex as he mounted the dun gelding.
He mounted easily, and she saw, as she had expected, that he demonstrated a graceful agility in the saddle. Still, he soon revealed that he was not as skilled as her brother. He was not a poor horseman, just one who lacked enthusiasm for horses or riding. He glanced around to see if everyone was ready, then gave the signal to start.