Susan Johnson (40 page)

“Good,” she said, rosy-cheeked and smiling, “because I’m hungry. And you can stop talking to me like a three-year-old child because I feel fine and I shan’t break.”

He grimaced, a half-smile of acknowledgment. “Forgive me, but I know so little of what you feel, and my ignorance breeds anxiety. I worry that something might happen to you out here in this isolation.…” His voice trailed away before her clear, steady gaze.

“Food then,” Elizabeth said, “before the calamities strike.” Her grin gave pause to his inchoate apprehensions.

“Food I have,” he quickly replied. “Sit down right here,” he went on, his words coming in a rush of relief, reassured by her prosaic response. Quickly undraping his
plaid from his shoulders, he spread it on the brown pine needles covering the ground. “Mrs. Reid packed a basket for the trip, but I can’t start a fire yet,” he apologized.

“Cold food will be wonderful. Any food will be heaven.” She hadn’t dared mention her hunger, knowing their danger.

And he told her of his gamekeeper’s cottage as they ate, talking of the days of his youth when he’d spend weeks with his father’s gamekeeper, Polwarth, learning to hawk and track and fish. “I’ll take you hawking while we’re here. There’s a small rise to the north that picks up some of the winds from the coast; you can see the peregrines slide along those gusts and then turn over and dive almost in dead fall. There’s nothing quite like the sight of a falcon dropping at incredible speed from a lofty pitch. And you learn to recognize your falcon’s stoop from a long way off.” He grinned suddenly. “You needn’t share my enthusiasm; I brought books along for you.”

“I’d love to watch.” She would have loved to have seen the young boy, too, all coltish eagerness and interest. And she thought with joy of the new child within her who might share his father’s love of hawking.

They reached the small cottage set on the fringe of a small clearing, framed by soaring dark pines just as the early winter twilight turned all the world to grey.

Lights shone from the windows of the thatched-roof structure, the golden glow offering warmth and welcome. A dog barked at their approach, a black-and-white border collie whose tail stood straight up for a moment and then began wagging in big, lazy circles. He’d recognized Johnnie.

Polwarth came out on the porch to see who his visitors were, a pipe in his mouth, his eyes narrowed in the dimming light. And then catching sight of Johnnie, he waved.

They were safe.

• • •

Nearly of a size with Johnnie, Polwarth was a big, rawboned man whose red hair had faded with age to a sandy grey. But he stood straight and tall yet, and when he clasped Johnnie in a hug, his uncovered arms revealed solid muscle.

When Johnnie lifted Elizabeth down from her horse and said, “Polwarth, I’d like you to meet my wife, Elizabeth,” she knew from the unceremonious introduction that the two men were close.

“Evening, ma’am,” the old man politely said, tipping his head in an awkward courtesy. “So ye’re married now,” he said to Johnnie with a wide smile. “And you look right happy.”

“I am,” Johnnie said with an unselfconscious frankness, the young boy yet to his fathers man.

“But ye’re no on a leisure ride,” Polwarth said, his gaze passing over the two packhorses, coming to rest on Johnnie’s face. He nodded toward the house. “See your lady inside, lad, while I put this bloodstock of yours in the stable.”

“You go and help Johnnie,” Elizabeth suggested. “I can certainly walk a few feet into the house.”

“Best see her in, Johnnie … what with those high steps built for a man. Then come help me if ye please.”

“He’s very nice,” Elizabeth said as they entered the stone cottage. “Now go, I’m perfectly capable of entertaining myself.”

“I won’t be long.” Johnnie glanced around the immaculate room that served as a sitting room and kitchen. “The fire will warm you if you take Polwarth’s chair.”

She stood for a moment after Johnnie left, surveying the functional room that smelled of pipe tobacco and the crackling fire. The furniture was simple, designed for large men; an oak trestle table, four high-backed chairs, a tall, carved cupboard taking up most of one wall. The fireplace was used for cooking, although the copper oven built into one side of it bespoke a woman’s touch. It was the best Swedish copper polished to a fine luster, and the distinct smell of bannocks mingled as an undertone to the tobacco and pinewood. As recognition struck her
brain, she began salivating, and she smiled at the fundamental drives of motherhood.

Two well-worn sofas flanked the fireplace, although their symmetry was broken by Polwarth’s upholstered chair, which faced the fire. The fabrics indicated their original provenance had probably been Goldiehouse, for despite their mild dilapidation, the fine damask still gleamed richly crimson. Taking Johnnie’s advice, Elizabeth dropped into Polwarth’s chair and warmed herself before the small blaze, resting in the depths of the soft chair, rising occasionally to check the progress of the bannocks in the oven. Not that she had any expertise in baking, but she could recognize if they were burning.

Luckily, the men returned before she was required to remove the round loaves from the oven, because she wasn’t certain how to accomplish that feat.

Polwarth slid the crunchy loaves out with a long-handled heart-shaped spade that he took down from the rafters the minute he walked into the room. And Johnnie said, “Mealie bannocks,” with distinct delight.

The following week was one of simple pleasure despite their narrow escape and the harrowing uncertainty of their future. In Dens Forest they could forget a dangerous world existed outside the protective wood; in their happiness they could overlook for a time the price on Johnnie’s head. And if he could have put aside all his responsibilities as Laird, there were moments during the week at Polwarth’s cottage when Johnnie found himself wishing he and Elizabeth could stay in this secluded hermitage, disregard the fractious outside world, and raise their child in peace.

In the mornings after a leisurely breakfast, they would all go hawking. Elizabeth would sit on a worn Turkey rug on the windy knoll while the men took pleasure in their sport. Johnnie and Polwarth hunted with wild-caught hawks instead of eyesses, the nestlings. Rarer, they were the best, well-taught by their parents in the wild, natural hunters with a desire for prey. The birds
were beautiful to see let loose from their leashes and cast up. They mounted slowly at first in ever-widening circles, then more rapidly, borne higher and higher by their broad wings on the breeze. Some high flyers climbed to an elevation of a quarter mile so they appeared the size of a swallow. Then, poised for that half second, they’d sight their quarry, turn over and, head first, drop in their glorious downward rush.

Elizabeth came to understand Johnnie’s pleasure in the thrilling sport on those cool fresh mornings, and she watched with fascination as the falcons responded like pets would to Johnnie and Polwarth.

When they returned to the cottage, she and Johnnie would help feed the small gamebirds Polwarth was raising; the hens were beginning to ready their nests for their spring broods. She observed an aspect of her husband she’s not previously seen as Johnnie labored alongside Polwarth, his transformation from polished courtier and chieftain to gamekeeper another facet of a complex man. He repaired the coops with quick, competent hands, hammering the wooden bars in place with a swift efficiency, as familiar with their construction as any keeper. He handled the nesting birds with a casual ease, putting his hand slowly inside the coops with a quiet confidence, touching the edgy hens with sure, gentle fingers. And the relationship between Johnnie and the older man revealed much to her of Johnnie’s boyhood, for he deferred to the gamekeeper in all things, not for courtesy’s sake but out of deep affection. Polwarth even sat at the head of the table when they ate, serving out the portions as the master of the household would.

Elizabeth acquired some rudimentary culinary skills during their sojourn at Dens Cottage when Polwarth agreed to show her how to mix the ingredients for his bannocks. When she took her first farls—small triangles cut from the rolled circle of dough—from the griddle—her face smudged with flour and soot from the fire, sweat gleaming on her brow from the heat, a smile of triumph gracing her face, she was given a hearty round of applause by the two men. They ate the hot fresh
breads with butter and plum preserves, complimenting the novice cook by devouring them all.

And a staggering sense of accomplishment animated Elizabeth, regardless the feat was no more than what thousands of women did every day in Scotland. But she’d never cooked before; she found pleasure even in small things.

They slept in one of two small rooms tucked under the eaves, in a huge four-poster bed wedged between the wall and the window. A built-in cupboard, oddly shaped to fit under the roof, offered modest accommodations for their clothes, while a small fireplace kept the tiny space warm and cozy.

“See those initials,” Johnnie said one morning as they lay under the goose–down quilt, pointing at the rafters above the doorway. “I was eight when I carved them. It took me all day to make them deep enough to see in that petrified oak.”

“Tell me what you were like at eight,” Elizabeth said, wishing to know the boy she’d never seen.

He shrugged slightly, her head moving as it rested on his arm. “I don’t know … asking a lot of questions, I think. I wanted to learn everything Polwarth knew.”

“Did Robbie ever come here?”

“Later he did … but not for as long as I. Mama died when Robbie was four, and we traveled a good deal after that.” He didn’t say she’d died in childbirth, she and the child both. “Papa was in trading, too, so it wasn’t unusual to spend time on the Continent.”

“How did your mother die?”

“I’m not sure,” he lied, superstitious about tempting the fates and not wishing to alarm Elizabeth as well. “A fever of some kind.” He took her hands in his.

“How old were
you
when you lost your mother?” Johnnie asked Elizabeth. As long as he could remember, Godfrey had been unmarried, preferring his mistresses to a second wife.

“I was two. I don’t remember her at all. My nanny took her place.” She smiled at more pleasant thoughts. “You abducted me from my old nanny’s school that day in Harbottle. I thought you were some heavenly host for
a moment when you appeared so suddenly in her parlor in those minister’s robes.”

“And I thought you so tempting, I had to remind myself why I’d come to Harbottle.”

“I knew that.”

He lifted his head off the pillow a fraction to look down at her. “No, you didn’t. You were faint with fear.”

“Later I did.…” She stuck her tongue out at him. “When you put me on my own horse at Uswayford.”

“Astute woman,” he murmured, dropping his head back onto the plump pillow.

“I was flattered.”

He grinned. “They all are.”

She slammed him in the stomach with her fist. Hard.

“Umpf,” he grunted, surprised at her strength. And then, with an angelic smile, murmured, “I’m completely reformed now.”

“You’d better be.”

“That gimlet-eyed look certainly puts the fear of God in me.”

“Forget about God,” Elizabeth emphatically declared, “for
I’m
your avenging angel should you ever stray from the path of fidelity.”

His brows rose and fell swiftly. “I’m convinced. Totally.” And then, without mockery, in a different voice of simple sureness, he said, “I’ve found the absolute love of my life. Why would I be interested in other women?”

Elizabeth threw her arms around him, her heart in her eyes. “Tell me we’ll be happy forever.”

“Forever” was a relative term at the moment, Johnnie couldn’t help thinking, but his hopes were as wistful. “Forever … my darling Bitsy,” he said, very, very softly, his eyes naked with emotion. “Always and ever …”

But there were still search parties out prowling the countryside for the escaped Laird of Ravensby. Later that morning, when the small party from Dens Cottage let their falcons loose on the windswept hillside, Johnnie noticed the birds’ flight patterns had altered. They hovered restlessly in the distance, flying in tight circles, not soaring in great sweeping arcs. “Look,” he said to Polwarth.

“A large party must be out.”

“Bring the birds in,” Johnnie tersely said, already moving to call in his falcon. “They might be followed.”

Within minutes the birds were back on their gloved perches, their hoods in place, and their descent down the grassy knoll proceeded with as much speed as Elizabeth’s clumsiness would allow.

After securing his bird on its perch in the aviary, Johnnie said, “I’m going back up. They saw something disquieting.” Dashing into the house, he grabbed his perspective glass from the table and sprinted back outside, running into the forest behind the cottage, crashing through the underbrush, jumping fallen logs rather than taking the time to go around them, rushing up the hill with compelling speed. Putting the glass to his eye, he scanned the countryside hurriedly until his breathing slowed and the glass settled. Then he carefully dissected individual sectors, swinging the polished-brass glass back and forth across the landscape with measured care, stopping when he detected some movement, bringing the object dead in his sights—a minister walking down the road, a single horseman riding over an unplowed field, a deer, two deer … then sweeping over another portion. He concentrated on the area where the falcons had hovered, going back twice to screen the ground between himself and the sea.

A flash of light caught his eye briefly and disappeared. He swore under his breath, recognizing the glimmer, telling himself some country gentleman had bought himself a new toy … it didn’t mean anything. But he kept his glass on the open ground behind the trees partially screening his view, his spine rigid, controlling his breathing so his perspective glass didn’t move.

A dragoon came riding out from behind the planted hedgerow. Johnnie stopped breathing, counting the number of troopers as they emerged from behind the greenery. Three … five … eight, nine, ten, fifteen … eighteen, with the officer in the lead.