“Before we left Perth last spring I made the acquaintance of a little lass who serves in Scone Palace. We spent a very pleasant few hours together. She happened to tell me that my lady Cicely goes into town to a certain shop for the queen now and again. I made the acquaintance of the shop’s proprietor, one Mistress Marjory. She is a widow, and inherited her husband’s lace-and-ribbon establishment when he died. Her daughter was with child and without a husband. I found the young man in question and saw the couple firmly wed. And I’ve paid for a tutor so her son may learn to read, write, and do his sums in order that he can one day take over the shop.
“In return Mistress Marjory was to send to me when my lady came to visit the shop next. She would claim the items my lady sought were not available for several days, and dispatch word to me. I intend bride-napping my lady Cicely as she browses among the lace and ribbons. Then I will bring her back to Glengorm. Once she comes to know me she will be glad to be my wife. I told you that the Gordons would not have her. She is mine!”
“They’ll come after her,” Fergus said gloomily.
“First they must learn where she has been taken,” Ian said with a wicked grin. “I met her formally but once, and have been gone from Perth for months now. Why would any suspicion fall on me?”
“What of the shopkeeper?” Fergus wanted to know.
“She’ll claim we broke into her shop from a rear alley, snatched the lass, and were gone as quickly as we came.”
“But why didn’t she run screaming into the streets, calling for the watch?” Fergus asked.
“Because she was hit upon the head and rendered unconscious when she began screaming upon our entry,” the laird said. “They have to take her word for what happened. And why wouldn’t they believe her? Who else is there to say otherwise? I’ve told her to say she heard the intruders saying that the lass was an heiress. It will be thought at first that she was taken for ransom,” Ian Douglas explained to his brother.
“But when no ransom demand is made, and the girl doesn’t reappear?” Fergus queried. “What then?”
“By then we’ll be safe home and my lady and I will get to know each other better so we may wed,” the laird said. “The lass will come around. They all do eventually, Fergus. You know I have a way with the lasses. But I’ll not seduce and leave this one. I will make Lady Cicely Bowen my lawful wife.”
“What if they find her before then, Ian? What if the king decides to punish us for your temerity? What will happen to Glengorm?”
“By the time they discover where she is, Cicely will be mine, little brother,” the laird said assuredly.
“But what if the Gordons come after her?” Fergus wanted to know.
“Do you think Andrew Gordon will want my leavings?” Ian replied harshly. “Once I have her and she is here at Glengorm, no one can take her from me.”
“You would risk offending Lord Huntley and his Gordons? Not to mention the king and his wife?” Fergus said.
“I would risk offending God himself to have Cicely Bowen for my wife,” the laid said quietly. “From the moment I saw her I knew she was meant to be mine, and she will be, brother. She will be!”
Fergus Douglas shook his head. There was nothing he could say or do but help his brother in this madness. Ian was in love.Ian!He found it difficult to believe, but there it was. The laird of Glengorm was in love with a lass who didn’t really know that he even existed. “God help us all,” he said, crossing himself. “I hope we don’t get hanged for this.”
Chapter 5
Four days after her initial visit to Mistress Marjory’s shop, Lady Cicely Bowen returned to purchase the delicate French lace and the silk ribbon for the expected royal heir’s christening gown. Orva had gone off to the apothecary for more lavender oil, for the queen had slept better than in weeks after having her feet rubbed with it. Cicely fingered the beautiful lace with a sigh.
“It’s exquisite. Her Highness will be delighted. She sews wonderfully well, you know, and the gown she has fashioned for her baby is beautiful. I will take all of it, for the lace that decorates the gown of Scotland’s heir must decorate no other.”
“Indeed, my lady,” Mistress Marjory said approvingly.
“The ribbon?”
“Did I not bring it out?” the shopkeeper said. “Oh, dear! Let me go into the storage room and fetch it for you, my lady.” She arose and disappeared into the back of the shop.
Suddenly Cicely heard a scream, and she jumped up, startled, as two masked men burst into the room. “Where is Mistress Marjory? What have you done with her?” she demanded. She bolted for the door, but one of the men caught her by her arm, swinging her about and hitting her on her jaw. The girl collapsed into his arms.
“Jesu, Ian, did you have to hit her?” Fergus Douglas asked.
“She was about to shout for the watch, damn it,” he said. “Comeon now, quickly, brother. We need to get her into the cart and out of the gates before she is found missing, and an alarm is raised.”
Together the two men returned through the rear of the shop, where Mistress Marjory lay unconscious upon the floor. Ian felt bad about the need to render the shopkeeper helpless, but it would certainly validate her story of what happened, and her outrage would be more convincing. Exiting the building, they carefully put the girl into a sack, its top open so she could breathe, and laid her in the bed of the small wagon. Then they covered the sack with straw to conceal it. Climbing upon the seat of the vehicle, they drove from the back alley and onto the High Street, moving with the local town traffic towards the gates. Fergus Douglas prayed silently as they went that they would not be caught.
Perth had been a town for centuries. Once it was unwalled, but Edward I had attempted to wall it; then Robert the Bruce had torn the half-built walls down. Edward III, however, had forced the Scots clergy to bear the cost of building stout stone walls with towers and fortified gates less than a hundred years before. The gates numbered four. Red Brig Port was at the end of Skinnergate in the district populated by the town’s tanning industry. While the artisans of this area made shoes and gloves, hides were also exported, along with timber and fish shipped down the River Tay, for Perth was a busy inland port.
The other gates were Turret Brig Port, at the end of the High Street past St. John’s Kirk; Spey Port, at the end of Speygate; and Southgait Port, at the end of South Street. There was also a small minor gate that led to Curfew Row. But it was the Southgait Port that the brothers sought now as their wagon moved along. The wagon turned from the High Street into Horner Lane, where craftsmen worked in shops and open stalls fashioning spoons, combs, and inkwells from cow and goat horns. As they got closer to the River Tay they could smell the wet wool being fulled before being beaten to thicken it, and then pounded with wooden hammers worked by water mills on the river.Finally they turned onto South Street, lumbering through the Southgait and onto the Edinburgh Road. Several miles from the town, out of sight in a grove of thick trees, their horses waited for them.
In the wagon bed Cicely began to shake off the bonds of unconsciousness. She struggled to make some sense of what had happened to her, of where she was. She could feel motion beneath her, hear the muffled drone of voices nearby. Opening her eyes, she tried to look about her, but her vision was blocked by the sack in which she realized she was now confined. She moved her limbs gingerly. With relief she realized she had not been bound. Carefully she began to stretch herself, and her head pushed from the sack.
