Tamed by a Laird (24 page)

That was true. He wasn’t, but how did his thoughts know it when he had not? Or were those real voices rather than just louder
thoughts in his head?

In either case, how could he be other than himself? Mayhap all his pretending had done it. But if he was no longer himself,
then who was he?

The puzzle proved beyond him at that moment to solve.

“Here, lad, sit up now.”

He felt himself smiling, although nothing funny had occurred. Then, numbly, he felt pressure on his arms, pushing or pulling
him upward.

“Sleeping now,” he muttered. He thought he was still smiling, which was odd, because if nowt was funny, he ought to stop.

“Come now, do as ye’re bid,” the voice said. “Ye’ll be glad of it in the end.”

“The end of me?” he murmured.

“He looks daft, he does, and sounds it, too,” another voice said.

He opened his eyes and saw a face close to his own, a white face.

“Gawkus,” he muttered.

The face grinned at him, and the other voice said firmly, “That’s it, lad. Now, take this quill and write your name on the
paper, just here, carefully—your full name, mind, just as ye always write it… that’s it, Hugo, and now the rest.”

Obediently, he wrote his name. His hand and arm felt as if they floated.

“Good lad,” the firm voice said. “Now again, just here.”

Again he obeyed, hoping they would then leave him be. He wanted to sleep. Indeed, he thought he was sleeping, but if this
was a dream, it was an even odder one than Jenny’s had been.

The voices had stopped, and he did not miss them.

Jenny broke her fast with Peg Wednesday morning and then found her lute and took it to a nearby rock slab, where she could
sit and practice her songs for that night’s performance. Sometime later, she saw Hugh making his way to the table.

He paid her no heed and seemed to concentrate hard on finding a place to sit, then clapped a hand to his head as he sat. When
one of the lads pushed a pitcher of ale toward him, Hugh grabbed it and poured a healthy draught into his mug.

Jenny had lived an isolated life but not so isolated that she did not recognize a man who’d had too much drink the night before.
The sight annoyed her. She had thought him an unlikely candidate for heavy drinking. However, Reid drank more than he should,
so mayhap Douglas men simply liked their ale and whisky.

Later, though, when she found Gilly and persuaded him to give her another lesson with her dirk, she felt disappointment when
Hugh did not follow them.

“Fix your mind on the knife,” Gilly said when she had missed the tree for the third time. “It’ll do ye nae good if ye dinna
concentrate. Throw again.”

Biting her lip, aware that her feelings had betrayed her, she retrieved the dirk, put her mind to her throw, and struck the
tree trunk dead center.

When she cast Gilly an exultant smile, he nodded, saying, “Throw again.”

When she had hit the tree five times in a row, he finally grinned and said, “Ye’ll do. But practice often, and recall what
I told ye. Dinna think to use yon dirk to defend yourself. Like as no, some villain will just snatch it and use it against
ye.”

Promising to heed his warning, Jenny thanked him, and they walked back to the encampment to find Gawkus waiting impatiently.

“I’ve had a notion for tonight,” he said to Gilly. “I want to discuss it wi’ ye.”

Parting from them, Jenny went to prepare for her own performance.

As the Joculator had predicted, their audience was larger, and the minstrels outdid themselves. Tumblers flipped and tumbled
over each other, and the dancers danced more wildly, whirling and stomping their feet to the music. The audience began clapping
and were still clapping when the jugglers ran in to the center.

All three juggled torches. Then the Joculator joined them, juggling axes with his. People shrieked whenever it looked as if
he might drop one.

Gawkus and Gilly began with the jugglers, stood aside while the Joculator did his stint, and then ran back out with ten clubs
flying back and forth between them. At the same time, the two carried on a seemingly naïve conversation about taxes and other
duties of the sheriff that drew gusts of laughter from their audience but seemed most unlikely, that night, to amuse Sheriff
Maxwell.

Fortunately, as Jenny noted to Hugh, the sheriff was not there to hear them.

“Someone is bound to tell Maxwell what they said about him, though,” Hugh said. “Those two should take more care to mind their
tongues.”

“But it is the nature of fools to say what they think,” Jenny said.

“A fool who doesn’t mind his tongue, lass, is likely to lose his head.”

The play came next, so their discussion went no further.

Everyone laughed when Gawkus strolled out to perform the wedding ending the second act. He wore priest’s garb and his eared
and belled fool’s cap, but Jenny stopped watching when the ceremony began. Somehow, Gerda became even more irritating as a
bride, managing somehow to simper at Hugh even through her veil.

The Joculator had changed the order of things, so that Jenny’s songs with Hugh followed the play, and the change felt odd
to her, as if Hugh had left his bride to sing love songs with
her
. When he smiled warmly at her in the midst of her favorite song, she wondered if it felt the same to him.

The audience loved it, though, so she decided that, as usual, the Joculator had known what he was doing.

When the applause began to fade, Gilly stepped forward to announce that they would do the entire play on Thursday night, from
beginning to end.

The audience roared its approval.

When Hugh awoke early Thursday morning, the sun was peeking over hills to the east, the day was clear but crisp, and again
the feeling of imminent snow touched the air. His persistent grogginess of the day before had vanished, leading him to think
he had simply grown too old to enjoy drinking into the night after a busy day.

As to the likelihood of snow, its supposed imminence having misled them now for nearly a sennight, he decided the weather
gods were just playing their usual spring pranks on the inhabitants of southwest Scotland.

In the mood for a brisk walk, he went first to the cook fires, where women were taking hot bannocks off flat iron griddles.
Taking three bannocks for himself, he accepted generous slices of warmed-over beef to go with them and headed away from the
camp, into the woods. A short time later, catching a glimpse of a blue skirt on the path ahead of him, he lengthened his stride.

Minutes later, he realized the woman he followed was Gerda’s mother Cath, the eldest of the gleewomen. His spirits sagged,
making him laugh at himself.

The reminder that he might spend much of the day practicing the farcical third act of the play with Gerda made him turn back
to look for another blue skirt.

Seeing Jenny with Peg near their sleeping place, he strode toward them, saying casually when he reached them, “I’d like a
word with ye, Jenny, about the new song we have practiced. Will ye walk with me for a spell?”

“I have not yet broken my fast,” she said.

He hefted his bannocks. “I’ve plenty for two. Come along now, for shortly I’ll have to be practicing yon play with that Gerda.”

She nodded, spoke quietly to Peg, and then joined him, making no comment as he guided her back to the path he had followed
earlier.

“Did you bring your dirk, lass?” he asked then.

“Aye, sure,” she said. “Will we have time for me to practice?”

“We will. In troth, I want to spend an hour speaking freely. I dreamed the other night that I’d lost my self to become one
of the characters I’ve pretended to be. That is, I think that was what happened. ’Twas a strange dream, withal. In any event,
I want to be myself for a while. Art still enjoying your grand adventure?”

She was silent for a moment, as she looked to the left and right of the path.

“No one else is near,” he said. “I saw Cath earlier, but she returned whilst I was talking to you. So, tell me, have you had
enough of this yet?”

“I have not yet learned what I want to know,” she said. “I expect this life could grow tedious, though. Also, it will soon
be time for planting at home, and I do not know if the steward his lordship installed there knows his business.”

“I warrant he does, or Dunwythie would not have put him there.”

“I suppose,” she said, and they went on talking about crops until they came to the hilltop where she had practiced throwing
her dirk before. Finding a flat rock, they ate his bannocks and beef, and then practiced flinging their dirks at deadfalls.

As they walked back in companionable silence, Hugh tried to recall any other time that he had talked as easily about planting
and crops with a woman as he had with her. He hoped Reid would appreciate her knowledge, but he had a strong feeling that
his brother did not appreciate her at all.

Jenny had likewise enjoyed their discussion. Hugh clearly cared as much about Thornhill as she did about Easdale, and from
what he had said, the size of the two estates was similar. He had also given her some more tips to improve her aim, and had
promised to teach her the best way to hone her blade.

When they returned to the encampment, Gerda waved to Hugh.

“Like a wife already,” Jenny said with a chuckle.

Hugh shook his head. “That’s why
I
mean to stay single.”

Still smiling, she watched him go, and then turned her attention to tasks of her own. One of the dancers had offered to help
her furbish up her old blue kirtle for the remaining performances in Dumfries, and she wanted to practice some new songs to
add to them. They would keep the love song that she and Hugh always sang, but everyone else was adding new things, and she
wanted to do likewise.

The evening’s performance went well. Some of the tumblers and two of the jugglers appeared in whiteface, wearing colorful
caps without ears or bells. In the minstrels’ world, Jenny had learned, the latter such trappings were for fools alone.

Gawkus and Gilly jested again about tax collectors and such to the delight of
most
of the audience. However, the sheriff was there with a large party of his own, and Jenny noted that he did not look as amused
by their jests as he had before.

When the Joculator had finished his turn, the audience, which always fell silent to watch his juggling and sleight of hand,
burst into applause and then fell as quickly silent again when Jenny walked into the clearing alone with her lute.

After the first two songs, she gestured to the children to join her, and they soon had the audience singing along with them.
Thus, the mood was merry when the players ran in to begin their play.

The action moved swiftly through the first two acts. Gawkus drew much laughter by playing the priest with a solemnity wholly
at odds with his clownish appearance. At the end of the wedding ceremony, when Gerda grabbed an astonished Hugh by his ears
to kiss him soundly on the lips, the audience roared its approval.