The Sinner (12 page)

S
krit scrit, scrit.
Claire drew her feet in as the mouse crossed the floor. It was bigger and bolder than the mice in the fields at home.

The old woman had not brought food yet today, so she and her doll were hungry. Poor Marie was dirty as well. If Grandmère was here, she would scold Claire for not taking better care of her doll. Grandpère had made Marie specially for his little girl from straw and rope, and then Grandmère had sewn her pretty gown from scraps.

The girl pressed her nose against Marie’s soft belly and sniffed, but the smell of Grandmère and Grandpère had been gone for a long, long time.

W
hen Glynis came down for supper, a man dressed in a priest’s robes was already sitting at the head of the table. He looked at her with gray eyes that were the same color and shape as her own, but they were as cold as a frozen pond.

“She does look like our former sister,” the priest said in a flat tone.

“Ye are my uncle?” Glynis asked.

After growing up in a family in which she looked like no one else, Glynis had been disappointed to see no resemblance between herself and her aunt. She could see herself in this tall, gaunt priest—but she did not like what she saw.

“Yes, I am Father Thomas,” he said, as if being himself was a great responsibility. “You may sit.”

Glynis’s backside was barely on the bench before her uncle started the prayer. He recited it rapidly with no inflection, giving Glynis the impression that his mind was elsewhere. When he finished the prayer, he helped himself to the choicest piece of meat on the tray and began eating before the rest of them had any.

“I hope you have a more obedient nature than your mother did,” he said, looking at her with a grim expression. “I pray you will not bring more shame upon our family.”

He did not expect an answer, and Glynis had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from giving him one he was sure not to like.

Glynis’s lively aunt Peg and Henry seemed to wilt in the priest’s presence, and the supper conversation was stilted. Midway through the meal, the priest put away his eating knife.

“Gavin Douglas has been imprisoned,” he announced.

Aunt Peg gasped, and Henry went pale.

“How can that be?” Henry asked. “He was supposed to become the Archbishop of St. Andrews.”

“The queen nominated him, and she is no longer regent,” Father Thomas hissed. “Now the Douglases are out of favor.”

“What does this mean?” Peg asked in a hesitant voice.

“It means, dear sister,” Father Thomas said, turning his venomous eyes on her, “that I will not be going to St. Andrews with Gavin Douglas.”

Glynis was tempted to suggest that Father Thomas should be grateful he was not following this Gavin Douglas to prison.

“What in the name of God possessed Gavin to advise his nephew to marry the queen?” Father Thomas raised his hands as he spoke, as if beseeching Heaven. “As her lover, Archibald Douglas had the queen in his pocket. And the council could do nothing because the king’s will provided that the queen should be regent
so long as she did not remarry.
”

Glynis dropped her gaze to the food growing cold in front of her.

“Damn him to hell,” Father Thomas said. “Gavin should have stuck to his poetry.”

“He is a poet?” Glynis asked, hoping to divert Father Thomas to a topic less upsetting to him.

“Gavin Douglas is famous for his own poetry as well as for his translations of ancient poems,” Father Thomas said. “A useless activity, of course, but one that would not have cost him a bishopric.”

“Useless?” Glynis said. “We Highlanders hold our poets in high esteem.”

From the way Father Thomas’s eyebrows shot up, he was not accustomed to disagreement.

“Why has the poor man been imprisoned?” Glynis asked, her curiosity overtaking her caution, as it often did.

“He is accused of attempting to buy the bishopric from the Pope.” Father Thomas shrugged one bony shoulder. “If Albany’s faction did not suspect Gavin had also advised the queen to flee to England with the Scottish heir, no one would care if he bought it.”

Glynis cleared her throat. “Are ye aware, Uncle, of what this new regent’s attitude is toward the Highland clans?”

“Of course I am,” he snapped. “’Tis fortunate that you escaped that God-forsaken place, for Albany has given the Campbells the crown’s blessing to destroy this Highland rebellion ‘by sword and by fire.’”

Glynis put her hand to her throat, fearing for her family back home. “What does that mean?”

“It means they have a free hand to lay waste to the rebels’ lands and murder anyone who stands in their way, including women and children,” Father Thomas said, “When the rebels submit, as they will, the Campbells are to collect the rebel chieftains’ eldest sons as hostages to assure their father’s good behavior.”

“My brother is only four years old.” Glynis felt sick to her stomach.

“Then it may just be possible to teach him civilized ways.”

If her father knew of this plan, surely he would see sense and leave the rebellion. Before Glynis could question Father Thomas further, he got to his feet.

“I must pursue my advancement independent of Gavin Douglas now,” he said, fixing his hard gaze on Henry. “It will be costly.”

Father Thomas did not wait for a response. Without so much as a fare-thee-well, he left the room with long-legged strides.

“Thomas is an important man in the church,” Peg said when he had gone, as if that should excuse his rudeness.

“Eat up,” Henry said to Glynis, as he stuffed an apple tart in his mouth. “A man likes a woman with some flesh on her bones.”

Glynis could not recover her good humor as quickly as her Aunt Peg and Henry, but she managed a weak smile and took a bite. The apples were not as tart as at home. Nothing tasted good here.

“What do ye think about James the Baker?” Henry said, looking at her aunt. “He’s a fine man. Wouldn’t he make our bonny niece a good husband?”

Glynis choked on the bite of dry tart caught in her throat. “Thank ye for your concern,” she said when she could speak, “but I don’t wish to marry again.”

“Don’t wish to marry?” Henry said, then repeated it more loudly: “Don’t wish to marry?”

When Glynis shook her head, Henry and her aunt exchanged startled glances.

“James is a steady man with a good future before him.” Her aunt reached across the narrow table and patted her hand. “It can’t hurt to meet him.”

“Thank ye kindly,” Glynis said. “But meeting the man will no change my mind.”

Bessie came in then and stooped to speak to Henry in a low voice.

“James is here,” Henry said, and gave Glynis a wide smile. “Make yourself pretty while I fetch him.”

Two hours later, Glynis was so bored she wanted to stab herself in the eye. James was easily the most tedious man she had met in her life. Alas, he was unattractive as well.

“Do ye never leave the city?” she asked after listening to him drone on about meetings of his guild. “Surely ye must long to take a sail or a walk in the meadows now and again?”

“There are pirates roaming the seas!” Poor James looked genuinely alarmed. “Besides, the sea makes me sick as a dog.”

The sea made him ill?

A wave of homesickness swept over Glynis, leaving a sense of hopelessness in its wake. She had always lived on the sea and had no notion how much she would miss it. Even when she was married to that despicable Magnus, she could hear the sea from her window and walk on the shore every day.

Glynis’s attention was brought back to the present by the sudden damp heat of a heavy hand on her thigh.

“Ye are a pretty thing,” James said, leaning close enough for her to see the spittle on his chin. “And I believe I’m just the man to tame a wild Highland lass.”

A
lex walked the city streets in the bleak hours before dawn. Occasionally, women of the night called out to him from doorways. No one else was out at this hour save for thieves and groups of drunken young men looking for a fight. But with his claymore strapped to his back and dirks hanging from his belt in plain sight, no one gave Alex trouble.

After tossing and turning on the too-small bed at the tavern, Alex had given up on sleep. He wished he could talk with Glynis about the problem of this wee girl Sabine claimed was his daughter. Glynis would give him honest advice. But he could not very well wake up her relatives’ household by pounding on their door in the middle of the night.

When the first streaks of dawn speared through the sky, he unfolded the paper that Sabine had given him and read the directions written there. What in the hell was wrong with Sabine keeping the child in the most wretched part of the city?

Alex turned down a close and held his plaid over his mouth and nose as he walked farther and farther down the hill. He was nearly to the sewage-filled loch before he finally reached the place. He pounded on the door with murder running through his veins.

A woman opened the door just wide enough for him to see her greasy hair and careworn face. Her eyes grew wide as she took him in.

“Alexander MacDonald?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

“Aye.”

When the woman opened the door wider, Alex ducked his head and stepped inside. He found himself in a low-ceilinged room lit by a single, smoky lamp. There was no one in it but the two of them.

“Where is the Countess?” he asked, though he had realized as he walked down the close that Sabine would never ruin her delicate slippers coming to this desperate place.

“I never saw the lady,” the woman said. “Her maid said ye would be the one to pay me.”

One brings deceit.

“Their ship has sailed?” Alex asked, though he already knew it had.

The woman nodded. “Aye, at dawn.”

“And the child?”

“I have her, but ye must pay me first.”

Sabine had known that, regardless of whether the girl was his or not, Alex would not be able to leave a child in this squalid place with no one to care for her. At least, he hoped Sabine had known that when she abandoned her daughter.

A ragged strip of cloth hung over the doorway to a connecting room, and he suspected the child was there. Though Alex could have fetched her himself, the woman deserved her pay. He dropped the coins into her waiting palm.

His heart raced as the woman disappeared into the blackness behind the curtain. What in God’s name was wrong with him? He was fearless sailing into a squall or charging into battle, and yet an unfamiliar frisson of terror traveled up his knees over meeting a wee bairn.

Before he had time to prepare himself, the woman flipped back the cloth and reentered the room leading a child by the hand. Sabine’s gift to him.

Alex had never lacked for words in his life, but he was too stunned to speak. Looking at the child, he had the oddest sensation that he was seeing a feminine version of himself as a wee lad. Her hair was the same white-blond his had been as a bairn, and she was long-legged as a newborn colt.

“She’s a strange child,” the woman said. “Can’t speak a word.”

“Maybe she has nothing to say to ye.” Alex noticed how dirty the child was, and a horrible thought occurred to him. “How long have ye kept her here?”

“Since she was brought to me a couple of months ago,” the woman said. “As ye can see, I’ve taken good care of her.”

God have mercy.
The child must have been here since Sabine arrived in Edinburgh. That had probably sucked the words right out of the poor wee thing. Alex remembered how desperate he had felt in that cell after just a couple of hours, and he could have wept for the child.

Alex dropped to his knee to have a closer look at her. Eyes the same shade of green met his. Though her face was heart-shaped, rather than square-jawed like his, she had a delicate version of his straight nose and his generous mouth with its full bottom lip.

Alex heard the woman leave, but he did not take his eyes off the child. He had a strange compulsion to touch her. He smiled at her as he cupped the wee lass’s cheek—and felt a surge of relief when she did not flinch. She had the soft skin of a baby. His heart hurt as he thought of her closed up in this dark, wretched place for so long.

“I’m told your name is Claire,” he said, speaking to her in French.

She nodded. While the child might be mute, she was not deaf.

“Do ye know what your name means?” he asked.

She shook her head a fraction.

“Bright and shining. Radiant,” he said, fanning his fingers out. For once he was grateful for the Latin that had been forced upon him in university. “In Gaelic, the language where I come from, we say
Sorcha
.”

Claire was a lovely name, but it sounded fragile to his ear.

“Sorcha is a powerful name,” he said. “Would it be all right if that is what I call ye?”

Her gaze never faltered as she paused to consider this and then gave him a slow nod.

“Sorcha, are ye ready to leave this foul-smelling place and come on an adventure with me?”

The girl nodded again. She was a brave lass, of course.

“We have a long journey ahead of us,” he said. “I’m taking ye home to Skye.”

That was as far as his plans went. He had no notion what he would do with her once he got her there.

“Skye is an island surrounded by sea,” he said, stretching his arms out. “And it’s as beautiful as Heaven.”

She put her thumb in her mouth, but he could tell she was listening hard.

When he picked her up, he was unprepared for the swell of emotion that filled his chest at holding his wee daughter for the first time. Her long hair fell in tangles over his arm as she tilted her head back to examine him.

“If ye are wondering who I am,” he said, touching his finger to her wee nose. “I’m your father, lass.”

A
woman could do worse than James,” Glynis’s aunt said over breakfast. “He is a steady man, and you’d never need to fret about other women with him.”

That was for certain.
“I couldn’t marry a man who hates the sea,” Glynis said, since they would not hear that she did not wish to marry at all. “We would never get along.”

Henry looked at her as if she were mad. “What has one got to do with the other?”

A vision of Alex jumping over a log brandishing his claymore in one hand and throwing his dirk with the other came to her. Even if she had wanted a husband, how could she let one of these pitiful men touch her after Alex?

“If ye don’t like James, what about Tim the Silversmith?” her aunt asked. “Ye must remember him—his was the third shop we visited yesterday.”

Unfortunately, she remembered the silversmith all too clearly.

“He’s shorter than I am.” It was the least of Glynis’s objections, but the first that burst out of her mouth.

“’Tis a shame ye are so tall,” Henry said, shaking his head as if it were a great misfortune. “But I don’t believe Tim minded.”

“He’s pale as a fish’s belly,” Glynis said. “And he has bad breath.”

“What is important is that he could support ye very well,” her aunt said.

Glynis was a chieftain’s daughter, and her father would provide a significant
tochar
, or dowry, if she should marry again. But she was becoming suspicious about the state of her Edinburgh relatives’ finances and decided not to enlighten them.

“There are hundreds of merchants in our grand city.” Henry got to his feet and stretched his stubby arms. “We’re bound to find one to your liking.”

“We are delighted to have ye visit us,” her aunt said after Henry left. “But what is your plan, child, if ye don’t intend to marry?”

Glynis had intended to be the spinster relative who grew old in the attic.

“Surely ye didn’t come here expecting to live with us forever?” her aunt asked, pinching her brows together.

Glynis sat up straight. In the Highlands, hospitality was a sacred duty. It was unthinkable to toss out any guest, let alone one who was also a close relation. One suffered with them as long as one had to.

“I apologize,” Glynis said, feeling her face go hot. “I did not realize I would be imposing.”

“All we want is for ye to be happy, but for that, a woman needs a husband,” her aunt said, giving her a sweet smile. “And the wealthier he is, the happier you’ll be.”

“Are ye expecting this wealthy husband to help support Father Thomas’s ambitions?” Glynis asked.

“That would be an added blessing, of course.” Her aunt patted her hand. “We don’t want to go to the moneylenders again.”

The bright sun hurt Claire’s eyes, but it felt good on her face. She could not remember the last time she had been outside. She was high above the people on the street, sitting on the shoulders of the man with the laughing eyes.

S-o-r-ch-a.
She practiced the name the man had given her in her head. Grandmère had only called her Claire when she was angry—her real name was ma chère. But perhaps she was wrong. When Grandmère first gave her the doll, she had called Marie by different names until she had found the right one.

The man spoke to her in words that were familiar, and sometimes she tried to understand what he was saying. But she had grown accustomed to listening for other things in voices. She knew from the rise in the old woman’s voice when she was going to slap her.

But the man’s big, deep voice made her happy.

Alex carried the child on his shoulders to keep people from stepping on the wee thing.

“Ye see that water in the distance?” he asked, turning around and pointing. “That’s the Firth, where the boat ye came on sailed into Edinburgh. Did ye like sailing?”

When he looked up her, she nodded. Since the child needed to learn Gaelic, he said everything to her first in French and then in Gaelic.

“We are going to say good-bye to a friend of mine before we leave,” he said, starting up the hill again. “It won’t take long.”

As anxious as he was to leave the city, he needed to see that Glynis was happily settled with her aunt. At least that was what he was telling himself.

When they reached the house, he set Sorcha on her feet. It seemed much longer than a day since he had stood before this red door with Glynis. At his knock, the same maid as yesterday answered it.

“I’ve come to speak to Mistress Glyn—”

He stopped when he saw Glynis descending the stair, looking as fresh as a spring breeze in a pale green gown. The only sign of surprise she showed at seeing him with a wee girl holding his hand was a slight widening of her eyes.

“Glynis, this is my daughter.”

Alex waited for her to call him a philanderer, a sinner, or worse.

“I can see that she is,” Glynis said with a light in her eyes. She leaned down with a warm smile and touched Sorcha’s shoulder. “What’s your name, child?”

“She doesn’t speak,” he said.

“She has no Gaelic?” Glynis asked, looking up at him.

“Her mother was French, so she has no Gaelic,” he said. “But what I meant is that she has not yet said a word of any kind.”

“Where is her mother?” Glynis asked in a soft voice.

“On her way back to France.”

Glynis met his gaze, and he was grateful she asked for no further explanation.

“I thought perhaps your family here might know of a good woman I could hire to look after my daughter on the journey home,” he said. “I haven’t the slightest notion how to take care of a bairn—especially a lass.”

“I could do it,” Glynis said in a rush.

Alex stared at her, wondering if he had heard her correctly.

“I have three younger sisters, so I know how,” she said, her voice unnaturally high. “And ye wouldn’t have to pay me.”

It was one shock too many before breakfast. “What are ye saying? Have pity on a hungry man and speak plainly.”

“I feel foolish after all the trouble I put ye to bringing me all the way here to Edinburgh,” she said.

“I enjoyed it quite thoroughly,” he said, causing her to blush. “But ye just arrived. Why would ye be wanting to go back so soon?”

“I didn’t know what it would be like here, with all the people and the noise and so far from the sea,” she said, worrying the skirt of her gown in her hands. “And my mother’s family is dead set on wedding me to a merchant.”

“To a merchant? Are they mad?”

“Nay, but they are short of money.” Glynis gripped his arm and looked up at him in a most appealing way. “I’d rather be unhappy at home than unhappy here. Please, Alex, don’t leave me in this city.”

“Get your things,” he said.

“Thank ye.” Glynis threw her arms around his neck. Too soon, she released him.

“Best not tell your relatives,” he said, catching her arm before she could fly up the stairs. “We don’t want an argument.”

He and Glynis both turned to look at the maid, who was still standing behind Glynis.

“I’ll tell ye the same as I told your mother,” the woman said. “You’ll find no happiness in this house, so go with your handsome Highlander as quick as ye can.”

“Bless ye, Bessie,” Glynis said, picking up her skirts and heading toward the stairs.

“But take me with ye, mistress,” the maid said.

The two women turned pleading eyes on Alex.

“Can Bessie come? Please?” Glynis asked. “It won’t be proper if I don’t have a maid with me when I arrive home. We can tell my father that she traveled with us both going and coming.”

“Aye.” God help him, he’d be traveling with three females now. He did not point out that a serving woman was what he’d asked for in the first place.

As Alex watched the two women disappear up the stairs, he felt an unfamiliar tug on his hand and looked down. By the saints, he had forgotten his wee daughter already. What kind of a father was he going to make?

Sorcha gave his hand another tug and pointed at the stairs, as if asking for an explanation.

“Mistress Glynis is coming with us,” he said. “She’ll take care of ye.”

His daughter gave him the faintest of smiles—her first—and it made his heart go all soft like butter on a hot day.

“So ye like Mistress Glynis?” he asked her.

Sorcha put her thumb in her mouth and gave him a solemn nod.

Alex sighed. “I do as well.”