The girl lifted her head, her eyes reaching deep into his, that steady gaze disquieting in its wisdom. Apparently, Anne was satisfied by what she saw.
“No, you won’t tell,” she said, solemnly. “He’d hurt you too, you know. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I don’t hurt easily, Anne,” Duncan told her, touched by her concern, deciding not to press her any further. Perhaps with time, she might grow to trust him. “Do you know that there is a small cave behind the waterfall?”
“Really? Where?” She was as anxious as he to change the topic of conversation and her excitement quickly overwhelmed her anxiety. “There are fish in the pond, Lord MacLean, but I can’t catch any. Is it a treasure cave, Lord MacLean?”
“You had best call me Duncan,” he said.
“Is it a treasure cave, Duncan? Do animals live there?”
“So many questions,” Duncan said.
“Is it too much of a bother?” Anne asked wistfully. “I haven’t had anyone else to ask for so long you see.”
“Nae, you haven’t, lass,” Duncan said, trying to keep his sorrow for her from coloring his voice. “And ‘tis no bother. You can talk to me, Anne, about anything you please. Remember, you can always talk to me.”
Chapter 10
“She was up in the tower,” Daisy moaned softly. “Could have been killed. I thought I locked that door, milady. I swear I did, but then I heard the noise in the courtyard, and all these folks comin’ round so unexpected-like, I must have forgot.”
“There’s no harm done, Daisy,” Kate soothed, patting the older woman on the shoulder.
“None at all,” Fred added his reassurance to Kate’s. “Merry as a grig, she were, laughin’ at ‘er mischief. The Major was fit to be tied though. Fact is ‘ee was tied, the way she’d sewn up ‘is sleeves.” He showed them his master’s shirt. “Looks like the mite ain’t payin’ much mind to ‘er stitchery lessons, Daisy,” he teased.
“Anne did this?” Kate asked, knowing even as she examined the childish seam that there could be no other explanation. “My daughter’s escapades seem to be getting out of hand.”
“Said as much to me, ‘ee did, the Major, afore ‘ee went after ‘er,” Fred agreed.
“Duncan went after her?” The shirt slipped from Kate’s fingers to the floor. Anne did not seem to fear Duncan. In fact, Kate had taken those small tricks that the child had played upon him as a sign of encouraging progress. However, a private confrontation with an angry man might very well destroy the precarious peace that Anne had achieved.
“Aye, ‘ee did,” the Cockney said, scooping up the linen and eying the dirt upon it with a cluck of dismay. “I ‘ave to wash it again, now, I will.”
“Stop your complainin’ and tell her whereabouts the two of them went,” Daisy demanded.
“Well now, I dunno.” The man scratched his head. “Seems to me this is betwixt the two of them. Ain’t a lot that’s been done about the matter of ‘er pranks till now. Except maybe to wag a finger and say ‘for shame!’”
“Fred, please! There is a great deal about Anne that you and Duncan simply do not understand,” Kate pleaded.
The urgency in her voice brought a reluctant answer. “Out past the gardens,” Fred told her. “Seen the Major goin’ beyond the stables, from up top of the roof. Can’t say where they went beyond that.”
“Bless you, Fred,” Kate said as she ran out the door.
“Biscuits for you, today,” Daisy promised, giving him a kiss on his grizzled cheek, “and gravy.”
“Might as well ‘and me thirty pieces of silver while you’re about it,” Fred grumbled. But he was whistling happily as he went back to mount the roof and watch until Kate had disappeared from sight.
. . .
Kate had no difficulty following their direction since neither Anne nor Duncan had made any effort at concealment. The ground, moist from a recent rain, showed the clear imprints of small toes, boots and paws jumbling together. The mere thought of Anne confronting a belligerent Duncan made Kate’s feet fly. But it was the first wild shriek that gave her wings. Then another scream followed close upon it.
It was Anne, her yell punctuated by Cur’s frenetic yips. What had Duncan said to Anne, done to her, that could evoke that awful noise? Though she knew it preposterous, loathsome memories slithered into her mind, the fears still fresh enough to set her heart pounding. Impossible though it might be that history was becoming the stuff of the present, the sound drew her down, pulling her into a dark vortex of fear.
As she ran those last yards, time slipped away and Kate was travelling down the long, shadowed corridors of Steele House, treading the darkened stairs up to the nursery.
Kate burst into the clearing like a fury, her heart beating a wild tattoo as she raised her hand, ready to strike. How the knife had gotten into her grip, she did not recall, but the cold steel was there, solid and reassuring. She would not fail, she vowed, not again. But the scene that confronted her was totally unlike the one that she had imagined.
“I would ask you, Anne, not to use my beard as reins, if you please, or else you may find that your mount will bolt,” Duncan said, giving his broad shoulders a demonstrative shake. It was not nearly enough to dislodge the delighted young miss perched upon his shoulders, but it was sufficient to send her into another volley of transported squeals.
He whirled about, neighing and pawing the ground like a rambunctious steed, all the while keeping a careful hold on the fragile burden above him. Anne clutched him tightly, screaming loudly enough to make him wince, but the rain of giggles in his ears that followed was more than adequate balm for his pain.
Then, abruptly, that chortling sound ceased. Duncan looked up from his equine play and saw Kate, her eyes unnaturally wide, as if she had seen something unspeakable, her countenance contorted with fear and rage. “Kate?” All at once Duncan recalled where he had seen a similar expression. She had the glazed look of a soldier in the midst of a melee, that air of uncertainty when friend and foe were all as one. “Kate?” The blood drained from her face as she hastily lowered her hand into the pocket of her skirt, but not before he saw the flash of steel.
“We shall continue the ride later,” he promised, gently setting Anne upon the ground. “Your Mamma seems to be somewhat upset. Shall we see what’s troubling her?”
Anne ran to her mother, grasping her limp hand.
Kate tried to find a reserve of strength, but that rush of fear had utterly drained her. She gave the girl a weak smile and to her surprise, Anne looked to Duncan.
“There’s nae need to worry, lassie,” Duncan said, according the girl a nod that seemed to satisfy some unspoken question, before coming to stand before Kate. “All the noise that we were making got your poor mother alarmed, I suspect. She must have been thinking that all the ghoulies and ghosties from here to Glen Torridon were after her little Anne. Have I the right of it, Kate?”
“Indeed, ghoulies, ghosties and beasties too.” Kate drew spirit from that steady supportive gaze and managed a pallid affirmation. She knew that she had to explain somehow, try to make him understand why she had come charging in literally with dagger drawn, but not with Anne present. “In truth, I came to speak with you, Anne, for I am most upset by your behavior. Why ever have you been playing such nasty tricks on Lord MacLean? It is inexcusable, especially considering his kindness to us.”
Anne looked at her toes with shamefaced fixation.
“Anne and I have already resolved that between us, have we not, Anne?” Duncan asked, wondering how much longer Kate could continue to hold up. As it was, she had been driving herself mercilessly toward the edge of exhaustion. Now, she seemed about to step over that verge. “We are in accord, your daughter and I,” he assured her.
Anne nodded, squeezing her mother’s hand in anxious confirmation.
Kate gave an unsteady laugh, maintaining the fiction that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, that she had not come rushing out like a madwoman, ready to
strike. “Without bloodshed, I take it? Go home with you then, Anne, if you have made your apologies. I have little doubt that Daisy has a word or two for you, as well. You know that you are not allowed up in the tower.”
Once more, Anne’s eyes sought Duncan.
“I shall care for your mother, lassie, I promise.” Duncan gave her a smile of encouragement. “And that’s one thing you may be sure of, Anne, I do keep my promises. Now go and tender your regrets to Daisy, for Fred told me that she was near to tears with blaming herself for your mischief.” The girl’s eyes darkened with guilt, but he could see that she was still hesitant to leave.
“Best to pay the piper earlier than later,” Duncan told her gently. “Go on with you.”
Anne gave her mother’s hand a final press before starting back towards the castle, the hound trailing behind her. As soon as the child was out of sight, Duncan was beside Kate in a few strides. “Lean on me now, Kate, for I’d as soon not violate a sworn oath, but unless I miss my guess you are perilously near to fainting away.”
Without a word, Kate stepped into his arms and he drew her close, supporting her trembling body. He whispered to her softly, murmuring the words of an ancient Gaelic lullaby that his mother had been used to sing, treating her much as he had the child. Yet, he was well aware that this was no child that he held, but a woman. It should have been easy to soothe her, but all of the old stratagems that he had used in the past seemed utterly useless. That fluid charm that had once been so simple to tap had seemingly run dry.
Never before had Duncan been so bereft of words. The diffident endearments, the casually cajoling enticements that he had tendered so many times to so many women, would not come to his lips. With an awkwardness that he could not quite understand, he clasped her to him, wishing that he knew what to say, what to do to help her.
“It has been so long,” Kate murmured, leaning her cheek against the warm support of his chest, listening to the strong steady beat of his heart. “I could not discern the difference between a shout of glee and a scream of fright, Duncan.” She looked up at him, her eyes murky with sorrow and apprehension, wondering how she could begin to make him understand. “I was afraid . . .”
“That Anne would be hurt again,” Duncan completed. “It does not take a man of great intellect to discern that something has happened to your daughter, Kate,” he explained, forestalling the question in her startled look. “From what both you and Daisy have let slip, ‘tis clear that the lassie was not always silent. Is that what you are running from, Kate?”
She was too tired to devise a credible lie and even if she had been capable of one, he did not deserve it. Kate closed her eyes, recalling the scene that she had witnessed before her insane fear had destroyed the moment. Anne on Duncan’s shoulders, laughing and screeching with all the joy and verve of a normal child. It was what Kate had hoped for, all that she had prayed for in these past few months and somehow, this man had made her daughter trust again, made her laugh again. When Kate opened her eyes and saw Duncan’s sympathy, she knew that he would require no less than the truth. With a sigh, she stepped from the shelter of his arms, wondering if she would see that look of concern change into contempt once he learned of her cowardice.
“Yes, that is why we are hiding,” Kate said wearily, slumping to sit on the nearby trunk of a fallen oak. “Most of what you know is true. My husband did die in the battle of Ciudad Rodrigo, only I was not on the Peninsula with him. I wish that I had been, but Anne and I were in England. Thinking me a rather flighty sort of female, I found that, when he died, he left our affairs in the charge of a relation by marriage. Perhaps I am a poor sort of creature, because I never deemed money to be very important. I was quite content to allow him to manage things, even to the point where I did not object when he and his wife moved into my home. There had been some problems. In retrospect, I begin to believe he engineered them. Because of mourning, I was isolated. Later, I found that he had been characterizing me as flighty and incompetent, even somewhat mad with grief. By then he had completely seized the reins of my household, ordering it to suit him, but so long as he left Anne in my charge, I did not make any complaints. But then, Anne began to change. . .”
Duncan seated himself beside her, but he might as well have been leagues away. Her eyes filled with pain as she cast her thoughts back to those disturbing memories.
“When I recollect how I how ignored those small signs. . . but Daisy knew that something was amiss. She noticed, far sooner than I did, that Anne had become withdrawn, sullen. My daughter had always been such a bright and candid child, but there were a number of easy explanations . . . her father’s death . . . the alterations in her life. And I was becoming frightened myself. How could I have been such a fool?” she cried.
This time there was no question of oaths or promises. Duncan grasped her against him as she sobbed against his chest. His lips gently brushed against the sun-warmed silk of her hair. “We are all fools at one time or another, make errors in judgement,” he said ruefully.
“But it was not me who paid the price for that mistake,” Kate protested, her words vibrating with shame. “It was Anne; Anne who suffered because of my blindness. Anne and poor Becky, the nursery maid. When I think how long it must have gone on; how I only found out by chance. . .”
Her fingers gripped his arms much too tightly with all the force of her bitterness and guilt, those faraway eyes peering inward toward the past. But Duncan bore that small nipping pain in silence, content to be her anchor in the midst of the maelstrom of self-blame.
“I had been due to go to a small gathering,” Kate said, in a distant voice. “A musical evening, entirely suitable for a woman in the latter part of her mourning,’ he told me. He encouraged me to go, damn him, and by then, I was glad enough to get away even for a short time. Those eyes of his were always devouring me, stripping me naked with secret glances. His salacious hints had long passed the pale of the acceptable. The touching that was always an ‘accident,’ was getting bolder. One night, I heard the knob turning on my door, but fortunately, I had locked it. That was when I had insisted Daisy sleep in my dressing room, you see, instead of the nursery where she had been used to spend the night. I was afraid that one night the door would open, and I would have to fight him off. If only I would have left Anne in Daisy’s charge . . . if only. . .” She choked.
It was like watching a mail coach taking a turn too fast. Duncan found himself praying that his conclusions were wrong, but the direction of Kate’s tale, the facts that Anne had unknowingly placed in Duncan’s possession were all pointing toward inevitable disaster. The bare anguish in Kate’s eyes told him that the only question remaining was the extent of the devastation.
“Just before my husband’s sister departed, a storm broke. It was one of those autumn tempests, all thunder and lightning as if the heavens themselves were threatening to break apart. I decided to cry off and spend the evening in the nursery with Anne, watching the storm from the windows. We both used to love seeing the jagged bolts streak across the sky. Even the footman was unaware that I had returned home and I wished to keep it so. My brother-in-law was due to spend the evening at his club, so I thought that I might be certain of being left alone.”
The thought of her skulking about, sneaking into her own home to avoid molestation was almost too much to bear. A killing outrage for her, for Anne was threatening to consume him. Kate’s fingers were icy, loosening and clenching in spasms as she continued her story.
“I went upstairs to change my gown. There were so many buttons to that dress,” she recalled. “And it took me some time to free myself, for I did not even wish to call for Daisy to help me because it might have alerted him that I was home. Then I went upstairs. It was so dark as I came up, not even a light in the passageway. I wondered, why had the nursery maid extinguished all the candles? Anne has always had a fear of the dark.”
There was a quaver in her voice. He wanted to deny what he saw in her expression, to somehow for
estall the truth that he knew was coming. Kate could have left off then and there and with the facts that Anne had let slip, Duncan could have told the end of her story, but he did not stop her. Somehow he knew that she had to say it even though he did not wish to hear.
“I thought I heard footsteps,” Kate said. “I wasn’t even sure. The sound of the thunder was so loud, and the rain on the roof, like the beating of a thousand drums. Then I saw a shadow at the door. It was my brother-in-law and I wondered what he was doing up there, in the nursery? He had only showed Anne the mildest of interest, previously. Then I saw that he was leading Becky, the nursery maid, out of the room. I shrank into the shadows. As he passed my hiding place, I saw that the girl wasn’t struggling, but there was a look of mortal terror in her expression. Coward! I was a coward!” She shouted the word in self-condemnation. “I suppose that it was fear for myself that kept me from questioning him then and there, fear of what might happen were he to find me defenseless in the dark. So, craven weakling that I was, I hid and kept quiet, waiting until he went down the stairs.”
“And what would have happened had you confronted him, Kate?” Duncan asked softly, but she would not hear him. She got up from her seat and he followed her to the edge of the loch.
“I found Anne, huddled in the corner of her bed, unmoving, still as a stone. Were it not for her breathing, I would have believed that she was dead. Her eyes were wide open, but she did not see me, I swear. I put my arms around her . . . but it was like grasping a piece of statuary,” Kate said, remembering the clammy feel of Anne’s skin, the utter lack of response. “There was a bruise forming on her arm. His fingerprints. Anne must have seen him leading Becky away.” She shook her head helplessly as she relived that moment of horror. “I know now that Becky was too frightened to speak up. He had dismissed the girl that I had hired, and I now believe he had done so to keep her silent.” Kate’s voice trailed off into sobs. “I suspect Becky was not the first. A number of the maids in my employ served their notice soon after John moved in, but I was so lost in my grief. I should have known. I should have paid attention.”
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