“Vengeance is what I want.

“I want Falstone’s sister, I want his land and I want his life.”

The wound was making Alex light-headed, for the image of Madeleine’s naked pale limbs entwined about his own kept surfacing. And resurfacing.

Angrily he slammed his clay goblet down. He remembered the living flame of her hair as she had been bustled from the room and the cool feel of her skin when she had touched his hand.

I can help you.

Alex shook his head in disquiet. She was a hostage, that was all.

Ashblane’s Lady

Harlequin® Historical #838

Available from Harlequin® Historical and SOPHIA JAMES

Fallen Angel #171

Ashblane’s Lady #838

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Bonny Laird of Ullyot

Oh, bold border ranger

Dark vengeance and danger

Stalk thee relentless

’Tween Jedburgh and Sark

On come the reivers

And wily South thievers

Hail, soldiers of Ashblane

Fight on till the end

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Chapter One

Heathwater Castle, northwest England.

30 September, 1358

‘There is a grounde called the Debatable Grounde, lying between the Realme of England and Scotland…’

‘Ian!’

The anguished keening cry of a name travelled on the wind over Heathwater as Laird Alexander Ullyot tore off his jacket and rocked back and forth across the dead body of his clansman.

Lady Madeleine Randwick, watching from the woods, could barely believe such emotion to come from him, for the Chief of the clan of Ullyot, born and bred in the Scottish Highlands and the bastard son of a royal father who had never claimed him, was far better known for his cruelty and callousness.

And she could well understand why. With the rain pouring down in earnest, his face looked hewn from cold hard marble. Not pretty. Not comely. No young man’s face this, full of dreams and promises, but a worn and tried visage underscored by danger and seasoned by tragedy. The scar that ran across his right cheek and into the hairline of his dark blond hair could be seen even from this distance, lending him a hardened beauty that took Madeleine’s breath away. No healer worth her salt had worked on him, she thought, folding her cloak across the brightness of her hair as his double-handed claymore caught the sun.

Lord, if he saw her!

Crouching lower, she viewed the oozing wounds on his arm and back dispassionately. A deep gash might well poison his blood. With intent, she weighed up her options. If he died, her brother might relax his guard around Heathwater, giving her the chance she needed to escape.

Escape from Noel and Liam and Heathwater. How long had she dreamed of that? She was about to turn away when she noticed his shoulders shaking.

He was crying.

The hated Laird of Ullyot, scourge of the borderlands and instigator of a hundred bloody battles, was crying as he brought the fingers of the one he mourned to his lips in a tender last embrace.

Madeleine stayed still, the image of muscle and war-toughened invincibility strangely disconcerting against such grief. She noticed him stiffen as soon as he perceived a sound from further down the valley, the dirt on his hands marking his face as he swiped his eyes and stood, glance chilling and sword drawn.

So this was her enemy close up. This man, whose land ran north of her own along the border of Scotland and joined with the tracts of her brother’s domain west of the River Esk.

She sensed his awareness of being watched as he scanned the undergrowth on the hillock behind her, but the arrival of a group of Ullyot men drew his attention away. She could hear his deep voice relaying orders as the bodies of fallen friends were separated from foe and placed on a dray pulled by two horses. She wondered where his own horse was, her curiosity appeased a moment later as he tilted his head and whistled to a steed of the deepest black. With a growing fear, Madeleine burrowed back into the root space and tried to recall all she had ever heard of the clan Ullyot.

Ashblane.

His keep hewn of stone, tall and windowless, the little light allowed in banished by dirtied cattle skin. Terence, her brother’s servant, had told her this once just after her mother had died. A cautionary tale, she had guessed, to balance her own lot against that of others, for no one could live more bleakly than Alexander, the powerful and arrogant Chief of Ullyot.

The bodies had been stacked now and angry drifts of conversation reached her fleetingly before the rising wind snatched them away and pulled at the plaid Ullyot had draped across the faces of his fallen. The dirty tartan was stained in red. His arm, she supposed. Or his nose. Or the slash she could see deep across his back as he turned, the marks of battle mingling with the rusty blush of blood.

His men crowded around him as if for comfort. Fleetingly she wondered who would give him comfort, the wayward thought catching her as being so absurd that she had to stifle a laugh. A man like Ullyot would need no comfort, no cosiness nor succour to lighten his way. The Laird had chosen his pathway, after all, and rumour had it that it did not include the support of anyone or anything. Loneliness was his code, and hatred his inspiration.

Glancing up at the sky, she tried to judge the time of day as the party disappeared through the wooded hills leading to the river. She dared not start for Heathwater Castle till the sun was lower, the ridges protecting her only marginally from the scouts and sentries she knew would be posted until the Ullyot party was well out of sight. Resisting the urge to creep forward to tend to any of her brother’s men, she stayed still until she could be certain that they truly had gone. Already she could imagine the knells and peels of the chapel bells at Noel’s castle, and she dreaded going back. Dreaded seeing the mothers of sons lying fallen, the colour of the Ullyot plaid not shading their faces as the cold and rolling mists settled in from the Scottish Lowlands.

An hour or so later Madeleine deemed it safe to move, and she had almost reached the line of trees where she had instructed her sister—dressed, as always, as her page and who was safer here than at Heathwater—to wait, when a movement caught her attention. One of the Ullyot soldiers appeared out of nowhere and was shouting as he tracked into the glade, sword drawn. A prickling fear enveloped her. Something was wrong. Even from this far she could see that it was wrong.

‘Jemmie,’ she screamed and raised her hand, surprised to find it whipped behind her back in a punishing grip.

‘Keep still, lassie.’ The voice at her ear was deep and imbued with the tones of a Highland Scot, and her whole world narrowed as she turned.

It was him, Alexander Ullyot, and she had not heard even the whisper of a footstep.

Eyes of the palest silver ran across her from head to foot, narrowing as the nails on her right hand raked down the ragged flesh on his arm.

‘Cease,’ he cursed and pulled her against him, pulled her into sinew and muscle and war-sculptured bone. Pulled her into warmth and sweat and the tantalising scent of pure male. And for a second everything slowed.

Safety. Strength. Potency. When had she ever touched a man who felt like this? Who looked like this? Her breath fanned out against the wide bare skin at his throat and lust swamped her.

A warrior.

A fighter.

A leader who knew his worth in a land that gave no second chances to those who didn’t. She wanted to place her cheek against his chest and beg for refuge. She wanted to hold him as a shield against a world she could no longer fathom…did not want to fathom.

‘Who the hell are you?’

No angel’s voice. The anger grounded her, as did the blood from his shoulder, dark against her arm and powdered into blackness. He would likely kill her if she gave her name. Red dizziness blossomed and the beat of her heart angled into panic.

‘Who are you?’ he repeated, his hand clamped hard across her shoulders. Maddy’s breath caught and thickened and when she tried to turn to see what was happening to Jemmie, the roiling tunnel of blackness stripped her of balance and she tumbled into nothingness.

Chapter Two

Madeleine came to in a filthy cell littered with marsh reeds. Jemmie lay beside her, unconscious, the fastenings on her thin wrists mirroring her own; already the rats were grouping. The cote-hardie she had worn was gone and her kirtle had been overlaid with the Ullyot plaid, the squares of blue, red and black dull in this light and barely respectable given the linen on her shift was ripped in a number of places and the ties at her bodice cut. Shock made her tremble; even in the coldness of this day she was sweating. Why were they here? And where was here? Not Ashblane, she mused, for a banner draped across the wall showed the crest of the Armstrongs.

Her movement brought a face to the cell door. A gap-toothed man with long dirty hair peered in through the bars, though he covered his eyes with his hand as soon as he perceived her watching him.

‘She’s awake.’ The slippery vowels of Gaelic. She’d never learnt the language past the rudiments and could not catch the gist of the reply from further out.

The sackcloth surprised her as two men strode inside. As they wrapped it firmly around her head, she wondered why they should want to carry her this way and began fighting as soon as her wrists were released. She was rewarded with a harsh smack across her cheek and tears stung her eyes. These men would kill her. Fear throbbed deep as she listened to the passage they took. Up some stairs, she guessed, and into a room warmer than the others. The slight smell of charcoal assailed her nostrils, and also the more astringent aroma of sweat, as the men placed her on her feet.

‘Remove the covering.’ The voice was chilling and she straightened, her eyes blinking in the harsh and sudden lightness.

Laird Alexander Ullyot stood before her, flanked by two men almost as tall as he. He had not bathed since she had seen him last, though now he wore a coarse woollen over-jacket. The hard planes of his face in the glow of a banked fire were ominous, as were the leather bindings that anchored his left arm. She knew without being told that they hurt him, for he kept himself strangely still even as he held the attention of all those around him.

‘The Armstrong laird names you as Madeleine Randwick? Sister to Baron Noel Falstone of Heathwater? Is this the truth?’

Nodding, her glance fell to his heavy bladed falchion before regaining his face. The surprise she had noticed fleetingly a moment ago had escalated into anger as he strode forward, tipping her chin up and rubbing at the bruise on her cheekbone.

‘Who hit her?’

‘She struggled, Laird, and I had to—’

The man who had taken her from the cell got no further. A backhanded jab from Alexander Ullyot knocked him flat.

‘Replace him, Marcus.’

One of the men beside him nodded and Maddy felt heartened by the exchange, though Ullyot’s next words were not at all comforting.

‘You are a prisoner here, Lady Randwick. A hostage to make your brother see sense.’

‘He will not—’

‘Silence.’ The quiet order was more disconcerting than an outright shout. She noticed simultaneously the corded veins in his neck and the chips of dark silver in his eyes. She also saw the intricate crest that topped the gold ring on his little finger. The lion of Scotland! Danger spiralled into dizzying fear and she stumbled and would have fallen had he not come forward to steady her. His hand was cold and the hard shape of a dagger strapped in the fold of his sleeve unnerved her further. He felt the need to carry hidden weaponry even in the company of his own men and allies? What laws did he live by?

The answer came easily.

None.

Paling as the implications of her deduction hit her, she dug her nails into her arms to distract panic with pain, ceasing only when she caught him looking at the red crescents left on her skin.

Distaste crept into slate-cold eyes. ‘Why were ye there? In the dying fields?’

She blanched. Could he think her part of the battle? ‘I am a healer,’ she said, defiantly.

‘A healer, is it? Rumour says differently,’ Ullyot said with distaste. ‘Quinlan, take her back to the dungeon.’

‘No.’

‘No?’ A light of warmth had finally entered his eyes, though the effect in a face etched with none was unsettling. ‘You would question me?’ He stood so close now she could see the blond tips on his lashes. Long eyelashes and sooty at the base.

‘There are rats.’ The laughter of those around her made her jump and she fought to hide fear. The ill-tied plaid she was dressed in dropped below the line of the torn kirtle and she noticed keen eyes upon her breasts. Just another humiliation—she sighed and edged the warmer wool up with shaking arms.

‘Take her back.’

‘Please. If it’s money you are after I can pay you. Handsomely.’ Every man she had ever known had his price, although this one’s frown was not promising.

‘It’s flesh and blood I’m wanting from your brother, Lady Randwick. Gold canna’bring back those men that I have lost.’

‘So you mean to kill us?’

Before she could say more he placed one hand around the column of her throat and squeezed gently. ‘Unlike your brother, I do not kill women and children.’

She felt the breath leave her body in a sharp punch of relief, though a new worry threatened. She had seen what Noel did to the captives at Heathwater and rape could be as brutal as murder.

A living death.

And such harm could come from any number of these men present. Indeed, when she looked around the room she saw many eyes brush across her body as the Ullyot soldiers contemplated their share of the easy spoils of battle.

Summoning courage, she stood her ground as Alexander Ullyot’s eyes darkened, fathomless for ever, eyes drenched in the colder undertones of sorrow. Grief juxtaposed with fury. Grief for the man he had cradled and wept over. Madeleine was lost in what she saw.

‘I can help you.’ Her words came from nowhere and she felt him start as she laid her fingers across the heated skin of his hand. Grief was as much of an ailment as the ague or an aching stomach, and the healer in her sought a remedy.

‘I do not need your help.’ He snatched away his arm, angrier now than when she had first been brought into the room. ‘Take her away.’

The irritable bark of instruction was quickly obeyed as two men stepped forward, though as she looked back she saw that he still watched her. Framed against the light, the Ullyot laird looked like a man from legend: huge, ruthless and unyielding. But something else played in the very depths of his pale eyes. Something she had seen before many times on the faces of many men.

Interest. Lust. Desire.

She smiled as he was lost from sight and bent her thoughts to wondering as to how she could best use this to her own advantage.

‘What do ye think of her, Alex?’

Quinlan’s voice penetrated Alexander’s thoughts as he upended his glass. ‘Madeleine Randwick looks rather more like a dirty angel than the conniving heartless witch it is said that she is.’

‘She’s taller than I thought she would be.’

‘And a thousand times more beautiful, aye?’

Anger levelled him. ‘A pretty face can be as deceiving as a plain one, Quinlan.’

‘She was scared of the rats.’

‘Then get rid of them.’

‘The rats?’

‘Tomorrow we leave for Ashblane and we’ve not the time to waste transporting a sick woman. Put her in another room and post a guard at the door.’

He made himself stop. His left shoulder throbbed, the paste the physician had applied to the wound searing into the flesh. As he tried to lift his arm the breath caught in his throat, his heart pounding with the effort it had taken.

Ian. Dead.

Everything was changed. Diminished.

‘Damn Noel Falstone to hell,’ he whispered fiercely and walked to the window, trying to search out the dark shape of the Cheviots to the east and tensing as Adam Armstrong came to stand beside him.

‘I am sorry. I ken how close you and Ian were and—’

Alex held up his hand. Anger was far easier to deal with than sympathy and much more satisfying. ‘I should have ridden into Heathwater with the men I had left and flushed the bastard out. Ian would have done that for me were I to have been lying on the cold slab of your chapel with the salt upon my belly.’

‘And you’d have died doing it.’ Adam, as always, sought the calm logic of reason. ‘Nay, far better to wait and continue the fight on another day when the element of surprise is on your side and you are not so battle-wearied. Besides, you are wounded. At least let me see to your arm.’

‘No. Hale has already done so.’ Moving back, Alex brought his left arm into his body. He wanted no one close. No one to see what he could feel. The wound was not small and he was far from home. Tomorrow when they reached Ashblane there would be time enough. For the moment, here in the keep of the Armstrongs, he wanted control. Or at least the illusion of it, he amended, as a wave of dizziness sent him down to the chair beside the table.

‘Ian should’na have come with so few men.’

‘Why did he, then?’ Interest was plain in Adam’s voice and, pouring himself another draught of ale, Alex was pleased for the distraction. It gave him a moment to swallow and settle the nausea. When he felt steadier he began to speak, though the beat of his heart was constant in his ears, the normal tones of his speech masked by rushing blood.

‘Noel Falstone had burnt down cottages and taken womenfolk from a village west of Ashblane, and Ian left in fury before I had a chance to join him. If he had waited, we could have hit the bastard together.’

‘Waited?’

‘I have been away in Edinburgh with the King.’

‘And when the King knows of the Falstone treachery? Will he act?’

‘Our liege lord has lost heart after his long captivity under the English and prefers diplomacy these days to battle.’ Alex was careful with his words.

‘You may well be right; besides, David will’na slay a man as wily as the Baron Falstone no matter what the provocation. He is too useful to him with his lands on the border and the Marches completely in disarray.’

‘Which is exactly why I will have to do it myself.’ Alex pulled himself up. This time the room did not sway. ‘Falstone is a braggart and a risk taker. Bur he is also a man of habit. He spends each January in Egremont and travels by way of Carlisle with only a small guard of men. He thinks himself safe.’

‘You could not breach the sanctity of England so far south. Not like that.’

‘Could I not?’ His eyes hardened.

‘As it is now, you stand in favour with the King. Imperil the treaty and you will lose Ashblane under the banner of treason. No one could save you.’

‘No one will see me.’

‘You would not wear the plaid? Lord, let me warn you of the pitfalls in this pathway. David may be your kin, but he is first and foremost King and he allows you Ashblane as a royal fortress. Should there be any instability here, any hint of falseness…?’ He spread out his hands across the table in a quietly eloquent gesture. ‘I am your friend, Alex, and from my experience men with a single purpose often bury their logic to define what they were not sure of in the first place. Take your clan safe back to Ashblane where Falstone cannot harm you, neither in siege nor battle. And while you are at that, toss the Randwick woman back to her brother with a note of clemency. Falstone may even thank you for it and David certainly will with the ink on the parchment of the Berwick Treaty hardly dry.’

Anger exploded as Alexander drew himself up from the chair and threw the last dregs of his ale into the fire.

‘It is not thanks I am seeking,’ he growled and watched as the pure alcohol caught with alacrity and the flames licked upward. ‘Nay, Adam. Vengeance is what I want. I want Falstone’s sister, I want his land and I want his life.’

‘And the de Cargne sorcery? How will you still that in Madeleine Randwick when it is said she can make a man believe anything?’

This time Alex did laugh. ‘You’ve a strange way to interpret the Holy Scripture. Thou shall not worship false idols, and are not sorcery and witchery the falsest of them all? If it is the magic you fear, then do so no longer, for the Bible would’na countenance the existence of such inexplicable unreason.’

Adam Armstrong brought his hand down hard. ‘You have stayed in the world of warfare for too long, Alexander, and strayed from the gentler teachings of God, so do not lecture me on the interpretation of scripture. The border lore is full of the tales of the de Cargne women whether you deem to listen or not. Josephine Anthony. Eleanor de Cargne. And now Madeleine Randwick. She uses her beauty to tie men to promises they canna remember making when they wake in her bed come the dawn. Strong men. Brave men. Brought down by the wiles of a witch.’

Alex took a deep breath and groped for normality. One more day and he would be at Ashblane. Twenty-four hours and the malady of what burned in his bones could be healed. Aye, the wound was making him light-headed, for the image of Madeleine Randwick’s naked pale limbs entwined about his own kept surfacing. And resurfacing.

Angrily he slammed his clay goblet down. He remembered the living flame of her hair as she had been bustled from the room and the cool feel of her skin when she had touched his hand.

I can help you.

He shook his head in disquiet. She was a hostage, that was all. A valuable means of vengeance and retribution when expediency demanded he find a way to exact conditions from the rampant greed of her brother.

A convenient pawn. A woman whose very name was synonymous with treason and immorality.

The Black Widow of Heathwater.

With an angry swipe at the ale beside him he upended the bottle and felt the pain in his arm numb. She would be gone before the week’s end. He swore it. And Ashblane would stay safe.

She had hardly got back to her cell when the man named Quinlan came down the stairs.

‘Unshackle her,’ he called to the guard and waited as this was done.

Maddy tensed—she had seen the anger in the Laird of Ullyot’s eyes. Had he rethought his plan and sent his minion to kill her? Panic made her struggle and pull back.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Deciding indignation was the best way to push her advantage further, she stood.

‘To a room without rats.’ His reply was measured, and the humour in his words struck her as odd. She struggled to make sense of it all.

‘Why?’

‘Our Laird wants you fit to travel north in the morning.’

The significance of this reply hit her with a blinding euphoria. They were not to die tonight? Perhaps, after all, there was a chance.

‘Please. Could you free my page, Jemmie, too? He is only young and the cold is bitter here.’

A wary puzzlement filtered into the eyes of the soldier opposite as his glance skimmed the floor.

‘The offer is for you alone, Lady Randwick.’

‘Then I am sorry, but I cannot accept it.’ Already the faintness of blue marked the pale face of her sister as the chill crept in through granite flagstones. She held out her arms for the manacles and turned her head away. She felt the chains re-locked as tangibly as she felt the indecision of the man opposite, though she did not look at him as he left, the heavy iron door clanging shut with a dreadful finality.

Sitting down, she put her head between her legs and willed calm as the small fingers of panic wrenched aside composure. She was trapped in the dungeon of an Armstrong keep by a Laird known well for his lack of mercy, and, if that was not bad enough, Jemmie was in a disguise that would tip the balance further were she to be unmasked. Everything was worsened yet again by the fearful nature of the Laird of Ullyot himself.

She made herself stop.

Unlike your brother, I do not kill women and children. Were those not the exact words he had used?

The thought cooled panic and kindled hope. If the rumours about the Ullyot’s appearance had been so misleading, then perhaps his character was also unjustly slandered?

‘Please, God, let it be so,’ she prayed; as the tightness around her chest loosened, she crept across to Jemmie, frightened by her stillness. If her sister died, how could she keep living? A sob of terror escaped her before she could stop it, before she could again assemble the core of strength that she very seldom lost a hold of. She had been in worse predicaments before and had survived. With the grace of God and a little luck, perhaps they would both survive this one, too.

Quinlan returned to the Great Hall less than ten minutes after he had left it.

‘She says she will’na leave her young servant.’

‘She what?’ Alexander turned to his second-in-command, wincing as the movement tore into the wound on his shoulder.

‘She says she will’na go without the boy. Jemmie, she calls him. He has’na regained consciousness yet and she’s worrit by the cold.’

‘Then leave her there. Place a blanket across them both and leave them there.’ But Quinlan wasn’t quite yet finished.

‘She smells nice, Alex, and her manners are more than fine….’

Sharp laughter filled the room. ‘She’s Noel Falstone’s sister, Quin. She takes place in his raids.’

Quinlan shook his head. ‘And yet when the plaid fell from her shoulders in the cell I saw a scar on one breast fashioned into the sign of the cross. Remember Jock Ullyot’s words, Alex. He told us that the woman from Heathwater Castle who had helped him bore the sign of a cross. And her hair. He spoke of a fiery angel who healed people…’

‘He was dying. Delirious and dying. And if it be a fiery angel we are searching for, I doubt Madeleine Randwick would qualify.’

‘The rumours could be wrong—’

Alex cut him off. ‘They’re not. Leave it at that, aye?’

‘I would, save Geordie is on guard duty tonight.’

Swearing, Alexander reached for his dagger on the chair, tucking it into the belt at his waist with difficulty. ‘And his son is laid out on a slab in the chapel. Ye dinna think it wise to change the watch, then?’

Quinlan shrugged in resignation. ‘He’s as close to the edge as I’ve seen him. To insult him further…’

He didn’t finish as Alex Ullyot led the way out of the Great Hall, his shadow lying uneasily against stone as they made their passage to the dungeons below.

The cell was quiet save for the night-time wind that howled around the corners of the draughty passageways. Madeleine Randwick had hooked herself around the scrawny body of the boy she had been brought in with. An uncomfortable position, Alexander reflected, given the space between them. He noticed how her hands were taut white with the effort of stretching so far left.

‘Get up.’ He strode in as soon as the locks were freed and pulled her to her feet, ripping the plaid off her in one quick movement and turning her around to the light to find the scar of which Quinlan had spoken. A dainty cross of gold surprised him and he fingered it briefly before turning his mind back to the scar. ‘Who marked you so?’

Maddy was stiff with shock. ‘Liam Williamson, the Earl of Harrington.’

‘You are his?’

‘Yes.’ Her heart beat fast in her chest and her mouth was dry. She saw the knife in his hand before she felt it and looking down, saw that her breast ran with the blood of a shallow cut. The red of her blood stained his hands as he drew away.

‘Under the spoils of battle I relinquish his claim. Untie her, Quinlan, and bring her to the chamber off the solar.’

‘You mean to—?’

‘Now.’ He said the word through his teeth and the soldiers in the cell all hurried to obey him. She felt their rough hands take liberties and knew that the Laird had seen it, too. This time he offered no retribution.

A large bed dominated the room they repaired to and it was on this the soldiers placed her. She noticed them fan out across the room as if they meant to stay through the deed, though the one named Quinlan was clearly agitated.

‘She is a Lady, Alex.’

‘She is Harrington’s whore.’

‘No, I’m not—’ A hand clamped across her mouth.

‘Speak again and I will kill you.’ He released her only as she nodded. The blood at her breast made her faint, made her shake, made her sick to her stomach and she retched across the floor the contents of a frugal meal from the morning.

Now she would die. Looking up, she blotted the spittle with the borrowed arisaid and waited for retribution. Kill her or ravish her. It was all the same—if this Laird did not do the deed, then Liam Williamson surely would before too much time had passed.

She was sick of caring, sick of worrying, sick of the effort it took to live into another day and the absolute absence of any viable alternative. ‘End it here,’ she thought and stood, challenging him, before the rush of unbalance took her and she crumpled on to the floor of the raised dais.

Alex swore as the redness of her hair spilled across his boots, the white sheen of her body dappled now with blood and bruises. She was young and thin and strangely vulnerable, this Madeleine Randwick. Bending, he touched the fiery tumble of her silken curls. In unconsciousness her fear had been wiped away and moulded into something else entirely, the gentle line of her throat running up to a face that was unexpected.

He turned, his stomach no longer in this public ravishment. ‘Settle her into a bedchamber upstairs and bring the young page to her,’ he ordered, his eyes flicking to the wound he had inflicted on her breast. He suddenly wanted to cover it, but knew that to do so would invite comment. Stripping a flare from the wall, he made for the door, dismissing the sentries with a sharp order and glad that he could trust Quinlan’s honour to make certain that the Lady of Heathwater stayed safe.

Madeleine woke in a bed, the feather-tick covers pulled up over her, and Jemmie beside her in a makeshift cot on the floor. Reaching her hand across the space, she was relieved when the blankets stirred. Jemmie was alive and unhurt. That was all that mattered. Outside it was dark; she could see a quarter moon through the clouds between the ill-fitting shutters.

‘Are you hurt badly, Maddy?’

‘Only a little.’ Sitting up, she pulled at her plaid to reveal the cut Ullyot had marked her with. It still oozed slightly, though a skin had formed across the edges of the wound. Spitting into the palm of her hand, she rubbed the mark briskly and swallowed back tears.

‘It feels better already, and, if Ullyot has not killed us by now, I doubt that he means to.’

‘But the mark. He will take you—’

She cut off the worry. ‘He will take me as a mistress, mark or no mark, Jemmie. It’s the least of our problems.’ Rising from the bed, she went to the window, pulling back the shutter and opening it carefully. Three storeys from the ground and no foothole to allow leverage. The Laird was taking no chances. She knew the door would have a guard standing watch.

‘We have a knife and a gold crown.’ She pulled both objects from a hidden pocket sewn deep inside her petticoats, putting her herbal powders that were also hidden there aside. ‘It may be enough.’

‘To escape?’

‘Nay, to send a message.’

‘To whom?’

‘To Goult. If we could get away from here and ride west towards Annan—’

Jemmie interrupted her. ‘No, nothing is safe.’ As the words stopped, Madeleine noticed the thin band of sweat across her sister’s brow. Could she be sickening from the cold night on the floor already, or was this a sign of being as frightened by the Laird of Ullyot as she herself was?

Her heart raced in fear. The Laird of Ullyot was not at all as other men—she had seen the auras that surrounded him the moment he had turned towards her. Silver and black. Eleanor had always warned her of such a mix; years ago she had come across her mother in the stables with her gowns around her thighs and entwined in the arms of a stranger who had breathed silver.

Silver and black. And something else, too. Something unspoken and forbidden. Something primal and reckless.

Shaking her head, she pocketed the dagger and the coin and began to think how she could turn this adversity to her own advantage.

‘We will watch for our chance to escape; when it does come, we will make for France.’ Covering her hands with the folds of her skirt, she was glad Jemmie could not see the whitened knuckles of her clenched fist. Glad she could not know the other thoughts that rushed around inside her head and had her rigid with panic.

‘And we will be together, Maddy?’

The voice was shaky and years of her own fears allowed Madeleine to easily see fright in others.

‘We will always be together, Jemmie, I promise. But now you must sleep, for it will be a long march on the morrow.’

She watched as the blankets shifted and then stilled before turning her eyes to the light beneath the door and sitting up. If they came, she would be ready, and the knife in her hand was honed sharp.

The Laird of Ullyot came to her room just as the pinkness of dawn blushed the eastern sky, his surprise at finding her awake masked quickly.

‘I would speak with you, Lady Randwick, and without your page. My men will take him.’

Jemmie stood uncertainly, movements clumsy with sleep, and Maddy felt her stomach lurch in fright. ‘Where will you take him?’ She tried to temper her desperation.

‘To the room next door. We will return him to you later.’

Her eyes went to the two guards. How dependable did they look? She was thankful to notice one was an old man with kindness stamped in his eyes.

‘I will be safe, Jemmie. Go with the men.’

‘But I think—’

Maddy shook her head as Jemmie began to speak, but the gesture did not seem to sway any intent as a bony chin went up and thinly covered shoulders straightened. ‘Will you give me your word, Laird Ullyot, that you will not hurt her?’

A young, uncertain demand given without weapon or strength. Holding her breath, Madeleine waited for reaction.

‘Get out.’

Not a knife through the ribs then, or a fist against the thin bones of Jemmie’s face. Reciting a prayer of thankfulness in her mind, she watched as her sister was taken from the chamber. As the door shut behind the group, Ullyot began to speak.

‘You have one who would vouch for your character, it seems, Lady Randwick, though many would say you are a whore and a liar known throughout two kingdoms for your loose ways and dark magic.’

She made herself smile. ‘I have been incarcerated at Heathwater for the past ten years, my Lord.’

‘Hardly incarcerated, my Lady, for your exploits at the Castle are chronicled well by those who have enjoyed your favours.’

Unexpectedly, she felt herself blush bright red. Angry at doing so, she stood and walked to the window.

Why was he here? And alone?

‘How many retainers does your brother keep at Heathwater?’

Her relief was visible. He was here to find out about Noel’s fighting capabilities?

‘A thousand,’ she lied, knowing the number to be almost twice that.

‘A thousand without the retainers of Harrington?’

She knew the question was not lightly asked and looked away. ‘My brother has not the numbers your domain yields, sir, though there is a certain safety implicit in depending on others.’

‘How so?’ His eyes were instantly alert, the mark on his cheek below puckered badly in the harsh dawn light.

‘The Ashblane soldiers are weighty in number. Too weighty, I have heard it whispered. Royalty likes to have strong men on the edges of their land as a first defence against invasion, but, when they become too powerful, any king is apt to worry.’

He laughed, the sound threaded with such ill-hidden arrogance it could only denote a man truly at ease with his own capabilities. ‘If you want to help your brother, I would advise you not to lie.’

‘Because my betrayal would yield him a quick death as opposed to a slow one?’ She thought of Goult trapped in the middle of a battle, but he ignored her question and posed one of his own.

‘Your page, Jemmie. How important is he to you?’

For a second Madeleine thought she might faint. Indeed, she grasped at the sill beneath the window and closed her eyes, every single thing she had ever heard about the Laird of Ullyot suddenly true. He had neither soul nor heart nor honour. And he was clever. She could barely believe the turn this conversation had taken. Had he guessed?

Desperately she faced him. ‘If lives are to be traded, Laird Ullyot, I would prefer to barter my own.’

‘Would you indeed, Lady Randwick? And I wonder why that might be the case?’

She dared not speak again. What was it he wanted of her? Everybody wanted something.

‘Now, how many? What are the numbers?’

‘Three thousand.’ She did not look up as she recited the re-tainers and their strengths, careful not to leave out the Western allies. She was truthful with the demands of number. With her sister’s life at stake and a Laird renowned for his lack of leniency, Goult would just have to take his chances.

‘Thank you.’ The words were as bleak as his eyes as she watched him. Slate grey. The colour of a lake before rain. Pale. Unreadable. Distant. For a moment she felt disorientated and exposed.

‘The safety of my clan is paramount to me, Lady Randwick, and I will do anything to protect it. Anything. Remember that and ye may yet live to be reunited with your beloved Heathwater.’

She nodded because he expected it and watched him leave.

Heathwater…beloved?

If she could burn the castle down herself she would, and if Noel was caught in the flames with Liam Williamson then all the better for it. The ghosts of ten years of hatred floated dangerously near and she closed her eyes against the screams of her murdered husband as the tightness in her chest caught her. Groping for the chair, she sat down. Not here. Not now. Not again. First she must get Jemmie to safety. And after that…

She would pray that the black Baron of Ullyot would scourge Heathwater from the earth on which it stood, leaving nothing for her ever to remember it by. And no one.

Alexander strode to the chapel. The candles burning in the vestry lit his passage as he crossed to where Ian lay. Lifting the plaid blanket away, he ran a finger in the sign of the cross over a cold forehead and pinched the salt in a dish on Ian’s stomach to the four corners of the room. ‘A charaid. May the Devil be far from your soul and your journey into Heaven sweet.’ With care he rearranged the rondel dagger tucked into the sleeve of his dead friend’s jacket, pleased to see that someone had thought to clean the blade and sharpen it. ‘I swear ye will be avenged,’ he whispered into the dawn. ‘I swear it on the soul of the Virgin Mary and the blood of our Lord.’

Our Lord?

How long was it since he had prayed? Crécy? Alexandria? Cairo? He looked up at the vaulted ceilings and across to the portraits in gold of the Holy Family that hung against the far wall. Adam Armstrong was a devout man and his chapel reflected this. A small likeness of the Virgin Mary caught his fancy, for she had hair the same colour as Madeleine Randwick’s. Shaking his head, he cursed abducting her, cursed the porcelain sheen of her skin and her fire-red hair. He should leave her with Armstrong to send back to her brother. Hostages could only harm Ashblane and he was always careful as far as his castle was concerned. And yet he knew he would not do it.

‘Why can I not just leave her here?’ His whispered question seemed like a shout. Lord, to be even considering taking her? Protecting her?

‘I think she has cursed me, Ian. I think she has used her magic and cursed me.’ The blood in his arm beat loudly and he felt hot. Sick. Cursed.

Breathing out, he pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to get a better look at the wound at the elbow. Angry lines of dark red scoured the skin and tracked upwards, the pain surprising him. Even in Cairo, with his face slit open from cheekbone to temple, he had felt better.

He knelt and genuflected, holding his right arm against his side so that no movement jolted it. And when he had finished his prayers of deliverance he made his way out to the waiting soldiers, hoping like hell that his dizziness was a temporary condition and that he would not slide from his horse before he again saw the battlements of the Ashblane keep.

Chapter Three

They had been travelling north-east through the damp of a rising drizzle for three hours, the hooves of hundreds of horses making such a sound that any enemies thinking to engage a force of men this size had long since vanished. Madeleine rode in the middle of the column with Jemmie at her side, and as the red and gold banners of the Ullyot clan swirled about them and the cold numbed the skin on her face, she wondered how much longer they would ride.

Finally the wide valleys of the Esk lay before them, tree berries bold and the branches covered with flaming leaves, and beyond, the deeper green of a forest. Jemmie seemed stronger after a night’s rest and Madeleine’s own wound stung less now, the throbbing of the night giving way to a softer ache. Ahead of her Quinlan reined in his horse suddenly and bid them to halt and she felt Alexander Ullyot’s presence before she saw him, bathed in a coat of dust. She could tell that his arm hurt him by the angle at which he held it. His wounds required more than the poultice his physician had laid upon him and the healer in her surveyed his symptoms carefully.

Already he sweated.

The beat of his heart had quickened as well. She could see it in the pulse at his throat.

‘We will build camp here for the night. The Liddesdale Forest is dangerous to stop in and we will’na make the other side by nightfall.’ He shielded his face as he scanned the sky and Madeleine had the impression of him reading both time and weather. As he looked down their eyes met, flinted silver less sharp now as the first waves of deep infection assailed his body.

Little time left, she thought and dropped her glance. He would be beyond her help by the morning.

‘You are comfortable?’

His question made her start, as did the full frown on his brow.

‘Pardon?’

‘Do ye have all you need?’ His glance went to her breast. ‘I could send my physician.’

‘No.’ She bit at her bottom lip to stop saying more and looked away. Already he was leaving. She felt as much of a murderer as her brother.

Quinlan dismounted and stood ready to help her down and she laid her hand upon his sleeve. ‘I would thank you for your help last night.’ Her gaze flicked across to Jemmie. It had been Quinlan who had brought Jemmie to her wrapped in a blanket.

The resentment that lay in his light blue eyes was momentarily replaced by perplexity. ‘Your retainer was full of praise for you, my Lady. I’ve seldom heard a young boy chat so much.’

The statement brought laughter to her lips. ‘Surrounded by such soldiers as these, any stranger could seem verbose.’

Quinlan frowned. ‘Alexander instructed everyone to keep their distance for your own safety. He wants you protected.’

‘Why?’

‘You are his now. Since last night.’ His eyes dropped to her breast. ‘As a hostage. I thought you understood.’

‘And if he dies?’

Alarm flickered in blue eyes as he sought her meaning. ‘Ullyot is invincible. Who would fight him and win?’

‘My God…’ Maddy crossed herself and turned away, the twin emotions of dread and joy battling within as suddenly everything dropped into place.

Could Alexander Ullyot, the feared Laird of Ashblane, shield her from everyone? From Noel and Liam? Even from King Edward? If he took her as a mistress, and unwilling, could such an uneasy alliance allow her time to think and plan, to throw them off her scent and disappear? She closed her eyes, the force of her desires washing across the more familiar powerlessness. He had men and might and an authority of leadership that was unrivalled. And last night, after she’d been sick over his floor, he had not killed her.

Not all bad, then, she reasoned, and turned again to Quinlan, her mind made up.

‘Without my help, your Laird will be dead by nightfall.’

She saw the hairs of Quinlan’s arm rise and his face redden visibly.

‘You curse him?’ His voice was strangled as he drew his blade.

‘Nay. I told your Laird, I have the power of healing.’ All around men gathered, their own swords drawn in response to Quinlan’s anger. She held his gaze. ‘The wounds your Laird has will poison him. Another few hours and his blood will run with it and there will be nothing I can do.’

‘Kill the Randwick witch,’ a bold voice cried to her left, and further knives were unsheathed.

‘No.’ Quinlan bade the men retreat, and they did so, but uncertainly, the air crackling with an unguarded tension. Were she to say more, she doubted even he could save her, and thus she held her silence.

An impasse. Drawing her gaze upwards, she looked towards the sky. The sun beat down upon the land and she felt it reflected in her hair. Quietly she raised her hood. In times like these some men took merely such a sign as this to take their action further. She saw Quinlan frown suddenly and thought perhaps he was a mind reader. She had encountered such beings in the old chronicles at her grandmother’s castle, and always their eyes were blue.

‘I will take you to the Laird and you can check the wound yourself.’ His voice was curt as he turned to his horse and called for hers. Beside her Jemmie made to rise, but she stopped the movement.

‘No, it is safe.’

One small hand came around her wrist and she felt the applied pressure. ‘You’ll need your things.’ Jemmie’s voice was uncertain, her upturned face deeply edged in worry.

‘What things?’ Quinlan demanded an answer.

‘My healing tools. They were left at the side of the battlefield when you took me.’

‘Our physician has others.’

Her mind raced to the balms and poultices she would have liked to have had, but in the pockets of her petticoats were twists of complex herbal powders whose recipes she had learned from her grandmother. It might just be enough.

And if it wasn’t? She refused to think of this problem yet. Everything was tenuous, but on the brink of disaster she sensed something different. If the Laird of Ullyot lived, she might yet have a life. For within the bosom of this clan she detected a glimmer of safety. Safety for her and for Jemmie. For a while. And if Alexander Ullyot lived, she would ask for her uncle’s safe passage from Heathwater.

Jemmie and Goult. Her family. To keep them safe she would strike a bargain with the devil himself.

The Laird was much worse when they reached him, and Quinlan’s fright mirrored her own.

Alexander Ullyot no longer knew them, the sweat on his brow so high now he had lapsed into delirium. An old man crouched at his side with a bowl full of leeches. Already she could see he had been bleeding him, the fat black bodies of the worms bloated with blood and glistening under the light of torches.

Quinlan hurried to his side, knocking away the other soldiers who knelt there. His hand felt for Ullyot’s and he squeezed it firmly.

‘Alex.’

A flicker of consciousness generated greater tugging, the black blood from his wrist leaving a trail of darkness in the dirt. Perhaps it was that, Maddy thought later, that made him push the elderly physician to one side and bring her into the light.

‘What can you do for him?’

A general hum went around the crowd at his words and another one as she came to crouch down beside him, pinching salt from a container on the ground and sprinkling it across the leeches. They curled up and fell on to the mat beneath him. She resisted scrunching them beneath her shoes even as the clan physician gathered them up.

‘I’ll need water,’ she said, her hands touching the heat of his brow. ‘And strong whisky.’ Both came within a second of her asking for it and she extracted her dirk and powders from her petticoat pocket.

Instantly she felt the prick of a well-honed sword in the sensitive folds of her neck.

‘Leave her.’ Quinlan’s voice. Anxious. Harsh. She did not look back at her assailant as she picked up her knife again and opened the herbal pouches. The sleeve of his shirt she dealt with next, slicing the seam apart and looking over at Quinlan who was watching her carefully.

‘He can mend it when he is better,’ she said bluntly, registering a spark of both admiration and wariness.

Many men had called her a witch, but just as many had admired her skills of doctoring. Tonight Quinlan’s respect buoyed up her courage, made her fearless, made the contact she had with bone and skin and blood more real. Closing her eyes, she held the palms of her hands against his skin, feeling the poison and tracing the pathways of darkness to healthier flesh. The shock of connection was like an almost-pain and she could sense a haunting, answering anger that shut off the moment she felt it. Deliberately? Beneath consciousness he could feel her? Her heartbeat accelerated markedly. That had never happened before. Ever.

With hesitation she pinpointed the dark blue lines of blood and drove the tip of her sharp blade inwards, tourniqueting all that lay beyond and squeezing out the badness.

If the collected men gasped and watched her with disquiet, she did not recognise their superstitions, so intent on hearing next the sound of his bones. When she held up her hand for silence, it came immediately.

‘Here.’ She grasped the elbow and slipped it up against the run of muscle, the swollen joints popping as the dislocation righted.

Sweat pooled between her breasts because she could not quite shake the unease of his awareness. Rolling him over, she looked at the jagged gash beneath his shoulder blade, red crossed by other scars from different battles and healed knot-beaded white.

A warrior!

My warrior!

The voices of those who had hurt him crowded in against her, the wraith cries of old battles full blown from that time to this one and echo-loud as she placed two fingers against the broken skin and pushed. When the heat gathered, her arms began to shake. Another moment, she told herself, another moment and the warmth would come. If she had been alone, she would have used the healing-fire inside her, but here the traditions of other people bound her tightly, and she had Jemmie to think of.

Nay, the doctoring had to be as conventional as she could show it. She smiled to herself when sharp heat made her fingertips vibrate. They would never see. A small, important victory for the de Cargne magic, for with its coming she knew that death had passed back into life.

Sitting back, she rested for a moment before swilling herbs in the whisky and bringing it to the Laird’s lips. Quinlan’s hand stopped her.

‘What is in it?’ The charge of poison lay as an unspoken threat.

Without answering she lifted the rim to her own lips and took a sip. Heat threaded her throat and sent the world reeling, but the fingers withdrew.

‘Go on.’

Readjusting her stance, she looked again at her patient. ‘You must drink,’ she whispered and pressed with her fingers on a certain point of his neck. Grey eyes flew open on cue and he swallowed the liquid in thirsty gulps before lapsing again into unconsciousness.

All about her men crossed themselves, the age-old reaction to something that was not understood. Few men at Heathwater looked her in the eyes. It would be the same here come morning, though Quinlan’s measured glance surprised her.

‘Your Laird will live.’

‘Do ye ever doubt yourself, Lady Randwick?’ he asked as she bent again to her patient. Ignoring the question, she touched Alexander Ullyot’s brow.

‘Already the fever lessens. It is a good sign. By the morning he will be much improved.’ Threading his dark blond hair through her fingers, she felt the lump of a fall on his temple.

I live as close to the edge of life as you do.

For a second she felt a bonding and, shocked, pulled her hand away.

Quinlan mistook her reflex action.

‘What is it? What is wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she lied easily and turned to collect what little was left of her powders, wiping the blade of her knife with a pad of alcohol and pulling at the material in her petticoat to cut a wide swathe from the hem.

Two long bandages of clean lawn soon lay across her hands and, removing the stopper from the flask, she soaked them in whisky before winding them about the wounds. Alexander Ullyot thrashed a little as she kneaded his elbow and she hurried at her task. In all her years of healing she had not seen a patient who had lain so still during the most painful manoeuvre of repositioning a dislocated shoulder.

When he stirred and his eyes fluttered open, she tried not to touch his skin lest he feel again that point of contact. Already he was coming into consciousness; she had no wish to be still kneeling at his side when he awoke.

‘I’m finished.’ Standing, she rubbed at the small of her back, the bending in the cold startling her with pain. Deliberately she did not catch the eye of a single onlooker.

Two hours later she was summoned back to the clearing where the Laird of Ullyot sat.

‘Quinlan says ye to be a witch.’ His voice was deep but tired. ‘My men believe it, too,’ he added. ‘They say ye charmed the sickness from me.’

‘Given the limited skills of your own physician, their superstitions do not surprise me.’

She frowned as he tipped back his head and laughed, though the humour did not touch his eyes—rather it shadowed them in an unspoken distance. ‘And yet you were not afraid?’

He faced her directly now, his irises catching the red light of a setting sun. Not quite silver, more the burnished hue of the wings of the moth that lived in the glens. And angry. Feeling his censure, she returned crisply, ‘Once I touched you I knew that you would not die. If I had thought you to be unsavable, I could have stood back and pleaded ignorance, leaving your physician to finish the bad job he had started.’

‘But by then ye had cursed me out loud. Nobody would have forgotten that.’

She did not answer and he swore softly, shifting his position as if to better accommodate his shoulder.

‘Quinlan says you closed your eyes and read my blood with your fingertips. He said you asked for silence so that you could hear the sound of my bones. Like a witch would listen. Hale, my physician, says the same.’

‘Your men speak nonsense, Laird Ullyot.’ She noticed his eyes up close were beaded with a dark blue. They disconcerted her with their directness and she struggled for normalcy. ‘I need to see if your fever is lessened,’ she explained as she placed her hand on his forehead.

‘It has gone.’ His voice was quiet and disengaged.

‘Your wounds, then. Does the pain increase?’

‘No.’

‘I need to look.’ Feeling him stiffen, she leaned forward to take his bandaged arm in her hands. The appendage was hotter than she would have liked, though the flesh beneath when she unravelled the cloth had the look of a wound knitting nicely. When she checked his back it was the same. Reaching for the last of her powders, she added only a few drops of water.

‘This one will cool your flesh,’ she explained as she rubbed in the salve, though he caught at her hand when she went to apply more.

‘Enough, Lady Randwick. You have cured me.’ Strong fingers closed around her own and a guarded irony laced his words. ‘The tales of your accomplishments are not without foundation, I see.’

Tensing, Madeleine pulled away. Dangerous ground this, given the widespread knowledge of the de Cargne sorcery. Tempering her answer accordingly, she met his gaze. ‘And now you wish to thank me?’ She sought to remove as much emotion as she could from her voice.

He laughed loudly, the sound bringing his retainers close, swords at the ready. Waving them off, he turned again to look at her.

‘Do men often thank you, Lady Randwick?’

The insult was implicit and she braced herself. So many men had looked at her the way he was doing now and for one fleeting moment she was sorry that it was him. Before she had a chance to answer, however, he got to his feet and she noticed him wince as the arm lowered with the pull of gravity. ‘I could fasten a bandage,’ she offered from the ground, the healer within overcoming her woman’s chagrin.

‘Nay, I have this.’ Pulling straps of leather from his pocket he brought the arm into his side and wrapped the binding around his wrist before looping it over his neck and moving the two or three steps needed to bring him right beside her. Sensing his intent for further conversation, she stood and waited.

‘I am indebted to you for your help,’ he said at length, the utterance dragged from his mouth as though it pained him to say it. ‘And if you’ve a request ye wish to voice as reparation, I will try my best to see that it is done.’

‘Bring my uncle to your keep from Heathwater.’

Surprise ran freely across his face.

‘Why?’

‘Because Noel will hurt him.’ She could barely get the words out.

‘And that would matter to you?’

‘Yes.’

He watched her closely. ‘Do you know how it is you are called in the court of Scotland, Lady Randwick?’

She didn’t answer.

‘They call you the Black Widow.’

The Black Widow. Lucien. She felt her world tilt.

‘Rumour holds it, you see, that love for the chatelaine of Heathwater is conducive to neither a man’s heart nor health. Lucien Randwick was eighteen when you married him and not twenty-six when he died. And when the body of an English Baron was found five miles from your castle before Yuletide last year, an entry in his journal named you as his lover. The pattern has been noted, Lady Randwick, though I’m wondering where I fit into the scheme of things. You could just as easily have said nothing today and left me to die.’

‘I could have.’ She said the words quietly, schooling her emotions in the way she had perfected across the many years of living with her brother. Alexander Ullyot could believe what he liked of her. People always had. She was surprised, though, by the thin band of pain that wrapped itself around her throat, and the tears that threatened. Looking away, she dashed the evidence against her sleeve. She never cried. Not ever. She forced a smile.

Jesus, Alex thought as the truth hit him. She had not murdered Lucien at all. A lifetime of soldiering easily told him that. Relief and anger were strangely mixed. He wanted to hate her, he wanted to hate her as much as he hated her brother. But he couldn’t. And that thought made him even more furious.

‘It was Noel, wasn’t it?’

‘Pardon?’

‘It was Noel who killed them,’ he repeated, louder this time and with more authority. ‘Lucien and the others. It makes more sense, damn it. He used you as his excuse?’

For a second every single fibre in her body longed to lie, but the hilt of her knife in Lucien’s neck was too real, too recent, and too tangible. She recalled in minutiae the way his eyes had glazed in shock as he had fallen, the light stubble on his cheeks strangely out of place against the harsher face of death. She remembered knocking his pleading hands away from her ankles and standing there until she was absolutely certain that his lifeblood had flowed away. Lucien Randwick, the golden-haired, laughing son of the Earl of Dromorne. Dead and not yet twenty-six.

Visibly she blanched. ‘Nay, I killed Lucien.’

‘But not the others?’

‘No.’

The hardness in her voice was palpable, but Alexander saw the flare of fear in her eyes before she hid it. And sorrow. Madeleine Randwick was good at hiding things, he thought suddenly. Her healing magic, for one—now, even hours after she had touched him, the skin at his back still tingled. No simple task for all she said of it.

Magic. And now, murder. Baldly confessed. The knuckles of her hands were white with tension and her whole body shook.

‘Randwick was a friend of mine.’ His voice was soft.

‘Lucien?’

‘No. Malcolm, his father. He killed himself last year.’

He saw her grip the skirt of her dress. ‘Malcolm Randwick. Dead? I had not heard. He brought me a bunch of snowdrops once and a pendant fashioned in gold. And when Lucien would not see him—’ She stopped and caught her words. ‘He was a kind man, a gentleman.’

‘Unlike his son?’

The question was so unexpected she could not trust herself to speak. Instead she nodded, and the instant bolt of anger in icy, pale eyes stunned her.

Belief.

Belief in her. For the first time in two years the white-hot shame of murder waned and the reality of her brother’s complicity crystallised. It was not her fault. Not all her fault. She could barely take it in.

Alex looked away, not trusting himself to speak. Had the Randwick bastard physically hurt her? His eyes scanned the cream-smooth skin at her throat and arms and his quietly voiced expletive held a wealth of meaning as the night drew in on them both, black and close, the secrets of state binding them into fragile harmony.

‘You were betrothed to Randwick as a child?’

‘Yes.’

‘Under the auspices of King Edward?’

‘Yes.’

The pain in her voice was brittle, and with exaggerated care Alex continued. ‘Malcolm’s wife was Edward’s cousin. Did you know that? The king knew of his condition.’

Condition? Lord, suddenly everything clicked into place in Maddy’s head. Lucien had always been mad. Her brother knew it. His father knew it. And Alexander Ullyot knew it.

‘I see.’ She remembered the substantial amount of money her brother had received for the exchange of her hand in marriage. Her welfare had been sacrificed for expediency and then sacrificed over and over ever since. If it had suited her brother to name her a murderer and incarcerate her and her dowry at Heathwater, then how much more so it must have suited the royal family of England. Aye, if the taint of madness was to be banished then she herself had to be discredited completely. How well her brother had done that with the procession of tipsy male visitors to her private chamber and the constant change-over of staff sent to see to her needs. Isolation had fuelled the rumours and solidified her as the mad and dangerous Lady Randwick. And up till this moment she had never been able to understand any of it.

The Black Widow. Sometimes she had heard the words in the drifts of drunken revelry at Heathwater.

‘I think I should retire.’ She did not want to speak further, for, were he to ask about the details, she knew that the unexpected softness in his eyes would falter noticeably. Pulling her cloak more firmly about her, she shivered, but he was not yet finished. His free left hand steadied her movement. The spark of contact triggered an almost-pain.

‘If it helps, Lady Randwick, I could tell you that I have killed a hundred men in battle and a score of others without its sheltering banner. And yet still I breathe. And live.’

Dimples graced her cheeks for the first time in months as she assimilated his very masculine attempt at consolation.

‘Thank you,’ she answered simply and watched as he left, moving through the trees with a grace seldom seen in large men.

The Laird of Ullyot was a self-sufficient man and one who walked his world without the crippling doubt of conscience, his strength and confidence as legendary as his danger. Without him next to her Maddy felt an unfamiliar tug of loss, as a lack of sleep caught up on her. Swaying with light-headedness she leaned against the trunk of a tree whilst considering her options.

‘I’m to take you back to your page, Lady Randwick.’ A kind voice startled her and she turned. ‘I’m Brian the Tall,’ the man said. ‘The Laird’s cousin,’ he added, seeing her frown. ‘He said to give you this. For the medicine, he said.’ The leather flask of whisky he put in her hands was roundly full and fashioned with plaited tongs and shells. ‘Gillion made it.’

‘Who is Gillion?’

‘Alexander’s son.’

The blood drained from her face. Alexander Ullyot was married? He had a wife at Ashblane? Lifting her chin, she tried not to let this Brian Ullyot see her quandary. If a wife was at his keep, everything was changed. She could not stay there at all. The sharp points of the seashell had drawn blood from her palm before she realised what she had been doing and let go. The man beside her looked away and Madeleine saw the movement of one hand crossing his chest.

It didn’t surprise her, as he’d been there at the healing. Still, she would have liked him as a friend, the kindness in his voice drawing memories of times when her life had included laughter. And now she was to be thrown again into a no-man’s land where any hope of sanctuary was futile. She felt the torn skin on her breast and could barely draw breath.

But what now?

She would never go back to Heathwater and she could not stay at Ashblane, either. Playing the whore for the promise of safety was one thing, but playing it in the presence of a wife and children was quite another.

Biting her lip, she tasted blood, cursing her woman’s body and her lack of strength. She hoped her healing of the Laird had inspired some sense of gratitude, some slight advantage to effect a softening of guardianship and a moment to escape. With Jemmie, of course. She frowned; the task of finding safe passage for them both had become immeasurably harder, especially in the middle of a landscape she could not recognise and the possibility of two hundred well-honed soldiers on their heels.

And Alexander Ullyot.

Worried, she thought of their recent conversation. Would the tainted secret of her marriage now be his to use as Noel had? A weapon of compliance. An unforgivable sin. Murder, or self-defence? Witchcraft or healing? Would Ullyot banish her to the court of either Edward or David to face trial and sentence? Her breath quickened as she remembered the rumours that placed the Laird firmly in the camp of David’s court. Bastard son of one of Robert the Bruce’s brothers, was it not said? For the first time ever she wished she had listened more closely to the gossipy ramblings of Noel and his lover, Liam Williamson. Pray that tomorrow they would still be heading north-east. Pray that the healing would sanctify her life. Pray that Ullyot was as irreverent of the law as she had heard and that the comfort he had given her was sincere.

The questions turned around and around in her head as a single drop of blood from the sharpness of the shell rolled down her palm and dripped off the end of her ringless fingers, mingling with the mud on the ground.

Chapter Four

She saw the keep from a distance and it was every bit as ugly as Terence had said it to be. More so in reality, for the walls rose at least a hundred feet in the air on every side and there was no sign of any windows. Jemmie beside her looked as taken aback by the place as she was. They had not expected a palace by any means…but this? The architecture defied description. Certainly it conformed to no style she had ever seen. Rather, it echoed only the promise of being a structure that might well still be standing in another five hundred years.

Ashblane.

The spoils of battle for Ullyot clan loyalty to Robert the Bruce after Scotland’s War of Independence from the hated English. No motte-and-bailey earth-and-wood keep this, but pure Scottish stone. And unassailable.

The noise of bagpipes rolled across the valley and a huge roar went up as the gates swung open, the occupants spilling out, searching for loved ones. No one as yet had come to the Laird of Ullyot and she wondered about it. Every person stood back from him rather, giving him room to coach his steed across the drawbridge and into the bailey proper.

She and Jemmie gained the bridge a few moments later and she saw the faces of those around her without really looking. If she had stared further, she knew she would read disdain and hatred. She was Noel Falstone’s sister and he was their sworn enemy. Already she could hear the wails of those who had reached the cart with the bodies wrapped in plaid. She steadied her mount, jittery in the close crowd of people, and wondered where to go.

‘You’ll need to dismount. Follow me.’

Quinlan’s voice shouted across the noise around them and she nodded as she carefully slipped from the horse, her body stiff from the hours of riding. Once down she turned to Jemmie, her fingers cupping a bony elbow as she helped her sister to the ground.

The hall inside was unremittingly plain. No tapestries hung to break the gloomy pall, no embroidered chairs or bowls of flowers. No banners that festooned the walls of other keeps, no decoration at all save the stuffed head of a deer pinned at an angle above the mantelpiece. Part of its antlers lay on the shelf beneath, in an odd juxtaposition of space. Alexander Ullyot stood there now, warming his hands against the flames and speaking to a man she had not seen before. He had removed the sling, though he held his arm in an awkward slant; when one of the dogs at his side inadvertently knocked him, he swore roundly.

Madeleine frowned and wondered if the rest of the keep was as frugal, her heart thumping as soon as she thought it. Would she be dragged to his bed tonight? Already the hour was late. Would he want to take her now? He looked like a man who never waited for anyone, least of all for a woman. Pure masculine power cloaked his every action. And what of his wife and son? Where were they?

‘Food will be brought to you and water provided.’ Ullyot had finished with his retainer and was speaking now directly to her.

‘It is not the custom here to eat in the Great Hall?’ Madeleine’s question was breathlessly hopeful as she played for time.

‘Not tonight,’ he returned quietly. ‘Tonight we will bury our dead.’

The pain in his words was tangible and she looked away.

‘Ian.’ The word slipped from her lips without thought as she remembered the name he had called out in the fields behind Heathwater.

‘What did you say?’ She flinched as he covered the distance between them.

‘Your friend. I saw him fall.’

‘Lord.’ The chips of cold anger in his eyes burned bright. ‘I had heard it said ye like to watch the slaughter. Like a game?’ The words were barely whispered as disgust over-wrote plain fury and he turned away.

‘You listen well to the stories that are spread of the de Cargnes, Laird Ullyot, and it is wise that you do so.’ Her voice was as hard as his had been and it caught his attention.

He turned back.

Madeleine forced herself to smile. For this moment he must believe all that was said of her family. The wound at her breast marked her as his and here as at Heathwater she needed to put a measure of protection in place. Men coveted women they could understand, soft women, weak women. Her armour lay in the foundations of superstition and magic. Even a man like Alexander Ullyot believed in superstitions.

She thought he might strike her—indeed, took a half step backwards before she stopped herself. At her side Jemmie had reddened dramatically and her eyes flicked with warning as she prayed her sister would not be foolish enough to try to defend her if Alexander Ullyot were to knock her down.

‘Do you court death, Lady Randwick?’ Ullyot’s query was bland and she looked up, puzzled.

‘Pardon?’

‘This.’ He had turned out the small dirk from her pocket before she could blink and it clinked uselessly on the dirt floor. ‘For a witch your face is surprisingly unschooled. But take warning. Should you bear arms against me in the company of my soldiers, you may find a sword through your heart before you have the time to explain it otherwise.’ His free hand ran across her breast in a surprisingly lewd caress. ‘And that would be a waste of good woman flesh, witch or no, I think.’

Maddy pulled away, the imprint of his fingers burning into her skin, and was intimidated again by his very bigness. With one single smack of his hand she could be dead if she should anger him further than restraint would allow. Her mind sought the anecdotes of his temper and the stories were many. Still she could not resist saying something as she hitched up her plaid.

‘I think your wife may object to such fondling should she be watching, Laird Ullyot.’

The chips in his eyes became colder. ‘And you think as Laird here I would have no right of choice?’

The question was so baldly provocative that the blood flared in Madeleine’s face as she comprehended his meaning.

‘Any choice by force is hardly honourable, sir, as any wife of honour would know.’ She drew herself up to her full height, which was not inconsiderable, and wished she were taller. ‘You have just need to ask your own.’

For the very first time warmth marked his face.

‘I am pleased to discover that mind reading is not one of your accomplishments, Lady Randwick,’ he said cryptically, speaking rapidly to Quinlan in Gaelic before he bent to retrieve her blade and left. She saw a group of women near the kitchen watching him, though he did not acknowledge their presence. Absolute interest was scrawled across every feminine face.

Madeleine turned to check Jemmie was tucked in safely behind her and wondered what was to happen next. Where would they be bedded and would the food he had promised arrive? Her stomach was rumbling loudly, protesting the lack of sustenance during the last two days, when a boy of five or so scampered out from a passageway, a broom of some weight bearing down behind him.

‘Away with ye, ye clattie imp.’ A serving girl chased him and Maddy found herself between the assailant and the child and in the first second of looking at him she knew him to be Alexander Ullyot’s child. He had the same eyes and hair. And the same sense of distance from everyone and everything around him. In a child the trait was heartbreaking.

‘Have you lost your senses?’ She turned on the woman and made an effort to snatch at the raised broom. ‘What has the boy done?’

‘Stolen buns from the evening’s wake,’ the woman wailed and Madeleine saw that, despite the etched lines across her brow, she was young. She turned to the child behind her for explanation, though none was forthcoming. He watched her with furtive eyes as he finished off the stolen goods.

Usually children denied their wrongdoings. The thought hit her forcibly. Other children she had seen dealt with in a disciplinary matter had been full of explanation as to why they had not possibly done what it was they stood accused of. This child did none of those things. He did not even run for shelter or brush the offending crumbs from his tunic.

‘Why did you steal the cakes?’ Madeleine made her voice as gentle as she could, bending so the child could see her face. She noticed he watched her lips and did not meet her eyes.

‘Because he is light-heided and dim-witted as well as being bone-hard deaf.’

The boy’s gaze caught the movement of the serving girl as she advanced upon him and with a swish of linen and wool he had run past them and up the stairs.

Turning to Quinlan, Madeleine saw he had distanced himself from the whole exchange. The child was known to him obviously, but he made no comment on the encounter at all as he walked towards the stairs and bade her and Jemmie to follow.

‘I’m to see ye to your sleeping place.’ He did not catch her eye. Was this a good sign or a bad one? Her fingers sought out the cross of gold at her throat and she rubbed it twice, stopping herself the instant she perceived herself doing such. Noel had chided her last week for the foolishness of such actions, castigating her again and again to rid herself of the cultivated habits of her childhood. At Heathwater everything was as measured as it must be here. No false moves, no reckless actions to place the weapon of knowledge in anyone’s hands. Schooled temperance and aloofness were the maxims of the Falstone men and their women suffered if they should forget such governance.

Keep your distance and the strength to maintain decorum no matter what.

Madeleine lifted her chin, remembering the words of her mother, and the words became a mantra as she followed the party up the stairs and into a room built at the back of the keep overlooking a lake. Some windows at least, then. Maddy drew in her breath with gratitude.

‘You will stay here, Lady Randwick, and the boy Jemmie next door until we find a job to set him to. Supper will be sent up on a tray as soon as it is ready.’

‘Thank you.’ She felt the tremor in her voice, though, as she bit back the question of the night’s sleeping arrangements. Quinlan surprised her again with his uncanny ability to read what was on her mind.

‘The mourning will keep the Laird busy for the next few days. You will’na be bothered tonight.’ Momentarily his eyes met hers. Imprinted with perplexity, she perceived also a humanity etched into the blueness. An honourable man, then, Quinlan Ullyot, and one uncertain of the implications of her imprisonment. Could he be persuaded, then, to let her go? Assist in the escape of both herself and Jemmie? Dare she ask the question at all?

‘I am a lady, sir,’ she began, wishing for the first time in her entire life that she bore the gift some young women had of bringing tears to their eyes on demand. ‘Your Laird has no right as a gentleman to keep me here against my will. If you could help me—’

She got no further.

‘Ladies dinna wear the mark of lovers on their breast or watch the slaying of good men in battle from a close distance. It is wise you learn that the will of our Laird is obeyed unquestioningly before ye ask of another what you were about to ask of me. Betrayal is measured in the cost of a life and no one’s life here is worth less than your own. One false step and ye shall be interred, Madeleine Randwick, with the bodies that this night will be laid in the coldness of Ashblane’s dirt.’

Without pausing for an answer he bade Jemmie proceed outside with him, the turning of a key in the lock giving her notice again that she was a prisoner here.

The light of a thin sun struggling through the October clouds hit the wall behind her and made her turn to the window. Through the panes of polished horn the world was strangely distended and made unreal. In the far distance she saw some hills. The Cheviots, she guessed. And just beneath her the movement of a priest hurrying, the black folds of his garment glued by force of wind around his legs and whipping the tassel on his belt sideways. If she listened carefully, she could hear the first tunings of bagpipes keening in the rising wind off the Scottish Lowlands.

Tonight she felt lonely and frightened and confused. Her hands dug deeper into the pockets of her skirt, feeling the last dustings of age-worn leaves. Chamomile. Lemon balm. Marjoram. They grounded her. Made her real. Pulled her bones to the earth in a way few people had been willing to. Jemmie. Goult. Her mother and grandmother. Shutting her eyes, she imagined Eleanor and Josephine calling to her in the way the de Cargne women had summoned their ancestors for centuries. The true witchcraft lay here, she smiled wanly and laid her hand across her heart, listening as the footsteps of the soldiers receded.

When silence reigned she crossed the room and bent at the timbered wall that divided her room from Jemmie’s. Knocking twice, she held her breath, releasing it only as two answering taps came back. Two for safety. Three for danger. The codes from Heathwater were so ingrained that she was suddenly and unreasonably angry. When would their lives ever really be safe? When would she be able to sleep at night without the edge of panic in her dreams? When could Jemmie set aside boy’s clothes and claim her place in a world that would not harm her? Ashblane was as much as a jail as Heathwater had ever been with its powerful Lord and its isolation, and here, caught in the borderlands of mist and drizzle, all she had ever tried to accomplish slid into nothingness.

The Black Widow. She mouthed the words into the quiet around her, hating the sound of them. At twenty-four she had become as notorious as her mother had been, and as trapped.

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