Ashblane's Lady. Sophia James

but he made no comment on the encounter at all as he walked towards the stairs and bade her and Jemmie to follow.

      ‘I’m to see ye to your sleeping place.’ He did not catch her eye. Was this a good sign or a bad one? Her fingers sought out the cross of gold at her throat and she rubbed it twice, stopping herself the instant she perceived herself doing such. Noel had chided her last week for the foolishness of such actions, castigating her again and again to rid herself of the cultivated habits of her childhood. At Heathwater everything was as measured as it must be here. No false moves, no reckless actions to place the weapon of knowledge in anyone’s hands. Schooled temperance and aloofness were the maxims of the Falstone men and their women suffered if they should forget such governance.

      Keep your distance and the strength to maintain decorum no matter what.

      Madeleine lifted her chin, remembering the words of her mother, and the words became a mantra as she followed the party up the stairs and into a room built at the back of the keep overlooking a lake. Some windows at least, then. Maddy drew in her breath with gratitude.

      ‘You will stay here, Lady Randwick, and the boy Jemmie next door until we find a job to set him to. Supper will be sent up on a tray as soon as it is ready.’

      ‘Thank you.’ She felt the tremor in her voice, though, as she bit back the question of the night’s sleeping arrangements. Quinlan surprised her again with his uncanny ability to read what was on her mind.

      ‘The mourning will keep the Laird busy for the next few days. You will’na be bothered tonight.’ Momentarily his eyes met hers. Imprinted with perplexity, she perceived also a humanity etched into the blueness. An honourable man, then, Quinlan Ullyot, and one uncertain of the implications of her imprisonment. Could he be persuaded, then, to let her go? Assist in the escape of both herself and Jemmie? Dare she ask the question at all?

      ‘I am a lady, sir,’ she began, wishing for the first time in her entire life that she bore the gift some young women had of bringing tears to their eyes on demand. ‘Your Laird has no right as a gentleman to keep me here against my will. If you could help me—’

      She got no further.

      ‘Ladies dinna wear the mark of lovers on their breast or watch the slaying of good men in battle from a close distance. It is wise you learn that the will of our Laird is obeyed unquestioningly before ye ask of another what you were about to ask of me. Betrayal is measured in the cost of a life and no one’s life here is worth less than your own. One false step and ye shall be interred, Madeleine Randwick, with the bodies that this night will be laid in the coldness of Ashblane’s dirt.’

      Without pausing for an answer he bade Jemmie proceed outside with him, the turning of a key in the lock giving her notice again that she was a prisoner here.

      The light of a thin sun struggling through the October clouds hit the wall behind her and made her turn to the window. Through the panes of polished horn the world was strangely distended and made unreal. In the far distance she saw some hills. The Cheviots, she guessed. And just beneath her the movement of a priest hurrying, the black folds of his garment glued by force of wind around his legs and whipping the tassel on his belt sideways. If she listened carefully, she could hear the first tunings of bagpipes keening in the rising wind off the Scottish Lowlands.

      Tonight she felt lonely and frightened and confused. Her hands dug deeper into the pockets of her skirt, feeling the last dustings of age-worn leaves. Chamomile. Lemon balm. Marjoram. They grounded her. Made her real. Pulled her bones to the earth in a way few people had been willing to. Jemmie. Goult. Her mother and grandmother. Shutting her eyes, she imagined Eleanor and Josephine calling to her in the way the de Cargne women had summoned their ancestors for centuries. The true witchcraft lay here, she smiled wanly and laid her hand across her heart, listening as the footsteps of the soldiers receded.

      When silence reigned she crossed the room and bent at the timbered wall that divided her room from Jemmie’s. Knocking twice, she held her breath, releasing it only as two answering taps came back. Two for safety. Three for danger. The codes from Heathwater were so ingrained that she was suddenly and unreasonably angry. When would their lives ever really be safe? When would she be able to sleep at night without the edge of panic in her dreams? When could Jemmie set aside boy’s clothes and claim her place in a world that would not harm her? Ashblane was as much as a jail as Heathwater had ever been with its powerful Lord and its isolation, and here, caught in the borderlands of mist and drizzle, all she had ever tried to accomplish slid into nothingness.

      The Black Widow. She mouthed the words into the quiet around her, hating the sound of them. At twenty-four she had become as notorious as her mother had been, and as trapped.