Chapter Thirteen #2
Thomas Hamilton stepped into her chamber with the easy confidence of a man who believed he belonged there. He wore a trim doublet of saffron-yellow wool, his hair neatly combed, his cheeks freshly shaven. The smile he offered her was polished, had once pleased her but now.... did not.
Elena stared at him, surprise giving way to a sharper spark of annoyance. “Thomas,” she said, sitting up fully, “Ye canna simply enter without—” she paused, riled to shock by so bold an action.
He paused, his smile barely slipping. “I did knock,” he said mildly.
“But ye should nae have—ye should have announced yerself and waited for my call,” she replied, drawing her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
The correction landed harshly, but she did not soften it.
If she was to be mindful of propriety—of what might be seen, assumed, or remembered—then so, too, would he be reminded of its bounds.
Thomas was, on the whole, completely unmoved by her disturbance.
“At any rate,” he said, clasping his hands together at his waist, “I had hoped to catch you before you got about your day. I meant to check in on you last night, but Mistress MacTavish advised you needed rest.”
She heaved a sigh and closed her shawl more tightly over her chest, thankful for her mother’s intervention.
He came closer as he spoke, until he stood only a few feet away. The room felt smaller with him in it, the air heavier, as though it no longer moved as freely as it had a moment before.
“I spent half the night worrying for you,” he continued. “I hardly slept.”
Elena pressed her lips together. “I appreciate your concern,” she said, “but I am quite well.”
He reached for her hand, the gesture easy, unthinking. She drew her own back at once, pretending to smooth a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His smile faltered briefly, then returned, unchanged.
“I know there has been... talk,” he added after a moment, his tone shifting, careful now. “Men are inclined to make much of such events. But you must understand—I was unarmed, outnumbered. Any rash action would have made matters worse.”
Elena said nothing, a wee bit astounded by him. Any rash actions? Made matters worse?
“I trusted,” he continued, filling the silence, “that help would come quickly. And it did.”
The words settled so very poorly.
“Thomas,” she said at last, her voice even, “there is something I must say, and I would rather say it now than carry it unspoken.”
His expression shifted—alert now, though still mild. “Of course.”
“Ye told others that ye fought for me,” she continued. “That ye were overrun.”
He drew a slow breath. “I did what I could under the circumstances.”
She shook her head once. Not sharply. Simply no.
“That isnaetrue.” The room went very still while she stared at him.
“Ye dinna draw yer sword,” she said. “Ye dinna move. And afterward, ye let it be said otherwise.” She met his gaze, steady despite the faint tightening in her chest. “I will nae pretend it dinna matter.”
Thomas frowned, clearly unsettled. “Elena, I did not mean to mislead—”
“Ye did,” she said sternly, assured of this truth at least. “Ye absolutely did. And I need to ken that if we are to speak of a future, ye will nae ask me to accept comfort built on untruths.”
He hesitated, then straightened, recovering his composure. “I believed,” he said carefully, “that my father’s men would answer quickly. That the situation would be resolved without further harm.”
He was missing the point. Her hands curled lightly into the edge of her shawl.
“But it was nae, and I spent three days running,” she went on.
“Three nights nae knowing if we would see morning. That matters to me. And if I am to be your wife, I need to ken that ye mean to be... more than a spectator.”
He shifted his weight, discomfort plain now. “You will be well protected,” he said. “My father commands a strong force—"
She snorted a harsh laugh, disbelief etched in every line of her face. “As does mine—but he was nae there. Ye were.”
“I would arrange that you—we—always have guards.”
“That is nae what I asked,” she replied.
At length, he said, “I will see that nothing like this happens again.”
It was not a promise of change. Only of arrangement.
Elena inclined her head once, acknowledging exactly what he had—and had not—offered. “Verra well,” she said, stepping past him toward the door, the movement itself a quiet dismissal.
“Oh—yes. Of course,” he said, startled into motion, following after her though he did not quite clear the threshold. “I had thought, perhaps, we might walk a little—nothing strenuous. Only about the bailey. With guards, of course.”
“Nae,” she said, cutting in before he could build the suggestion further. “I dinna think I’m up for that today.”
She kept the rest to herself—the sharp, instinctive refusal that rose in her mind.
He accepted her answer with visible relief, possibly attributing it to fatigue, or lingering shock, or mayhap any explanation that did not require that he look inward. “Then another time,” he said. “Perhaps after the meal tonight.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed, not even bothering to smile politely, as she might have once done.
She closed the door behind him and stood there for a moment, hand resting against the wood.
It was not anger she felt, exactly, but a dull astonishment at how thoroughly he had missed the point, at how obtuse he obviously was.
And she knew, with a clarity that brought no comfort at all, that it had changed very little—the truth was she was beginning to dread Thomas’s company. Her heart, whether she wished it or not, had already begun to turn elsewhere.
Or mayhap, it had simply never turned away from Jacob.
After the missteps thus far today—and it was so early yet—Elena was sorry that the rest of her morning was just as trying.
She was summoned, along with her mother and Meggie Jamison, to Lady Hamilton’s solar shortly after the household stirred in earnest. The chamber sat high in the east-facing tower, warm with late-morning light and scented faintly of beeswax and dried lavender.
Cushioned benches lined the walls, and a small table had been laid with wine, sweet biscuits, and preserved fruit.
Lady Hamilton received the trio with effusive concern.
“My dear Elena,” she said at once, rising from her chair and taking both of Elena’s hands in her own. “You cannot imagine the distress your disappearance caused. We were beside ourselves.”
Elena inclined her head politely. “You are kind, my lady.”
“Now,” Lady Hamilton continued, guiding her firmly toward a seat, “you must tell us everything. From the very beginning. I cannot abide gaps in a story, especially one so dreadful.”
Elena felt her shoulders tighten beneath her gown. She glanced briefly at her mother, but Isabel merely offered a small, steadying nod, saying nothing.
So Elena began where it started, telling of her stroll with Thomas in the orchard, of being taken unawares.
“Yes, yes, my dear,” Lady Hamilton chirped. “My son has told me all this, and of his heroics—fruitless though they turned out to be—trying to save you.”
Elena clenched her teeth and somehow managed to keep her lip from curling, and a rebuke from bursting forth.
Her mother, seated directly on her left, laid her hand over Elena’s, squeezing gently, a warning mayhap.
“Oh, but Lady Hamilton,” Isabel said, lifting her chin, “I pray, let us nae make my daughter relive the trauma of it.”
“No, of course not,” Lady Hamilton agreed readily, her eyes widening as though she, too, wished to be spared any truly dreadful account. But then she leaned forward, a spark of almost girlish eagerness lighting her expression. “The men, though—the English raiders—were they terribly brutal?”
“They were determined,” Elena replied with care.
“And you escaped how, precisely?”
“With help,” Elena said blandly.
Meggie Jamison took a measured sip of her wine before setting the cup aside. “My son, Jacob, witnessed Elena’s abduction,” she said, smoothly redirecting the focus. “He was able to—”
“Of course, yes, as we’ve all heard,” Lady Hamilton cut in, with the air of brushing aside a detail she found already settled. “But what I wish to know, my dear—”
“It was really quite fortunate,” Meggie continued, entirely undeterred, “that he happened upon her when he did.”
“Providence, I said,” Isabel added at once, looking across Elena to Meggie with a bright nod. “What else would place your Jacob so near at exactly the right moment, ready to give aid to my dear Elena?”
She pressed a hand to her chest, her tone rich with feeling. Elena hardly recognized her mother then; she had never heard such artifice pass Isabel’s lips.
“At precisely the moment,” Isabel went on, “when Elena was in the greatest need.” She extended a gracious hand toward Lady Hamilton. “And your Thomas, too, of course,” she said sweetly, as though careful not to exclude him from the tale.
Lady Hamilton cleared her throat and shifted in her seat, turning her head this way and that. “Yes, well—Thomas being as he is—refined by his education at university and not...” She paused, fumbling, her gaze flicking between Isabel and Meggie as she searched for a word that would not offend.
“Nae trained by the sword,” Isabel supplied helpfully, with unmistakable pride, “as our lads were.”
Meggie nodded once in agreement.
Lady Hamilton nodded as well, though more slowly. “Yes. Trained by the sword. Thomas was a sickly child, you see,” she offered, as though that might excuse matters, before hastening to correct herself. “But of course he is well past all that and—”
She faltered, then seemed to read the room at last, and refrained from making her son the subject of the conversation again.
“But you, my dear,” Lady Hamilton said after a moment, plainly unsatisfied, “you are remarkably composed. I should have been hysterical.”
Elena managed a polite smile. “There was little time for it.”