Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (26 page)

Annoyed with herself for giving her emotions away when she thought she had controlled them, Sibylla said, “You read too much into a look of weariness, my dear. I own, he was displeased with me, and rightly, but I’m not angry and neither is he. Now, tell me more about Catherine Gordon. Are you sure she is only seven, Meg?”

Amalie said, “Wat did say so, Sibylla. I heard him, too.”

“He said Fife used Catherine’s age as cause to declare himself her guardian, just as he did with Margaret of Strathearn,” Meg said. “He believes—Wat does—that

Fife means to add her estates to the Crown lands and control them, just as he controls Strathearn. But Wat thinks he will find it hard to do. Sithee, Sir John Gordon had other female heirs. And one is married to a man of consequence.”

“Even so, if Fife can make Catherine marry one of his own men, he can keep control of her estates if not her entire income—or so Garth said,” Amalie told them. “That
is
Fife’s usual practice, is it not?”

No one disagreed, but Meg changed the subject, asking Sibylla to tell them more about her daring rescue. “Rosalie said you jumped in after that child.”

Sibylla explained briefly but refused to let them draw her into detail, and soon changed the subject again by asking Amalie if she and Westruther were not looking forward eagerly to the birth of their first child, still some months away.

Although Amalie replied with loving exasperation that she would look forward to it more if Garth would cease trying to wrap her in cotton wool, this interesting topic entertained them until Sibylla tactfully suggested that Lady Murray might like some time alone with her daughters.

“Oh, aye,” Alice agreed. “I must retire, too, because although I delight in hearing all your tales and reminiscences, I can scarcely keep my eyes open. But may I speak to you in your chamber, Sibylla, before I go to my own?”

“Aye, sure,” Sibylla said before bidding everyone else goodnight.

When they were alone inside her room with the door shut, she said, “What is it, Alice? I hope you do not mean to complain to me about whatever Father may have said to you after you ran off as you did with young Denholm.”

“Nay,” Alice said doubtfully. “That is to say, it is all horrid, because Father said that if the Colvilles do not discard the notion of allying their family with ours after what I did, he means to move the date of our wedding forward.”

“Sakes,” Sibylla said. “I had hoped he would understand now why you dislike the match and how unsuitable Edward Colville is to be your husband. The Denholms are perfectly respectable, are they not?”

“They are, aye,” Alice said. “But Father is so angry with me, Sibylla, and one cannot blame him. Also, he blames himself for not watching me closer, and that makes him angrier. I know I ought never to have walked away with Geordie as I did, but when he asked me to go, I just went. I did not think at all.”

“I am glad you understand that you were in the wrong, love. Not just for going with Denholm but for abandoning Rosalie as you did.”

“I know,” Alice said. Looking guiltier than ever, she added, “Rosalie knows now that you and her brother nearly married, Sibylla. But I vow, I did
not
tell her.”

“Nay, Edward Colville did that,” Sibylla said.

“So she said, aye. But she is sure that her lady mother knows naught of it. We know we mustn’t tell her, but we do think that you or Simon should.”

“Simon has said he will,” Sibylla said. “But you
are
growing wiser, love, surely wise enough now to know that you need not marry Edward Colville.”

“But I
told
you, I cannot defy Father as you did,” Alice said. “You don’t understand, because it is always so easy for you to do as you please. But not everyone is like you, Sibylla.
I
am not.”

An idea stirred, and Sibylla paused to consider it before she said, “Look here, Alice, are you sure you love

George Denholm? You are not just encouraging him as a way to escape Edward, are you?”

“Nay, I swear! I have loved Geordie for more than a year now, and I loathe Edward Colville. But I don’t know what to do,” she said. Then, with a sigh, she added, “Mayhap Geordie should just go to Father and demand that he let us marry.”

“He can hardly do that whilst you are betrothed to another man. You must break the betrothal first.”

“Oh, I couldn’t!”

Sibylla sighed. “It is rarely easy to follow one’s own course, Alice,” she said. “No one can do it for you, you know. You must do some things for yourself.”

“Then tell me what to do,” Alice begged. “Just do
not
say that I must stand up to Father and
explain
to him.”

“It did occur to me that if you love Denholm, you might run away together and get married,” Sibylla said. Before Alice could protest, she added, “Sithee, you are past the age of consent, so you do not need our father’s permission to wed.”

Alice stared at her in dismay. “You must be joking, Sibylla! I could
never
—”

“You sought my advice, and I have given it,” Sibylla said, losing patience. “I do not think less of you, dearling, but I cannot help you if you refuse to help yourself. Now, prithee, go to bed and let us both get some sleep.”

Scowling mutinously, Alice left the room without another word.

Knowing she had handled the situation badly but with no idea of how to help her sister, Sibylla summoned the chambermaid. As she prepared for bed, her thoughts shifted back to Simon and the abruptness of their parting.

He had kept silent all the way back from the ramparts, but she had sensed more easily than usual with him that he had had more he wanted to say.

She’d cut him off when he’d tried to explain, not wanting to hear him defend his loyalty to Fife. A more civil person, one with a stronger guard on her tongue, would have let him speak. Not, she decided, that anything he
could
say would alter the facts that Fife wanted to see them married and Simon habitually obeyed Fife.

She lay in bed, lulled by the murmur of voices in the solar and thinking of things she had omitted in telling Meg and Amalie about her stay at Elishaw. Recalling Amalie’s remark that Simon, having rescued her, felt obliged to treat her civilly, she realized she’d had similar feelings of obligation to Kit. Might Simon’s thoughtful gestures have been similar to the small indulgences she allowed the child?

When she’d felt bad at leaving Kit to sleep in the shadowy kitchen, and had let her sleep in her bedchamber instead, had it not been much the same as Simon’s unwillingness to send
her
to bed with wet hair after her moonlight swim?

The fact was that, annoyed with him or not, she wanted to share her thoughts with him and tell him all she had learned about the lady Catherine Gordon. When she told herself that she just wanted to hear what he’d say about it all, the voice in her head laughed. He’d say that it was none of her affair, and he would be right.

She wondered if Simon was already aware that Catherine was only seven. He had said he did not know the family, but he might still have known her age. Perhaps Fife’s habit of assuming guardianship of little heirs and heiresses was so common that it had not occurred to him to mention it to her. Then she remembered his anger with Fife for trying to marry off the thirteen-year-old Rosalie.

Surely, then, had Simon known Catherine’s age, he would have mentioned it.

Even so, she could almost hear him say that while it was one thing to concern herself with Alice’s betrothal to Edward Colville, having spurned Thomas herself, she had no right or reason to take interest in whomever Thomas might marry.

He would be right, but she still wanted to talk to him. On that thought, she slept, only to wake to a drizzly morning that reminded her of their near-wedding day and thus brought Simon to mind again.

As she accepted the chambermaid’s aid to dress, she wondered if he would come in search of her as he had before, and demand private speech.

By midmorning she persuaded herself that she had declared her distrust so blatantly that he never wanted to speak to her again.

Deciding to prove to herself, if not to him, that his silence meant nothing to her, she passed time before the midday meal casting dice against Rosalie and Alice while Lady Murray worked at her tambour frame. But when they entered the hall, Simon was not there to impress with her lack of concern.

Nor did she see Westruther, Buccleuch, or their wives. “Did not Meg say they would all dine with us today?” she asked Lady Murray.

“I thought so,” her ladyship said.

Sir Malcolm, escorting them, said, “Doubtless the weather kept them in.”

Fife was in his place at the center of the dais table with the Bishop of St. Andrews at his right. Sibylla recognized several lords of Parliament sitting in a string to the right of the bishop.

At Fife’s left was a line of noblewomen, wives of the men on his right who had wives. Thomas Colville was with the men, but she saw no sign of Edward.

She still had not seen Simon, either, when Lady Murray announced she had had enough of the din and suggested they return to their chambers.

With nothing more interesting in mind to do, and the girls wanting to learn the game of dames, Sibylla agreed. Simon would find her if he wanted her.

That he was not coming became clear long before suppertime, and it was then that she recalled his mentioning that Fife might send him to Huntly with the Colvilles to search for the lady Catherine. Perhaps he had gone with Edward.

Because of that fear, she had small hope of seeing him when she went down to supper with her three companions. The din greeted them yards from the hall entrance, and when the chamberlain’s lad blew his horn and the chamberlain announced them, Sibylla doubted that anyone in the chamber heard him. Clearly, everyone kept inside the precinct by the rain all day had come to supper in the hall.

Her gaze swept the lower hall trestles without finding Simon, but she did see her father beckoning from one, where he had apparently saved places for them.

Lady Murray’s smile said that she had seen him, too, so Sibylla followed her and saw Simon at last when she looked toward the dais.

He sat at Fife’s right hand. As Thomas Colville sat farther down the table, Sibylla hoped that Edward, still apparently absent, had gone to Huntly alone.

They took their places, and Alice and Rosalie chattered as if they had not a care in the world. If either suffered any lingering ill effects from their confrontation with Lady Murray and Sir Malcolm the previous night, Sibylla saw no sign of it.

They had missed the grace before meat, and minstrels played merrily as a troupe of dancers capered in the open space provided for them.

Sibylla gazed vaguely at them and toyed with her food until someone passing behind her said, “I must ask Kitty Lennox. She is kin to nearly everyone, so she may know that handsome wretch.”

Sibylla stopped breathing long enough to become aware of her heartbeat. She did not know Kitty Lennox, but she knew many things about her. Lady Susan Lennox, one of Isabel’s other attendants, was Kitty’s cousin. And Susan, who was full of just
being
a Lennox, talked of Kitty often. More important to Sibylla, however, was that Kitty Lennox’s Sunday name was Catherine.

A chill crept through her as she considered that simple fact and strenuously resisted the next, patently absurd, thought striving to form itself in her mind.

She looked again at the high table. If she had wanted to talk to Simon before, it was as nothing to her desire to do so now.

But Fife was speaking to him, and Simon was listening intently.

She had to think. But the din in the chamber rendered anything but the simplest thought processes impossible.

On one side of her, Alice and Rosalie continued to chatter away. On the other, Sir Malcolm and Lady Murray had their heads together, talking quietly.

Listening with only half an ear as Fife described the Douglas’s report to him about the increasing Border raids and insisted Northumberland must be instigating them, Simon had watched as his mother, Rosalie, Sibylla, and Alice joined Sir Malcolm at one of the trestles reserved for the nobility.

He continued to keep an eye on them as he listened and occasionally replied to Fife’s questions. As a trio of young women walked past Sibylla toward the main entrance, he saw her stiffen. Her mouth opened, and she turned her head toward him.

Although she looked right at him, he knew she could not tell that he was watching her. He was careful to look as if he kept his attention firmly on Fife.

“I agree with Archie that before we act we must be certain that these raids come from beyond the line,” Fife said.

“I assure you, my lord, the Percys want peace as much as we do and support the truce. I’ll talk with Cecil Percy when he visits and hear what he thinks of it all.”

“I shall be interested to learn what he says,” Fife said. Glancing again at the trestles as Fife went on to another matter, Simon saw that Sibylla’s place was empty. Scanning the huge chamber, he saw her alone near the doorway through which his sister and Alice had vanished the night before.

Tempted to swear, he exerted patience until Fife said that for civility’s sake he supposed he ought to converse with the woman at his left.

“By your leave then, my lord, I would beg to be excused,” Simon said. “Others here and in town may have ideas on subjects we have discussed, and—”

“Take yourself off then, but heed what I’ve said to you, Simon. I expect you to attend to business here as I suggested, and likewise to learn from those others all that you can of this raiding. I shall depend on you for that, sir. Don’t disappoint me. I want know more about it than the Douglas does.”

“Aye, sir, I’ll do all I can,” Simon said despite his certainty that Fife was unlikely ever to know more than Douglas about what happened in the Borders.

Fife turned away, and Simon left the dais, his deceptively long strides covering the distance to the doorway without any appearance of undue haste.

Having taken leave of the others by suggesting a need to use the garderobe, and eschewing Lady Murray’s suggestion that she take a maid along, Sibylla headed for the maze of chambers and corridors accessed from the east doorway of the hall.