“I’m wide awake,” Sibylla said. “And I do not like lying abed if I need not.”
“They took your clothes, though,” the child pointed out.
“They did.” Recalling then that Simon had said she was in Amalie’s bedchamber, Sibylla began to sit up, only to feel her head pound and lie back again. She said, “That kist near the door . . . Do you see others like it in here?”
“Aye, two more,” Kit said with a gesture.
“Prithee, open them and tell me what they contain.” “Should we do that, though? Them kists dinna belong to us.”
“We should,” Sibylla assured her. “The lady whose room this was is a friend of mine. If she left clothing here, she would want me to make use of it.”
As she spoke, she wondered if Amalie’s clothing would fit her.
Amalie—now Lady Westruther and happily expecting her first child—was several inches shorter, plumper, and more buxom. Her skirts would be too large around the waist and would hang shorter than fashion decreed. But Sibylla thought they would fit well enough to sustain her modesty.
She wanted to get up, but she was not wearing a stitch of clothing.
“I do not know what you can be thinking to have brought that young woman to Elishaw,” Lady Murray said to her eldest and sole remaining son as she followed him down the winding stone stairs to the great hall. “She is a Cavers of Akermoor! Doubtless, she is that dreadful man’s daughter.”
“She does have a father,” Simon said, weighing how much he ought to say.
“I do not admire flippancy,” Lady Murray said with her customary, majestic air. “You know that she must be the daughter of Sir Malcolm Cavers of Akermoor. Moreover, you have been very glib, sir, about why you brought her here.”
“As I explained, the river was too high to make a crossing safely with an unconscious woman and two bairns to protect,” Simon said. “Also, I’d heard that Isabel departed a fortnight ago for Galloway to visit his grace and the Queen.”
“More likely to create trouble for your liege lord,” Lady Murray observed. “That surely was her purpose the last time she traveled to Galloway.”
“That was nearly three years ago, after James Douglas’s death,” Simon said, suppressing familiar irritation. “She was seeking then to protect her widow’s rights.”
He was aware that he was unlikely to sway his mother from a position based on her strong belief that his destiny, and therefore Elishaw’s, lay in his long service to Robert
Stewart, Earl of Fife and now Governor of the Realm in place of their crippled, disinterested King.
Because Sibylla Cavers served Fife’s sister, who was often at odds with him, Lady Murray surely believed Fife would disapprove of Sibylla’s presence at Elishaw.
As the widow of James, second Earl of Douglas, Princess Isabel had been entitled to lands deeded her in their marriage settlements and to a third of the income from other Douglas lands that James had owned or controlled as earl.
Fife had hoped to acquire Isabel’s Douglas lands for the Crown, but Archie the Grim, now third Earl of Douglas and more powerful than any Stewart, had acted swiftly and honorably to protect those rights for her. Archie continued to provide her with knights and men-at-arms to protect her, too, just as James Douglas had.
Fife had hoped to arrange a second marriage for Isabel to one of his loyal adherents and thereby control both her and her property, but the Douglases had outmaneuvered him by hastily marrying Isabel to Sir John Edmonstone of that Ilk, a loyal if somewhat muttonheaded follower of Archie’s.
Despite Isabel’s inconsolable grief over James’s untimely death, she had agreed to the hasty marriage to avoid battle with Fife. But she had married Edmonstone only with an understanding that she need not live with him.
According to Simon’s sister Amalie, Isabel thought Edmonstone uncouth, too fond of his whisky, and worst of all, a paralyzing bore. So she had taken up semipermanent residence with her ladies at Sweethope Hill House in Lothian.
Entering Elishaw’s empty great hall, Lady Murray moved to one of the two tall, narrow windows that overlooked the bailey and gazed silently out on the yard.
Simon waited, knowing she had more to say. She had a magisterial temperament, and he had often observed how patiently she let his late father bluster on about what he would do or not do. When the flow had run its course, she would exert her influence to persuade him that he meant to do something else altogether.
Since Sir Iagan’s death eight months before, Borderers who knew them had made clear their expectation that she would continue to rule at Elishaw, that Simon, having lived under her thumb or Fife’s all his life, would be no match for her.