Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The letter arrived two days later. The sight of the Fraser stag pressed into dark green wax made her heart leap so sharply that pain answered beneath the healing cut at her ribs.
At last, Maither has written.
She reached for it too quickly, nearly upsetting the cup beside her. Tea washed across the saucer and stained the white cloth beneath it, but Elspeth scarcely noticed.
“Thank ye,” she told the servant.
The door closed, and only then did she turn the letter over.
The writing upon the front was not her mother’s. Morven Fraser formed Elspeth’s name with soft, generous curves, as though even ink deserved kindness. These letters were narrow and severe. Each stroke stood apart from the next with no more warmth between them than soldiers arranged for inspection.
Thomas Fraser.
Elspeth’s fingers tightened around the parchment.
She considered leaving it unopened. This was foolish, of course.
A letter could not become less dreadful merely because one refused to break its seal.
Still, she sat for several moments with it upon her lap, listening to the low crackle of the fire and the wind pressing weakly against the chamber windows.
Finally, Elspeth broke the seal. The sound was very small. It nevertheless seemed to split the room. She unfolded the parchment and began to read.
Elspeth,
No dear. No blessing. No inquiry after her health.
She had not expected one, yet expectation had never prevented disappointment from arriving.
Yer letter was received. Yer maither was in nay condition tae answer it, and therefore the burden has fallen tae me.
Elspeth’s breath stopped. Her eyes returned to the words.
Nay condition.
Her mother had been unable to write.
Elspeth pressed one hand against the edge of the table. She continued.
Ye have at last proved useful tae this family. Yer marriage settled a debt which could nay longer be permitted tae threaten Fraser lands, and ye have been provided with a husband whose rank exceeds what might otherwise have been expected fer ye.
Heat rose through Elspeth’s face.
Useful.
The word struck with the old familiarity of her father’s voice. He had often spoken of people as though they were tools of varying quality. A servant was useful until age slowed her. A tenant was useful while rents were paid. A daughter, apparently, became useful only when sold.
She looked toward the fire. For one fierce instant, she wanted to thrust the letter into it and watch her father’s careful hand blacken at the edges. But her mother remained somewhere below the next fold, so Elspeth read on.
It is unfortunate that even in performing the single duty required of ye, ye have managed tae bring further disorder upon us.
Her fingers went cold. She read the sentence again, because cruelty was sometimes so calmly expressed that the mind mistook it for reason.
The attack upon the cathedral has caused considerable embarrassment. Questions have been asked which ought never tae have arisen, and men of the Crown have made themselves troublesome where discretion would have better served all involved.
Elspeth’s mouth parted, though no sound came.
Men had died. Blood had run over consecrated stone. Women had screamed beneath the clash of steel. Colin had taken a blade across his hand while standing between her and an armed man. Her father called it all embarrassment.
A bitter laugh rose in her throat and died there.
Whether the violence followed MacKenzie or was provoked by some conduct of yers is nae yet kent. Given yer tendency toward defiance, I cannae dismiss either possibility.
The paper trembled. Elspeth placed it upon the table, but that only made the trembling visible in her hands.
She was being accused as though she had invited armed men into the cathedral between the vows and the kiss, and as though Robert Munro gathered soldiers because Elspeth once spoke too sharply at breakfast or failed to lower her eyes quickly enough beneath her father’s displeasure.
She knew it was absurd. Yet guilt did not require truth in order to wound. It needed only a familiar doorway, and her father had spent years building them within her.
Elspeth picked up the letter again.
Yer maither was injured during the disorder.
The sentence struck so violently that everything after it blurred. Elspeth rose from the chair without meaning to. Pain pulled at her ribs, but it was far away, unimportant beside the cold spreading through her chest.
She blinked until the ink became words again.
She was knocked down near the cathedral entrance and suffered badly from the fall. Fer several days, she remained confined tae bed and was unable tae receive visitors or attend tae the household.
Elspeth saw her mother as she had last seen her, with one hand against the cathedral stone, her face pale in the chaos and her eyes finding Elspeth’s across smoke, steel, and fleeing bodies.
Maither.
Elspeth’s knees weakened. She caught the chair and lowered herself into it before the floor could make the decision for her.
She should have gone back. She had fought Colin. She had begged him. But she had still left. The horse had carried her away while her mother remained behind, and each mile placed between them had been another act of abandonment, even if Elspeth possessed no power to stop it.
Her rational mind objected. Colin had saved her life. The attackers were hunting them. Remaining would have exposed her to capture or death. She had not commanded the raid, caused the panic, or pushed her mother to the ground.
All these things were true. But none reached the part of her that remembered her mother’s face vanishing behind them.
Elspeth forced herself to continue.
She is recovering now. The healer expects nay lasting damage, provided she is spared unnecessary distress.
Relief came so suddenly that it hurt. Elspeth closed her eyes and pressed the letter to her chest, careless of the parchment bending beneath her hands. She drew one breath, then another. The second shook more than the first.
She already knew what would follow.
Fer this reason, ye will refrain from sending further agitated letters.
Yer maither requires quiet, nae demands concerning matters which are nay longer yers tae govern.
Ye are Lady MacKenzie now. Whatever consequences have followed from that arrangement belong tae yer husband’s household, and ye would be wise tae attend tae them without drawing further misfortune toward ours.
Elspeth read the paragraph twice. Her father had managed, with admirable efficiency, to tell her that she no longer belonged to her mother while blaming her for endangering the family she had been ordered to leave.
A remarkable achievement, even for him.
At the bottom of the page stood only: Thomas Fraser. Not Yer faither.
Perhaps he had finally tired of claiming relations which were of no use to him any longer.
The letter slipped from Elspeth’s fingers and landed upon the table. For several moments, she sat without moving. She merely stared at the Fraser seal, broken neatly in two.
Her mother had been hurt. Guilt rose with such force that it made her stomach turn. She had promised never to forgive Colin for taking her away. Yet now she loved him for keeping her alive.
The two truths sat painfully beside one another.
She lowered her hands.
“This wasnae me fault,” she said aloud.
The words fell into the chamber and waited.
She tried again. “I didnae bring those men.”
Her voice was firmer, but grief cared very little for firmness.
She needed distance from the letter, from the castle, perhaps even from Colin, whose concern would be unbearable because it was the very thing her father had taught her never to expect.
Elspeth slipped the folded parchment into her gown, then she went in search of air.