Amanda Scott (26 page)

“But if you escort Isabella—”

“I mean to do so, but I’ll dress as one of her retainers with helmet and jack. Our people know me, of course, but none will betray me. I’ll join you after I see her home. Here is our man returning,” he added in a warning tone. “I’ll go back the way I came, then bid Ealga farewell and escort Mother to Sinclair House before appearing to depart for my ship. That should settle them nicely if they’re watching.”

“Mercy, I forgot about Ealga!” Adela exclaimed. “I cannot just ride off—”

“Doucely, lass,” Lestalric interjected, nodding toward Brother Joseph. “Henry will make your excuses to her ladyship.”

“But there can
be
no excuse for such a departure,” Adela said, controlling her tone with effort. “She has been so kind to me. To go in such a rude manner—”

This time it was Henry who interrupted, saying, “Rob is right, Adela. I’ll say all that is necessary, and Ealga will understand. I do not think you realize how much danger you may be in. Obey your husband, lass.”

She glowered at him, fighting to guard her tongue.

To her increasing fury, he chuckled. “The very picture of Sorcha,” he murmured provocatively.

“Aye,” Lestalric agreed. “And Lady Isobel, for that matter.”

Much as Adela would have liked to slap them both, she could not. Moreover, the picture they had given her of her demeanor made her lips twitch.

Her husband put his right arm around her shoulders then, pulled her close and kissed her on the forehead. His lips were warm, his arm likewise, and she sighed.

Nevertheless, she said, “I pray you, Henry, do not just offer her meaningless excuses. Tell her I am abject in my apologies for treating her so badly and look forward to seeing her as soon as possible to make those apologies in person.”

“I’ll tell her everything that is proper, lass, I promise. Now, here is your eager escort, so I must bid you both farewell.”

Lestalric said ruefully, “Before you do, Henry, I should tell you that your tilt-cart with its driver and pony are waiting patiently for us behind the abbey. I told him we would send for him when we wanted him, but we don’t want him, and I haven’t a notion what to do with him. Do you?”

“Aye, I’ll ask them to put him up here and stable the cart until it’s safe to collect it. I shan’t need it, and the less anyone sees of it now, the better. I’ll deal with that after I’ve seen you off.”

Both horses were equipped with men’s saddles, but as the gillie held the sleek bay mare he had brought Adela, and Henry lifted her to the saddle, Lestalric said, “You are scarce costumed for riding, lady wife. I know you deplore the use of a woman’s saddle, but are those skirts full enough to let you sit properly astride?”

“I can make them so if you men will turn your backs long enough,” she said.

They did, and although the doing was awkward, since it entailed pulling up her shift, once it was rucked under her hips, her outer skirts were full enough to let her straddle the mare. She wore silk and her favorite lavender velvet cloak, so she knew she would be warm enough even if the air grew colder.

When she declared herself ready, Lestalric mounted his horse with less effort than one might have expected, considering his injury. Then, following their young guide out of the stable and around to the back of the abbey with Henry striding alongside to deal with his driver, they soon bade them farewell and were off.

The moon was still bright enough to show them the narrow muddy track the gillie followed through the abbey woods, which skirted a long, narrow loch extending much of the half-mile distance to the base of Arthur’s Seat.

Trees grew to the lochside with the path wending its way a dozen feet from its bank, but the moonlight reflected from the mirrorlike surface of the water and provided sufficient light for them to see their way.

Eventually, they came to the foot of Arthur’s Seat, and Adela gazed up at the hill the people of Edinburgh fondly called their sleeping lion.

Their guide urged them toward the hill’s western end, and fifteen minutes later, he said, “There be the road ye want yonder, me lord. D’ye ken your way?”

“Aye, lad, I do,” Lestalric said, extracting a few coins from his purse to give him. “Thank you for your aid.”

Stammering his own thanks, the lad bade them goodnight and turned back toward the abbey.

Adela was alone for the first time with her new husband.

Rob gazed at her, sitting so serenely and easily on the bay mare. She had pushed her hood back. Now she reached up and began to pull pins from her caul.

“You might want to leave that on, lass,” he said. “It could turn much colder before we reach our destination.” He knew the lad might still be within earshot and did not want to mention where they were going.

Not that Fife would have trouble following if he discovered they’d headed south. He’d assume what the abbot had assumed and take the track toward Roslin, and, doing so, he would easily find them. Still, they had a head start, and Rob could see no reason to make anyone a gift of the information.

Adela was still pulling pins from the caul. How many did women use, he wondered, to hold the things in place? She was watching him, and when he frowned in his musing, she said, “I’m taking it off because it will give me a headache. It is one thing to wear a formal caul whilst one is dining or dancing, although I’d probably have pulled it off if we had joined the ring dances.”

“Are you warm enough?” he asked, thinking she looked deliciously cool, almost silvery with her hair freed of its confines, spilling in a sheet down her back and looking almost white in the moonlight. He wanted to stroke it.

Just the thought of touching her stirred him, making him wish they could gallop the horses all the way to Hawthornden. But not only would such speed be impossibly foolhardy, it would be painful as well. Isabella’s potion had worked its magic, but he was not sure it would keep doing so if he tested it in such a way.

As it was, he hoped he would be able to claim his bride when they arrived.

She smiled and said, “I shall do, sir. You need not coddle me. Our Highland weather is harsher than any I have met since I left there.”

“Then let us not tarry,” he said. “I look forward to a warm bed at the end of this journey.”
And more than that, pray God
, he added silently.

She sobered, giving him a direct look. “You have not asked me,” she said.

“Asked you what?”

“If I am … that is to say whether Waldron of Edgelaw took—”

“Sakes, lass, I thought I’d made it plain that I harbor no doubts. If you would have it plainer, let me say that in the very unlikely event that I should discover you are no longer a maiden, I’ll own myself astonished and assume Ardelve somehow found sufficient time betwixt the ceremony and the feast to demand his husbandly rights. Either that or you suffered injury somehow through your love of frequent riding. Sithee, I have heard of such occurring.”

She smiled again, this time more shyly. “I do not think I have ever been so injured, my lord.”

“You may call me Rob, you know.”

“Not Robbie?”

He grimaced. “I cannot imagine that you would want to call me so, but you may choose, lass. Call me what you will. I would be friends with my wife.”

“Were you friends with Lady Ellen?”

“I do not want to talk about Lady Ellen on my wedding night,” he said.

She gave him a narrow-eyed look, but he was growing accustomed to the way she sometimes seemed to peer right into the depths of him, and he gazed steadily back. He was not sure he could easily manage so steady a gaze had his conscience not been clear. But on the subject of Lady Ellen, it was as clear as a conscience could be. If he never saw the woman again, he would be content.

She nodded. “You did not ask, but you should know that Ardelve never touched me either. As you may have noted, we did spend some time alone in the countess’s solar, but that was so he could tell me he had no intention of demanding his husbandly rights, as you say, until I was ready for him to do so.”

She gazed limpidly at him, clearly awaiting his reaction.

He grinned. “Art hoping I’ll make the same declaration? Because I’ll tell you to your head I won’t do any such thing. We’ve little more than five miles to travel, but at the end of those five miles …”

He watched her, still grinning, letting her fill in the rest for herself.

Adela could not have explained why she told him what Ardelve had said to her. Perhaps it was only that she found it easy to say what she liked to him. But it had seemed right to tell him, even to tease him a little and hear what he would say.

She had not expected his reply to stir feelings that she had experienced only once before. It was as if he had touched her—nay, as if he had kissed her again and not in the gentle way he had kissed her earlier in the abbey kirk, but thoroughly, as he had kissed her the night they met in the chapel at Roslin.

She fell silent then, thinking about what lay ahead— and not far ahead, only five miles. He seemed content to be silent, too.

She wondered when he would tell her about the map, for although she had not looked at it, she was sure that was what she had concealed for him in her bodice. He had trusted her with it, so it had not occurred to her to look. But she hoped he would tell her all about it and would do so before long.

The track they followed was wide enough for them to ride two abreast, and although the misty veil still occluded the moon, the night remained pleasant.

The air was still, the horses’ hoofbeats dull and steady. Crickets chirped and frogs croaked. These sounds, punctuated with the occasional night bird’s cry or fox’s bark, filled the night with the music she loved best.

Without warning, he said, “Tell me more about what happened.”

She did not have to ask what he meant, for she knew. And although she had scarcely spoken a word about her abduction to anyone, she hesitated only a moment before saying, “I told you how they came for me in Glenelg, that they rode right up to the kirk porch. ’Tis where we wed in the Highlands, sithee, not inside the kirk. I was beside Ardelve when Waldron snatched me up and rode away with me.”

After that, it was easy this time to tell him more. He rarely asked questions, just let her relate her tale in the way she found comfortable. As she talked, she remembered details that she had not thought about since they had happened.

“He never hurt me,” she said, then shivered, remembering. “He did slap me once, quite hard, before I learned to take care how I spoke to him.”

“Did he?”

Only two words, but she shivered again at his tone, thinking it was as well that Waldron of Edgelaw was already dead.

“That was just the first day,” she said. “He never struck me again.”

“But he hanged someone right in front of you. You told me that. You must have been frightened witless the whole time you were with him. Do you still think he was not truly evil?”

“I know he was,” she said. “’Tis odd, but since meeting you, I remember that time more clearly. Near the end of my time with him, I did come to realize he was evil. He believed the things he said, but perhaps if I’d been with him longer …”

“It was a gey long time, lass, just two days shy of a fortnight.”

“You know exactly?”

“Aye,” he said. “It was not so long ago, after all.”

“No.” She bit her lower lip, suppressing a flurry of unwelcome thoughts.

“Are you afraid something like it might happen again?” His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, as if they discussed something ordinary.

When she did not answer straightaway, he added, “What did you think at first when Fife and his men came upon us today?”

She shivered again.

He reached for her and clearly did so without thinking, because his horse was to her right, his reins in his right hand. So he reached with his left.

“Damnation,” he muttered.

“I’d nearly forgotten your wound,” she said. “It seems to be mending much faster than I’d thought possible.”

“Isabella is a witch with her potions,” he said, smiling. “Sir William Sinclair traveled a great deal. He made a collection of potions and their recipes, as his father and grandfather had before him, and Isabella has long studied them. She gave me a decoction of willow bark in wine to drink for the pain and to avoid fever, and smeared some sort of salve on the wound. But she warned me to clean it well and put more salve on it when we change the wrapping.”

“Do you think she would be willing to teach me some of what she knows?”

“Aye, and willingly,” he said. “But let us talk more about you. It frightened you when Fife came upon us, did it not, even with Henry’s men there?”

“I don’t trust Fife.”

“Nor should you,” he said. “But I’m thinking it will do you no harm to learn some things I can teach you, ways you can protect yourself in the future. You must still be wary, of course, because women are always more vulnerable than men. But no woman is helpless, lass, as you learned for yourself. You handled yourself well. You stayed calm whilst you were with Waldron. Despite being frightened, you retained your ability to think and to act. Most men would not have done as well.”

His words warmed her and stirred a sense of her old pride. She turned to thank him, but he was looking straight ahead. As she turned, he smiled.

Following his gaze, she saw a tall, square tower ahead, the pale moonlight turning its gray stones to silver. She could see portions of the river North Esk far below, flowing at the base of the high, sheer cliff atop which the castle perched.

“That’s Hawthornden,” he said. “Welcome to your new home, lass, at least until we can move into our own.”

Chapter 14

T
he entrance to Hawthornden Castle was a tall archway boasting stout double gates. But when Lestalric whistled and shouted his name, the gates opened swiftly for them. As he and Adela rode into a small, flagged, torchlit court-yard dominated by the great, square keep, he pointed out the stable, bakehouse, and carpenter’s shop, three small stone buildings that abutted the curtain wall.

Fearing that Lestalric—or Rob, as she would try to call him privately now—must be in pain again, she watched as he dismounted. But he did so without using his left hand, so she could not judge how much his wound was hurting him.