“But why are we running away, m’lady?” asked Pansy. “We’ve escaped Ranald Torc and Master Grant. Why can’t we go home? Dugald’s going to be having a fit for certain.” She chuckled to herself and then shared with her mistress the cause for her humor. “Dugald didn’t want me to ride with you that morning, but Morag sided with me, saying it was only two miles.”
“Pansy,” said Velvet seriously, “if you want to go home, you should, and the more I ponder it I think that you had better. But I cannot. Ian has gone to Maitland, and once Maitland hears his plan he will throw him out, for Ian is of no importance, but Maitland will use his idea. They will hunt me down and use me to get to Francis. I cannot let that happen! I daren’t even send a message to my mother, lest it be intercepted, and who could we trust to even take such a message? No—in a few weeks’ time the king will realize that I cannot be found, and they will forget me. Then I can return home secretly. In the meantime, I must be where the Scots crown cannot find me. They will look in all the obvious places,Dun Broc, and probably send agents toQueen’s Malvern, but I shall not be there. I shall go where no one will find me; but you must go home, my dear Pansy.”
“Go home?” Pansy looked horrified. “Leave you to run off on some wild adventure by yourself? Never, Mistress Velvet! Me mother would kill me, and that would only be after m’lady Skye and his lordship and yer husband and mine had had at me. Wherever we’re going, we’ll go together, m’lady. Who, I should like to know, would take care of you if I weren’t around?”
“Oh, Pansy, are you sure? I don’t want to endanger either you or the baby.”
“You’re with child, too, m’lady. You need me,” came her servant’s calm reply.
“Aye,” Velvet admitted, “I do need you, Pansy.”
“Well, then, ’tis settled,” said Pansy. “Where are we going to hide in France? Surely not at your grandparents’? They’d get right in touch with your parents, who would tell the earl, and then the fat would be in the fire.”
“We’re going toBelle Fleurs, Pansy. It is my parents’ home in France, but they rarely go there anymore. We will be safe there, and when James Stewart has decided that I am not worth bothering with, then we shall come home to our husbands andDon Brocagain.”
“Amen to that!” said Pansy reverently.
Ian Grant had gotten no farther than a nearby tavern, however, where he proceeded to get himself roaring drunk. Ranald Torc’s men, returning with the evening meal, found both him and their two captives gone. Obedient to their leader, they waited until Ranald Torc and his wife had returned. Although Ranald had no idea where the two women were, he was fairly certain of where to find Ian and sent his men to the tavern to fetch his cousin back. Before he slid into a drunken stupor, Ian managed to disclaim any knowledge of what had happened.
“They’ve escaped, damn the sot!” said Ranald Torc to Alanna, “though how I dinna know.”
“Could BrocCairn have found them?” said Alanna.
“Nay, Ian would be dead if he had.”
“What are we going to do, Ranald?” For the first time since he had known her, Alanna sounded afraid. “If anything has happened to her ladyship, Alex is going to hold us all responsible.”
“The only person who can possibly know anything about this is my drunken sot of a cousin,” muttered Ranald Torc. “I’ll nae wait around for Alex Gordon to wreak his vengeance upon us, my lass. I’ll admit to stealing his cattle, but nae else.”
“Then what are we to do?” Alanna repeated.
“I’ve kept my word to Ian, but our survival is at stake now,” came her husband’s reply. “Ian will sleep until sometime tomorrow, I’m certain. We’ll take him to Edinburgh and leave him at Huntley’s house with a message saying that he’s the man BrocCairn is looking for, and that, my lass, will take care of everything. Then we’re off for home. I’ll nae be caught so far from my lands again, Alanna. We’ve gold enough to last us a goodly time. We’ll go home and spend a long winter together fucking and eating, and fucking and drinking! Would ye like that?”
Alanna smiled up at him. “Aye,” she said, “I would.”
Fortunately, both Francis Stewart-Hepburn and Alex Gordon had kept their heads. Surrounded by Alex’s men, they had made their way south, finding the place where Alex’s cattle had been sold and moving on to Edinburgh where the trail had gone cold. Then Ian Grant was deposited on the Earl of Huntley’s front steps by several brawny Highlanders wearing the kilt of Clan Shaw. All the note pinned to him said was that he was wanted by the Gordon of BrocCairn. Both Bothwell and Alex realized that Ian Grant had probably not gotten to Maitland.
On October eighteenth, Maitland attempted to lure Lord Bothwell into a trap of his own at the Gold Anchor in Leith, without any mention of Lady Gordon, and Alex and Francis knew for certain that Ian had never reached the chancellor. Bothwell, however, escaped and made his way back toHermitage.His rendezvous in the Highlands had come to naught, for the various factions could not agree on a way to stand against the king without committing treason. Ian Grant had been very close to being a rich man.
Ian Grant, however, was by this time quite dead. It had been an ignominious death. Awakening from his drunken spree, he had stretched lazily, then suddenly realized that he was not in that disgusting apartment they had rented in Leith. His mouth tasted terrible, and he had an absolutely awful headache. Slowly he turned over onto his back, and his eyes met those of Alexander Gordon, the Earl of BrocCairn. Ian Grant’s mouth dropped open in shock, and he drew but one gasping breath before his heart gave out from total terror at the dreadful look in the earl’s eyes.
If he hadn’t died then and there, Alex would have killed him, but only after he had found out what had happened to his wife. Ian’s death robbed him of that knowledge. He had only one other direction in which to go, and that was north into the Highlands from whence he’d come; north to find Ranald Torc. The outlaw had to know what had happened to his wife, to Pansy, to the unborn bairns that they both carried. Alex didn’t believe for one minute that his wife was dead. He would have known if she was dead, but he felt nothing, just an emptiness. Velvet lived! Of that he was convinced.
Ranald Torc’s house was impervious to attack by virtue of the thick forest that surrounded it. Remembering Ian’s sudden and unexpected death, Alex did not want to lose the only chance he had of finding out what had happened to Velvet by fighting his way in. Under a flag of truce, he met with Ranald Torc at his house in the forest.
“Ian is dead,” Alex said bluntly to open the conversation, and then he went on to explain how the event had occurred. “I was unable to question the damned coward, and I dinna know where my wife and her tiring woman are. Ye can tell me.”
“Nay,” replied Ranald Torc, “I canna. The plot to kidnap yer wife was all Ian’s. I only stole yer cattle, Alex. Ian insisted we go to Leith so that he might make his escape quickly when the exchange was made.”
“Did he ever contact Maitland?” demanded Alex, too concerned about his wife to demand compensation for his cattle.
“Nay, not to my knowledge. Alanna and I were married outside of Edinburgh wi’ yer wife for a witness. We were seeing the sights in Leith, that’s all. We came back one day to find yer wife and her woman gone, and Ian off drunk. She must have escaped, and so we brought Ian to Huntley’s house and left him for ye. I canna tell ye anything else or I would. Having found a woman of my own, I can sympathize wi’ ye in yer double loss, especially since my own wife has only today told me that I’m to be a father.”
Alex was stunned. Ranald Torc had been his only hope. What could have happened to Velvet? If she had escaped, why had she not returned home toDun Broc?Perhaps she had been so frightened that she had fled south instead to her parents in England. He could understand that now, but why had the de Mariscos not gotten in touch with him? He returned toDun Broconly long enough to settle an allowance on his widowed sister and orphaned nephews before heading south to England with Dugald and a troop of his men.
In the Loire Valley of France it had been a long and leisurely autumn. Velvet and Pansy arrived atBelle Fleurssafely to find her parents’ little chateau still carefully and lovingly attended by Mignon and Guillaume, retainers from the great estate ofArchambault, which belonged to Velvet’s grandparents, the Comte and Comtesse de Cher. Mignon and her spouse, Guillaume, had attended Skye and Adam de Marisco, Velvet’s parents, in the years that they had lived in France. The chateau had been left in their keeping. They were elderly now, and Velvet’s simple story that wicked men sought to use her and her unborn child against her wonderful husband so no one, not even herchergrandmère and grandpère, must know that she was atBelle Fleurs, brought their immediate support and promise that Velvet’s visit would remain a secret.
Safe now, Velvet sought news of Scotland, not easy to come by in this rural and bucolic setting. Still, with the help of Matthieu, Mignon and Guillaume’s fourteen-year-old grandson, they were able to establish a small line of information, but the news coming from Scotland was not good. Velvet heard of Maitland’s attempt to trap Bothwell and cursed Ian Grant for the bastard he was. It was obvious to her that they had tried to lure Bothwell into their hands by convincing the earl that they had her. She wished she could send a message to Alex telling him that they were safe. How he must be worrying! She missed him so very much, but she would not endanger him, or Bothwell, by revealing her whereabouts.
