“Aye, I do. I think, madam, that ye will do well with Lady Gordon, for like ye she is educated, although apt to be a wee bit pedantic for my taste,” Bothwell said.
He remained with them for another day, and then left. Jean and Annabella began to pack for their journey, for Jean would go with her mistress. Angus sent Matthew to Edinburgh to find them a house, for he was not of a mind to live in a public accommodation, and they were unlikely to be given a place at Holyrood Palace, where the pregnant queen was living.
Annabella had not felt well in recent days, but there was no help for it; they must go to James Hepburn’s wedding, and then join the court to please the queen. Matthew returned, having managed to lease a house for three months on a street off of the Royal Mile. It had a view of Edinburgh Castle, and a large garden. The owner was in France, but the servants remained. Matthew had also arranged for the places they would stay during the nights of their journey. And to Annabella’s delight they would spend two nights at Rath.
They left Duin on a cold but sunny morning. The gulls flew overhead, skreeing noisily as they departed over the drawbridge. They had prayed for good weather, for it would take them a good week or more to reach Edinburgh. They traveled with two dozen men-at-arms. The baggage carts had gone on several days earlier, escorted by another dozen armed men. Hopefully they would all arrive in the town at the same time, for the carts could not travel as quickly as the mounted riders could.
After several days they reached Rath just as a snow began to fall. Annabella had warned her husband that her family’s tower house was small in comparison to Duin Castle. “We will probably sleep in the hall in the bed spaces by the fireplace,” she told him. But to her surprise they did not. While the earl and his brother would have the bed spaces, Annabella would share her girlhood chamber with her sister Agnes and Jean Ferguson.
Her parents greeted her warmly, but Annabella immediately noticed that everyone at Rath seemed subdued. “Where are my other sisters?” she asked.
Agnes began to cry.
“We hoped to spare ye the shame,” the lady Anne said. “Myrna allowed herself to be despoiled by Ian Melville. Then he would nae wed her, marrying one of my Hamilton cousins instead. Both lasses were wi’ bairn by the dirty lecher, but the Hamiltons were able to offer a higher dower to old Melville. Myrna miscarried a son. She was held up to ridicule in the kirk. Only yer da’s standing as laird kept her from the stocks.”
“Oh, Mam, I am so sorry,” Annabella said. She remembered her sister’s bold and knowing words the night before Annabella departed Rath for Duin. She had wondered about Myrna then, but there was naught she might have done to save her sister. “What of Sorcha? Is she all right?”
“She was wed to Gilbert Elliot in December. Thank God the Elliots looked the other way, but they knew Sorcha is a good lass,” Robert Baird said.
Agnes sniffled.
“What has happened to Myrna?” Annabella persisted.
“Gone. Married to a Highlander my sister sent down from the north,” the laird told his eldest daughter. “I had written to my sister about Myrna, and one day in early January, a man named Duncan MacKay appeared. He’s kin to my sister’s husband and came with a letter written in my sister’s hand.”
They were all seated about the fire as he told the tale. They had hardly expected any visitor at this time of year, the laird began, let alone a giant of a red-haired clansman.
“I’ve come to wed yer daughter,” the deep voice boomed at the startled laird and his wife. He had a bushy red beard that matched his hair.
“I hae four daughters, and two already wed, sir,” the laird of Rath replied.
“Ye’ve one who’s been despoiled, I’m told,” came the surprising answer. “’Tis that lass I’ve come for, my lord. I am Duncan MacKay, the MacKay of the Cairn, kin to yer sister’s husband. I’ve land, a fine stone house, a wee village, thirty-two men whose loyalty is to me first, and a fine herd of cattle. But I cannot seem to keep a wife, and I must have one.”
Fascinated in spite of himself, Robert Baird had asked, “Why can ye not keep a wife? How many have ye had?”
“Three,” Duncan MacKay said mournfully. “And each dead and buried. One in childbed of a stillborn bairn. One who drowned when she fell into the loch, and the third from a winter ague. Now no one will gie me a lass to wed, for they say I bring misfortune to the lasses who wed me.”
“Indeed,” the laird of Rath had said, not quite certain what else to say at this point.
His wife discreetly signaled a servant to bring refreshment. “Please sit, sir,” the lady Anne invited their visitor.
He sat and, leaning forward, asked the laird, “How and why was yer lass despoiled, my lord?”
And then Robert Baird had found himself explaining to Duncan MacKay.
“He nodded, and his eyes were genuinely sympathetic,” the lady Anne said.
“I told the MacKay that Myrna was not wanton. She was simply foolish,” the laird explained. “Melville rejected her for a larger purse, she was held up to public shame, and none would have her. Still, this clansman would have her. He said he would find no fault in her for what had happened, for it was Ian Melville who was to blame. He said he thought the other lass was fortunate that her family could pay a large dower to keep their daughter from facing the shame that Myrna had to face. Then he asked to see her. Before I agreed I reread my sister’s letter to gain a better understanding of just who this man asking to wed Myrna was, but if truth be told, I considered him the answer to our prayers.”
“What happened next?” Annabella asked her father. “Do ye remember what your sister wrote?”
“I committed it to memory, for it was Myrna’s salvation. The missive read:
Brother, ye hae asked for my help. I commend to ye my husband’s kinsman Duncan MacKay, to be a husband for my niece Myrna. He is considered a good man, a worthy opponent, a dangerous warrior on the battlefield. His weakness has been in choosing silly lasses to wed. If Myrna remains strong of character, as ye hae written to me, then she will make Duncan a good wife. If ye gie him my niece, be assured that I will be nearby to guide her. Yer loving sister, Jane.
“I sent for your sister to come to the hall while warning Duncan MacKay that she was beautiful, but had a tongue that could cut wood, it was so sharp. He laughed and told me he liked a lass wi’ a bit of spice in her.”
His listeners now laughed too.
