Chapter Eighteen #3
“Etta,” Mairead snapped automatically, though her eyes never left Anastasia. “I am the laird’s màthair, lass, Mairead Mac Cailin.”
“I’m Anna—Anastasia Ellis. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she replied, her voice level.
“And whence—?” his mother began.
“Anastasia and I met during my escape, Màthair,” Bram spoke up, hoping to stave off at least half their questions. “She’s nae from Scotia, as ye may have surmised, was as desperate as I when we met, and has proven herself a... valuable traveling companion.”
His mother’s brows rose at the hesitation, while somewhere behind him Harsain made a small sound in his throat that Bram elected to ignore.
Mairead recovered quickly and offered Anastasia a polite smile, but Bram could practically see the words cycling through her mind, each one discarded and replaced as she attempted to make sense of the strange young woman her son had brought home: beggar, fugitive, leman, runaway wife, perhaps even English spy before she was through with it.
He continued before she could settle upon any of them.
“Anastasia came to my aid after a wee skirmish with some English scouts.”
His mother’s gaze snapped immediately to him.
“?Tis true,” Bram assured her. “?Twas Anastasia who tended my wounds, and ?twas she who cleaved the English shackle from my wrist.”
The words wiped the last traces of suspicion from Fearchar’s expression and changed Harsain’s scrutiny entirely. His captain looked from Bram’s wrist to Anastasia and then regarded her for several moments with a solemnity that required no translation.
His mother, unfortunately, heard only one portion of the explanation.
“English shackles?” Mairead repeated, her face blanching. “Oh, I canna bear to think upon it, and yet I will insist ye tell me all.”
“Mam—”
“All.”
“Aye.”
Apparently satisfied that she’d secured his eventual confession, Mairead clasped her hands before her—wrung them, in truth—and turned again to Anastasia.
“And what misfortune befell ye, lass, that ye found yerself in such dire straits as to be traveling with my son and...” She paused, looked Anastasia up and down once more, and finished, “garbed in this fashion?”
Anastasia glanced down at her thoroughly travel-stained clothing. “These are... my clothes.”
“Saints preserve us,” Mairead murmured in Gaelic, barely audibly, all while attempting to maintain her smile.
“So many questions have I,” Etta announced.
“Of that I have nae doubt,” Bram muttered.
“Anastasia’s circumstance was nigh as dangerous as my own upon English soil,” he informed them, “and I could nae in guid conscience abandon her to whatever fate the English might have visited upon her.”
“Nae, nae, of course ye wouldnae,” Mairead agreed, though some measure of uncertainty remained.
“Did ye fight the English, too?” Etta asked, her brows climbing toward the middle of her forehead.
Anastasia touched a hand to her chest, evidently astonished that his sister might imagine such a thing. “Me? No—oh, gosh, no. I wouldn’t know how to—”
“Ye dinna speak like anyone I’ve ever met,” Etta continued, cutting her off. “And we’ve welcomed Welsh and Irish and even a Spaniard once.”
“Yes, I can hear that now,” Anastasia said self-consciously. “That I don’t sound like everyone else.”
“Nae anyone else,” Etta reminded her. “And what does Bram mean, a dangerous circumstance?”
“Have ye nae home?” his mother pressed.
“Well, I’m not sure, exactly—I don’t have a home in Scotland, or any family.”
“Nae home, nae kin,” Etta concluded. “Ye are both luckless and destitute?”
Bram shot his sister a look sharp enough to quash further questions while his mother seemed finally to recover herself from the considerable puzzle that was Anastasia Ellis.
“Ye poor child,” Mairead said, and for the first time since turning her attention upon Anastasia, her voice softened noticeably. “Come along, then. Straight inside, and we’ll see ye properly welcomed and made...” She paused, casting another critical eye over Anastasia’s garb. “Er, comfortable.”
Anastasia offered a small smile in response. If she felt overwhelmed, she hid it well enough for his mother’s benefit, but Bram had spent too much time beside her to miss the tension she carried. She glanced briefly toward him as Mairead took charge and began steering her toward the keep.
Bram watched until Anastasia disappeared through the doors of the keep between his mother and Etta, still carrying herself with that rigid composure he had come to recognize as evidence that she was anything but comfortable.
For one fleeting moment, he considered following, if only to make certain his mother and sister did not overwhelm her before she had even crossed the threshold, but the thought was scarcely formed before Harsain moved into his path and the men who had crowded around Bram since his arrival closed in again.
“How in God’s name did ye come away from them?” Harsain asked, his voice lowered now that women, children, and half the village still milled about the courtyard. “We heard nothing after they took ye. Naught but rumor.”
Bram glanced once toward the keep before turning his attention fully to the men.
“They held me first near Durham, moved me twice after that, and finally took me to Richmond House. Three months, near enough.” He saw Harsain’s jaw tighten but continued before the man could interrupt.
“They meant to transport me to York for hanging. The prisoner to whom I’d been chained perished as we marched, and before they might bind me to another, I took the only chance I was like to have.
Went into the river still wearing his cuff and mine and managed to get clear before the English could organize a proper search. ”
“Still shackled?” Fearchar asked, his gaze dropping again to Bram’s damaged wrist.