The Border Trilogy

by Amanda Scott

  “Oh!” She caught her tongue between her teeth and hoped the exclamation would pass as anything but the expression of scorn that it was. How could the man sit there, she asked herself, glibly talking of knowledge and lack of knowledge as though he were ignorant of the facts? Delegation indeed. James ought to have dispatched an army. And he could have raised one, too, if he had begun the task in October when he first learned of Mary’s danger. She dared a glance at Douglas. The expression on his face was quizzical, and she feared he would press her for further explanation. Instead, he changed the subject and began to help her put the chess pieces away.

  Not until later, when she lay in her own bed, did she realize that Douglas could not accuse her of knowing more than she ought to know without revealing his own arcane possession of the facts. She was safe enough unless she betrayed herself completely, and she hoped she had better sense than to do such a daft thing as that.

  The weather improved the next day, and by Friday the first crocus buds appeared in the garden. Douglas’s father and sister arrived shortly before noon, having passed the night with the same friends Douglas had visited ten miles to the south. They came with an entourage, for Lord Strachan had brought his own servants, of course, and was accompanied by a number of friends who had traveled with him or joined his party along the way.

  Mary Kate nearly laughed aloud when she met his lordship, for he matched his son’s description exactly. He was very much the hearty sporting gentleman, and when he greeted them, he actually clapped Sir Adam on the back, causing that impudent young man to cast her a look brimful of merriment. With an effort she controlled her own amusement, allowing Lord Strachan to embrace her in a generous hug. But she did laugh when he remarked that his gay dog of a son sometimes presented the family with the most delightful surprises. In answer to an anxious question from Douglas, he replied that although Lady Strachan had not been thought strong enough yet to undertake the long journey to the highlands, she was nearly recovered from her recent indisposition.

  “She sent a message to you, my little beauty,” his lordship said to Mary Kate as he searched diligently through capacious pockets in his cloak. “Made her write it down, so I wouldn’t forget what she said. I know it’s here somewhere.”

  “I have it, Father,” said the dark-haired young woman who had been standing silently behind him. “Only wait, I’ll find it.” Margaret Douglas jammed her hand into her overstuffed saddlebag, withdrawing it a moment later with the crumpled note. A vivacious young lady, taller and built along more generous lines than her hostess, Margaret had the look of her handsome brother about her, particularly in her hair and eyes. She laughed when she held out the, note. “I hope you will not take offense, Mary Kate, but I have read it. ’Tis all polite nonsense, of course, and does not begin to express my lady mother’s true feelings.”

  “Margaret!” two masculine voices protested in chorus.

  “Oh, hush, both of you,” she retorted with a chuckle. “Mary Kate will hear the whole from Mother herself the minute she meets her. Besides, you have made her think now that Mother does not approve.”

  Indeed, though Mary Kate had first been astonished to discover that neither Margaret nor Lady Strachan seemed to fit the mold for border women as she knew it, she was thinking precisely what Margaret expected. She said a little shyly, “I hope she does not disapprove.”

  “Of course not,” Margaret said. “She is delighted. She practically cheered when Father read her Adam’s letter.”

  Her brother interrupted this discourse, saying wryly, “Do you think you might fold your tongue behind your teeth long enough to follow the others inside. Mary Kate is shivering with the cold.”

  Margaret only laughed again, but she allowed herself to be bundled into the house, nonetheless. Mary Kate was delighted with her. She had expected Douglas’s sister to be a timid creature, especially since she was also the daughter of a man who could supposedly make Sir Adam tremble in his boots. She chose to disbelieve that particular tale, however, for Lord Strachan’s gruff kindliness put her too much in mind of Duncan. Though Strachan was a border lord and therefore no doubt possessed many of the same faults as his son, there was nothing the least bit frightening about him.

  5

  MARY KATE TOOK MARGARET upstairs to tidy herself after her journey, and they soon found themselves happily laughing and chatting together. Mistress Douglas confided that she, too, was soon to be wed.

  “He is Sir Patrick Ferguson of Craigdarroch, and we have known each other since I was a child. He’s older, of course, but I like him well enough, and our families are pleased.”

  “When do you marry?”

  “In late August, I believe. My father means to take me to my aunt and uncle at Ardcarach House in Edinburgh in July, and the rest of the family will join us soon thereafter. You must come, too, of course. But, tell me, Mary Kate,” she added abruptly, “do you really wish to marry Adam?”

  Caught off guard, Mary Kate barely stopped herself from answering with an automatic negative. Though such a reply was clearly ineligible, she did not wish to commit herself with an unqualified affirmative, so she merely smiled in what she hoped was an enigmatic manner.

  “Well, I should not wish to be his wife,” declared Margaret frankly.

  “And a good thing that is, too,” Mary Kate told her with a laugh, “but why not?”

  “He is too domineering. I am far more comfortable with Patrick, for over the years he has got into the nicest habit of letting me have my own way about things.”

  Perversely, Mary Kate could not help thinking that being married to a man who always let one have one’s own way might become boring. Pushing this disturbing reflection out of her mind, she said, “You do not seem to me to be particularly daunted by your brother.”

  “Not as a general custom,” Margaret agreed, “but I take good care not to anger him, I can tell you, for he inherited his devilish temper from our father. Neither one is easily aroused to anger, thank heaven, but when their tempers are stirred, I prefer to be elsewhere. Both of them have the most annoying notions regarding proper female conduct.” Since Mary Kate had no good reason to doubt that statement and every reason to believe it, she held her tongue, allowing her guest to continue. “That,” Margaret said, “is why my lady mother sent you that proper little message. She knew Father and Adam would both think it unseemly if she were to set her true feelings to paper. She had nearly despaired of Adam’s ever getting married, you know. After all, he will be thirty in just two years.”

  “Deplorably ancient, in fact.”

  Margaret grinned. “You take my meaning well enough. Most men marry earlier than that. In any case, my lady mother is well pleased and will be better satisfied yet when she meets you.”

  Mary Kate replied absently that she looked forward with pleasure to that event. For a brief moment, while Margaret had been describing Sir Patrick Ferguson, she had thought perhaps there were men in the borders who would not expect their women to be always subservient. But Margaret’s comments about her mother’s hesitation to describe her true feelings put that thought to flight and reaffirmed Mary Kate’s earlier convictions. Several moments passed before she was able to return her attention to her companion’s cheerful conversation.

  With guests to entertain, there was no time for rest before supper, and later that evening there was the highland foot-washing ceremony to be endured, when friends and houseguests gathered to watch the bride and groom wash each other’s feet. This was no staid ritual but an uproarious one, filled with revelry and merrymaking, and most of the participants ended the evening in damp clothes. At last, however, Mary Kate could fall into bed with her own thoughts for company. She was not yet reconciled to the notion of marriage to a border knight, but she was beginning to feel a strong yearning to pit her mettle against his. She liked his father, had found a friend in his sister, and looked forward to meeting his mother, whom she was certain to admire. How could one feel otherwise toward a woman who thought, si
ght unseen, that one was wonderful?

  Though she still assumed that Douglas expected to teach her to be properly submissive once they reached the borders, she no longer feared that he might succeed. Indeed, she welcomed the challenge of proving herself a power with whom he must reckon. Perhaps, she thought, as she drifted off, if she were clever enough, Douglas would soon shed the arrogant, domineering manner that surfaced so uncomfortably from time to time, and marriage to him would not be as dreadful as she had feared.

  Shortly before sunrise the next day Morag MacBain woke her with a shake. “Coom, lassie,” she urged, “’tis no day for slugabeds. ’Twill be a glorious morn, and ye’ve flowers tae fetch, so up wi’ ye the noo.”

  Mary Kate stretched languorously, then slipped out of bed, feeling an unexpected surge of exhilaration. Today was the day. She threw on an old brown tamsin gown and, a few minutes later, hurried downstairs and out into the crisp, gray, dew-ridden dawn, a straw basket hung over her arm. By the time she had climbed the steep hill behind Speyside House, the rising sun had begun to shoot fingers of golden light through the branches of the trees and shrubbery and across the new, emerald-green grass on the hillside. She gazed with delight upon a sea of early wild-flowers nodding their cheerful heads in the light, chilly breeze wafting up from the river.

  It took no time at all to fill her basket with flowers that would be arranged by the maids with dried broom, rosemary, and myrtle for her wreath and her nosegay, and when she returned to her bedchamber, two housemaids were filling the huge canopied tub with steaming, rose-scented hot water for her bath. Half an hour later, glowing and refreshed, she sat wrapped in a voluminous robe, brushing her hair dry before the crackling fire. The maids were gone. Only the housekeeper remained.

  Mary Kate looked up at her through a curtain of hair. “Have our guests been aroused, Morag?”

  “Aye, lassie. Mistress Douglas was let tae sleep longer than the others but will join ye here tae break her fast.” She reached out to feel Mary Kate’s hair. “That will be a wee while a-drying. Shall I brush it the noo?” Mary Kate handed her the silver-backed brush and luxuriated in the familiar sensation of the practiced strokes through her hair. When it was nearly dry, Morag announced that she would go downstairs to oversee service of the gentlemen’s morning meal.

  Before the buxom, gray-haired woman could do more than set down the hairbrush, Mary Kate jumped up from her place by the fire and gathered as much of her as she could hold into a tight hug. “Oh, Morag, you are so dear to me! I shall miss you.”

  “Och, not ye, lassie.” But the hug was returned with interest. “Ye’ll be sae thrang wi’ yer ain home, ye’ll soon forget the auld woman who loves ye like a daughter.”

  “I won’t. You are the only mother I have known, Morag, and if Margaret Douglas had not agreed to stand up with me, I meant to ask you to do so. So there, now.”

  “Well, I niver heard o’ such a thing!” exclaimed the old woman. “And me nobbut yer father’s servant. Of all the unseemly notions, I niver heard the like. Nobbut what I’d be right proud, lassie,” she added with the hint of a tear in her eye. “Ever sae proud, I’d be.”

  “No one hereabouts would have thought it improper,” Mary Kate told her staunchly. “More likely they would have said I was showing sense for the first time in my life.”

  “Gae along wi’ ye.” Morag laid a wrinkled hand upon her hair. “’Tis dry enow. I best be seeing tae yon porridge. Och, but that’ll be Polly the noo, nae doot.” She opened the door to a grinning housemaid laden with Mary Kate’s breakfast tray.

  Moments later the door flew back on its hinges with a bang and Margaret Douglas erupted into the room, a merry laugh upon her rosy lips. “Pray tell me I have not missed my breakfast!” she exclaimed. “I am pleased that you have the good sense to eat before the wedding, Mary Kate, for you will be too excited afterward. Moreover, I am hungry now. The maid who fetched me said I needn’t dress yet, so I’ve come to you in my night robe.”

  Morag stared, but Mary Kate waved her exuberant guest to a stool and invited her to examine the tray to see what might catch her fancy. She thought privately that if she had a night robe as magnificent as the one Margaret wore, she would wear it all day, every day, and not merely when she had dispensed with her farthingale.

  Made of bright red wool, its bodice embroidered with roses in gold thread, the robe was trimmed with white lace, had sleeves trailing nearly to the floor in the medieval style, and was fastened around Margaret’s narrow waist with a long gold cord. Since the garment was designed to be worn in comfort at the end of a day spent in corsets and hoops, it had no framework of its own but clung becomingly to her voluptuous figure. Her cheeks reflected the gown’s bright color, her eyes sparkled, and her unbound raven hair fell in loose curls to her hips.

  “You look beautiful,” Mary Kate told her sincerely.

  “Certes, ye cheer a room, Mistress Douglas,” Morag said with a wry smile, adding, “I’ll just gae doonstairs, lassie, tae see that all’s weel wi’ the menfolk. I mun make certain o’ the food for the feasting, as weel, but I’ll return when ye’ve done tae help ye mak ready.”

  Mary Kate poured herself a cup of ale, then poured out another for her guest. “Will you take porridge, Margaret?”

  “Oh, Mary Kate, do not take ceremony with me. We are family now, so I shall help myself. Did I hear Adam say last night that you will be leaving today?”

  “Aye, after the feasting has well begun.”

  “What, no proper highland bedding?”

  “Margaret!” Mary Kate blushed, but when Margaret only grinned at her and spread marmalade on a scone with lavish abandon, she added, “Adam wants to put as much road behind us as possible before dark. You know he is taking me to Tornary. ’Tis a journey that will take us at least five days, I believe.”

  “Well, it won’t, and I do not believe he ought to deny you the fun of your own wedding festivities. You have never traveled with Adam, but I have, and believe me, though he may say five days, you’ll do it in three. It is not as though you will travel with a cavalcade, after all, and the distance is less than a hundred and fifty miles.”

  “But tomorrow is Sunday, and moreover, that is a great many miles, for my father says the roads are in a dreadful state.”

  “The roads are dry,” Margaret said, twinkling, “and that is all that will matter to my brother, Sunday or no. He says you are an excellent horsewoman, so although you might briefly honor some small kirk along the way with your presence, I’ll wager you’ll spend your third night at Tornary. You might as well spend tonight right here.”

  Mary Kate shook her head. Though she did not say so, she was grateful that Douglas’s high-handed methods would prove useful for once in that they would spare her the embarrassment of the rowdy highland bedding ceremony with guests standing around the bed drinking to their health and their potential fruitfulness till none was left standing. She was grateful, too, to learn that Douglas would not expect her to spend her future Sundays attending day-long religious services. “Adam has already made the decision to leave as soon as we can manage to do so,” she said quietly. “Tell me about Tornary.”

  “Tornary?” Margaret was instantly diverted, as Mary Kate had hoped she would be. “Hasn’t he told you?” When Mary Kate shook her head, she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Men are so stupid. Let me see, I have not been there for a long time. Adam said he brought back a great many furnishings from his trip to the continent last year when he visited France on the king’s behalf, but men have no notion of what is suitable, so I put little faith in his assurance that everything is of the finest quality. You will not have rushes underfoot, however, except in the great hall, for he bought beautiful carpets. My lady mother has several of them at Strachan Court. He brought lace from Brussels, too, for my wedding gown, and it is exquisite, so he does have some taste.”

  “Yes, but I want to know what the house looks like, and what the nearest town is, and…well, all that sort of thing. T
he house must be fair-sized if it boasts a great hall.”

  “House?” Margaret stared at her. “My dear, Tornary is no house. It is a castle. Didn’t you know?”

  “A castle?”

  “Aye, in Teviotdale atop the edge of a steep, bracken-grown slope on the north bank of the river Teviot. The proper name for the original pile, which overlooked a Roman road some five or six miles west of the present location, was Torr na Righe, castle of the king, and was no more than a motte and bailey on a hilltop overlooking Borthwick Water in the midst of a forest. Though I am no great hand at history, I do know that Tornary existed in the thirteenth century.”

  “So old?” Mary Kate was wide-eyed.

  “Aye, it was English then, but later the castle was captured by Sir William Douglas, and by the early fifteenth century the property had passed to the Black Douglas earls, who built a courtyard castle where Tornary is now, on the river. The original is naught now but a pile of rubble crowning the hill above Tornary village. The Black Douglases displeased James the Second somehow, and the king himself stabbed the eighth earl, William, in Stirling Castle. Then, he defeated William’s brother at the battle of Arkinholm and the Douglas lands were confiscated by the crown. My grandfather retrieved possession of Tornary partly because he was a bitter enemy of his own cousin, the Earl of Angus, whom James, the Fifth detested, but even more, it is said, because he shared with the king a passion for bedding simple country girls. My grandfather could not boast, like the king often did, of having fathered eight children by his various mistresses, but I believe there were a number of them. In any event, he was not a man of violence, and whenever the political situation became heated, he very sensibly contracted gout and retired to Tornary. My father is likewise no fiery warrior, so he attracted no attention during the difficulties twenty years ago, and now the castle belongs to Adam.” Pausing for breath, Margaret reached for another scone.