Thorn in My Heart (14 page)

“Curious business, this. And ye're quite right,” Neda agreed, handing back the note. “You canna include yer sister without offendin Lady Maxwell, seein as her ladyship wrote only to ye.”

Rose bit hard on her lower lip, trying to sort out her feelings. “I fear I can't risk that.”

“Indeed not.”

“Risk what?” a third voice asked.

Both women turned to find Leana standing inside the open back door. Her arms were brimming with roses on the cusp of losing their bloom; her face was filled with sisterly concern. “Who might be risking what?” Leana asked again, easing the drooping flowers into a pail of water left behind by forgetful Annabel. Her gaze landed on the letter. “Is it bad news, Rose?”

“Not…not bad news, no.” Rose patted the letter against her skirts, debating the best way to handle things. She couldn't bear to see her sister wounded. Yet how could she celebrate her own good fortune without suffering pangs of guilt? Of course,
she
was not the one who had made the decision to exclude Leana. If it was not her choice, how could it be her fault?

“One of Lady Maxwells servants brought this letter to our door,” she explained, wanting to prepare her.

Leana slowly held out her hand. “May I read it?”

Rose watched her sister's face as she read in silence, amazed when Leana's mouth popped open in astonishment and then bloomed into a smile.

“Rose, this is quite something!” Leana stepped forward and pressed a warm cheek against hers. “A pot of tea with her ladyship, and you the daughter of a bonnet laird. Remarkable, I'd say.” Leana stood back and pressed the note into Rose's hands, her eyes twinkling. “You must promise to describe everything in detail the minute you get home.” Leana turned to wink at their housekeeper. “Mustn't she, Neda?”

“Aye.” Neda glanced at Rose's gown and dirty bare feet. “It seems we've a few details of our ain to take care of. Put a pail of water on to boil, Leana, while I see to Miss Rose McBride's dress.”

Relief washed over Rose like the water that soon would wash her feet. It seemed that Leana understood. No, more than that, she was happy for her, genuinely so. The hours passed quickly as Leana and Neda pressed her best blue dress, combed and beribboned her waist-length black curls, then touched a bit of powder on her freshly scrubbed cheeks.

Rose waited until the last possible moment to present herself to her father. Too late for him to protest her visit or ask many questions.

“Pride goeth before destruction,” he cautioned, adding weight to his words by pointing to the wooden box where the family Bible was stored. “Don't be aiming above your station, Rose. The Maxwells are too powerful to be trusted, and papist besides.” Lachlan McBride had an uneasy regard for nobility. Bonnet lairds and tradesmen were one thing, lords and ladies quite another, and Catholics frichtsome.

She gave a quick curtsy, then hurried toward the stables where Willie, Auchengray's
orraman
, waited for her with the two-wheeled chaise. A kind and quiet man in his early sixties, Willie handled all the odd jobs that fell under no one else's jurisdiction—tasks like escorting her to Maxwell Park. She gaped at the carriage, seldom used except on Sundays, its polished leather seat gleaming in the afternoon sun. “Not old Bess with a sidesaddle?”

“Not today” His wrinkled skin wreathed the grin of a much younger man. “Not for a visit with Lady Maxwell. I'll be drivin you meself. Can't have your hands gettin soiled and smellin like leather.” Willie nodded at her white silk gloves.

Rose glanced down, extending her fingers to admire the treasured gloves she'd borrowed from Leana, gloves that had once belonged to their mother. Leana wore them only on the most special occasions. The rest of the time she kept them wrapped in linen, taking them out now and again to run her fingers along the fragile seams.

“You are most thoughtful, Willie,” Rose murmured, squeezing her hands tight to hold her emotions in check. “We'd better get on with it. I mustn't be late.”

“No indeed. Come, let me help keep yer skirts oot o’ the mud.”

Rose climbed nimbly into the chaise, her mind already two miles away, her heart beating with anticipation.

A good jack boot with double sole he made,
To roam the woods, or through the rivers wade.

G
IUSEPPE
G
IUSTI

J
amie did not need to ask a stranger for directions; he knew where he I was going and precisely how to get there. Hadn't he copied a map from the
Geographiae Scotiaeon
his fathers desk? True, he no longer had the map, but he'd
drawn
the thing. He remembered that the road from New Galloway led southeast along Loch Ken and the River Dee toward Carlinwark. Short of being swallowed whole by one of Ben McGill's monstrous pikes leaping out of the Ken, he'd reach his destination by suppertime.

He trudged on, the glassy blue surface of the loch to his left, an endless afternoon of walking before him. The mere thought of food was all it took to set his stomach groaning. “Wheesht!” he hissed as it grew louder, grateful he had the road to himself for the moment. He'd borrowed a handful of apples from the fertile orchards of Kenmure, certain the landowner wouldn't miss them. Now the tart juices gurgled in protest, souring his insides.

Jamie emerged from the shadows cast by a densely wooded rise of tall conifers and spied a family of barefooted peasants ambling toward him. The father pulled a
ricklie
two-wheeled cart filled with baskets of dirt-caked tatties and two wee sons, their faces brown as the potatoes. Alongside them walked a woman who could only be their mother, so loving was her expression as she sang a lilting tune:

• Kenmure's on and awa, Willie!
  

• Kenmure's on and awa;
  

• Kenmure's lord is the bonniest lord
  

• That ever Galloway saw.
  

No doubt they were tenants on Kenmure's estate, singing the praises of the unfortunate viscount who'd lost his head in the rebellion of ‘ 15. All of Galloway knew the story of Williams brave march on Preston, his capture and trial for treason, his beheading at Londons Tower. A gruesome affair, hardly fit to be set to music and sung to children.

“Guid day to ye, sir,” the peasant said, tipping his cap.

Jamie, unshaven and disheveled, was relieved to find his standing in society still apparent. It was his boots that marked him as a gende-man—Italian leather, finely tooled and well fitted, if a bit mud splattered. Jamie greeted the stranger with a perfunctory nod. “How much farther to Carlinwark?”

The man looked over his shoulder as though the distance were signposted. “Eh…twelve miles, I'd say. Could be fourteen.” He turned back to study Jamie. “Ye'll make it by the gloamin if ye put a bit o’
smeddum
in yer step.”

Jamie brisded at the peasant's impudence. Surely the man understood he was accustomed to traveling on horseback, not on foot like a commoner. If it took him longer, so be it.

“Follow the banks o’ the Dee past Balmaghie,” the man continued, inclining his head to indicate the route. “Ye'll come to the casde they call Threave. Hundreds o’ years auld and prime full o’ woe.” The peasant lowered the handles of his tipcart, oblivious to his sons’ distress at toppling among the vegetables, and used both hands to point the way. “Cross the bridge, then turn north and follow the road into the village of Carlinwark, past the Three Thorns. Ye'll be wantin to watch for Gypsies, lad, travelin alone as ye are.”

“So I shall.” Not that he had anything left worth stealing. Jamie thanked the man, then strode past him, grimacing as he heard the peasant's wife peck away at her husband like a hen come upon fresh grain. Her sharp scolding reminded him of his mother. Rowena McKie's words might be more refined, but the tone of voice was quite the same. Jamie shook his head as he walked, wondering how his father Alec had endured his wife's constant belitding. Whichever one of his cousins he claimed for a bride, Jamie intended to make very sure her nature was gende and her words seasoned with sugar, not salt.

The miles and hours passed without incident as he put one booted foot in front of the other, always keeping the meandering Dee in sight. Occasional herds of black catde rumbled by, sending him scrambling to higher ground for safety. The beasts were purchased the day before at Keltonhill on the first market day in October, or so he'd learned from a local farmer with an incredulous look reserved for travelers foolish enough not to know that simple fact. Jamie merely shrugged, keenly aware of being what the Buik called “a stranger in a strange land.” This Galloway was not
his
Galloway. The rugged hills and glens of home had disappeared, replaced by lush farmland and wide, flat meadows. Bonny as the landscape might be, he could not return to Glentrool soon enough.

Above him the pale gray skies had grown darker, the clouds thicker. Such a changeable sky could revert to sunshine without a moments notice or usher in a fierce autumn storm and drench him to the bone. The rain did not concern him, but the brooding sky did. It bore down on him in silent warning, as though it knew something he did not. Jamie refused to acknowledge his discomfort, training his gaze on the hedgerows instead, ignoring the ominous heavens, even as a memory from three nights past haunted him: Had he truly conversed with the Almighty in his dreams?

A low rumble of thunder overhead sent Jamie's thoughts bolting elsewhere.

He quickened his steps, matching the hasty rhythm of his heartbeat, and eyed the countryside for a safe haven from the coming storm. An hour passed, then a second. The rain threatened, nothing more, nor did the sun reappear. When a massive square tower rose in the distance, gray and foreboding as the clouds themselves, Jamie stopped to gape at it. On an island in the Dee stood the remains of Threave casde, embrasures for archers’ bows piercing the tower walls like eyes narrowed into menacing slits.

A flock of goldeneye flew across the gloomy hills, the whisding of their wings swallowed up by the stark landscape that was once home to the Black Douglases. The earls were gone now, but their spirits seemed
to hover over the land, holding sway even from the grave. Unnerved by the deserted fortress, Jamie began walking again, faster now. When another rumble of thunder rolled over him, he fairly ran along the marshy riverside, past the eerie casde, craning his neck for a place to cross the Dee, for cross it he must. By the time he arrived at the old bridge—short of breath, his blistered heels crying out for mercy—Jamie knew he must attend to his wounds without delay. He would reach Auchengray tomorrow, but only if he first found some relief for his swollen, bleeding feet.

Jamie dropped onto the bridge with a weary grunt, not minding the damp stones under his breeches. He grasped one filthy boot and tugged with all his might. It came off abruptly, sending him sprawling backward. The second one came more easily. He parked his boots next to him, dangled his legs over the edge of the bridge, and let loose a noisy, satisfied groan, despite his empty stomach. How good the cool air felt on his swollen feet! The fast-moving waters of the Dee tumbled over the rocks far below—inviting but too far away to be of much use to him.

As the threat of a storm passed and twilight fell, the insect world struck up its familiar chorus. Jamie leaned back on his elbows, content to simply breathe and listen. It was then he heard the muffled sound of wagon wheels coming down the road, coming closer. Low male voices, children singing, the music of a woman's throaty laugh, tin pans banging against a wooden brace—all floated past like leaves from a nearby ash tree. He sat up, wincing as he scraped an elbow on the rough stone. Tinklers. Gypsies, he'd wager.

Round the bend came a wagon pulled by two shelties, broad backs straining against the load of kettles and pots, crockery and horns. Fore and aft walked Gypsies of all ages, dressed in ill-matched if colorful garb, whispering and giggling among themselves until they spied Jamie and fell silent, averting their eyes.

He struggled to stand, ashamed to be caught without his boots on his feet, sore and bleeding as they were. The dozen or so Gypsies busied themselves with their cartful of goods, speaking in a musical cant. Were they Marshalls or MacMillans? Watsons or Wilsons? The roads
of Galloway were thick with such families—foreigners and nomads drawn to a land where smuggling and cattle
reiving
constituted a way of life, where most folk looked the other way when His Majesty's laws were bent in two.

None of the wary travelers would meet his gaze save one. He appeared to be the oldest, the patriarch, who stepped forward, then broadened his stance and folded his arms with a familiar swagger. “We meet again, lad.”

Jamie blinked, trusting neither his eyes nor his memory. “We've crossed paths before?”

“Aye, ye know we have.” From behind the Gypsy rose a chorus of soft chuckling. “Near a certain cairn in a certain parish, name o’ Monnigaff.”

Jamie peered at the man more closely. It
was
him. Sporting a different coat on his back but nonetheless the same traveler who'd found him last Sabbath morning waking from a most curious dream. “So it
is
you,” Jamie murmured, at a loss for what else to say. He counted four younger men behind him and a passel of women and children unpacking their cart by the roadside. The odds were very much against him. “What…ah, what shall I call you?”

The Gypsy's dark eyes brightened. “Ye shall call me for supper!” he crowed, and the others laughed more boldly, sneaking glances at the gendeman with his torn clothes and foolish questions. Sobering slighdy, the Gypsy nodded his head, though he did not offer his hand in polite greeting. “Me name's Marshall, and that's all ye need to know.”

“James Lachlan McKie of Glentrool,” Jamie said with as much bravado as he could muster, locking his hands behind him. Conversing with tinklers in the gloaming was a strange business. Cutpurses who helped themselves to others’ pockets and pouches were a common occurrence and no threat to him since he had naught worth stealing. A cutthroat was another matter, sticking a knife in a man's gullet for no reason other than he didn't care for the look of him.