Sophia James - Ashblane's Lady

‘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.

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.