A Rip in the Veil (28 page)

He knew for a fact there were mice in his mattress, he could hear them rustle through the straw, and only by paying extra had he managed to get a clean set of sheets. Hector scowled. He wasn’t meant for this squalor! No, if nothing came up in a fortnight he’d leave, make for Edinburgh or London, maybe even try to find a ship bound for Spain.

And then he had his first stroke of luck. The fat little lawyer sitting beside him was conversing with the innkeeper, a casual sharing of this and that, when the innkeeper leaned forward with a gleam of interest in his eyes.

“Is it true then? That Matthew Graham has wed a foreign lass?”

“Aye, Swedish,” Simon Melville confirmed.

“Swedish?” the innkeeper shook his head. “Is she heathen, do you think?”

“No,” Simon said, “nor does she foam at the mouth or in any way look different from us.”

“Oh, aye?” an unknown man put in. “She had no hair, did she? All cut off.”

“Really?” Hector asked.

Three faces turned like one towards him, three sets of eyes narrowing suspiciously. For all that he’d been drinking here for several weeks, he was definitely a stranger, and strangers did best not to meddle in local matters.

“What is it to you?” Simon demanded.

“Nothing. I was just wondering what a woman might look like without her hair.” Hector dragged a hand over his own, still very short, hair.

“Not that short! More like this.” Simon waved a hand somewhere just below ear level. “Sick,” he said for the benefit of the innkeeper. “Alex had the fever, Matthew said, and so the healer up Lanark way cut her hair off.”

“Ah,” the innkeeper nodded, seemingly not that interested. “No dowry? No land?”

“None, but what good would it do Matthew to have a parcel of land in Sweden?”

Hector had heard enough. A Swedish woman called Alex with short hair, who could it be but the elusive Ms. Lind? He was bursting with questions, but recognised that to ask any more tonight would be to draw undue attention to himself. After yet another beer, he bade the men goodnight and pretended to stumble up the stairs to the bed he paid double rates for to sleep in alone.

A few discreet inquiries, several beers, and he had a pretty good picture of this Matthew Graham. A stout-hearted Parliamentarian, a man who’d fought for the Commonwealth but then betrayed the cause – even if quite a few of his respondents were doubtful as to how true that was.

“His brother,” the innkeeper confided, well into his cups. “That Luke Graham set him up. Matthew is no royalist, but now he lingers in gaol, convicted for treason.”

“He lingers in gaol?” Hector asked, looking up from his pipe in surprise.

“He should, but he didn’t like it much, and as we hear it he escaped. A fugitive, one could say.”

“Oh,” Hector nodded.

The innkeeper gave him a bleary look. “He has been keeping well to the ground. No need to let the local garrison know he’s back.”

“I won’t tell,” Hector said, “but I dare say his brother will.”

“Yon Luke is elsewhere at the moment.” The innkeeper glowered in the direction of his kitchen. “He isn’t welcome here, not after nearly burning my place to the ground.”

*

“I don’t like it,” Simon said to the innkeeper a couple of days later, following Hector out of the room with his eyes.

“How so?” the innkeeper yawned.

“We don’t know him, and for all that he speaks effortless English, he’s definitely not Scots, is he? He may well be a royalist spy.”

The thought had clearly not struck the innkeeper before, but now that Simon mentioned it…He pursed his mouth into a narrow spout and poured himself and Simon yet another tot of whisky.

“Aye, he asks a lot of questions.”

“Far too many,” Simon nodded.

*

“Hector? A Hector Olivares you say?” Matthew shook his head. It couldn’t be, could it? Nay, such must be impossible, it had to be an eerie coincidence no more. “No, I can’t say I collect such a man.” He threw a discreet look at Alex; she’d sunk her hands into her skirts, eyes locked on the floor. Matthew stretched. “And he’s been asking questions?” he said in an uninterested voice.

“Aye; about your wife as well,” Simon replied, scrutinising Alex. Matthew frowned; wee Simon was far too adept a lawyer not to react to her frozen stance.

“About me?” Alex sounded surprised. “Why would he want to know about me?”

“I don’t know,” Simon said, “but mayhap it’s because you’re a foreigner.”

“Well, so is he,” she snapped and Matthew closed his eyes.

“How would you know?” Simon asked, but nodded all the same.

Alex shrugged. “His name, not exactly the most Scottish of names.”

“There are plenty of Hectors up here,” Simon said.

“But not that many Olivares; that’s a Spanish name.”

“Spanish, you say?” Simon mulled this over.

“A spy?” Matthew offered.

Simon grinned. “That’s what we told the garrison commander, and now Hector Olivares is on his way to Edinburgh. I dare say it won’t help his case when they find out he’s Spanish, and no doubt papist to boot.” Alex visibly relaxed, and when Joan called for her from the kitchen she hurried off.

Simon studied Matthew for some moments, his eyes very serious.

“I didn’t like it that he asked around for you, and when I saw yon Hector conversing with Luke, I decided to nip that friendship in the bud.”

“Ah. So Luke is back, then?”

“Unfortunately. You know he’ll come here.”

“That would not be wise.” Matthew injected his voice with menace.

“Hmm.” Simon threw a look at where Alex had left her shawl. “She knows this Hector Olivares, doesn’t she?”

“Aye,” Matthew said, “it would seem so. I’ll ask her.”

*

“It might not be him,” Matthew said a few hours later, watching his wife pace up and down their bed chamber.

“No,” Alex said, “but it does seem probable it is.”

Aye, Matthew sighed, however inexplicable, he’d hazard this man was the same man who’d orchestrated Alex’s abduction. She did another turn; he grabbed her and pulled her down to sit beside him on the bed.

“I don’t believe this,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “How on earth can he be here? And yet here he is, having somehow left the twenty-first century behind.” She stuck her hands in under her thighs and sat swinging her legs back and forth. Matthew kneeled before her, his hands cupping her face.

“You’re frightened.”

She nodded, scuffed at the floor with her toes. “And I don’t understand. How?”

Matthew half smiled and drew her close enough that he could kiss her brow. “A thunderstorm?”

Alex shook her head: too improbable.

“Aye,” Matthew agreed. He sat back on his heels, regarding her thoughtfully.

At times it struck him that he didn’t really know her or the world she came from, he had no manner to verify if her story was true – she might be a full-blooded witch who had enthralled him through magic, or something as mundane as a lass fleeing from the long arm of justice. All he truly knew was that he’d found her, concussed and burnt on the moor, and that now that he had, he had no intention of relinquishing her – ever.

“What?” she said, and Matthew realised he’d been staring at her.

“He won’t hurt you – I won’t let him.”

“But what does he want?” Alex said hoarsely. “Why is he here?”

Chapter 23

Alex had been at Hillview for more than a month before she met either of them. She sometimes walked in the direction of the isolated cottage, drawn by a curiosity she couldn’t fully explain, and on this October morning she’d sat down under a rowan tree to look at the landscape spread out below when the sound of a breaking twig alerted her to the fact that she was no longer alone. She knew who he was immediately and slid up to stand while she studied him.

Where Matthew was tall and solid, Luke was fluid like water, long hair the deep red of a fox pelt, eyes a vivid, sharp green. With his colouring and strong facial features, he was catwalk material, drop-dead gorgeous. He was also very young, Alex noted with some surprise, before remembering that he was only twenty-three, five years younger than Matthew.

“Well, well,” Luke said, giving her a bow. “My new sister-in-law, I believe.” His eyes travelled over her with interest, stopping at the too short hair, registering her breasts and hips. He laughed and shook his head, sunlight dancing in his hair.

“Poor Matthew, he’ll never get over her.” He looked at her again. “Remarkable, absolutely remarkable.”

“What?” Alex smoothed down her skirts.

“You could be sisters, twins almost, you and Margaret.” Luke tilted his head and studied her with frank curiosity. “Your hair’s lighter, and you’re not as narrow around the waist as my Margaret, but apart from that…” He laughed again.

Had Matthew been there Alex would have torn into him on the spot, demanding an explanation. Seeing as he wasn’t, she decided to save that little spurt of anger for later and studied Luke as openly as he had studied her.

“Have you changed your name yet?”

Luke gave her a blank look.

“It should be Cain, shouldn’t it?” she said, very pleased with the red that stained his cheeks.

“Cain killed Abel,” he said icily.

“Well, bully for you, how unfortunate the sentence to hang was commuted to one to rot in prison. But I’m sure you attempted to find ways round that, didn’t you? You probably bribed the prison guards to give him hell.”

He paled and turned away.

“Oh my God! You actually did!” She stepped up close. “Have you any idea what they did to him?”

Luke hitched a disinterested shoulder. “He should’ve been dead.”

“Why?” Alex demanded. “What has he ever done to you to deserve that?”

“Done to me?” Luke echoed. “Has he not told you then? Of how he had Da throw me out?”

“Matthew had nothing to do with that. Your father threw you out because of finding you with Margaret, not—”

“He asked him to, aye? Matthew had taken a liking to Margaret already then, and he made Da throw me out.”

“That’s not what he says,” Alex said. Had he? Her Matthew?

“No, but he wouldn’t, would he?” He was standing far too close, brittle eyes boring into her. No warmth, some interest, and Alex backed away. It seemed to amuse him. He took a step towards her and she retreated. Two quick steps and he had his hands on her, and when she backed away again she slammed against the tree, with him far too close.

“A kiss for your brother-in-law?”

“Go to hell! Go home and fuck your two-timing wife instead.” She winced at the pressure on her wrist bones.

“I love my wife,” Luke hissed, a fanatical gleam in his eyes. “And he, that bastard brother of mine, tried to take her from me.”

“Really? As I heard it, she eagerly led him on.”

“Led him on?” Luke’s voice climbed a register or two. “What lies has he been telling you? He forced her! He violated her, dishonoured her, and then what was she to do? What could she do but wed him, all alone as she was in the world? For that he deserved to die, for all the pain and sorrow he put my Margaret through, you hear?” He twisted his hands into her skin.

“Ah!” she gasped, tears springing in her eyes. “Let me go!”

“I will, soon. Once I’ve made my own comparisons between you and Margaret. After all, he probably already has.”

“You heard her; let go of her.” The quiet voice cut through the clearing and Luke wheeled. Matthew was standing only feet away with his dirk in his hand. “I should have killed you that afternoon in my bedroom,” Matthew continued, “and I am of a mind to do it now. I won’t, not this time. But if you as much as lay a finger on my wife again – any wife of mine – I swear, on my blood, that I’ll have your balls off, you hear?” He took two long strides across the clearing, raised his knife and slashed himself across the palm, holding up the bloodied hand to Luke. “My word, brother. And now, get off my land.” He motioned with his knife and waited until Luke disappeared up the hill before moving over to Alex.

“What were you thinking, coming up here alone? I told you to stay away from her cottage. And why didn’t you kick him, like you did with those men on the moor?”

“He got too close, okay? And I wasn’t under the impression that your brother was going to behave quite as erratically as he just did. You never told me he’s a total wacko.”

Matthew blinked in incomprehension.

“He’s insane,” Alex explained impatiently.

“Ah no, he’s not insane. He’s twisted and dangerous, but very sane.” He muttered a quick prayer and held out his hand to Alex. “Come, lass, let’s go home.” She turned and stalked away, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Is that why you don’t want me to see her?” she demanded a couple of minutes later. She was seething inside, wanting very much to hurt someone.

“See who?”

“Her. Margaret.” She turned towards him. “Luke just told me that we could be sisters she and I, is that true?”

He didn’t reply, keeping his eyes on the ground.

“I asked you a question!”

“Aye, and I’m not inclined to answer.”

“Fine. I’ll go and check for myself.” And just like that she was off, running back the way they’d come.

He caught up with her and tried to grab her. She wrenched herself free, gripped his forearm, and with a twisting motion sent him flying to land on his back. He lay staring at the sky for a long moment, his breath coming in loud, choked gasps.

“I’m sorry,” she said, made as if to help him up, but he waved her away. He moved his legs, rolled over on his side. “I didn’t mean to.” She stood a distance away, not quite sure what to do. “I’m sorry, do you want me to…” She swallowed down the rest. He looked at her with blank eyes as he got to his feet. She could see he was bleeding from just below the ear and her stomach turned with shame.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

He wiped his face with a shaking hand and spat into the ground. He was bleeding from his mouth as well, and she wanted to rush over and try to make things right again, but the look on his face was cold and forbidding.

“You wouldn’t defend yourself against him, but me you throw like a sack of barley.” He pushed through the closest thicket and walked away.