Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (6 page)

“Those will do,” Sibylla said. Turning to pour water from the ewer into the washstand basin, she tried not to think what it would feel like to drag a comb through her stiff, filthy tresses.

“Them combs will pull like Auld Clootie,” Kit said as Sibylla dampened a towel and gingerly dabbed dirt from her face with it. “I could help ye, though.”

“Aye, so you could,” Sibylla agreed. “If we each take one strand at a time and begin at the end, working our way upward, we can comb out a little at a time. That way, we may not pull out all my hair.”

Kit giggled, but when Sibylla had washed her face and hands, they both climbed back up on the cupboardlike bed with their combs. Sitting close together, propped up with pillows, they went to work on her hair.

They were going to make a mess, she knew. But a maid would have to strip off the bedding anyway to wash it and would shake everything out when she did.

“Whilst we do this, would you like to tell me how you came to be in the river?” she asked Kit a few minutes later.

“I did tell ye,” Kit said. “Them men said they was a-drowning puppies.”

“Dreadful, but why would they want to drown you and your brother?”

Kit concentrated closely on a stubborn snarl in the strand of hair she was combing. Then she said grimly, “They were the deevil’s men, that’s why. I hope they burn for their wickedness and dinna
ever
find us again.”

“But how did they find you at all? Do you know who they were?”

Kit shook her head, her gaze fixed again on the stubborn hank of hair.

“Kit, you must know why they behaved so badly. Were you doing aught to attract their attention, or anger them?”

Kit shrugged. “Just walking by the river and . . . and talking a bit is all.”

Watching her, wondering if she knew more and just did not want to tell, Sibylla tried another approach, saying gently, “What is your brother’s name?”

Kit had worked her way halfway up the strand she held and got onto her knees as she murmured, “Dand . . . They do call him Dand.”

“I warrant his Sunday name must be Andrew then.”

Kit shrugged again. “I call him Dand. D’ye think he’ll die?”

As Sibylla started to assure her that God would not be so cruel, she hesitated, knowing it would be crueler to raise her hopes with what might prove a lie.

Instead she said, “Whilst his lordship . . . the laird . . . was here, we should have thought to ask him how Dand is faring.” Wondering then if Kit had intended to divert her with the question, she said, “Have you a Sunday name, Kit—Cristina perhaps?”

Shaking her head, she said, “Just Kit is all.”

The door opened abruptly, and Simon appeared at the threshold, looking first concerned and then annoyed.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he demanded of Sibylla.

“Mercy, sir, I am still on it,” she said calmly. But she set aside the comb and stood to face him, feeling infinitely less vulnerable on her feet, bare or not. “I am a woman grown, sir,” she added then. “I’m fully capable of knowing my own mind.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “No female ever knows her own mind.”

She might have retorted, but his gaze had shifted. He was staring at the scarlet kirtle she wore, and she realized that without a shift beneath it, its fabric was too thin to conceal details of her body. The lack had not concerned her before, but with Simon staring so, she felt naked again. Heat flooded her cheeks.

“Be this the young lady wha’s sick then, me laird?” a high-pitched, quavering voice inquired from behind him.

His body had been blocking the entrance, but an old woman peeked around him. She wore a long black wool scarf draped over her unkempt, grizzled curls, and had tossed the long end across her meager chest and over the other shoulder of her faded gray tunic. In her visible hand, she carried a small black sack.

Her voice had startled Simon, and Sibylla hid a smile as he stepped hastily aside to make way for her.

“This is the lady Sibylla, Mistress Beaton,” he said. “She knocked her head hard against a tree branch. I want you to do what you can to ease her pain.”

“Aye, sure, and so your lad said, me laird. I’ve brung a potion to give her.”

“What manner of potion?” Sibylla asked. “ ’Tis naught but a headache, so a distillation of willow bark should suffice, or mayhap a mug of steeped yarrow.”

The woman cocked her head. “D’ye ken summat o’ herbs, me lady?”

“Some,” Sibylla said. “Willow and yarrow are both good for pain.”

“Aye, sure, if such pain be from fever. But willow stays
all
fever, including the heat o’ lust in a man
or
woman. So, as ye’re young and bonny, ye’ll no want willow. Yarrow be good for most ailments, but me own potion o’ rectified wine wi’ camphor and spirit o’ sal ammoniac be gey better. I’ll give it a good shake and—”

“Mercy, you do not expect me to drink such stuff, do you?”

“Nay, me lady. I’ll just rub some on me hand and hold it hard on the injury till the potion dries.”

“I can do that for myself,” Sibylla said, trying not to recoil at the thought of the old woman pressing hard on the knot the branch had left on her forehead.

Looking at Simon, she said, “Prithee, sir . . .” Recalling that he believed he owed her punishment and was unlikely to be sympathetic, she paused there.

To her surprise, he said, “Thank you, Mistress Beaton. You may leave that bottle with us. How often should her ladyship apply this treatment?”

“Until the pain be gone, o’ course.” She seemed about to protest her dismissal, but after a second look at his stern face, she patted her sack and said, “I’ve other things, too, me laird. A good eyewash, and dried betony leaves from the monks at Dryburgh Abbey for a tisane, aye, oils o’ rosemary and marjoram, and clover for—”

“Thank you, mistress, but the headache potion will be enough,” Simon said.

“Wait, sir,” Sibylla said, smiling now at the herb woman. “We’ll take the clover, the rosemary, and the marjoram, if you please.” She looked at Simon, who shrugged and nodded, surprising her.

Gratefully the herb woman accepted the coins he gave her and handed him the potion bottle and the other requested items from her bag.

When he had summoned a servant to show her out, he shut the door and turned back to Sibylla. Then, with a glance at Kit, he said, “I want to speak to the lady Sibylla privately, lassie. Go downstairs to the first door you will come to and open it. I believe Dand is awake now, so you may visit him until I finish here.”

Soberly, Kit nodded. Then she looked at Sibylla.

“Go along, Kit,” Sibylla said. “The laird cannot eat me.”

“Aye, but he may try,” the little one said fearlessly. Then, with a quick, wary look at Simon, she hurried past him and out the door, leaving it open behind her.

Simon shut it and turned back to face Sibylla.

A tremor shot up her spine. So much, she thought, for her foolish assumption that he would observe the proprieties.

Cocking her head, she said, “Surely you know you ought not to be alone with me in here, my lord. Think what people would say.”

“I don’t care what they say.” “I do.”

“Do you?” He regarded her thoughtfully before he said, “I should think a lass with such concerns would not have marched out of that wee kirk as you did.”

“I was not then a member of Isabel’s household,” she reminded him. “I could lose my place with her if she should learn I’d been alone with you in a bedchamber.”

“Doubtless, my mother’s presence here at Elishaw will protect you.”

She dared to shrug much as Kit had and saw with unexpected satisfaction that his eyes opened wide. Their fathomless green color fascinated her anew. How unfair, she thought, that a man should have such beautiful eyes. And, too, his lashes were dark, absurdly long, and lushly thick. Most unfair, indeed!

Giving herself a mental shake, and realizing she had instinctively braced herself to step back, she said, “Surely, you’ve outgrown your fury with me by now.”

“I warned you I would not.”

“An overproud, angry lad’s warning,” she countered, undaunted. “That wee kirk was well nigh empty. They read no banns, the priest had not yet said your name, and none who saw us that day will have spoken of it except perhaps my father. And I am very nearly certain that he did not.”

“I believe you. But I also know that was not the only time you did such a thing. You did it the year before in front of a crowd at St. Giles in Edinburgh.”

“So I did,” she agreed. “I also did it the following year just before Otterburn when I refused to marry Thomas Colville of Cocklaw. It pains me to admit that I did not even present myself at the altar to face him,” she added with a sigh.

“I knew about Colville but not that particular detail,” he said with a disapproving grimace. “You prove my case for me.”

“I must agree that I do not care much for
some
proprieties,” she admitted. “In troth, I am burning now to ask why no one in your family seems to know that you and I nearly married each other. However, inasmuch as I may owe my life to you today, I expect that
would
be unmannerly.”

“It would, aye,” he said. “But what makes you think no one knows?”

Dryly, she said, “Your mother is not one to keep such knowledge to herself. Nor, if she did know, would she have greeted my arrival as she did. The most telling evidence, though, is that Amalie has never spoken of it or shown any indication that she knows about it. Do you mean to say someone in your family
does
know?”

“Nay, I’ve told no one.”

“But your father must have known. Did you not have to discuss marriage settlements? Mine never shared such information with me, but I believe such a discussion is commonplace before any marriage.”

“It is, but I was fully of age and capable of managing my own settlements.”

“How could you? You had not yet inherited Elishaw. Surely Sir Iagan would have had to agree to any decision about the land.”

“Aye, sure, but I made no agreements about Elishaw, and your father was content with the things to which we did agree.”

“Which were?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t see how that can be any affair of yours now. By marching away as you did, you effectively rendered those agreements moot.”

“Call it unmannerly curiosity then,” she said. “Or is there aught about those agreements that you do not want to reveal?”

She saw that she had angered him again, and the knowledge made her head throb. It had been aching all along, but she had ignored it, well aware that she had exacerbated the pain herself by standing as long as she had.

“I should not have said that,” she admitted ruefully.

He was watching her closely again, and he said with an indecipherable but decidedly different note in his voice, “The settlements contained nowt that was out of the ordinary. Sir Malcolm agreed to settle a generous dowry on you and to arrange that you would inherit something more than half of the Akermoor estates if—”

“Faith, sir, I had no right then to
any
Akermoor estate. You forget that until Otterburn my brother, Hugh, was still alive!”

“Aye, sure, but just consider the nature of Sir Hugh’s duties as a knight,” Simon said matter-of-factly. “With extreme hostilities then between Scotland and England, the likelihood was high that he might die young—as of course he did.”

She gasped at the rush of anguish produced by so cruel a reminder of Hugh’s heroic death during Scotland’s victory over the English. The image her imagination produced of the unseen event was nonetheless stark in its clarity, as always, stirring both outrage and resentment.

Ruthlessly suppressing both, she abruptly shifted the focus of her questions, saying, “Tell me this, my lord. How much had the Governor of the Realm to do with those marriage settlements of ours? You and Thomas both serve him, after all, and I believe that Lord Galston was likewise an ally of his.”

His silence answered her question. “I see,” she said, putting a hand to her pounding head as a new wave of dizziness struck her.

Simon shook the bottle he held. “Get back on that bed before you fall down.”

Stiffening, ignoring her pain, she said, “I dislike being ordered about, my lord. You would do better to make polite requests.”

“Would I? Then, pray, my lady, get back on that bed
if you please
, or I will pick you up and put you there.” His expression had not changed. “Is that better?”

Knowing he meant every word and was capable of doing as he threatened, she abandoned the remaining shreds of her dignity and got back on the bed.

“Lie back,” he said.

“But I—”

He loomed over her and, without setting the bottle aside, pressed her to the pillows, holding her down as he put his face close to hers and said, “I will
not
let you do harm to yourself through nowt but more of your damned stubbornness.”

“Let go of me.”

“Not until you understand that you will stay in this bed because I command it. If you refuse, I’ll take every stitch of clothing from this room to see that you do. Do you understand me?”

“I do,” Sibylla said angrily, glad she had had the good sense
not
to say those two words when she had stood at the altar with him three years before.

“Do you promise?”

“Aye, my lord,” she replied meekly.

He eyed her shrewdly. “If you hope this sudden docility will persuade me that I need not take the clothing, you are going to be disappointed.”

As that was exactly what she had hoped, she wanted to smack him.

Her expression provided a mirror to her thoughts, but Simon wished he had not touched her. He’d wanted to shake her the minute she had defied him but restrained himself, not just because of her injury but also because the thought of putting his hands on her had stirred feelings that had nothing to do with vengeance.

When he got close to her, though, and she had made it plain that she would argue with him for the pure sake of argument, he had been unable to stop himself.

To have escorted the herb woman upstairs, expecting to have to waken the lass, only to find her standing before him in the too-revealing red dress, had been a shock to his sensitivities. He had recognized the kirtle as Amalie’s but only because, when Amalie had first worn it, the dagged neckline had been a new and daring fashion, and Amalie was particularly buxom.