Chapter 13 #2
“Perhaps I should hang my head and look browbeaten. Then they’d assume you’d just been taking me to task again. That was your purpose in bringing me here, aye?”
“Not to browbeat you, Robby, but to try to understand you better. We must discuss this all later, though, because I agree that Rosalie is unlikely to keep her belief to herself. Nor is she likely to admit that she was mistaken about what she heard.”
“But if we can keep her from telling Lady Meg and Wat—”
“Sakes, she won’t need to send word if she tells her equerry or anyone else at Coklaw. I’d wager that Tad and Alf have already told people in the kitchen, come to that. You know how quickly such news spreads, throughout the Borders.”
She did know. What she did not know was how they could overcome Rosalie’s error. She did not want to marry Dev.
“Then what man do you want to marry, Beany? A Douglas? Who could live up to your standards if Dev does not?”
Rab’s question was unanswerable. She did not realize that tears had welled in her eyes until one trickled down her cheek.
Dev brushed it away with a thumb. “Don’t cry, lass. I meant what I said. I’ll marry you if you want me—nay, if you will have me. A man could do worse, much worse.”
She wanted to smack him. As the thought crossed her mind, her hand flew up, but he caught it easily and held it. “Naughty,” he murmured. Then, ruefully, he said, “I’ll admit that I provoked it, though. What a daft thing to say to you!”
“You should have saved it to use in persuading your father,” she said. “What if he hears about it before he arrives? Would he not forbid you to marry me?”
“No,” Dev said. Again he looked rueful.
“But if he expects you to marry Anne Kerr—”
“I should not have mentioned that,” he interjected, meeting her gaze.
“Father knows that I would not agree to that. Furthermore—although I wager this will seal my fate with you—he was the first to suggest that I should be Warden of Coklaw, when I told him that Archie wanted to install someone here.”
Robina frowned. “But why, if he’d decided you should marry Anne Kerr?”
Grimacing, Dev said, “Because of your Ormiston estate. Sithee, it was originally one of ours and got caught up in the cross-border land-swapping years ago.”
“Is that why you’re willing to marry me now, to get the Ormiston estate?” The disappointment she felt nearly overwhelmed her.
“Sakes, lass, do you think so little of me that you can believe that?” he demanded. “Even if splitting Ormiston off from Coklaw made sense, what manner of guardian would I be to take such base advantage of Benjy as that?”
“I… I didn’t think of that,” she admitted. “I know you would not betray Benjy like that… or Rab.”
“Or you,” he said, his tone gentle again. “You are just as important as they are.”
“I know that you loved Rab as a brother,” she said, looking into his eyes again, “and that I—”
“If my feelings for my own brothers are aught to judge by, I cared much more about Rab than that,” Dev said. “We understood each other so well from the first time we fought side-by-side that talking was rarely necessary.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I remember how often you would just look at each other and smile, or how you would both roll your eyes at the same time.”
“Usually at something you said that struck us the same way,” Dev said. “Rab said once that you were jealous of our friendship, but you need not have been. We both cared equally about you, too, Robby.”
“You have told me yourself that I remind you of him, but I am not Rab, sir.”
Dev’s eyes lit with laughter. “If you were Rab instead of Robby, I promise you, we would not be having this conversation.”
“Well, of course not. Even so—”
“Look,” he said, “we cannot stand here like this any longer without causing a stir, even if it is only a stir of impatience from those waiting to eat supper.”
Pulling a handkerchief from inside his jack, he mopped her face with it.
“At least you haven’t blackened your lashes,” he muttered.
“Rosalie wanted to. She did pluck my eyebrows.”
“Well, don’t let her muck about with your hair, or Corinne either. I like it best in a single plait. That’s how I’ve always pictured you in my mind when I’ve not been here.”
“Faith, did I haunt your mind?”
He grinned, shaking his head. “Let us go to supper, you pliskie bairn.”
“I’m not a bairn.”
“True, but believe me, ’tis safer for me to think of you so,” Dev retorted.
Her emotions were in such turmoil that she could not think, let alone imagine what he meant by such a statement.
However, she lacked energy enough to argue or to demand more answers from him, so she went meekly past him when he held the door for her, and took her place beside Lady Rosalie at the table.
“It is about time,” Rosalie said. “What did you decide?”
Dev began to say the grace-before-meat, saving Robina from having to answer at once. By the time he finished, she’d decided to elude the question by changing the subject to one she knew Rosalie could not resist by asking her what new rumors she had heard.
Dev heard Rosalie’s question and was glad that Robby managed to avoid answering it. Honor demanded that he let her decide, but he understood, too, that the decision was a burden he should share with her.
Lady Rosalie’s misunderstanding unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. He suspected that she might have put him in the wrong on purpose.
Women, in his experience, were always matchmaking. His mother had certainly pressed his older sister, Gellis, to marry and had seemed to think that any man of property would do for her. Perhaps similar thoughts were in Rosalie’s mind.
But he was not a man of property, and she must know he was not.
Or did she know him only as a knight and believe that all knights did own property? Many knights did but more did not.
In any event, Robby deserved a man who could take care of her and keep her out of trouble, a man with sufficient wealth that she would never again have to keep her kirtles until she wore them to rags.
Never again should she have to put up with well-meaning women who wanted to change her. She should just be herself.
Most women and girls he had met, other than Lady Meg, were too likely to agree with whatever a man said. Such women bored him. Robby rarely agreed with what any man said, and she was never boring.
She knew her own mind, and when she disagreed with him, he could always see that she had reason. Not always good reason, perhaps. He was able to visualize a stream of occasions when her so-called reason for whatever she’d done had led to strong argument between the twins.
He had often sided with Rab but not always.
Heaven knew Rab could be as reckless as Robby could, and more so.
Dev remembered thinking that he had been the voice of reason then, and sanity.
He grinned at the thought. Devilish sanity, perhaps, which at least once had stirred Rab to try to knock him on his backside.
Unsuccessfully, but he and Rab, grappling wildly, even furiously, had ended in a horse pond, thanks to a fierce shove from Robby. All three had laughed… afterward.
Recalling her suggestion that he’d agreed to marry her because she reminded him of Rab, he smiled. He had scoffed, even laughed at the image that had leaped to his mind then of Rab in a wedding gown, repeating his vows.
In truth, though, he understood what she’d meant, because he had known her almost as long as he’d known Rab and they had all gotten along well together.
So, did he equate Rab and Robby in his mind, or in any other way?
“What be ye thinking on, Dev?” Benjy asked. “Ye look powerful vexed.”
“Then I beg your pardon,” Dev said. “Did you want to say something to me?”
“Only that I ha’ been talking wi’ Greenlaw about being a laird, and he said I must learn me numbers. A good laird doesna depend on his scribe or some monk to keep his accounts for him, Greenlaw said.”
“Not without knowing how to look them over for himself and understand what they mean,” Dev said, realizing that he ought to give some thought to the boy’s education.
“Greenlaw tells me so much about Coklaw and such that I canna keep it all in me head. Could you teach me about numbers and accounts?”
“I can, aye,” Dev said, hoping he was not overstating the truth.
His responsibility for accounts at Ormiston had been nil.
So, although he was good with numbers and could read and write, he had not the least notion how one set up the accounts for an estate and had been expecting to learn such things from Greenlaw.
It occurred to him that his father would likely have something curt to say if he were to admit that failing to him. Greenlaw would not.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Dev said. “I need to learn more about Coklaw’s accounts, and since Greenlaw has been keeping them for years, he can teach you and me at the same time. Then I’ll know just what you should know.”
“Good,” Benjy said. “I’d like that. Greenlaw gets hecklesome if I forget.”
“I can get hecklesome, too, if you fail to heed what he or I tell you.”
“D’ye think I dinna ken that fine, Dev? ’Tis just that some things take longer to stick wi’ me than others do.”
“I know what you mean, laddie. I’m that same road myself.”
Asking Lady Rosalie to share any new rumors with her had opened a floodgate, so Robina was able to eat her supper in peace, needing only to glance at her occasionally and say, “Art sure of that, cousin?” or “Mercy!”
She could hear Dev chatting with Benjy, although not what they said, and her thoughts drifted back to the inner chamber and Rab’s odd behavior, first snarling at her not to speak and then demanding to know whom she would marry if she did not marry Dev.
It had sounded as if Rab thought she ought to marry Dev.
Rab thought the sun rose and set with Dev, though. She did not.
If it weren’t for the fact that she and Dev seemed to have been in conflict with each other from Easter night forward, she might have welcomed the idea. She liked him well enough when he was not telling her what she must and must not do, and she knew him better than any other eligible man.
But he was just a friend. A too-domineering friend.
In truth, though, no one was scouring the countryside to shepherd eligible suitors to Coklaw. Nor was anyone likely to, except perhaps Wat or Dev.
“Are you listening to me, Robina?”
Starting guiltily at Rosalie’s indignant tone, she fought to recall enough to nod and then said with a smile, “I believe you were describing Jannie’s new maidservant, cousin. I hope she finds the woman more acceptable than you do.”
“At least Hilda does not flirt with every man at the Hall,” Rosalie replied.
Looking directly at her then, Robina said, “I hope you do not tell others that you hold such an opinion of Corinne, madam. That would displease me. Corinne is a good-hearted person who cares deeply about us and is practically a member of our family. She does enjoy flirting, but that is all she does.”
“Mercy, dearling, I never meant to distress you,” Rosalie said, lowering her voice as she flicked a glance past Robina toward Dev and Benjy. “You must admit, though, that the way she goes on about Sir David’s man, Jem Keith…”
When she paused, Robina said lightly, “Corinne went on in much the same way about Rab’s equerry, and about Shag’s Hobby.
She lost interest in Hob only after she clapped eyes on Jem.
I’ve seen them together,” she added. “Jem is respectful of her without encouraging her, and she does naught but flirt.”
“And kiss,” Rosalie said, raising an eyebrow. “I saw that myself.”
“Aye, and kiss,” Robina admitted. “Corinne says kissing is part of flirting and she enjoys kissing handsome men. She wants to learn how to tell good kissing from bad, so she can avoid marrying a man who can’t do it well.”
Rosalie glanced toward Dev again and murmured with a dawning twinkle, “Do you discuss such things with your maidservant? My dear—What?”
Robina had raised a hand to stop her and was choking back laughter. “Prithee, cousin, who else would you have had me ask? Mistress Greenlaw or one of our tenants’ wives? Perhaps if I knew Molly Scott better, or even Lady Meg…”
She blinked, trying to imagine asking the formidable Meg such questions.
Rosalie chuckled, but Robina was undeterred. “Believe me when I say that Corinne is a better source of such information than anyone else I know, cousin.”
“Do you mean to tell me that she is not a maiden?”
“Well, of course, she is a maiden,” Robina said, although she was not sure about that, thanks to Corinne’s comments about Rab.
“See you,” she went on, “her grandmother was a tavern wench who married one of those French soldiers who came here years ago. Corinne declares that flirting is therefore in her blood.”
“I see,” Rosalie said. “I also see that I spent too much time in England, and the English ways must have affected me, because when I was young, if I’d had a maidservant like your Corinne, I would have known much more than I did when I married.
Not that my mother—a formidable woman and an English Percy, herself—would have allowed a girl like Corinne to cross our threshold. ”
“How sad for you,” Robina said. “She is the merriest creature.”
“Aye, very likely, but you have finished eating, dearling. I expect it is time we excused ourselves to the solar.”
Dev, apparently overhearing that remark and thus making Robina wonder what else he’d heard, turned and said, “I mean to take Robina for a walk outside the gates, my lady. As you noted earlier, we have matters to discuss, and we can do so privily there, whilst remaining in view of men on the wall walk.”
“Very well, sir,” Rosalie said. “Prithee, bring her back in before dark, though. I shudder to think what Meg will say if she learns I’ve been lax about such matters.”
“We won’t linger,” Dev said, standing. “Do you need your cloak, lass?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “The evenings have grown warmer.”
“They have, aye,” he agreed, giving her a look that warmed her to her toes.