by Amanda Scott
“I expect he did.” She turned away, dying to ask more but reluctant to say anything to him that might disparage Fiona or make him think the worse of her.
“Dow said his lordship caught Will with your sister,” Rob said.
Whirling back to face him, she said, “What can you mean by that?”
“Easy, lass,” he said, resting his hands on her shoulders.
“Sakes, do you not listen? Not only do you persist in calling me so, but now you address me as if I were a nervous mare,” she snapped. Hearing the echo of her own words, she pressed her lips firmly together and glowered at his broad chest.
“Then don’t always assume that I mean the worst,” he retorted. “I meant only that I may be able to help. I could speak to Old Jardine. He won’t want mischief between Will and your sister any more than your father does.”
Biting her lower lip, Mairi shut her eyes, wondering at her own angry outburst and knowing that it was directed as much at Fiona as at anyone else.
It was not the first time in their acquaintance that Rob had wanted to give her a shake or a kiss, or wished he had the right to do both.
Firmly gripping her chin, he tipped her face up, making her look at him. “Mairi,” he said evenly, “I did not mean what you thought I meant.”
“Release me.”
He held her chin, and her gaze. With an audible edge to his voice, he said, “What Dow said, exactly, is that your father told him he had caught Will sniffing around the lady Fiona and ordered him to stay off his land. Does that answer you?”
She started to nod but found she could not free her chin. Licking her lips, she said, “Aye, sir, it does. Now will you release me? You are bruising my chin.”
Stifling a curse, he relaxed his hold and gave her chin a rub with a forefinger, as if he could erase the bruise before it surfaced. “I’m sorry, lass,” he said.
“I angered you. Again.”
“Nay, you only irked me, and it is not wrong to speak up. I should fetch your supper before we fratch more, though. I’ll bring mine up, too, if I may.”
Her eyebrows arched upward in an exaggerated way. “Now you ask my permission? Good sakes, sir, how is this?”
He chuckled. “Put away your stitching, you unnatural termagant, and wash your face and hands whilst I’m gone. I’ll bring a game board, too, and chess pieces.”
“’Twould doubtless be wiser for us both to get to bed early,” she said. “I believe the tide will be stemming up about two hours after midnight.”
“So, you heed the tides,” he said. “You are right.”
“Aye, well, when one has little to occupy one’s time, one does become aware of changes in one’s surroundings. Mark you, I would not recognize the sounds of rising or falling tides from anywhere but this chamber. However, from here, I can now tell you without looking how high the water has risen or fallen.”
Chuckling at her air of wisdom, he left her and hurried down to tell a gillie to put their supper on a tray, while he hurried to his bedchamber to wash and don a clean shirt and doublet. As he tied the cord lacing of the latter, he realized he was far too eager to sup with her. Annie, he recalled, would not be there.
Going more slowly down the stairs than he had come up them, he took the tray from the gillie who waited with it at the hall landing. Then, seeing Gibby put a jug on a nearby trestle table, he said, “Gib, leave that and come with me.”
As soon as Rob had gone, Mairi bustled about, thrusting the quilt pieces she had been stitching together into their basket, then tidying herself and her chamber.
To the voice in the back of her head that wondered why she should care, she retorted that she did not want anyone mistaking her for a disorderly woman.
She had pulled the little table into place and drawn the stool up to it when footsteps sounded on the stairs. Sitting quickly on the settle, she strove to look as if she had been relaxing there quietly, if not demurely, since he had gone.
The door opened, and he stepped across the threshold, carrying a laden tray. Pausing, he frowned at the open window. “That breeze seems to have freshened since I left,” he said.
“Aye, perhaps,” she agreed. “Mayhap more rain is coming.”
Only then did she see Gibby following him. The boy looked at her curiously, even warily, and Mairi realized she must be frowning, too. She smiled at him and said, “I see that the laird brought you along to protect him from my temper, Gib. He stirred it earlier, so mayhap now he thinks he needs protection.”
The boy’s expression relaxed. “I ha’ me doots about that, m’lady, but if ye look too fierce at him, I’ll step betwixt ye. Where be the wee terror a-hiding?”
“Why, I don’t know,” she said. “He may be sleeping behind the bed curtain, or he may have slipped out whilst the door was open.”
“Look for him later, lad,” Rob said. “Come sup with us now.”
“Cor, sir, I ate me supper. As I’m here, I should serve ye, I expect.”
“Nay, I’ll do that,” Rob said. “You take a chicken leg then from the tray, and find your wee terror. He’ll be hungry if you are not.”
“I can always eat a chicken leg,” the boy said, grinning. “But I’ll share it wi’ him an he behaves himself.”
His hunt for the kitten soon took him onto the stairway.
Mairi said, “If you brought him with you to ensure propriety, sir—”
“Nay, just to remind me of my promise to you,” he said. “I’ll not deny you tempt me, my lady, but I will keep my word. That the lad could reappear at any moment should be sufficient.”
She smiled, sure she was safe with him. He had made her feel so from the start. That she attracted him was no bad thing. That he attracted her as well was unfortunate, because she must not let him keep her captive if she could escape. It went right against nature to let him use her so, or to lead him to think she did not mind. Moreover, if she could escape, it would be a good lesson to him.
That she even found it necessary to have such a discussion with herself was unsettling, but she liked the man. She could not say she had liked him from the start, because she had not. Attraction and liking, after all, were different things. But in the time that she had spent at Trailinghail, despite being his captive, she had come to like him. She could not say, however, that she understood him.
Even now, he was eyeing her with what looked annoyingly like amusement.
Keeping her tone light, even disinterested, as if she merely made conversation, she said, “Does the knacker stay long?”
He paused with a bite-size chunk of mutton on his knife, halfway to his mouth, and said just as casually, “Oh, a few more days, I think. He’ll take his meals with Fin Walters and his wife at their cottage, though, as he usually does unless I invite him to eat with me. I doubt he’ll even be aware that I’ve gone.”
It was all she could do not to gnash her teeth, especially when his eyes glinted and his mouth twitched as if he were now struggling not to smile or even chuckle. Turning the subject to the weather, rather deftly she thought, she asked if he thought it was likely to rain again before his return.
He said it well might, and they continued to chat until she found herself thinking again how comfortable she felt even when he disconcerted her as he just had by seeming to know her thoughts. She could so easily say what she wanted without considering how he might react. If he fired up, she could fire right back at him and naught would come of it except a better understanding.
After he bade her goodnight, though, her thoughts shifted back to his upcoming departure, its likely result, and her own need to act.
Gibby returned with the kitten in his arms not long after Rob had gone.
Smiling, Mairi said, “I see the two of you have declared a truce.”
“Och, aye,” the lad said. “The wee beast likes to play wi’ string, and I were a-twitching one for him by the hall fire. But Fin Walters said I should bring him up now, so ye could go to bed. He said ye like to ha’ him with ye in the ni
ght.”
She thanked the boy, bade him goodnight, and began to prepare for bed.
As she did, her thoughts returned to her dilemma. Totting up details such as Parland Dow’s presence, Trailinghail’s nearness to Kirkcudbright and Castle Mains, and her knowledge of the tides, she concluded that if she were careful, and lucky, she might just succeed in escaping while Rob was on his fool’s errand if only…
On the thought, she stepped to the chamber door and touched the latch. Hesitating long enough to send a prayer aloft, she lifted it.
Gibby had not locked the door.
Rob made a mental list of things he needed to do before his departure, then sought out Fin Walters to tell him to look after things in his absence.
“Don’t share this information with anyone,” he added. “Especially Dow.”
“Aye, sir,” the steward said, nodding. “I’m mum.”
Rob then told his oarsmen to slip out of the tower without drawing attention. “Prepare the galley now,” he told his helmsman, Jake Elliot. “I’ll meet you at the beach as the tide begins to turn unless a storm blows up. If we row out of the bay then, we’ll be ready to sail toward Annan on the spring tide.”
The helmsman nodded. “A good notion, sir. We’ll find ourselves against the outflow from the Firth for a time, but ’tis better than fighting a spring tide out o’ the bay. If ye truly want to go quiet, though, we could leave from the beach and pick ye up in the cavern afore the tide gets too low. Then none would ken that ye’d gone.”
Agreeing to that plan, with full confidence that Jake could get the men to the boat without drawing attention, Rob retired to his chamber to prepare for bed.
As he did, an enticing image of Mairi as she had looked at supper captivated his thoughts. The candlelight had turned her smooth skin golden and her hair to silver-gilt. She had not worn a veil or caul that evening but had worn her thick plaits simply, coiled at her nape.
A few tendrils had escaped, and a long one had persisted in tickling her cheek. Again and again, she tucked it behind her right ear with a fingertip. It would stay for a time only to escape as soon as she gestured or nodded her head.
More than once he had nearly reached to tuck it back but restrained himself. He found it harder each day to remember that she was a captive and not a friend.
He knew now that abducting her had been a much graver mistake than he had realized, because no sensible woman would ever forgive such an act or the man who had committed it. At the time he had thought only of his goal, and Alex’s, and his belief that he had hit upon the way to achieve it.
The best thing he could do for her now, and for himself, was to persuade her father to submit quickly, so he could take her home again. He could not hope that Mairi would ever forget what he had done, but perhaps, in time…
Rob’s thoughts went no further, because he was sure that his lifetime—however long it might be—would not be long enough for him to win forgiveness, let alone to win her heart. He was a fool even to be contemplating such things.
He would do better to get on with the business at hand.
Accordingly, he retired, giving himself a mental order to wake before low tide. Then he slept deeply until his appointed time.
Awakening in a chamber filled with moonlight, and hearing the rhythmic sounds of the waves below his window, he got up, dressed quickly, and stole downstairs, past the hall where many slept but all was quiet and into the kitchen where embers in the fireplace cast orange-gold light on the hearthstones.
Taking a lantern from a shelf there, he lit a twig from the embers and used it to light the lantern. Then he went down one more level to the storage cellar.
A small room opened off the cellar, where they kept buttery stores—jugs of whisky, ale, and claret. At one corner a tall door led into the tunnel. He unbarred it, leaned the two heavy bars against the wall, and opened the door. Coming back on the long ebb, they would be unable to use the cave, so he did not bother to pull the latch chain through before he shut the door and rapidly descended to the wharf.
The galley awaited him there with several of the lads holding it against the swell. The water was already lower than he liked, so he doused the lantern, jumped in, and they were off. They emerged from the cavern without incident, and headed toward the mouth of the bay. By the light of the full moon, he could see that beaches below the northern end of the eastern cliffs were already showing.
A full moon or a new one produced spring tides, rising higher and falling lower than normal. Leaving before the tide reached low water meant a shorter, easier departure from the bay and opportunity for him to use the cavern.
Waiting outside the bay for the tide to turn would add time to their journey, but it would spare the oarsmen, because once it did turn it would be swift enough to carry them to Annan by dawn.
Spring tides were the most dangerous ones to ride up the Firth, because they ran so swiftly, and the initial inflow up the narrowing vee of the Firth could create a wall of water as high as eight feet. His men were all experienced, though, and they knew the Firth well. Even so, they would have to take more than usual care.
“Did you have trouble entering the cavern, Jake?” he asked his helmsman as they waited, rocking with the waves, for the tide to be right.
“Nay, laird, rode in as sweet and smooth as honey, we did.”
“Aye, we did,” a familiar voice said cheerfully, drawing his attention for the first time to the small shadow between two of his oarsmen. “I thought sure we’d crash on the rocks, laird, but we did nae such thing.”
“What the devil are you doing here, Gib?” Rob demanded.
“Herself did say I ought to learn all I could whilst I were wi’ ye, so I thought I ought to learn about the rowing.”
“He said ye’d given him permission, laird,” the helmsman said grimly.
Rob shook his head, but said only, “We’ll see what Fin says to you about telling lies, my lad. I doubt you bothered to ask him if you could come along.”
“It come on me after I heard ye talking,” Gib said. “I didna like to trouble Fin, so I betook me out the window and followed some o’ your men to the boat. We be rocking a good bit just a-sitting here, like. Will we be off and away soon?”
“I hope you enjoy yourself when we do, because if you get sick, I’ll likely throw you overboard,” Rob said sternly. “Sakes, but it would serve you right if I took you straight back now and woke Fin up to hand you over to him. I cannot do that, so I’ll leave you to explain your absence to him yourself when we get back.”
“Aye, sure,” Gib said, undaunted. “It’ll be grand, though, meantime.”
Rob turned away to hide a grin, then glanced back at the tower, where doubtless the lass lay peacefully sleeping.
Mairi, dressed and wearing her cloak, waited at the window until she saw the galley row in toward the cave below the tower and depart soon afterward toward the mouth of the bay. In the moonlight, she saw Rob clearly, standing in the stern near the helmsman as he had before. She had no idea what time it was, only that it was late, the moon was high in a cloudy sky, and the tide had not yet begun to turn.
She made her bed, picked up a bundle of the few necessities she would need and, taking a candle to light her way, hurried downstairs. Tiptoeing past the hall landing, then on down and across the kitchen, she hurried down to the lowest level.
Chapter 11
Easily finding her way to the room with the cave entrance, Mairi took a last peek outside the storage chamber to be sure no one had followed her. As she turned back, her candlelight revealed two heavy bars leaning against the wall between tall sets of shelves. Relieved that Rob had not arranged with someone to replace the bars after he left, she examined the long iron door handle, seeking its latch.
At first, she saw none and, with a sinking feeling, wondered if there was a secret to opening the door. Perhaps, the laird did not want anyone, inadvertently or otherwise, leaving such a door open to an enemy. Still, there had to be a latch. She
saw a heavy bolt at the bottom, but it was open. Even so, the door would not budge.
Holding her candle higher, she spied the iron latch at once—a strong-looking one—attached near the top of the door, much higher than ordinary latches and well above her natural eye level. A chain at the free end of it ran through a ring near the center of the door. But the chain was long enough for her to reach on tiptoe.
Spilling a small pool of wax from her candle onto the floor far enough back to be out of the way of her skirts and still cast candlelight on the door, she set the taper in the wax and held it so until it would stand alone. Then she moved back to the door and pulled the chain. The latch lifted, but the door still resisted her tug. So she let go of the chain to use both hands.
The latch dropped right back into its iron notch.
She would have to hold the chain with one hand and pull harder with the other at least until the door opened enough to let the latch clear its notch.
The process was awkward, because the thick timber door was heavy and fit snugly. But she managed it at last. Turning to retrieve her candle, she moved into the colder air at the threshold of the spiral stairway with a sense of accomplishment.
Lifting her skirts with her free hand, she stepped carefully down to the first step and reached back to adjust the door so that no one looking into or entering the storage area would see at once that the door was ajar. Such a likelihood at that hour was small but not impossible. And she did not know how much longer it would be until low water would give her access to the shingle beach.
As she neared the end of the spiral portion of the stairs, she felt her skirts stir in an icy draft that slipped under them and swirled up around her feet and legs.
Her candle blew out, and she heard distant moaning.
With a shiver and a few second thoughts, she decided against going back to find another candle and peered into the blackness ahead. As her eyes adjusted, a pale glow from below penetrated far enough up the stairway for her to discern its narrow stone steps. Putting one hand to the slimy wall and realizing she had forgotten her gloves, she reminded herself that the stairs would be slippery, too, and continued carefully down them, seeking the light.
