With Angus’s eyes on Margaret’s, he brought her bare hand up and kissed it.
She jerked her hand away but not quickly enough. His desire flooded her mind. And his regret, disappointment that yet again she was turning him away. She wiped the back of her hand along her kirtle as if she could remove that glimpse into his thoughts, but it was no good. He loved her completely.
“How dare you,” she said, though her voice lacked conviction. She rubbed at the pain in her head while it took all her power to keep from leaning into him. She could hardly begrudge him a small kiss after all he’d done for her. He knew not that it had opened his mind to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
But he didn’t look sorry at all. Leastways not about the kiss to her bare skin. He stepped out of her tower and walked slowly to his horse through the rain. His leg swung up and over. He was leaving. She used to think him a pesky fly. Now she wondered if she’d ever see him again.
She’d also told him to go find Gillis. But Gillis was out reiving with his father and the other clans.
Margaret ran out into the courtyard. “Angus.”
He twisted in his saddle to face her.
“Are you going reiving?”
He shook his head. “No.” He was still giving up his way of life for her. Even after she’d refused him.
“What about Gillis?”
“I could not persuade him to go against our father.”
“Where will you go?”
“Home,” he said, as if she were a halfwit.
“What about your father?”
He smiled at her. “I didn’t realize you were so worried about me.”
How could she not be? His father would devour him. What if he threw Angus out without coin or purse? She wouldn’t put such an act beyond him. “If you have no place to go, you can come here.”
He grinned. “I’ve never wanted more to be disavowed.”
“You think too highly of yourself, Angus Robson. I only meant you can sleep with our chickens.”
He laughed. “I should have known.” He rode closer to her. “I will be fine. I don’t think he can despise me any more than he already does.” He looked down at her, the rain darkening his jerkin. “Fare you well, Margaret.”
He kicked his beast, and it thundered away. Hamish trotted over and sat beside her, looking up with woeful eyes. Rain dripped down her hair and pooled at her feet, creating a circle of mud.
Angus’s farewell had sounded final. A little too final. All the times she’d tried to get him to leave her alone—but now his absence echoed in the squelching of her feet as she trod back into the house.
Hamish shook his body, and droplets of water flew across the room. Margaret ducked her head. She still had Angus’s dog, so perhaps she might see him at least one more time when he came for Hamish. The dog turned in a circle before settling on the woven reed mat in front of the fireplace.
“You shouldn’t keep turning him away like that, my lady.” Osanna stood at the bend of the stone steps in the corner of the single room. “He won’t keep coming back forever.”
“That is my hope,” she said. It was also her fear. But so it must be. She couldn’t be with him, so she must learn to live without him, as she’d lived before she’d returned to Hartfell. If things went badly with the warden, she wouldn’t be around too long anyway.
“But, my lady,” Osanna descended the last few stairs, “he loves you.”
“I know.” Margaret tugged at the laces of her bodice. However great a distance she’d tried to keep him at, she’d failed. Mostly because her own resolve had come up short. She let her kirtle drop to the floor, stepping out and kicking it with all her might across the room.
She could always abandon her plans. Leave the warden alone and try for a life with Angus. But what kind of life would it be if every touch left a mark? How long until she feared even the slightest brush of his fingers? It wouldn’t be fair to him. Nor to her family, who lay so cold waiting for justice.
She could not know for certain that he would never reive again. He had already endured too much of his father’s wrath. She did not want to be the cause of more strife in the Linkirk household.
“I fear we will need him afore the night is o’er.” Osanna picked up Margaret’s abused kirtle and laid it out over the back of a chair near the fire to dry.
“Why do you say that?” Margaret asked.
“Bones told me.”
Osanna had been consulting her bones, just as Margaret had predicted.
“My mother loved a man once,” Osanna said, stirring up the fire. “He wanted to marry her, even though she already had a daughter from another man. But my mother refused.”
“Why?” Margaret tugged a wooden comb through her tangle of hair.
“People called her a witch. ’Twas only a matter of time afore their accusations would be her death. She thought ’twould be too hard on the man. Not fair to marry him only to die later.”
Osanna understood well how Margaret faced a similar problem, but she did not understand her curse. Unless the bones had told her something about it. “Why are you telling me this?”
Osanna took the comb from Margaret and set to work on Margaret’s hair. “He was the younger son of the tanner. ’Bout as poor as a man can be without having to beg. But that weren’t nothing to my mother. When she were led to the stake, he was there. He watched the whole thing as they set fire to my mother. But there weren’t nothing he could do about it. He was wedded to another by then, you see. And she carried his child.”
“Osanna.”
“He tried to save her. Made a valiant effort by taking two strides afore his new wife collapsed. She groaned with the birth pains, and he turned away from the flames and went to her.” Osanna set the comb aside. “Her child weren’t born till three weeks later.” Osanna gave Margaret a quick bow and slipped back up the narrow stone steps to the second floor. The floorboards creaked as she crossed the short distance to her sleeping pallet, then all was silent.
Hamish had already climbed up onto Margaret’s bed and sprawled out with his eyes closed.
Margaret joined him, fighting the giant dog for some space. She pulled the blanket up over the both of them.
Poor Osanna. How betrayed she must feel by the townsfolk that burned her mother. By the man who had loved her mother and then abandoned her. But what could the man have done? Events like that were all too common. Always, there were people who had power but used it wrongly.
So why had Osanna felt the need to tell her this now? Did she think if she rejected Angus he would turn against her? That he would stand by and watch her burn?
More than likely, he would. As he should. Her choices were her own, and there was no reason his life should be compromised because of her. Yet one more reason she was right to keep him at a distance no matter how desperately her heart felt the tug.
Perhaps Osanna meant to convince her to change her mind before it was too late and Angus fell for another. Or perhaps it was just a story, like the many that seemed to randomly burst out of the girl’s mouth.
Margaret lay awake a long time into the night thinking of Osanna, her poor mother, and the press of Angus’s lips against her hand. Until Hamish’s head popped up, his ears straight, alert. He jumped off the bed and put his paws on the window ledge, trying to see out. Margaret followed him, but it was too dark to see anything. She stilled her breathing, listening for any sound coming from outside.
So soft it could almost have been the wind, she heard the fall of horses’ hooves and the creaking of leather.