The Scot's Oath Read online

  The old man looked suspiciously at Thomas.

  “No.” Thomas held out his hand to the old man. “I didn’t—” He looked to Dragan. “That’s not what I said. You understand English—you know.”

  “I heard what ye said, but I see more clearly what ye mean,” Dragan growled. “I’m nae stupid Englishman can be lied to, and I’ll nae have ye lyin’ to the folk.”

  “Yer the one what’s lyin’,” the woman shouted. She broke out in another stream of Gaelic, ending with a pleading look to her father.

  The old man turned to Dragan with a low query.

  Dragan’s expression darkened further, and his fists clenched. “Christian or nae, I’ll nae have it,” he growled. And then he spun on Thomas. “I’ll nae have it, I say.”

  He lunged for Thomas and seized him by his wet hair. Thomas ducked, but it was of no use—the man’s reach and hands were mythological in proportion and there was no escape. Thomas struggled, but the cold and the wet, the shock of being abandoned on the tiny Scots isle had sapped his strength, and each blow he landed on the gargantuan man seemed to have as much effect as a child’s as Dragan dragged him further into the village. A sharp blow to the side of Thomas’s head caused colors to explode behind his eyes and his right ear to ring like the giant bells of a cathedral. He went momentarily limp as they passed the last of the houses on the opposite end of the settlement, headed toward a long point of land strewn with boulders that appeared to have been tossed about like toys.

  The sea crashed onto the shore with ferocious intensity, as if the water had declared war on Caedmaray, and the beach was the point of engagement.

  “I’ll send ye back meself,” Dragan said, shaking Thomas by his head, stomping through the muck so that great showers of mud splashed from his boots. “The devil take ye!” He plunged into the surf, dragging Thomas with him into a wall of water, and Thomas was thrust beneath a wave, the hand on the back of his neck holding him down as surely as any broken-off granite from a cliff slide.

  He struggled against Dragan’s grip, squirmed and writhed and managed to get his face above water between waves to gasp a breath.

  “She’s mine!” the Scot screamed into his face before he again plunged Thomas beneath the salty, icy water.

  She’s dead. As the water pushed inside his skull, Thomas saw Vaughn Hargrave’s face on that dreadful night. The night Cordelia lay in the dungeon, her perfect, white skin slashed open. The night before they would have wed. The night all the secrets—all the shocking confidences of everyone at Darlyrede House—had been discovered.

  He had not been strong enough to save Cordelia. He had possessed neither the courage nor the physical prowess to overpower such evil—evil he hadn’t known until that night could even exist.

  He had run away and left her at Darlyrede.

  He had run away and left Harriet behind.

  He had run from his mother’s clan.

  And now he would meet his end on Caedmaray, at the hands of yet another evil man. Dragan wanted the honey-haired woman, and perhaps one day this would be her same fate—Thomas could foresee it now, as the cold waves stole the present from him, showing him with startling clarity the future and the past at once.

  There would be no retribution. There would be no truth. Not for Thomas. Not for the woman or the villagers of Caedmaray. He had failed everyone who had ever dared be kind to him, and now there was no one and nothing left. He grew limp.

  Hargrave would win, and not ever know his accomplice.

  Fight, you coward, a quiet, fierce voice whispered inside his frozen brain. For once in your life, fight.

  Thomas fought the powerful surge of water and the lack of air to raise his right hand and clutch a handful of Dragan’s inner thigh through the man’s thick woolen trews—the hand that had pulled miles and miles of wet, heavy rope over the summer. He curled his fingertips into a claw and squeezed with all the strength left in his body, imagining that he gripped Vaughn Hargrave’s throat, and he felt the ends of his fingers plunging into warmth.

  And then he was free. Miraculously free, there at the end of the earth, and full of a deafening, red rage the likes of which young Thomas Annesley had never before felt.

  He erupted from the crashing surf with a gasp, and then a great scream of fury, as he lunged at the goliath Dragan in the same moment the surprised and furious Scot came at him again. But this time Thomas did not try to duck and evade. He met the man’s blows to his head as if he had lost the capacity for feeling, and perhaps he had. For his blows gave no heed to the ones that landed on his own body. Thomas’s inexperienced fists flew faster and faster, striking Dragan’s face, his throat, the tender place behind the man’s ear. He climbed the dangerous weapon that was the islander, every protuberance on his body acting like a lance as he channeled his fury.

  Dragan’s blows began to slow. And then a massive wave overcame them both and twirled them together in the storm surge, whipping the heavier man to the rocky bottom, shoving the entwined pair higher up on the shore.

  Thomas wrapped his hands around Dragan’s throat, holding him beneath the foamy, detritus-strewn shallows while the man squirmed and kicked beneath him. Thomas squeezed his bloodied fingers, pressed with all his might, in his mind waiting for the bones of Dragan’s neck to finally give, give, give under the pressure.

  He would stop running now. He would stop running, and stop being afraid.

  “Stop! Stop!” The woman’s arms were around his neck, pulling vainly at Thomas. He was like an iron band, bent over Dragan—he could not be moved. He would not be moved.

  “Please,” her voice shuddered in his ear. “Nae matter his cruelty, he’s one of them, and they’ll never let ye live if ye kill him! Stop!”

  It was another wave that did her work for her, separating Thomas’s death grip on the man and sending him tumbling onto the shore. He was shaking once more, but no longer with cold. No longer with fear. He swiped the seawater from his eyes as he saw the handful of village men dragging Dragan’s limp bulk out of the foam. They awkwardly maneuvered him onto the path and away toward the village, leaving Thomas alone in the rain with the woman and, standing some distance away, her father.

  She stared at him, her eyes red, her chest heaving through her soaked gown.

  “Who are you?” she asked incredulously, her voice breaking.

  Thomas returned her confused gaze for a long moment. Who was he? He couldn’t be Thomas Annesley—that man was dead, killed at Darlyrede along with Cordelia; killed by betrayal on the bridge to Carson Town; killed on the wooded slope of Town Blair, just beyond Starving Lake by the stone in his own hand. Thomas Annesley was dead and buried so many times over, he could never be resurrected again.

  And that was perhaps the way it must be if he was to survive, here at the end of the earth.

  “Tommy,” he croaked at last. “I’m Tommy.”

  “All right,” the woman whispered. “All right, Tommy. I’m Jessie Boyd. Come on now, back to the house. There’s a storm blowin’ in.”

  Chapter 1

  October 1458

  Darlyrede House

  Northumberland, England

  “Is it done?”

  The rasping whisper and skeletal fingertips digging through the sleeve of her gown caused the maid to gasp and freeze in her movements—she hadn’t known the lady was awake, she’d been so still, her eyelids drooping so low.

  “Yes, milady. All is ready.”

  “Then I am also ready,” Caris Hargrave said. She opened her hand and turned it palm up toward the maid, who took it in a firm but gentle grip and then seized the woman’s forearm, pulling her into a sitting position on the thick mattress, forested by towering piles of cushions and throws. The noblewoman dragged her thin legs from beneath the coverlet and, at first glimpse of the woman’s bare feet, the maid dropped to her knees to fit the fine, tall, calfskin slip
pers over the pale, blue-veined skin.

  “Cordelia? No, of course that’s not right.” Lady Hargrave sighed crossly. “Forgive me; I…I haven’t been sleeping, and—”

  “Think nothing of it,” the maid said, pulling the ties of the slippers tight—but not too tight—against the fragile bones of the lady’s foot. It was like fitting a songbird with armored boots. “I am called Beryl, milady. Remember?”

  And that was true. The first rule was to tell the truth as much as possible.

  “Beryl, of course. How could I...” Her words trailed away.

  Beryl helped Lady Hargrave to stand, then held the thick robe while the woman slid her arms inside. She braced her with an arm around her waist and then, together, they turned toward the door and began a slow advance.

  The maid reached out an arm to open the ornately carved door leading to the adjoining chamber.

  “I remember now,” Caris Hargrave said as they entered the glowing chamber, lit by exactly fifteen candles. “The abbey.”

  “That’s right, milady,” Beryl murmured, leading the woman through to the long, lead-paned window. “I will try to remind you.”

  “No, no,” Caris said dismissively as she lowered herself gingerly onto the window seat. “It is only a remnant of my nightmares, Beryl.”

  As soon as Lady Hargrave was settled, Beryl took a step backward and folded her hands at her waist, prepared to wait silently. She would be standing here for at least an hour, and while there would be little conversation, it was an opportunity to further observe, and Beryl would take full advantage of it.

  Lady Caris Hargrave. Aged three score, if reports were averaged. Her dark brown hair contained not even one strand of silver, her face pale and lovely still, even if the skin was thin and draped over the fine bones of her face like fragile pastry over a tart. Her eyes were the same dark shade as her hair, her brows wispy and arched.

  Beryl thought that this woman could have passed for her own mother, and it made her heart ache quietly in her chest.

  Lady Hargrave wore no veil in such private attire as her sleeping gown and robe; none of the heavy jewels Beryl had occasionally glimpsed. But, then again, she never wore them at night when she took up the vigil in the hauntingly still apartment of rooms that was Beryl’s primary domain. The entirety of her duties at Darlyrede House took place here, and they must be done with absolute precision.

  Fresh linens. A pitcher of cold milk and a plate of cheese and crisp bread. Fifteen new candles lit and kept burning as night crept across the moors toward Darlyrede House. Every night. And for the first hour of the vigil, Caris Hargrave would keep watch at the window, waiting for the return of her missing niece. Fifteen candles to mark the age Euphemia Hargrave had been when she had disappeared.

  “He hasn’t touched you, has he?”

  The question—both the noise of and the subject matter—startled Beryl. “Milady?”

  “My husband. Lord Hargrave,” Lady Caris clarified in her soft, vulnerable tone. “Has he touched you in any way?”

  Beryl stared at the woman, her heart pounding, her mouth dumb.

  Lady Hargrave tucked her chin, and her deep brown gaze bore into Beryl’s. “Be not afraid to tell me, child. You would not be punished.”

  “Nay, milady,” Beryl answered, dismayed at her raspy whisper. “He has not. I swear it.”

  And that too was, thankfully, true.

  Caris held her gaze an instant longer before turning back to the black window that showed only the woman’s specterly reflection. “Good,” she said. “Sometimes he…takes liberties beyond what he is entitled to. I don’t like it when he touches my girls. I wonder sometimes…”

  Beryl forced herself to swallow past her constricted throat.

  “You will tell me, won’t you?” Lady Hargrave said abruptly, her gaze still fixed upon the nothing through the window. “If he is…untoward?”

  “Of course, milady,” Beryl said. “If you wish it.”

  “I do wish it,” Caris Hargrave murmured to her reflection. “I wish it very much.”

  The woman was quiet for a long time, and so Beryl thought that her mistress had reverted to the silence that had marked these nightly rituals for the six months of Beryl’s employment at Darlyrede House. Six months of watching, waiting; of rebuffing the offers of friendship from the other maids, rejecting the advances of the male servants of the estate. She was known as the cold French girl now. Airs, they said.

  Perhaps that was also true.

  But then Caris Hargrave whispered again, and this time Beryl did actually jump.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she? Fifteen years with no word, no sign. She must be dead. Out there, somewhere.”

  Beryl swallowed forcibly. “We must have faith, milady.”

  “‘Faith’?” The noblewoman repeated the word as if it was a foreign term she couldn’t comprehend. “When I think of where she could have gone, who she could have encountered…” She paused, and Beryl could see the shining, silver trails of the tears on Lady Hargrave’s face reflected in the window glass.

  “It haunts me. Every moment of every day. Even into my dreams. I pray that she is dead. That she stumbled into a ravine and broke her neck at once. The alternative is unthinkable.”

  “Your devotion is admirable,” Beryl dared offer, her heart pounding. It was a risky game she played, but the lady had never spoken so freely.

  “She was mine,” Caris murmured. “After Cordelia…it was another chance, I suppose. To protect her properly.”

  “I will continue to pray for you, milady,” Beryl murmured. “And for the soul of Lady Cordelia and Lady Euphemia’s safe return.”

  “You are a blessing from God, Beryl,” Caris Hargrave spoke to her reflection. “Such kindness you’ve shown me.” She stilled, and her head turned so that Beryl could see her profile, but the woman kept her gaze cast toward the floor. “Would you…might I impose a favor on you? It’s foolish and improper of me to ask. I know I am often confused, but I’ll not punish you if you refuse me.”

  “Anything, milady,” Beryl replied.

  Lady Hargrave turned her face more fully to Beryl. “Would you lie with me upon her bed for a while? Keep me company? Euphemia and I would oft share stories before retiring and…” The woman’s thin shoulders jerked. “It is fifteen years. Tonight.”

  Beryl felt her own eyes ache with unshed tears. “Of course, milady. Here, come.” She helped Caris Hargrave from the window seat, and the woman seemed to lean all her slight weight upon Beryl’s arm as they reached the side of the bed. Caris climbed upon the pristine, white surface of the fresh coverlet, rested her fragile-looking skull upon her open palm while Beryl rushed to the other side and gained the mattress, facing Lady Hargrave.

  She wore an exhausted, saintlike smile as she reached out a skeletal but somehow graceful hand to tuck a strand of Beryl’s hair behind her ear.

  “When Lady Paget told me of your…uncomfortable circumstance that forced you to the abbey, I wondered: Did you have no parents to return to, my dear?”

  Beryl shook her head, mesmerized by the sight of the woman’s face before her, the heartbreak so clear as to be exquisitely outlined on her face.

  “They are dead, milady.” True.

  “No family at all?”

  “A brother,” she admitted.

  “And where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” Also true. “He could be anywhere.”

  “He does not care for you?”

  “He is ambitious, milady.”

  Caris’s eyes narrowed and her mouth turned up in a hammock of folds. “That is the way with men, is it not?” She reached out again and stroked Beryl’s cheek with a forefinger. “They leave us to our own devices. Only returning when they have made a great mess of something and require our assistance.”

  Beryl felt her own mouth curve. “The
y underestimate us when it suits them.”

  Lady Hargrave’s smile widened with pleased surprise. “Just so. And you are a bit older now, to know so much better after your ordeal.” Her hand fell away to tuck itself between her waist and the plush bedclothes, embracing her own thin form. “I shall sleep here tonight, Beryl. I think it fitting. Will you stay with me? Please say you will. It is an unfair request after all you have done, but…”

  “Of course,” Beryl interrupted, and moved closer to the woman, as if she were a magnet and Beryl composed of ore. “Of course I will, milady. I would not leave you so alone on a night such as this.” She reached over and drew the coverlet up from behind Lady Hargrave and tucked it around her. “Rest easy,” Beryl insisted. “I will be right here.”

  The lady gave a series of dainty although forceful sneezes as Beryl withdrew.

  “Oh dear,” she said with a sniff. “Have you by chance been in the unfortunate company of a cat, Beryl?”

  Beryl hesitated only the briefest moment, her heart pounding. “Nay, milady, I—” She swallowed the lie. “Oh, yes! Yes, I have. When I was in the kitchen preparing the tray. Looking for an easy supper, I suppose. I removed it forthwith.” True.

  The lady wore an expression of relief. “The next time you see it, do have it killed. Dreadful creatures. I cannot abide them. The asthma, it is brought on by the horrid things. I nearly died once. You’ve probably heard.”

  “I have, milady.” Unfortunately, true.

  Lady Hargrave’s solemn countenance was luminous in the candlelight, her pupils enlarged so that all the iris appeared black. “I want to tell you a secret—”

  The hinges of the door squealed as it opened with a whoosh of air, causing the fifteen candle flames to duck and then dance in indignation. Nothing so loud, so sudden, ever went on inside this sacred chamber, with its thick draperies and carpets.

  Beryl’s eyes went wide, and she looked over her shoulder to see Darlyrede’s steward step into the chamber, his hand still on the door latch.

  “How dare you,” Lady Hargrave whispered, pushing her slight form up onto one hip, the coverlet Beryl had so carefully tucked sliding away.