name,’ he said, ‘is Somers. Alex Somers at your service, my lady.’ There was no ambiguity in his meaning.
‘Master Somers,’ she said, finding her voice far away down some rusty channel, ‘you are—’
‘I am Sir Alex,’ he corrected her.
‘I see. And I suppose that was a prelude, was it? Are you about to take me here against the wall, or do we have to…?’
His teeth showed evenly as he laughed and pulled her back to him, halting her supposition before it staggered to an embarrassing conclusion. ‘Here? Now? Is that what you want, lady?’
Oaf! Lout! ‘I do not want you at all, sir. I want my child,’ she snarled.
‘And I would prefer a more comfortable setting,’ he said, pressing his nose close to hers, ‘where we could take a more sedate approach to the matter. Your chamber will do well enough, when things have settled.’
‘How knightly. How chivalrous. I should have known.’
‘That I don’t take half a bargain when I can have it all? Yes, lady, you should. You will come to know me better than that, in time. Now I suggest you take a filial interest in your wounded father-in-law.’ He released her from his embrace, pointing down the passageway. ‘Second left.’
‘That’s the steward’s office,’ she said, wiping her damp cheeks.
‘Yes. That’s where Sir Joseph is. He’d have been dead by the time they’d carried him up to his chamber.’
‘And you didn’t want that?’
‘Not particularly. He has information I need.’
‘Then why wound him?’
‘He came back wounded from his raiding, lady.’
‘You lie!’
‘No. Go and see for yourself. His wounds are hours’ old.’
For a moment, she stared at him. ‘And what about my child?’
‘He’s having the time of his life. He’ll come to no harm.’
‘How can I be sure of that?’
In one swift and practised movement, his fingers pulled the net off her bundle of hair, spilling it in a black glossy tide over her shoulder. She saw his eyes darken suddenly and once more she found herself in his arms with neither the time nor the wit to protest. His hand buried itself deep in her hair as his second assertion of authority came fierce enough to take her breath away, making her cling to him for support.
His reply was breathless and husky, as if he was fighting for control. ‘Until our bargain is sealed, my lady, you can’t be sure, can you?’ he said. ‘So don’t go where I can’t find you.’
Chapter Two
Even as the door closed behind him, the relief of being allowed to stay by her child’s side was being eroded by doubts that her bargain with such a man could be the action of a sane and intelligent woman. During the most humiliating and degrading conversation of her twenty-three years, Ebony’s mind had been crystal clear in obtaining one thing at any price. Now, she found that a cold fear was setting in like a Scottish mist, chilling her to the bone and waking her to the significance of her first bid and of his raised stakes, resulting in an abominable bargain that could tie her to his side indefinitely unless she took prompt action to release herself and Sam. Escape? Yes, there were ways out of the castle other than the gatehouse. She had not fled from one mob of reivers simply to be caught up in this devil’s crowd, and nine years was not too long for her to forget her way home.
At fourteen, Ebony had been more than eager for a new life in Scotland. Coming from Carlisle, just over on the English side of the border, to Galloway’s glorious mountains and lochs had meant a complete break from her widowed mother, Lady Jean Nevillestowe, who had willingly accepted an olive branch from a Scot to cement a prestigious family connection. Sir Joseph had no problem, he had said, with the idea of an aristocratic Englishwoman for his newly knighted only son Robert. And though the two countries had not been on the best of terms in 1310, it was not so uncommon for the English and Scots to unite at board and bed, ignoring dissenters whom Sir Joseph could stare down with his pale prominent eyes.
So she had gone to live with the Moffats of Castle Kells to prepare for the time when she would wed Sir Robert, and by the age of seventeen she had been deemed old enough to accept him as her husband and to bear him a son almost immediately. Tragically, their idyll lasted only three years, their manor being in the path of English reivers during one of their raids from across the Solway Firth. The last image Ebony had had of her dear one was silhouetted against the roaring flames as he pushed her, Sam and Biddie out of a low upstairs window. The house and its contents had burned to the ground with Robbie in it while the three survivors had fled to the nearby woodland where the thick bracken had hidden them all night. At daybreak, trembling with shock and cold, they had set off in their shifts along the loch side to the castle. Sir Joseph had found them, the man who last night had been inflicting the same fate on someone else as she and Sam slept safely. Had he found the culprits at last and taken revenge for his son’s life? And were his wounds the result?
Since that appalling event, her main concern had been to keep her small son safe from further harm and to find ways of redirecting his cries for the father he adored. Lately, he had stopped asking for him, but his nightmares continued to be fuelled by his insensitive grandfather who saw no harm in nightly warnings that, if he didn’t go straight to sleep, the reivers would come and get him. Needless to say, he rarely did fall asleep quickly, and never alone, and now he was in the very hands of those ghouls who were cleverly disguising themselves as his friends. Whatever bargain she had made with them, she saw no dishonour in making an effort to outbid Sir Alex which he, no doubt, would call going back on her word.
As far as she knew, this was the first time that Castle Kells had suffered a raid. She had begun to think it would never happen, being so well fortified and protected by the loch and the mountains, and Sir Joseph a reiver himself and more than able to look after his own. Now that he was out of action, she had not for three years felt so vulnerable or so out of her depth.
Stuffing the caul from her hair into the pouch at her girdle, she forced her shaking legs to move reluctantly down the stone-flagged passageway to where the laird of Kells was apparently suffering a dose of his own medicine. Believing Sir Alex to have been exaggerating the seriousness of Sir Joseph’s injuries, she was unprepared for the ravaged body that lay motionless and grotesquely spread out upon the trestle table in the steward’s confined office where his rolls of parchment were squashed beneath tatters of burnt clothing.
‘Meg…oh, Meg!’ she whispered. ‘Dearest. I’m so sorry.’
Meg’s fresh, smooth face was almost as white as her father’s, her blue long-lashed eyes sorrowing at the plight of her disabled protector. ‘The first day of May, Ebbie,’ she said, quietly, ‘and this is what we get. Who would have thought, this morning, when we…?’ Her voice broke, her arms opened and dropped helplessly to her sides. Always so tidy and prim with the air of an efficient red squirrel, Meg at twenty-four years old was not one to break easily. With a father as difficult to please as hers, and a life constrained by her environment, her natural stoicism had been honed to perfection, a barrier against melodrama in any form. This was one of the few times that Ebony had seen her distraught.
She
