Ashblane's Lady

‘Our Laird wants you fit to travel north in the morning.’

The significance of this reply hit her with a blinding euphoria. They were not to die tonight? Perhaps, after all, there was a chance.

‘Please. Could you free my page, Jemmie, too? He is only young and the cold is bitter here.’

A wary puzzlement filtered into the eyes of the soldier opposite as his glance skimmed the floor.

‘The offer is for you alone, Lady Randwick.’

‘Then I am sorry, but I cannot accept it.’ Already the faintness of blue marked the pale face of her sister as the chill crept in through granite flagstones. She held out her arms for the manacles and turned her head away. She felt the chains re-locked as tangibly as she felt the indecision of the man opposite, though she did not look at him as he left, the heavy iron door clanging shut with a dreadful finality.

Sitting down, she put her head between her legs and willed calm as the small fingers of panic wrenched aside composure. She was trapped in the dungeon of an Armstrong keep by a Laird known well for his lack of mercy, and, if that was not bad enough, Jemmie was in a disguise that would tip the balance further were she to be unmasked. Everything was worsened yet again by the fearful nature of the Laird of Ullyot himself.

She made herself stop.

Unlike your brother, I do not kill women and children. Were those not the exact words he had used?

The thought cooled panic and kindled hope. If the rumours about the Ullyot’s appearance had been so misleading, then perhaps his character was also unjustly slandered?

‘Please, God, let it be so,’ she prayed; as the tightness around her chest loosened, she crept across to Jemmie, frightened by her stillness. If her sister died, how could she keep living? A sob of terror escaped her before she could stop it, before she could again assemble the core of strength that she very seldom lost a hold of. She had been in worse predicaments before and had survived. With the grace of God and a little luck, perhaps they would both survive this one, too.

Quinlan returned to the Great Hall less than ten minutes after he had left it.

‘She says she will’na leave her young servant.’

‘She what?’ Alexander turned to his second-in-command, wincing as the movement tore into the wound on his shoulder.

‘She says she will’na go without the boy. Jemmie, she calls him. He has’na regained consciousness yet and she’s worrit by the cold.’

‘Then leave her there. Place a blanket across them both and leave them there.’ But Quinlan wasn’t quite yet finished.

‘She smells nice, Alex, and her manners are more than fine….’

Sharp laughter filled the room. ‘She’s Noel Falstone’s sister, Quin. She takes place in his raids.’

Quinlan shook his head. ‘And yet when the plaid fell from her shoulders in the cell I saw a scar on one breast fashioned into the sign of the cross. Remember Jock Ullyot’s words, Alex. He told us that the woman from Heathwater Castle who had helped him bore the sign of a cross. And her hair. He spoke of a fiery angel who healed people…’

‘He was dying. Delirious and dying. And if it be a fiery angel we are searching for, I doubt Madeleine Randwick would qualify.’

‘The rumours could be wrong—’

Alex cut him off. ‘They’re not. Leave it at that, aye?’

‘I would, save Geordie is on guard duty tonight.’

Swearing, Alexander reached for his dagger on the chair, tucking it into the belt at his waist with difficulty. ‘And his son is laid out on a slab in the chapel. Ye dinna think it wise to change the watch, then?’

Quinlan shrugged in resignation. ‘He’s as close to the edge as I’ve seen him. To insult him further…’

He didn’t finish as Alex Ullyot led the way out of the Great Hall, his shadow lying uneasily against stone as they made their passage to the dungeons below.

The cell was quiet save for the night-time wind that howled around the corners of the draughty passageways. Madeleine Randwick had hooked herself around the scrawny body of the boy she had been brought in with. An uncomfortable position, Alexander reflected, given the space between them. He noticed how her hands were taut white with the effort of stretching so far left.

‘Get up.’ He strode in as soon as the locks were freed and pulled her to her feet, ripping the plaid off her in one quick movement and turning her around to the light to find the scar of which Quinlan had spoken. A dainty cross of gold surprised him and he fingered it briefly before turning his mind back to the scar. ‘Who marked you so?’

Maddy was stiff with shock. ‘Liam Williamson, the Earl of Harrington.’

‘You are his?’

‘Yes.’ Her heart beat fast in her chest and her mouth was dry. She saw the knife in his hand before she felt it and looking down, saw that her breast ran with the blood of a shallow cut. The red of her blood stained his hands as he drew away.

‘Under the spoils of battle I relinquish his claim. Untie her, Quinlan, and bring her to the chamber off the solar.’

‘You mean to—?’

‘Now.’ He said the word through his teeth and the soldiers in the cell all hurried to obey him. She felt their rough hands take liberties and knew that the Laird had seen it, too. This time he offered no retribution.

A large bed dominated the room they repaired to and it was on this the soldiers placed her. She noticed them fan out across the room as if they meant to stay through the deed, though the one named Quinlan was clearly agitated.

‘She is a Lady, Alex.’

‘She is Harrington’s whore.’

‘No, I’m not—’ A hand clamped across her mouth.

‘Speak again and I will kill you.’ He released her only as she nodded. The blood at her breast made her faint, made her shake, made her sick to her stomach and she retched across the floor the contents of a frugal meal from the morning.

Now she would die. Looking up, she blotted the spittle with the borrowed arisaid and waited for retribution. Kill her or ravish her. It was all the same—if this Laird did not do the deed, then Liam Williamson surely would before too much time had passed.

She was sick of caring, sick of worrying, sick of the effort it took to live into another day and the absolute absence of any viable alternative. ‘End it here,’ she thought and stood, challenging him, before the rush of unbalance took her and she crumpled on to the floor of the raised dais.

Alex swore as the redness of her hair spilled across his boots, the white sheen of her body dappled now with blood and bruises. She was young and thin and strangely vulnerable, this Madeleine Randwick. Bending, he touched the fiery tumble of her silken curls. In unconsciousness her fear had been wiped away and moulded into something else entirely, the gentle line of her throat running up to a face that was unexpected.

He turned, his stomach no longer in this public ravishment. ‘Settle her into a bedchamber upstairs and bring the young page to her,’ he ordered, his eyes flicking to the wound he had inflicted on her breast. He suddenly wanted to cover it, but knew that to do so would invite comment. Stripping a flare from the wall, he made for the door, dismissing the sentries with a sharp order and glad that he could trust Quinlan’s honour to make certain that the Lady of Heathwater stayed safe.

Madeleine woke in a bed, the feather-tick covers pulled up over her, and Jemmie beside her in a makeshift cot on the floor. Reaching her hand across the space, she was relieved when the blankets stirred. Jemmie was alive and unhurt. That was all that mattered. Outside it was dark; she could see a quarter moon through the clouds between the ill-fitting shutters.

‘Are you hurt badly, Maddy?’

‘Only a little.’ Sitting up, she pulled at her plaid to reveal the cut Ullyot had marked her with. It still oozed slightly, though a skin had formed across the edges of the wound. Spitting into the palm of her hand, she rubbed the mark briskly and swallowed back tears.

‘It feels better already, and, if Ullyot has not killed us by now, I doubt that he means to.’

‘But the mark. He will take you—’

She cut off the worry. ‘He will take me as a mistress, mark or no mark, Jemmie. It’s the least of our problems.’ Rising from the bed, she went to the window, pulling back the shutter and opening it carefully. Three storeys from the ground and no foothole to allow leverage. The Laird was taking no chances. She knew the door would have a guard standing watch.

‘We have a knife and a gold crown.’ She pulled both objects from a hidden pocket sewn deep inside her petticoats, putting her herbal powders that were also hidden there aside. ‘It may be enough.’

‘To escape?’

‘Nay, to send a message.’

‘To whom?’

‘To Goult. If we could get away from here and ride west towards Annan—’

Jemmie interrupted her. ‘No, nothing is safe.’ As the words stopped, Madeleine noticed the thin band of sweat across her sister’s brow. Could she be sickening from the cold night on the floor already, or was this a sign of being as frightened by the Laird of Ullyot as she herself was?

Her heart raced in fear. The Laird of Ullyot was not at all as other men—she had seen the auras that surrounded him the moment he had turned towards her. Silver and black. Eleanor had always warned her of such a mix; years ago she had come across her mother in the stables with her gowns around her thighs and entwined in the arms of a stranger who had breathed silver.

Silver and black. And something else, too. Something unspoken and forbidden. Something primal and reckless.

Shaking her head, she pocketed the dagger and the coin and began to think how she could turn this adversity to her own advantage.

‘We will watch for our chance to escape; when it does come, we will make for France.’ Covering her hands with the folds of her skirt, she was glad Jemmie could not see the whitened knuckles of her clenched fist. Glad she could not know the other thoughts that rushed around inside her head and had her rigid with panic.

‘And we will be together, Maddy?’

The voice was shaky and years of her own fears allowed Madeleine to easily see fright in others.

‘We will always be together, Jemmie, I promise. But now you must sleep, for it will be a long march on the morrow.’

She watched as the blankets shifted and then stilled before turning her eyes to the light beneath the door and sitting up. If they came, she would be ready, and the knife in her hand was honed sharp.

The Laird of Ullyot came to her room just as the pinkness of dawn blushed the eastern sky, his surprise at finding her awake masked quickly.

‘I would speak with you, Lady Randwick, and without your page. My men will take him.’

Jemmie stood uncertainly, movements clumsy with sleep, and Maddy felt her stomach lurch in fright. ‘Where will you take him?’ She tried to temper her desperation.

‘To the room next door. We will return him to you later.’

Her eyes went to the two guards. How dependable did they look? She was thankful to notice one was an old man with kindness stamped in his eyes.

‘I will be safe, Jemmie. Go with the men.’

‘But I think—’

Maddy shook her head as Jemmie began to speak, but the gesture did not seem to sway any intent as a bony chin went up and thinly covered shoulders straightened. ‘Will you give me your word, Laird Ullyot, that you will not hurt her?’

A young, uncertain demand given without weapon or strength. Holding her breath, Madeleine waited for reaction.

‘Get out.’

Not a knife through the ribs then, or a fist against the thin bones of Jemmie’s face. Reciting a prayer of thankfulness in her mind, she watched as her sister was taken from the chamber. As the door shut behind the group, Ullyot began to speak.

‘You have one who would vouch for your character, it seems, Lady Randwick, though many would say you are a whore and a liar known throughout two kingdoms for your loose ways and dark magic.’

She made herself smile. ‘I have been incarcerated at Heathwater for the past ten years, my Lord.’

‘Hardly incarcerated, my Lady, for your exploits at the Castle are chronicled well by those who have enjoyed your favours.’

Unexpectedly, she felt herself blush bright red. Angry at doing so, she stood and walked to the window.

Why was he here? And alone?

‘How many retainers does your brother keep at Heathwater?’

Her relief was visible. He was here to find out about Noel’s fighting capabilities?

‘A thousand,’ she lied, knowing the number to be almost twice that.

‘A thousand without the retainers of Harrington?’

She knew the question was not lightly asked and looked away. ‘My brother has not the numbers your domain yields, sir, though there is a certain safety implicit in depending on others.’

‘How so?’ His eyes were instantly alert, the mark on his cheek below puckered badly in the harsh dawn light.

‘The Ashblane soldiers are weighty in number. Too weighty, I have heard it whispered. Royalty likes to have strong men on the edges of their land as a first defence against invasion, but, when they become too powerful, any king is apt to worry.’

He laughed, the sound threaded with such ill-hidden arrogance it could only denote a man truly at ease with his own capabilities. ‘If you want to help your brother, I would advise you not to lie.’

‘Because my betrayal would yield him a quick death as opposed to a slow one?’ She thought of Goult trapped in the middle of a battle, but he ignored her question and posed one of his own.

‘Your page, Jemmie. How important is he to you?’

For a second Madeleine thought she might faint. Indeed, she grasped at the sill beneath the window and closed her eyes, every single thing she had ever heard about the Laird of Ullyot suddenly true. He had neither soul nor heart nor honour. And he was clever. She could barely believe the turn this conversation had taken. Had he guessed?

Desperately she faced him. ‘If lives are to be traded, Laird Ullyot, I would prefer to barter my own.’

‘Would you indeed, Lady Randwick? And I wonder why that might be the case?’

She dared not speak again. What was it he wanted of her? Everybody wanted something.

‘Now, how many? What are the numbers?’

‘Three thousand.’ She did not look up as she recited the re-tainers and their strengths, careful not to leave out the Western allies. She was truthful with the demands of number. With her sister’s life at stake and a Laird renowned for his lack of leniency, Goult would just have to take his chances.

‘Thank you.’ The words were as bleak as his eyes as she watched him. Slate grey. The colour of a lake before rain. Pale. Unreadable. Distant. For a moment she felt disorientated and exposed.

‘The safety of my clan is paramount to me, Lady Randwick, and I will do anything to protect it. Anything. Remember that and ye may yet live to be reunited with your beloved Heathwater.’

She nodded because he expected it and watched him leave.

Heathwater…beloved?

If she could burn the castle down herself she would, and if Noel was caught in the flames with Liam Williamson then all the better for it. The ghosts of ten years of hatred floated dangerously near and she closed her eyes against the screams of her murdered husband as the tightness in her chest caught her. Groping for the chair, she sat down. Not here. Not now. Not again. First she must get Jemmie to safety. And after that…

She would pray that the black Baron of Ullyot would scourge Heathwater from the earth on which it stood, leaving nothing for her ever to remember it by. And no one.

Alexander strode to the chapel. The candles burning in the vestry lit his passage as he crossed to where Ian lay. Lifting the plaid blanket away, he ran a finger in the sign of the cross over a cold forehead and pinched the salt in a dish on Ian’s stomach to the four corners of the room. ‘A charaid. May the Devil be far from your soul and your journey into Heaven sweet.’ With care he rearranged the rondel dagger tucked into the sleeve of his dead friend’s jacket, pleased to see that someone had thought to clean the blade and sharpen it. ‘I swear ye will be avenged,’ he whispered into the dawn. ‘I swear it on the soul of the Virgin Mary and the blood of our Lord.’

Our Lord?

How long was it since he had prayed? Crécy? Alexandria? Cairo? He looked up at the vaulted ceilings and across to the portraits in gold of the Holy Family that hung against the far wall. Adam Armstrong was a devout man and his chapel reflected this. A small likeness of the Virgin Mary caught his fancy, for she had hair the same colour as Madeleine Randwick’s. Shaking his head, he cursed abducting her, cursed the porcelain sheen of her skin and her fire-red hair. He should leave her with Armstrong to send back to her brother. Hostages could only harm Ashblane and he was always careful as far as his castle was concerned. And yet he knew he would not do it.

‘Why can I not just leave her here?’ His whispered question seemed like a shout. Lord, to be even considering taking her? Protecting her?

‘I think she has cursed me, Ian. I think she has used her magic and cursed me.’ The blood in his arm beat loudly and he felt hot. Sick. Cursed.

Breathing out, he pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to get a better look at the wound at the elbow. Angry lines of dark red scoured the skin and tracked upwards, the pain surprising him. Even in Cairo, with his face slit open from cheekbone to temple, he had felt better.

He knelt and genuflected, holding his right arm against his side so that no movement jolted it. And when he had finished his prayers of deliverance he made his way out to the waiting soldiers, hoping like hell that his dizziness was a temporary condition and that he would not slide from his horse before he again saw the battlements of the Ashblane keep.

Chapter Three

They had been travelling north-east through the damp of a rising drizzle for three hours, the hooves of hundreds of horses making such a sound that any enemies thinking to engage a force of men this size had long since vanished. Madeleine rode in the middle of the column with Jemmie at her side, and as the red and gold banners of the Ullyot clan swirled about them and the cold numbed the skin on her face, she wondered how much longer they would ride.

Finally the wide valleys of the Esk lay before them, tree berries bold and the branches covered with flaming leaves, and beyond, the deeper green of a forest. Jemmie seemed stronger after a night’s rest and Madeleine’s own wound stung less now, the throbbing of the night giving way to a softer ache. Ahead of her Quinlan reined in his horse suddenly and bid them to halt and she felt Alexander Ullyot’s presence before she saw him, bathed in a coat of dust. She could tell that his arm hurt him by the angle at which he held it. His wounds required more than the poultice his physician had laid upon him and the healer in her surveyed his symptoms carefully.

Already he sweated.

The beat of his heart had quickened as well. She could see it in the pulse at his throat.

‘We will build camp here for the night. The Liddesdale Forest is dangerous to stop in and we will’na make the other side by nightfall.’ He shielded his face as he scanned the sky and Madeleine had the impression of him reading both time and weather. As he looked down their eyes met, flinted silver less sharp now as the first waves of deep infection assailed his body.

Little time left, she thought and dropped her glance. He would be beyond her help by the morning.

‘You are comfortable?’

His question made her start, as did the full frown on his brow.

‘Pardon?’

‘Do ye have all you need?’ His glance went to her breast. ‘I could send my physician.’

‘No.’ She bit at her bottom lip to stop saying more and looked away. Already he was leaving. She felt as much of a murderer as her brother.

Quinlan dismounted and stood ready to help her down and she laid her hand upon his sleeve. ‘I would thank you for your help last night.’ Her gaze flicked across to Jemmie. It had been Quinlan who had brought Jemmie to her wrapped in a blanket.

The resentment that lay in his light blue eyes was momentarily replaced by perplexity. ‘Your retainer was full of praise for you, my Lady. I’ve seldom heard a young boy chat so much.’

The statement brought laughter to her lips. ‘Surrounded by such soldiers as these, any stranger could seem verbose.’

Quinlan frowned. ‘Alexander instructed everyone to keep their distance for your own safety. He wants you protected.’

‘Why?’

‘You are his now. Since last night.’ His eyes dropped to her breast. ‘As a hostage. I thought you understood.’

‘And if he dies?’

Alarm flickered in blue eyes as he sought her meaning. ‘Ullyot is invincible. Who would fight him and win?’

‘My God…’ Maddy crossed herself and turned away, the twin emotions of dread and joy battling within as suddenly everything dropped into place.

Could Alexander Ullyot, the feared Laird of Ashblane, shield her from everyone? From Noel and Liam? Even from King Edward? If he took her as a mistress, and unwilling, could such an uneasy alliance allow her time to think and plan, to throw them off her scent and disappear? She closed her eyes, the force of her desires washing across the more familiar powerlessness. He had men and might and an authority of leadership that was unrivalled. And last night, after she’d been sick over his floor, he had not killed her.

Not all bad, then, she reasoned, and turned again to Quinlan, her mind made up.

‘Without my help, your Laird will be dead by nightfall.’

She saw the hairs of Quinlan’s arm rise and his face redden visibly.

‘You curse him?’ His voice was strangled as he drew his blade.

‘Nay. I told your Laird, I have the power of healing.’ All around men gathered, their own swords drawn in response to Quinlan’s anger. She held his gaze. ‘The wounds your Laird has will poison him. Another few hours and his blood will run with it and there will be nothing I can do.’

‘Kill the Randwick witch,’ a bold voice cried to her left, and further knives were unsheathed.

‘No.’ Quinlan bade the men retreat, and they did so, but uncertainly, the air crackling with an unguarded tension. Were she to say more, she doubted even he could save her, and thus she held her silence.

An impasse. Drawing her gaze upwards, she looked towards the sky. The sun beat down upon the land and she felt it reflected in her hair. Quietly she raised her hood. In times like these some men took merely such a sign as this to take their action further. She saw Quinlan frown suddenly and thought perhaps he was a mind reader. She had encountered such beings in the old chronicles at her grandmother’s castle, and always their eyes were blue.

‘I will take you to the Laird and you can check the wound yourself.’ His voice was curt as he turned to his horse and called for hers. Beside her Jemmie made to rise, but she stopped the movement.

‘No, it is safe.’

One small hand came around her wrist and she felt the applied pressure. ‘You’ll need your things.’ Jemmie’s voice was uncertain, her upturned face deeply edged in worry.

‘What things?’ Quinlan demanded an answer.

‘My healing tools. They were left at the side of the battlefield when you took me.’

‘Our physician has others.’

Her mind raced to the balms and poultices she would have liked to have had, but in the pockets of her petticoats were twists of complex herbal powders whose recipes she had learned from her grandmother. It might just be enough.

And if it wasn’t? She refused to think of this problem yet. Everything was tenuous, but on the brink of disaster she sensed something different. If the Laird of Ullyot lived, she might yet have a life. For within the bosom of this clan she detected a glimmer of safety. Safety for her and for Jemmie. For a while. And if Alexander Ullyot lived, she would ask for her uncle’s safe passage from Heathwater.