Ashblane's Lady. Sophia James
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lifted her chin, remembering the words of her mother, and the words became a mantra as she followed the party up the stairs and into a room built at the back of the keep overlooking a lake. Some windows at least, then. Maddy drew in her breath with gratitude.
‘You will stay here, Lady Randwick, and the boy Jemmie next door until we find a job to set him to. Supper will be sent up on a tray as soon as it is ready.’
‘Thank you.’ She felt the tremor in her voice, though, as she bit back the question of the night’s sleeping arrangements. Quinlan surprised her again with his uncanny ability to read what was on her mind.
‘The mourning will keep the Laird busy for the next few days. You will’na be bothered tonight.’ Momentarily his eyes met hers. Imprinted with perplexity, she perceived also a humanity etched into the blueness. An honourable man, then, Quinlan Ullyot, and one uncertain of the implications of her imprisonment. Could he be persuaded, then, to let her go? Assist in the escape of both herself and Jemmie? Dare she ask the question at all?
‘I am a lady, sir,’ she began, wishing for the first time in her entire life that she bore the gift some young women had of bringing tears to their eyes on demand. ‘Your Laird has no right as a gentleman to keep me here against my will. If you could help me—’
She got no further.
‘Ladies dinna wear the mark of lovers on their breast or watch the slaying of good men in battle from a close distance. It is wise you learn that the will of our Laird is obeyed unquestioningly before ye ask of another what you were about to ask of me. Betrayal is measured in the cost of a life and no one’s life here is worth less than your own. One false step and ye shall be interred, Madeleine Randwick, with the bodies that this night will be laid in the coldness of Ashblane’s dirt.’
Without pausing for an answer he bade Jemmie proceed outside with him, the turning of a key in the lock giving her notice again that she was a prisoner here.
The light of a thin sun struggling through the October clouds hit the wall behind her and made her turn to the window. Through the panes of polished horn the world was strangely distended and made unreal. In the far distance she saw some hills. The Cheviots, she guessed. And just beneath her the movement of a priest hurrying, the black folds of his garment glued by force of wind around his legs and whipping the tassel on his belt sideways. If she listened carefully, she could hear the first tunings of bagpipes keening in the rising wind off the Scottish Lowlands.
Tonight she felt lonely and frightened and confused. Her hands dug deeper into the pockets of her skirt, feeling the last dustings of age-worn leaves. Chamomile. Lemon balm. Marjoram. They grounded her. Made her real. Pulled her bones to the earth in a way few people had been willing to. Jemmie. Goult. Her mother and grandmother. Shutting her eyes, she imagined Eleanor and Josephine calling to her in the way the de Cargne women had summoned their ancestors for centuries. The true witchcraft lay here, she smiled wanly and laid her hand across her heart, listening as the footsteps of the soldiers receded.
When silence reigned she crossed the room and bent at the timbered wall that divided her room from Jemmie’s. Knocking twice, she held her breath, releasing it only as two answering taps came back. Two for safety. Three for danger. The codes from Heathwater were so ingrained that she was suddenly and unreasonably angry. When would their lives ever really be safe? When would she be able to sleep at night without the edge of panic in her dreams? When could Jemmie set aside boy’s clothes and claim her place in a world that would not harm her? Ashblane was as much as a jail as Heathwater had ever been with its powerful Lord and its isolation, and here, caught in the borderlands of mist and drizzle, all she had ever tried to accomplish slid into nothingness.
The Black Widow. She mouthed the words into the quiet around her, hating the sound of them. At twenty-four she had become as notorious as her mother had been, and as trapped.
Chapter Five
The next morning she was taken alone to the Great Hall where the hum of conversation was quickly silenced by her entry. Maddy caught Alexander Ullyot’s glance as she walked by. Today he looked tired, the dark stubble of his beard unshaven and the clothes she had seen him in last night dishevelled and creased. He had not been to bed then, the wakes taking up all of the hours between then and now. The thought made the bile rise in her throat and she was thankful to note that the chair to which she was led at least afforded her a little privacy.
‘You are to sit here, Lady Randwick, and I will fetch you the morning meal.’
The woman spoke nervously and crossed herself as she scuttled away to the kitchens. Looking around, Madeleine caught the scowl of a man who shaped his hand into the form of a knife and whipped it across his throat. Her glance dropped away in shock. Such harsh and raw hatred was jolting—even though at Heathwater it had been every bit as potent, it had never been quite as overt.
She made herself sit perfectly still, hands tightly fisted in her lap, teeth gritted. She had sat like this so many times at Heathwater as Noel and Liam Williamson had drunk themselves into oblivion. She had shielded her emotions from her husband, too, when the ghosts that ate at his sanity threatened to take it completely. Aye. She was a woman who had learned not to expect much. Here at least there was not a fist in her face or a barrage of angry expletives every time she deigned to leave her room.
Her room. The tower room in the western wing at Heathwater Castle, black drapes drawn across the sun for fear the ghoulies and silkies of a thousand years of fairytale should enter unseen. Lucien’s gibberish and in the end her saviour. She liked the curtains closed and humanity shut out, the sounds of a world she could no longer fathom softened by the distance of darkness.
A movement at the top table caught her attention. Alexander Ullyot had summoned a young woman to speak with him, a girl with light hair and a blue gown and the complexion of someone who enjoyed a walk outdoors in the sunshine. A girl who was even now approaching her.
‘Would ye mind if I joined you, Lady Randwick? My uncle has bid that I be polite.’
A barely concealed insult. An explanation of intent.
‘I do not expect it,’ Maddy returned. ‘Tell your uncle that I relinquish any duty regarding manners that you or he may feel bound to.’
She was surprised when the girl smiled and sat. ‘My name is Katherine. I am the daughter of the Laird of Ullyot’s first wife’s oldest sister.’
‘His first wife? How many wives have there been since?’
Katherine smiled again. ‘Only that one. She died when Gillion, who you saw last night, was born.’
‘Then he is not married?’ Maddy did not question the silent spring of relief that rose in her breast.
‘No. Alice Ullyot has been dead for these past five years. She died in the chamber you have been placed in, though there is no ghost or any such thing. Not that you would be afraid, I think, Lady Randwick, for I have watched you. It is you the others are afraid of. They cannot afford to believe in your magic, you see.’
‘Magic?’ Her voice was guarded.
‘The way you heal. With your hands.’
‘It is not magic. It is only good medicine.’
‘And it makes you independent, doesn’t it?’
Maddy frowned, troubled by the drift of this conversation.
‘You’ve no husband,’ Katherine qualified, ‘and you need none. I, too, would like to become a woman without need of men.’
‘And that is how you see me?’
‘I overheard my uncle say it to Quinlan when first he brought you here. He also said you were a witch.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘Quinlan does and Dougal, and the men who watched your doctoring in the clearing before the Liddesdale Forest. I see them cross themselves after you have passed them by. For protection, I think, though my uncle frowns at them when they do