His hand clenched into a fist. He had held out, held on, waited, but he could not forget the doubts. He had not been so steadfast in his belief as this woman was. Though he had held fast in public, in private he had questioned. Was not this certainty simply the guilt of the survivor? A stubborn unwillingness to confront the truth? He had survived his wound because fate, ill fate, had placed him on the side of the victors. Rory, who had chosen to fight with his kin, had most likely not been so fortunate. Yet still Calumn had waited, because not to wait would be to admit the inadmissible. The price he had paid, would continue to pay, for his own choices, was high enough without that.
‘I’m sorry, I should not have been so rude.’ Madeleine’s voice broke into his thoughts. She was gazing at him searchingly. Too searchingly.
‘There’s no need to apologise,’ Calumn replied gruffly. ‘What you believe is not for me to question.’
She smiled tentatively. Whatever was going on in that handsome head to make his tempter so volatile, it was more than the after-effects of whisky. ‘I know Guillaume is probably dead, I know that it’s irrational of me to think otherwise in the circumstances, but I still find it impossible to accept. You understand, I think. It’s the lack of certainty.’
His nod was reluctantly given, but it was eventually given all the same. ‘What is this man to you?’ he asked sharply.
‘Guillaume and I are—friends.’
‘Friends! You’ve come all this way, after all this time, for a friend? He must be a very particular friend.’
Piercing blue eyes, disconcertingly penetrating, searched her face. Madeleine returned to playing with her cutlery. She was strangely reluctant to tell him the truth. She put the fork back on the table and forced herself to meet Calumn’s gaze. ‘We have known each other since childhood. Guillaume is my best friend.’ That, at least, was true.
Calumn raised his eyebrows sceptically. ‘And how came you to be here in Edinburgh alone?’
‘Everyone else thinks Guillaume is dead. No one will listen to me, I had no option but to come.’ The truth was, she had run away, but if she told this man the truth she doubted he would help her. More likely he would insist on packing her back to her father, and she could not risk that, not when she had already risked so much just to get here.
‘Won’t you be missed?’
She shrugged, deliberately offhand. ‘They will guess where I am.’
‘I see,’ Calumn said drily, thinking he did, now. She was obviously in love with the missing Comte, in all likelihood had been his mistress, and had equally obviously been abandoned. If he was not dead, this Guillaume de Guise, he had most likely taken up with another woman. Calumn had seen it himself many a time with his own men, stationed far from home for months on end, falling for a pretty local girl and abandoning all thought of the one waiting for them back home. Whether her swain was dead or unfaithful, Madeleine Lafayette was doomed to disappointment.
Callous bastard, not even to have the guts to tell her! If Guillaume de Guise had been one of his men! Calumn sighed and shook his head. ‘You’re probably on a wild goose chase, you know,’ he said gently.
A film of tears glazed her eyes, but Madeleine shrugged fatalistically. The defensive little gesture touched his heart more than her tears. He did understand, of course he did. He’d been the same, all those months when Rory was lost to them. Calumn felt in the pocket of his waistcoat for his handkerchief and handed it to her. Wild goose chase or no, she’d been very brave to come here like this all on her own, so determined and so steadfast in her belief. He, of all people, could not but admire her for that. She deserved to find out the truth, even though she was heading for heartache. Why not help her?
He took her hand in his again, enjoying the feel of it again. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he told her. ‘I’m not promising, but I think I can get you into the castle, if you’re set on it. And I have a friend here in Edinburgh who can check the records, make sure de Guise’s name isn’t on any of our lists for deportation or—or anything else.’
‘I knew you understood,’ Madeleine said softly.
The intensity of her gaze made him uncomfortable. Calumn threw some coins on to the table. ‘Come on, let’s see what we can do about finding this precious Guillaume of yours.’
Chapter Two
Calumn set off at a brisk pace with Madeleine hurrying along breathlessly at his side, buoyed up by the prospect of making progress at last. The Grassmarket was the disembarkation point for most coaches coming in and out of Edinburgh. At the far end stood the gallows, and towering high above it, perched on its plug of volcanic rock, stood the castle.
‘Everything here is so tall.’ She gazed up in wonder at the lofty buildings climbing four, five, some six storeys high. To one whose experience of a metropolis was limited to the small Breton market town of Quimper, the Scottish capital, with its crowded thoroughfares and bustling populace, was like an alien world. The houses were packed so tightly against one another it seemed to her that they, like the people on the street, were jostling for space and light. Inns and coaching houses took up most of the ground-level accommodation, separated from each other by the narrowest of alleyways. The skyline was a jumbled mass of steeply gabled roofs and smoking chimneys, with washing lines strung out on pulleys from the tenement windows, fluttering like the sails of invisible ships. ‘So many people living on top of each other, I don’t know how they can bear it. It’s like a labyrinth,’ Madeleine said.
‘Aye, and a badly built one at that, down in this part of town,’ Calumn replied. ‘Some of these wooden staircases are treacherous. The problem is there’s too many people and nowhere to build except up, because of the city walls.’ He pulled her adroitly out of the path of a dray loaded with barrels of ale.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To see a friend of mine.’ He led the way through a wynd, which rose sharply between the two streets it connected, then turned left into a small courtyard where more rows of laundry took up most of the cramped space, flapping on lines stretched between poles across its width. ‘Mind these stairs. See what I mean about treacherous?’
The staircase wound up the outside of the building, almost like a wooden scaffold attached rather precariously to the stone tenement. Madeleine lifted her petticoat and climbed nervously, relieved when they stopped at the first floor.
‘Jeannie,’ Calumn called, rapping briskly on the door.
A young woman answered, her pretty face lighting up with pleasure when she saw the identity of her visitor. ‘Calumn, what a surprise.’
Her vibrant red hair was caught up in a careless knot on top of her head. Her figure was lush, with rather too much of her white bosom on display through her carelessly fastened shift, Madeleine decided prudishly.
‘I brought Mademoiselle Lafayette to meet you. Madeleine, this is Jeannie.’
‘Good day to you, mademoiselle,’ Jeannie said, bobbing a curtsy. ‘Come away in, the pair of you, before we have the rest of the close wanting to know our business.’
Despite the fact that she was obviously not a respectable female, Madeleine warmed to her. Jeannie ushered them into a room which seemed to serve for living, sleeping and eating all
