The Border Trilogy (2 page)

“Most highland girls of my class have some education, sir.” She spoke proudly, knowing he would think it an unusual accomplishment, because she had often heard that border women, like English-women, were rarely educated. “I took my lessons in the
clachan
near my father’s estate, from Parson MacDole,” she continued, grimacing at a sudden mental vision of that dour worthy with his beetling gray brows and the slender little ferule he carried as a reminder to those not sufficiently diligent in their studies. “And I do not have an accent, sir.”

He chuckled. “You do, but ’tis an uncommonly beguiling one. However,” he went on hastily, “you continue to evade answering my question. To hear you confess to even the smallest twinge of jealousy would content me well.”

She reddened but was spared the difficulty of forming an acceptable reply when his attention was suddenly diverted to a point beyond her shoulder. Turning, she saw one of the men who had arrived with him beckoning from the doorway into the west gallery.

Douglas set his mug on a nearby trestle table. “’Tis my secretary, Johnny Graham. I must leave, mistress, but I shall not tarry.”

“It is of no import to me if you do, sir, for I intend to retire soon. The hour grows late, and my uncle’s parties are like to last till dawn.” She hesitated, looking around. Her aunt, who enjoyed all the advantages of self-declared and unsubstantiated ill health, had retired much earlier, and her uncle, having overindulged himself in his excellent whiskey, sprawled near the great fire, languidly casting dice with a group of his cronies, all in a like condition. Mary Kate laughed doubtfully. “Mayhap my uncle will leave his dicing long enough to escort me to my chamber.”

Douglas shook his head. “No need to trouble him, lass, or to summon a servant. Escorting you will be my pleasure.” Taking her mug from her, he placed it next to his own and gallantly offered his arm.

Although she knew it to be highly improper for her to accept escort from an unmarried gentleman, Mary Kate made not the slightest protest before giving him directions to her bedchamber. It was not even necessary for them to request a candle from one of the servants, because candles and torches had been lit in every public room and gallery in honor of the party.

They had reached the door to her bedchamber on the second floor of the west wing when the same young man who had signaled Douglas before approached them from the other end of the long gallery. “Sir,” he said respectfully, “the others await you in your chamber, and Sir William grows impatient lest someone note the absence of so many at one time.”

“Hold your tongue, lad!” Douglas snapped. “It clacks like a beggar’s claptrap. Go and tell them I am just coming.”

Graham turned away, his face crimson from the rebuke, and Mary Kate reached toward her door latch.

“One moment, mistress.” Douglas pulled her around to face him. “I’ll be rid of them soon,” he murmured, folding her into his arms and lowering his mouth to hers.

Astonished though she was, the unexpected heat of his passion transmitted itself to her at once, flooding through her body, electrifying every nerve end. Mary Kate had never been kissed in such a way in all her eighteen years, and shock held her rigid for several seconds before she collected her senses sufficiently to shove her small hands against his broad chest in an attempt to free herself.

He released her with a sigh. “If you insist, lassie, but I enjoyed the experience very much and look forward to repeating it as soon as may be.” Bowing deeply, he turned on his heel and strode off down the gallery.

Mary Kate stood for a moment, breathless, her cheeks flushed, her emotions on end. Surely, she thought, only a man bred in the borders would dare to use her so. The odd thing was that she was not as angry as, by rights, she ought to have been. Instead, she was strangely excited by the fact that he had wished to take such liberties with her. Reaching distractedly for the door latch, she had begun to lift it before young Graham’s words echoed tantalizingly through her mind.

Kenneth Gillespie’s reaction to the new arrivals had given her a fleeting notion of intrigue afoot, and that notion had later been reinforced by Douglas’s wary attitude when he signed to the others to leave the hall. Were borderers, she mused now, not noted for their constant plotting and devilry? Suddenly convinced that Douglas had come to Critchfield to meet Sir William MacGaurie for some secret purpose, she allowed curiosity to overcome good sense without putting up so much as a token battle. With a darting glance in either direction to assure herself that the gallery was empty, she hastened after Douglas.

As she approached the room that she had seen him enter at the far end of the gallery, she could hear the low murmur of masculine voices, but she had to put her ear right against the door before she could make out any words.

“That Babington business,” one man was saying, “has convinced Elizabeth at last that her own life is in jeopardy so long as Mary lives. I doubt there be any practicable course left to us now, MacGaurie.”

“Sir Anthony Babington,” replied a second, more gravelly voice, “though his heart was true, was a young fool, but more important than that is the fact that he was no more than a pawn for that devil Walsingham.”

A murmur of protest greeted the remark, and Mary Kate searched her memory. The name Babington was unknown to her, but Francis Walsingham she knew to be Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, a man renowned for his devious nature.

The gravelly voice was speaking again in reply to the protests. “Nay, lads, ’tis true enough. My sources are infallible. ’Twas a wicked plot devised by Walsingham himself to entrap our unfortunate queen, and Babington walked into it just as tidily as you please. In point of fact, Mary’s own courier was Walsingham’s man, and Elizabeth was never in danger from anyone, least of all Babington. Walsingham intercepted all his letters to Mary and hers to him from the outset.”

Outraged voices demanded to know whether Douglas thought the king would act upon such information, and after he had replied somewhat vaguely, Mary Kate soon learned from the lively conversation that followed that a commission had recently been formed in England to try the Scottish queen for treason as a result of her part in Sir Anthony Babington’s assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth.

“They meet in the Star Chamber almost as we speak,” said the gravelly voice, “and ’tis certain I am that they will demand her death.”

Mary Kate froze. Rather than bringing news of the Scottish queen’s imminent release, as she had so naively suggested to Kenneth Gillespie, she realized with horror that Sir William MacGaurie had brought warning of Mary’s imminent danger of execution instead.

A new voice, louder than the others, demanded just then to know whether perhaps James VI liked being King of Scotland too well to intercede on his mother’s behalf.

Douglas’s tone was grave. “I do not know what Jamie will do. He treasures his throne but will not want to anger the Scottish people, many of whom, as you all know, are still pressing him to demand Mary’s release. However, you must also recognize the difficulties encountered whenever one attempts to make him comprehend the power he holds against Elizabeth. As we all know, he could create a deal of trouble for her should he decide to cast his lot with France or Spain against her, but he sets great store by the alliance he signed only months ago and fears to annoy her lest she leave her precious crown elsewhere and not to him. Nonetheless, I agree that MacGaurie’s news is ominous. Jamie must be told at once so that whatever can be done may be done quickly. I warn you, however, that I doubt even this news will convince him that Elizabeth is capable of signing Mary’s death warrant or that of any other monarch. For her to do so would be to set a most undesirable precedent.”

The gravelly voice said bleakly, “It is impossible now that both Mary and Elizabeth shall continue to live.”

The tangle of voices rose again as Mary Kate leaned weakly against the door, amazed by what she had heard and trembling to think that she had listened in upon such a conversation—or upon any conversation, for that matter, for she had been strictly taught to regard eavesdropping as an unthinkably disreputable action. A highland servant caught with an ear to his master’s door was assumed to be a traitor attempting to gain information to be used against the clan. For such an act, she had heard of people being summarily executed without question or trial. Though she had reason to believe that listening at doors was not everywhere so violently disapproved, such behavior was, according to her Aunt Aberfoyle, consistently regarded as an unforgivable social solecism. Surely, she thought, she must have greatly overindulged herself in her uncle’s mulled claret to have been guilty of such a contemptible act.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Douglas’s voice. “There is little else we can accomplish tonight, though my own lads would do well to forgo the festivities below in favor of sleep, for we leave for Edinburgh at dawn.” When someone suggested that more haste than that was in order, he laughed. “We will make greater speed by waiting for this storm to lift. Besides, there is a wee, winsome armful waiting to offer me the comforts of her bed and ’twould be ungentlemanly to disappoint her.”

Furious to realize that he must be speaking of her, Mary Kate snapped upright and nearly pushed open the door to contradict him on the spot. But then, cheeks burning, she came to her senses, flipped her skirts around, and hurried back to her own chamber, sped along the length of the gallery by mortifying echoes of appreciative male laughter.

“How dare he!” she demanded of the ambient air as she snapped the door shut behind her and slammed the stout iron bolt into place. Pacing wrathfully, she kicked off her satin shoes, letting them fall where they would, and told herself bitterly that she ought to have expected nothing less from such a man. Boast how he might of maternal relations in the highlands, Douglas himself was naught but a lowly, uncivilized borderer.

Had she not heard all her life that such men held women cheap? Had it not been recommended on more than one occasion that she ought to thank the good Lord for having granted her the privilege of being born in the highlands, where women were properly respected, where they could own property in their own names, where they might even become clan chieftains? Border women, like Englishwomen, were said to be regarded by their men as inferior beings, as mere chattel, in fact. Even among the upper classes the women were expected to bow before their men or to follow several paces after them, to obey them unquestioningly, and to have no intelligent thoughts or opinions of their own. Was it any wonder then that Douglas, clearly a power among borderers, should arrogantly assume that he might command any woman to his bed merely because he wanted her? She had been foolish to be swayed by his charm, to think he might be different. Clearly, he was just the sort of man she ought to have expected him to be. But he would learn a lesson tonight. He would not trifle successfully with Mary Kate MacPherson.

A fire crackled in the stone fireplace set into the north wall of her high-ceilinged bedchamber, and candles in pewter holders stood ready to be lit upon a table by the door as well as on the candle table near the cupboardlike bed opposite the fire. No chambermaid awaited her pleasure, for the young maidservant who had accompanied her from home had succumbed to a feverish cold and Mary Kate had sent her to sleep in the servants’ hall so as not to contract it from her. She had intended to send for one of her aunt’s maids, but now, with Douglas on his way at any moment, she had no wish to do so.

Beside the candle on the table near the door, there was also a ewer of water, a basin, and a flagon of wine, but Mary Kate had use for none of these items at present. Lighting the candles, then hastily pulling off her gown and flinging it onto a back stool in a black-edged, saffron-colored heap, she snatched the pins from her hair and let the red-gold tresses fall in a cloud of ringlets over her bare shoulders to her waist. Next she removed her petticoats and underbodice and reached for her night rail. Slipping the flimsy lawn garment over her head and flipping her hair free, she strode to the court cupboard and took out her fur-lined cloak, sheepskin mules, and her hairbrush, muttering unflattering descriptions of the Douglas character to herself as she wrapped the cloak about her slender body, shoved her bare feet into the mules, and sat down at the dressing table to yank the brush in hasty, rhythmic strokes through her curls.

Moments later she stepped to the tall, oak-shuttered window near the northwest corner of the room and, using the nearby latchpole, unhooked the shutters’ high, upper latches. Leaning the unwieldy pole against the wall again, she dealt manually with the bottom hooks and pulled the heavy shutters wide, letting in the night’s chill but also revealing the spectacular scene beyond the stone balcony’s snow-frosted parapet.

Large, puffy black clouds still raced across the night sky, but the snow had stopped, and whenever the moon appeared through a break in the clouds, it bathed the white landscape below with a magical, silvery light. The temperature remained extremely cold, however, and with the brief thought that her relatives’ money might better have been spent on thick, leaded glass than on balconies for every window, Mary Kate blew out her candles, flung off her cloak, and dived beneath the thick quilts piled atop the high, curtained, cupboardlike bed. Wriggling to get warm, she listened carefully for sounds of approach from the long gallery.

Several persons passed, but nearly ten full minutes elapsed before the door latch rattled and Douglas called to her in a low, seductive voice. She held her breath, a tiny smile playing upon her lips. He called again, more loudly, and rapped upon the door. Silently, she waited until, with an oath and a hefty blow of his fist upon the offending portal, he moved away down the gallery. Then, with a final wriggle, she turned onto her stomach and prepared to sleep the sleep of the innocent.

Fifteen minutes later she had reached that drowsy state which is neither sleep nor wakefulness when a muffled scraping sound and a heavy thump from the balcony brought her fully alert. Surely, she thought without moving a muscle, that had been a human sound, perhaps even a step; and, as fear raced through her body, the light in the chamber dimmed. Something or someone standing in the tall, arched window had blocked the moonlight.