The Pretender (10 page)

Elizabeth nodded her thanks before finally turning to face her father.

He stood at the end of a sniffling assembly of females, trying very hard to appear austere and ducal. His cravat was knotted neatly, his wig powdered and trim, but as he took her by the shoulders, pulling her against him to plant a kiss on her cheek, she heard his breath hitch just a little. “I will come in two months’ time, Elizabeth, to hear your decision. Whatever it may be.”

Elizabeth nodded, swallowing against a lump in her throat. Despite their disagreement, she would truly miss him.

“Yes, Father,” was all she could manage before she
broke away, squaring her shoulders as she moved down the steps to the drive where her horse—and her husband—awaited.

Since they were going to ride, MacKinnon had abandoned his plaid in favor of a pair of tartan trews, a Scottish sort of breeches, closely cut, that covered both feet and legs, which he wore beneath his dark-colored coat. His bonnet of blue sat atilt his forehead as he merely sat his horse, watching the farewells through eyes that were hooded and vague.

“Take care of my daughter, MacKinnon.”

“Aye, your grace,” was all he said.

Then, with the help of the mounting block that had stood before the Drayton house for centuries, Elizabeth hoisted herself onto the sidesaddle. She arranged her skirts around her and took up the reins from the stable boy, before turning her mount to steal a final glimpse of her family as they stood atop the steps.

The image of them burned itself into her memory. Elizabeth blinked against the sting of tears. How she would miss them.

With a click of her tongue and a nudge of her heel, she started off down the drive, ready to embark on the most significant two months of her life.

Douglas glanced once at Elizabeth as they crossed the rushing waters of the burn, and with it, the border into Scotland.

They had been riding for hours, crossing bleak marshland tufted with reedy grass where only the hardiest of sheep would graze. The sun, what there was of it, hovered high above them, lost in a sky that was as colorless, as barren as a blank artist’s canvas, without so much as the dark fleck of a bird in flight to smear it. Now and again they would pass the ruins of the ancient pele towers that had once defended the border marches against lawless bands of reivers. They were now naught but empty crumbling shells whose stone walls sometimes seemed to echo, whenever the wind blew just right, with the clang of steel on steel and the thunder of marauding hooves.

Nearer the border, moorland had finally given over to mosses and lush valleys, with forests so thick with pine
and oak that at times all but the smallest traces of daylight were blotted out.

Instead of circling the woods, Douglas went through them, on an old reiver’s trail known by very few, steering their course clear of the main northbound roads in order to avoid the patrols that were certain to be guarding the border. As such they hadn’t seen another soul since they had skirted that last tiny village some distance back.

Elizabeth had said very little during their journey, answering his few attempts at conversation with a “yes” or a “no,” sometimes just a shake of her head. She sat stiffly in the saddle, even all these hours later, staring ahead in stony silence at the neverending stretch of distance. Douglas had only known her a few days, but it was long enough to know that this silence of hers wasn’t a good thing. This was a woman who always had something to say, and the fact that she didn’t now—and hadn’t for some time—was starting to become cause for concern.

Douglas pulled his horse to a halt, then turned in the saddle to face her. They were on a narrow path only wide enough for a single rider.

“Your cook packed us some food and we’ve made good time so far. Would you care to stop for a wee bit to stretch your legs and have a bite to eat?”

Elizabeth glanced at him negligently, then nodded. Nothing more.

Frowning, Douglas led them through the trees to a small clearing where the burn rippled softly over moss-skimmed rocks thick with gorse and tufts of marram grass. Heather bloomed in brilliant splashes of red,
fuchsia, and white, and the sun had finally broken through, glistening on the damp fir branches like faerie teardrops.

Douglas watched Elizabeth dismount, then take a moment to accustom her legs to standing again after all the time she’d spent riding. Amazingly, she still looked as neat and trim as she had when they had departed with her hair tucked up beneath a smart hat, and a snowy cravat knotted primly beneath her chin. The tip of her nose, he noticed then, had a nice touch of color to it from the wind.

Without a word, Elizabeth led her mount to a patch of sweet forest grass to graze, removed her gloves and knelt beside the burn, dipping her fingers in the cold water to ease their stiffness.

“Are you going to be silent like this all the way to Skye then?” he finally said, hunkering down a space away to cup the water in his hands for a drink. It slid against the dryness of his throat, cool and bracing and good, so good in fact that he cupped some more and ran his hands back through his hair, over his face, relishing the sweet, wet chill of it.

Douglas stood and gave his head a shake to dry it, dashing droplets everywhere. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the brisk of the air. It felt good to be back, back on this land, sweet Alba, land of the Gael, kingdom of the mist and the thistle. He closed his eyes, threw back his head, and yelled from sheer unadulterated joy.

When next he looked, Elizabeth was staring at him as if he’d just crawled out from beneath a rock.

“You should try it,” he said. “It’s glorious. Go on, open your arms wide and give out a good wail.”

But she simply gazed at him blankly, as if he wasn’t really there.

“It will be a very long journey indeed, lass, if we cannot at least pass the time with some conversation.”

“I haven’t anything to say.”

“Somehow I find that difficult to believe.”

She stared at him, and Douglas noticed for the first time the way her brow creased deeply right in the middle between her eyes when she frowned.

“Actually, it’s just that I haven’t anything to say
to you
, Mr. MacKinnon.”

Douglas quirked a small smile. “So do you mean to say you’ll not be speaking at all while we’re together? Not even to hear the sound of your own voice? Because two months is a dreadful long time for a person to hold their tongue.” He added, “Particularly when that person is a woman.”

He watched as she straightened and shook her hands dry. Her backbone went as straight as a bayonet, her voice cut as sharply as its blade.

“Sometimes, Mr. MacKinnon, holding one’s tongue can be a blessing to the others in company.” She added, “You should consider that the next time you feel the urge to bay at the moon.”

Now that’s more like it,
Douglas thought with satisfaction.

But he wasn’t finished with her. Oh, no. Not yet.

He straightened and followed her as she made her way back to the horses. “Perhaps it would help matters for you, make you more at ease in speaking with me, if we did away with the formalities. Besides, it wouldn’t do for the wife of a Scotsman to be calling him anything
other than his given name. Which is Douglas.” He grinned. “In case you’ve forgotten.”

“I am well aware of your name, sir.”

“Och, but there you go again. Not ‘sir,’ or ‘Mr. MacKinnon,’ but Douglas. Of course, if you’d prefer it, I suppose you could call me ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘Hinny’ instead . . .”

“Douglas will be sufficient,” she said, giving him her back.

“Fine. Well, then, glad we have that settled. . .
Bessie.
”

She whirled on him. “My name is Elizabeth.”

“Aye, that it is. But it’s a somewhat complicated name, particularly for a Scottish barbarian like myself to remember.”

They were her words, overheard when she’d been talking to her sister. From the look that came over her face, an appealing rush of color to her cheeks, she realized it as well.

“If you cannot call me by my given name, I would rather you call me nothing at all then.”

“
Nothing-at-all-then?
” He rubbed his bearded chin. “Oh, I dinna think I like the sound of that one at all. Bessie it is, then.”

“Not if you expect me to answer you.”

As Elizabeth started rummaging through the saddle panniers, Douglas sat back against the trunk of a fat oak, folded his arms and crossed his legs before him to watch her. She took out a round of dark bread, some cheese, an apple, and a skin of wine.

He closed his eyes and tilted his face to the sky. “I’ll
take mine here in the shade where its cool and the ground is soft.”

He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was staring at him. “You’ll take your what?”

“My food, Bessie. Just some bread and the apple. Maybe a little wine. You can serve me here.”

“Serve you?”

“Aye.” He stretched his arms contentedly. “ ’Tis a wife’s duty, after all, to serve the man. And you are my wife, even if it is just for two months.” He opened one eye then. “So serve me.”

It was a good thing Douglas’s reflexes were sharp. More by instinct than for any other reason, he raised his hand just as the apple sailed straight for his head. It slapped into the palm of his hand and he closed his fingers over it. Grinning, he took a bite of it. “Many thanks, Bessie.”

Elizabeth stared at him, watching as he closed his eyes, and chewed the apple with such relish that the juice ended up dribbling down his chin.

Uncivilized . . . dunder-headed . . . clod!

She wanted to clout him. She wanted to push him into the river and dance on his head, only he wouldn’t drown. No, the water was too shallow, damn it. And his head was too hard. It would be a waste of both her time and her effort.

She tossed the food back inside the panniers and turned, her skirts swishing as she stalked away.

“Lost your appetite then, Bessie?”

She refused to give him the satisfaction of a response. But just as soon as she was out of eyeshot, Elizabeth kicked at a rock, wincing when it proved far more
inflexible than the toe of her half boot. Limping slightly now, she found a stray twig that proved much more amenable than the rock. She unleashed her frustration on it, snapping it in two, then in four for good measure.

Bessie . . .

He made her sound like a bloody cow! She might as well hang a bell around her neck and stick a bucket under her belly. Try as she might to come up with some ridiculous and laughable name for him, she could think of nothing. Nothing at all. Douglas was simply that.
Douglas.

It was sometime later when Elizabeth finally realized she had no idea how far she’d walked. Nothing looked familiar and there wasn’t any sign of Douglas or the horses anywhere behind her. The sun was starting to darken behind a new cover of clouds, but she wasn’t too worried. She would have the trees to shelter her if it started to rain and he certainly couldn’t go any further without her. It would serve him right for calling her that horrible name. So she sat down atop a large boulder to wait, searching for more reasons to make it his fault.

After a while, her irritation began to melt as she let the serenity of her surroundings embrace her. She closed her eyes and a soft breeze rushed through the reeds along the riverbank, filling the air with the fragrance of pine and heather and rushing water. Her shoulders loosened and the tightness knotting in the back of her neck began to ease as deep in her mind’s eye, she began to picture a house. It would be made of pale sandstone with a fanlight over the front door and tall narrow windows that faced onto a busy street, gleaming windows that winked in the morning sunlight like diamonds. In the back,
behind a high wall, she would have a garden, her own private Eden with an ivy-shaded bench where she could sit and read for hours in the summer sunlight with the mingling scents of honeysuckle and jessamine, lilac and lavender all around her. The address would be fashionable, but still tucked away from the fray of the city, near the park so she could ride in the mornings before anyone else but the costermongers were about.

It was her house.

She wondered what it would be like, living on her own, accountable to no one. She wondered at the fascinating things she would see and do, the intriguing people she would meet. She wondered if she would take a lover . . . and then she wondered why she should not.

She was so lost in thought, so caught up in her plans, she never heard the sounds of approach coming from behind her—until a gravelly voice suddenly pulled her, jerking her back to the present.

“Well, wha’ ’ave we ’ere, Brodie? By the looks o’ it, she’s a wee faerie sprite me mither used to tell me stories ’bout when I were a laddie.”

Elizabeth spun around, searching the trees.

“Nae, she be no faerie, Murdoch. She looks more like a fine Sassenach lassie sitting all alone ’ere in the woods jus’ waitin’ for us to come upon her and show her wha’ a true Scotsman can give her.”

Elizabeth turned just as two men slipped from behind the cover of the trees not a handful of yards away.

How had she not heard them?

They wore plaids dyed in muted shades of green and brown, making them nearly indistinguishable against the trees. Their faces were grimy, their hair hung long,
stringy beneath their tattered bonnets of blue. They didn’t wear coats, only masses of plaid thrown over bony shoulders and ruddy linen shirts that were torn and stained. They each carried a rusty sword and pistol strapped to their sides. And as they drew nearer, Elizabeth realized that the rust on their swords was not rust at all. It was something else that looked very much like dried blood.

The sun seemed to darken. Even the birds had grown suddenly quiet in the trees. Elizabeth’s heartbeat raced, thudding against her chest, even as she told herself to remain calm, not to show her fear.

Something told her if she showed how terrified she truly was, she was done for.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said in the calmest, most pleasant voice she could muster. She cleared her throat and attempted a smile. “Thank you for the offer of your company, but I was just going on my way. This is a lovely spot, and I have enjoyed it, but the day grows short and I am due to meet my husband.”

The security of that word—
husband
—gave Elizabeth the strength to slowly rise from the rock she’d been sitting on and start to move away.

“But
sair
tainly you can stay a wee bit
lan
ger, lassie.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Oh, I’m afraid I really cannot. You see I promised my husband I would only be a minute, and I fear it’s been much longer even than that. Good day to you both.”

Elizabeth turned and started away. She decided against weaving a path through the woods and instead took to the open ground that ran alongside the burn. It would be better for her if she suddenly needed to run.
Unfortunately, where she stood, the burn was too wide, its waters rushing too strongly for her to distance herself from them by taking to the other side. With the weight of her skirts, she wouldn’t make it halfway across, so instead she put a firm grip on her skirts and picked her way swiftly along the rocks that littered the water’s edge.

It hadn’t seemed such a distance in coming there, but now the empty woods stretched in front of her with no end in sight. Where was Douglas? Where were the horses? She wasn’t even sure she was heading in the right direction. She glanced back once when she heard the sound of footsteps and was alarmed to see that the men were trailing her. They were grinning and they did not run, but rather matched their stride to hers so that no matter how she tried, she couldn’t put any further distance between them.

Elizabeth stopped suddenly and turned to face them.

“Truly, gentlemen, I do appreciate the offer of an escort, but I can make it very well on my own. Please do not trouble yourselves on my account. It really isn’t necessary.”