Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2](5)

“Your cousin Harry is not called Hotspur for nowt, madam,” Sir Iagan said testily. “His forces and those of the English king will prevail in the coming conflict, Douglas or no Douglas. Indeed, it surprises me that you should encourage kinship with yet another of the men you so often call ‘my heathenish Scots.’”

“Young Scott may be a heathen, but he is no coward,” Lady Murray said. “He has won his knighthood, I believe, and is properly Sir Walter Scott. If he is the young man I do recall, he is rather handsome, although too dark for my taste. He also has a stubborn, implacable look about him. Still, I warrant he would make a suitable enough husband for a sensible young woman like our Meg.”

Startled, Meg barely managed to remain silent, but she dared not speak lest her irritated father order her from the table. She certainly could not say that she had been thinking Sir Walter Scott sounded just like Sir Iagan and her brother Simon—temperamental, stubborn, and domineering.

But then, she mused, most men were temperamental and domineering. She had not met many yet, though, so she could still hope to meet one who was not.

“What do you think of your mother’s daft notion?” Sir Iagan asked her.

“I don’t think I’d like to marry a thief, sir.”

“There, you see, madam,” Sir Iagan snapped.

“Meg is a dutiful daughter,” Lady Murray said without so much as a glance at Meg. “She will do as you bid her.”

“Ye’re talking as if the lad would agree to the notion,” he said. “More likely, he’d refuse it outright.”

“Pressed to choose between a marriage and a coffin, I believe any sensible young man will choose marriage,” Lady Murray said. “However, I should like to see him before you either make him the offer or hang him.”

“I suppose next you will say you want your daughters to see this villain, too,” he retorted. His expression said he believed nothing of the sort, but it altered ludicrously when the wife of his bosom said that she did indeed want her daughters to see the reiver.

“It will be a valuable experience for them,” she said.

Meg had been as certain as her father was that her mother would decline having any such notion. Beginning to breathe normally again, she had reached for her goblet, but her ladyship’s reply diverted her attention just enough to make her knock it over, spewing ale across the table and drawing a curse from Sir Iagan.

As gillies leaped to clean up the mess, he said, “You’d have me admit such a scoundrel to my daughters’ presence? Faugh, I won’t permit it.”

“He may be a scoundrel, but he is nonetheless nobly born,” Lady Murray reminded him. “I shall excuse Rosalie, but there can be naught amiss in showing Meg and Amalie what happens even to powerful men who break the law.”

“Aye . . . well . . .”

“Moreover, if you should change your mind after considering my suggestion, there is surely no harm in letting them see the man one of them is to marry.”

Gruffly, he said, “I’ll permit it only because seeing him in his present state, if it accomplishes nowt else, should put this foolish notion of marrying him to one of them right out of your head.”

“Mayhap it will,” she replied equably.

With a brusque gesture to a hovering gillie, he snapped, “Have them fetch the reivers’ leader here to me. Tell them to bring him just as he is.”

Meg watched the gillie hurry from the hall, wishing with half her mind that she could snatch him back. With the other half, she wished she could fly beside him, unseen, and have a look at the prisoner before they haled him in before her.

Well aware that such powers were beyond the ken of ordinary mortals and that God could read her thoughts, she surreptitiously crossed herself.

When the cell door creaked open, even the faint light from the stairwell caused a glare that made Wat wince. Believing the guards had come for them, to hang them all straightaway, he was not surprised when the two who entered each grabbed an arm and hauled him upright.

“You’ll have to untie my feet, lads,” he said, stifling a groan. “Even so, I doubt I can walk, for I’ve scarcely any feeling left in them.”

The larger of the two said, “We weep for ye, reiver, but we dinna care an ye walk or no. Ye’ll come with us any road.”

“What of my men?”

“They’re to bide here a wee while longer.”

They had clearly meant to drag him. But after cursing at how heavy he was and noting irritably that the winding stone stairway was too narrow to accommodate all three of them abreast, they finally untied his feet.

“I dare ye to run,” the one who had spoken before said with a grim chuckle. “’Twould please me tae clout ye again.”