Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy Two 02] (3 page)

Instead, she said, “I’d like to slip away for a short time if you will permit it. I’ll rejoin you as soon as they go inside.” When Isabel looked about to protest, she added, “I shan’t be long, truly. Now that Carrick has gone in, they won’t stay outside much longer, because my mother will
not
want to end up at the back of the kirk.”

“Very well, but don’t let them see you,” Isabel said. “I’d not be amazed if your mother stopped me and demanded to know where I’d sent you.”

Amalie shook her head, letting her amusement show. Although Lady Murray was a controlling woman, she would never behave so improperly as to demand anything of the princess. But Amalie understood why Isabel had suggested she might.

Despite the princess’s own sorrows, she paid close heed to the members of her household and could always make a worried or unhappy one smile.

Peeping between the brawny pair that led their party, Amalie saw her mother still looking about. Perhaps, she thought, Lady Murray was only trying to spot one of her other offspring or Buccleuch, but she could not make herself believe it.

Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch would be with other powerful barons invited to take part in the ceremony. Lady Murray would know that Meg was not there, due to advanced pregnancy, and that Simon was probably with Fife. Nor would her ladyship be looking for her younger son, Tom. She was looking for Amalie.

Shrubbery and tall beech trees surrounded Abbots’ House, and Amalie snatched the first opportunity to slip behind a wide tree trunk. She meant to wait there until the coast was clear, but as she looked nervously about, she saw Tom Murray striding straight toward her with some of his friends.

Although he had not seen her, if she stayed where she was he soon would. Her overskirt and gloves were green and might blend in, but her tunic was pink and boasted wide bands of green trim embroidered with gold and silver thread.

Quickly wending her way through shrubbery and along a gravel path, she came to the steps of Abbots’ House and saw that the front door stood ajar.

Aware that Carrick and his party were staying there, she was sure that some servants must still be inside. But she suspected that if she went around the side of the building, she would look more furtive than if she just walked in.

However, if she went boldly up the steps with her back to the crowd, a chance observer might easily mistake her for one of Carrick’s many sisters. Should anyone challenge her, she could just say she was looking for Isabel or one of the other princesses—not Gelis. Like Meg, Gelis was pregnant and had not come.

Having thus decided her course, Amalie hurried up the steps. Once through the open doorway, she closed the door just enough to conceal herself from view.

The dim entry hall was no more than a spacious anteroom with a stairway at her right to a railed gallery above. Doubtless, service areas lay beyond a door she could discern in the dark corner under the stairs. The walls ahead and to her left revealed three other doors, all shut.

As she hesitated, uncertain where to go and unable to know if any nearby room was unoccupied, heavy footsteps approaching the stair-corner door made the decision for her. Snatching up her skirts, she ran silently up the stairs, hoping to find a window from which she might see if her parents had entered the kirk.

At the landing, she saw that the gallery continued around two more sides of the stairwell, providing access to several more closed doors. Window embrasures at each end of the landing provided light, but neither one would overlook the kirk.

Opposite her, another, narrower flight of stairs led up to the next floor. She would have to open one of two doors on that side to find a suitable window, and when she did, she would be in view of anyone coming down those stairs.

As she considered her choice, to her shock, she heard a male voice inside the room to her left. Something about the voice seemed familiar.

Stepping nearer, she put an ear close to the door and heard a second voice say with perfect clarity, “In troth, if we give him sufficient cause, he is likely enough to cooperate, but one cannot trust the man from one moment to the next. ’Twould suit me better not to have to concern myself with him at all.”

“Sakes, sir,” the first voice muttered. “Is it murder you seek?”

Amalie leaned closer.

“I did not say—”

Without the slightest warning, a large, gloved hand clapped tight across her mouth and nose as a strong arm swept her off her feet and away from the door.

Terrified and disoriented, she could not see her captor’s face, but his grip was like a vise clamping her against a hard, muscular body. Her struggles did no good as he strode around the gallery, bearing her as if she were a featherweight and moving as silently as he had when he’d crept up behind her.

She kicked and squirmed until she realized that if she drew attention, she might find herself in worse trouble. Since she suspected that one of the voices might have been Simon’s, and since Simon was not a man who would look kindly on a sister secretly listening to a private conversation—especially one about murder—she decided that, for the present, she might be safer where she was.

Still, she had no way to know if the man who had caught her was friend or foe. Judging by the ease with which he carried her, he might be as large and strong as Jock’s Wee Tammy, her huge and therefore misnamed friend at Scott’s Hall who often served as Buccleuch’s squire, as well as captain of his fighting tail.

It occurred to her, too, that to have been creeping about Abbots’ House as he had, the man had to be either Carrick’s own attendant on watch for intruders, or an intruder himself. As she was telling herself she hoped he was the latter, she realized that such an intruder might well throttle her to ensure her silence.

Why, she wondered, had she darted into the house at all? How could she do such a silly thing just to avoid a confrontation with her mother? Then a vision of that formidable dame appeared, and she knew she would do it again in an instant.

To her astonishment, her captor headed right to the second flight of stairs and then up the stairs themselves.

She tried to pull her face far enough away from his hand to draw a deep breath, but he only pressed harder. Wondering what he would do if she bit him, she tried kicking again, hit one silk-shod foot against a bruisingly hard wooden railing, and remembered she did
not
want to attract attention.

Shock and terror had eased to worry and annoyance that now were shifting back to fear, so she told herself sternly that, whoever he was, he would not dare to harm her. Even if he did not know who her father was or that her good-brother was the powerful Scott of Buccleuch, he would have to be daft to harm a member of a royal household at Scone Abbey on Coronation Day.

Slightly reassured, she began to relax just as they reached a tall, heavy, ornately carved door.

Breath tickled her ear as a deep voice murmured, “I’m going to take my hand from your mouth to open this door. If you make a sound, you may endanger both our lives. Nod if you agree to keep silent.”

She nodded, telling herself she would scream Abbots’ House to rubble if she wanted to, that no one could expect her to keep her word under such circumstances.

But when he took his hand away and continued to hold her off her feet with one arm as easily as he had with two, she decided to keep quiet until she got a good look at him and could judge what manner of man he was. All she knew so far was that he was one who could creep up on a person and carry her off as easily as he might a small child—all without making enough noise for anyone else to hear.

The chamber they entered astonished her further, because colorful arras cloths decked the walls, and a thick blue-and-red carpet covered much of the floor. Forest- green velvet curtains with golden ties and tassels draped the windows as well as a large bed in the near corner to their right.

“Faith,” she muttered when he set her on her feet and moved to shut the door, “what is this place? Surely, this is not the lord abbot’s own bedchamber!”

“Aye, although doubtless the abbot does not boast carpets to walk upon,” her captor said. “At present it serves as Carrick’s chamber, which means, in a very short time, it will be that of his grace, the King of Scots.” Then, in a tone harsh enough to raise the hairs on the back of her neck, he added, “Now, Lady Amalie, tell me, if you please, just what the devil you were doing, listening outside that door.”

Turning at last from her fascination with the bed to see his face, she gasped.

Sir Garth Napier, newly a baron and properly styled Lord of Westruther, saw her lips part and heard her gasp, but she did not immediately burst into speech.

She was stunned to see him, though. He could easily tell that much from her expression and the quickening movement of her impressive breasts.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “And how did you learn my name?”

“As you’d told me your brother’s name, yours was not difficult to come by.”

She was looking past him, doubtless at the door. “We should
not
be in here.”

“No one will come here for at least an hour,” he said. “But someone is sure to miss you in the kirk. You should be with the princess Isabel, should you not?”

She nodded, saying earnestly, “I must go to her at once.”

“Not until you tell me why you were listening at that door.”

Her gaze met his searchingly, as if she would measure the strength of his resolve. Evidently, she saw that he meant to have an answer, because she gave a soft little sigh of resignation. Her breasts were downright tantalizing.

She said, “I did not mean to listen.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he said, wrenching his gaze back to her face and fixing a stern look on his own. “You had your ear right against that door.”

“Aye, but I came up only to find a window that looked onto the kirk steps.”

Recognizing a diversionary attempt, he said, “Lass, I’m not a patient man.”

“No man is patient,” she retorted. “But I don’t even know you, because you did not tell me your name before. You just walked away.”

His patience had evaporated, and he wanted to shake her. “My name would mean nowt to you.
What
did you hear?”

She glowered at him like an angry child. He’d have wagered his recent inheritance that she was preparing to lie again.

“You had better tell me the truth,” he warned her.

Shrugging, she said, “I could not hear their words. They spoke too quietly.”

“They?”

“I heard two voices through the door before you snatched me off my feet. I could not hear what they said, though. Nor do I know why I should tell you even if I’d heard every word.”

“I think you did hear every word,” he said. “Just what do you think would have happened if I’d just opened that door and pushed you inside?”

She bit her lower lip but rallied quickly. “Why did you not?”

He was in no more hurry to explain his actions than she was to explain hers. And he was not about to give her the satisfaction of hearing he’d followed her into Abbots’ House out of nothing more than the same curiosity she had stirred in him from the moment he’d laid eyes on her at Dunfermline. No man of sense would knowingly hand a woman a weapon of such magnitude.

Having seen her slip away from the princess and nip boldly into Abbots’ House as if she had every right—instead of no right at all—to do so had awakened the strong protective instinct that had leapt to life at seeing Simon Murray stab her in the chest with one damnably stiffened finger.

The plain fact was that Garth had followed without thought of consequence, and had stepped across the threshold to see her skirts whisking out of sight up the stairs. Voices from beyond them suggested others nearby—doubtless Carrick’s servants or some of the abbot’s, assisting Carrick’s people. At all events, he had not hesitated more than that second or two before hurrying after her.

He had been careful not to announce his presence by being heavy footed, but neither had he taken particular care to remain utterly silent. He knew he would have heard such an approach as his, had he been sneaking about as she had.

But so intent had she been on those murmurs supposedly too slight to be intelligible that she had not noticed him until he’d grabbed her. Even then, she had had enough sense not to draw the attention of the men in that room.

Had she seen them go into the house? Had she followed them, intending to hear what they said to each other? That thought gave him chills.

He told himself that the most likely people to be talking in that room—possibly the abbot’s own reception chamber—were servants. Anyone else entering it for privy conversation would have to be of equal rank to the house’s chief resident to dare usurp one of his privy chambers for such a talk.

But the present chief resident was not the Abbot of Scone.

Moreover, everyone had seen Carrick and his attendants making their slow progress to the abbey kirk. And most could deduce that the private chambers in Abbots’ House would be empty for an hour or two until the new sovereign’s chamberlain returned to assure that all was still in order for his grace’s comfort.

In fact, only one man would consider himself equal to that newly crowned King and thus rightfully entitled to usurp his grace’s chamber to his own use. And if the lass had purposefully listened to the Earl of Fife, now Governor of the Realm, speaking with a minion—or, worse, to another noble—she ought to be soundly skelped for such folly.

The thought of the consequences to her, had Fife caught her in the act, sent icy fear racing through him. But instead of chilling him, it ignited his temper.

He said grimly, “Do you know the penalty you’d face if I were to report what you were doing? Had the people in that room been only two of the abbot’s servants, it would be bad enough—”

“They were not servants,” she said. Then, clearly realizing that silence would have been wiser, she clapped her own neatly gloved hand over her mouth.

“How do you know they were not?” he demanded, clenching his fists to keep from shaking her.

“I . . . I don’t,” she said. “They didn’t sound like servants.”