Susan Johnson (3 page)

“Is Jamie gone south again?” he casually remarked, softly closing the door behind him. His neighbor’s wife was one of several local women who entertained him. And while he never sought them out, he didn’t refuse them either. But tonight, with Robbie sleeping in a dungeon pit under Harbottle Castle, he found he didn’t have the stomach for pleasure.

“He’s gone for a fortnight, darling,” replied Janet Lindsay, a Countess by birth and marriage and very used to doing as she pleased.

“You heard they took Robbie today. From our side, too … and with no provocation.” He hadn’t moved from the door.

She nodded, her hair black as midnight, shining in the candlelight. “It’s the war fever. I thought you might be in need of … consolation.”

He refused her gently, politely, standing very still … far away from the bed.

But she hadn’t ridden four miles through the storm to be turned away. Raised in a wealthy, privileged household, unfamiliar with refusals, she ignored Johnnie’s words as though they’d been directed at someone else. Pushing the green coverlet aside, she rose from the bed in all the fulsome bloom of her womanly beauty and slowly walked nude, rose-petal pink and luscious, across the large, firelit bedchamber to encourage her suit at close range.

Johnnie Carre found his appetites disinclined to fine nuances of principle at close range, and he drew in a steadying breath.

“Robbie would never turn me away,” Janet purred, reaching up to brush a kiss over the dark stubble shadowing Johnnie’s jaw, pressing her opulent breasts into the leather jack he still wore, leaning her weight into him so he was softly forced back against the door.

She was right, he knew, which didn’t help his battle with principle. At eighteen Robbie was unbridled, freely dispensing his handsome favors on the female populace north and south of the border.

“I’m tired,” the Laird of Ravensby said in honesty, two days of little sleep and five hours in the saddle exhausting even his vitality. Perhaps sincere fatigue might be excuse enough, since Robbie’s plight had failed to impede her interest.

“You needn’t move at all, darling,” the Countess murmured, tracing a finger lightly over the roughness of his unshaven face. “Simply lie there, and I’ll ride
you
.”

He tried not to respond, but his body reacted automatically to her husky suggestion; she was warm and inviting, her words instant trigger to his senses, her small hand drifting down the smooth leather of his jack, over the ornate silver buckle of his belt, then lower to rest provocatively on the sleek leather over his growing erection.

“See …” she murmured, rising on tiptoes to nibble at his bottom lip, “you’re not
too
tired.…”

The scent of her drifted into his nostrils, the heady fragrance of exotic jasmine familiar, insinuating, reminiscent of other nights with his neighbor’s wife.

“I adore you in your raiding garb.” Her whisper warmed his face as she clung to his tall, leather-clad body, the metal plate on his jack leaving marks on her pliant flesh. “Johnnie Carre as war chieftain …”

He shook his head faintly in denial of her melodramatic image. A practical man at heart, he did what he had to do—what his father and grandfather and forebears before him had done to maintain their possessions.

“Did you kill any English tonight?” Janet Lindsay breathed, her wet pink tongue licking a leisurely path up his tanned corded neck, his damp clothing cool to her heated body. Johnnie Carre’s exploits in border-raiding
were an aphrodisiac … like his large, muscled body and haunting dark beauty. Like his stamina and teasing playfulness in bed.

“Jesus, Janet.” And he started pulling away.

“You can’t say no.” Her arms tightened on his broad shoulders. “I won’t let you.” Her tongue reached his chin. “And Robbie won’t mind … so kiss me, and I promise you won’t regret it.…”

Pulling his head down, she kissed him instead. But he found he didn’t mind. Or not enough to be discourteous. And in the end he didn’t regret it, either, for she was a woman of remarkable virtuosity.

But sometime later when his neighbor’s wife fell asleep, he left her, his thoughts consumed with his brother’s plight. In the throes of passion one could forget for those brief seconds when nothing mattered but release. And after, out of politesse, he stayed with Janet because where he slept wouldn’t change Robbie’s status or bring him out tonight.

Throwing on a quilted robe he’d bought in Macao, a Japanese silk that was warmer than fur, he left his bedchamber and moved down the dimly lit corridor to his map room, where he spent the next hours assessing the best routes between Ravensby and Harbottle. Looking for those least populated on the English side—with the most gentle ascent into the hills and the widest pass over the Cheviots.

Taking into account every possibility of pursuit on the homeward journey.

The next morning, under a flag of truce, the letter of courtesy and restraint was delivered to Lord Godfrey.

Kinmont politely pointed out that by seizing Robbie Carre, Lord Godfrey had acted unlawfully, and asked that the young brother of the Earl of Graden be immediately returned in redress of the wrong.

Lord Godfrey by his answer excused himself and referred the matter to the Queen’s Deputy Chancellor, Lord Scroope, who was at the time unavailable at his house in the country.

Lord Scroope was duly written to. Kinmont’s second letter suggested the prisoner Robbie Carre be set at liberty without condition or bond, seeing as he had been unlawfully taken.

Lord Scroope answered he could do nothing without the consent of Queen Anne and her council.

Understanding these replies were no more than delaying tactics, the Laird of Ravensby had already set his plans
en train
.

On the day the first letter was delivered to Lord
Godfrey, seven Ravensby men entered Harbottle as scouts. A day later a cryptic message made its way to Robbie via an inn servant and prison guard—both fifty pounds richer for their mission.

A trade in progress
…

was all it said, but those few words brought a smile to the face of the Laird’s young brother and made his
durance vile
—his imprisonment—more bearable.

Four days passed, with messengers riding out for the Laird of Ravensby as far south as Durham, where Lord Scroope was enjoying his daffodils at his country home, Bishopgate.

Four days passed during which Ravensby scouts gathered the necessary information on Elizabeth Graham’s daily schedule.

Four days passed in a flurry of preparation for the abduction of Robbie Carre’s reciprocal exchange.

And on an unseasonably warm Friday in March, Johnnie Carre entered Harbottle in the guise of an itinerant preacher, flanked by two clerical minions, all three men bristling with weapons beneath the concealing volume of their long black robes.

They rode slowly through the village toward the castle, stopping at Peartree’s Inn to stable their mounts and bespeak a sleeping room. By noon they’d eaten dinner in their private parlor, drunk two bottles of Mr. Peartree’s best hock, and set out with the proprietor’s excellent directions to call on Dame Rosbery, who dispensed culture and learning to the genteel young ladies of the community.

Dame Rosbery, at one time governess to Lady Graham, had been subsidized sufficiently by her former charge to allow her to establish her own school in Harbottle. And the Dowager Lady Graham, the Ravensby scouts discovered, paid a call on Miss Rosbery at two o’clock each afternoon.

“I’m
going
, Father, with or without a guard,” Elizabeth Graham insisted, exasperation in her voice, “and if you don’t muster an escort posthaste, I’ll leave without one. Although why a guard is required in a burgh of this size with two companies of troops garrisoned in the castle is beyond me. Have I ever been harmed or even
accosted
? Good
God
, Father, everyone knows who I am—everyone knows you’re Warden here,” she finished in a breathless rush, her temper up at her father’s unwanted restraints. After eight years of marriage to a man who, despite his myriad faults, at least had allowed her a modicum of freedom, she wasn’t about to re-establish herself as a submissive daughter.

“Why do you have to go to Rosbery’s every day?” her father hotly inquired, his own temper barely leashed, finding his daughter since her return to Harbottle impossibly arrogant.

“Why not, pray tell? Is there something profoundly important keeping me in this dank, dull, boring castle? Another suitor, perhaps, you plan on parading before me at dinner?”

With every intention of ultimately controlling her fortune if not her person, Lord Godfrey snapped, “You should be married again.”

“We disagree,” his daughter acerbically replied. “And unless the men you gather to your table have more to recommend them than land grants in Northumbria adjacent to yours, I won’t change my mind.”

“Perhaps I could make you change your mind,” her father suggested unkindly, familiar with absolute power, but unfamiliar with his newly returned daughter, who was no longer a docile sixteen-year-old.

“Not on God’s green earth, Father,” Elizabeth Godfrey Graham said, each word emphatically pronounced, as if she were practicing an exercise in diction. “Is that plain enough?” Her brows rose over green eyes hot with temper. “My funds are liquid, Father, which means your control over them doesn’t exist. The Graham curate keeps my money, and he’s guarded by a band of Redesdale men. That should stop even you—which I
think was Hotchane’s intent.” She half turned away from his desk, where she’d been confronting her father, then turned back to add in a voice less combative, “I’m here to visit Rosie and help at her school for a time.” She disliked this continuing argument; she disliked having to constantly fight for authority over her life. “Kindly resist your urge to interfere.”

And with a scowl drawing his beetled brows together over his chill grey eyes, Lord Godfrey, an Earl, an English Warden, and a man of consequence and power watched as his daughter turned her back on him and left his office.

“Wharton!” His shout could be heard out in the courtyard. “Get me a guard!”

So a short time later, ignoring her guard, Elizabeth Graham left the castle gate and, carefully descending the steep cobbled incline down to the village, reached the bustling highway serving as Harbottle’s main thoroughfare.

Her progress was interrupted often by greetings from shopkeepers and villagers; she’d grown up in Harbottle and knew everyone. Stopping for a moment before the church, she admired the stained-glass window depicting Saint George and the Dragon, a favorite of hers since childhood. The small medieval structure perched on the north side of the road, where the hillside continued to fall away to the valley below, had the unpretentious air of a private chapel. It was Romanesque in style, unornamented save for the small cross over the doorway and the colored windows, and she’d often wondered if the original baron who’d raised both the castle on the hill and this diminutive church had subscribed to the premise that God helped those who helped themselves. The brilliant windows depicted scenes of a distinctly military nature; the golden-haired Saint George, the most romantic figure in the scenes of battle, had been her first hero.

After eight years of marriage to Hotchane, she no longer believed in heroes, although she still enjoyed the
vivid beauty of the composition. And she smiled at the maiden being rescued. “Good luck,” she murmured under her breath. “He probably sleeps with his boots on.”

Continuing her journey toward Rosie’s, she shook away the melancholy memory of her marriage. Despite her father’s continuing pressure to remarry, she was free now, in charge of her own wealth; the past could be left behind. Taking delight in the spring air fresh with the scent of new green grass, her own life facing a new spring, a new beginning, she thrust aside her niggling unease.

As always, she looked forward with pleasure to visiting with Rosie and her charges. Each afternoon she helped the younger students with their reading, played the harpsichord while the girls sang, and afterward enjoyed a cozy chat with her beloved governess over tea.

Her guards were left at the front door, and Rosie, buxom, huggable, and welcoming, greeted her with a kiss.

“Would you like tea first today?” her old governess inquired, immediately recognizing her former student’s suppressed disquiet.

“How can you tell, Rosie?” Elizabeth marveled, her mood considerably lightened since her confrontation with her father.

“He won’t give up, you know.” Agnes Rosbery had watched with horror when Elizabeth had been married at sixteen to the seventy-year-old Hotchane Graham.

“He’ll have to.”

“He could find an amiable judge to rule in his favor,” Dame Rosbery quietly said, leading Elizabeth down the narrow hallway to the back parlor.

“But my money’s hidden.”

“And well guarded, I hope,” Rosbery cautioned, opening the door into the small room off the garden.

“Moderately,” Elizabeth replied, not certain even a troop of lawless Redesdale men would be proof against two companies of dragoons.