Amanda Scott (2 page)

Anne automatically braced herself, but his first words made it clear that what anger he felt was not directed at her.

“I’ve failed you, lass. By God’s feet, I have.”

Shocked to hear him admit such a thing, she felt unfamiliar sympathy stir as she said, “You have not done any such thing,
sir. Moreover, you should not distress yourself by fretting about such matters but should try instead to go back to sleep.
I warrant you will feel much better after you rest.”

“Faith, but I’m sped, like your mother and two small sisters afore me. And I’ll rest soon enough. Whether I’ll feel better
when I do must depend upon the Almighty and where He sends me. I’ve not much hope of heaven, for I’ve not led a pious life,
but I can’t mend that now, either. The good thing is, wherever I go, I’m bound to find most of the men I’ve dealt with over
the years who passed on before me. We’re all much of a muchness, after all, whichever side we’ve served.”

Hastily crossing herself, Anne said, “You must not talk like that!”

A glimmer of a smile touched his dry, cracked lips. “God kens me through and through, Anne-lassie. What I say or how I say
it won’t vex Him now.”

“Still—”

“Hush, lass. I’ve no time or strength left for fratching. Indeed, I do not know where I’ve found the strength to talk, for
I swear I could barely open my mouth afore now to sip water when it were offered me. Still I mean to make the most of it,
for there be things you should know before I leave you alone in this world.”

“I can learn what I must from your man of affairs in Hawick,” she insisted. “He knows your wishes, does he not?”

“Aye, Scott kens my mind on most subjects. On some there be nowt I can do in any event, with your brother gone as he is.”

He fell silent, his eyes taking on the faraway look Anne had seen so often since the day nearly a year before when the terrible
news had reached them that Sir Andrew Ellyson had fallen in a brief but fatal skirmish after troops of England’s Henry VIII
had crossed the line near Carter Bar to harass the Scots.

The earl had withdrawn from his family then, in mind if not in body, and the passion he had previously displayed for his lands
and his people had diminished noticeably. He had not shirked his duties, but with Andrew dead, the fire inside his lordship
had nearly died, too.

A few lingering embers had glowed briefly upon learning two months before that his countess was once again with child, but
that glimmer of hope had died six weeks afterward with her ladyship and the wee seedling bairn inside her.

The fever that had swept through the Borders, particularly Roxburghshire, was fearsome, wiping out whole families and decimating
villages. But its strength had waned, and they had thought the worst over when it struck Ellyson Towers.

Determined to recall the earl to the present, Anne said, “What must I do?”

“You must not stay here,” he said, his voice losing strength again.

“But I thought… ” She hesitated, reluctant to admit that she knew, or thought she knew, how things would be left.

“Ellyson Towers will be yours in two years, Anne, when you reach twenty-one. In the meantime you’ll have an adequate allowance
from the rents, even with England’s wretched Harry wreaking mischief wherever he can.”

She nodded, for she had learned as much from her mother before the countess’s death. Blinking back tears at that unhappy memory,
she forced herself to concentrate on her father’s words, for his voice had weakened again, frighteningly.

“Scott will write to inform Thomas … ”

“Thomas Ellyson?”

“Aye. He is the heir now to my titles and the Armadale estates in Stirlingshire.” He drew a rasping breath. “Still, the inheritance
will surprise him.”

“But surely you wrote to him when Andrew died.”

“Och, aye, but he did not bother even to reply, doubtless believing I still had plenty of time left to produce an army of
sons. You must write to him, lass. ’Tis the proper thing to do, for he will be head of the family when I’m gone.”

“He won’t expect to look after me, will he?” Anne asked. She remembered their distant cousin Thomas Ellyson fondly from her
childhood and the one or two occasions when he had paid them a visit, but the thought that a near stranger might call the
tune for her dancing did not appeal to her.

The earl’s parched lips twitched slightly. “You are to do as I bid you, lass.”

“Aye, sir, but I’d prefer to remain here.”

“Nay, you must not, for we lie only three miles from the line and English Harry’s troops. Our own King Jamie’s nobles are
gathering armies nearby too, to support him, and there be little to choose betwixt one fighting man and another where an unprotected
lass is concerned. Don’t count on Jamie to protect you, either. For one thing, he is not here. Moreover, he has troubles enough,
just trying to determine from one day to the next who is with him and who is against him.”

“But I—”

“It’s settled,” he said. “You’ll go to your aunt Olivia at Mute Hill House.”

“Mute Hill House?” Anne scarcely remembered the place, for her aunt Olivia, Lady Carmichael, and Armadale were not close,
and Anne had not visited Mute Hill House since her early childhood.

“It won’t be bad,” the earl said. “You will be only ten miles from home. Moreover, the house is large and well fortified,
so you’ll be comfortable and safe. You can help support your aunt’s spirits, too, for she will pretend to miss me, especially
since she plunged herself into grief after her husband died two years ago and apparently refuses to emerge from it. She’s
a tiresome woman, but you may find a friend in your cousin, for although you are older, you have much in common, including
the fact that you were both named Fiona Anne after my mother.”

“But I—”

“It’s settled,” he growled. “You’ll go to Olivia.”

Anne sighed but nodded, saying, “At least living at Mute Hill will be better than traveling all the way to Stirlingshire to
abide with Cousin Thomas.”

“If Thomas Ellyson has married, he has not had the courtesy to inform me,” the earl said with a hint of his customary testiness.
“And if he has no wife, although he is years older than you, it would be most inappropriate for you to live with him.”

“I suppose it would.”

“I warrant you’ll not stay long with Olivia in any event, lass. After all, with the Towers and your mother’s fortune, plus
what more I shall leave you—which includes your little sisters’ portions now, as well as your own—you will be a wealthy woman
even if English Harry does take the Borders—or takes all Scotland, for that matter—so you will doubtless marry well.”

“If that is true, sir, Ì cannot imagine how you have failed me.”

“My dear child, you are nearly nineteen years old! You should have married long since, but what I meant to say is that your
aunt Olivia will most likely see to that business quite easily. She’s a fool and thinks too much about herself, but she did
manage to get that lass of hers betrothed to Sir Christopher Chisholm of Ashkirk and Torness, which was no mean feat. Indeed,
I should think—”

But what he thought she would never know, for his words ended in a gasping cough as his voice and frail body failed him at
last. His eyes widened, a sharp spasm wracked his body, and a moment later, his eyes closed.

Anne heard one last rattling breath, and then he was gone.

A wave of desolation swept over her. In less than a year—no, in barely a fortnight—she had gone from being a member of a happy,
vigorous family to being alone in the world. And although she disapproved of her father’s arbitrary disposal of her future,
it was his right to command her and her duty to obey. In any event, she knew she lacked the fortitude to defy his wishes,
even now.

As soon as he was buried in the little cemetery just outside the castle walls, she would pack her things and go to Mute Hill
House.

T
wenty-eight-year-old Kit Chisholm swallowed hard as he and his two silent companions reached the top of a hill pass a few
miles southeast of Moffat and a salty tang in the soft Border breeze brought a rush of memory and stirred a familiar longing
in his soul. The three had left Lanark early that morning, the first sunny morning in a sennight, and had already endured
eight hours in the saddle, following four equally long, wet and dreary days before this one, journeying south from the Highlands.
They were tired, but all three were Border bred, and Kit knew that Tam and Willie must be feeling much as he did.

Before them, beyond the wide, low-lying forest of Eskdale, lay the homeland of his childhood, the steep, rolling hills and
deeply cleft river valleys of Roxburghshire. There, wandering mountain streams divided thick woodlands from occasional patches
of arable land as their waters rushed to spill into the greater flow of the Teviot, the Ewes, the Lid-del, and other powerful
rivers of their ilk.

The deep, aching homesickness that his memories stirred seemed only to strengthen with the knowledge that he was almost home
again. Six long years had passed since the angry day he had left Hawks Rig Castle for the Highlands, when he had declared
that he would never be homesick. But he had been wrong. Indeed, the feeling now was as strong as it had been during the fifteen
months he had spent as a prisoner aboard the
Marion Ogilvy,
a time he remembered as endless, lonely months of helpless, often seething rage punctuated by periods of uncharacteristic
despair.

Now that he was nearly home, it seemed to him that his yearning to be there should be easing a bit. Perhaps, he mused, it
was simply safe now to acknowledge the homesickness and recognize how deeply it had affected him. Perhaps, too, he had simply
grown up.

He had no idea what lay ahead. His father, the late Laird of Ashkirk and Torness, had died during his absence, so the estates
and Hawks Rig were Kit’s now, but the first thing he had felt at hearing the news had been fury, fury with the old laird for
dying before they could reconcile their differences, and fury with himself for not growing up sooner.

“How far would ye say Hawks Rig lies from here?” young Willie Armstrong asked him, breaking the long silence.

Kit frowned. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Ten miles or so if we could fly, but since we must ride, I’d say a half-day’s journey.
But ’tis only an hour and a bit from here to Dunsithe.”

“That’s good, that is,” the older, stockier Tam said in his deep, gravelly voice. “I’ll be glad tae slip off this saddle for
a good night’s rest.”

“I wonder what they’ll think of our news,” Kit said, smiling at last.

“Riders!” Twelve-year-old Wee Jock o’ the Wall raced barefoot across the damp, grassy hillside, shouting, “Riders approaching
the castle, laird!”

Wild Fin Mackenzie, Laird of Kintail, and his constable and best friend since childhood, Sir Patrick MacRae, both turned in
their saddles. They had taken advantage of the first dry day after a sennight of intermittent rain to go hawking.

Kintail yelled, “How many, Jock?”

“Three o’ them,” the boy yelled back. “Ye can see for yourself an ye look beyond them trees yonder.”

“Go ahead, Fin,” Patrick said. “I’ll call Zeus in and be right behind you. Whistle up the dogs, Jock.”

“Aye, sir,” Jock replied, putting two fingers in his mouth and producing an ear-splitting shriek to which the three spaniels
responded with tongues lolling and tails awag. The giant deerhound, Thunder, loped after them, showing far more dignity but
soon outpacing the smaller dogs to catch up with his young master.

Patrick whistled the goshawk’s recall signal, whereupon the great bird raised its wings and swooped toward him from the high
branch where it had perched to survey nearby fields for its next unsuspecting prey. When the bird’s talons met Patrick’s leather
glove, he caught its jesses and gave it a quail’s wing. As Zeus tore flesh from bone, Patrick spurred his horse and caught
up with Kintail.

“Three, just as the lad said,” Kintail told him. “They carry no banner.”

Since Patrick’s distance vision was nearly as keen as the hawk’s, he had already noted the lack of a banner, and other details
as well.

“Faith,” he muttered. “My eyes must be deceiving me.”

“They rarely do,” Kintail said, “but what makes you say so?”

“Because if they do not, we’re about to offer hospitality to a dead man.”

When Dunsithe Castle came into view at last, squatting solidly atop the highest hill in the area, its gray square towers and
rounded turrets outlined starkly against the clear blue sky, Kit pointed it out to his companions.

“’Tis a fine looking place, that,” Willie Armstrong observed. “Wonder how many kine they run in the hills hereabouts.”

“You will stifle that reiver’s soul of yours whilst we’re here, lad.” Kit ordered bluntly. “Besides being my friend, Kintail
is a bad man to cross, and his constable, Sir Patrick MacRae, can take down a stag at four hundred yards with a single shot
from his longbow.”

Widening his blue eyes, Willie said, “I’d never lift beasts belonging tae anyone ye speak for, Kit. Ye should ken better nor
that, should he no, Tam?”

The older man merely grunted.

Indignantly, Willie said. “D’ye think I’d lift beasts from a friend, Tam?”

“In sooth, lad, I think ye’d lift the featherbed from under your own mother, did a more lucrative use for it occur tae ye,”
Tam said.

Kit chuckled, and although Willie cast him a darkling look, the lad wisely let the subject drop.

“Someone ha’ seen us,” Tam said.

“Aye,” Kit agreed, already watching the two men riding toward them.

The two of them, despite being Highlanders as tall and broad-shouldered as he was, rode like Borderers bred to the saddle.
One carried a large hawk on his fist, and the bird lifted its wings now and again, not in protest but as if it simply enjoyed
the sensation of wind beneath its wings.

Smiling, Kit said, “You are about to meet our host and his constable.” He drew rein and waited patiently for Kintail and Patrick
to close with them. As they did, he noted a lad and four dogs racing uphill toward the castle.