“What did you do? Please tell me you didn’t do anything daft!”
Matthew scowled at her. “The one daft thing I’ve done with my brother is to not have killed him when I found him in bed with my wife. That’s something I fear I’ll live to regret many times over.”
He tightened the girth one more time and led the horse over to the stable door. “But I told him; I warned him that if I ever catch him touching a wife of mine again I’ll geld him.” He ignored her shocked exclamation and swung himself up into the saddle. “Will you light a candle? In case she should come back and not find her way?”
She patted his leg. “Of course I will.”
He found her sitting just off the road, a couple of miles from Cumnock. By then he was worried sick, imagining one scenario after the other, all of them ending with her being carried forever out of his life.
If it hadn’t been for the horse’s little sound he might have missed her, a dark shape against a slightly less dark background. She was sitting just off the verge, shoulders hunched against the drizzle, and when he approached he saw her stiffen. He dismounted and dropped down beside her, arms propped on his knees.
“Why did you just go?” he said, breaking an endless silence.
She had no idea, she muttered; it definitely had something to do with coming face to face with Margaret and discovering herself to be a faded copy of a glorious original, but just as much with the shame she felt at having turned her anger at Luke on him, letting him pay for his brother’s intimidation. Most of all it was because he hadn’t cared enough to come looking for her last night, hadn’t even bothered to say something to her this morning.
“I was so angry with you, that you would toss me like that…” Matthew said, feeling shamed.
“I told you I was sorry.”
“And why did you stop here?” No cover from wind or rain, it made a dismal spot to spend the night.
“I…” she bit her lip. “I just felt like it.”
“Oh, aye? You like sitting out in the rain?”
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she mumbled, and he could hear how she hated having to admit it. “I was thinking of going to Edinburgh or London, but what was I to do there? How would I earn my living?”
“On your back, in all probability,” Matthew said harshly, frightened by the image of her disappearing into the teeming underbelly of a city the size of Edinburgh. “But you’re not going anywhere, are you?” he added, softening his voice.
“Not much choice, is there?”
“Alex,” Matthew sighed, “you’re my wife. You don’t need anywhere else to go, because you belong with me.”
She turned back the hood of her cloak and faced him. “I’m not used to being so dependent on one person.”
“Neither am I,” he said seriously.
By the time they got back home, Alex was stiff with cold, no matter that Matthew had wrapped her in both their cloaks. She stumbled into the kitchen, dropped cloak and shawl onto the floor, and at his urgings sat down as close as she could to the fire.
“More,” she said, waving her cup in the direction of Matthew.
“Not too much more,” he warned, replenishing her cup with hot milk before spiking it with brandy and a dollop of honey. He added an extra dash of brandy to his own cup before coming over to sit with her by the kitchen table. The small strongbox lay on the floor, its contents removed to be hidden elsewhere, with his father’s secret cache. Her wide-eyed look at the sight of the gold and the small pieces of jewellery had gratified him – at least she need no longer think it was her wee trinkets that he was after.
“I didn’t see it.”
“See what?” Alex yawned.
“The likeness.”
Alex raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Poor you; you need glasses.”
“I didn’t see it from the first. If I had, I wouldn’t have gone near you with less than a six foot pole between us.” He smiled at her. “It would have made it difficult to bandage your ribs.”
“Huh. Sometimes I wonder if my ribs really needed bandaging, or if that was just an excuse to have me undress.”
“An excuse,” he said, laughing when she swiped at him. He grabbed her hand, gathered her to sit in his lap. “Once I did notice, well then it was a bit late in the day.”
“Hmm.” Alex regarded him thoughtfully. “She’s very beautiful.”
“Oh, aye. That she is. Very beautiful.” He felt the ice splinters bury themselves in him, but decided to add a bit more fuel to the flattering fire of jealousy he saw burning in her. “Like an angel.”
“You think?” It came out very cold.
Matthew buried his nose in her cleavage and exhaled. “A fallen angel, while you…” He tickled her with his hair.
“…am not an angel.” She squirmed on his lap.
“No, too hot-blooded by far.” He nuzzled her neck. “A handful.”
“Somehow I don’t think you mind,” she said, twisting so that she straddled him. Now it was him that fidgeted.
“No,” he breathed, “I don’t think I do.”
*
Over the coming days, Alex gravitated in the direction of Margaret’s cottage, overcome by an instinctual need to size up the competition. Sometimes she saw her, mostly alone but at times with a child. They never spoke, at most nodded before going their different ways.
One day she heard someone laughing, a high happy burbling, and Alex smiled in return, detouring to see who was making the sound.
A sturdy little boy sat by the running stream and dropped acorns into the rushing water. Every now and then that contagious laughter just bubbled out of him. When he turned his head, she bit back on a surprised exclamation. This must have been what Matthew had looked like as a child; dark, tumbling hair, wide hazel eyes and a small cleft chin. Nothing at all of Luke, she mused, eyes narrowing as she grasped at a half-baked thought that whizzed through her brain. Several years bonking the daylights out of each other, and only one child? Hmm.
“What do you want?” Margaret planted herself to shield the boy from her. Alex looked at her and peeked round the side to smile down at the child, who readily smiled back, an exact copy of Matthew.
“What do you want?” Margaret repeated belligerently. She flicked a strand of black hair off her forehead and sank her eyes into Alex.
“I was just passing by.” With an ironic nod Alex sidestepped her. She threw one last look at the child. “He looks just like his father,” she said, very pleased by the way all colour drained from Margaret’s face.
Chapter 24
Every Sunday, Simon would ride in well before noon, slide off his horse, and rush to embrace his wife. They made an odd couple, she an ostrich, him a strutting pigeon, but anyone not blind couldn’t help but notice the tangible attraction between them.
“Why isn’t she living with him?” Alex asked Matthew, watching with astonished amusement as Simon swept Joan off her feet and carried her inside.
Matthew’s features darkened. “He had some misfortune some years back, after my trial.”
“Misfortune?”
Matthew sighed and looked away. “They found him in a close, and they beat him and promised they’d do the same to his wife, closet royalist that she must be.” He fisted his hand and punched it against his leg. “She’s safer here.”
Joan laughed disparagingly when Alex confronted her about all this.
“It’s none so bad, and once you’re settled in, I’ll be going to live with Simon – now that he’s finally found us acceptable lodgings.”
“You don’t need to stay for my sake, I’ll manage.” Alex heard Mrs Brodie snort behind her back, and considered throwing the contents of the slop pail in the housekeeper’s face, but decided it would be unnecessarily antagonistic.
“I’ll stay some weeks more,” Joan said.
*
“Have you heard any more of yon Hector?” Matthew asked after dinner. He moved his rook, grinned at Simon’s responding move with his knight.
“No, but he hasn’t come back, has he? They hang spies at present.” Simon threw them both a worried look. “And you’d best be careful, Matthew. They hang escaped convicts as well.” Over Simon’s head, Alex met Matthew’s eyes. He smiled and stretched out his long legs, his toes nudging hers.
“They must catch me first.”
“Aye, there is that,” Simon agreed, “and you may be a bit weak in the arm but you run like a hart.”
“Weak in the arm? Come here, you, and I’ll show you.”
“Do you think he’s dead then?” Alex said, interrupting their horseplay.
“Who? Oh, Hector Olivares. Probably,” Simon said, smoothing down his rumpled coat. “Does that make you feel better?”
Alex attempted a disinterested shrug. “Why should it? I don’t know the man, do I?” But it did; however awful a person it made her, she was glad Hector Olivares was dead.
*
“So, are you a royalist?” Alex asked Joan some days later. Joan gave her a disapproving look, and tilted her head in the direction of Mrs Brodie.
“You shouldn’t ask,” she said once they were alone. “It’s not an easy subject.” She sighed and shook her head. “One brother a puritan, the other a wild eyed royalist. It’s enough to make your head burst.”
“Puritan?” Alex bit back on a smile. “Matthew?” Definitely not in bed.
Joan rolled her eyes at her and held out her hand. “Let me see that.” She inspected the rip Alex had just mended before going on. “Matthew was only a lad when the Covenanters defeated the king that was, and when the Scottish Army rode south to fight, he begged Da to let him go. When Da said no, Matthew tried to sneak off but was caught and given the belting of his life, and he already fourteen. He wept when he heard of Marston Moor, telling Da that it was his fault that he, Matthew, had not been there to fight and win against the king.” Joan smiled, shaking her head. “It was Mam’s doing. Egging him on with all her talk of all men being equal in the eyes of the Lord.”
Joan broke off, eyes straying to the window. “It was always Mam and Matthew, it was always Da and me, and for Luke it was Margaret – he had no one else. Always alone, Luke was, until the day Da brought Margaret home.”
“Poor him,” Alex said, not even attempting to sound sincere.
“The fighting was far from over, and one day Matthew disappeared and went to fight against the royalist rebels, against Montrose.” Joan stabbed her needle through the coarse linen and worked in silence for some minutes. “He was a lad, Alex, and he came home after the battle of Philiphaugh, shocked by what he’d seen and done. It was the murder of the Irish, I think.”
“Murder of the Irish?”
Joan hitched her shoulders. “They surrendered, the Irish soldiers, and were promised their lives. Instead they were killed – them and their camp followers, down to the smallest bairn.”
“Anyway,” Joan went on, ignoring Alex’s shocked exclamation, “a few days after Matthew returned, a troop of Horse rode in, and one of them recognised Matthew. They told Da he must be very proud of his son, and then they hauled Matthew onto a horse and told him he was coming with them, for hadn’t he signed up with the Horse? Matthew didn’t want to go, he was weeping, big lad that he was, and Da tried to make them let him go, but the officer just shrugged and said it was easy; come with them or hang as a deserter. So he rode south with them, and when he came back four years later, he had changed from a lad with romantic notions of equality among men, to a man with the firm conviction that all free men rule themselves.” Joan sighed, an inward look in her eyes.
“He came back in June of 1649, a lean, tanned man with his buff coat hanging open. I scarcely recognised him, and in many ways he was a stranger, the lad who’d ridden out all those years ago permanently gone. Instead here was a man, a man whose eyes regarded the world with a hint of caution, who no longer smiled and laughed quite as readily as he was wont to do.” Joan smiled at Alex. “But he laughs now. I hear him laughing in your room, and every time I do, I wonder what you might be doing.”
“Umm,” Alex said, extremely embarrassed.
Joan chuckled and bent her head to the buttonhole she was stitching. “Mam was so glad to have him back. And Luke, well Luke was not yet fifteen, and he followed Matthew like a wee dog, asking him about the war, and had he ever been wounded, and what was it like to kill a man. He was too young to understand that Matthew wanted to forget, and Matthew was too young to explain. He just ignored him, became close-lipped and hard-eyed whenever Luke was close, until the day when he exploded and told Luke to leave him be, to stop nagging at him like an old wife, and that he had no time for untried laddies that knew nothing of what it was like to fight or die.”
Joan handed a new shirt for hemming to Alex and folded the finished shirt in her lap.
“Luke never went near Matthew again, and a year or so later, Luke was out on his ear and as far as I know, they’ve never since spoken properly to each other. Well; now I suppose it’s too late.”
“Probably,” Alex nodded.
“Luke was always…” Joan frowned. “…unpredictable. As a child he threw tantrums, as an adolescent he’d be smitten by huge rages and the only one who could reach him in these black destructive moods was Margaret. He’s still like that, very dangerous once he loses control.”
“Tell me about it.” It had taken days for the imprints of his fingers on Alex’s wrists to fade.
Joan didn’t seem to have heard. “She lied, I fear. Margaret wasn’t entirely truthful when Luke came back. God knows what fanciful stories she told Luke, but I don’t think they painted Matthew in a favourable light.”
In Alex’s opinion, Luke wouldn’t have been willing to listen to any story not casting his brother as an ogre, and to be fair Margaret had probably not quite understood the consequences of spinning together this little yarn in which Matthew figured as a cross between Bluebeard and a particularly disgusting Orc. She threw a look out of the window and folded together her work.
“I’m going for a walk, want to come?”
“Walking with you is far too exhausting.”
“Exercise, Joan. It’s good for you.”
“Hmph,” Joan produced yet another garment from her work basket.
“Suit yourself.” Alex was sick of sewing, and the autumn day was far too bright to waste it sitting indoors.
*
Matthew sank back behind the trees. In front of him Alex was singing, arms extended as she swung her hips this way and that, and even from here he could see how she peeked down at the way the skirts swirled.
She growled out the words, bending over at the waist in a series of quick, jerky movements that made her hair stand wildly round her head. He smiled, recognising the song as something she’d sung for him on the moors, all about her being made for loving him.
She sang on, making some lewd pelvic movements that had Matthew laughing, before dropping to lie on the ground with her eyes closed, one hand on her belly and a wide smile on her lips. She looked so achingly happy, and a rustle of premonition ran up his spine. He went over to her and her smile widened into a grin.
“Enjoy the show?” she asked, without opening her eyes.
“You knew I was there?”
She just nodded.
“So that’s why you were doing those…” He made some thrusting movements himself. “…and you do them right well, you do.”
“Well you would know, wouldn’t you?” came the floating reply. She’d undone the top of her bodice, and her breasts swelled against the linen below. She lay in a pile of autumn leaves, russets, golds and faded greens, and in her hair he saw the red of a cluster of rowan berries.
“You look like a wood sprite,” he told her and kneeled down to scatter a handful of leaves over her skirt.
“Really? Then you must be Pan, all curly haired and wild.” She opened her eyes fully, dark and promising, and lifted her hand to his chest.
Agreeably drowsy after their lovemaking,
Matthew pillowed his head on her lap afterwards, enjoying how her fingers combed his hair.
“Do you love me?” The question burst from her.
He was glad he was lying as he was, his face hidden against the folds of her skirts. Love her? He laughed, bit her through the fabric of her garments. Love her? He buried himself deeper into her lap, inhaled her scent.
“What could possibly make you think I do?” He sat up and cupped her cheek. “You’re a wee fool to have to ask me that, Alex.”
“But you’ve never said it. It’s only me who tells you…when we’re, you know.” She hitched her shoulders expressively. “When we’re in bed and when you hold me, I tell you how much I love you, but you never do.”
He cleared his throat and looked away. He’d told Margaret repeatedly; he’d whispered ‘I love you’ into her black, black hair, he’d kissed ‘I love you’ down her front. And she’d taken the gift of his heart and ripped it apart.
“I show you, don’t I?” He kept his eyes on the curl of hair he was winding round his finger. He released it and watched it bounce into a corkscrew before meeting her eyes.
“Yes, but I’d very much like to hear it. Sometime.”
“Sometime,” he promised, and got to his feet.
* * *
After weeks in the Tolbooth, Hector was so filthy he could barely stand his own scent. His cheeks bristled with heavy stubble, his skin itched, and when the door opened the shaft of light cut like laser across his cornea.
“The captain wants to see you,” the warden said.
“Finally!” Hector replied. “He took his time about it.”
“I dare say he has other things to concern him than the fate of a spy.”
Hector eyed the warden with dislike but held his tongue and shuffled after him in his chains.
“A mistake!” Hector gasped, drawing in air in long, steadying gulps. Jesus! He raised his dripping head in the direction of the officer. “How many times must I tell you? I’m no spy!”
The officer nodded, and Hector’s head was yet again pushed into the barrel of water, his hands flapping ineffectually in their chains.
A Rip in the Veil (The Graham Saga) Page 24
