Amanda Scott (30 page)

Having drunk deeply from the goblet and gestured for a refill, he said, “But I interrupted your conversation, madam. I trust you were discussing naught that you cannot easily continue to discuss in my presence.”

“Lady Sorcha and Hugo were merely relating their recent adventures to me,” Isabella said lightly. “ ’Tis all rather astonishing, because heartless villains carried off her sister Adela from her own wedding. Sorcha and Sidony set off to find her and met Hugo in the village of Dail Righ. We had got nearly that far when you arrived,
so you must be sure to make Hugo repeat all the details of the first part of the tale to you later. Sorcha, my dear, do tell us what happened after Dail Righ.”

Sorcha had seen Hugo wince at his aunt’s proposal that he should tell Sir Edward the whole later, and she was not too comfortable with that idea herself.

But Hugo said only, “Before she continues, madam, I am afraid we should reveal one important detail without waiting until we reach the part of our journey when we came to be certain of it ourselves. I regret to tell you that the man who abducted Lady Adela was Waldron.”

Isabella gasped. “But he’s dead!”

“Evidently not,” Sir Edward said dryly, shooting a speculative look at Hugo.

In the gatehouse on the uppermost level of the round gate tower at Edgelaw, Adela stood at the window gazing down at the road that passed below her into the square forecourt. She felt numb.

She and Waldron had ridden that way only half an hour before. She recalled the echoing
click-clack
of the horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, because the sound had seemed to echo the speeding seconds of what little time she had left.

He had brought her to the little chamber, told her she would be comfortable, and left her there. She had heard the key turn in the lock. How long, she wondered, would it take him to realize he had no more use for her now that the others had seen her run off willingly with him? Perhaps he realized as much already.

That thought sat in her mind like a heavy stone that she could not dislodge. Its weight seemed to affect every muscle in her body, because she had no energy, nor sufficient will to think clearly or to act.

The light had nearly gone. She had watched the sunset before the castle came into view, but dusk lasted longer each night, and so they had been able to see well enough when they arrived. Some of his men had escaped, too. A few had reached Edgelaw before them, and four more had passed beneath her prison since.

Apparently no one had pursued them, which told her she need expect no further interference from Sorcha or Sir Hugo. And certainly Isobel would not urge anyone to come looking for her, not after the horrid things Adela had said to her. But Isobel had not understood the danger her presence had created. Sorcha had not understood that either, but then Sorcha never did recognize her own foolhardiness.

Adela wondered how the babe fared. It had come early, which often meant trouble. Remembering her mother’s death, she forcibly put the bairn out of her mind. She could not afford such distraction now, for she could not trust herself to think properly as it was. Moreover, every time she thought she was coming to understand Waldron, he did something to prove she did not know him at all.

Still, he did seem to listen to her from time to time, so perhaps she could think of some way yet to influence him.

When he had first threatened to kill her, she had instinctively sought to distract him, to win his favor. Learning that she could not escape him, that he held her very
life in his hands and would not hesitate to snuff it out, she had come to fear rescue, to fear that any such attempt would endanger her rescuers as well as herself. He had even persuaded her that he sincerely believed in his holy mission as a just cause, and indeed, perhaps he truly did believe that. In any event, she knew now that she had focused on his faith in God, on even his smallest kindness to her, to persuade herself that he was a normal man, even one who was coming to like her.

However, no normal man who liked her would have used her or her sisters, especially one big with child, to bait a trap for his enemies. But knowing all that—even recognizing that the deep gratitude she felt every time he did something normal stemmed from no more than a false hope that he was growing less brutal, less evil—did not seem to do anything but frighten her more. The earlier easing of her fear had vanished as soon as she had found herself alone with him again, and she wondered if the time she had spent with him had driven her mad. Warning him, then running with him had been impulsive and purely instinctive, but it had been pure madness, too.

She knew she ought to lie down and rest while she could. But the knowledge of what she ought to do and the doing seemed unrelated.

Dread surged through her at the sound of the key in the lock, but when he entered, he just nodded at her and said, “I know you must be as hungry as I am, but I had some things to see to. Supper is ready now if you’d like to come to the hall.”

“Yes, please,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded steady and natural.

When he stepped aside, she passed close to him and
went down the narrow stairway to the cobbled courtyard. The air had grown chillier since their arrival, but they crossed the yard quickly and went inside.

A fire blazed on the hearth in the hall, but she felt little warmth from it as he guided her to the high table, past standing, silent men on each side of three trestle tables. Indicating a place for her at the end of the nearer bench, he then took his seat on a plain back-stool at one end of the table.

When the men in the lower hall behind her sat and began talking quietly, the resulting low, steady murmur made her feel as if she were alone with him again, but she could not read his mood. He signed for a gillie to serve them, and she ate silently, waiting for him to speak.

At last, he pushed the trencher away and leaned back with his wine goblet in hand. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “It has occurred to me that you may want a bath and some clean clothes.”

Adela nearly burst into tears at the thought of being clean again, but with a ruthlessness she had not known she possessed, she suppressed the impulse. Even so, she had to wait a moment to be sure she could speak calmly before she said, “I’d like that, sir. How kind of you to think of it.”

“I’m never kind, lass. But I want you to do something for me, and it won’t do for you to be reeking when you do it.”

The flood of relief at learning he still needed her overcame her determination not to cry. Tears spilled down her cheeks, but she smiled through them, hoping he would think that her delight in at last being able to take a bath had stirred them.

Sorcha had never before known any conversation to possess so many pitfalls, but in the course of describing their journey to the countess and Sir Edward, she and Hugo seemed to fall into one after another. The countess had only to hear a glib remark to pounce on it and demand elucidation. And Sir Edward, displaying an uncanny knack for recognizing a partial truth, did the same thing.

He also showed Sorcha where his son had acquired the piercingly stern gaze that had often disconcerted her in their brief association when a question directed to Hugo inadvertently revealed that certain details Sir Edward had missed in the earlier discussion might be of greater interest than Isabella had led him to believe.

When he demanded the whole tale, Sorcha was astonished to note the same resigned guilt on Hugo’s face that she had often felt on her own. But when they had revealed everything up to the previous night, Sir Edward was not as severe as the countess had been, saying no more to his son than, “We will talk more of this.”

“Yes, sir,” Hugo replied calmly.

“But do go on now, both of you, and tell us the rest,” Isabella said.

The rest of the tale seemed to flow more easily, particularly the part about the baby’s birth in the midst of battle. And if Isabella gasped and scolded when she learned of Sorcha’s decision to leave Hugo’s camp, and if Sir Edward shook his head more than once, the worst was over. The gratitude that both of them expressed at having Isobel and her baby safe at Roslin was sincere and profound.

“But I am grievously vexed with Waldron,” Isabella added with a heavy frown. “ ’Twas wickedness, first to abduct a bride from her wedding and then to order the same done to a woman great with child. His behavior has been quite unforgivable, and I want him to understand that. Do you know where he is now?”

Hesitating, Hugo looked at his father. But when Sir Edward gazed serenely back, he said, “Aye, madam, I do. He is at Edgelaw, but—”

“I shall send for him tomorrow,” she declared.

“I doubt he will come,” Hugo said.

“He will if he wants to continue calling himself Waldron of Edgelaw,” Isabella said. “He merely serves as our constable there. He does not own the place.”

“Then doubtless when Henry learns what he has done, he will—”

“Henry has nothing to say about it,” Isabella snapped. “ ’Tis at
my
pleasure, not his, that Waldron inhabits Edgelaw.”

“I did not know that,” Hugo said. “I knew he did not own Edgelaw, any more than I own Hawthornden, but I assumed that my uncle had gifted him the tenancy there for the term of his life as Henry did for me.”

“Edgelaw is
my
property, settled on me when I married William,” she said. “I offered it to Waldron as a residence because he had little to show for his training with you and Michael, and much to overcome in the circumstance of his birth. And, too, he always behaved charmingly to me. I liked him. However, had I not thought him dead, I’d have turned him out after that dreadful business last year with Isobel and Michael. The only reason I did not order his people to leave is that those who were not already
loyal swore fealty to me. And they take excellent care of the land.”

“Did Waldron keep the rents?” Hugo asked.

“A generous portion of them,” Isabella said. “The rest he paid to me or my bailiff. Since last summer, his people have paid the entire sum each quarter day, except what they required for upkeep of the castle.”

Noting that Sidony was scarcely able to keep her eyes open, Sorcha took advantage of the silence that followed to say, “I know you must want to discuss these matters further, madam, but I trust you will forgive Sidony and me if we beg to be excused now. This has been a very long day for us.”

Isabella nodded, and they stood to take their leave.

Hugo and Sir Edward likewise stood, and Hugo said, “Don’t go to bed yet, lass. I want a word with you before you do.”

Hearing the note of determination in his voice, she was about to suggest that they could as easily talk in the morning, when he caught her gaze and held it.

Easily deducing that he meant to have his way, she said, “I will take Sidony upstairs first and see her settled, sir, but I can return here afterward.”

“No need for that,” he said. “I’ll just go up with you.”

Expecting the countess or Sir Edward to protest that intention, since their earlier reactions suggested that they would disapprove of any private chat between a maiden and a single gentleman, Sorcha glanced from one to the other. Neither spoke, however, so she and Sidony made their curtsies and went with Hugo.

Passing through an archway in the west wall and turning to their right, they entered a short corridor, at the
northwest corner of which was the spiral stairway they had come down earlier.

“This wall to our right is the west end of the ladies’ solar Henry built for his mother and Isobel last fall,” Hugo said. “You may have noticed its entrance at the back of the dais. It all used to be part of the upper hall, so that wall is new, too.”

“Isobel wrote us a letter about the solar,” Sidony said. “She sent two of them with mendicant friars, written on the smoothest paper we had ever seen.”

“Aye, it was very fine,” Sorcha agreed. “She said Michael had given it to her.” She remembered something else Isobel had written, about the solar, and although she did not think she ought to tell Hugo that her sister had mentioned Roslin’s laird’s peek, she did note the narrow doorway on the half-landing.