by Aileen Adams
He had so little time before they were too old to forgive his short temper, his clumsiness.
He might have destroyed things forever if it had not been for her setting him straight.
A rustling noise caught his attention, wiping away his rather unsettling course of thought. This was not unwelcome, as he’d been roughly three seconds from telling himself that Anne’s presence was a blessing in disguise, and that would be a mistake.
Though he knew she was about the place, the sight of Shana Blackheath startled him just as anything out of the ordinary would. He chuckled, shaking his head. “Ye took me by surprise. Ye are the last person I expect to find here.”
She wrapped her traveling cloak more tightly about herself. “Aye, and you surprise me, Drew MacIntosh. You surprise me greatly.”
Her sharp whisper shook him from the weary stupor he’d only just been sliding into. “What do ye mean?”
She looked about, sighed, and crooked one finger in a beckoning gesture. “Come here. Where we won’t be so easily heard.” She led him to the rear of the structure, between two haystacks against the stone wall. The chill was deeper there, in the shadows, but she merely drew her cloak tighter and fixed him with a gaze even colder than the air.
“What’s this about, then?” he murmured, both perplexed and concerned. She’d been with Anne and the bairns. What had happened?
She tilted her head to the side. “I would like to know what you are about. It’s as clear as anything that the lass is lying.”
“Anne?”
“Yes, Anne. If that even is her name.”
“’Tis her name.”
“How are you so certain?”
“Her brother called her Anne. He was a lad of ten years, too young to be convincing if he’d lied.” He looked her up and down, judging his chance of getting anything past her. She was far too shrewd.
Shana’s eyes widened. “So, you admit you have already questioned her honesty? Why, then, is she still on the land?”
“I need help with the twins. I canna allow them to run wild all through the day and like as not break their necks. Someone has to mind them.”
“But her? You could not find someone a bit more… honest?”
“And just what makes ye think she is dishonest?” he finally had the good sense to ask. He ought to have asked that from the start. Lying had never been one of his skills.
She scoffed with a heavy roll of her eyes. “Och, come now. She recited the tale of her parents’ death with no emotion whatsoever, as if she had practiced it in her mind before speaking it aloud. Besides,” she added with a wicked smile. “Her brother is supposed to be living with an uncle, yet you spoke of him just now as if you had met him. Which is it?”
His heart sank like a stone thrown into a pond. She had caught him. It had not even been difficult.
What point was there in lying any further, then? He leaned against the cold, hard stone wall with a sigh. “What would ye have me say?”
“To start, I would have you explain who the young woman is and why she has not yet made Davina’s acquaintance. Who is she in hiding from?”
Drew had just been about to close his eyes, giving up, but her question stopped him. “Hiding?”
“What other explanation is there? Please, do not tell me it is worse than that.”
He recalled the circumstances of their first meeting, how Shana had been running from a brute who’d captured and held her in deplorable conditions. William had saved her, and they’d taken shelter at the farm on their way to Laird Richard’s castle.
Naturally, this was where Shana’s thoughts had immediately gone. For an instant, he considered allowing her to continue believing this. That Anne was in need of protection from someone who wished to do her harm, which was why he’d brought her on as someone to mind the twins.
No one need be the wiser, and he might go on without admitting the truth.
When he offered nothing at first, Shana put a hand to his shoulder and shoved. Not hard, not enough to move him, but enough to shake him a bit and show him how angry he’d made her.
“Why are you now thinking of a way to lie to me?”
“Dinna strike me, woman!”
“I did not strike you. I barely touched you.”
“And this is the thanks I get for saving your life.”
“Do not make me strike you in earnest,” she warned, holding up a fist. “I learned to take care of myself. Think twice before you waste more of my time with yet another falsehood.”
“I dinna know what ye wish for me to say, woman.”
“I wish for you to tell me the truth. If it is something you would rather Davina and Rufus not know, I understand. But if they are in danger…” She shook her finger at him.
He scoffed at this. “They are in no danger. Do ye believe I would place the twins in the care of someone who is a danger to them? The purpose of my asking her to stay was to make certain they were in no danger, for the love of God.”
“What is it, then? What can you not tell them? Why is she hiding herself from them?”
“She is not hiding herself from anyone—at least, not any longer. I dinna know why she has not introduced herself.” Perhaps it the guilt of knowing she had stolen from them. “I have not the time to ask her, nor have I the time to drag her, kicking and screaming, to the house. I canna do everything, ye ken. I have quite a lot of work to attend to without making introductions on top of it.”
“She does not feel as though she can introduce herself.” Shana frowned. “Is she… ashamed of how she lived before this?”
The light blush on her cheeks told him what she meant, and he was barely able to contain a laugh at the thought. “Aye, but not in the way you’re thinking. I dinna wish to know the man in such great need that he would pay that hellcat to warm his bed.”
“She is quite bonny, and you know it,” she hissed. “Do not pretend otherwise.”
What harm would it do, truly, if she knew the truth? “Would ye make a vow that ye will not give her away to Davina or Rufus, or to anyone on this farm?”
“It is that serious?”
“Promise me.”
She chewed her lip, her gaze darting here and there. Wondering if she was about to step into a bad bargain.
“I would not put anyone on this land at risk,” he reminded her. “I mean that.”
“All right.” She sighed. “I vow to keep this between us.”
If nothing else, it would be a relief to share the truth with someone. “She was a thief. She might still be, for all I know. I caught her and her brother as they were moments away from stealing a pair of steers. Not the first time she’d done it, either. She made off with quite a few of them—here and elsewhere—before I caught her in the act.”
Shana gasped. “You would allow a thief—”
“We made a bargain,” he was quick to cut her off before she worked herself into a proper outrage. “If I sent her brother home and did not turn them over for the law to deal with them, she would remain here and care for the twins.”
“Why would you do that? How do you know she’s to be trusted?”
He threw his hands up, staring at the sky. “Because I got the sense that she did not steal of her own doing. She was forced to do so, I mean. By the person or people she and her brother lived with.”
When she shoved him again, he moved further away.
“Enough of that!”
Now it was evident she was truly furious. If fire had leaped from her eyes and set him ablaze, it would have come as no surprise. “You sent the lad back to that? When you ought to have kept him here as well?”
The truth of this rocked him to his core. How could he have been so blind? He ought to have kept Liam. “She… she wanted him to go…”
“Why? If she cared anything for him, why was she so insistent that he leave?”
“I suppose…” This was truly embarrassing, and he steeled himself for a throttling from Shana’s small, yet very powerful, fists
. “I suppose because I threatened to have them punished. More than once, of course. Because they were thieves!” he added as she raised a fist. “Enough of that!”
“I ought to break your head open,” she spat. “Perhaps that would knock sense into you. No wonder she wanted him off the land! A lad of ten! Children do not steal unless they have no choice but to do so. And now, who is to say what the lad is forced to do without Anne there to shelter him?”
Drew groaned as the truth of her accusations sank in. “I dinna know what to do. She will not tell me where he lives, for I’m certain she’ll believe I wish to send the magistrate after him.”
“You ought to send the law after this uncle of theirs, if there truly is an uncle,” she muttered. “Imagine, a man sending a lad and a young woman to do his reiving for him. I would spit on him if he were before me.”
“I would do much worse.” And he meant it, though the truth was, until that moment, he had not given nearly enough thought to the person or people behind Anne’s stealing. In fact, between having his immediate needs satisfied and the continuing arguments between him and the lass, he had not given Liam much serious thought in the days since his departure.
This was not a realization which brought him any measure of satisfaction. He was ashamed of himself.
He slumped a bit, wearier and more heartsick than he had been in quite some time. “I dinna know what’s best to do. I suppose I could ask about, find out what I can.”
“I could draw her out a bit,” Shana offered, and there was a softness to her tone now. “Perhaps she will talk to me if I ask the right questions.”
“Which questions will they be?”
She smiled, but only said, “I will know when the time comes.”
“Ye ought to share them with me. Perhaps it will help.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nay, you would not have said it if you did not mean something.”
There was now a playful tone which he thought he might dislike more than when she’d scolded him.
“Enough,” he muttered. “I have a house to return to and supper to eat. How long do ye intend to stay?”
“As long as Davina needs me,” she shrugged. “I understand Innis does her best, but she has a home of her own and is getting on in years. It might be a relief to everyone.”
“Would that ye had come a week ago. I would not have needed to bring Anne in to mind the twins.”
To this, Shana merely raised her brows, her lips pursed in silent question as she turned and walked to the house, her cloak billowing in the wind.
18
Anne placed the kettle on the table with a satisfied smile.
Was this how normal people lived? She had always asked herself about them, wondering late at night when she could not get to sleep how normal people went about their lives—she’d been too young while her father and stepmother were alive to notice much.
Only when a lass grew older did she begin to see the differences between her life and those around her. Only when she got word of this friend and that getting married and starting a family. Only when she watched from afar as giggling lasses walked down the road with baskets from the market, sharing secrets and feigning outrage as lads teased them.
Only then had she begun to understand that they might as well have lived in a different country from the one in which she lived.
Yet here she was, serving tea to a young woman who might have been her friend if given the chance. Even if the house was not her own—or even the kettle—she was sitting down at midday with a cup of tea while the twins slept.
“They shall be even more boisterous on waking,” she predicted with a groan, rolling her head on her shoulders. “I ought to sleep while they do.”
“Perhaps you should,” Shana encouraged. “I can only imagine how weary you must feel. They are lovely bairns, though.”
“That they are. I have already grown so fond of them.” And that fondness was folly. Nothing less than the worst sort of mistake, for she knew better. Did she not? Deepening her connection to them meant tearing an even larger part of her heart from her chest when she made her inevitable mistake.
If only Drew would heed her advice on how to treat them, for he would need to be kind once she was gone.
“I can see why. They are such charming things, and so fortunate to have a home to come to after losing their parents. It could have been far worse.”
Anne merely nodded, staring into her tea.
Shana gasped. “Forgive me! That was thoughtless.”
“Not at all.”
“But it was, and I know it was because you will not look at me.”
Anne had to snicker, raising her eyes as she did. “Now, I am looking at ye.”
Shana’s smile was warm and tender, the sort of smile a person wished to trust. Anne longed for a friend, just one person she might know deeply. One person in whom to confide.
They had already spent much of the late morning speaking of Shana’s past—always moving from place to place, never having a home or security. Always on the outside. They’d spoken of her escape from captivity, how William had fought for her.
Would that someone would fight for Anne.
They gazed at each other from across the small table, holding their steaming mugs before them like shields. “You said your brother lived with an uncle,” Shana recalled.
“Aye.”
“Who is this uncle? Is your brother far away? It seems you would be happier if you could see him. You have already spoken of him several times, and I hear the longing in your voice. I beg you,” she added, holding up a hand, “if I am speaking beyond what I ought to speak of, please, tell me so. I would not wish to insult you. I merely wonder.”
A lump found its way into Anne’s throat. She strained to swallow it back, to deny it, to fight it off. There was no cause for her to be so emotional. Was this not the sort of thing friends discussed? Shana had already shared so much. Was there reason to be on her guard?
She was so tired, always being on her guard. Always watchful, always questioning the reasons people had for doing as they did, for speaking as they did. Learned after years of living among filthy, slovenly men. After holding herself back while in the presence of others, keeping her head down while at the market. Afraid to attract attention, for attention meant questions and curiosity which Malcolm simply could not have.
Malcolm was no longer with her. She need not appease him any longer.
“I do long for my brother,” she confessed, turning the mug around in her hands. “I fear for him now. Our uncle is… not a kind man. He is very difficult, very coarse and terribly hard on him. Would that I might find some way to get Liam out of there, somewhere he might be safe and be able to grow up well. But I have no skills. I have no hope of earning my way.”
“What of this?” Shana indicated the house around them. “This is a means to earning your living.”
Anne bit her tongue to keep from laughing. It was all too amusing, but for no reason she could explain without explaining a great deal more. “We… have an arrangement,” she explained. “I earn no money. I cannot afford food for Liam, nor clothing or anything else he needs. It is one thing to have my needs met, but I cannot meet his.”
“I see. What if Rufus took him on? Perhaps he might learn a trade here on the farm. The smithy could teach him. He might be a stable hand, or he might assist Clyde in training the horses. When Tyrone and Alec return to train the men Rufus is gathering to provide guard, Liam might assist them.”
Anne looked at her new friend with growing interest. “Ye have been thinking on this, have ye not? Ye came up with that very quickly. What do ye know?”
Shana’s gaze turned to a pattern in the table’s woodwork.
Meanwhile, Anne cursed herself. What a fool she had been for believing she could trust this person. She did not know her at all. “Have ye spoken to Drew?” she challenged, rising from her chair on legs which shook enough
to nearly topple her. She could not allow that. She would not allow it.
Shana’s brow furrowed, her lips pulling back from her teeth in a grimace. “Please. Do not be angry with me. ‘Tis only that I knew you missed your brother. I would miss mine if the circumstance were the same. I merely wished to be of help to you.”
Was that so? If it was, her outburst had made her look foolish. She sank into her chair, legs still twitching. “Forgive me. I ought not—”
“No. Do not apologize. I understand how you feel.”
“You do?”
“Certainly. Better than you can imagine, I would wager. You feel always as though you cannot trust others. Is that so?”
“Aye.” Anne leaned forward. “It is so.”
“Because you came of age believing you could not trust. I understand that. I could not trust anyone, either. We were thrown out of villages, cursed and spat upon.”
“My life was not so difficult, and I ought not make it seem as though it was,” Anne demurred, pouring fresh tea for lack of anything else to do. There was a hot, prickly feeling spreading over the back of her neck. Discomfort. She did not enjoy speaking of herself, not at all.
She also had no practice with it, which was why her tongue felt thick and useless.
She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I wonder if Liam made it safely to our uncle. I ask myself if he is well there. If he has what he needs. I know he would not send word, nor would anyone at the house. I’m afraid I shall never know for certain whether he is well—or even if he is alive.”
Her hands shook so, tea splashed from her mug onto her skin and made her wince and gasp.
Shana was gentle, but firm, as she pulled the mug away and blotted the spilled tea. “There, there. I understand that as well. I could not reach out to my family. None of them knew if I was alive, and I knew nothing of them or their safety. To do so—to make contact—would have meant revealing myself and taking a great risk. I could not do that. And though I blamed my brother for the risks he took, and still do, I did love him. I loved them all.”
