by King, Susan
"'Gyptian, aye. You're lost too, laddie, to your lassie's charms, though you seem loath to admit it, even roped as a husband. At least you wed the lass, without leading her kin after you, as Jock is bound to do, for the price of a kiss."
William did not reply, setting his mouth tight as he watched guard over the night, guard over his heart. Tamsin's kiss had bought a piece of that heart, paid already. A lifetime of those sweet kisses, of her love and companionship, would more than equal the value of his very soul. And be a bargain, he thought.
Ten days had passed since he had been so sorely tempted to make that payment in full to her. Ten days of polite conversation, of gaming at cards and draughts with her and the others, ten days of watching her play sweetly with Katharine and endeavor to learn stitchery from Emma. Nine nights on a flat cot in the antechamber, steeling mind and body against the lure of her, luscious and fiery, in his bed.
Desperate, at times, to take her into his arms, he had turned away, walked away, ridden away to shake loose his intense urges. He had not been able to take the risk. Too easy to lose all, he had thought, if he invested heart and soul in her as he wanted, more each day, to do.
Jeanie's death had taken away all that he thought he had, wiped his life clean of hopes, like a storm driving the leaves from an autumn forest. He had gained Katharine, his most precious, and unexpected, treasure. But he had lost his own future. The price of that beautiful child had come high.
He had meant to wait, as he had told Tamsin, to see what fate planned for them. But each day that passed, each night, proved to him that the bond he felt with her was far stronger than simple lust. Pray God that Tamsin felt as intensely as he did. He believed, now, that what existed between them burned with a fine, bright fire. That kind of flame would settle into lasting warmth and keep forever.
He craved her touch, even in passing: shoulder against shoulder in a corridor, hand grazing hand at supper. The sound of her voice, the scent of her, filled his senses when she was near. He listened for her step, for her laughter, when she was not in the room, felt the gift when she arrived, felt the loss when she left. She had captured a part of his soul, and now he wanted to give her the rest.
Yet he hesitated, deeply afraid, beyond all else, that he might lose her. The blaze he had felt with Jean had begun to burn out even before it had been extinguished by outside forces. With Tamsin, then, he waited, uncertain how long he would delay and deny what was undeniably real within him.
He knew, had known almost from the first moment he saw her, that he was falling deeper and deeper into love, like a man might fall into that moonlit river yonder. And be as lost, and perhaps as saved, as Jock was now.
He closed his eyes briefly, remained silent.
"So," Sandie said, keeping his voice low. "I hear Archie Armstrong just sent word to you that he wants his lassie back. You havena yet told the man you've wed his daughter?"
"We'll take care of it soon," William replied.
"Aye, you'd best do that," Sandie drawled.
William blew out a sigh. "I'll escort her back to Merton Rigg in a few days, when Musgrave's fortnight is over. I will keep my word. Musgrave is to meet with us at Merton. I had a post from him two days ago. I assume he sent a rider to Merton as well, since Archie sent a lad to me to arrange a meeting."
Archie had sent no letter, for the man could not write, but he had sent an Armstrong cousin. The lad had said that the laird of Merton Rigg expected them at Merton in a few days, and that Archie wanted "his lass back home and nae arguments about it."
The sharpness of that statement had puzzled William. He wondered if Musgrave had made some other threat to Tamsin, and he wondered, further, if Arthur Musgrave had raised the issue of witchcraft with his father. Soon enough he would find out.
He peered across the quietly flowing river. "They've wandered off somewhere," he remarked. "I hope 'tisna far. I dinna fancy sitting here in England for long."
"Nor I. Jock says he means to find a way to dissolve Anna Forster's betrothal," Sandie said. "I advised him to bury himself a bridegroom or steal himself a bride."
"Jock isna the kind to do murder," William said. "And he willna beg her father to withdraw the lass's hand from Musgrave and give it to him instead. So..." He shrugged at the obvious.
"Aye." Sandie sighed. "I hope he doesna mean to snatch the lass this night." He glanced over his shoulder. "But I have a bad feeling, a creeping along my limbs. We should ride away from this place. Where the de'il has the lad gone?"
"Perhaps behind those rocks, there, or among those trees."
"Whistle out, Willie, and let him know 'tis time to leave."
William lifted his face to the night breeze and cupped his gloved hand at his mouth. He rounded his lips and made a low sound, one of many his father had taught him long ago, the call of a night owl. Soft and careful, he bounced the air from his opened throat and rounded lips, an accurate imitation. Soon it was returned by an owl, far off.
He waited, but saw nothing, and did not hear the soft splashing of Jock's horse in the water. He lifted his face and made the call again: three times, silence, then three times more.
"He's kissed his fill, I would think," Sandie muttered. He looked around. "I hope they havena gone off to fondle. I willna sit idly by like a duck in the reeds while they take their pleasure. He ought to say his farewells and be on his way."
"Farewell may be the last thing he'll say, if the lass is to be wed tomorrow. He might mean to make her a bride tonight instead," William said. He called out again, three soft hoots, and stopped. He heard nothing, saw no sign of his cousin.
"We've been on English soil long enough this night, and nae kine nor woolly sheep to show for it," Sandie muttered. "Though if Jockie snatches himself a wife out o' England, that might be booty enough." He grinned.
A bird called out nearby. William held up his hand for silence from Sandie. The call came again, a raven's croak, wretchedly done by a human throat.
"We're not alone," he whispered.
Sandie slid a brass pistol from a sheath on his saddle, and began to load powder into it. William tightened the bay's reins and eased the horse out of the cover of the trees, glancing across the wide calm of the river. Sandie followed.
Jock was in sight once again, mounted on his horse, leaning down in the moonlight to touch Anna's cheek. She reached up and took his hand, and he bent to kiss her.
"Hurry," William urged in a whisper. He too felt the tension that Sandie felt. "Hurry...."
The girl finally stepped away and turned to run along the bank, away from Jock, while he headed his horse toward the water. William heard Sandie breathe a sigh of relief, and he exhaled some of his own apprehension. "Nae bride this night," Sandie said, low.
"I'd wager they've made some sort of plan between them," William said. "That didna look like farewell forever to me."
As Jock entered the water, the quiet night seemed to explode in shouts and hoofbeats and fury. Riders burst out of another wooded area on the opposite side of the river and headed toward Jock. A pistol flared bright and sounded.
Jock wheeled, shouted, cut sideways on the horse through the water. Anna turned and ran back toward him, cloak winging out behind her. The riders thundered in pursuit. Anna leaped from the bank into the water and began to wade toward Jock, who rode toward her.
William reached down and grabbed the small crossbow that hung beside his saddle and loaded a short, deadly quarrel into its channel. He balanced the weapon on his forearm, and used one hand to guide his horse out into the clear moonlight.
In the river, he saw Jock bend down, and in one sweeping movement, lift Anna to his saddle. She settled behind him and looped her arms around his waist. The horse plunged toward the middle of the river, surging chest-deep. A crossbow bolt whipped through the night, splitting the surface of the water not far from the horse's flank.
Sandie lifted his pistol, sighted, and lowered it. "'Tis too far, yet. Just let those English rascals come closer, and
let them try to fire on our lad again!"
Another bolt skimmed the water. William answered it with his quarrel, skillfully aimed, knowing the crossbow had a longer range than Sandie's pistol. One of the pursuing riders fell from his horse, but the rest came on, entering the water, churning it to white foam.
Jock attained the near bank, water spraying high in the moonlight. William and Sandie turned their mounts, breasted on either side of Jock and Anna, and launched out over the moorland. Four riders—five, William saw in a quick backward glance—reached the bank and began to chase them.
Jock sent him a fleeting grin beneath the shadow of his helmet. "I think her kinsmen have a mind to come to our wedding," he called.
William shot his cousin a sour glance, and leaned forward as the bay picked up speed.
* * *
The priest's voice droned on in Latin, the sound thick and hoarse, for he had been sleeping sound but minutes before. William bent his head as much in reverence as to avoid the low-raftered ceiling of the small room. The main chamber of the priest's small bastle house was overcrowded, already containing a table and chairs, and a curtained bed, with rumpled covers, boxed into one wall.
On the other side of a wattled partition, a cow and several pungent sheep had been awakened by the midnight arrival of three reivers and a stolen bride. Snorts and chomping sounds created the only music for the wedding ceremony.
William tucked his helmet under his arm, his chest armor reflecting the red gleam of the peat fire in the central floor hearth. Beside him, Sandie seemed quiet, even meek, as he stood with helmet in hand.
Jock and Anna knelt before the priest, hands joined, heads bowed. Father Thom had tried to deny them admittance to his little house until he saw the lances and crossbows shining in the moonlight, and had heard the names of the laird of Rookhope and the laird of Lincraig. Now he looked grim and sleepy in a long shirt and bare feet, an embroidered priest's cope tossed over his shoulders, as he hurried through the ritual.
William listened to the intonation and watched Jock's and Anna's bowed heads, fair and reddish, in the light of the flaming candles that each held. Their faces looked somber and innocent, their gazes wholly devoted. The priest sketched the symbol of a cross in the air over their heads, pronounced them wed, and hastened to the table to write out the document of marriage.
Jock turned to Anna as she turned to him. He tipped her chin up with his fingers. The kiss they shared was slow and gentle, a cherishing that took William's breath to watch. Their candles, which each held to the side, haloed them in a golden, peaceful light.
William turned away. He ached for that kind of salvation, that kind of abiding love in his own life. He felt the need burning within him, felt it rock him to his soul and throw him out of balance. Equilibrium lay just within his grasp, though he would have to reach out, past risk, to take hold of it.
Jock and Anna had found the courage to take what they needed, no matter the danger. Witnessing that, even more than the marriage itself, inspired him, filled him with a fervent urge to claim his own happiness.
He turned, saw the priest bending over the parchment, heard the scratch of the quill as he wrote out the names of the souls he had united that night. The priest offered him the quill, and William signed his name as witness. He murmured congratulations to Jock and Anna, and turned away.
He went to the door while the others talked and laughed behind him. He kept silent, stayed wary and apart, as was his nature, for in that he had always found a sense of safety. The simple, hurried marriage he had just witnessed had touched his heart, and he did not trust himself to speak. Later he would give them better congratulations, and see that a valuable gift was delivered to Lincraig Tower in honor of the marriage.
He opened the door a crack and scanned the night, making certain that the hills beyond were still deserted. They had ridden far into Scotland before losing their angry tail of Forsters and Musgraves, and before finding the house of a priest who would marry them in haste, for good coin.
William knew that the four of them could not ride on to Lincraig Tower, Jock's home, just yet, in case their pursuers sought them there. The bride and groom would have to find some other place to spend their wedding night. When that was accomplished, William would make his way back to Rookhope. He expected to see morning sun before he slept.
He meant to do all that he could to ensure that Jock and Anna were protected on their wedding night. He felt an obligation, shouldered willingly out of loyalty and reverence, to defend those he loved, those he respected.
What he saw shining between Jock and Anna was so precious, so fragile in its newly wedded state, that he wanted to be there to act as protector. He would step aside when the danger to them had passed.
And then he meant to try to find the courage that he needed to claim love for himself. What he had witnessed tonight, what he had learned about love, and about himself, gave him hope.
Chapter 23
"O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires."
—"Thomas the Rhymer"
"So Jock and Anna had already agreed to meet later that even, when she had a chance to collect her gear?" Tamsin asked. "The abduction at the river was a spontaneous thing?"
"Aye," William said. "The Forsters and Musgraves came out in ambush, so Jock took her with him then."
Tamsin nodded. She had heard the story already, but did not mind hearing it again, for each telling brought more, and interesting, details. As with most men she knew, William's full story was not delivered in the first telling, or even the second, but the three women at Rookhope had persistently drawn it out of him.
William had returned yesterday at midmorning, dirty, hungry, exhausted, and bearing news of Jock's wedding. Tamsin, Emma, and Helen had heard the essentials of the story while he ate, and questioned him again at supper, after he had slept for several hours. Today, they had asked him about it again, and William had answered their questions patiently.
"What a wonderful adventure! To go against the wishes of kin, all for love!" Helen sighed. She smiled and swept a gentle hand over Katharine's head, capped in silk.
Katharine cooed in excitement, then lurched forward in her walker, a lightweight framework of sturdy twigs and wooden wheels with a canvas sling seat. Her little feet, in leather shoes, shoved across the polished wood floor. William, while talking to his sister, reached out and grabbed the walker to pull it away from the hearth. He sent Katharine gliding toward her grandmother, while the baby laughed.
"Will Jock and Anna be at Lincraig now?" Tamsin asked. She bent over a small piece of linen held in her left hand. She had begun to show her hand more often, set free somehow by the fact that no one at Rookhope was bothered by the sight of it. Now she laboriously stitched over a simple flower design that Emma had painted on the cloth for her. The silver needle, dragging blue silk thread, slipped, and she winced as she pricked a finger.
"Nay. I think they will stay in hiding for several days, perhaps weeks," William said. "The Forsters, and Arthur Musgrave in particular, will still be searching for them. When Sandie was here earlier today, he said they rode to Lincraig last night, stole a dozen sheep, and burned a barn—to light the bridal bower, they were heard to shout as they rode away."
"Anna's kinsmen will have to accept that she and Jock are married," Helen said. "Jock woke a priest that very night. She is wedded and bedded now, and her kinsmen can do naught."
"'Tis done, true. Sandie and I witnessed the marriage and signed the document," William said. "Jock sent a man to give a copy to Anna's father, along with a letter in Anna's own hand, explaining that she married by choice rather than force. They slept together as husband and wife. Legally the Forsters and Musgraves can do naught, for she wasna abducted."
"They can carry on a blood feud," Emma said.
"Aye. But all this will cool, I think, given tim
e. The Forsters and Musgraves will cease to demand Jock's life in return for the abduction of the bride. But Jock will lose sheep and cattle to them, I will wager, for the rest of his life."
"As we all do, who live in the Borders," Emma said. "Naught to fret over... unless lives are lost," she added quietly.
Tamsin listened, frowning over the linen, dipping the needle in and out of the cloth, her stitches too large or too small, too tight or loose. She bit her lip in concentration, and bit back the urge, once or twice, to utter a round oath or two. Lady Emma and Helen had facile hands at stitchery, but she did not think she would ever master it. Her left hand was too clumsy, and her right hand was too impatient.
She looked at William, thinking how handsome he looked in the pale light that poured through the high-set glazed windows of the great chamber. The daylight was gray and thin, but pure enough to make William's eyes seem more brilliant a blue than the gypsy flowers that Tamsin so cautiously stitched. She had asked Lady Emma to sketch the flowers on the linen, for she had thought to give William the finished piece to use as a handkerchief. But she was sure that her current effort would not be good enough to give to him.
She did not think she would have a chance to attempt another hand cloth for him. William had told her earlier that he had heard from both Archie and Musgrave, and that he planned to take her back to Merton Rigg that evening. The scheme that Musgrave had put into motion, at King Henry's orders, would begin its spin now, and take them all into its heavy current, like the pull of a mill wheel. She and William had found some respite at Rookhope, but the turn of that wheel was inevitable.
And she did not know, when all was done, what would happen to her, to William, or to the mock marriage that had become so important to her.
