The Border Lord's Bride (10 page)

The great oak bedstead had matching curtains that could be drawn above the bed for extra protection from the cold. A small table had been placed on one side of the bed. It held a taperstick. There was an oak table near the window, and by the hearth a single chair of oak with a high tapestried back and seat. The floors of her chamber were wood, and a large sheepskin had been placed before the fireplace, a smaller one on one side of the bedstead. To her surprise Ellen found a small interior room just big enough for a single bed, with a tiny nightstand and a taperstick.

Peigi would have her own little nest, although Ellen knew her old nursemaid would not be pleased. But Ellen was. She was long past sleeping with her serving woman, and the little chamber offered Peigi far more comfort than a trundle bed would have given her. The

accommodation was really quite good, considering that Duffdour was only a border keep. She considered that perhaps she had been given the finest room. She would ask Sim. She did not want to put anyone out.

Peigi arrived just before the early sunset the next day. She was exhausted with her travels, but pleased with the keep. "It‘s a civilized place," she said to Ellen. "When I heard we were being sent to the borders I feared for our safety and comfort." Her brown eyes were taking in everything, and to Ellen‘s surprise she was delighted with her tiny chamber. "I‘m too old and too fat to share a bed with anyone now," she said bluntly. "And I like me comfort, my baby."

The November days dwindled away. December brought the shortest days of all. It was cold, and the landscape about them bleak. Their days took on a comfortable routine. Maggie insisted that her brother‘s priest, Father Iver, say the Mass each morning in the hall before they broke their fast. Duncan would not gainsay his sister‘s wish. And each day they prayed for the black soul of Balgair MacArthur. God, Maggie had told Ellen most firmly, had already forgiven her the sin of killing the misbegotten mongrel.

After the Mass they would break their fast with a hearty meal of oat stirabout in bread trenchers, fresh bread, butter, and cheese. Then Duncan went off to manage the affairs of Duffdour. Ellen spent her days in the keep‘s small, cozy hall, sewing while Peigi knitted and Maggie worked at her tapestry frame, explaining that the tapestries now hanging had been worked by her mother and her grandmother. Twice a week the cotters came to the hall to have their miseries and sicknesses tended to by the three women. As Ellen was well acquainted with the making of salves, ointments, potions, and pills, Maggie encouraged her to replenish the keep‘s apothecary.

One day each week, accompanied by six men at arms, Maggie and Ellen would ride out to the most distant cottages to see to the infirm. On the other days they checked to make certain that the miller was grinding the grain in a timely manner, and distributing the flour fairly so the Duffdour folk might make their bread; or they saw that there was enough salt available for the villagers to preserve the meat and fish they were given. Once the larder in the keep was filled they saw to the fair distribution of the hunt. For the first time in many years Duffdour had women managing the domestic needs of its people.

Ellen found she was every bit as busy as if she had been managing her own home in the

Highlands. And Duncan Armstrong noticed. Noticed that his hall was cleaner than usual. That there was a bowl of small branches laden with orange berries on the high board. That the sheets on his bed were changed with more frequency, and smelled of fresh lavender. The meals put on the table now offered more variety. The three women had brought comfort and peace to his house.

One evening his sister asked him if he would ride out the following day with Ellen to the far cottages. "I am no longer a girl, and my bones ache with the damp and the coming winter. I cannot ride tomorrow, Duncan, but Ellen needs to go. There‘s a clansman‘s young wife who will drop her first bairn in the winter around the time the ewes are lambing. Ellen has made a special tonic for her. The lass is frail, I fear."

"Aye, I‘ll ride with her," the laird answered. He was actually glad to have the opportunity, for since their arrival at Duffdour he had been kept busy. The only time he saw her was at Mass and at meals. And he had had no time at all to speak with her. Was she happy? Was there something he might do for her? How could he know if he couldn‘t speak with her?

Maggie smiled to herself. She had already come to the conclusion that Ellen MacArthur would make an excellent wife for her youngest brother. The fact that it had not occurred to Duncan didn‘t surprise her. Like most men, he wouldn‘t wed until he was backed into a corner and the arrangement made for him. He was so far past his boyhood she doubted he could remember it.

He was closer to forty than thirty. But he was a good man, and he needed an heir, which would necessitate his taking a wife. As for Ellen, her impoverished state put her in a very difficult position, and she could hardly be considered at her peak when she was almost nineteen. Yet she was still young enough to have children, and Ellen MacArthur was a good lass.

Maggie Armstrong might be a nun, but she had eyes in her head. She could see her brother was attracted to Ellen, even if he didn‘t realize it yet. Ellen, however, still thought of Donald MacNab and the life they might have had. Had she loved this man to whom her grandfather had betrothed her? Maggie didn‘t think so. But her life had been laid out for her, and she had accepted what was put before her. She had loved her grandfather, and if old Ewan MacArthur said Donald MacNab was the man for her, then Ellen would have followed her grandfather‘s decision without question. Love, however, would not have necessarily entered into it.

Most people would have wondered what a nun knew about love, but Maggie knew. She had

fallen in love at the age of ten with the son of one of her father‘s cotters. They had known each other since infancy, for the lad‘s mother had been Maggie‘s nursemaid. They romped and played together, and then one day when he was fourteen and Maggie twelve, they had kissed. And they had known in that instant that they loved each another.

But they had also known that the laird of Duffdour would not sanction his daughter‘s marriage to the son of a lowly cotter. Her friend had been married to his cousin, a match that had long ago been approved by the laird. And her father had decided the dower he had for his daughter was too small to bring her a good husband. So Maggie Armstrong had been sent to St. Mary‘s to become a nun. She had accepted her father‘s decision, as Ellen had accepted her grandfather‘s decision. But she had been resentful of it, even though she realized that without a husband she had no place in the world.

Now she saw a young lass in a similar position. And Ellen was a girl who should have a husband and family. Maggie had discovered over the years that she was not. She was too independent a female. She had worked her way into her convent‘s hierarchy and now stood in line to become the mother superior one day. Maggie knew when to yield a point. But she loved making things right, and she was going to make this come out right for her brother and for Ellen MacArthur.

She watched them ride out the next day, a smile of satisfaction upon her face.

"Ye‘re a sly boots," she heard Peigi say as she turned back to the keep.

"Do you disagree?" she coolly asked the old servant.

"Nay," Peigi replied shortly, and she cackled. "You would hae yer brother safe wi‘ a good wife, and I would have my mistress safe wi‘ a good man."

Unaware of the plotting about them, Duncan and Ellen rode some distance with the men at arms until they reached the far cottage they sought. The clansman, coming from the cottage, greeted them. His wife, he told Ellen, thought the child inside her too active, and was frightened. Ellen dismounted and entered the cottage.

"Here I am, Annie, with the tonic I promised you," she said cheerfully. "Laren tells me the bairn is stretching his wee legs." Ellen plunked herself down on the bench by the fire, smiling at the young woman. "Come, lass, and sit with me. Tell me what troubles you, and I will see if I can help you. But first get a spoon, and take a sip of my tonic."

Annie did as she was bidden. "It tastes of peppermint, my lady," she said.

"It will strengthen you for the birth in a few months," Ellen told her. "The king‘s own aunt gave me the recipe, Annie. Now speak with me."

"The child is so active, my lady, I fear he will come before it is time," the girl said. "And I am all alone here out on the moor. What if the English come raiding?"

"Is yer mam in the village?" Ellen asked her.

"Aye, she is," Annie said.

"That the child moves strongly tells you that he is a healthy bairn, and will live. I am told that as your time draws near the bairn will rest in preparation for his birth. You are fine, lass, but I think Laren should take you home to your mother until the bairn is born, and I will tell him so. And I will speak with your mother. It is better you be in the village near the midwife, your mam, and your female relations. Your fears will subside with the other women about you to comfort you.

As for the English, the laird tells me they will probably not raid once the snows come. Another reason for you to go quickly."

The laird and the clansman entered the cottage now, and Ellen told them that Annie would be safer and more comfortable with her mother at this time. It was agreed that her husband would take her this same day.

"But I must return here to protect what is ours," Laren said. "I must keep the signal fire prepared should the English come raiding. ‘Tis my duty."

"Good man!" the laird approved.

Ellen bade her patient farewell, and they rode back toward the keep. "He is a loyal man, Laren,"

she said as they traveled.

"But you did the right thing with the wife. I could tell she was frightened," the laird noted.

"Her fears of the English won‘t subside. They may grow worse once she births her child," Ellen said. "She is one of those lasses who is just naturally fearful. Would it be possible to put a man without a wife out on the moors? And perhaps give Laren a position in the village? Annie can‘t live with the loneliness out here."

"He could work with the cattle," the laird said thoughtfully. "I could put one of the older men, a widower perhaps, at the signal fire."

"Do it in the spring, after the lass has had her bairn. Her husband will have gone the winter without her, and she without him. He will be more amenable to making a change," Ellen said with a small smile.

"You‘re a very devious lass," Duncan replied, smiling back.

"My grandsire always said I had a practical streak," she replied.

He liked her, Duncan realized, and as the days passed he really began to understand what a great loss Lochearn was to and for her. She was meant to be the wife of a man of property. She had been trained from her birth for such a role. She knew how to nurture gently without coddling, and how to be strong as well. And she was certainly easy to get along with, he found. His sister, with whom he had had little association over the years but knew by reputation, liked her too.

God only knew that Maggie was not an easy person, but Ellen MacArthur had quickly gained her respect and her friendship.

The Christmastide season came, and Maggie warned him to have some small gift for Ellen, but she would not say why. On Christmas Day, the first of the twelve days of the feast, he discovered why when Ellen shyly presented him with three fine new linen shirts she had made for him.

"Of course, the linen is yours, my lord," she told him. "Maggie found it for me in a storeroom, but the work is all mine. It is the only way I can thank you for sheltering me. I took one of your old shirts to make the pattern, but I can make any alterations needed once you have tried one of the shirts on," Ellen finished.

He carefully inspected her handiwork, and then praised it. "Your stitches are so small, Ellen, that I can barely see them," he said. "I have not had any new shirts in a long time. The last I recall came from my sister-in-law, Adair, several years ago. Thank you!" And then he smiled at her.

"And as turnabout is fair play, lass, I thought you might want to make yourself a few new gowns." He handed her a key. "This will unlock the storeroom in the chamber my mother

inhabited when she lived here. I did not know of it, but Maggie did. I realized most of your clothing was left behind at Lochearn but the little you brought to court."

Quick tears sprang into Ellen‘s soft gray-blue eyes. "Thank you, my lord," she said, her voice trembling just slightly. "I have, I fear, become a bit shabby."

Sister Margaret Mary gave a small smile as she watched her brother and Ellen. Yes, she thought to herself, God will answer my prayers in this particular matter.

The winter passed in relative quiet. The snows came down from the north and covered the earth around them. But the hall was warm, and the days began to grow longer. Ellen found herself managing the daily affairs of the keep when Sim, the laird‘s steward, began coming to her for this and for that. She did not wish to appear forward, but Maggie assured her that the place needed a woman‘s touch. And so the days seemed to fly by. In the evening they would sit, the three of them, close by the fire talking or sometimes playing chess. Maggie appeared to be particularly skilled at the game.

"You‘re too clever, sister," the laird said one evening. "And here I assumed you spent all of your time on your knees in prayer at your convent. It would seem otherwise."

"Chess," Maggie told her sibling, "is a game of strategy and skill, Duncan. Like most men you are too impatient. Check. And mate." She took his king and smiled.

Ellen burst out laughing at the look of surprise upon the laird‘s face.

Then Maggie laughed too, unable to help herself.

"So," the laird said, and a wicked look came into his eye, "you find my helplessness before this religious charlatan amusing, Mistress MacArthur, do you?" He stood up. "I think you need a lesson in respect for your host." He stalked her.

Still giggling, Ellen jumped up, putting a chair between them. "I am most respectful of those deserving my esteem, my lord," she told him. "Your sister certainly has my admiration for her dexterity in the game of chess."