Maid of Deception (18 page)

I gaped at the girl, momentarily taken away from my own worries, which may well have been why she shared this little bit of news. “How exactly have you ‘spirited out’ John Dee’s books?” I demanded. “Tell me you have not gone all the way to Mortlake and broken into his library!”

Anna’s eyes fairly sparkled, and she possessed the air of a woman well contented that someone finally knew her secret. “Mortlake is only twenty-odd miles away from Windsor, and I know how to ride a horse, Beatrice. Getting in and out was simple once I convinced Dee’s staff that I was there on the man’s behalf.”

“And you did that—how?”

“Forgery.” Anna grinned. “You get to the point where you recognize someone’s handwriting so well, ’tis only a matter of time before you can replicate it.”

I shook my head. “Help me understand. You wouldn’t so much as smile back to a boy who was eyeing you at court, but you’ll risk arrest and imprisonment to read a few books?”

“Well, talking to boys isn’t what I’m good at,” Anna said, shrugging. “Solving mysteries is. It only makes sense that I’d focus on where my talents lie.”

We talked on then about what Anna had learned in John Dee’s books, and I saw her come alive with excitement as she spoke, fairly crackling with knowledge and passion for what she’d read in books so old, their very pages had begun to crumble. Most of all, however, I saw her staunch support for the strange sprite we found in our midst, Miss Sophia Dee.

We returned with zeal to our cleaning, and only then I realized it was full noon and the manor finally resembled the home of my birth. After a simple lunch of bread and soup, I wandered out onto the open lawns of Marion Hall, eager for a respite from the smell of sour ale.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to find Alasdair waiting for me.

I wiped my hands on my apron before removing the garment, nervously reaching up to smooth my hair. Alasdair took the apron away from me and set it aside, then batted my hands back down. He tucked my right hand into the crook of his left arm. “Your hair looks lovely, my lady, as it always does,” he said. “You also look like a maiden in need of a walk. Where shall we off to?”

“Wherever,” I said, glad for any distraction to keep my mind off everything changing all around me so quickly. Both Sophia and Anna were transforming into people I wasn’t quite ready for them to be. Why couldn’t I change so quickly and so well?

“On an estate this large, ‘wherever’ could mean halfway back to Windsor.” Alasdair laughed, breaking into my thoughts. “But let’s make it an unofficial survey of your holding. The Hall itself you know too well of late, but I think she’ll make a full recovery.”

“No thanks to the Queen,” I grumbled, and Alasdair tightened his arm on mine. “And where did you disappear to, before even the last of the ale was tapped?”

He shrugged. “We both saw the ale, and what comes of ale being tapped is invariably theft and disruption. I knew I had to notify your guards—and mine—to redouble their watch.”

I arched a brow, regarding him sidelong. “That surely was not your responsibility.”

“And yet it was my pleasure nonetheless,” he said mildly. “Your father asked me to have a care should the revel grow too overloud or long, and it was quickly becoming both.”

“Then I should thank you, I daresay,” I said stiffly, though something still rankled in his words.

He chuckled and patted my arm. “Never that, my lady. Never that.”

We walked in silence then to the stables, where the children were helping the groomsmen care for the dozens of mounts our guests had ridden to Marion Hall. Alasdair lifted a finger to his lips, and even in my annoyance I could not
forestall a smile. It had not taken the Scot long to realize that the adulation of the children was exhausting. We slipped past the stables and down the lane, coming around to the back of the castle. I thought about the Queen’s irritation at the poorly kept back lawns of Marion Hall, and my humor dwindled again. “Elizabeth seems honor bound to make my life miserable,” I muttered.

“You do have a knack for upsetting her,” he said. “Though Sophia told me what set the woman off in truth.”

I raised my brows at that. “Sophia talked to you?”

“Aye. She’s a tiny slip of a girl, isn’t she—but she sought me out at last night’s debauch, lest I think your distraction was the result of any ill will toward me.”

That did have me turning around. “She did what?”
Why on earth?

“She seemed quite adamant, so I let her tell her tale.” He waggled his brows at me. “And indeed, when I did have the chance to dance with you, I did not find you distracted at all.”

“Indeed.” I turned and faced forward again, ruing my fair complexion for the flush that now stained my cheeks. I moved ahead, and Alasdair grasped my hand lightly, letting me set the pace. We no sooner rounded the last bend of the mansion, however, than his steps slowed, and I glanced back at him, irritated anew as he planted himself and stared in wonder at what now lay before us. I tugged on him again. “Oh, come on. You cannot be serious.”

“Can’t I, now?” Before us stood circle upon circle of the Marion Hall labyrinth, its ragged hedges a legacy from the
same batty baron who’d also erected the hulk of stone behind us. Like everything else about my ancestral home, the labyrinth was a wreck and a ruin.

Alasdair, however, would not look away. “What fell secrets shall we find here, I wonder?” he asked, and tightened his hand on mine.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“I say, leave off,” I protested. “The only secrets that place holds are rotting branches and dead creatures.”

I tried to tug him back to our walk, but Alasdair was steadfast.

“You mean to tell me no one ventures back here?” he asked, rooted in place and staring at the labyrinth as if it held the secret entrance to the fairy realm. “Not even the children? It would be the first place I would go, were I still a child.” He chuckled ruefully. “I’ve been sorely pressed not to enter it myself, and I’ve been here but a few days.”

“If you were a foster child here, you would not enter it, no. Not if you wanted to stay at Marion Hall,” I said levelly. “We’ve made the rules quite clear. No one but the servants are allowed back here, on pain of being removed from the house entirely. If there were a few additional stories planted about children being spirited away in the night from ghosts awakened in the labyrinth, well—there’s naught I can do about that.” I grimaced, thinking of the same stories that my father had told to frighten me. “That’s not to say that a few
of the hardier children haven’t breached the outermost rows of the labyrinth, but in truth they honor my father’s wishes for the most part. He has no interest in seeing them hurt, and the servants keep a sharp eye as well.” I shook my head, staring at unruly hedges. “It always gives newcomers a bit of a turn when they first see it, I will tell you that.”

“It is an impressive bit of gardening,” Alasdair said dryly. “You have never kept it flourishing? It does not look so abandoned as that.”

“You’re seeing only the outside,” I said. “We make an attempt to keep that trimmed. And when I was little, my father staged a campaign to improve the entire maze, inviting the whole of the countryside to take part in opening up its pathways and clearing it of brush and leaves. They found a perfect open space in the center, clear but for a small, marble-lined hole in the ground. A spring burbled up from below that, and it fairly glistened in the sunlight. He would delight me with its tales, but then he said it was cursed.”

“Cursed!” Alasdair’s eyes flared wide. “You canna be serious. I wouldn’t think your father given over to such imagination—or you.”

“Yes, well . . .” I looked away. “I was a child. I believed a lot of things back then.”

Alasdair had the grace to stop staring at me—though it took him several long seconds to find that grace. When he did, he returned his gaze to the monstrosity of the labyrinth. “Well, it couldn’t have been that cursed. Your father didn’t tear it down, now, did he?”

“No, he did not,” I said bitterly. “But he also did not
dispute the story that the center of the labyrinth was a place to be avoided at all costs. He and the villagers have talked over the years of returning the grounds to open lawns, but really, the cost would be extraordinary. And with a house the size of Marion Hall, you learn to conserve your pennies.”

“Aye,” Alasdair said, turning back to take in the Hall’s rose granite walls, glowing like a promise in the bright sun. “She is a beauty.”

“A beauty!” I scoffed, surveying the hulk with a more critical eye. “You must live in a frightening place indeed, then.”

He grinned. “In a manner of speaking, aye. My family has worked to make our castle a fortress, in any event. It has been home to a long line of chieftains before me, including my own father—and, God willing, a long line of chieftains after. And before you ask, no. I am not the firstborn. I would hardly be allowed to take men to England and dance pretty dances with foreign ladies if I were supposed to carry on the great banner of the MacLeods.”

“Mm,” I said, wondering at his words. So not only a son of a barbarian but a second or third son at that. Not that it should bother me, of course. I was not going to be this man’s bride, but still. I found myself unaccountably depressed. “How many do you have in your family?”

“Not so many as you,” he teased. “Just a half dozen of us, three of them lasses. But already my sisters have graced us with bairns of their own, and of the laddies I am the only unwed.” He waggled his brows at me, and I felt another hard jolt in my stomach. Surely he didn’t think he had a chance with me? I
had
to make a fortunate marriage to assure my
position in court! That was all I’d ever worked for, and what my family—and I—desperately needed.

Focus!
I was the one supposed to find information out about the blasted Scot—and he was in a talkative mood about something of substance finally. If that something was the curse of the dilapidated hedgerow, I would take it and to spare. “So, tell me about your family, good sir. What hulking fortress do you call home, that you think Marion Hall is an English jewel?”

Alasdair chuckled. “My home is Dunvegan Castle, and it stretches up from the rock of Scotland in defiance against the very heavens. It’s surrounded all round by the sea, easily one of the best protected castles on Skye.”

“By the sea!” I stared at him. “So how do you get in and out? By boat?”

“An’ up through the sea gate, aye.” Alasdair’s brogue was thicker now, his eyes lifting up and to the northwest, as if he could recall his castle to him by words alone. “ ’Tis a wondrous place, though not entirely a kind one. ’Twas built for defense and defiance, and not for pretty things.” His hand tightened again on my arm. “Still, it has a beauty all its own. I would bring you there one day, my lady, for you to see its wonders, both inside and out.”

“Indeed,” I said, by rote, not knowing what else to say. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I knew precisely what to say: the flirtatious comment, the quickly forgotten promise.

But I had no intention of going anywhere with Alasdair MacLeod after my work with him for the Queen was done. He was a captivating diversion, but a diversion nonetheless. I
had a family of foundlings to care for, not the least of which was my mother, and a falling-down Hall to shore up. I would not be setting off on an adventure to the middle of nowhere.

“So, what beauty lies within such a sturdy rock?” I finally asked, thinking it safe. Immediately I regretted my decision. The faintest surge of excitement in Alasdair’s mien was enough to make me want to run away.
I would never follow you to a land of barbarians and warriors, you fool
, I wanted to cry.
You are mad to even suggest it.
But I could at least show interest in his ancestral home. That didn’t seem too much to ask of myself, even if manners appeared to have deserted me. “Do, ah . . . do you mean just the austere beauty of its strength?”

“Not only that.” Alasdair turned me to him and tilted my chin up. “My family holds treasures like none other in Scotland,” he said, his manner suddenly too intent. “We consider it our duty and our right to hold such beauty close, and protect it from all who would take it away. Not least of which is the Fairy Flag.”

I frowned at him. “The Fairy Flag?”

He seemed to recall himself, blinking at me in surprise for just a moment. Then he grinned and shrugged, the thrall apparently broken. He returned his gaze to the hedgerows as he spoke. “ ’Tis magic, my lady, pure and simple.”

Once more he tucked my arm into his, and we turned to continue our walk, edging ever closer to the labyrinth. “The Fairy Flag is a furl of silk gifted to the MacLeods a thousand years ago, it is said, by the fairy folk themselves. It holds great power, and never have we unfurled it in the midst of battle but we haven’t won the day.”

I lifted my brows at that. “It assures success in war?”

“Aye, it does. Since time unremembered.”

I smiled, getting caught up in the image of an ancient flag held high for all enemies to see. “From the fairy folk themselves, you say? Then it must be a wonder. Does it fly at Dunvegan Castle?”