Chapter 1
What was she thinking? God help her, why had she run? When they caught her… But that dreadful likelihood didn’t bear thought. They must not catch her.
Even so, she could not go any faster, or much farther. It felt as if she had been running forever, and she had no idea of exactly where she was.
Glancing up through the forest canopy, she could see the waxing half-moon high above her, its pale light still occluded by the mist she had blessed when leaving Henderland.
Although the moon had been rising then, she had prayed that the mist would conceal her until she reached the crest of the hills southeast of her father’s tower.
After she reached the southern slope in apparent safety, she had followed a little-used track that she hoped her pursuers—for they would certainly pursue her—would never imagine she had taken.
Experience had warned her even then that the mist might augur rain ahead, but the mist had been a blessing nevertheless. In any event, with luck, she would find shelter before the rain found her, or the light of day, come to that.
Long before then she had to decide what to do. But how? What could she do? Who would dare to help her? Certainly, no one living anywhere near St. Mary’s Loch would. Her father was too powerful, her brothers too brutal and too greedy, and Tuedy—
She could not bear even to think about Ringan Tuedy.
A low, canine woof abruptly curtailed her stream of thought, and she froze until a deep male voice somewhere in the darkness beyond the trees ahead of her said quietly, “Wheesht, Ramper, wheesht.”
Terrified, knowing that she was too tired to outrun anyone and dared not risk time to think, let alone try to explain herself to some stranger, eighteen-year-old Molly Cockburn dove desperately into the shrubbery and wriggled her way in as far, as quietly, and as deeply as she could, heedless of the brambles and branches that scratched and tore at her face and bare skin as she did.
Lying still, she feared that her heart might be pounding loudly enough to betray her.
A susurrous sound came then of some beast—nay, a dog—sniffing. Then she heard scrabbling and a rattle of nearby dry shrubbery. Was the dog coming for her?
Hearing the man call it to heel, then a sharper, slightly more distant bark, and realizing that he and his dogs were closer than she had thought, she curled quietly to make herself as small as possible, then went utterly still, scarcely daring to breathe.
She was trembling, though, and whether it was from the cold or sheer terror didn’t matter. She was shaking so hard that she would likely make herself heard if the nosy dog did not drag her from the shrubbery or alert its master to do so.
Above the sounds of the animal that had sensed her presence came others then, even more ominous. Recognizing the distant yet much too near baying of hounds, Molly stifled a groan of despair. They were doubtless Will’s sleuthhounds, trained to track people, even—or especially—rebellious sisters.
Twenty-four-year-old Walter Scott, Laird of Kirkurd since childhood and the sixth Lord of Rankilburn and Murthockston for a scant twenty-four hours, had just taken a long, deep, appreciative breath of the energizing, albeit chilly, damp-earth-and-foliage scented forest air—filling his lungs and trying not to think of the myriad responsibilities that had so suddenly descended on him—when his younger dog gave its low, curious woof.
“Wheesht now, Ramper,” he muttered. When the shaggy pup ignored him, its attention fixed on whatever nocturnal creature it had sensed in the always-so-intriguing shrubbery, Wat added firmly, “Come to heel now, laddie, and mind your manners as Arch does. I’d liefer you disturb no badgers or other wildlife tonight. ”
Hearing its name, the older dog perked its ears, and Ramper turned obediently, if reluctantly, toward Wat. Then, pausing, Ramper lifted his head, nose atwitch.
Arch emitted a sharp warning bark at the same time, and Wat heard the distant baying that had disturbed them himself.
“Easy, lads,” he said as he strode toward the sound, his senses alert for possible trouble.
Both dogs ranged protectively ahead of him, but seeing torchlight in the near distance and now hearing hoofbeats over the hounds’ baying, he halted a few yards past the area where young Ramper had sought whatever wildlife had gone to earth there.
Calling both of his dogs to heel, Wat looked swiftly around lest there be other intruders nearby.
The misty moon’s position indicated that the time was near midnight, so whoever was riding his way with hounds had not come to offer condolences to the new Lord of Rankilburn and hereditary Ranger of Ettrick Forest. That they might be raiders occurred to him next, but he dismissed that thought as unlikely, too.
A third thought and a companion fourth one that brought a near smile to his face led him to shout, “Tam, Sym, to me!”
Doffing his voluminous, fur-lined cloak, he draped it over nearby shrubbery, listened for sounds behind him, and watched the torches draw nearer as he waited.
Except for the ever-closer riders and dogs, silence ensued.
It was possible, he supposed, that neither Tam nor Sym, or perhaps only one of them, had followed him from Scott’s Hall, but both tended to be overprotective of him, and had been since his childhood.
At such a time, it was more likely that both men were within shouting distance than that neither one was.
As the riders drew nearer, Wat drew his sword and eased his dirk forward, hoping that he would need neither weapon.
His dogs were quiet now and kept close, awaiting commands. Hearing a slight rustle behind him, Wat said, “Are you alone, Tam, or is Sym with you?”
“ ’Tis both of us, laird,” Jock’s Wee Tammy said quietly. “We should be enough, too. It be just four or five riders, I’m thinking.”
Even more quietly, Sym Elliot muttered, “Herself did send us out, laird.”
At Rankilburn, “Herself” referred to only one person, his grandmother.
Wat said gently, “Are you suggesting that, had Lady Meg not sent you, you would not have followed me?”
Sym cleared his throat.
“Aye, well, I’m glad you did, both of you,” Wat said, looking at the two shadowy figures as he did.
Jock’s Wee Tammy, despite his name, had nearly sixty years behind him and was thus the older as well as much the larger of the two.
A time-proven warrior and still fierce with a sword, he was captain of the guard at Scott’s Hall.
He and Sym had both served Wat’s father and grandfather long before Wat was born, and he knew both men well and trusted them completely.
“I was woolgathering as I walked,” he told them frankly.
“But Arch and Ramper warned me of our visitors.”
Lanky Sym said, “Herself sent me to tell ye that her ladyship were a-frettin’ earlier and restless. She said to remind ye that if she wakens—her ladyship, I mean—she’d be gey worried to hear ye was out roaming in the forest, so…”
“My mother and grandmother are both strong women,” Wat said when Sym paused. “I do know that Mam is grieving, Sym. We all are.”
“It were too sudden,” Tam said.
“It was, aye,” Wat agreed, stifling the new wave of grief that struck him. “We will miss my lord father sorely, but death does come to us all in the end.”
“Not from this lot we be a-seein’ now, though,” Sym said confidently, drawing his sword. Tam’s was out, too, Wat noted.
“Don’t start anything,” he warned them. “Take your cues from me.”
“Aye, sir, we know,” Tam said.
He knew that they did, but the riders were close. Their baying dogs were closer yet, and he hoped they were well trained. Arch and Ramper would fight to the death to protect him, but he didn’t want to lose either one. He kept them close.
Seconds later, a pack of four hounds dashed toward them through the trees.
“Halt and away now!” Wat bellowed, shouting what the Scotts had long shouted to keep their own dogs from tearing into their prey.
Either his roar or his words were sufficient, because the four stopped in their tracks. Two of them dropped submissively to the ground. The other two hesitated, poised and growling, teeth bared.
Wat stayed where he was and watched the riders approach, four men in pairs, the two on the right bearing flaming torches. In the fiery glow, he recognized the two leaders and a man-at-arms who served them. He did not immediately recognize the fourth man although he looked familiar.
When the four saw him and wrenched their horses to plunging halts, Wat said grimly to their leader, “Will Cockburn, what urgency brings you and these others to Rankilburn at this time of night?”
Cockburn was a neighbor who lived at Henderland Tower on St. Mary’s Loch.
He was a wiry man several years older than Wat and known for leading brutal raids across the border and on the Scottish side, too.
Such a reputation was common in the area, which was rife with reivers. Wat shared a somewhat similar repute.
However, the two of them had never been particularly friendly, and if Will had hoped that Rankilburn might be ripe for his raiding…
Will glowered at him. Then, exchanging a look with his brother Ned, beside him, he looked back at Wat speculatively, as if he hoped that Wat might say more.
Instead, Wat waited, expressionless, for the answer to his question.
At last, Will said, “One of our maidservants seems to have lost her way home. The hounds picked up her scent near St. Mary’s Loch and led us here.”
Molly nearly gasped. So she was a maidservant, was she?
Not that it was far off the mark. But did they truly think that Walter Scott of Kirkurd would care about a missing maidservant?
And, surely, the man must be Scott of Kirkurd if Will called him “Wat” and if they were on Rankilburn land near Scott’s Hall.
“You fear that a maidservant wandered all the way here from Henderland?” Kirkurd said, his tone heavily skeptical. “Sakes, Will, ’tis eight miles or more.”