Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (22 page)

But he had stopped too soon, overcome again by his own passion. So once again he had left her with a sense that more ought to have happened. There had, after all, been that one time, before he had gone to Elishaw . . .

Recalling her feelings then, she would have liked to ask him to explain much more about coupling to her, but he clearly wanted to talk of other things. He said, “I meant to tell you, before everything else happened, that the wardens heard my grievance against your father. They have ordered him to return my livestock.”

“Did he agree?”

“He had no choice. Douglas guaranteed his compliance and ordered him to provide you a proper dowry. The Earl of Carrick is to visit Hermitage in a few weeks, and your father is to see to the matter before then.”

“If Douglas has guaranteed it, my father will comply,” she said. “He will not like it, but he won’t defy Douglas or the wardens’ court.”

“We’ll see, but we should sleep now,” he said. “There is much for us both to do before I must join Douglas and the others at Southdean.”

Still curious, and aware from experience that he would drop off quickly, she said, “You know much more about coupling and such than I do. Do you know how a woman can tell if she is with child?”

He went still for a long moment before he said, “Do you think you are?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But coupling is the manner by which women do become pregnant, so surely I could be. How would I know?”

“Did your mother not tell you?”

“Our marriage happened so quickly,” she said. “I scarcely spoke with her after you agreed to it, and she said naught about coupling and such.”

He was silent for several moments before he said, “A woman’s courses stop once she is with child. That is how she knows.”

“Oh.”

“Well?” he said.

“My flow should start within the next week or so.”

“I would like sons,” he said sleepily. “And a few daughters, too.” Soon after that, he began to breathe deeply and evenly, and she knew he was asleep.

She lay for some time, wondering if she should have asked him to tell her what she burned to know about the feelings she had when they coupled. They kept increasing, promising ever more, then stopped when he stopped, leaving her with a sense of some wondrous thing that lay just beyond her ken.

He certainly reached some sort of release, and he reached it each time.

Probing her reluctance to ask him about it, particularly when he seemed so willing to answer other questions, she realized that she feared he might think she implied criticism of him. Walter did not respond well to criticism.

An imp in her head suggested that she did not much like criticism either. Perhaps her real fear was that he would say it was her own fault and that some lack in her kept her from achieving whatever there was to achieve.

Aside from those lingering questions, she thought she had handled things well. She was learning at last to manage her husband.

The following day, as soon as Walter had gone out with his men, Meg found Amalie in her bedchamber and told her she had learned how a woman could tell if she was with child.

“Mercy,” her sister said when Meg explained, “I don’t know when my last flow was exactly. I don’t pay the dates much heed, but it has been some time. When did Simon last come home?”

“Shortly after Beltane, I believe,” Meg said.

“Aye, that’s right. ’Twas the second week of May because I remember thinking it was the sort of thing that
would
happen when Simon was there. It was just as unwelcome as he was.”

“You should not talk so,” Meg said. “Simon has an important position with the Earl of Fife and may well become very successful. Tom may be merrier and more fun to have at home, but Simon deserves more respect than you show him.”

With a sour look, Amalie said, “You have a higher opinion of our brothers than I do, but do you actually
like
Simon? He often makes me want to shake him.”

“One need not like him, my dear, but he
is
family and deserves our loyalty. So do not let such words leave your tongue whilst you are with anyone but me.”

Amalie shrugged and changed the subject.

As they talked, Meg did some mental calculating and realized that her sister had indeed missed her time. But missing once did not make a certainty. Meg had done as much herself, more than once, without ever being with child.

The rest of the week passed swiftly after that until Saturday morning.

Amalie had not come down yet, so Walter and Meg were breaking their fast alone at the high table when he said, “I mean to ride to the Hall today to talk with my father and bid my mother farewell. She departs on Monday for Ferniehurst.”

“I know,” Meg agreed. “Prithee, tell her I wish her a safe journey.”

“I mean to tell her that you and Amalie will be happy to go with her.”

“But I’ve already sent a message with our regrets,” Meg said.

“That is of no matter,” he said. “She will be glad to have your company.”

Noting with a sinking feeling that the hall still teemed with his men, she said, “I know that you worry about our safety, sir, but I’ve explained how I feel. Surely, we will be quite safe here at Raven’s Law.”

“I think it better that you go.”

Well aware of what Amalie’s reaction would be, and aware, too, that her own reaction was straining to match it, Meg fought to rein in her temper. Drawing a deep breath, she said quietly, “I do not want to go. I thought I had made that plain.”

He nodded to a hovering gillie to refill his mug with ale before he said, “I know you don’t want to. You will go because I command it. I cannot go away and leave you here alone to invite sundry villains to sup with you again, or worse.”

Anger surged at his unfairness. But well aware of their audience and thanking the Fates that Amalie was not there, Meg said in carefully measured tones, “I pray you, sir, may we not discuss this more privately?”

“There is nowt to discuss,” he said, reaching for his mug. “You’ll do as I bid.”

“No.”

The mug stopped halfway to his lips. He turned his head to look at her. “What did you say?”

“I said no,” Meg said, eyeing him warily.

“By God!” he exclaimed, banging the mug down on the table as he rose to his feet and shoved back his stool. “You will not defy me again.”

Unwilling to sit when he loomed angrily over her, Meg stood to face him and even managed, hard as it was, not to step back.

“I am neither a child nor a fool,” she said, realizing that her careful calm was shattering, and striving to hold on to it without backing down. “I have a brain, sir. I did no more than make a decision—and that a full week ago, I’d remind you—to help someone in need. But you cannot seem to set that aside. Instead, you say that I should not have done what I did, although it ended well and gained information you needed, information you could have got by no other means. I think you shou—”

“Enough!” he roared. “I won’t have my wife threaping and scolding and saying she will or she won’t. Not to me! You will
not
wear the breeks in this family, madam, for all that your mother may wear them at Elishaw!”

With a cry of pure fury that he would say such a thing before such an audience, Meg scooped up his mug and cast its contents into his face. “How dare you speak so to me!” she cried.

“How dare I? I’ll show you what I dare.” His face still dripping ale, he reached for her, his intent clear.

Nimbly, she stepped back, evading his grasp as she said in a voice that rang through the hall, “Don’t touch me! You have men here who have sworn an oath to serve me, and I will demand that they honor that oath, even to protect me from you!”

Wiping a sleeve across his face, Wat cursed himself, knowing he had let his temper carry him too far. He ached to put her across his knee and give her a good skelping to teach her to mind him, but he knew her well enough now to be sure she would do as she’d threatened. He did not want to humiliate her by forcing such a test of his men’s loyalty. Knowing them nearly as well as he knew himself, he had no doubt they would obey him despite what they had vowed to Murray under duress.

Accordingly, he held up a hand and said quietly, “Pax, Meg. We’ll continue this discussion later, as you have suggested, when we can do so more privately.”

To the men, he said, “We leave for the Hall in ten minutes. Make haste.”

They got up quickly, their relief visible as they headed for the doorway.

Meg—wisely, he thought—said nothing.

Waiting long enough to be sure everyone else was beyond earshot, Wat said evenly, “I would suggest, lass, that before I return, you ponder carefully all that we said here and decide how you will make your apology.”

Watching as Walter turned away and strode to the stairs, Meg fought the temptation to hurl the heavy pewter mug after him.

Telling herself fiercely that to do so would be the act of a dafty seeking an early death, she set it back down on the table with unusual care instead.

Apology, indeed.

She was not sure whether she had just enjoyed a victory of sorts or suffered total defeat. He had intended dire punishment. She had seen that much. But he had set his decision aside when she’d threatened to claim protection from his men.

They
had
promised her father they would serve her.

Memory surfaced of the look that had leaped to Tammy’s face as she’d made her sweeping gesture toward the men in the hall. The huge man had not looked eager to rush to her defense. Instead, he had looked stunned, even appalled.

“Beg pardon, mistress,” a familiar young voice said just behind her.

Wincing with self-reproval, she turned. “What is it, Sym?”

“I didna ken what ye’d ha’ me do just then, had the master no taken fright and left,” he said. “Will ye tell me, so I’ll ken better next time?”

“You did as you should have by coming now to ask me,” she said, laying a hand on his wiry red curls. Smiling softly, she added, “I think you know, too, that the master did not take fright. He just changed his mind about what to do.”

“Aye, I ken that fine,” he said, sighing. “I hoped ye thought he did, though, so ye’d no fret about when he comes back. Sithee, he may still be wroth wi’ ye.”

“Would you really have stood up for me, Sym?”

“I would, aye, and I will, for he told me himself that I must. I dinna think he’d hang me for going against him in such a cause. D’ye think he would?”

“No,” she said, realizing that Wat would be most unlikely to punish the boy in any way for coming to her defense. “He would never do that.”

Sym sighed again, this time with relief. And when she suggested that he go out and be sure that the men riding to Scott’s Hall had got off without incident, he ran away without looking back.

Although the exchange temporarily eased her fury with her husband, her temper, once ignited, was slow to cool. As she went upstairs to their bedchamber, her words and his, and all the things she might better have said to him to persuade him, echoed through her mind.

That he expected to rule their household without allowing her to voice an opinion unless it marched with his was unacceptable. Likewise was it unacceptable that he seemed to think that he could see to everything and everyone, in or out of the household, without so much as a discussion of what she might think or prefer. Such behavior was entirely English, quite unsuitable for a Scottish Borderer, and—

Her thoughts came to a halt. What did she know of Scottish Borderers? Was her own father not one of them? Did she want to be married to a man like Sir Iagan?

She did not.

As for the English, they expected their women to be decorative and obedient. Even her mother had behaved so whenever they had visited their English kinsmen.

Lady Murray would not have dared offer advice to her Percy cousins. The freedom she felt to speak her mind to her husband, however, was exactly what Meg had hoped to enjoy with hers.

As she entered their bedchamber, she asked herself if she might have misread his earlier benevolence and should heed Sym’s caveat that his anger might be smoldering. Not that it mattered, because she had no intention of being treated like a ninny for the rest of her life. Not if she could do aught to prevent it. She would have to stand up to Walter somehow. But how?

“Meggie, did you not hear me call you, or rap?” Amalie asked as she pushed open the door. “Have you already broken your fast?”

“Aye,” Meg said, making up her mind and moving briskly to one of the kists that contained her clothing.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to turn that wee room across the landing into my own bedchamber,” Meg said, looking up at her.

Amalie stared back in astonishment. “Faith, did Walter tell you to?”

“No, I’m just angry. He has commanded us to accompany his lady mother to Ferniehurst despite my already having sent her our regrets.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes, but I want him to understand that I am not one who can simply submit to such orders as if I had no thoughts of my own to express.”

“May God have mercy on us,” Amalie murmured.

“There will be time enough later for prayer,” Meg said. “Help me with this.”

Chapter 15

“Yet spite o’ your wiles and your spies they have shunned you, A Murray is kittler to catch than the diel!”

B
y the time Wat returned that afternoon, his temper had cooled considerably. He still smarted, however, when he recalled how easily he had lost control and exactly what he had said to her.

Remembering his command that she think of a suitable way to apologize, he realized that he owed her an apology, too. That it might undermine the authority he was attempting to establish was a nuisance. But that was his own fault, and he thought that, with care, he could make himself clear on both points.

However, he also remembered the way in which she had apologized the last time they had quarreled. That memory stirred his loins, and he began to hope her next apology might take a similar form.

Dismounting and turning his horse over to a gillie to tend, he hurried upstairs to the hall, where he stopped one of the lads setting up trestles for supper and asked him where he might find the mistress.

“She’ll be in her bedchamber, sir.”

“In
our
bedchamber, you should say,” Wat corrected gently.

“Och, nay, for she’s set up one for herself across from that ’un.”

Anger surged back. Struggling with it, determined not to make the mistake of presenting his emotions again to the entire hall, he growled a polite thank-you to the lad and went stiffly back to the stairway. He had not gone far before light, running footsteps sounded behind him.

“Will ye still be a-leaving for Hermitage in the morning, Master Wat?”

Stopping, Wat whirled with a demand at the tip of his tongue to know how the lad had dared let his mistress shift bedchambers. But looking at Sym’s widening eyes and realizing he was about to unleash his anger at the wrong person, he snapped instead, “Where are you supposed to be?”

Looking bewildered, Sym said, “I’ve been watching over her ladyship, like ye said I should, Master Wat. But when I told her the lads at the gate had said ye were a-coming up yon hill, she told me to go help Jed Crosier in the kitchen.”

“Did she ask you to give her warning when I returned?”

“Aye, she did. So ye see—”

“I see a lad who is not in the kitchen as he is supposed to be,” Wat said sternly.

“Aye, well, I were just wondering if ye’d still be going to the Douglas, ’cause if ye’ll no be leaving yet, she’ll ha’ nae need to sleep in yon puny room she’s took. I warrant ’tis nobbut fretting over how much she’ll miss ye—”

“Go,” Wat said grimly, pointing downstairs toward the kitchen.

Sym fled, and Wat went on up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

She had left his bedchamber door wide open. The one across the landing from it was shut. If she had dared to bar it against him . . .

Just the thought of such an outrage made him so angry that he paused, telling himself not to be a fool. Meg would not bar the door.

Taking a deep breath, he lifted the latch and pushed.

She had.

Learning from Sym of her husband’s return, Meg had banished Amalie to her own chamber to dress for supper, and had sent Sym to the kitchen. Then she put the wooden bar across the door and waited, alone, sitting on the edge of the narrow cot, scarcely daring to breathe lest she miss hearing his step on the stairs.

She knew he would come. He would learn what she had done before he had been five minutes in the hall, because she had made no secret of it. She had even told a passing gillie that he should let others know where they could find her if need be. And she could depend on Sym to give him the news if no one else did.

When she heard footsteps at last, hasty ones of booted feet, she looked again at the barred door. The same sense that had warned her not to throw the mug at him stirred hairs on the back of her neck now. She was on her feet, moving to raise the bar, when she saw the latch lift, heard a curse, and quickly stepped back.

With a heavy thump, the bar snapped, the door crashed open and banged back against the wall, and Walter crossed the threshold toward her, glowering.

She said hastily, “I was going to—”

She got no further before he scooped her into his arms without a word. Then he turned on his heel and marched across the landing to his own bedchamber, where he kicked that door shut behind him with another crash.

Striding to the bed, he dumped her onto its hard mattress. “There will be no barred doors between us,” he snapped as she scrambled back away from him toward the wall. Her caul had come off, but she left it where it lay.

“I would have unbarred it if you’d asked,” she said.

“I should not have to ask,” he said as he turned away and began to unfasten his jack, only to turn back with a narrow-eyed look. “Why did you bar it at all?”

She hesitated, pushing a strand of hair off her cheek. She had barred the door to keep him out, of course, but she would do herself no good to admit that now.

“Well?”

Swallowing, she said, “I’d hoped I could talk to you through the door. That way, I’d not have to see your anger whenever I disagreed with you or suggested something you did not want to hear. I . . . I’d hoped you would listen, and not just dismiss everything I said as if my words meant naught to you.”

“I don’t dismiss everything you say.”

“You do, aye,
and
you make up your mind to things that affect me without discussing them with me.”

“I’ve told you, I won’t allow you to rule me.”

“I don’t expect to,” she said, trying to sound calm, although the words had sounded more as if she had wailed them at him. “I don’t want that.”

The echo of what he had said about her mother roared through her mind.

She was
not
her mother, but she could not say that to him without shouting it. So she held her tongue and watched him warily instead.

He was eyeing her, too, with a speculative, measuring look. At last, he said, “I should not have said what I did, lass, not the part about your mother.”

“But that
is
what you think, is it not?”

“That she rules your father and Elishaw, or that you want to be like her?”

“You believe both of those things,” she said flatly, judging it safe now to move back to the edge of the bed and sit on it properly instead of cowering near the wall. “Nay, you
fear
both of those things.”

He turned his attention to undoing his doublet and shirt as he said, “I don’t know what I believe, but I don’t fear you. You made me angry by saying things you should not have said to me—not in front of my men at all events,” he amended.

“But—”

“I know,” he said, raising a hand. “I said things to you in front of them, too, things I should not have said at all. Especially that about your mother. That was ill done of me, but I cannot tell you I don’t believe what I said. Can you deny that you
have
tried to manage me from time to time?”

She bit her lip. She could not deny it, because she had.

His gaze held hers. “Even so, I should not have said what I did. All I can do is apologize for bellowing it out like that and . . . and beg your pardon.”

Although she was surprised that he would apologize, let alone ask for her forgiveness, she could not grant it. Not yet.

Instead, solemnly, she said, “You, of all people, should be grateful that my mother
does
wield influence with my father, sir. Had she none, you would be dead, because he would have hanged you as a reiver. My mother saved your life.”

Wat stared blindly at her as the sense of righteousness that had supported him for the past ten minutes dissipated like smoke into thin air.

He said, “How can that be?”

She hesitated.

“It wasn’t true, was it?”

“It was, aye, but I don’t know how much I ought to tell you about it.”

“You’d best tell me all of it now. You cannot fling that sort of thing at a man and then
not
explain it. I recall that she did speak to him just before he said he’d hang Sym, but that did Sym no good. She may have spoken for the others. But otherwise, I saw no sign of her taking more than scant interest in us.”

“Sakes, sir, do you suppose he would have ordered you dragged into the great hall for the sole purpose of displaying you to his womenfolk?”

“Recall that I was not at my best then, so I did not question his reason for the summons. I’d wakened only a short time before to find myself bound hand and foot, and mind-numbing pain in one’s limbs rather dampens one’s powers of reflection.”

A flicker of sympathy crossed her face, but she said only, “At that same time, sir, my mother had just learned of your capture and had suggested—”

She broke off with a grimace, telling him as plainly as words that she had talked herself to a point past which she did not want to proceed.

“Go on,” he said, not sure he wanted to hear it but knowing he must.

“I was trying to think how to put it so it would not sound . . .”

When she paused, clearly seeking the right word even for that, he said, “I’d suggest the plain truth, Meg. I won’t bite you for telling me. I know whose fault the whole business was, and I’ll not try to lay blame elsewhere again.”

“Very well. When she learned that you were Buccleuch’s heir, she asked if you had a wife. When my father said he did not know of one, she said it would be unwise to destroy such a gift of . . . of Providence.”

“Providence?”

The smile he had learned to watch for dawned slowly then. “Mother reminded him that he had a duty to find husbands for his three daughters. She made it clear that she saw your capture as God’s way of providing for one of us.”

“And she suggested me for you?”

A flicker of pain erased the lingering smile. “My father declared that I should be the one,” she said. Meeting his questioning gaze, she added briskly, “But when you refused, she continued to insist that he not hang you. She told him to let you see the rope. I . . . I suspect it was she who suggested hanging Sym first.”

“For that alone—”

“Had you been the sort of man who could let that happen, she would have intervened again and let my father hang you,” she said. “I’m certain of that. She might have let him hang the others, but she would not have let him hang Sym.”

He nearly told her not to be stupid. But something in her expression told him that would be more brutal than what he had said about Lady Murray earlier.

She said, “With such an opinion as you had of her, I am surprised you did not suspect all along that she was the force behind our marriage.”

“Nay, it never occurred to me, because although I’ve heard that she rules the roast, I did not think she was doing so then. I saw what I expected to see, and most women I know are obedient and submissive to their husbands.”

She looked up from under her lashes at that. “Like Jenny, I suppose.”

He chuckled and spread his hands. “I said ‘most women.’”

“So you did.” She nibbled her lower lip, then looked up at him again and said, “My mother generally
appears
submissive herself. In fact, she does not try to drive my father but only to . . . to make suggestions to him.”

This time her struggle to find just the right words stirred his amusement, but he tried not to let her see it. Instead, he said, “I am indebted to her for my life, Meg. But you and I must come to an understanding of our own, the two of us. I expect we’ll be together for a long time, and I don’t want to spend it fratching with you.”

“I don’t want to fratch with you, either.”

“Nor do I want to wonder every time I leave here if I will come home to find that you have gone counter to my wishes again, or that something even worse has happened because you’ve done something else you should not have done.”

She cocked her head. “What would you have had me do differently?”

“We have discussed that enough already, I think,” he said.

“I cannot be a prisoner here, sir. I do have a mind and a brain of my own. If I did something I ought not to have done by riding to visit your mother, I did not know it. Moreover, my actions provided you with two dozen more men to take with you to fight the English. I also helped you resolve a serious problem in the Forest. Can you not agree, in fairness, that you ought to acknowledge at least that much?”

“I can, and I will. But this matter of going to Ferniehurst is different. The English may well overrun this area if we fail to stop them. Have you no imagination, lass, that you cannot understand what that would mean?”

“I have more than imagination,” she said. “I have my family’s history. Seeing how my parents have dealt with both the English and the Scots over the years is what gave me the ability to persuade Nebby Duffin that we meant him and his men no harm. What I expect, sir, is that Douglas and the rest of you will stop the English armies before they get here. If you cannot, then Raven’s Law itself is at risk, and I’d remind you that Elishaw and even Hermitage have fallen before and may fall again.”

“Aye, but that does not mean—”

“You asked me once what I think about England’s desire to rule Scotland. I was not certain then. But I know now that Scottish freedom means more to me than anything but our family. If we do have to submit, recall that I am half English, with powerful English kinsmen. But first, sir,” she added, looking straight into his eyes, “I am your wife, and thus I am mistress of this tower. If you cannot trust me to remember that and to do all I can to protect our people here, you should not leave.”

Her hair, freed of its caul, was mussed and falling in wisps around her face. But her voice was as it nearly always was, calm and as soothing as music to the ear.

He held out a hand to pull her to her feet. “I wish I did not have to go,” he said. Shifting both hands to her shoulders, he added, “I’m not sure you do know what you may face, Meg, but I don’t doubt your sincerity. Know this, though. Whatever comes, we’ll seek no English favor unless we can do so without selling them our souls.”

“I agree, sir. Does that mean you will not insist that Amalie and I go to Ferniehurst with your mother?”

“I told her today that your plans remained uncertain. I’ll tell her tomorrow that you cannot bear to leave Raven’s Law until all is in order here.” He smiled. “We were both at fault this morning. We must learn to deal better together.”