The Scot's Oath

by Heather Grothaus

  Lucan was still lying on the same cot when they entered the darkened antechamber of Father Kettering’s domain. He had one forearm across his eyes, and his left foot was propped up, wrapped in thick bandages. He raised his arm slightly to see who had entered and then took it away altogether, rising to one elbow while Iris barred the door behind her.

  “What is it?” he asked, at once alert. His expectant gaze went to Padraig’s and then followed Iris as she went to the doorway leading to the chapel proper and secured the barrier.

  “We’re going to tell him,” Iris said, stopping at her brother’s bedside and turning to face the Scotsman, clasping her hands together tightly to stop her nervous fidgeting. “Now.”

  She saw Lucan collapse back to the cot in her periphery. He sighed. “We don’t yet know—”

  “We do,” Iris interrupted. “At least, I do. Lucan, Thomas Annesley lied to you.”

  “What?” Lucan said.

  Padraig spoke in the same moment. “Lied to him about what?”

  Iris looked at each man in turn and then settled on Padraig. “Your father told Lucan that the reason it was unthinkable that he could kill Cordelia Hargrave was that she carried his child. They were to be married the next day, and the unborn babe would have been Thomas Annesley’s heir—the security of his and Cordelia’s future at Darlyrede. No one save he and Cordelia knew for certain about the child, although there were rumors.”

  “What?” Padraig breathed incredulously.

  “Beryl,” Lucan warned pointedly. “You assume too much on rumor.”

  “I assume nothing,” Iris returned crisply. “It was you who relayed the information to me, Lucan. I’m certain you recall.”

  Padraig regarded her warily now, and Iris was caught between saying what she must as quickly as possible to get it over with and ordering her words so that the sting of them was lessened.

  She decided on efficiency.

  “The thief in the wood bragged to me today that he killed Euphemia Hargrave the night she disappeared, as mercy for the suffering she had endured. When we all returned to Darlyrede this afternoon, Father Kettering confirmed that, prior to her disappearance, young Lady Euphemia had become obsessed with the idea of Thomas Annesley and Cordelia Hargrave, nearly to the point of madness. She was consumed by the rumors of Cordelia’s secret pregnancy and vile murder. She would not accept Father Kettering’s refutation of the rumors—that Cordelia Hargrave had definitely not been with child.”

  Padraig’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Kettering said it was he who buried Cordelia,” he acknowledged. “But perhaps she wasna so far gone that he—”

  “No,” Lucan interrupted. “No, Padraig. Thomas said she was nearing the end of her time—a month, mayhap, at most. It would have been impossible that Kettering could have overlooked a pregnancy that advanced.”

  “But my father has nae reason to lie about that,” Padraig said with a confused frown. “If anything, it would have brought more charges against him.”

  Iris nodded. “You’re right—and so neither does it make sense that, if Cordelia had indeed been pregnant, Lord and Lady Hargrave would not have shouted it from Darlyrede’s walls. They would have lost not only their daughter but their grandchild. And the Hargraves have done naught but disregard the rumors since the very beginning.”

  “Wait,” Padraig said, “I would expect Sir Lucan to have divulged this information to me, having been charged by the Crown to bring my father to so-called justice, but why would you care to know anything about it, Beryl? You’ve told me you’re nae sleeping with him, so it’s nae mere lovers’ confidences.”

  “My God,” Lucan muttered distastefully.

  Iris took a quick, deep breath. “I came to Darlyrede House to work for Lady Hargrave some eight months ago. This you already know.”

  “Aye,” Padraig said warily. “From an abbey in France. You’d been sent there to have a child out of wedlock.”

  “That is not completely true,” she acknowledged. “I was living at the abbey, yes, but I had been there for many years as a guest, on a stipend from my parents’ estate. Beryl was indeed an English maid of the Pagets’, who bore her child at the abbey. But she died. And I assumed her identity in order to gain passage back to England and to help find out the truth about the fire that killed my parents and destroyed my home.”

  “You should have stayed there, as I told you,” Lucan said grimly.

  “Because you were doing so well on your own, chasing your tail back and forth across Scotland,” Iris snapped. “I’ve compiled information that will likely help incriminate Lord Hargrave.”

  Padraig could have been carved from stone, he was so still. His eyes shifted to Lucan, then back to Iris. “You’re the sister. The sister Lord Hood mentioned.”

  Iris nodded once. “My name is Iris Montague, Padraig.”

  “You’re nae maid.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “It’s why Lucan grabbed you the night we arrived,” Padraig reasoned out loud. “He didna expect you to be here.”

  Lucan muttered, “A rather subtle understatement.”

  “It’s how you knew so well to tutor me,” Padraig continued, and Iris could tell he was reliving each of their moments together. “You were born into a noble family. Neighbors to the estate stolen from my own father. Castle Dare was your home too.”

  “That’s right,” Iris said.

  “You both were using me.”

  Lucan scoffed, “What?”

  “No, Padraig,” Iris said. “But we couldn’t tell you—”

  “You couldnae tell me ennathin’ until you’d determined what worth I was to you,” he said. “Without me winning back Darlyrede House, there’s nae chance in hell you’d get back even a blade of grass from Castle Dare. Unless Hargrave had promised to—”

  Padraig stilled suddenly, his head drawing back, and Iris could see the devastation in his handsome face in the instant the pieces fell into place for him. He looked at Lucan.

  “You’ve been working for Vaughn Hargrave the entire time.”

  * * * *

  Lucan met his gaze without wavering. “Not the entire time,” he said.

  And even though Padraig had recognized the idea as truth as soon as it had entered his mind, hearing Lucan confirm it was like a blade to his heart.

  “I trusted you,” Padraig said with a disbelieving wince. “I came all this way—I trusted you both.”

  “You can still trust us,” Beryl—nay, Iris—said, stepping toward him with a hand out, as if to touch him, comfort him.

  Padraig backed out of her reach and looked to Lucan once more. “That’s why you were searching out my father’s other children,” he realized aloud. “My brothers. Nae so you could give them the opportunity to clear Tommy’s name, but to make sure there would be nae nasty surprises to reclaiming your own estate. You wanted my father out of the way just as much as Hargrave did.”

  “That’s not at all true, Padraig,” Lucan argued. “I don’t believe Thomas committed any of the crimes he was accused of. Not one. Upon my honor, it is my intention to present my evidence to the king to exonerate your father.”

  “And, lucky for you, here’s poor, dumb Padraig, who has a legal right to Darlyrede. Your golden goose, am I?”

  “Padraig, please.” Iris stepped toward him yet again, her beautiful face splotchy with unshed tears.

  But Padraig fought the pull of her, knowing it was all a lie. Everything she said was a lie.

  “I was happy,” Padraig insisted. “Me mam and da—we didna have two pennies to press together, but we had each other, and we were happy. Now look at us all,” he demanded. “Me da is again being chased across the land, a price on his head. Me mam’s dead. I’ve been shot, brained, had me food poisoned, been humiliated, led to believe I had the loyalty and affection of friends who, in truth, only wanted m
e for what I could gain them. You used me,” he repeated.

  He looked between them several times, ignoring the silent tear that raced in a silvery line down Iris’s cheek.

  “To hell with ye both,” he sneered and then turned away, stalking to the door. He threw the bolt and flung open the door, sending it crashing into the stone wall, and then strode across the courtyard toward the doorway that led to the corridor just outside the great hall.

  I’ve never lied about how I feel about you.

  He ignored the memory of her words. Everything she’d ever done, said, was suspect now. Lucan too. He thought of the lives they’d ruined with their spying and treachery as he strode through the wide entry chamber into which he’d fought his way that first night at Darlyrede, and he paused in the center of it, paying no heed to the nobles, the servants who stopped what they were doing to stare openly as Padraig, in his dirty, bloody clothes, looked about the tall, paneled walls.

  Portraits. All these people he had never even known existed before Lucan Montague had arrived on Caedmaray. He walked up to the largest one, a painting of a hopelessly pale and despairing-looking girl, her faded blond hair and translucent skin seeming to blend in with the ivory cloth of the backdrop draped in long, graceful swags behind her. Her blue eyes seemed to see nothing, her thin, pale mouth turned down. Her right hand was laid upon the back of a gilded chair, her left hand clutching a single, pale lily, held down against her thigh as if she had not even the strength to pose with a proper bouquet. Indeed, she did look defeated for one so young.

  The last portrait of Lady Euphemia Hargrave…she was ten and five…

  And now she was dead.

  Padraig turned away toward the hall, where he could hear Vaughn Hargrave shouting at his first in command.

  “Then you shall go back and search again!” the nobleman insisted, standing before the hearth while the kindly Lord Hood leaned heavily on the lord’s table nearby. “Do you not understand? They have killed Lord Paget! If you come back without at least one of them, I will kill you myself!”

  The man-at-arms was stony-faced through this tirade. He gave Hargrave a stiff bow. “As you wish, my lord.” He turned and strode past Padraig without a glance.

  “Oh, now what do you want?” Hargrave sneered in exasperation. “I’ve enough to deal with without—”

  “I’ve come to tell you I’m leaving,” Padraig interrupted.

  Hargrave stilled, looked at Padraig suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. “Leaving?”

  “Aye. Leaving Darlyrede House. You can have the lot of it. I doona want it.”

  “Is that so?” Hargrave said in a tone of surprised interest. “Did you hear that, Edwin?” he said to the slouching lord who had raised his head to fix Padraig with a look of unabashed surprise. “Proved too much for you, after all, I suppose. I thought it might. It takes a strong man to keep Darlyrede in check. Your father was never that man, and neither are you. Weak. Stock,” Hargrave enunciated. “And speaking of weak stock, are you taking your friend Montague with you?”

  “He’s nae my friend,” Padraig said, feeling a pinch in his chest at the words. “But I think you knew that long before I.”

  “Ah,” Hargrave mused. “Yes, I suppose I did. It seems that everyone in my house is at last coming to their senses.”

  Padraig steeled himself for the request he was about to make. “I’d have a horse for the journey.”

  Lord Hargrave’s eyes widened again. “By all means, take two, if only that I should be rid of you sooner.”

  Padraig had never hated another human being as much as he hated Vaughn Hargrave in that moment. His hands shook so that he clenched them into fists to stay the tremors from taking over his entire body.

  The nobleman looked at him pointedly. “Well? Goodbye. I shall be sure to give your regards to the king.”

  Padraig lifted his chin and turned away, his pride screaming out as he felt the stares of everyone in the hall. He could imagine their thoughts, slimy and dark and cold, brushing up against him as he passed.

  Interloper.

  Peasant.

  Fraud.

  Coward.

  He was no longer lost in the maze of corridors that made up the interior of the castle and came to his door in moments. He found the old satchel he had carried to Darlyrede those many weeks ago—it seemed years—and he was embarrassed by its condition, filthy and patched. This place had made him embarrassed of what had once been his own contented life—negating his happy past in exchange for the lure of something noble and grand. But it had been nothing more than a glittering façade, hiding an oozing, putrescent core.

  He opened the flap of his bag; there was nothing in it now, save the letters Lucan Montague had given him. Padraig unfolded the now-worn-soft messages, read each through once more with new eyes, wiser eyes, as he walked toward the hearth. One letter given on Caedmaray, luring him to this place of death and deceit; one letter the night he’d arrived at Darlyrede, dangling the hope of the king’s favor before his ignorant nose.

  He tossed the pages and the ribbon to the flames.

  Padraig located his father’s ragged shawl and folded it inside the satchel, along with the stoppered flasks of wine on the table. It was fully winter now, and the journey would be even harsher heading north, but this time he was well-nourished, well-clothed, and would be astride. He ducked his head through the strap of his satchel and then put on his thick cloak. He’d been a fool here long enough.

  He was going home.

  His door opened then, and Searrach slipped inside. She closed the door and leaned back against it. Her dark eyes flicked over his costume.

  “You’re leavin’.”

  “Aye.”

  She came toward him then, holding out a piece of parchment that he took from her.

  “What is it?”

  “Lord Hargrave wants you to put your name to it,” she said as he skimmed the words. “Before you go.”

  Padraig turned back to the table, and in the next moment he was scrawling his signature across the bottom of the page.

  “Did I nae tell you?” she said in a voice that was not unkind.

  Padraig tossed the quill onto the page, where it skittered and sputtered ink, like a spurt of black blood across the words. “You did,” he acknowledged, and his heart was so heavy it felt like cold lead in his chest. He looked to Searrach and thought he glimpsed compassion in her dark eyes.

  She knew the pain of Darlyrede too.

  “Neither one of us belongs here.” He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed, and then she whispered, “Take me with you.”

  And Padraig’s hurt and disillusionment, his betrayal, was so deep, so blindingly painful in that moment that he nodded.

  Chapter 16

  Iris left Lucan in the chapel annex, ignoring his harshly whispered demands to return. She swiped angrily at the tears that ran in rivers down her cheeks, each one like a silent condemnation that she only now realized the truth of.

  Padraig had been right all along. Even Iris herself hadn’t understood how indebted to Hargrave her brother had become, hadn’t understood the depths of what he’d agreed to. But now that Padraig had revealed the truth to her, Iris couldn’t believe that she’d failed to see it herself. How else had Lucan Montague, a young orphan boy forgotten in France, managed to secure a position of authority under the king of England? Was there no place safe, no office sacred enough, to be out of Hargrave’s reach?

  But now Iris knew the truth. And Padraig knew the truth. And Lucan knew the truth.

  There was just one more person who must be put through pain today, and Iris knew that duty could fall only to her.

  She made her way up the long, wide flights of stairs to Lady Hargrave’s wing, and was surprised to find Rolf and another house guard standing to either side of the corridor.

  “Mistress
Beryl,” Rolf said. “You’re early.”

  “The events of the day seem to warrant it, Rolf. Is Lady Hargrave in her chamber?”

  “She is,” the man answered. “You should know that Lord Hargrave has commanded that the family wing be closed to visitors until the thieves in the forest are apprehended.”

  “I see,” Iris said. “I’ll go down for the tray myself later, then.”

  “No need,” Rolf said. “It’s already been placed, miss.”

  “Thank you.” She passed between the two men but then stopped. “Rolf?”

  “Yes, miss?”

  “If you should happen to see Master Boyd, will you tell him I would very much like to speak with him after my duties to her ladyship are finished for the evening?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  Iris turned and strode down the corridor, her slippers making no sound on the thick rug that ran down the center. Iris passed Euphemia Hargrave’s chamber and stopped at Caris’s door, considering this thing that had never seemed important to her before, although she had made note of it in the journals. This was the only carpeted corridor in all of Darlyrede. It pained Iris’s heart to think of the lady’s fragility requiring such a thing.

  If Lord Hargrave ever struck her, the woman would crumple like a pillow of ash on the hearth.

  Iris rapped softly on the door. “Milady?” she called out, and then engaged the latch, pushing the door open. “Milady?”

  The plush, opulent room was empty, but the door leading to the connecting chamber stood open, and it was from there that Iris heard her call answered.

  “Beryl, is it you?”

  Iris closed the door behind her and went through to find the lady already seated in her usual position at the window seat, although it wasn’t yet dusk. And just as Rolf had reported, the tray had been delivered.

  “You’ve experienced many trials lately, have you not?” the woman said with her sad smile. “Oh, Beryl, what would I do without your stalwart strength? Do go on and place the candles for us—it will be dark soon enough.”