The Border Trilogy (23 page)

She lowered her eyelids demurely. “You told Trotter that I was to serve you in his place, sir.”

Douglas chuckled, delighted. “So you shall, wench. Come here to me at once.”

She moved toward him submissively. “I have never done this sort of thing before, so you must tell me what to do.”

“I should hope so,” he declared with mock severity. “You will begin by unlacing my doublet.” As she proceeded, he assisted by giving detailed instructions, the likes of which Trotter had certainly never heard, and many of which made her blush or chuckle. But Mary Kate enjoyed herself, and by the time Douglas was ready to climb into bed, her robe had joined his clothes in a pile on the stool. He patted her appreciatively on her backside, telling her she was a good little serving wench who had earned her rest, but it was a good time later before he allowed her to sleep.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, AFTER
a breakfast of cold boiled beef, porridge, and ale, Douglas announced that it was time for Mary Kate’s tour of the house. They began with the long gallery, an elegantly appointed chamber that stretched the entire rear width of the house and boasted fully glazed north and south walls overlooking the terrace, parterre, and hedge walls of the rear gardens as well as the peaceful inner court. Douglas drew Mary Kate’s attention to the huge twin fireplaces that faced each other from the end walls, but she was more impressed by the gallery’s linenfold wainscoting, the punched borders of which resembled elaborate stitchery, than she was with the exquisitely carved chimney pieces.

They paused to gaze at the garden view, then wandered to the east end, where a set of double doors opened into the bedchamber wing, consisting of four adjoining guest chambers, one pair facing the inner court and the second overlooking the herbary and the kitchen gardens. Next they came to a gloomy triangular hall that led to the rear stairs on one hand and to the front of the house on the other. Douglas pointed out his parents’ and Margaret’s rooms before they emerged into her ladyship’s sitting room, having completed a circuit of the first floor.

“There are only servants’ rooms upstairs,” he said as he opened the door into the window hall. “We’ll go on down—Good morning, Megan.”

Lady Somerville turned at the top of the stair, and Mary Kate saw that she was dressed for riding. She did not look so rosy-cheeked this morning. In fact, she seemed pale, but Mary Kate thought her depressingly beautiful nonetheless.

Douglas explained that they had been looking over the house.

“How interesting,” Megan said, her bored tone belying the polite phrase. “’Tis such a glorious day, though, that I had hoped you might join me for a ride. Both of you,” she added as an obvious afterthought.

“What about it, lass? We can finish this anytime.”

Mary Kate would have liked to point out that they could also go riding anytime, but she only protested that she was unsuitably clad. Douglas brushed her words aside, telling her they would wait while she changed, and Megan agreed with an enigmatic smile that spurred Mary Kate to greater haste than might otherwise have been the case. When she returned a short time later, they were laughing and the roses were back in Megan’s cheeks. Mary Kate bit her lip at their ease of manner, wondering if it truly had been five years and more since they were last together.

They soon reached the stable yard to find Sesi standing quietly and Valiant nervously beside a coal-black stallion, easily sixteen hands at the shoulder, who snorted and pawed impatiently at the hard ground. When the black heard his mistress’s voice, he responded with a twitch of his ears and a sound between a whinny and a chirp. Smiling broadly, Megan stroked his cheek. He snorted again, tossed his proud head, and pushed at her shoulder with his muzzle, making her laugh.

“What a splendid animal!” Mary Kate could not help her exclamation.

Megan smiled at her with unmistakable sincerity. “Yes, he is,” she agreed. “I call him Devil, of course, though his behavior is never evil. He and Valiant are rather a good match, are they not?”

It was true. Beside the two stallions, Sesi looked like a pony, and Mary Kate felt the difference even more once they were mounted. Douglas dismissed the grooms, and the three riders had no sooner cleared the stable yard than Megan issued a challenge to race. The black plunged ahead with Valiant in hot pursuit. Although Mary Kate urged Sesi to a gallop, she was easily outdistanced and the other two were soon lost to sight in the dense wood that loomed ahead. Evidently they had already decided upon a destination, but she did not know what it might be, nor would the knowledge have helped her, since she was unfamiliar with the wooded and hilly countryside.

Unwilling to keep Sesi at a headlong pace over unknown terrain, she slowed her to a trot when she entered the wood, and when the trail forked with still no sign of Douglas or Megan, she drew rein. What, she wondered, had possessed him? Surely he had not left her behind on purpose. Or had he? The notion occurred to her then that Megan might have issued her challenge simply to see if Douglas would follow her. Frustrated, bewildered, and angry, Mary Kate turned back toward Strachan Court, riding slowly, not wishing to face the embarrassment of returning alone. No more than a moment passed, however, before she heard hoofbeats behind her.

Reining in again, she turned in the saddle, smiling so as not to let Megan see that she was angry. She was certain that Douglas would be shamefaced, apologetic; thus, she was astonished when he spoke sharply before Valiant had come to a complete stop.

“What’s wrong? Why are you turning back?”

“You left me. I didn’t know where to go.”

“Don’t be childish,” he retorted. “We said we were riding up the ben path. If you were outdistanced, you had only to follow the uphill fork.”

Stung by the injustice of his words, she replied hotly that, on the contrary, no one had seen fit to mention any destination to her, that the two of them had simply and quite rudely left her behind, and that, furthermore, if they wished to ride up the ben or anywhere else, they could do so without her company since that had so clearly been their intention from the outset.

She had barely warmed to her subject, however, before he interrupted, peremptorily commanding her to keep a civil tongue in her head. If there was even a hint of guilt scratching at the surface of his subconscious, it was not evident, and Mary Kate realized belatedly that she ought not to have criticized him in front of his cousin. His pride had been stung. As a consequence and with a fine disregard of his own for Megan’s presence, Douglas proceeded to deliver a tongue-lashing that under ordinary circumstances might well have been expected to reduce his wife to tears, accusing her of discourtesy, selfishness, lack of generosity, and anything else he could think of.

Mary Kate heard him out in stony silence, biting back blistering words or her own. She would have liked very much to answer him with a detailed and unflattering description of his own character, but she was well aware of Megan’s interested attention, and she was not a fool. She knew exactly how he would deal with what he would interpret as bare-faced insolence from her. Therefore, she kept a guard on her tongue and forced herself to submit with outward meekness to his reprimand, while blinking away persistent tears of anger and frustration. She would not cry, no matter what he said. She would not give Lady Somerville that satisfaction.

But when he concluded by demanding that she improve her disposition at once and prepare to accompany them as planned, Mary Kate pleaded that she had lost her taste for a morning ride and would infinitely prefer to return to the house. To her surprise, Megan intervened before Douglas could expostulate.

“Do, for heaven’s sake, let her go, Adam. Not everyone has such a passion for exercise as we do. Moreover, she looks pale. Perhaps she suffers from the headache.” She smiled sweetly, causing Mary Kate to grit her teeth. “Shall we accompany you as far as the stables, my dear?”

“No, thank you,” Mary Kate replied brusquely, knowing she sounded sullen but not knowing how to sound otherwise. “I shall do well enough by myself.”

Douglas hesitated. He still looked angry, but now there was a shadow of doubt in his eyes as well, as though he realized that he ought not to ride off alone with his cousin. Mary Kate said nothing, hoping that this once he might give as much thought to her position as to his own. Unfortunately, her silence only irritated him, and with a near snarl, he glared at her and lifted his rein. “Go back then, if you wish to do so. But it would be best,” he added, grim warning clear in his tone, if you have done with these sulks before we return.”

Tears clouded her vision, spilling over at last as she watched the pair of them disappear again into the small, dense wood. Once again, the honors had gone to Megan. Cursing herself for sheer stupidity, Mary Kate rode back to the stable yard, where an obliging and mercifully uncurious groom assisted her to dismount and took charge of Sesi.

Walking to the house, she would have gone straight to her own bedchamber had she not chanced to meet Lord Strachan in the great hall. The rushes on the floor there had been newly changed, and the scent of crushed herbs wafted into the air as she crossed the room. Servants were already setting up trestle tables for dinner and Strachan was in the midst of the bustle, conferring with his bailiff, but he dismissed the man and greeted Mary Kate with delight, declaring that since she was alone, she ought to come at once to see his books.

With a hope that her cheeks were not tearstained, she followed him to his sanctum, a spacious chamber with more of those magnificent windows overlooking the inner court. The other walls were lined with bookshelves piled with manuscripts and leather-covered tomes secured in place with fine gold chains. Side tables provided space for more manuscripts and more books.

In the center of the room stood a beautiful Italianate oak table with an elaborately carved underframing. An elegant, cushioned armchair had been pushed away from the near side of the table, and at their entrance, Ned Lumsden scrambled hastily to his feet from a back stool on the far side.

“She has come to see the books, lad,” said Strachan, waving him back to his seat and pulling another armchair forward for Mary Kate. Before the next hour was done, she had learned a great deal more than she wished to know about illumination and the miracle of movable print. She had seen books on proper manners, history, and medicine, books of classical literature, and books in languages and even alphabets of which she had no knowledge. The information was all very interesting, to be sure, but she could not say that her interest matched her host’s enthusiasm, so it was with unmixed relief that she greeted her husband’s entrance a little more than an hour later.

Lord Strachan, in the process of selecting just one or two more excellent examples of something or other—she hadn’t been attending carefully for some time—had not yet noted his son’s presence, but Mary Kate looked at Douglas helplessly, and Ned grinned at him with undisguised impudence.

Casting a glance at the pile of books on the table beside his wife, Douglas raised an eyebrow and turned to his father. “Good day to you, my lord,” he said, cutting unhesitatingly into what had been a running monologue. “I believe you are confusing my wife with your vast knowledge of your favorite subject.”

Strachan turned quickly, pleased to see him but taken aback as well. He peered anxiously at his daughter-in-law. “I hope not,” he said. “I know I tend to give my tongue free rein when I get to talking about my books.”

“I have enjoyed your discourse, sir,” Mary Kate assured him, smiling, “but perhaps we should stop now that Adam is here. I fear I shan’t remember the half of what you have told me.”

He looked disappointed but cheered considerably when Douglas mentioned that Mary Kate had still not seen all of the house and he wished to take her over the ground floor before dinner.

Cheerful again, Strachan suggested that they cross the inner court and begin with the garden hall.

The sun was high enough now so that half the courtyard was bathed in light, and the air was warm. The fish pond in the center was surrounded by a floral border and boasted a Cupid’s fountain. Douglas reached into a hidden recess, and a fine, showery spray leaped up to surround the Cupid, splaying out over the pond below, causing golden carp to dart hither and yon for a moment until they became reaccustomed to the gentle splash.

From where Mary Kate stood, the sun’s rays provided her with a rainbow arcing across the pond. “’Tis lovely, sir.”

“Aye.” He looked at her searchingly, but she avoided his gaze, and they passed into the garden hall. Except for the long gallery above it, this room was easily the largest she had seen, certainly as large as the great hall and even more elegantly appointed. Once again, two opposing banks of windows gave one almost to feel that one was outside. But the most impressive feature of the room was the large hooded fireplace, where a gillie was busily laying a fire. Flanked by fluted pilasters and boasting an elegantly carved and decorated chimney piece, the fireplace dominated the western wall.

Douglas said briefly that the door to the right of the chimney led through a large, paneled parlor and two saloons to the great hall, while the housekeeper’s parlor, pastry, bolting house, and kitchens lay beyond the garden hall’s eastern door. Then, shooting the busy servant a look of unexplained annoyance, he guided Mary Kate outside onto the terrace.

They stood for a moment, drinking in the view of the sun-ridden gardens below, where two middle-aged gardeners and a gardener’s boy were industriously clipping hedges and pulling such minuscule weeds as had dared to disturb the perfection of the herbaceous borders. A pair of saucy jays screeched at each other unseen somewhere in the surrounding tall green hedges.

“Shall we walk a bit?”

She looked up at him, conscious of gathering tension, but then she nodded and let him tuck her hand in the crook of his arm. They went down the broad terrace steps and walked silently along the paths, away from the busy gardeners, until eventually they came to an arbor with a stone bench. Douglas pulled out his handkerchief and dusted the seat.