My True Love

by Karen Ranney

  “Is she the woman I treated?” Richard asked. “There is some resemblance between the two of you. Something about the chin and mouth.”

  Anne blinked at him. Stephen thought she looked startled by the question. She shook her head as if to negate it.

  “My father,” she said, but he’d lost the thought as Richard moved to the fireplace.

  “I think you might be wise to bind me,” he said, a confession more onerous than any he’d ever made. It shamed him, even as it swam in truth. Another image then of rum in a keg and the tiny part that was his courage bobbing like a cork.

  She did not bind him. Instead, she shook her head when Betty would have moved closer. Such faith in him. He did not know if it was misplaced. He closed his eyes again. There was some security in not knowing when it would come.

  She drew closer until he could feel her breath upon his cheek. His knuckles were against her breast. He wished he might lay his head against her there, extend his arms around her. A bit of weakness that he’d never confess aloud. Not yet, anyway.

  She spoke in Gaelic to him. A harsh, guttural language that she made lyrical. Her lips were close to his ear. Richard was using a brush inside the wound. More than that he didn’t wish to know. His mind was capable of furnishing his closed eyes with enough images.

  He clung to each word she spoke, as if they strung together a net to hold him. The smell of the poker was a warning. So, too, her startled gasp. Didn’t she know that it was the treatment for wounds such as his? Her hand pressed flat against his cheek. Her fingers were cool; he curved his face toward her touch.

  “Talk to me,” he said, when she was rendered silent. She began to speak again, nonsensical words in a language he’d never known.

  It became a cradlesong, the sound of her voice. A calmative that held him sane as Richard laid the poker against his open wound. He walked through the blood-red landscape with her as his companion. Her voice was a thread he somehow followed, a blessed sound, far more welcome than his silent, muted screams.

  Until even those faded away, and he knew nothing else.

  Dunniwerth, Scotland

  Robert Sinclair, Laird of Dunniwerth, was furious. “What do you mean, she’s not here?” he roared.

  “Did I not set a guard in place?” This question was asked of the most senior of his troops left at Dunniwerth. Alex nodded but did not move his gaze from the floor.

  “Do you not understand what it means to guard Dunniwerth, Alex? It is not to watch the bricks, man, but to protect the people!” This was said in an earsplitting roar. It had the effect of making the man wince, but it did not furnish Robert with any more of an explanation.

  “Where did she go?”

  Alex looked up then. There was petition in his look and a sorrowful lack of pride mixed with fear. He could almost be forgiven for that. Robert wanted to pull the head off his shoulders.

  “All we know is that Hannah went with her, Robert. And Douglas. Ian, too.”

  “Should I be grateful, then, that there is anyone left at Dunniwerth? Was it a migration?”

  Not one person in the hall could answer him. Or chose to. And Hannah? Leaving the island after all this time?

  He looked over at Maggie.

  His wife stood before a fire, intent on the blaze. She turned then, as if sensing his gaze. She still wore her traveling cloak, a long cape with a hood of soft red wool. The color accentuated her green eyes and auburn hair. She was still beautiful, even after all these years. A thought that did nothing to lessen the leaden feeling in his chest.

  They had been married when they were both very young, a union of land and clan more than inclination. He’d seen her once from a distance, and she’d seen him not at all before they’d wed. It had not been love at first sight, and they’d only tolerated each other for years. But time had a way of gathering up respect, and somehow, respect had turned to love.

  He turned back to the men arrayed in front of him. Once more he prayed for patience, and once more he listened to the story again. Told a hundred times, it would be the same. The four of them had ridden out of Dunniwerth’s gates more than a week ago. No one knew where they went. Or why.

  Maggie came and stood beside him, her face a study in calm acceptance. He knew that anyone looking at her would think her unmoved by the tale. In actuality, she did not easily show her feelings, being more stoic than even he upon occasion. Later, perhaps, she would come to him and lay her head upon his chest and allow him to comfort her. But for now her misery was complete and personal and solitary.

  Their daughter was missing.

  “Go,” he said, waving a hand to the men in front of him. Outside, people were congregating in patches, conversation muted. The men who’d accompanied him home would be speaking in low tones to their wives. Children would be shushed, and mothers would be weeping sympathetic tears.

  Where was his daughter?

  He rubbed his hand over his eyes, pressed against them with thumb and forefinger, willing himself to cease thinking the worst.

  “Has Hannah taken her, Robbie?”

  He turned. Maggie stood watching him. The question had been his, too.

  “Anne is a grown woman, Maggie. It’s a bit late to be stealing her away.”

  “Then she would have wanted to go. Why?”

  He studied her face. There was love between them. Hard won but there, nonetheless. A question lingered in the air between them. One she had never asked. Had she thought it all this time?

  “I never went to the island, Maggie.”

  She moved toward him, smiling. She reached up her hand and cupped his face. “I know, Robbie. I know.”

  He extended his arms around her, and she sighed against him. It was a moment for fear and worry and questions. But it was also, Robert Sinclair thought, a time of forgiveness. There was no way to wipe away the past, but Maggie had eased it a bit with her simple gesture and her smile.

  Chapter 4

  Harrington Court, England

  Her laughter was full and rich, coaxing forth his own. His hands at her waist were her only support as they twirled in a circle, her arms thrown out, the cloud of her hair shining in the sun. An angel flying in the air.

  He had never known such joy. Such utter freedom of the senses and the soul. Would that this moment were his forever. To feel again and again. To pluck from his memory and recall when he grew old.

  In the way of fevered dreams, she grew closer and then further apart. Finally, she walked away from him for the last time. He called to her, stretched out his hand, but she continued to walk away. At the edge of the horizon, where the sea met the sky, she turned and blew a kiss to him. A smile was his last link to her as she became no more than mist. There had been tears on her cheeks. And in his heart.

  My beloved. My own true love.

  A voice came to him, one rough and impatient. A band of something cold and wet bound his forehead, cooled his skin. He wanted to thank the hand that placed it there but was cast into another dream before he could frame the words.

  He made a sound in his sleep, a cry of terror, as his world became black again. The voice above him eased him. The hand upon his forehead was cool.

  An angel, then. The voice of an angel commanded that he rest or he would never heal. And so he tried. One did not gainsay God.

  Someone pressed something to his lips. A bit of cheese, some wine? Only water. The sound of a lute seemed oddly familiar. There, her laughter again.

  Come with me, love. A voice that sang with the sound of bells. He turned and she was there, holding her hand out to him. Her hair was black as night. No, brown as a chestnut. A sweet face. A lovely one. Eyes a shade of green. No, deep, dark, with gold at their centers. Eyes to lure and warm.

  I am so very tired. A thought. Into it came her voice. Or his. God’s again?

  I am here. Sweet love, remember me.

  The dream shifted again. A woman’s face again. A smile, a beauty patch, a cloud of scent. A laugh, his own.

 
Home. Sleep.

  Rest now. It’s the only way you’ll heal. I’ll be here.

  Voices in his head. He gave himself up to the angel’s voice, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  “You still have not found him?” Anne asked.

  “Do you think the soldiers took him?” She looked up at him, horrified.

  They stood in the garden. Ian had asked to speak to her, so she’d walked here with him. She’d never imagined, however, that his news would be so terrible.

  He nodded. “It is the likeliest possibility.”

  “What will they do to him, Ian?”

  “Shouldn’t you have worried about that earlier, Anne?” Ian asked, his voice tight with anger. “Before we left Scotland?”

  She looked down at clasped hands.

  “The earl’s men and I have scoured the countryside, Anne. There’s no sign of him.”

  Douglas was a sweet boy. But just as humor was something oddly missing in his nature, so was initiative. He would not know where to hide. Or where to come, if he managed to escape the soldiers.

  Shame sat on her like a wet woolen cloak. He was a member of her clan, and she was the daughter of Dunniwerth. Therefore it had been her responsibility to assure his safety. She had not. The condemnation was there in her thoughts as well as in Ian’s words.

  “Are you never going to tell me why we left Scotland?”

  He’d agreed to accompany her only because he’d been given the responsibility for her safety. And, he’d told her that he wasn’t at all sure she would remain at Dunniwerth if he’d refused to come to England with her. In that, he was correct.

  Ian had not approved of the journey, nor of his traveling companions. He had said that Hannah was too old, a remark that caused Hannah to cease talking to him for one whole day. His comments about Douglas were even less charitable.

  “If you treat him as if he can do nothing,” she had told him, “then that’s exactly what he will do. Give him an opportunity, Ian. Let him show you how helpful he can be.”

  Unfortunately, Douglas had vanished. Not very helpful.

  Ian frowned down at her, his stance watchful. As if he were on sentry duty and she was an approaching shadow.

  “Was it worth Hannah being injured and Douglas lost?” he asked, when she said nothing.

  He was not, in that moment, unlike the boy who’d taunted her. He did not spare his words in case he might cause her hurt.

  If he’d asked her the moment they’d arrived at Harrington Court, she might have confessed to her confusion. There was no castle, and the man who’d come to their rescue in the meadow was a forbidding stranger.

  It was only later, when she’d held Stephen, that she’d felt that sense of connection to him. That man, adrift in pain and fevered, had been more like the one she’d known. As if illness had stripped him of a shell he had worn, revealing the true man beneath.

  “Does it have anything to do with him?” A glance back at the house made Ian’s meaning clear enough. Anne was surprised at the question, at the insight it revealed. “You haunt the hallway outside his door, Anne, as if you cannot bear to be away from him even in sleep. Even when Hannah sends you from her room, you do not stray far from the house.”

  She could feel her cheeks warm.

  “Do you think yourself invisible? I am not the first who has noticed it.”

  “But you are the only one who finds it necessary to comment upon it.”

  She frowned up at him, willing him to go away. It was not in her nature to be rude, but at that moment she wished to be. She wanted to silence him. He spoke of things he did not understand. But she would not make it more clear to him.

  “The sooner we are gone from here, the better, Anne,” Ian said curtly.

  She watched him as he walked away. And felt a guilty pleasure in his departure.

  Chapter 5

  Hannah sat in a chair beside her, eyes closed. But when a knock sounded on the door, she readily answered it. She feigned sleep, but was as alert as a magpie. Anne didn’t bother hiding her smile.

  The maid bustled into the room with Hannah’s morning tray. Something Hannah heartily disliked, being waited on with such assiduousness. But in this she was a captive. She could barely move due to the soreness of her ribs. Rest was the very best thing for her. A fact that even she recognized, although she would have denied it had she been asked.

  “Place the tray on the table first, Muriel.” Betty stood in the doorway, hands folded at her waist. She looked around the room with the proprietary air of any goodwife. Did the windows need washing, the pewter polishing, the brass shining? She frowned at the fireplace, looked swiftly at the floor. Anne knew that as soon as Muriel left the room, she would be given orders to sweep both.

  Anne looked up at Betty’s entrance and returned the housekeeper’s smile. Her first sight of Betty had been when she was eight. Back then, she’d appeared a tall woman with large hands. But to a child all adults are tall. Now she appeared only of average height.

  She felt a fondness for the housekeeper and thought that it might be reciprocated. A bond had been forged between them the night she’d knelt at Stephen’s side. A conspiracy of care.

  Amidst the clink of china and Hannah’s and Muriel’s voices, she asked the question she had asked every morning for a week.

  “The earl? He is well?”

  Every day Betty brought her word of his progress. “The physician says he is healing and such sleep is good for him” had been the message for three agonizingly long days. The news had gradually improved. Two days ago his fever had broken. Yesterday he had insisted upon getting out of bed.

  Today, however, she answered Anne’s question with a smile. “He is up and dressed. Insisted upon it,” she said. “He looks much his usual self,” Betty said. “Although a little more pale and somewhat thinner.”

  Relief flooded through Anne so quickly and fiercely that she felt almost lightheaded from it.

  “I feel it is a bad sign, indeed, Muriel, when your mistress and Anne are deep in conversation,” Hannah said, eyeing them both with some disfavor. “Either you are to be punished, or I am to be starved.” She poked at the toast on her tray. “A plan that looks to have already begun.”

  “You will frighten Muriel, Hannah,” Anne said, looking over at her. She smiled at the maid. “I can tell you that she does not mean half of what she says.”

  “I do not?” There was a frown on Hannah’s face.

  “No,” Anne said. “I think you are being quarrelsome simply to see what kind of reaction you can get.”

  “I am not,” Hannah protested. “I am simply tired of this room and tired of remaining in it.”

  “Then I will ask the physician to see if you cannot at least begin to walk tomorrow. Would you like that?”

  She slitted her eyes at Anne. “I am not a cat to be coaxed to purr, Anne. And I am capable of asking him questions on my own.”

  “If you were a cat,” Anne said, feeling absurdly cheerful, “then I would simply rub you between the ears.” Hannah’s lips twitched. “He has promised to pay you a visit this afternoon. Ask him then,” Anne said, daring her.

  “He is a pompous know-it-all,” Hannah said.

  Anne said nothing, but her smile broadened. Prior to every visit from Richard Maning, Hannah had insisted her hair be brushed and her face washed.

  Hannah eyed her as if she’d heard her thoughts or could divine them in her smile. “Go away, Anne. Go for a walk. Take the air.”

  Betty caught her look and smiled. “I’ll ask my husband to set up a stool and a table in the garden. You might wish to sit and draw there.”

  Anne looked over at Hannah, torn. She would have dearly loved to spend a few hours outside, instead of the few minutes she allotted herself each morning.

  Betty’s hands were folded at her waist, her head tilted, a bit like an inquisitive bird. “I’ll be within hearing distance of the bell,” she said.

  It was, in the end, too tempting to be
gone from this room, to sit in the garden for a little while. Anne nodded, capitulating.

  “See? We all agree,” Hannah said. “It is your mood that needs improving. Not my own. I am a thoroughly pleasant individual. A truly amiable soul,” she said, turning to Muriel. The young maid looked somewhat stunned by such sweet-tempered attention, Anne thought, as she left the room.

  The knot garden was imposing from above, but almost overpowering up close. Instead of the intricate designs cut into the hedges, all that was truly visible was their size. She felt as if she were trapped in a maze, one created for giants. With relief, Anne found herself in a smaller place, a garden with its beds mulched and readied for the first blossoms of spring.

  Betty’s husband turned out to be a short, wizened man with a face filled with wrinkles and the most charming smile she’d ever seen. He reminded her of what a gnome might look like if he’d been transported to the surface of the earth and instructed to marry and live among humans.

  “Did Betty send you out, then?” His blue eyes twinkled at her. “I’m Ned,” he said, nodding back at her. “Been married to the woman since Adam was a boy. Know her right enough I do. She’s a great one for the freshness of the air.” He smiled once again, then turned his attention to placing the table where she wished. With a wave he disap peared behind the knot garden, gnomelike.

  She sat on the stool Ned had provided and laid the drawing board down on the table. The board had been a present from her father on her eleventh birthday. Its surface was only about a foot square, making it easy to carry. It had been constructed to act primarily as a slate. The wood had been bleached until it was nearly white, then oiled until it shined. Such a surface allowed her to practice a sketch with charcoal. When she was finished, she needed only to wipe it clean. Two knobs at the top held paper when she was ready to render her sketches onto a more permanent surface.

  She removed the drawings she’d started from the pocket of her cape. Unlike her father’s mapmaker, she didn’t so much as draw what she saw as much as feel it. An explanation that might have amused the man.