by Amanda Scott
Her suddenly unpredictable temper stirring again, she crossed the room in swift, angry strides and lifted the latch. The door refused to budge.
The villain had locked her in!
Shutting her eyes and drawing a breath, she warned herself that losing one’s temper brought no good, and wondered at herself for losing hers with him.
Even Fiona was no longer able to stir her to such fury. And she had long ago learned to take Phaeline in stride, accepting her authority and reacting with submissive calm even to her complaining and her scolds.
Turning from the door, Mairi picked up the stool and carried it back to where she had found it. Then, realizing that light was fast fading in the chamber, she decided it would be only sensible to take stock of its contents.
Her first and most urgent need was a night jar, and she found one near the curtained bed. Feeling better after she had relieved herself, she moved to the kists he had indicated and opened the first.
The fabrics inside were wonderful, silks and satins, soft cambric shifts and woolen scarves and gloves, even stockings, shoes, and slippers. Removing the stout hide boots she had put on to walk to the river, she soon found that the footwear was all a little larger than she normally wore, but not uncomfortably so.
Finding a hairbrush and comb, she took off her veil and the net she wore under it. Then, before unbraiding her plaits, she went to the washstand and poured water from the ewer to wash her face and hands. Next, collecting her cloak from the settle, she found a hook for it on the wall by the door.
Her first impulse had been to disdain the use of anything he had provided. But as she picked up the brush to deal with her untidy hair, she recalled that she had on her least favorite kirtle. She had chosen it on purpose for her walk to the river.
Now, she looked ruefully down at its rumpled, faded blue skirt.
The villain was bringing supper to her. She would be alone with him again, because although he plainly had servants—she had seen a number of them in the kitchen—he just as plainly did not mean to provide anyone for her.
“Faith,” she muttered. “He cannot give me a woman even to help me dress. What self-respecting woman would agree to help him keep me captive?”
She often conferred with herself so. In a situation that promised long periods of undesired solitude, however, it brought home to her just how alone she was and how far from home.
At the thought, unexpected tears welled in her eyes. When one spilled down her cheek, she dashed it away. She would not let anything the man did upset her so easily. She would find a way instead to defeat him.
“I must.”
Believing he would expect further defiance, she imagined Fiona in her place and knew that her sister would try to scream the tower down. She would surely defy Robert Maxwell at every turn until she had exhausted herself.
In fairness to Fiona, her tactics often worked. But they did not suit Mairi.
She wondered if coaxing would persuade Maxwell to free her but decided he was unlikely to succumb to such a strategy. She also doubted that she could bring herself to coax him. She certainly would not flutter her eyelashes at him the way Fiona fluttered hers at their father whenever she was being outrageous.
Mairi’s thoughts continued along these lines as she sorted through the items in the two large kists. But no plan presented itself. Resigning herself for at least the one night to putting up with things as they were, she shook out a fresh cambric shift, a green woolen underskirt, and a tunic of deliciously soft rose-pink velvet.
Stripping off the clothes she had worn all day, still damp from their hours on the water, she noted again the cold breeze wafting more intensively now through the open window. Unwilling to shut out what little light remained by closing the shutter, she dressed quickly and slipped her feet into a pair of matching rose-silk slippers with ribbon ties. The tunic fit well enough, but the skirt was much too long.
Having seen a small covered basket with scissors, needles, and threads for mending in one of the kists, she might have hemmed it but decided to do so later and take care in the meantime not to trip. Only as she clasped her own silver-linked girdle over the gown and adjusted its position at her hips did she realize that she still had the keys to the Annan House pantry and buttery attached to it.
Biting her lip at the mental image that arose of Phaeline’s likely reaction to their loss, Mairi decided her stepmother would curse her absence more sincerely than she might have before that discovery.
However, finding the keys reminded her that the only thing in the kists that might occupy her for a time had been the mending basket. She wondered how she would keep from going mad with boredom if her captor kept her locked up for long.
Time crept then until she feared she might go mad before she got supper.
She stared out the window until the cliffs opposite hers vanished into dusky gray shadows. Hoping that there might be a moon visible through the other, still shuttered window, she went to it and felt for its latch hooks, muttering to herself when she discovered they were of heavy steel and fit tightly into steel eyes.
She got the lower hook out, whereupon the shutter seemed to tremble with relief as great as her own. The higher hook fit tighter, and she had to stand on the three-legged stool to get purchase. By putting the heel of her hand under the hook and shoving upward with all her strength, she felt it move at last. Her hand hurt, so she stopped to rub away the indentation the metal had pressed into it before she tried again, giving the hook a sharp upward jab.
The hook flew up, and the shutter flew open, bringing a gale in with it and striking her shoulder hard enough to knock her off balance. Jumping awkwardly back off the stool, she stepped on the hem of her too-long skirt and sat down hard just as the door opened from the landing.
Wind gusted through the room from the newly opened window, blowing the bed hangings as it dashed wildly about and through the other window.
“What the devil do you think you are doing?” Maxwell demanded.
She glowered at him from the floor. He stood there in the doorway and appeared to be holding a tray. She smelled warm mutton, so at least he ignored Lent. “I wanted more light and thought there might be a moon,” she said. “One can hardly see in here. Why did you not at least bring a candle?”
“I did,” he said. “Your windstorm blew it out as I opened the door.”
“Oh.” She moved to stand up and trod on her hem again but managed, awkwardly, to get to her feet.
Meantime, he set the tray on the floor and hurried to slam and latch the shutter, evicting the gale. “Don’t open this one without first closing the other,” he said. “The wind nearly always blows from the west or southwest here, so the window overlooking the bay gets only a breeze. This one can bring in a tempest.”
“You said only that it provided a fine view,” she reminded him.
“So I did, but ’tis wiser to wait for a calm day to enjoy it. Wait until we have a storm, though. This wind is nowt to what you’ll see—aye, and hear—then.”
“I don’t like storms, so I trust I’ll be long gone by then,” she said, lifting her skirts so she would not trip. The smell of roast mutton was making her mouth water.
“Did you hurt yourself when you fell?” he asked as he finished hooking the shutter back into place.
“Just my pride because you came in,” she said. “I’m sorry you saw that, but thank you for bringing supper. Have you candles here—or flint, come to that?”
“I have both, aye. But let me get that tray up off—Here you!” he exclaimed, leaping with unexpected speed toward the still open doorway.
Mairi saw a flash of movement as a small shadow dashed through the doorway and no doubt on down the stairs.
“Mercy, was that a rat?”
“Nay, just a small feline thief,” he said as he shut the door. “I think it may have snagged some of our food.”
“Our food?”
“I want to share your meal if you’ve no objection.” He moved to s
et the tray on the settle before he turned and added, “If my presence will spoil it for you, you have only to say so and I’ll leave you in peace.”
“Prithee, do not suggest peace to me just now,” she begged. “I have been yearning for a task to occupy my hands and keep my mind from dwelling on my situation. In troth, I am more likely to die of boredom than to object to sharing a meal. Otherwise, I’d point out the extreme impropriety of your even being in my bedchamber. At this point, though, it seems priggish to quibble over such a thing.”
“Your virtue is in no danger from me, my lady,” he said with earnestness she had not heard from him before. “I promise you I will not harm you any more than I have already done by abducting you.”
“Good sakes, you stole my reputation with that act alone,” she snapped. “So do not tell me again that you will not harm me. I am grateful to know that I need not fear rape. But others will never believe that you didn’t…That is, once my abduction becomes known…” She spread her hands, letting him fill in the rest for himself.
“Calm your fidgets, lass,” he said. “When you inherit your father’s wealth, if not long before then, you will have offers aplenty.”
The breath caught in her throat, and she stared at him in horror as, with a scratch of flint and a glow of tinder, the candle he held caught flame.
Hearing Lady Mairi’s quick intake of breath, Rob looked up to see horror on her beautiful, candlelit face. “What is it?” he asked. “What have I said?”
“They mean to kill him, don’t they?” she said.
“Kill who?”
“Whom,” she said, but as though her thoughts were elsewhere. “My father, of course. I can hardly say you did not warn us that there would be trouble, but—”
“Don’t be a fool,” he snapped. “And don’t correct my grammar.”
Her blush visible even in the candle’s glow, she grimaced and said, “I fear I responded as automatically as I would have with my sister.” Then, without actually apologizing for correcting him, she said, “Why is it foolish to believe that? You say I will inherit his wealth. And you did warn him that the sheriff would seize—”
Impatiently, he said as he picked up a gate-leg table near the wall, “I said the sheriff has the power to seize your estates, not that he would do so immediately.”
“Prithee, do stop interrupting me.”
“Was that not what you were going to say?”
“It was, aye, but—”
“Then I need not listen to the whole before replying.” He set the small table down in front of the settle and began to put up its leaves.
“You cannot possibly know what I was about to say just then! But you interrupted me again. In any event—”
“It was rude. Aye, I ken that fine. And for the rudeness I will apologize. But I do know what you were going to say both times.”
“What, then?”
“The same thing, that interrupting you was unmannerly. So, now that we have that sorted out,” he went on without waiting for her to reply, “shall we eat our supper—what that wee villain has left us of it?”
“It didn’t look large enough to be a cat,” she said. “How old is it?”
“Just weaned, if I understood my grandmother…or no, it was my nephew, or mayhap it was Gibby who told me its mother had stopped feeding her kits.”
“Who is Gibby?”
“A lad of nine or ten who is another acquisition from my grandmother,” he said as he moved the tray from the settle to the table.
“Does your grandmother live here, then?”
“Nay, she lives much of the year with my brother and his family, and the rest with her son in Glasgow. Trailinghail was part of her tocher when she married my grandfather, Lord Kelso. He left it to me when he died about four years ago.”
“Was it not still hers if it was part of her portion?”
“Nay, lass, the lands usually become the husband’s to dispose unless the wife bears a title in her own right, as you will one day.”
“My future is not as certain as you make it sound,” she said with a sigh.
“I know, aye, but from what I hear, ’tis likely,” he said, lighting a second and third candle from the first and placing them all on the table. He liked to see what he was eating when he could. “Sit down, lass, here on the settle.”
She hesitated, and he knew without her saying so that she did not want to sit beside him. “I’ll draw up yon stool for myself,” he said.
Catching her lower lip between her teeth and shooting him a rueful look, she said, “You do see what is in my mind. But I do not think I should apologize for it.”
“Nay, you owe me no apologies. The boot is on the other foot.”
“Sakes, I hope you don’t mean to pretend that you are sorry for abducting me,” she said scornfully. “I shan’t believe a word of it if you do.”
“What I did was necessary,” he said. “That is not to deny, however, that I regret having to take such a course.”
“Now you are quibbling.”
“Aye, perhaps,” he admitted, thinking as he moved the stool to the table that the way her eyes sparkled in the candlelight and reflected the flames made her look magical, the way a child might imagine a good witch or a fairy queen to look.
“Why do you stare at me like that? Have I got something on my face?”
He chuckled. “Nay, I was just admiring the way your eyes shoot sparks even when your voice sounds as soothing as water trickling over stones.”
“Very pretty speech for a villainous rogue, sir,” she said. “Do not think you will charm me again so easily.”
“Are you saying that I have charmed you before?”
Ignoring that gambit without hesitation, she said, “What you did today was shameful, and I have yet to hear any good reason for it. Nor do you answer my questions. Are you going to serve me some of that mutton?”
He proceeded to do so, placing three generous slices on a wooden trencher for her, along with a cold chicken leg. As he set the plate of raspberry tarts where she could help herself, he was glad to see her take her eating knife from its narrow sheath on her girdle, and to see that the knife was the common lady’s implement.
He would not have wanted to trust her with his dirk and had no doubt that he would anger her again if he suggested she eat with her fingers.
“Do you want some barley water?” he asked, hefting the jug.
“I do, aye,” she said.
“What question have I failed to answer?” he asked as he filled both goblets.
“For one thing, you have not yet explained why you abducted me, although I have asked you more than once.”
“I did it in the hope of avoiding clan war and the considerable number of deaths that would result from one,” he said.
“You did say ’twas to avoid much bloodshed. That sounded ridiculous.”
“You called it ‘noble intent,’” he said.
“I expect I did not mean that,” she said.
“It is not noble, but it is practical,” he said. “I thought long before I decided it might work. You know that my brother sent me to Dunwythie Mains to persuade your father to submit to his authority. Sithee, he kens fine that if your father submits, others will emulate him just as they do now in his refusal.”
Her mouth opened but shut again firmly. She reached for her goblet.
“What?” he asked.
“’Tis naught we need discuss now,” she said. “By ‘submitting,’ you mean, do you not, that the sheriff wants my father to agree to let him collect all the gelt that Annandale owes to the Crown, rather than continuing in our usual way?”
“That, aye, and some other things,” he said. “It is all rather complicated.”
“I think it is simple,” she said in much the same casual tone as his. “Your brother wants to acquire more power and thinks to do so at my father’s expense. That brings me to the second question you have not answered.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve not actually said that your brother does not mean to kill my father.”
Words leaped to his tongue to deny it forcefully. But the intent way she watched him made him leave the words unspoken. He thought, then said frankly, “I cannot swear to what is in another man’s mind, especially my brother’s. I know only that he is angry because your father and the others refuse to bow to his authority. I will say, though, that he’d be a damned fool to kill Dunwythie.”
“Why?” she asked as she finally took a sip of her barley water.
“Because to do so would start a war between the Maxwells and the Annandale clans. And it is not Alex’s place as Sheriff of Dumfries to start clan wars. Nor is it his place as a chieftain of Clan Maxwell to do such a daft thing.”
“Might there be any other powerful Maxwell who would wish to do so?”
“Nay, for that could only mean our chief, Maxwell of Caerlaverock. He prefers court life in Stirling or a peaceful existence at his house near Glasgow to greater exertion. I’d wager he expects Alex to keep the peace, not to break it.”
Niggling doubt stirred even as he said it. Maxwell of Caerlaverock still called himself so despite years since the castle’s ruin and his lack of success in stirring anyone else to aid in rebuilding it. He might rejoice at Alex’s determination to control all of Dumfriesshire—especially if Alex did not ask for his assistance and presented him afterward with the “chief’s share” of the income.
“You do not look as if you believe your own words, Robert Maxwell,” Mairi said, eyeing him narrowly.
“You might find it more convenient to call me Rob,” he suggested.
“You do make a good argument against assassinating my father,” she said, clearly ignoring his suggestion. “However, I do not believe that your brother has considered that argument, or he would not be threatening to seize our lands. He did issue such a threat, did he not? It was not of your own devising?”
“Nay, it was not,” he said. “But Alex believes simply knowing that he can seize them will bring your father and the others into line.”
“Then he does not know them,” she said tartly, pushing her trencher away. “Heed me well, sir. I can see that you hope to persuade my father by holding me prisoner until he submits to the Maxwell demands. But such tactics will persuade him of naught but Maxwell perfidy, and perfidy he will fight to his last breath.”
