My God, she acted as a chaperone! And all the while she was desperately in love with the very man that she was tasked to serve!
Delilah’s heart was suddenly wrung with pity.
How hard that must have been!
“Ah, I see in yer face that ye remember me now!” Mallory hissed, her face screwed up in scorn.
“Yes,” Delilah said. “Yes, I remember now. I’m sorry. I had no idea that—”
“That I loved Marcus?” shrieked Mallory. “Why would ye? I doubt ye gave me any mind at all! All us servin’ folk are just a type of movin’ furniture tae ye!”
Delilah hunched her knees to her body as Mallory slashed wildly at the air with her knife, using it to emphasize her points.
“Might come as some surprise tae the likes of ye, but us small folk feel, too! We laugh and cry and love, just ye rich folk in yer silks and jewels!”
“I understand that,” Delilah said in a placating voice, “but I had no idea that you felt like this. I would never intentionally hurt you—anyone—in this way. Is killing me really how you want this to end? Do you think that that will make everything all right?”
Delilah knelt up in the bed, her arms extended in a pacifying gesture. “This isn’t the way to deal with this, Mallory,” she said.
As she looked into Mallory’s grief-stricken face, watched the tears track down her full cheeks, Delilah saw something go out of the green eyes. They seemed to cloud over in despair.
“I’ve tried every other way I ken,” the young maid said in a dead voice.
“You, you have?” Delilah faltered.
“Aye. I tried tae talk ye out of it whilst ye walked in yer fever,” Mallory said.
Delilah remembered the female voice then, a voice that, at the time, she thought might be her subconscious.
“Stay away from Marcus, ye hear. Stay away. Or woe betide ye, ye’ll suffer more than this. Leave him be, lass. Leave him be, unless ye fancy strife doggin’ yer footsteps for the rest of yer days.”
“Ye see, me Lady,” Mallory said, her voice quiet, decided and defeated. “This is the only way left tae me.”
Delilah’s eyes widened, and she let out a wordless gasp.
Mallory stepped forward. The knife glittered and flashed as she raised it above her head.
“Please, no!” Delilah cried.
And the door to the cabin exploded inwards.
Marcus stood in the opening, in the wreckage of the door that he had just kicked off its hinges.
He gazed with disbelieving eyes at the tableau in front of him. Delilah on her knees in bed and over her another woman standing with a large knife in her hand.
Is that…my maid?
“Mallory!” he cried out in disbelief.
The sound of her name coming from his lips seemed to hit Mallory like a dart. She staggered back a pace or two.
“What’re ye doin’?” Marcus said, stepping over the threshold and into the room. Behind him came Finley.
Mallory did not answer.
“Marcus—” Delilah began.
“Shut yer mouth, harlot!” Mallory screamed. Her eyes were popping from her head and she was breathing hard.
“Mallory,” Marcus said, in the tone of voice he adopted when he was trying to calm a horse he was in the midst of breaking. “Mallory, what are ye doin’, lass?”
“I love ye, can ye nae see that?” Mallory choked, tears streaming down her face. “I’m doin’ this so that we can be together. Why’d ye think I hid all those letters? I did nae want it to come tae this!”
“That was ye? The letters that I never received? That was ye?”
“O’ course it was me, Marcus,” Mallory said, her green eyes shining with tears and hysteria. “Someone had tae stop ye getting’ involved wi’ this English trollop.”
Marcus was taking slow steps towards Mallory, his arms held out to show he had nothing on him.
“So, ye hid me letters?”
“Aye.”
“And penned the fake one?”
Mallory nodded.
“And now ye mean tae take Lady Delilah’s life?”
Mallory bit her lip. “Tis the only way tae help ye.”
“Lass, this way is nae goin’ to help anyone. Can ye nae see that?”
Mallory gulped. The knife wavered in her raised hand.
Marcus was only a few strides from Mallory and Delilah. He could feel that tension in the air that he felt when he was hunting. It was that tautness that suffused an atmosphere, when life hung precariously in the balance.
There was a pregnant pause in which the futures of these people entwined as closely as futures can.
Then, Mallory gave a heart-rending scream of furious anguish and lunged at Delilah. At the same time, Marcus leaped forward, his tall frame covering the remaining distance between the two women in one great bound. Finley also moved, vaulting over the little table in his attempt to get at Mallory.
The knife came down. A flash of metal.
Blood—vivid red against dark wood—spurted up the wall. There was a scream from Delilah. A grunt from Marcus, as he pushed the English noblewoman out of the way.
Finley pinned Mallory to the wall, the bloody knife skittering away across the floor. Delilah and Marcus lay on the bed covered in crimson blood.
“Whose is it?” Finley yelled, over Mallory’s hysterical sobbing.
Delilah could not speak, she was so shocked.
Marcus rolled over. His face was white. There was a long tear along his shirt sleeve. Blood welled through a deep cut along his bicep.
“It’s Marcus!” Delilah said, managing to find her voice.
Despite himself, fear flooded Marcus. There seemed to be so much blood! He was suddenly terrified that he would bleed out, that he would fade away and never get to see Delilah again.
“Is it bad?” Finley demanded.
“I—I don’t know. It’s his arm.”
Finley pushed Mallory to the ground. The maid was sobbing uncontrollably, rocking backwards and forwards, clearly completely overwrought.
“I’ll be fine,” Marcus said, sitting up. His face was drawn with pain, and he couldn’t quite disguise the dread he felt that he might not make it. Even just sitting up caused more blood to seep from the wound and soak into his already crimson sleeve.
Finley inspected his friend’s wound, keeping one eye on Mallory.
“Aye, ye’ll live fer now, but we best get ye back tae the castle.”
With the practiced efficiency of the soldier, Finley tied a tourniquet around the top of Marcus’s arm. Then he ripped up the sheet on the bed and used it to pad and bind the wound.
“Delilah,” Marcus said weakly. “I’ll need ye tae help me back to me horse. Ye’ll need to ride whilst I hold on, all right?”
“Yes,” Delilah said, her face almost as pale as the injured man’s.
Finley pulled Mallory to her feet and bound her, whilst the woman continued to howl with misery.
“And I’ll be takin’ ye back, Mallory,” he said, not unkindly. “Give me nay reason to be rough wi’ ye, lass, please.”
The four of them marched from the cabin. Marcus leaned on Delilah, who had pulled her gown on whilst Finley had bound Mallory’s hands. The arm of his shirt was soaked with blood and he was as unsteady as a newborn calf.
Marcus felt quite light-headed, and not just from his wound. In a few moments, the confusion and mystery of years had been cleared away. He felt as if his world had suddenly come into focus, his reality finally marrying up with his feelings. He had a sudden urge to sob with relief.
As he climbed up behind Delilah on his horse, the Highlander leaned forward and said in a slurred voice, “Well, lass, I dare say I owe ye an apology ‘bout those letters.”
Delilah squeezed his hands, which were clasped about her waist.
“You saved my life,” she said, simply.
“Aye,” Marcus murmured groggily, “that would be what my faither might call the heart rulin’ the head.�
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Chapter 15
It was mid-afternoon when they reined in under the shadow of the keep. Finley had been obliged to lead them fairly slowly so that the weakened Marcus would not slip off the back of the horse that he shared with Delilah.
They were met, on their return to the MacConnair castle, by a delegation of sorts. Griselda and Callum stood in the bailey alongside the Earl and Lady of Glimouth, with a small retinue of the Earl’s mounted guards. It appeared that the Glimouth’s had only recently arrived themselves.
“There they are!” Lady Glimouth shrieked when she turned and saw the two horses, bearing their four passengers, clopping wearily up the road.
“Good God!” the Earl cried out, as the riders pulled up. “All that blood! Delilah, are you hurt?”
Delilah looked tiredly from one parent to the other. Then she turned and addressed Griselda, whose jaw was clenched and face pale but seemingly unruffled apart from that.
Here is a woman who has seen this sort of thing before.
“It’s not my blood,” Delilah said, “but Marcus’s.”
The Laird strode past his wife as Finley dismounted.
“It’s a flesh wound, yer Lairdship,” Finley said. “Not vital, but it’ll need tendin’ to.”
Together, Finley and the Laird helped Marcus down. The Laird’s son was barely conscious, his feet unable to support him.
Delilah’s chest swelled with pride as her father—not a fighting man in any regard—strode forward, and along with Finley and the Laird, helped to carry Marcus into the castle.
Delilah was feeling mightily weary, but she knew that it was up to her to inform her hostess on how her only son had come to sustain such injuries. She gestured to the huddled and forlorn figure of Mallory, who stood, red-eyed and sniffing, by the horses.
“Lady MacConnair,” she said, “it was Mallory here who inflicted the wound upon your son.”
Griselda swiveled her gimlet eyes towards the maid. “Mallory?” she breathed. “What does Lady Delilah speak of, lass?” There was shock and hurt in the older woman’s tone.
Fresh tears began to leak down Mallory’s anguished face. “My Lady…” she began.
“Allow me to tell the tale, My Lady,” Delilah said firmly. “In the meantime may I suggest that Mallory is put somewhere safe under guard? She has been through quite an ordeal, but it was not malice that drove her.”
“Aye, so be it,” Griselda said. She motioned to a couple of her own men standing nearby. “Ye two escort Mallory Lynch to one o’ the guest rooms. Lock her in, but make sure that she has water fer washin’ and some food and water. I best hear this tale afore passin’ any sort o’ judgement.”
The two kilted guardsmen took Mallory firmly by the arms and marched her into the castle.
Delilah could not help but feel a pang of guilt and pity at seeing her go.
Regardless of birth or station, she’s just a poor young woman whose love went so many years unknown and unrequited. It’s enough to move any heart.
“Now, lass,” Griselda said to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get ye inside and washed and dressed, and then ye can regale yer mither and I with exactly what in the world ye two foolish young folk have been up to.”
Delilah frowned as they moved towards the great hall of Castle MacConnair. “Washed and dressed?” she asked, vaguely.
“Darling,” her mother said, slipping an arm through Delilah’s own, “you’re covered in mud and drenched with blood. It looks like you’ve been towed through a battlefield by a runaway horse. Let’s get you clean. The story will keep a little longer.”
And so, after a luxurious bath in front of a roaring fire, Delilah sat down with Lady MacConnair and her mother and told them the entire tale. She did not begin the story the night that Marcus came and spirited her away from the Earl’s house. Rather, she started four years previously, when she had first laid eyes upon the heir to the MacConnair clan.
The two older women listened with rapt attention as she laid out the story before them, stitching and fitting each square into place like the portion of an elaborate tapestry.
It was a tapestry that even Delilah herself could only now begin to see in its entirety, as she inserted the segments that had been hidden from Marcus and herself, right up until Mallory had confessed to the part that she had played.
Both women gasped at the right moments, murmured and smiled as Delilah spoke. The fire burned lower and fresh wood was added. Neither Griselda or Lady Glimouth interrupted—though when Delilah explained how she had tied her skirts into trews and climbed out of her bedroom window and down the side of the manor her mother exclaimed, “Delilah, really!”
Though she could see her mother was shocked at some of her behavior, Delilah was also inclined to think that she was also, somewhat, impressed—thought she doubted she would ever willingly admit it.
When the tale had wound itself down to the hunter’s cabin and the confrontation with Mallory, Griselda sat back in her chair and sighed.
“Ah, the poor lass,” she said, running a finger around the rim of her cup of mulled cider.
“Poor lass?” exclaimed Lady Glimouth. “That criminal stabbed your son!”
“Aye, that she did,” Griselda said. Her shrewd eyes fastened themselves on Delilah’s, looked into her face with the same deep regard as they had four years ago when Delilah had first met the Lady MacConnair. “But my son seems tae have a knack fer inflamin’ such passions in the fairer sex, isn’t that right, lass?”
Delilah felt the blush that infused her face had probably spread all the way to the tips of her freshly washed blonde hair.
“He is a fine man,” she said, trying to avoid her mother’s eye. “I have come to think most highly of him. He saved my life.”
“Got himself stabbed playin’ the hero, ye mean? Aye, that’s Marcus right enough. Always been a reckless lad, even as a boy.”
Griselda’s eyes had not left Delilah’s burning, crimson face.
“Might be that ye’ve the temperament to bank that fire in him.”
Delilah looked up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother look sharply at Griselda.
“What do you mean?” Delilah asked.
Instead of answering, Griselda fired another question back at her with a forthright bluntness that Delilah was starting to recognize as the Highland way.
“D’ye love him, lass?”
“Really, Lady Griselda,” Lady Glimouth said. “Is that really appro—”
“Yes,” Delilah said.
The three women sat in silence for a moment. Outside, the window shutters were rattled by a gust of wind bringing rain with it from across the hills.
“You, you do?” her mother asked her.
Delilah turned to face her. “Yes, I do, Mother.”
Lady Glimouth opened her mouth as if she was going to say something in protestation, but before she could, Delilah reached over and put a hand over her mother’s own hand.
“I love him, Mother. That’s the truth. I loved him even when I thought I hated him, when I thought that he hated me. I have loved him ever since we first met. Through fair weather and storms. I do not know what else I can say to you.”
Griselda smiled. “Ah, ye’ve the look about ye that I felt I had when I was yer age and met the Laird. His parents were dead-set against our union,” and here the Scotswoman turned to the Earl of Glimouth’s wife, “but, sometimes, less harm is done by goin’ with the stream than fightin’ the current.”
For once in her life, Lady Glimouth seemed at a loss for words. Eventually, she managed to say, “But, your son—he is betrothed to the daughter of another Laird.”
Griselda waved a deprecating hand. “Bah, ye ken what lads are like, Mary—full o’ bluster. Ye give me a wee bit o’ time to talk tae his Lairdship and we’ll see what can or cannae be done.”
“Lady Griselda,” Delilah asked, trying to temper the sudden hope that had burgeoned inside of her on hearing Griselda’
s words, “What will happen to Mallory?”
Griselda’s face grew grave. “That will be up tae his Lairdship to decide, lass,” she said. “It’s a serious thing she did, ye ken. Attemptin’ to take yer life, and almost killin’ the Laird’s only son… Well, we’ll have tae see what happens.”
Marcus spent three days abed.
Delilah was not allowed to see him on the first and second days, as he was sleeping. Boyd, the castle’s physician, spent the first day cleaning, stitching, and spreading a pungent poultice over the knife wound. After this, he declared that Marcus was to be left to rest and that only the immediate family and himself should be allowed access to him, as he had lost a lot of blood and was weak.
Delilah spent her time in a state of constant agitation. She walked the castle grounds, doing circuits of the gardens, and walking all around the lake on the second day. Finley accompanied her, but they did not talk much. Each of them were engrossed in their own thoughts.
Delilah hardly dared to hope that what Griselda had hinted at could be true. Did she really mean that Marcus and Delilah could wed? What of the agreement between the MacConnair and Allerdice clans? She had no concern over her own betrothal. That morning—the morning of the third day since they had arrived bloody and weary at MacConnair Castle—her father had told her over breakfast about Viscount Keicester’s retraction.
“He seemed rather put out, my dear,” the Earl said, as he peeled a hard-boiled egg. “I believe he was under the impression that you were more enthusiastic about running off with a wild Highlander than you were on being the wife of a pretentious member of the English aristocracy.”
“Henry!” Mary said, from where she sat next to him. “It does not become you to speak of people in that manner.”
“Sorry, my dear,” the Earl said, bending with sedulous attention to the task of removing shell from egg. “I may have been mistaken, of course. It was rather difficult to hear the poor chap’s words through his broken nose.”
Captured by his Highland Kiss Page 12
