The Border Trilogy (31 page)

She nodded, acknowledging the truth of the statement, then forced a smile to her. lips, knowing Ned well enough by now to be certain he would worry if he thought she did.

He returned her smile, visibly relaxing before he remembered that he had been on his way to inquire if his lordship had duties for him. Reminded, he took himself off in some haste.

Mary Kate continued up to her bedchamber, where she curled up like a kitten on her bed and soon fell asleep. She had been dozing for nearly two hours when she was disturbed by a timid scratching on the door to the gallery. Neither Douglas nor Annie would knock, so it was with a note of curiosity in her voice that she called out permission to enter.

The door opened slowly, and after a long pause, Megan stepped reluctantly inside. Her demeanor had changed a good deal since Mary Kate had answered Lord Strachan’s summons to the bookroom sped along by her taunting smirk. Now, the young woman’s usually flawless complexion was stained with blotches of color and her eyes were red from recent weeping. Her proud head was lowered, her chin trembled, and the look she cast Mary Kate was miserable, even beseeching.

“M
AY I HAVE SPEECH
with you, my lady?” Courtesy as well, Mary Kate thought, wondering what this was all about. Megan hadn’t called her by title since her arrival.

“What do you want?” Her tone was sharp if not actually hostile. Barely glancing at Megan, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, smoothing her skirts, then reached up to tuck straggling ends of her hair back into her net.

Megan came farther into the room, shutting the door behind her. “I have come to make an apology to you.” Her voice trembled, but she seemed otherwise in control of herself, and Mary Kate suddenly remembered Lord Strachan’s promise. “I have behaved badly,” Megan went on, “and I have come here because I must tell you how sorry I am.”

“Very affecting, Lady Somerville,” Mary Kate said scornfully. Not doubting for a moment that Megan had chosen her words as carefully as Douglas had chosen the words of his message to the reivers, Mary Kate reveled in the other young woman’s discomfort, wishing Douglas himself could see it. How the tables had turned, she thought. Megan couldn’t possibly know that he had ordered his wife to make just such an apology to her, and now the shoe was on the other foot, exactly where it belonged.

Wanting nothing so much as to make her erstwhile adversary crawl, to humble her to her knees, Mary Kate went on in the same scathing tone, “Since I am quite certain that it was his lordship who demanded that you make this apology, I find it difficult to believe in its sincerity. No doubt he said things to you that you were sorry to hear, but I do not believe for a moment that you are truly sorry for your behavior to me.”

“Mary Kate, please!” To her dismay, tears began streaming from Megan’s eyes, and she stepped forward to sink down upon a low footstool before Mary Kate.

Mary Kate recoiled instantly. Although she had wanted to find Megan at her feet, to enjoy just such a display of humility, she now found it intensely distasteful. A woman so proud and beautiful as Douglas’s cousin should not humble herself to anyone, any more than Douglas or his wife should.

Megan struggled to control her tears. “My uncle has commanded that I return at once to Somerville,” she said wretchedly. “I am to be sent home to my husband in disgrace.”

“Sent home?” Mary Kate was astonished. “What about Margaret’s wedding?”

“Uncle said that that must lie with Sir Reginald to decide. But oh, Mary Kate, I know he will not permit me to go. He will be so angry, and he will say that since I have had my chance and mismanaged it, I deserve not to go. And he will be right.” She brushed tears away with the back of her hand and slumped woefully on the footstool. “I have no one to blame for this wretched turn of events save myself.”

Shamefaced and speaking haltingly, Megan described what had happened when she had been summoned to the bookroom not long after Mary Kate had left it. “I foolishly believed that somehow my uncle had heard of your rudeness to me yesterday and intended to make you apologize to me,” she confessed reluctantly.

Instead, she had found her uncle in a naming temper. He had accused her of insensitivity, rudeness, lack of hospitality, and—worst of all—of disgracing the proud names of Douglas and Somerville. He had ranted on and on for some time in that vein, and Megan assured Mary Kate that her ears were still ringing from the peal of his upbraiding, although the scene had taken place a good while before. She had spent the intervening time miserably, alone in her bedchamber, trying to decide what course might be the best one to pursue.

With a catch in her voice, she insisted that she had never expected her mischief to lead to such an end, that she had wanted only to see what sort of reaction her harmless flirtation with Douglas would evoke from Mary Kate, and she willingly admitted that she had allowed the business to go much too far. Now her uncle was adamant, and she could not appeal to Douglas for assistance. Even if he would agree to speak for her, she explained, his father would never listen to him.

“I am afraid of my husband,” she admitted quietly. “My uncle promises to write him a letter, detailing my many unkindnesses to you. I—I am to take it to him when I return. Such a message…” She paused, gulping, visibly exerting control over rapidly rising emotion. “Such a message will enrage him beyond anything I have ever seen, I am sure of it, and his temper is formidable.”

“You make it sound as though you fear for your very life,” Mary Kate said suspiciously. “I doubt it can be as bad as that.”

Megan managed a weak smile. “No, but it will be grievously uncomfortable, nevertheless.” She threw Mary Kate a sapient glance. “Only consider how Adam would react if our positions were reversed.”

Mary Kate fell silent. To imagine the Douglas fury were she ever to present him with such a message as Lord Strachan had promised to send with Megan was not difficult. His anger with her now would be as nothing compared to it, for the discord between herself and his cousin had been a matter easily kept within the family, a disagreement between two mere females, at that. Douglas had been angry when she had insulted Megan, but not angry enough to beat her. To be sure, he had been angrier, and still was, over her abduction by the reivers, but only because he thought she had come to grief through willful disobedience to his commands.

It was her safety that concerned him presently, just as it had been the day she had impulsively left the castle and ridden toward Jedburgh. That incident and her more recent difficulties would remain, for the most part, private matters between the two of them. If, on the other hand, she were to misbehave under someone else’s roof and he were to learn of it from a third party, the matter would no longer be a private one.

Remembering how straitly he had warned her against making their affairs public, she could have no doubt that he would be enraged if such a situation ever arose, convinced that others would see in her actions a reflection of his inability to control her behavior. Bad enough, then, to have to face Douglas’s wrath in such a case. But what about Sir Reginald, who had a reputation for being a harsher, more insensitive man to begin with? The thought of Megan’s probable punishment made Mary Kate wince. Suddenly she no longer wanted vengeance of any sort.

“I am sorry for you,” she said quietly.

“Please believe I never meant this foolishness to go so far, Mary Kate. You were right to say that it was my uncle’s words that made me sorry, for until then I had been selfishly heedless of your pain. I amused myself at your expense, and besides being foolish, my behavior was wicked and thoughtless. I am truly sorry, both that I have hurt you and that I have caused this trouble between you and Adam. I think I must have been jealous,” she added frankly, “and perhaps at times I did intend more than simple mischief. I am not proud of myself, but I never meant such dreadful things to happen to either of us. When Adam received that message from your captors…well, you cannot think how I felt.”

She paused with a reminiscent grimace. “I promise you, the news made me physically ill, and at that moment, if I could have brought you back merely by confessing to him what I had been doing and suffering the consequences of his fury, I’d have done so and gladly. But then he brought you home safely, and everyone made such a fuss over you that I reacted childishly again when my uncle sent for you. I saw your fear when the message came for you, and I thought you were finally to be scolded for causing such an upset.”

Mary Kate chuckled. “Oh dear, how little you know. To think that you can believe everyone made a fuss over me when Adam was, and is, truly livid with anger.”

“But I saw him,” Megan protested. “He was beside himself with fear when word came of your capture, and today he had his arm ’round your shoulders, helping you up the front steps.”

Mary Kate stared, then shook her head in wry amusement. “Megan, he was not helping me. He was forcing me. The last thing I wanted to do just then was to go into the house with him. He thought—still thinks, in fact—that I ran away yesterday rather than obey his command to beg your forgiveness for calling you a bitch.”

Megan’s mouth opened. “Is that what that word means?”

“Aye, near enough.” Mary Kate bit her lip, feeling warmth surge to her cheeks. “And I am sorry I said it. But Adam probably thinks being captured by brigands is nothing compared to what I truly deserve. He would like nothing better than to use me as you fear Sir Reginald will use you. But his lordship intervened.” She grimaced. “He did so, mind you, not because he thought Adam’s wrath unjustified but because he feared that Adam’s beating me would distress Lady Strachan. In point of fact, I probably owe my escape directly to her. I’d not be surprised to learn that, knowing precisely what Adam would do in such a case, she begged his lordship to protect me. So much for fussing over me!”

“I didn’t know.” Megan shook her head. “I am so ashamed of myself, Mary Kate. My uncle is right. There can be no excuse for my behavior. I wish now that I had been kinder to you. We might have become friends.”

“We can still be friends,” Mary Kate said, smiling. “Perhaps, if I were to speak to his lordship—”

“Oh, if only you would! I confess I had hoped you would suggest such a course, for it is the only thing now that might weigh with him, but I could not ask, for I know I do not deserve your help. If you will try,” she added huskily, “I will be forever grateful to you.” She hesitated then, fiddling with a fold of her skirt. “He said I am to leave first thing in the morning, so perhaps you could speak with him after supper?”

Mary Kate nodded absently, for her mind was racing. She did not doubt that, in the long run, she could convince Lord Strachan to alter his decision, but she pondered the advisability of waiting until after supper to approach him. There was always the likelihood that Douglas would return and interfere, one way or another, and she wanted the matter over and settled before ever he heard about it. He would be displeased, to say the least, if Megan were sent home on her account to face Sir Reginald’s wrath. On the other hand, perhaps it would alleviate some of his present displeasure with her if she were able to prevent that. On the thought she consulted her watch, flicking open the intricate gold case with her thumbnail.

“It lacks half an hour of supper,” she said briskly, rising to her feet and shaking out her skirts. She moved to study her reflection in the Venetian looking glass on the wall by the press cupboard, speaking as she went. “Do you remain here, and I shall speak with him at once.” Smoothing her hair, she turned. “Should Adam return in the meantime, pray tell him only that I am with his father.”

Megan agreed with becoming gratitude, and Mary Kate sallied forth to confront his lordship in the bookroom. When she requested a private interview, he obligingly dismissed young Ned to change for supper, seated her in the big armchair, perched himself against the edge of the huge table, and gave her his undivided attention.

At first he refused to consider her request, giving it as his opinion that Megan had stepped beyond all bounds by applying to her for assistance in what he readily agreed was a pretty tangle. He declared flatly that although he might decline to exert his authority so far as to take a good stout rod to his niece’s backside, he had no qualms whatever about sending her home to a husband who could be depended upon to exercise that authority to the fullest degree. When he added, smiling, that Mary Kate was displaying her own generosity of spirit by supporting Megan, she tried to disabuse him of that notion by insisting first that she believed the other young woman was being punished more harshly than the situation merited and, secondly, that her own motives were selfish ones.

Earlier, when she had described her difficulties to him, she had been honest without dwelling upon her own contributions to the problem. In describing the incidents preceding her departure from Strachan Court, she had said only that Douglas had given her a tongue-lashing for being uncivil to his cousin. Now, albeit reluctantly, she filled in more of the details, emphasizing the fact that she, too, had been much at fault. She even admitted having told Megan that she, rather than Rose MacReady, had belonged upon the repentance stool. That part did not anger Strachan, as she had feared it might. He even smiled a little. But he was no longer smiling when she finished describing precisely what had taken place in the window hall.

“Your coming to me this way speaks well for you, Mary Kate,” he said then, “but I understand now why my son was so angry with you.” He paused, and she waited anxiously, chewing her lower lip. “None of what you have told me excuses Megan’s rudeness, nor Adam’s, for all that. But where his was heedless, hers was willful, and nothing you have said alters that fact. That she, a Douglas born, could so forget her duty…” He shook his head grimly. “Common courtesy, if nothing else, is expected of her at all times, and I am not inclined to forgive her easily.”

“She knows you are displeased with her, my lord, and she is sorry for what she has done, so can you not reconsider your decision to send her home? Sir Reginald will be furious with her. She is certain that he will not allow her to attend the wedding, which will disappoint Margaret as much as it will disappoint Megan. Her absence will also distress her ladyship,” she added shrewdly, “and there is still Adam to be considered. You yourself said that I shall have difficulty making my peace with him, but my task will be doubly difficult if he believes that Megan is being sent home in disgrace on my account. And that is what he will believe. She has apologized to me, after all, and I find that I am able freely to forgive her. I should like her to be my friend.”