Border Fire (51 page)
“Now, madam, surely—”
“You have allowed her to defy you for too long, sir,” Blanche went on without a pause. “She defies you in every way, even refusing every effort that you have made to see her properly married. Surely, you see now that she must be tamed before anyone will have her. Having flouted your orders yet again by running off to consort with low persons, this time endangering even her own life, she surely deserves a sound beating. Moreover, although perhaps you cannot smell her, apparently she rolled in dung of some sort before presenting herself to you.”
Hearing muted, hastily stifled chuckles from some of the observers and feeling heat flame in her cheeks, Laurie did not dare meet her father’s gaze.
Curtly, Sir William said, “Clear these people out of here, Samuel.”
The scribe got up at once and cleared the hall, taking himself out with the others. Other than a couple of hounds stretched on the hearth before the roaring fire, only Blanche, Sir William, and Laurie remained.
Sir William said grimly, “You do deserve beating, daughter.”
Laurie, saying nothing, heard Blanche’s sigh of satisfaction.
Sir William went on, “This is no example to be setting for your younger sisters. You must do better, lass.”
“Yes, sir.
Haughtily Blanche said, “One need not fear that
my
daughters would ever be so foolish as to follow Laura’s bad example, Sir William. God in His mercy has seen fit to give you two children whose behavior is faultless.”
Sir William smiled faintly at her. “You have done well with May and Isabel, Blanche. I’ll not debate that with you.”
“One hopes that no debate will arise betwixt husband and wife on any point, sir,” Blanche said, bowing her head with apparent submissiveness.
“I could wish, however,” he added gently, “that you had done as well with my eldest daughter.”
“’Twas yourself who ordained that she should not be properly disciplined,” she reminded him, lifting her chin. “Perhaps now you will admit that you erred in taking such a lenient position.”
Laurie wished fervently that she were still with Sym in the beech tree.
Sir William said evenly, “Laura had not yet attained her fifth birthday when I married you, and she had recently lost her mother. Under such circumstances, my dearest, you can hardly blame me for thinking that your notions of discipline seemed overly harsh.”
“She would not be as she is now,” Blanche said with a sweeping gesture toward Laurie, “if you had left her to proper maternal discipline.”
Remembering that her stepmother’s notion of discipline had included a leather slipper and a switch, both of which had left bruises that lasted long after the initial punishment, Laurie could only be grateful that her father had intervened. She had not heard him discuss the matter with Blanche before, but she vividly remembered that the vicious punishments had abruptly stopped. After that, Sir William had disciplined her himself, albeit rarely.
She had an unhappy feeling that this might prove to be one more of those rare occasions. Certainly it would be if Blanche had her way.
“You may safely leave this matter to me, madam,” Sir William said.
With a nod and a curtsy, Blanche replied, “One bows to your authority as always, dear husband. Pray do not forget, however, that her actions inevitably affect lives other than her own.”
Rising from her curtsy, Blanche cast Laurie a look that from anyone less haughty would be called a triumphant smirk and then swept past her out of the hall.
Meeting Sir William’s stern gaze at last, Laurie said, “I am sorry, Father.”
“You should be,” he retorted implacably. “I have never known a gently bred lass who could stir more trouble than you do. I shall not go so far as to say that you were responsible for the raid, of course—”
“No, sir.”
“Do not interrupt,” he said. “I own, I’m sorely tempted to take a switch to you, to teach you to behave. Did I not command you to cease your visits to Davy Elliot and that tribe of his unless and until your mother agreed to accompany you?”
Stifling the impulse to remind him that Blanche was not her mother, Laurie said only, “Yes, sir, but you said that only because she insisted that you say it. She will not set a foot anywhere near Tarras Wood.”
“I did say it, however, and I expected you to obey me,” he said, ignoring the rider. “I know that, having been acquainted with Davy Elliot and his Lucy since you were a babe in your mother’s arms, you consider them to be great friends.”
“Davy put me on my first pony,” Laurie said. “Lucy was my nursemaid.”
“Aye, but that is no reason to run free in their household, Laura. Davy is my tenant and nothing more. Your mother is quite right when she declares that your frequent visits to his cottage are unseemly.”
Seeing nothing to gain by pointing out that Davy Elliot and his family had been far kinder to her than her own family had, Laurie remained silent.
Sir William’s tone gentled as he said, “Were you hurt, child?”
“No, sir. Davy put Sym and me up a tree. It was Sym who warned us that the raiders were coming.”
“You should have ridden straight home. You’d have been safer.”
“I couldn’t know that, sir. Moreover, they needed my pony for Lucy and the babe.”
If such reasoning moved him, she saw no sign of it, but at least he did not castigate her for letting the Elliots use her pony. Instead, he gestured impatiently toward the documents on the table before him. “Do you see these?” he demanded.
“Aye, sir.
“Warden’s business, they are, and I should be attending to them, not dealing with trivial domestic matters. Those documents are grievances, English grievances against our people. They are of great importance—far greater importance than anything you can have done—because if I do not manage them well, the result could be war between England and Scotland. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “They have to do with your new position, then.” King James had recently appointed Sir William to act in Buccleuch’s place as warden of the Scottish middle march.
“Aye, they do,” he said, “and if you think that I am grateful to Jamie for dumping this lot in my lap, you were never more mistaken. Scrope has agreed to a wardens’ meeting next month at Lochmaben, but since that blasted raid on Carlisle, there has been naught but trouble. Moreover, since my deputy is apparently the man the raiders rescued from Carlisle, and since he has been too busy of late with Buccleuch’s troubles, he won’t be of much use to me against Scrope.”
Sir William’s deputy was Sir Quinton Scott of Broadhaugh, one of Buccleuch’s numerous cousins and the man whom many thought Jamie ought to have appointed warden after he arrested Buccleuch and put him in ward at Blackness Castle. Other cousins included Scott of Harden and Sir Adam Scott of Hawkburne (whose chief claim to notoriety was that he descended directly from an erstwhile King of the Reivers). They had all expressed a strong interest in taking over the wardenship, but James had appointed Sir William of Aylewood, declaring that Sir William was more likely to appease Elizabeth than any Scott was.
“But Scrope arrested Sir Quinton in violation of a truce, did he not?” Laurie asked, grateful for a change of subject.
“Scrope denies it,” Sir William said. “He insists that outlaws captured a man in a raid on Bewcastle, that Musgraves in pursuit of those outlaws crossed the line quite legally to a house where they discovered Rabbie Redcloak. Scrope says Redcloak tried to raise the countryside against Francis Musgrave and his men, whereupon in self-defense they were forced to take Redcloak into custody. They all deny that Sir Quinton ever was a prisoner at Carlisle.”
“But—”
“None of that matters now, Laura. Queen Elizabeth believes that Buccleuch led the raid against Carlisle and freed a prisoner, and although Buccleuch does not bother to deny it, James continues to ignore demands that he send him to London to answer to the English authorities. All he agreed to do was to house Buccleuch at Blackness for a time and to appoint a new warden for the middle march. As you know, Buccleuch has been acting warden here these two years past.”
“Aye,” Laurie said. Davy had told her as much, and Davy knew all about Buccleuch. According to Davy, Buccleuch was the most powerful of all the Border lords. Men on both sides of the line called him “God’s Curse” and had excellent reason, Davy said, to do so. “Buccleuch is still Keeper of Liddesdale and Hermitage, though,” Laurie said.
“Aye, he is and doubtless will remain so unless Elizabeth gets her way and James sends him to face the English authorities,” Sir William said.
“Do you think he will?”
“Nay, and Scrope may have overstepped himself today. James did not like arresting Buccleuch and did so only because he feared that Elizabeth might change her mind about letting him succeed her if he thwarted her will too defiantly. I hold no great opinion of any Scott and especially Buccleuch,” he added grimly. “’Tis a hasty, hot-headed family, but today’s invasion of Liddesdale will infuriate James when he learns of it. I’d certainly not advise him to release Buccleuch, if he were to ask for my advice on the matter, but he won’t. Therefore I’ll not be surprised to see Buccleuch back at Hermitage very soon.”
“Well, I think it is a pity that Elizabeth blames him for Carlisle when he did not even go there,” Laurie said. “Nearly everyone hereabouts knows that he was laid up with an injured leg at the time.”
“You know nothing about such matters, nor should you,” her father said testily. “In any event, I did not draw your attention to my duties as warden in order to discuss them with you but to remind you that I have far more important matters on my mind than dealing with the trouble you manage to stir up. I dislike punishing you, Laura…”
Laurie braced herself.
“…but I fear that I must do so if I am ever to have peace in this house. I should send you out to cut a switch right now, but I won’t do that.”
Relieved, she said quietly, “Thank you.”
“Faith, lass, don’t thank me yet. I’m still likely to put you over my knee, but I won’t do so now, because in your present state, I’d only soil my hand and my clothing. Go up and tidy yourself. Indeed, bathe yourself and wash your hair. You may go without your dinner to do so. Then you may keep to your bedchamber until suppertime, when you may beg my leave to sup with the family. By then I shall have decided what to do with you.”
Grateful, even if the reprieve proved no more than temporary, Laurie made a hasty curtsy and fled to her bedchamber.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Lynne Scott-Drennan
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4804-0691-9
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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