Once Upon a Plaid (11 page)

But the presence of two little boys limited what they might accomplish in that direction, so Will sank to the floor and crossed his legs. Lucas plopped down between them and leaned back on his uncle’s chest without invitation, making little neighing sounds and trotting his toy up and down Will’s shins. Then as the pony’s movements began to slow, Lucas explained in his babyish voice that the horse was tired and needed to “wie down to sweep in da paddock.”

The paddock turned out to be William’s left boot. Once his pony was safely stabled away, Lucas tucked his thumb in his mouth. His head began to nod and he fell asleep sprawled happily across Will’s kilted lap.

“I sent a messenger to fetch your brother home,” he said softly so as not to wake his nephew. “I canna promise it will be in time.”

“At least ye tried. Thank ye,” she whispered back.

Lucas shifted in his sleep and made a wee fussing noise. Will smoothed the boy’s downy hair till he settled once more. It was as soft as a spring lamb. And his fat cheeks were still touchably new, after the manner of all young things. The lad’s milky breath, his bonelessly relaxed body, they contrived to coax a memory to the forefront of Will’s brain. He tried without success to tamp it down.

“How old is Lucas?” he finally asked.

“Almost three and Tam was two only last month. Margaret had them verra close together.”

“Hmm. I was just thinking. . . .”

“What?” Katherine shifted Tam to her shoulder and patted his bottom rhythmically, in an effort to send him to join his older brother in a nap.

Will hesitated. “I dinna want to . . . I mean, will it make ye sad if . . .” He sighed. “They would have been of an age, wouldn’t they?”

The muscles in Katherine’s neck bobbed as she swallowed hard. “Who do ye mean?”

“Lucas and . . . our Stephan.”

—From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

 

 

—An observation from Nab,
fool to the Earl of Glengarry

Chapter Twelve

Stephan.
Will had finally said his name. A cold corner in Katherine’s heart began to thaw a bit.

“Aye, I was confined with Stephan about the same time as Margaret had Lucas.” Was it only three years ago? Sometimes it seemed another lifetime.

“I didna mean to make ye sad all over again. If ’tis hard to speak of—”

“It doesna make me sad to hear ye speak his name,” Katherine said. “’Tis a mercy. It means ye think on him too.”

“Of course, I think on him. He was our child, Kat.” He laid a hand on Lucas’s head, but the lad slept on. Will’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He was my son.”

“He still is. So long as we remember him.” She had plenty of memories of Stephan. It was only the final blood-soaked ones that were painful. She cast about for a happy memory. “I mind the first time I felt him move. I’d suspected I was bearing for some time, but then one morning, I felt this wee flutter inside me. Like a moth in a jar.” She closed her eyes and put a hand to her abdomen as if, by willing hard enough, she might somehow feel that slight vibration again. “It was so faint the first time, I couldna be sure I hadn’t imagined it.”

William chuckled. “I didna have to imagine the time he kicked me in the head.”

Katherine laughed with him. “Aye. He was trying to tell ye not to use his mother’s belly for a pillow, thank ye verra much.”

“Opinionated, even in the womb,” Will said. His smile faded. “He’d have been a handful.”

One that Katherine would have joyfully accepted. Stephan had seemed so lively, especially in the final months of her pregnancy. Her belly rolled in constant turmoil with his little body pressing against the confines of the small space. Then one day, without warning, he stopped moving.

“When I started bleeding, I hadna felt him move for half a day,” she said softly.

“Katherine, ye dinna have to talk about it again.”

“But that’s just it. There’s no ‘again.’ We never talked about it in the first place.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.” He didn’t meet her gaze.

“No, ’tis not. Did ye never think that I need to know how it was, how it is, for ye?” Emptiness yawned between them and she rushed to fill it. “Silence is like death. There’s no light, no warmth, no hope in silence. It feels like a noose around my neck that tightens more with each smothered word, with each time we could have spoken our hearts and didna.”

Will stared at the toy horse on his boot until she began to wonder if he’d even heard her. Finally, he raised his gaze to meet hers.

“That’s what happened to Stephan. Did ye know that?” he said woodenly. “The cord was wrapped around his neck, they said.”

His words cut like a knife, but if it could cut the putrefying silence from her marriage, she’d bear it. She still had no idea how he felt, but at least Will was naming their son and speaking about him instead of pretending he hadn’t existed. It was a start.

“I didna ever know how Stephan died,” she said. “They wouldna let me see him at first. If I hadna demanded, I think the midwife would have just taken him away. I was weak from losing all that blood, ye see, and so tired, but I had to see him. When I started to drag myself from the bed whether the midwife allowed me or not, she finally promised to clean him and put him in my arms.”

After two days of labor, sweating through countless sets of sheets, she had thought there was no moisture left in her. But if the child hadn’t been cleaned up by the midwife, Katherine could have washed his small body with her tears.

“I was in the chapel when they brought him to me,” William said so softly she almost didn’t hear him.

“In the chapel? Will, were ye praying for us?”

“Aye,” he admitted. “Ye know I’ve never been a praying man, but I was that desperate. Ye’d labored for so long, and for much of the while I’d stood outside the door, digging my nails into the wood each time ye screamed. I wanted to go to ye, but the midwife said ye’d not thank me for invading the birth chamber.”

His eyes became very bright, and for a moment she wondered if he was going to well up. She felt tears pressing against the backs of her own eyes and her nostrils quivered.

But then William looked away sharply. Katherine swallowed back the lump in her throat and blinked hard. He wouldn’t want to see her tears. It might make him stop speaking and she needed him to keep going.

“The midwife was wrong,” she said. In the dark watches of those desperate hours, when her strength was fading and the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to close in upon her between one contraction and the next, she’d have given anything to see William. “I wanted to have ye near.”

The lines between his dark brows deepened. “I didna know that. I should have forced my way in to be with ye, but I didna want to add to your troubles in case the midwife was right. I was no good to anyone hovering outside your door like a ghoul, so I went to the chapel. I spent the night prostrate on the stone floor, begging God for your life.” When he met her gaze again, the ferocity in his eyes made her flinch. “Ten sons couldna make up for losing ye.”

Her chest burned with love for him, but she wished he’d prayed for his son as well. They were quiet together for a moment, the only sound the soft, wet snoring of their sleeping nephews.

“I never thought God would take our son,” he finally said.

“But ye did see him.”

He nodded. “They brought him to me, all wrapped in a bit of plaid. He was perfect, ten wee fingers and ten wee toes. Tiny little nails glinting like the inside of an oyster. His eyelashes were fine, and pretty enough for a lass. Our Stephan had everything, except breath.”

“I wish ye’d come to me right away,” she said. The midwife had claimed Katherine needed her rest, but she’d have rested easier if her husband had been by her bedside.

“I couldna. I had some unfinished business.”

William had taken care of burying Stephan while Katherine recuperated. It was the dead of winter and the ground must have been like iron when her husband dug that small grave in a patch of unconsecrated ground. William still hadn’t told her where the child rested, only that he’d done all he could for him.

“There was still a matter between me and God. He’d spared ye, as I asked, but after all ye suffered, He still took our son. So after I buried Stephan, I went back to the chapel and railed at God for putting ye through hell.”

“Oh, Will, ye didna.”

“I did. And I’d do it again. I swore. I raged. I dared Him to smite me for it. I screamed until I was hoarse, but there was nothing but silence.” William’s lip curled. “Either He doesna care or He doesna exist.”

Katherine couldn’t stop the tears from coming this time. “I dinna want to be the cause of ye losing faith, Will.”

“’Tis not your fault. Never think it. God had His chance to show a little mercy and He didna.”

“But He did. I’m still here. Ye’re still here, and after such blasphemy, I wonder that Father Simon hasna excommunicated ye.”

One corner of William’s mouth lifted. “No need. I excommunicated myself. Besides, when I first started my tirade before the altar, the priest ran for cover. He expected flaming bolts from on high. In any case, he wasn’t in the chapel for the worst of it.”

Katherine read pain in William’s eyes despite his bold words. He’d needed to lash out and God was a convenient target for his anger and grief. She feared for him. It was no light matter to fling insults heavenward, but she was also strangely comforted that William had taken Stephan’s death so hard. It was as if his admission was the first step to bridging the gap that yawned between them. Her soul strained toward him, stretching to graze his spirit’s outstretched fingertips. Only a little farther and they’d find each other again....

Then William looked away and shifted the sleeping child on his lap so that his head and neck were better supported. “Let’s talk on something else.”

Katherine breathed a sigh. They weren’t done with Stephan’s death, not by a long stretch. The wounds were still deep, but at least now, they’d been reopened so the poison of deadly silence could leach out.

“I heard about the hunt for the scepter,” Kat said. “I’m surprised ye’re not looking for it.”

“’Tis not exactly a hunt as Nab said. This is no game. The scepter has been stolen, but it’ll turn up. I’m not worried.” A muscle in his cheek ticked.

Katherine knew that tick. He was worried. No matter what he might claim, that scepter and what it stood for meant the world to William.

Wee Tam fidgeted in his sleep and whimpered. Katherine shifted him to her other shoulder and patted him back to sleep.

“Ye know, I’ve been thinking. There’s nothing to keep us from filling Badenoch with wards and foundlings,” Will said. “Every child needs a mother, and it doesna follow that it must be the one who carried him for months and brought him into this world.”

She smiled sadly at him. “I’d love nothing better. To hear the laughter of children in our halls would be a blessing indeed.”

“Then we’ll do it.”

“But it doesna solve our problem, Will. Ye are not a man who can do what he wishes without thought of your holding. Ye need an heir.”

“I, for one, havena given up hope of getting ye with child.” He shot her a wicked grin. “And I’m looking forward to the effort verra much.”

A warm glow washed over her, but she didn’t bask in it long. “I can conceive. There’s no doubt of that,” she said. “I just canna carry a child.”

“The past is no proof of the future,” he said.

“But ’tis all we have to go by.”

“Now that’s a wee bit surprising seeing as between the two of us, ye’re the one with all the faith,” he said.

Faith had nothing to do with it. There was something wrong inside her, something that kept her from bearing. She felt it to her bones. She was broken. She wouldn’t break William too.

“Even if we are never given a son, I’ll train up one of my brother’s lads to take over the barony when I’m gone,” he said as if it were as easy as handing down a used plaid.

Katherine knew it was not. Will’s younger brother had been made a father twice already and his sons seemed sturdy and strong enough. But a man’s nephew couldn’t replace a son of his loins, especially in the Douglas family.

“Ye canna hand down the Scepter of Badenoch to a nephew,” she insisted. “It has never been done. Time out of mind, for generations, it has been passed from father to son in a line unbroken.”

Will laughed, but it seemed forced to her. “Ye’re putting too much stock in bards’ tales about that pretty trinket. Perhaps ye’ll allow that I can take care of my family’s traditions without your fretting.”

My family, he said. His family. Not our family.
The distinction wasn’t lost on her. She might be Lady Badenoch, but she and William weren’t a family. That would take a child in the center of their circle.

But before she could say more, Nab appeared at the nursery door. “Fergie says to tell ye MacNaught’s on the move.”

“I have to go,” Will said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m fair certain MacNaught’s behind the scepter’s disappearance and I mean to catch him at recovering it.” He rose to his feet, cradling Lucas in his arm and carrying him over to the bed in the corner, where the lad could finish his nap.

“Seems ye’re fretting over the ‘pretty trinket’ as much as I,” Katherine said. “Probably more.”

Of course, he was. The symbol of Badenoch handed down through the ages wasn’t one he could set aside lightly. The scepter itself might be on the smallish side, but it was weighty and dear—both for the rich metal from which it was fashioned and for the ponderous history it bore.

Will strode across the room and placed a quick kiss on her forehead. “Get some rest, wife,” he whispered. “With what I have planned for us this night, ye’ll need it.”