And he would not bargain with Mairi’s life.
Mairi Armstrong belonged with him, here at Norwyck. She would be his lady, the Armstrong laird be damned. Bart cared for her, far too deeply than he’d admitted to himself, and he could not imagine his life at Norwyck without her.
While he had finally accepted that she had had no choice but to keep her identity from him, he would have no more deception between them. He would confront her with her lies, and insist upon a vow between them to engage in no further deceptions once they were husband and wife.
They passed through the gate to the edge of the village, heading toward the farthest point west, where the wall had not yet been completed. As they rode down the lane, Bart became aware of a disturbance within the ranks behind him. He turned to see Sir Walter riding forward at top speed.
“My lord!” he called.
Bart’s brow furrowed automatically and he waited for Walter to reach him. They’d had enough bad news, and Bart did not look forward to hearing even more.
“’Tis Eleanor!” the steward stated loudly. “She is returned!”
A low murmur ran through the company of knights and all the villagers who were out watching them departed.
“Where? How?” Bart queried uncertainly. It seemed too easy, not having to use Mairi as a bargaining tool.
“Come,” Walter replied. “You must hear what she has to say.”
“Nay,” he replied, steadfast in his purpose. “Now, more than ever, I would battle the Armstrong, for his audacity in stealing my sister. The men are prepared and—”
“My lord,” Walter insisted, “Lady Mairi is gone, taken by Carmag MacEwen’s men. You must come and hear what Eleanor can tell you.”
Bart’s puzzlement only increased with Walter’s words, along with grim alarm. He could not imagine how Mairi had been taken by MacEwen while under guard with Kathryn in the tower.
Bart gave orders to Sir Duncan and Sir Stephan, who rode beside him, then he broke away from the ranks, allowing the knights to pass by. They would set up camp outside Braemar Keep as planned and bolster the men already there.
“Where was Eleanor found?” Bart asked when they were clear of the men.
“On the beach, outside the postern gate,” Walter replied. “She was draped in Mairi’s cloak, and crying to be let in.”
“Where had she been?”
“Apparently, MacEwen’s men sneaked into the keep—through the postern gate, I suppose—and took her. With all the activity in the bailey last night, preparations for the attack upon Armstrong, ’twas not difficult for them to pass unnoticed.”
“God’s blood!” Bart muttered.
“Aye. Somehow they learned of Mairi’s survival and were sent to capture her.”
“To be taken back to Braemar Keep?” Bart asked.
Walter shook his head. “I do not know, my lord,” he replied. “Mayhap when you question Eleanor, you will be able to learn more.”
“Is she all right?”
“Aye. Though she is exhausted and a bit scraped about the knees and hands,” Walter said.
They left their horses near the main steps to the keep, and Bart ascended quickly. He made his way through the hall and up to the nursery, where Eleanor lay in her bed. Kathryn was there with Nurse Ada and Rose, the maid who most often tended Mairi.
“Bartie!” Eleanor cried weakly. She sat up in her bed and, when Bart came close enough, embraced him.
“Hush,” he said as he cupped her head and held her close. She was much more precious to him than he’d ever realized. Nearly losing her had made him see that, and now he’d lost Mairi.
“I was so afraid, Bartie,” Ellie whispered.
“Aye, but you’re home now,” Bart replied. “And safe.”
“But those Scotsmen took Mairi,” Eleanor said, beginning to weep. “She gave me her cloak and made me run away. And they took her!”
“Will her father make her wed the MacEwen laird?” Kathryn asked. She looked no better than she had the night before, her eyes red and swollen from weeping. The lines of worry had not left her face.
Bart turned. “What do you know of it?”
“I heard her tell Sir Walter that she left France only because her father commanded her to return. To wed Carmag MacEwen.”
“Is he so very awful, Bartie?” Eleanor asked. “Kathryn said he was.”
Bart eased Eleanor back into her bed and sat down next to her. Then he spoke to Kathryn. “Tell me what happened last night, Kate, after I left you.”
Kathryn, too, sat on the edge of Eleanor’s bed. “We went to the tower room, just like you told us,” she explained. “I got into the big bed, but Mairi said she couldn’t sleep. I watched her for a while. She was pacing by the fire….”
Bart could easily imagine Mairi’s body taut with tension as she paced the tower room.
“I suppose I must have fallen asleep,” Kathryn continued, “because when I awoke again, Mairi was gone.”
“Raulf was guarding the tower, my lord,” Sir Walter said. “Lady Mairi told him she had to find you, and that he was to remain at his post and continue guarding Lady Kathryn.”
“Which is when she slipped out,” Bart concluded. “Where did Lady Mairi find you, Ellie?”
“’Twas someplace I’ve never been, Bartie,” she replied. “High up on Scots land, over the sea.”
“They took you up the escarpment?” Bart questioned.
“Aye,” she replied. “One of them carried me for a long time up the beach. Then he put me down and made me climb a big hill, and it hurt my hands because I had to hold on to the rock so tight.”
“It must be the ridge on the northern border,” Sir Walter remarked.
“When we got to the top,” Eleanor added as her tears started again, “we w-walked a long while, and I was afraid.”
Bart patted his sister’s hand and tried to be patient. He knew she’d undergone a terrible experience, but he was anxious to hear about Mairi, and how she had found Eleanor. He wanted to know what he would have to do to get her back.
“After a while,” Eleanor finally said, sniffling, “we got to a place where they k-kept their horses, and one man said they would stop and m-make camp until dawn.”
“That took a nerve,” Walter muttered.
“They stuck some blankets up somehow and made me crawl underneath them. I fell asleep.”
More tears delayed the story, and by now, Kathryn was weeping, too.
“I woke up and M-Mairi was there. She took me away from the camp and we ran as fast as we could, back toward Norwyck. But the men chased us. Mairi gave me her cloak and told me to run, or to hide.”
Bart heard Walter say, “That’s our girl.” Nurse Ada had her hand over her heart, and Rose’s eyes were huge, as if she could not believe her mistress’s dire situation.
“I kept g-going, but when I heard them coming close, I huddled down by a tree stump and covered myself with the cloak. Th-they walked past me in the dark. But I heard th-them get Mairi.”
Kathryn gasped, and Ada cried out in dismay.
“He said they were looking for her, anyway—not me,” Eleanor said. “They only took me because they couldn’t find her.”
“And now she’s to marry the MacEwen!” Kathryn cried. “He’s a terrible man, and Lady Mairi will die before she weds him.”
The room grew suddenly silent with Kathryn’s proclamation. Dread gathered and coiled in Bart’s belly.
“Explain yourself, Kate,” he said. His voice sounded low and dangerous, even to his own ears.
“Lady Mairi said th-that she would die by her father’s hand if she did not wed the MacEwen,” Kathryn said shakily. She looked up at Sir Walter then, as if the old man would verify her words. “And sh-she said she would die by her own if she did.”
“For listening at keyholes, lass,” Walter said sorrowfully, “you certainly heard well enough.”
Bart hardly heard Walter’s words. He felt numb with the thought of Mairi at Braemar
Keep, at the mercy of her father. Enraged at the thought of her wed to Carmag. Eleanor began to cry again, and Bart touched Walter’s shoulder, steering him out of the nursery.
“Mairi said this?” he asked. “That her father would have her life if she refused to wed Carmag?”
Walter nodded. “My lord, she cares deeply for you,” the steward said. “This marriage will be…” His chin dropped to his chest as he searched for the words. “Lachann will have to force her to it.”
“Not if I can stop him,” Bart said.
Walter looked up.
“I’ll get her back, before the nuptials are said.”
“There’s a lad,” Walter said, smiling. “I knew you would see reason, my lord. Lady Mairi had no wish to lie to you, but as you must see, she had no choice.”
The nursery door opened, and Rose slipped out and could have gone down to the great hall without notice. But with her eyes cast down, she approached Bart and Sir Walter. She cleared her throat. “My lord,” she said shyly.
“Aye,” Bart said gently. He rarely had occasion to speak to any of the maids, and he knew it must have taken a great deal of heart for her to address him.
“What Lady Kathryn said…” she began, “about Lady Marguerite, er, Lady Mairi…” She looked up at the two men and bit her lip. ’Twas clear she had something to say, yet for some reason was uncomfortable with it. “My lord, m-might I speak to you alone?”
“Excuse us, Sir Walter,” Bart said, curious now, but unwilling to waste any more time. His men were bound for Braemar Keep and Bart was anxious to join them there.
Quickly, he ushered Rose through the gallery to the solar, and once they were inside, closed the door.
“What about Lady Mairi?”
“She would never harm herself, my lord,” Rose said. “Not now…”
“Go on.”
“Well,” the maid continued, wringing her hands before her, “I—I am not fully certain of this, my lord, for the lady took pains to hide the signs. But if I am not m-mistaken…Lady Mairi is with child.”
The block of dread that lay so heavily in Bart’s stomach dropped to the floor. He steadied himself with one hand against the mantelpiece.
Mairi…carrying his child?
’Twas all too easy to believe. He supposed he’d seen some of the signs himself, but had not recognized them. And now she was MacEwen’s prisoner. Mairi, and their child.
Bart cleared the tightness from his throat. “Thank you, Rose, for speaking up,” he said, heading for the door.
“You’ll bring her back, won’t you, my lord?”
“Aye,” he replied as he opened the door to leave. “Be assured of it.”
He would kill Carmag MacEwen himself to prevent him from putting his beefy hands on Mairi.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Though Mairi’s captors treated her reasonably well during the long ride, she felt as close to despair as she ever had. She was exhausted, but fear and apprehension kept her upright in the saddle.
She was doomed to wed Carmag. She could not possibly carry out her vow to end her own life if this circumstance came to pass, for ’twould mean destroying the child she carried. The child she already loved as much as its father.
Mairi hoped Eleanor had managed to make her way back to Norwyck safely. It wasn’t possible for the child to have lost her way, not with the sea at her side, but other calamities might have occurred. She might have come across a wild animal. Or fallen off the escarpment!
Swallowing hard and forcing herself to believe Eleanor had gotten safely back to Bartholomew, Mairi considered the situation that awaited her.
They rode inland, angling north and west toward Armstrong land. Mairi did not know what to expect at Braemar Keep, beyond the fact that Carmag would be waiting for her there. In due time—and Mairi did not think there would be much delay—she would have no choice but to wed the laird of clan MacEwen. Her stomach churned at the thought, yet she had no choice but to face facts, as distasteful as they were.
She could not help but hope that there would be some way to escape this marriage, however. If only she could think of something that would make her utterly unacceptable to Carmag.
She knew her pregnancy alone would not be enough. Many a woman married while she carried another man’s child, and Carmag struck her as the kind of man who would not care. In truth, Mairi believed Carmag would be perverse enough to enjoy the prospect of raising a Norwyck son to be the enemy of his true father.
“We’ve not much farther to ride, my lady,” one of her captors said. He had been respectful and polite ever since abducting her the previous night, but Mairi held no illusions about these Scotsmen. They would never bargain with her for her freedom. On the contrary, they would tie her down and drag her to her father’s keep if necessary.
She wondered what Bartholomew’s reaction to her disappearance would be. Would Eleanor understand enough of what had happened to explain to him that Mairi had not left Norwyck by choice? She would not have him think she had abandoned him, as Felicia had done.
Mairi may have withheld her identity from him, but she was not as false as Bart’s late wife.
“There ’Tis, my lady,” the man said as they rode over the rise. “Braemar Keep.”
There was no high stone curtain around the keep, and ’twas not as large or as impressive a fortress as Norwyck. Yet Mairi could see from a distance that Braemar Keep was quite defensible, positioned high upon a hillock.
It looked primitive and raw, just as she remembered it.
One of her captors tossed another blanket to her, apparently noting her sudden shudder. Mairi pulled it around herself and tried not to think of what awaited her here.
During her ten years in France, Mairi had never had any communication from Armstrong—not until Carmag had arrived to take her back to Scotland to be his wife. Since the shipwreck, she’d learned of her brother and father, but had heard naught of her mother. Mairi did not even know if the woman who’d given her life still lived.
She swallowed and blinked away the tears that came when she thought of poor Teàrlag, doomed in her marriage to Lachann. And Mairi knew the same fate awaited her.
Many poor, drab cottages dotted the hillside around her father’s stone keep. A timber church stood near the center of the village, its thatched roof in need of patching. Mairi wondered why, if clan Armstrong was so destitute, and in such sore need of provisions, her father had butchered those Norwyck animals and left them to rot.
She knew the answer before the thought had barely formed. ’Twas his pride. Lachann would never allow Bartholomew to know of his clan’s dire need, but would kill the animals for the sole purpose of flaunting his Scottish potency before the English lord.
As they rode through the muddy lanes of Braemar, people stepped out of their cottages to see who passed. Mairi recognized no one. Naught seemed familiar, not even Braemar Keep itself, where she’d lived the first decade of her life. Mairi looked up at the cold, dank keep. Few windows graced the building, and much of the stone was crumbling. It seemed that Lachann took no better care of his own dwelling than he did those of his clan. Several long, low buildings lay beyond the keep, and rows of Scotsmen with bows guarded the perimeter of her father’s grounds.
It began to rain as Mairi dismounted without assistance. No one approached her as she walked toward the wooden stair to the keep, but a sudden bellow came from within. The scarred wooden door was flung open, and before Mairi had a moment to catch her breath, she stood looking at Carmag MacEwen, with her father right behind him.
Carmag was only partially dressed—he lacked shirt or tunic—and Mairi cringed at the sight of all that MacEwen flesh.
“Wife!” he roared.
Mairi made no reply, but stood still, bracing herself and wishing she had a weapon to use against him.
She had no doubt that he would attempt to force himself upon her as he’d done in France. Only this time there was no one to stop him from doing what was his right.<
br />
“Mairi Armstrong!” he shouted, heaving his massive bulk down the wooden steps to the ground.
Mairi glanced up at Lachann, who made no move toward her.
The Armstrong knights stood in place, and the people of clan Armstrong watched from the shelter of their cottages, as MacEwen reached her. Without warning, he lifted her so that she was face-to-face with him, and then mashed his lips onto hers.
Mairi gagged when he opened his mouth and tried to force his tongue between her tightly closed lips. She felt her feet dangling inches above the ground, and a painful pressure under her arms where Carmag held her.
She kicked her feet helplessly in the air, and one of her shoes finally made contact with his shin. He put her down suddenly and let out a laugh that chilled Mairi’s blood. “We’ll loosen these tight French lips of yours yet, Mairi Armstrong, and make you into a true Scotswoman!”
“Enough o’ that, Laird MacEwen,” called a man, distracting Carmag enough for Mairi to take a step away. “Can ye no’ see ye’ve terrified th’ lass?”
Mairi saw that the man who’d spoken was a cleric. And it appeared that he was the only one who cared—or had the nerve—to speak to Carmag. The villagers stayed well away from them, and her father remained at the top of the stair, eyeing her curiously.
“We will wed this eve,” Carmag said, his voice loud and abrasive to Mairi’s ears. “Prepare what you must, Father Murray.”
“Nay, MacEwen,” Father Murray countered. “There are the banns—”
“The banns be damned!” Carmag roared. “The woman was fairly given by the Armstrong, and now she’s mine, vows or nay.”
Father Murray stepped up and faced Carmag. “Church rules will be obeyed in this matter, Laird MacEwen,” he said quietly. He was just as tall as Carmag, but not so broad, with unkempt hair as black as night, streaked with silver over his ears. His presence gave comfort to Mairi, however slight.
“Nay,” said a low, rough voice that sent a shudder through Mairi. “I am her sire. The lass will wed when I bid her to wed. Not a moment after.”
But Father Murray would not be gainsaid, and Mairi could have kissed his hand for it. “If ye’ll not wait for the banns, then surely ye can give the lass a bit o’ time, and after she has—”
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