Chapter 14 #2
At least, he told himself, they had not brought dogs out with them.
Keeping his eyes on the guards above, he crept forward only when the two he could see looked away from him. His progress was slow, but he was due for some luck. If he could just find the right spot and mark it…
“As I see it,” Dev said when they reached the huge, ancient oak that Robby admired, “we have but two choices, to marry or not marry. What we need to discuss is why we might do so and why, perhaps, we should not.”
“Faith,” she said when he paused expectantly, “do you expect me to start?”
“I’ll wager you were thinking it over at supper whilst Rosalie blethered on and on.”
She looked up with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “What makes you so sure I was not heeding every word she said?”
“You lack the patience, and you jumped nearly out of your skin when she asked if you were listening. The woman clatters like a beggar’s claptrap.”
“That is a mean thing to say. She is generous and kind.”
“Aye, but her blunder landed us in this plight. And her love of clish-maclaver, which you encouraged, will likely make it worse for us.”
“I don’t deny that I encouraged her to share any new rumors she had heard, but I did it to keep her from plaguing me to tell her what decision we’d made.”
“At least, she accepts that it is our decision,” he said, leaning back against the wide, rough trunk of the oak. “This is a splendid old tree.”
“I came here as a child when I was upset or wanted to be left alone. It is easy to climb, and I’d sit in the crook of that big branch up there to think.”
“Did no one ever prevent your coming out by yourself?”
“Aye, sure, Father did whenever there was trouble in the area. He knew I did not roam far, though. I could nearly always hear when someone called.”
“Nearly always?”
Instead of rising to what was admittedly bait, she gave him a serious look and said, “Why do you think we should marry?”
“I did not say we should, only that we ought to discuss whether we should.”
“Then you don’t think so. Tell me why not?”
“Robby, don’t…” He hesitated, aware that he, not she, was quibbling.
When he paused, she cocked her head in the familiar birdlike way that told him she might keep pressing him to say yea or nae until he lost his temper and either told her what he thought or walked away.
Accordingly, he said with careful calm, “I have not decided anything, lass. I spoke the truth when I said I’d given no thought to marriage because of my obligations to Archie Douglas. However, that was before he sent me here.”
“What else do you think?”
“That although Archie did not say how long I’m to remain warden here, he knows Wat wants me to stay. So, unless something changes, I expect I’ll be here for some time.”
“What else?”
“I told you some of it earlier. I do care about you. I enjoy talking with you—”
“Nearly always,” she said, and he was glad to see the twinkle again.
“True,” he said, smiling. “But, even when we disagree, you make me think. You see many things the way I do, but you surprise me, too, with thoughts and ideas that have never entered my mind. I welcome that.”
“Nearly always.”
He straightened then and caught her by her shoulders, giving her a shake. “You can also infuriate me. I’ll admit that, too. Will you admit the same thing about me?”
“Aye, sure,” she said. “You infuriate me every time you dismiss what I say or prevent me from doing as I please.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said evenly, holding her gaze. “Rab was more likely to understand that I meant well when I disagreed with him and to accept that I knew more about some things than he did.”
“Aye, he accepted you as his superior because you trained him, so he turned you into something almost godlike, Rab did. Do you want me to idolize you, too?”
“I do not,” Dev said, revolted by the image she’d created of Rab and of her so absurdly imagined self.
“As if you could idolize me! And, if you think Rab bowed and scraped to my every word and gesture, you’ve forgotten that he was as stubborn, reckless, outspoken, and care-naught about things as you are… his own safety being one of them!”
Hearing his increasingly angry words and overwhelmed by a sudden, clear image of Rab on Black Corby charging in front of the lancer, then falling at Auld Nick’s hooves—aware that tears had welled in his eyes, Dev turned sharply away from her toward the tree, furiously fighting to compose himself.
Stunned by his sudden anger and uncharacteristic tears, and feeling guilty for speaking so rashly, but fighting her emotions, too, Robina drew a breath before she stepped close to Dev and gently touched his arm.
“I should never have said that,” she murmured.
“Oh, Robby.” He pulled her into his arms, holding her so tightly that she could barely breathe. “You can always say what you think to me. It’s what I love best about you and always have. I’m just so sorry that Rab died and that I—”
“Dev, don’t!” she cried, pushing unsuccessfully against his chest with both hands, trying to free herself from his embrace.
“Don’t say you’re sorry that you lived instead.
I could not bear that. By my troth, sir, if you are going to carry that burden and see him whenever you look at me—” She broke off, pressing her face and hands against his chest, unable to speak or to breathe properly.
He did not let go of her.
She felt his chest heave with a huge sigh or a sob. Then his right hand gently cupped the back of her head. Its thumb stroked the smooth hair near the centered part that separated the plaits still looped round her ears.
Silence filled the woods around them for a long minute.
Then, quietly, he said, “I was going to say I’m sorry I couldn’t prevent his death.
We were both warriors, Robby. We knew from the outset that one or both of us might die in battle.
I won’t deny that I’ve wondered why Rab died instead of me or never wished that he’d been the one to live.
I did wish that, desperately, when I brought him home and saw how devastated you all were.
But I knew that wish was futile. God did not grant us the power to change the past. We can only try to make amends when we’re at fault. ”
“Well, you cannot make amends by marrying me.”
“Nor have I imagined that I could or that I must. What I will tell you is that I miss Rab almost as much as you do, and I mean to keep my promise to him. If you and I do not marry, I’ll do all I can to find you a good husband.”
“You will want to approve the man I choose, I expect.”
“Would not Rab expect that of me?”
“Aye, he would, but I do not,” she said firmly.
“Nor do I want to talk more about that now. I like you, too, Dev, most of the time. I think Rab approves… that is, that he would approve of our marrying. Likely my father would, too, if he were alive. Rosalie already does, so likely Lady Meg will, and Wat. But this is all too abrupt, too soon, and it demands too much of me.”
“I know,” he said. “I feel it, too. Especially since my father will also approve.”
“Because of the Ormiston estate, aye. But that won’t—”
“Don’t say it,” he warned. “I’ve told you how I feel about that.
Mayhap one day, if we marry and if it pleases Benjy, we can build a cottage on that estate, but only as a place to stay whilst we visit him and his family.
That land is his and will remain so. I’m the last person who should covet it, and so I shall tell my father if he raises the issue, as he may. ”
“It is part of your family history, too,” she said softly.
“And that is all it is, Robby. I want to make my own family history, and I’m willing… nay, I’d be honored… to do that with you if that is your choice. But you must decide, lass. I know that, given time, you will know what you want, one way or the other. I will honor that decision, whatever it is.”
She pressed a hand to his chest again, and this time he eased his embrace. When he did, she stood on tiptoe, put both hands to his cheeks and pulled his face closer to kiss him.
Her lips no sooner touched his than, with a moan, he pulled her close again and kissed her more possessively, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. However, when she darted her tongue to meet his and pressed her body closer, he released her.
“Don’t tempt me further, lass,” he said. “I have too little control over myself, and I don’t want anything to happen that might make you feel obliged to marry me. If you come to me, it must be of your own free will.”
“Blame Corinne for that kiss then,” she said. “I like the way you kiss, and I wanted more of it. She said she wanted to learn how a man should kiss. I know now that I want someone like you, who makes me feel it deep inside when he kisses me.”
He smiled. “So it’s Corinne’s fault, is it?
” When she nodded, he said, “I’ll do all I can to persuade Rosalie to let you think in peace and not urge you to marry me.
But we must go in now, Robby. I can see the men on the wall from here.
I doubt they can tell what we’re doing, but I’d liefer they not start imagining things they might repeat.
All we’d need is someone suggesting to my father, Archie, or even Wat that I’ve abused my power here. ”
Robina barely heard him. She remembered instead that he’d said she could always say what she thought to him because it was what he loved best about her. Did that mean he loved other things about her, too?
From shrubbery twenty yards from the castle clearing, his view of the rise still obscured, Chukk watched the man and woman go in.
It had grown darker. The guards would soon be lighting torches.
Moreover, he was taking chances that would see him hanged if they caught him. But he could think of no other way to gain his treasure.
His sole hope was to mark the right spot, creep in under cover of the ground fog, and successfully find the right spot. Then he’d have to dig. To accomplish all that would, he suspected, require a miracle of God.
He saw that one of the two men he’d seen on the wall walk had vanished. The other paced for a time and then went round to the east wall.
Deducing that there were only two men on the wall now, and perhaps just the one, Chukk crept closer, stopping only when a watcher returned, and then creeping forward again when the man turned his back.
In this manner, he came to a place where, through the shrubbery, he could see the top of the rise and the small sapling planted there, as near as it could be to the spot beneath which his treasure awaited.
“Da said it were nobbut a foot or two beneath the surface,” he murmured.
Chukk did not consider himself a man of intellect, but he knew that a man planting a sapling might easily dig deeper than a foot or two. Most would dig a good-sized hole.
Suspecting that someone had recently found Shetland Jamie’s jar, he felt an urge he’d not felt since childhood to cry, kick his feet, and pound the treacherous ground.
Since he could not safely do that, the urge passed, and he eyed the sapling more judiciously. Anyone might have planted it, even the wee laddie he’d seen outside the wall.
The hole might not be so deep, after all.
Dev spent much of Monday riding Coklaw’s lands from Hummelknowes near Slitrig Water to the Ormiston estate east and southeast of the castle.
He rode with Sandy, Jock, and Shag’s Hobby, because two outlying cottars had reported rumors of English raiders and of strangers wandering near their cottages.
The strangers had asked questions and commented that Northumberland was rightful lord of Teviotdale, because Henry IV of England had awarded the Douglas estates to his grandfather. The raiders, men said, were likely thinking of laying siege again to Coklaw.
Dev was certain the rumors were untrue, because whatever the current seven-year-old English King’s grandfather had done, the King’s warring regents insisted that they wanted peace with Scotland. Even so, he knew better than to ignore such rumors, ever.
After a day spent learning nothing that increased his concern, Dev returned late to Coklaw, spoke with Jem Keith and others who were still up, learned that nothing new had occurred, and retired to bed.
Tuesday morning, when he descended later than usual to break his fast, he learned that Mistress Geddes, a Hawick seamstress, had arrived and begged speech with the laird.
“What the devil does she want?” Dev demanded.
“Mistress Geddes says she’s coom tae finish the lady Robina’s wedding dress,” the lad replied. “We heard summat yestereve about a wedding, sir, but no that her ladyship be the one a-getting married. Be that true?”