Chapter Twenty One
After Prime, Ian led Jo out into the garden.
To his surprise, her gaze passed over the flowers and well-tended vegetable patches.
Instead, she hurried over to the small table beneath a flowering tree and surveyed the chess set he’d laid out for later in the day, when the abbot would be free to play.
“Abbot Matthew and I always enjoy a game when I visit,” he explained.
Her uncanny eyes shone brightly as she continued to consider the pieces. “Who usually wins?”
Ian rubbed the back of his neck, a mock, sheepish grin on his face. “As a matter of fact, the abbot always wins.”
Laughing, she picked up the white queen and tossed it absently in her hand. “I love to play.”
“Really?” He sat down in front of the black pieces and raised his brow at her. “Should I be worried?”
She took the stool opposite him, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Ye may wish to say a prayer or two.”
Shaking his head in amazement as she whisked his knight off its square and settled it next to the ever growing cluster of black pieces on her side of the board, he leaned across the table and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “I love my incredible wife!”
She smiled and lifted her shoulders, modestly. “I wasn’t always as accomplished, but my father forced me to practice everyday.”
“Ye used to play together?”
She nodded, and a sad smile curved her lips.
“We played nearly every afternoon, as often as he could get away from his duties, but it took years for me to become a proficient player. In fact, I remember asking him, when I was just a wee lass, why he wasted his time teaching me. At the time, I never thought that I would improve.” She leaned closer. “And do ye ken what he told me?”
Resting his chin in his hand, Ian gazed at his wife. “Nay,” he said unhurriedly, enamored as he watched the last of her guard fall away.
A wistful smile curved her lips. “He said, ‘time spent with ye is never a waste, for time is the greatest gift anyone can give’.” She laughed. “After that, if he wanted to play chess, he would always say to me...‘Do ye feel like wasting time?’”
Just as Ian was thinking that he could never tire of listening to Jo’s laughter, the lyrical sound faded, and her smiled disappeared.
He sat straight.
She stiffened tensely in her seat.
“What is it, Jo?” He reached across the table, covering her hand with his. Her mouth had gone slack. Unshed tears glimmered in her eyes beneath her pinched brow. Her sudden grief made his own heart ache. “Talk to me, Jo!”
“Those were his last words to me,” she said in a rush. “He cupped my cheek and said ‘remember, time is the greatest gift anyone can give’.”
Tears slid past the confines of her lids. Ian stood and circled around the table to take her into his arms. But she pressed her hand against his chest to stop him. “Wait,” she said, her voice suddenly hard.
Ian froze. “What is it?”
But she didn’t reply. Her tears stopped, and she gripped the table, her knuckles whitening from the strain.
His heart started to race. “What’s happening, Jo?”
She stood, still not heeding his words, and began to pace the garden, muttering, her brow heavy with concentration. Then she whirled around, hardness replacing the light in her eyes. “Ian, take me home.”
He frowned. “I thought ye never wanted to go back to Durham.”
“Not Durham. Take me to my true home. Take me to Toonan.”
His eyes widened. “I can’t do that. I already promised the abbot that I wouldn’t. In his words, I’m not to go traipsing through the Scottish countryside with ye. ‘Tis too risky. Whomever wishes to find ye, could still be out there.”
“I don’t care!”
“I do! Both the abbot and the bishop knew ye at a glance. The abbot believes yer resemblance to yer father is the very reason yer mother took ye as far south as Durham, in the first place.”
She stubbornly jutted out her chin. “I promised my mother I would never return to Toonan alone. Are ye going to take me or will ye force me to break my word.”
Ian raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Jo, but Toonan is likely still being watched. We can’t just walk through the front gate.”
She put her hand on her hips. “Husband, do ye think me a simpleton? I don’t plan to walk through the front gate.”
It was two days hard ride to Toonan. When the castle came into view, Jo’s heart soared and ached all at once.
She was home.
Memories came flooding back. It had been nearly three years since she glimpsed Toonan, but it felt as if a lifetime had passed. She’d fled, clinging to her mother, sobbing for the loss of her father, her heart riddled by fear and grief.
There was so much about that girl—the one she saw in her mind’s eye, racing through Toonan in her beautiful new tunic—that left Jo feeling unsettled. That girl had been kindhearted but also pampered and na?ve.
That had been Lady Josselyn.
Now, she was just Jo—a commoner, a weaver, a woman grown. But she, suddenly, shook her head. That wasn’t right either. She wasn’t an English peasant.
If she wasn’t a Scottish lady or an English peasant, then who was she?
In that moment, she looked sidelong at Ian, who sat tall in his saddle, humming.
A slight smile upturned her lips. She knew exactly who she was. She was Jo MacVie, Ian MacVie’s wife. And like her husband and her parents before her, she was a Scottish rebel.
And now, she was on a mission to fulfill her father’s legacy and to advance the cause of Scottish independence... For, in her heart, she knew her father had given her the very clues needed to solve the mystery of the missing treasure.
Pulling on the reins, she brought her horse to a halt.
In the distance, loomed the gates of Toonan’s outer wall.
Her kin resided behind those gates, people she loved with her whole heart.
Instantly, she started to fret over how they’d managed without her father or mother to care for them, but she took a deep breath.
The abbot had said that Thane and Captain William were both alive and well.
Together, Jo was confident they had the skills to run Toonan.
She closed her eyes against the memory of Thane’s anguished face as he was dragged away by the Stewart warriors.
She shook her head, fighting against the flood of heartbreak rushing to the fore of her mind.
But she couldn’t escape it. Memories hurtled toward her—the anguish etched on her father’s face as he watched them rush from his sight; Ruby sobbing uncontrollably; Lady Clara, who had always been so gentle with her, becoming hard and unyielding as the iron wrought for the very swords from which they hid.
Jo gasped, suddenly, understanding why her mother had been so hard on her.
She turned, seeking Ian’s gaze. “She knew she was going to die and leave me all alone.” Tears stung her eyes.
She looked to Toonan. “She knew then, before we’d even left the gates that her health was failing.
She was hard on me so that I would become tough enough to face any challenge head on. ”
Ian nodded. “That I do not doubt. ‘Tis believed that men are stronger than women.” Ian shook his head. “There’s no greater force on earth and I wager in heaven, than a mother’s love. She did what she thought she had to, to ensure ye kept on going.”
“Keep breathing. Keep fighting,” Jo muttered. Then she looked Ian hard in the eye. “That is what she told me. ‘If ye can breathe, ye can fight’.”
A light shone in Ian’s eyes. “’Tis odd that ye should say that, because I met a pilgrim outside Durham Cathedral, an older woman about half yer size, who gave me the same advice.” He took a deep breath. “I’m still breathing.” Then he winked at her. “So why don’t we go find that treasure?”
She gasped. “How did ye know that is why I wanted to come here?”
He chuckled. “Because I ken my wife is no simpleton.”
She laughed, remembering her cheeky remark back at the abbey. “Does the abbot know why we’ve really come?”
Ian nodded. “He needed a worthy reason for why the monks were being tasked with the responsibility of caring for Ruby, who, as ye know, was less than gracious to her hosts.”
“With any luck, we shall return to Haddington with a prize to make up for the...er...inconvenience. With that in mind...” Sitting straighter in her saddle, she took a deep breath. “Let’s keep fighting!”
“I have just one question—how do we get in?” Ian asked.
“Follow me,” she said, turning her horse down a grassy slope that would lead them to the forest.