CHAPTER 6
“You were right to come to me,” Margaret told Brian. “Now tell me what’s happened.”
“Da killed her this time!” Tears streaked down his face. “He’s killed my mum.”
Margaret swallowed. She was afraid to go into the boy’s cottage with his violent, drunk father there, but his mother might still be alive. “I’d best go see.”
“Nay!” Brian said. “I don’t know how soon he’ll be back, and he mustn’t find ye there.”
“Your father’s gone?” she asked. “Where?”
“To bury her,” the lad choked out. “Said he knows a place where no one will ever find her body.”
Good God. Margaret’s hand went to her throat.
“Da said he’ll tell everyone she left him, and if I say otherwise, he’ll kill me too.”
“I’ll get my cloak and take you and Ella to the castle at once,” Margaret said. “You’ll be safe there.”
“I’ll not be safe so long as Da knows where I am,” Brian said, shaking his head violently. “I’m going to go as far away as I can.”
Margaret eased Brian onto a stool and tried to calm him. Ella still clung to him with her face pressed into his chest and her tiny fingers clenched on his bloody shirt.
“Come, Brian, ye can’t manage on your own,” she said. “How will ye live?”
“Ye know I’m a hard worker. I can find a place on a ship,” he said. “I’ll go to sea and never come back here.”
Margaret could not blame him for wanting to escape to a different life.
“But I can’t take care of Ella too.” His eyes pleaded with her for understanding. “Will ye take her?”
“Take her?” she said.
“Please!” Brian said, fighting tears.
She was not sure what he meant. “As I said, I can take her to the castle, where my sister and the laird will—”
“Not the castle! People in the village work there,” he said. “They know Ella, and Da will find out and get her back. Ye must hide her from him.”
Margaret looked up to see Lizzie listening raptly from the doorway.
“With no proof of murder and the only witness gone,” Lizzie said, “David will have no justification for keeping Ella from her father.”
“David will do it if I ask him to,” Margaret said.
“Da would find a way to steal her back, I know it,” Brian said. “My mum always said how kind ye were. She’d want you to have Ella.”
“Me? Have her?” Margaret was taken aback.
“I know you’re fond of Ella, and you’d take good care of her,” he said, his voice cracking. He rubbed his cheek against the top of his sister’s head. “Please, can’t ye be her mother now?”
Ella looked up at her then with wide blue eyes, and the air went out of Margaret’s lungs in a rush. She would not allow the violent man who murdered this sweet child’s mother to ever have her back. A fierce determination filled her to do whatever she must to protect her.
When Brian lifted his sister onto Margaret’s lap and the exhausted child leaned heavily against her chest, Margaret’s decision was made.
“Of course I’ll take care of Ella,” she said.
“I can’t stay any longer,” Brian said. “If Da catches me trying to leave, he’ll beat me—or worse.”
“I’ll take care of you as well,” Margaret said. “We should stay together.”
“Ella and I have a better chance of escaping him apart,” Brian said. “Da will travel the roads and search everywhere, asking after a boy and a wee girl.”
Though Margaret tried to persuade him he would be safer with her, in the end, she could not make him stay. And the lad deserved a chance at a new life, far from the village where he would always be known as his father’s son.
“I left our things outside,” he said.
While he brought in a dirty cloth bag and a large rectangular basket from outside the door, Margaret and Lizzie gathered what few coins they’d brought with them.
“Hide these coins well,” Margaret told him, then she gave him one of her pieces of black onyx. “This is for protection.”
A tear slid down Brian’s cheek as he pressed a soft kiss to his sister’s cheek.
Margaret suspected he’d been shown little affection in his life. She put her arm about his bony shoulders and held him. For a moment, he leaned into her, then he stepped away and hoisted his bag over his shoulder.
“You’re going to grow up to be a fine man,” she told him. “When you’re ready to find us, Ella and I will be waiting for you.”
###
“Bwian! Bwian!” Ella cried out, her small arms reaching toward the door.
Margaret was grateful Ella had not understood her brother was leaving without her until after the door closed behind him. The parting was already so painful for him without hearing his sister’s heart-wrenching cries.
“Hush, sweetling, hush,” she cooed as she rubbed Ella’s back and rocked her on her lap.
Margaret’s heart wept for the little girl in her arms. How could she fill such a gaping hole in Ella’s life?
The poor child had lost both her mother and her brother tonight.
Margaret squeezed her eyes shut and prayed Ella had not actually witnessed the bloody murder.
Even if she had not, Ella most likely had seen violence in her home before this.
Ella’s cries gradually subsided to soft hiccoughs, and eventually she fell into an exhausted sleep in Margaret’s arms. Being careful not to wake her, Margaret laid her in her basket.
Her heart swelled as she watched Ella sleep curled up on her side in the basket, which was meant for a babe, not a child of three. Even sound asleep, she clung to her ragged blanket and a dirty doll her mother had made, all the poor thing had from the only home and family she knew.
“By the saints, what will ye do with her?” Lizzie asked, leaning over the basket.
“I’m going to keep her.”
She touched Ella’s soft cheek. Tears swam in her eyes. She was a mother. After years of longing, she had given up on her dream of having a child. Ella was the answer to her prayers.
“I’m your mother now,” she whispered. “I’ll take good care of you. Always.”
Ella changed everything. This could no longer be a temporary escape from court. Margaret could not go back. Ever.
“I can’t wait to see Archie and George’s faces when they find out,” Lizzie said with a grin. “Adopting the child of a penniless villager, and a murderer at that, will ruin their plans of making the kind of marriage alliance they hoped for.”
“They must never find out. Never,” she said, gripping Lizzie’s arm. “They would take her away from me.”
“What will ye do?” Lizzie asked.
“I don’t know yet.” Where could she go that her brothers would not find her? How would she care for the child once she got there? She rubbed her forehead, trying to think.
“Ye can’t stay here in the village long without being found out,” Lizzie said.
Brian’s father would assume Brian took Ella with him when he disappeared, and the other villagers would assume their mother took both children with her.
That bought Margaret a little time. Still, she could not keep Ella hidden in the cottage for long without being discovered by a villager, if her brothers’ men did not find them first.
“I’ll have to take Ella somewhere I’m not known,” Margaret said, more to herself than to Lizzie.
“I know,” Lizzie said. “Ye can go live in the Highlands with Sybil and her MacKenzie husband.”
“If only I had a way to get there.” MacKenzie lands were far away and difficult to reach. Her brothers could track her down anywhere in the Lowlands, but no one in the MacKenzie clan territory knew her except her sister. She could pretend to be someone else there.
“Ye could hire a man to take ye.” Lizzie screwed up her face in thought. “He’d have to be someone who knows the Highlands well and who can wield a sword if you’re attacked.”
How would she ever find such a person—and quickly? Even if she did, the man would probably take her straight to Archie. Any fool would know he could gain more by revealing her plan to her powerful brother than by helping her escape.
Lizzie yawned and stretched her arms. They were both beyond tired.
“We can’t do anything before morning, so let’s sleep on it.” Margaret brushed Lizzie’s hair back from her face. “Thank you for helping me tonight. I don’t know what I would have done without ye.”
After Lizzie climbed the rope ladder up to the loft, Margaret set Ella’s basket on the floor beside the narrow bed, then she paused to marvel again at the girl was now her daughter.
Though she had no right to this dear, sweet child, Ella needed a mother, and Margaret was determined to keep them together.
She had no idea how, and she did not have much time to figure it out.
In the morning, her brothers would discover she was not in the palace. How long would it be before they sent men to Blackadder Castle and the village to look for her?
God help me, what can I do?
She picked up the bag with her shattered onyx from the bed and dropped to her knees beside Ella’s basket.
Though she doubted the stone retained its magical qualities after it was shattered, if it ever had any, she was desperate.
The jagged pieces poked into her palm as she squeezed the bag and prayed for a way to escape with Ella.
When no answer came, she rested her head on her folded arms on the bed.
Her mind was foggy with exhaustion when she felt a slight draft and turned to see the lamp on the table in the other room flicker.
She meant to have that door fixed for Thomas because the latch sometimes stuck open.
With a deep sigh, she got up to blow out the lamp and shut the door.
When she stepped into the other room, she came to an abrupt halt, too stunned to move as her mind tried to make sense of what her eyes seemed to see.
A huge Highland warrior sat with his feet propped on the table, a long dirk across his lap, and a wicked smile on his face. Margaret blinked, expecting the inexplicable vision to disappear. But the vision—or rather, the man—remained.
He had coal-black hair that fell past impossibly broad shoulders, a square-jawed face with the shadow of a beard, and startlingly blue eyes that watched her closely.
Despite his smile and relaxed posture, his long, muscular body exuded an animal power that reminded her of the king’s lions.
She knew instinctively that if she attempted to run, he would spring from his seat and pounce on her before she took one step.
She forced back the almost overwhelming urge to scream. That would wake Ella and Lizzie and alert the Highlander to their presence. She had to protect them, no matter what it cost her. Her heart beat so frantically that she felt lightheaded, but she was determined to keep her wits about her.
“This will be easier on both of us if ye cooperate.” The Highlander spoke in a deep, soft voice, as if soothing a frightened animal, but everything about him pulsed danger, danger, danger.
“Cooperate?” she asked, her own voice coming out in a thin whisper. “What is it ye want?”
“You, lass,” he said. “I’ve come for you.”