The Secret Clan: The Complete Series

by Amanda Scott

The gates stood just ahead, so she hoped he would not press her too hard to say more. It was not his way, but she wanted him to say he would not tell Chisholm.

  He did not say anything for a time, and when he did, she discerned an enigmatic note in his voice that she had not heard before.

  “You were alone with him for some time.”

  “Aye.” The word was barely audible, because her breath had stopped in her throat. She wondered how much he would demand to know, and she wondered, too, if she could manage not to tell him that the Fox had kissed her or, worse, that she had kissed him back. That thought led to the next. What if he asked if she had met the Fox more often than today and the day he rescued her from Francis Dalcross? She did not want to lie to Alex, but how much dared she tell him?

  “We can talk about that later perhaps,” he said.

  Keeping her voice carefully calm to conceal how much the answer mattered to her, she said, “You still have not said about telling your father.”

  “I don’t think we need to trouble him straightaway with the details of your adventure,” he said. “He may, of course, hear about them from other sources.”

  “Who would tell him?”

  He reached out then and caught her horse’s bridle, bringing both horses to a standstill. “You are not employing your usual keen wit, mistress,” he said, looking directly at her but still employing his normal, light drawl. “You let the Dalcrosses’ men see you again in the Fox’s presence. Whether they tell the sheriff or his whelp, both will certainly come to know of it, and when they do, one or the other is going to demand information from you, and they will come here to seek it.”

  “I won’t tell them anything,” she said fiercely. “I know nothing that could help them. I’ve never seen his face, nor has he told me anything useful.”

  “Faith, mistress, there is no call for such heat,” he said. “We will do what we can to protect you, of course. I just want to be sure you understand that your actions today will bear unhappy consequences.”

  Even the mention of consequences made her glad that Patrick was miles to the south, but she realized, too, that even if Alex did not tell his father that she had been with the Fox again, Chisholm would learn soon enough. Remembering that the Dalcrosses’ men had seen him snatch her from her saddle and plunge off the cliff with her, she wondered how she could have thought for a moment that she could keep it quiet. That part of the story would be all over the glens before dusk.

  She sighed.

  “I know that you have been bored at Ardintoul and probably at Dundreggan, too,” Alex said in his mild way, “but I’d like you to promise me that you will not put yourself at risk again as you did today.”

  “I will be careful,” she said. “I did not endanger myself purposely.”

  “Aye, perhaps, but danger often lurks unseen, ready to pounce when one least expects it, and I do not want to have to face Patrick if aught happens to you.”

  “He knows me too well to blame you,” Bab said.

  “And I know him, mistress. He expects me to keep you safe.”

  She saw that the gates had opened. Several Chisholm men-at-arms gazed curiously at them, clearly wondering why they had stopped.

  “We MacRaes are not cowards, sir,” she said, “but I confess I do not regret missing dinner, for I am in no hurry to face your parents or my mother.”

  “Ah, now, as to that,” he said, “my father ordered the meal set back an hour, so you have not missed it, but we will not breathe a word of your adventures to anyone until we must. We do not want to distress anyone unnecessarily.”

  The last bit was so completely in keeping with his usual demeanor that she smiled wryly and said, “You just want to enjoy your dinner in peace.”

  He chuckled. “Mistress, when they learn what happened today, all three of our parents will demand to know why I did not prevent your folly. Believe me, I will take as many meals in peace as I can get before that time arrives, because afterward I shall likely never hear the end of it.”

  Satisfied that he would keep the matter to himself for as long as possible, Bab made no demur when he suggested that they ride on before some of the guards came to fetch them. She felt more in charity with him at that moment than she had since she had thrown the mug at him.

  Claud was thinking hard, and since he was not skilled in that particular exercise, he was making heavy labor of it. It was unfair, he told himself, that he should be saddled with the great, unpredictable wizard Jonah Bonewits as a father and the invincible, even more unpredictable Maggie Malloch as a mother and have so little power of intellect himself. At least he had only five fingers on each hand and not six like his father. Nor did his hair radiate from his head like rays of a red sun, turning yellow at the ends, as Jonah Bonewits’s hair did.

  That was all to the good, he decided, but he still had to make some decisions, and he did not know which course of action would best serve his Highland charge.

  He was glad they had reached the castle again, because he knew Mistress Bab would be safe within its walls as long as no one came seeking her there. He wanted to talk to Maggie, but Lucy had returned as soon as he and the gray gelding had reached dry land, and was sticking to him like a cocklebur.

  “She’s no helping us much, that lass o’ yours,” Lucy said as they shook the dust of the track from themselves and hurried inside. “It be a good arrangement, this marriage ye’ve arranged, and she likes him. I dinna ken why she’d be against it.”

  Claud shrugged. “Mayhap because she doesna like others ordering the course o’ her life,” he said, remembering his own feelings about that sort of thing in days not long past. “But I didna arrange this marriage, Lucy. Her own mam done that, as ye heard for yourself.”

  “Och, aye,” Lucy said with a wink. “I ken how ye do things, Claud. Ye always make it look as if the doing were summat else.”

  “I had nowt tae do with this,” Claud said tersely. “I dinna tell lies. Nor do I plunge me friends in icy water,” he added, voicing his primary grievance.

  “Aye, well if ye didna do it, then it were that Catriona as did,” she said blithely, “and dinna think ye’ll persuade me otherwise, Claud, for ye won’t.”

  Claud did not argue. The wedding might well have been Catriona’s doing, for she had said herself that she wanted them to work together, and the most likely way to arrange that was to arrange a marriage between her Chisholm and his MacRae. He thought someone else had devised the plan before Catriona was in it, however, and that was only one reason that he wanted a word with his mother.

  “Dinna be wroth wi’ me, Claud,” Lucy said coaxingly a few moments later as she leaned close and tickled his cheek.

  For once, his body failed to respond instantly to her touch, and it occurred to him briefly that he had only her word that she did not, as he had believed, share Jonah Bonewits as a father. He remembered in that same fleeting shift of gray matter that Lucy had lied to him before. But even as the thought popped into his mind, it faded and was no more.

  Bab’s satisfaction with the way things had turned out after her adventure with the Fox lasted only until ten o’clock the next morning when she went out to the stables and asked Will to saddle her favorite gelding for her.

  “That gray’s come up lame, mistress,” the gilly said. “Sir Alex said he thought it best to let it rest its leg a day or two afore ye ride it again.”

  “Show me,” Bab said.

  When she examined the indicated leg, she could detect no swelling and found nothing lodged in the horse’s shoe. She frowned, but as she did, she had a clear mental vision of the gelding struggling after her in the turbulent river.

  Knowing that it might easily have injured itself in its plunge off the cliff or during its struggle to reach the shore from the swiftly moving water, she patted its nose gently, murmuring a loving apology before she turned back to Will, saying, “I don’t see anything amiss, myself. Still, I agree that the leg should rest, so you may saddle another horse for me today.�
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  The gilly shook his head. “I canna do that, mistress, for I’ve no other lady’s horse to give ye today.”

  “But surely her ladyship would lend me one of hers.”

  “Aye, and so she would, for she be ever generous,” Will agreed, “but I had me orders earlier to put her horses out to graze in the high meadow. And nae pony we ha’ in the barn be accustomed to skirts, so I canna put ye on one o’ them.”

  “I am an excellent horsewoman,” Bab said firmly, beginning to understand. “I warrant I can manage any horse you have in these tables.”

  “I dinna doubt it, mistress, for I ha’ seen ye ride, but his lordship dinna hold wi’ ladies riding spirited beasts, and I ha’ to answer to him, ye ken.”

  Knowing she could win no battle against an opponent who lacked the authority to surrender, she considered approaching Chisholm directly, but her experience with him told her that he would most likely suggest that she ask Alex to go with her. And Alex, she recalled—also from experience—had a knack for putting obstacles in her path until the only course left to her was one he had suggested.

  She found him at the high table in the hall, apparently just breaking his fast, because half of a manchet loaf, a pewter mug, a basket of fruit, and a jug of ale sat before him. The rest of the hall was empty except for a pair of gillies strewing fresh rushes on the lower hall floor.

  Bab strode across to the dais and stepped onto it, coming to a halt directly across the table from him. He was neatly paring an apple and looked up only when she spoke his name. He did not stand or put down his knife or the apple.

  “Forgive me,” he said with a smile. “ ’Tis childish, I know, but I am attempting to remove this peel in a single, unbroken paring.”

  “I want to ride, sir,” she said bluntly, “but your Will tells me your stable can provide no suitable horse for me today.”

  “It is going to rain,” he said amiably. “I wager you’d get no more than a step outside the gates before those clouds would open and half-drown you.”

  “Fie, sir, it is a beautiful morning, and even should it chance to rain later, if it does more than spit a bit, I shall be astonished.”

  “I should think you’d want to avoid getting soaked two days in a row.”

  Looking quickly over her shoulder to be sure no one else was within earshot, she said, “Pray, do not speak of that here. Someone will hear you.”

  “What if they do? ’Twas a perfectly innocent remark.”

  “It did not rain yesterday,” she reminded him.

  He smiled. “Suffice it to say then, mistress, that because matters here require my attention, I cannot ride out with you today.”

  “You need not do so. I can take Will or one of the other lads if I must.”

  “I would prefer that you wait until I can escort you myself. As you know, my father prefers that I do.”

  “So it is as I suspected,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You mean to keep me a prisoner inside these walls because of what happened yesterday.”

  “A prisoner?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said grimly.

  “I know you would be wise to avoid venturing out until we know what Francis Dalcross and the sheriff mean to do,” he said. “But you are not a prisoner, mistress. What devilish hosts you must think us even to imagine such a thing!”

  For a brief moment, guilt stabbed her, but sharp on its heels came anger. “That is precisely how you do it,” she snapped. “You are devilish, because you pretend to be kind and light-minded when, in fact, you manipulate others so that they must do what you want them to do. That makes you even worse than ordinary men who simply issue orders and expect them to be obeyed.”

  He cocked his head and said with a teasing smile, “So you think I am extraordinary, do you?”

  Without thought, she snatched up the jug of ale in both hands and dashed the contents in his face, startling him so that he leaped to his feet. Knife and peel went flying in one direction, apple in the other, as he grabbed blindly for a napkin.

  Still holding the jug, appalled at what she had done, Bab stared at him in horrified astonishment as he blotted the ale from his eyes and face.

  When he lowered the napkin just enough to look directly at her, for an instant, the fury blazing in his eyes frightened her, but then he shut them for a long moment, and when he opened them and put the napkin down, the fury had gone.

  He said, “I see that I have not lost the knack of irritating you, mistress. Pray forgive me for speaking so thoughtlessly. You have had your revenge though, because I am sure you have ruined my fine doublet.”

  With a sound halfway between a curse and a shriek of exasperation, she stormed from the hall.

  Alex watched her go as he continued to wipe dripping ale from his face, head, and doublet. His sense of the ridiculous, while always active, extended itself only so far, and he decided that the lass should consider herself lucky on two counts. One was that the table had stood between them, and the other was that he had learned through bitter childhood experience with two teasing older brothers to control his volatile temper.

  Rob and Michael had often enjoyed teasing him until he lost his temper and then dunking him in the icy river or doing some other horrid thing to teach him better manners, as they would afterward explain to him. They had toughened him with such treatment, but they had also taught him the wisdom of keeping his own counsel and playing least in sight if he wished to take revenge. In fact, he realized, his brothers had done much by their actions to make him the man he was today.

  His flash of temper over, he was able to smile again. At least, Mistress Bab would not be riding into danger again before they knew exactly what Francis Dalcross had in mind for her. He would prefer simply to tell her to stay inside and explain his reasons, but her attitude toward the foppish Sir Alex was so dismissive that he doubted she would obey him and did not want to deal with the consequences if she fell into Dalcross’s hands again through her own willful disobedience. That his own deceptions exacerbated the situation did not escape his notice.

  As penance, he would endure Hugo’s no doubt stringent comments on the spoiling of another fine doublet, and would do so without protest or rebuke.

  Having managed to elude Lucy at last, Claud hurried to his mother’s parlor, hoping to find her in. He did not understand the power Lucy had to winkle his thoughts away from important matters back to her twinkling self, but she certainly had that power and used it frequently. He did not usually mind, either—indeed, he had strong feelings for her that had not diminished even after learning that they shared the same father or his own dousing in the river. But he had learned, too, that things were not always as they appeared to be or as others declared they were.

  The only one he trusted absolutely was Maggie Malloch.

  She was not at home when he got there, but he had no sooner settled himself in his favorite chair in the parlor than she returned.

  “What’s amiss?” she demanded, flicking a finger to start a fire in the fireplace, and then flicking it again to light more candles in their sconces.

  He watched her, biting off the urge to ask why she should assume something was amiss, because she always seemed to know what he was thinking.

  She ignored his silence while she wiggled her finger again over the little white pipe she held. A thin stream of white smoke curled from it in response, and she took a deep puff before she said, “Well, lad, out wi’ it now.”

  “I dinna ken what tae do,” Claud blurted. “I thought it were a fine notion tae put Mistress Bab lass wi’ the Chisholm heir. ’Twere a good match, I thought.”

  “Is it no a good match, then?”

  He grimaced. “She doesna care for him. At least—”

  “I ken your dilemma, lad,” she interjected with a wave of the pipe. “She may dislike bits o’ the two parts, but d’ye truly think she doesna care for the whole man?”

  “She just upended a jug o’ ale over the whole man! I dinna ken wha
’ tae do!”

  “I canna help ye,” she reminded him.

  “Ye can if ye give equal help tae Catriona,” Claud said.

  “But we dinna ken where Catriona be.”

  “Ye still canna find her?”

  “I havena looked. Since your Lucy apparently rendered Catriona helpless, I ha’ given more help tae her side as I be bound, tae equal matters, but ye must still do your part alone tae succeed in fulfilling your share o’ the bargain.”

  “But I canna decide what tae do,” Claud protested. “Just when I thought I had matters in hand, the lass up and doused him wi’ ale.”

  After taking another thoughtful puff on her pipe, Maggie said, “I dinna think I’ll be breaking any rules an I tell ye a wee secret about making decisions.”

  “What?”

  “The secret be tae think a bit and then tae make one,” she said.

  “But what if my thinking be wrong or I make the wrong decision?”

  “If ye look tae keep the lass safe and happy, ye’ll make the right ones more often than no, but ’tis better tae make a decision even an it proves wrong than tae dither and make nae decision at all. That path only opens the way for your enemies tae prevail, Claud, and that ye must never do. Now, off wi’ ye, or we’ll ha’ half the Circle here, demanding tae ken what mischief we be brewing.”

  Reluctantly, he obeyed, but he could not believe her advice would aid him much, despite her vast powers and vaunted wisdom. It did occur to him, however, that keeping Mistress Bab’s enemies at bay until he could decide what to do might be a good first step to take. A tiny adjustment in the weather might help with that.

  Chapter 15

  If Bab had not felt guilty at once, she did as she hurried up to her chamber. When Alex did not follow her, she was oddly disappointed but also relieved. What demon, she wondered, possessed her to throw things at him? In truth, he had done no more than express concern for her, and when she had railed at him for it, instead of scolding her as most men would have, he had made a joke. Why had her temper snapped as it had, and why could he stir it so easily?