Ashblane's Lady

Jemmie and Goult. Her family. To keep them safe she would strike a bargain with the devil himself.

The Laird was much worse when they reached him, and Quinlan’s fright mirrored her own.

Alexander Ullyot no longer knew them, the sweat on his brow so high now he had lapsed into delirium. An old man crouched at his side with a bowl full of leeches. Already she could see he had been bleeding him, the fat black bodies of the worms bloated with blood and glistening under the light of torches.

Quinlan hurried to his side, knocking away the other soldiers who knelt there. His hand felt for Ullyot’s and he squeezed it firmly.

‘Alex.’

A flicker of consciousness generated greater tugging, the black blood from his wrist leaving a trail of darkness in the dirt. Perhaps it was that, Maddy thought later, that made him push the elderly physician to one side and bring her into the light.

‘What can you do for him?’

A general hum went around the crowd at his words and another one as she came to crouch down beside him, pinching salt from a container on the ground and sprinkling it across the leeches. They curled up and fell on to the mat beneath him. She resisted scrunching them beneath her shoes even as the clan physician gathered them up.

‘I’ll need water,’ she said, her hands touching the heat of his brow. ‘And strong whisky.’ Both came within a second of her asking for it and she extracted her dirk and powders from her petticoat pocket.

Instantly she felt the prick of a well-honed sword in the sensitive folds of her neck.

‘Leave her.’ Quinlan’s voice. Anxious. Harsh. She did not look back at her assailant as she picked up her knife again and opened the herbal pouches. The sleeve of his shirt she dealt with next, slicing the seam apart and looking over at Quinlan who was watching her carefully.

‘He can mend it when he is better,’ she said bluntly, registering a spark of both admiration and wariness.

Many men had called her a witch, but just as many had admired her skills of doctoring. Tonight Quinlan’s respect buoyed up her courage, made her fearless, made the contact she had with bone and skin and blood more real. Closing her eyes, she held the palms of her hands against his skin, feeling the poison and tracing the pathways of darkness to healthier flesh. The shock of connection was like an almost-pain and she could sense a haunting, answering anger that shut off the moment she felt it. Deliberately? Beneath consciousness he could feel her? Her heartbeat accelerated markedly. That had never happened before. Ever.

With hesitation she pinpointed the dark blue lines of blood and drove the tip of her sharp blade inwards, tourniqueting all that lay beyond and squeezing out the badness.

If the collected men gasped and watched her with disquiet, she did not recognise their superstitions, so intent on hearing next the sound of his bones. When she held up her hand for silence, it came immediately.

‘Here.’ She grasped the elbow and slipped it up against the run of muscle, the swollen joints popping as the dislocation righted.

Sweat pooled between her breasts because she could not quite shake the unease of his awareness. Rolling him over, she looked at the jagged gash beneath his shoulder blade, red crossed by other scars from different battles and healed knot-beaded white.

A warrior!

My warrior!

The voices of those who had hurt him crowded in against her, the wraith cries of old battles full blown from that time to this one and echo-loud as she placed two fingers against the broken skin and pushed. When the heat gathered, her arms began to shake. Another moment, she told herself, another moment and the warmth would come. If she had been alone, she would have used the healing-fire inside her, but here the traditions of other people bound her tightly, and she had Jemmie to think of.

Nay, the doctoring had to be as conventional as she could show it. She smiled to herself when sharp heat made her fingertips vibrate. They would never see. A small, important victory for the de Cargne magic, for with its coming she knew that death had passed back into life.

Sitting back, she rested for a moment before swilling herbs in the whisky and bringing it to the Laird’s lips. Quinlan’s hand stopped her.

‘What is in it?’ The charge of poison lay as an unspoken threat.

Without answering she lifted the rim to her own lips and took a sip. Heat threaded her throat and sent the world reeling, but the fingers withdrew.

‘Go on.’

Readjusting her stance, she looked again at her patient. ‘You must drink,’ she whispered and pressed with her fingers on a certain point of his neck. Grey eyes flew open on cue and he swallowed the liquid in thirsty gulps before lapsing again into unconsciousness.

All about her men crossed themselves, the age-old reaction to something that was not understood. Few men at Heathwater looked her in the eyes. It would be the same here come morning, though Quinlan’s measured glance surprised her.

‘Your Laird will live.’

‘Do ye ever doubt yourself, Lady Randwick?’ he asked as she bent again to her patient. Ignoring the question, she touched Alexander Ullyot’s brow.

‘Already the fever lessens. It is a good sign. By the morning he will be much improved.’ Threading his dark blond hair through her fingers, she felt the lump of a fall on his temple.

I live as close to the edge of life as you do.

For a second she felt a bonding and, shocked, pulled her hand away.

Quinlan mistook her reflex action.

‘What is it? What is wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she lied easily and turned to collect what little was left of her powders, wiping the blade of her knife with a pad of alcohol and pulling at the material in her petticoat to cut a wide swathe from the hem.

Two long bandages of clean lawn soon lay across her hands and, removing the stopper from the flask, she soaked them in whisky before winding them about the wounds. Alexander Ullyot thrashed a little as she kneaded his elbow and she hurried at her task. In all her years of healing she had not seen a patient who had lain so still during the most painful manoeuvre of repositioning a dislocated shoulder.

When he stirred and his eyes fluttered open, she tried not to touch his skin lest he feel again that point of contact. Already he was coming into consciousness; she had no wish to be still kneeling at his side when he awoke.

‘I’m finished.’ Standing, she rubbed at the small of her back, the bending in the cold startling her with pain. Deliberately she did not catch the eye of a single onlooker.

Two hours later she was summoned back to the clearing where the Laird of Ullyot sat.

‘Quinlan says ye to be a witch.’ His voice was deep but tired. ‘My men believe it, too,’ he added. ‘They say ye charmed the sickness from me.’

‘Given the limited skills of your own physician, their superstitions do not surprise me.’

She frowned as he tipped back his head and laughed, though the humour did not touch his eyes—rather it shadowed them in an unspoken distance. ‘And yet you were not afraid?’

He faced her directly now, his irises catching the red light of a setting sun. Not quite silver, more the burnished hue of the wings of the moth that lived in the glens. And angry. Feeling his censure, she returned crisply, ‘Once I touched you I knew that you would not die. If I had thought you to be unsavable, I could have stood back and pleaded ignorance, leaving your physician to finish the bad job he had started.’

‘But by then ye had cursed me out loud. Nobody would have forgotten that.’

She did not answer and he swore softly, shifting his position as if to better accommodate his shoulder.

‘Quinlan says you closed your eyes and read my blood with your fingertips. He said you asked for silence so that you could hear the sound of my bones. Like a witch would listen. Hale, my physician, says the same.’

‘Your men speak nonsense, Laird Ullyot.’ She noticed his eyes up close were beaded with a dark blue. They disconcerted her with their directness and she struggled for normalcy. ‘I need to see if your fever is lessened,’ she explained as she placed her hand on his forehead.

‘It has gone.’ His voice was quiet and disengaged.

‘Your wounds, then. Does the pain increase?’

‘No.’

‘I need to look.’ Feeling him stiffen, she leaned forward to take his bandaged arm in her hands. The appendage was hotter than she would have liked, though the flesh beneath when she unravelled the cloth had the look of a wound knitting nicely. When she checked his back it was the same. Reaching for the last of her powders, she added only a few drops of water.

‘This one will cool your flesh,’ she explained as she rubbed in the salve, though he caught at her hand when she went to apply more.

‘Enough, Lady Randwick. You have cured me.’ Strong fingers closed around her own and a guarded irony laced his words. ‘The tales of your accomplishments are not without foundation, I see.’

Tensing, Madeleine pulled away. Dangerous ground this, given the widespread knowledge of the de Cargne sorcery. Tempering her answer accordingly, she met his gaze. ‘And now you wish to thank me?’ She sought to remove as much emotion as she could from her voice.

He laughed loudly, the sound bringing his retainers close, swords at the ready. Waving them off, he turned again to look at her.

‘Do men often thank you, Lady Randwick?’

The insult was implicit and she braced herself. So many men had looked at her the way he was doing now and for one fleeting moment she was sorry that it was him. Before she had a chance to answer, however, he got to his feet and she noticed him wince as the arm lowered with the pull of gravity. ‘I could fasten a bandage,’ she offered from the ground, the healer within overcoming her woman’s chagrin.

‘Nay, I have this.’ Pulling straps of leather from his pocket he brought the arm into his side and wrapped the binding around his wrist before looping it over his neck and moving the two or three steps needed to bring him right beside her. Sensing his intent for further conversation, she stood and waited.

‘I am indebted to you for your help,’ he said at length, the utterance dragged from his mouth as though it pained him to say it. ‘And if you’ve a request ye wish to voice as reparation, I will try my best to see that it is done.’

‘Bring my uncle to your keep from Heathwater.’

Surprise ran freely across his face.

‘Why?’

‘Because Noel will hurt him.’ She could barely get the words out.

‘And that would matter to you?’

‘Yes.’

He watched her closely. ‘Do you know how it is you are called in the court of Scotland, Lady Randwick?’

She didn’t answer.

‘They call you the Black Widow.’

The Black Widow. Lucien. She felt her world tilt.

‘Rumour holds it, you see, that love for the chatelaine of Heathwater is conducive to neither a man’s heart nor health. Lucien Randwick was eighteen when you married him and not twenty-six when he died. And when the body of an English Baron was found five miles from your castle before Yuletide last year, an entry in his journal named you as his lover. The pattern has been noted, Lady Randwick, though I’m wondering where I fit into the scheme of things. You could just as easily have said nothing today and left me to die.’

‘I could have.’ She said the words quietly, schooling her emotions in the way she had perfected across the many years of living with her brother. Alexander Ullyot could believe what he liked of her. People always had. She was surprised, though, by the thin band of pain that wrapped itself around her throat, and the tears that threatened. Looking away, she dashed the evidence against her sleeve. She never cried. Not ever. She forced a smile.

Jesus, Alex thought as the truth hit him. She had not murdered Lucien at all. A lifetime of soldiering easily told him that. Relief and anger were strangely mixed. He wanted to hate her, he wanted to hate her as much as he hated her brother. But he couldn’t. And that thought made him even more furious.

‘It was Noel, wasn’t it?’

‘Pardon?’

‘It was Noel who killed them,’ he repeated, louder this time and with more authority. ‘Lucien and the others. It makes more sense, damn it. He used you as his excuse?’

For a second every single fibre in her body longed to lie, but the hilt of her knife in Lucien’s neck was too real, too recent, and too tangible. She recalled in minutiae the way his eyes had glazed in shock as he had fallen, the light stubble on his cheeks strangely out of place against the harsher face of death. She remembered knocking his pleading hands away from her ankles and standing there until she was absolutely certain that his lifeblood had flowed away. Lucien Randwick, the golden-haired, laughing son of the Earl of Dromorne. Dead and not yet twenty-six.

Visibly she blanched. ‘Nay, I killed Lucien.’

‘But not the others?’

‘No.’

The hardness in her voice was palpable, but Alexander saw the flare of fear in her eyes before she hid it. And sorrow. Madeleine Randwick was good at hiding things, he thought suddenly. Her healing magic, for one—now, even hours after she had touched him, the skin at his back still tingled. No simple task for all she said of it.

Magic. And now, murder. Baldly confessed. The knuckles of her hands were white with tension and her whole body shook.

‘Randwick was a friend of mine.’ His voice was soft.

‘Lucien?’

‘No. Malcolm, his father. He killed himself last year.’

He saw her grip the skirt of her dress. ‘Malcolm Randwick. Dead? I had not heard. He brought me a bunch of snowdrops once and a pendant fashioned in gold. And when Lucien would not see him—’ She stopped and caught her words. ‘He was a kind man, a gentleman.’

‘Unlike his son?’

The question was so unexpected she could not trust herself to speak. Instead she nodded, and the instant bolt of anger in icy, pale eyes stunned her.

Belief.

Belief in her. For the first time in two years the white-hot shame of murder waned and the reality of her brother’s complicity crystallised. It was not her fault. Not all her fault. She could barely take it in.

Alex looked away, not trusting himself to speak. Had the Randwick bastard physically hurt her? His eyes scanned the cream-smooth skin at her throat and arms and his quietly voiced expletive held a wealth of meaning as the night drew in on them both, black and close, the secrets of state binding them into fragile harmony.

‘You were betrothed to Randwick as a child?’

‘Yes.’

‘Under the auspices of King Edward?’

‘Yes.’

The pain in her voice was brittle, and with exaggerated care Alex continued. ‘Malcolm’s wife was Edward’s cousin. Did you know that? The king knew of his condition.’

Condition? Lord, suddenly everything clicked into place in Maddy’s head. Lucien had always been mad. Her brother knew it. His father knew it. And Alexander Ullyot knew it.

‘I see.’ She remembered the substantial amount of money her brother had received for the exchange of her hand in marriage. Her welfare had been sacrificed for expediency and then sacrificed over and over ever since. If it had suited her brother to name her a murderer and incarcerate her and her dowry at Heathwater, then how much more so it must have suited the royal family of England. Aye, if the taint of madness was to be banished then she herself had to be discredited completely. How well her brother had done that with the procession of tipsy male visitors to her private chamber and the constant change-over of staff sent to see to her needs. Isolation had fuelled the rumours and solidified her as the mad and dangerous Lady Randwick. And up till this moment she had never been able to understand any of it.

The Black Widow. Sometimes she had heard the words in the drifts of drunken revelry at Heathwater.

‘I think I should retire.’ She did not want to speak further, for, were he to ask about the details, she knew that the unexpected softness in his eyes would falter noticeably. Pulling her cloak more firmly about her, she shivered, but he was not yet finished. His free left hand steadied her movement. The spark of contact triggered an almost-pain.

‘If it helps, Lady Randwick, I could tell you that I have killed a hundred men in battle and a score of others without its sheltering banner. And yet still I breathe. And live.’

Dimples graced her cheeks for the first time in months as she assimilated his very masculine attempt at consolation.

‘Thank you,’ she answered simply and watched as he left, moving through the trees with a grace seldom seen in large men.

The Laird of Ullyot was a self-sufficient man and one who walked his world without the crippling doubt of conscience, his strength and confidence as legendary as his danger. Without him next to her Maddy felt an unfamiliar tug of loss, as a lack of sleep caught up on her. Swaying with light-headedness she leaned against the trunk of a tree whilst considering her options.

‘I’m to take you back to your page, Lady Randwick.’ A kind voice startled her and she turned. ‘I’m Brian the Tall,’ the man said. ‘The Laird’s cousin,’ he added, seeing her frown. ‘He said to give you this. For the medicine, he said.’ The leather flask of whisky he put in her hands was roundly full and fashioned with plaited tongs and shells. ‘Gillion made it.’

‘Who is Gillion?’

‘Alexander’s son.’

The blood drained from her face. Alexander Ullyot was married? He had a wife at Ashblane? Lifting her chin, she tried not to let this Brian Ullyot see her quandary. If a wife was at his keep, everything was changed. She could not stay there at all. The sharp points of the seashell had drawn blood from her palm before she realised what she had been doing and let go. The man beside her looked away and Madeleine saw the movement of one hand crossing his chest.

It didn’t surprise her, as he’d been there at the healing. Still, she would have liked him as a friend, the kindness in his voice drawing memories of times when her life had included laughter. And now she was to be thrown again into a no-man’s land where any hope of sanctuary was futile. She felt the torn skin on her breast and could barely draw breath.

But what now?

She would never go back to Heathwater and she could not stay at Ashblane, either. Playing the whore for the promise of safety was one thing, but playing it in the presence of a wife and children was quite another.

Biting her lip, she tasted blood, cursing her woman’s body and her lack of strength. She hoped her healing of the Laird had inspired some sense of gratitude, some slight advantage to effect a softening of guardianship and a moment to escape. With Jemmie, of course. She frowned; the task of finding safe passage for them both had become immeasurably harder, especially in the middle of a landscape she could not recognise and the possibility of two hundred well-honed soldiers on their heels.

And Alexander Ullyot.

Worried, she thought of their recent conversation. Would the tainted secret of her marriage now be his to use as Noel had? A weapon of compliance. An unforgivable sin. Murder, or self-defence? Witchcraft or healing? Would Ullyot banish her to the court of either Edward or David to face trial and sentence? Her breath quickened as she remembered the rumours that placed the Laird firmly in the camp of David’s court. Bastard son of one of Robert the Bruce’s brothers, was it not said? For the first time ever she wished she had listened more closely to the gossipy ramblings of Noel and his lover, Liam Williamson. Pray that tomorrow they would still be heading north-east. Pray that the healing would sanctify her life. Pray that Ullyot was as irreverent of the law as she had heard and that the comfort he had given her was sincere.

The questions turned around and around in her head as a single drop of blood from the sharpness of the shell rolled down her palm and dripped off the end of her ringless fingers, mingling with the mud on the ground.

Chapter Four

She saw the keep from a distance and it was every bit as ugly as Terence had said it to be. More so in reality, for the walls rose at least a hundred feet in the air on every side and there was no sign of any windows. Jemmie beside her looked as taken aback by the place as she was. They had not expected a palace by any means…but this? The architecture defied description. Certainly it conformed to no style she had ever seen. Rather, it echoed only the promise of being a structure that might well still be standing in another five hundred years.

Ashblane.

The spoils of battle for Ullyot clan loyalty to Robert the Bruce after Scotland’s War of Independence from the hated English. No motte-and-bailey earth-and-wood keep this, but pure Scottish stone. And unassailable.

The noise of bagpipes rolled across the valley and a huge roar went up as the gates swung open, the occupants spilling out, searching for loved ones. No one as yet had come to the Laird of Ullyot and she wondered about it. Every person stood back from him rather, giving him room to coach his steed across the drawbridge and into the bailey proper.

She and Jemmie gained the bridge a few moments later and she saw the faces of those around her without really looking. If she had stared further, she knew she would read disdain and hatred. She was Noel Falstone’s sister and he was their sworn enemy. Already she could hear the wails of those who had reached the cart with the bodies wrapped in plaid. She steadied her mount, jittery in the close crowd of people, and wondered where to go.

‘You’ll need to dismount. Follow me.’

Quinlan’s voice shouted across the noise around them and she nodded as she carefully slipped from the horse, her body stiff from the hours of riding. Once down she turned to Jemmie, her fingers cupping a bony elbow as she helped her sister to the ground.

The hall inside was unremittingly plain. No tapestries hung to break the gloomy pall, no embroidered chairs or bowls of flowers. No banners that festooned the walls of other keeps, no decoration at all save the stuffed head of a deer pinned at an angle above the mantelpiece. Part of its antlers lay on the shelf beneath, in an odd juxtaposition of space. Alexander Ullyot stood there now, warming his hands against the flames and speaking to a man she had not seen before. He had removed the sling, though he held his arm in an awkward slant; when one of the dogs at his side inadvertently knocked him, he swore roundly.

Madeleine frowned and wondered if the rest of the keep was as frugal, her heart thumping as soon as she thought it. Would she be dragged to his bed tonight? Already the hour was late. Would he want to take her now? He looked like a man who never waited for anyone, least of all for a woman. Pure masculine power cloaked his every action. And what of his wife and son? Where were they?

‘Food will be brought to you and water provided.’ Ullyot had finished with his retainer and was speaking now directly to her.

‘It is not the custom here to eat in the Great Hall?’ Madeleine’s question was breathlessly hopeful as she played for time.

‘Not tonight,’ he returned quietly. ‘Tonight we will bury our dead.’

The pain in his words was tangible and she looked away.

‘Ian.’ The word slipped from her lips without thought as she remembered the name he had called out in the fields behind Heathwater.

‘What did you say?’ She flinched as he covered the distance between them.

‘Your friend. I saw him fall.’

‘Lord.’ The chips of cold anger in his eyes burned bright. ‘I had heard it said ye like to watch the slaughter. Like a game?’ The words were barely whispered as disgust over-wrote plain fury and he turned away.

‘You listen well to the stories that are spread of the de Cargnes, Laird Ullyot, and it is wise that you do so.’ Her voice was as hard as his had been and it caught his attention.