The Border Lord's Bride (55 page)

"It was not fair of him to ask you, given his knowledge, and mine," Ellen replied.

"I could not stay behind if the king rouses the borders."

"You could be ill when he calls, couldn‘t you?" she asked.

"I am neither a coward nor a liar like Ian Johnston," the laird responded testily.

"Ahh, now you admit the man is a liar!" Ellen said, outraged. "You were not so certain in the recent past, my lord, were you?"

"My children, my children, why are you quarreling?" Father Iver, Duffdour‘s elderly priest, had come upon them.

"The laird is a fool!" Ellen said, and then she hurried into the house.

"You have obviously given your good wife great offense that the temper so common to most red-haired folk has exhibited itself, my son," Father Iver said mildly. "I do not believe I have ever seen the lady so outraged. Do you need to confess to me?"

"My wife speaks the truth, good Father," the laird told the priest. "I am a fool."

"Come into my cottage," Father Iver invited, "and tell me what has set you at odds with the lady.

Perhaps I may help to reconcile you."

There was still a bit more work to do on the inner walls about the house, but it was early yet, and the laird considered that the elderly priest might indeed have a suggestion to help him. He certainly didn‘t know what to do. He followed the frail old man into the small one-room cottage and sat down upon a stool to speak with the priest, who was seated in the single chair in the room.

"What has happened between you, my lord?" the priest asked. "Have you perhaps been

unfaithful to your wife, and she learned of it?"

"Nay, I have not been unfaithful, good Father. But I have accused my wife wrongly of that sin,"

Duncan began. Then he went on to explain to the elderly priest what had happened at Devil‘s Glen. "She had confessed to me that he had forced his kisses and caresses upon her while he held her in his custody. But she swore nothing worse had happened, and I thought I believed her—

until Ian Johnston accused her as he lay dying." The laird ran an impatient hand through his dark hair. "Father, I thought that a man about to face God‘s judgment could not lie. But Johnston did, and suspicion raked me, though I told Ellen I did not believe him."

"Until the moment Sir Roger lay dying," the priest said, nodding. "The temptation was simply too great for you, my son. You love your wife, and could not imagine how this villain resisted her even as you tried to believe her. Your faith in her was shaken, and you saw in the dying Sir Roger your last opportunity to be certain." Father Iver shook his white head. "Aye, my son, as a man I understand. Women are weak, as we know, and prone to lying to cover a host of their sins.

But men are weak too, and prone to jealousy where their women are concerned. But you had never had reason prior to the lady‘s kidnapping to doubt her. And she did tell you that he forced kisses and caresses upon her that she resisted. Was it Ian Johnston‘s words alone that roused you?"

"Aye! He was dying, good Father. Why would he tell such a lie when he lay dying? Did he not fear for his immortal soul at that moment?" the laird asked.

"There are many reasons he said what he said," the priest considered thoughtfully. "Perhaps he assumed Sir Roger had violated your wife. Perhaps Sir Roger intimated it to appear more dangerous than he was. Or perhaps Ian Johnston was jealous of you, my son. You are a respected man here in the borders. He was not. You have a wife you love. He did not love his wife. Your wife gave you a healthy son and heir within a year of your marriage. His woman, poor lass, could manage only stillbirths and miscarriages. Did it not occur to you that Ian Johnston hated you for your good fortune, Duncan, my son? Hated you enough to spew forth a lie he knew would eat at your pride, your soul, and perhaps even destroy your marriage as he destroyed his?

It is hard to imagine such wickedness, but it does exist," Father Iver concluded, fingering the beads at his waist.

Duncan Armstrong nodded slowly. "Aye, I believe Johnston did hate me. Still, like you it is difficult for me to conceive of such evil in one man."

"The corruption in him is what drew Sir Roger to him," the priest responded. "Being the most depraved of men himself, he recognized a similar but weaker soul, and used him to his own ends.

But these matters are past. Now you must restore your wife‘s faith and trust in you again, my son. It will not be easy."

"She hates me," Duncan said despairingly.

The priest chuckled. "Nay, Duncan, my son, she does not hate you. She loves you, and I suspect you well know it. However, you have tested her love by being all too human. You will, I fear, have to do the one thing that is most difficult for men to do: You will have to apologize to your wife, and admit to your faults."

"Apologize?" The laird of Duffdour looked surprised. "For what need I apologize? I was jealous.

Any husband would have been jealous. Would Ellen have preferred I not be jealous of a man who held her captive for many weeks, and who she has admitted kissed and fondled her?"

"You must apologize for not trusting her, not trusting her word," the priest said. "Normally I should not even consider such a thing, my son. But you have hurt a woman who never gave you any reason to doubt her, and only by telling her that you are sorry can you give her the opportunity to forgive you. And she must, for the sake of her own soul."

The laird stood up. "I will think on it," he told Father Iver.

"Do not wait too long to make your peace with her, my son," the priest advised. "The longer you wait, the wider this breach will grow, and ‘twill be harder to close it, to heal the wounds you have both inflicted upon each other." He watched as the laird walked off, going to a group of workmen now reinforcing the little wall about the house. Father Iver shook his head. Duncan Armstrong was an intelligent man, but he was also a stubborn one. He decided he would speak with Ellen.

He found her in the kitchen gardens transplanting seedlings into the freshly turned soil. "I would speak with you, my daughter," he began.

Ellen looked up. There was a smudge of dirt on her right cheek. "Do you mind if I work while we speak, Father Iver?" she asked him hopefully. "Old Malcolm says the rains will come tonight for at least two days. I need these seedlings planted today or I shall not be able to plant again for a good week. There are peas, and many of the herbs I used in my apothecary. Our growing season is not as long as I might wish."

"Of course, my child," the priest said, lowering himself to the small wooden bench by the low garden wall. "I have spoken," he began, "with the laird. He is quite devastated by the troubles between you, poor lad."

"Father, you waste your breath on me. If Duncan will come and tell me he is sorry for doubting me, then all will be well between us. I will put from my heart and mind the picture I retain of his kneeling by Roger Colby as he lay dying, and asking for all there to hear, ‗Did you fuck my wife?‘ My own husband doubted me and shamed me before the king, before all who were there.

I am his wife until death, good Father. I will keep his house and entertain his guests. I will care for our bairn, but there will be no more bairns of my body until Duncan Armstrong can apologize for those words, for his doubt. And there is nothing more to say on the subject. I thank you for your caring."

The priest arose slowly. He was a man who knew how to retreat, and when. "I would have you know, my daughter, that I am in full concord with you. The laird treated you shamefully, for you are—have been—a good and loyal wife to him." Then he ambled off, pleased to have planted the idea in her head that he was on her side. She would not shut him out, and he would be able to help the laird and his wife mend their breach, for now each of them believed the priest was on their side.

Ellen continued planting, her hands scooping out holes in the earth, transplanting the seedlings she had been growing for the last month in her apothecary. Her conscience still tweaked at her slightly, but she would have to live with it. She had admitted to kisses and caresses. She had not told her husband of the night Colby had used her with his fingers, with that horrible thing he called a phallus. She would never tell him. She had done the right thing keeping it to herself, although the memory of it still hurt her.

But look what trouble the dying Ian Johnston‘s words had caused her. Duncan had a picture in his head of Colby futtering her, and until Colby himself had disabused her husband the notion on his own deathbed, Duncan had doubted her. If Colby had denied fucking her, then what he had done certainly could not be called by the same name. But why had he denied it? He could have added to Duncan‘s misery and destroyed her world entirely, by saying he had, or by remaining silent. Yet he had denied it, and she would pray for his soul her life through because he had.

She had suspected that despite his claim that all women were whores and sluts, Roger Colby had come to admire her determination. Admire her. Believe just a little bit that perhaps there were good women in the world. She wondered if perhaps he had even hoped in the deepest part of his soul that she would escape him that day. They had both known she was taunting him deliberately that morning in his hall, but he had acquiesced to her challenge and given her a chance to escape him. She had no doubt what would have happened had he caught her. Whatever small admiration he might have had for her would have disappeared as he took her where he caught her. Ellen shivered. Certainly God and his blessed Mother had been with her that day.

But now she had a worse difficulty to face, to manage. Duncan had hurt her, embarrassed her publicly. Until he made his peace with her she could not forgive him. She wished she were a greater soul and could forgive him the jealousy that caused him to doubt her, for that was really all it had been. But she could not. If he could not apologize to her then he had no respect for her, and she was little better than a servant in his house.

Duncan wanted to apologize, but somehow he could not gather the courage up that he needed to say the words. He gave Ellen credit, for she showed him no disrespect, nor berated him before others. She was coolly diffident toward him, speaking in pleasant if reserved tones when they were in public. In private, however, she spoke little to him, and he knew that he dared not force her to his will in their bed, lest he lose her forever. If he attempted to cuddle her, she pulled away if she could, and if she couldn‘t she lay stone cold and still in his embrace. The warmth had left her entirely.

It occurred to him that he was no better than his brother Conal, who had been unable to tell his wife, Adair, that he loved her until it became apparent that he would lose her unless he did.

Duncan recalled berating Conal for his stubbornness in the matter, but now it would appear he was no better. What the hell was the matter with him? He was a proud man, he knew, but he had never before allowed his pride to ride him so hard. And even the servants were beginning to notice that the laird and his lady were not as they had once been, laughing and full of open love for each other.

And then in midsummer little Willie had an accident. The bairn, now walking all over, had somehow evaded his nursemaid, Laria, and escaped the hall. He wandered out into the small courtyard surrounding the house. The new wall about Duffdour was just about finished, but there were building stones still there, stacked up three and four high. Adventurous, the bairn clambered up to the top of one of the piles. Delighted with his success he crowed triumphantly, and it was then that he lost his balance, falling from atop the pile of stones to the ground below.

It was not a precipitous drop, no more than two feet, but Willie was small and had not the balance an older child would have had. He hit his head on a single stone that lay in the dirt as he fell to the ground, and a gash opened in the back of his little head, pouring forth bright red blood.

He lay still and silent and very small in the dirt, making not so much as a whimper.

Laria, coming out to seek her little lad, saw him as he fell, and ran shrieking to gather up her charge. She carried the bleeding child back into the hall, calling loudly for help as she came. And she was sobbing wildly as she ran.

Sim heard her even before she entered the hall. Then, seeing the girl with her burden, he crossed himself, saying, "Holy Mother of God, lass! What has happened?" Then he shouted to another servant, "Fetch the mistress quickly! She‘ll be in the gardens. Then find the laird! Hurry!

Hurry!" He turned back to Laria. "Stop your howling, lass. Put the lad there on the high board.

What happened?"

Willie was laid down upon the table. Laria continued to weep. "I looked away for just a moment," she sobbed, "and he was gone. I went right outside, for I know how he loves the out-of-doors. Ohhhhh," she wailed. "The laird will have my life for this!"

Ellen ran into the hall and, seeing her son upon the high board, hurried over to him. "What happened?" she demanded of Laria.

Laria wept louder.

"The bairn got away from her and out into the courtyard," Sim said.

Ellen slapped the hysterical girl hard across her cheek. "What happened?"

Laria gasped with surprise, but then she said, "He climbed a pile of stones left over from the wall, mistress. Before I could get to him, he fell and cracked his head open." She sniffled, the tears coming again. "I tried to reach him."

Ellen nodded. "Go to my apothecary," she said to Laria. "You will find Gunna there helping me make winter syrups. Tell her that Willie‘s head is cracked open, and to come with what I need to dress the bairn‘s wound. Hurry now!"

"Yes, mistress," Laria said, and ran from the hall.

"Get me some water and clean rags, Sim. I‘ll want to clean the wound," Ellen told him. Her voice was calm, but her heart was hammering in her chest. Willie was her bairn. He lay so still and pale, but she could see he was breathing, his little chest rising and falling with even breaths.

She took a rag and dipped it into the water that Sim had so quickly brought. Then Ellen lifted her son, holding him carefully as she began to clean the congealing blood from his wound. He began to whimper.