Page 78 of Devil Black

Isobel, watching the emotions travel across her sister’s face, asked, “What of you? You were set for Bristol, and Thomas’s new employment. How come you here?”

“The place I was promised fell through,” Thomas admitted gloomily. “When he heard our tale, my father’s cousin, who originally offered the situation, decided he would not risk offending your father by taking me on, since my own father yet hoped to win back his old place as Bailiff. And other places proved deuced hard to find.”

“We have been roaming and traveling,” Catherine confessed, “sometimes sleeping rough, once in a ditch. When we were robbed of what little money we had, we knew we must turn for home and face Father’s anger. I never dreamed he should turn us away after coming so far through that vile weather.”

Isobel looked at Thomas. “Could you not apply to your father?”

“I could, but your father has dismissed him for my role in stealing Catherine away. Father has not yet managed to win back his place on your father’s estate, and will not if he is found helping me.”

“So unfair!” Tears flooded Catherine’s eyes. “What did we do that was so wrong, except love?”

“I am sorry,” Isobel murmured, heartfelt. She could scarcely believe the plans she and Catherine had hatched together so innocently had caused such devastation.

“Your father is a bailiff?” Dougal asked Thomas. “And, what work can you do?”

Thomas shrugged. “I was promised a place in Bristol as a clerk. I and my two older brothers were taught to read and write, but Father also brought us up learning to run the estate.”

“Fine, that, and I can use you. It is as my wife says, however. We are at war with a neighbor. MacNab is a treacherous bastard who has captured the ear of the King and speaks poison of me. I should like naught better than to see both Randal and Bertram MacNab dead. I mean to achieve it if I can. I am known in the district as the Devil Black MacRae.” He paused to drink from his cup. “If any of that daunts you, then, aye, you had better take a day’s rest and be on your way. For things here are ugly now, and bound to grow still uglier.”

Thomas’s face, usually so open and sunny, looked guarded. The bailiff’s lad, Isobel thought, had changed; a man appeared to have emerged in his stead. He said, “I shall be glad of the place. And I shall fight whomever necessary to keep my wife safe.”

Dougal did not smile, but he did extend a hand. “Then, man, we are of exactly one mind.”

Later, in the privacy of Isobel’s bedchamber, the two sisters exchanged whispers and further confidences. Isobel knew Dougal was out riding his borders. She had no idea where Thomas might be—perhaps finding remedy for his exhaustion in sleep. She knew her own healing, as so often in the past, lay in confessing her thoughts to her sister and trading accounts of hardships. Sleepless, they spoke long into the night, and Isobel was hard put to tell which of them had the harsher tale. Catherine clung to Isobel and wept over the account of her sister’s miscarriage, and shuddered at her depictions of Bertram MacNab.

“To think what I so narrowly escaped! And, you, also! But, your husband—is he in grave trouble over this business with the King?”

“I hope not. Losing his lands would kill him. And should I lose him,” Isobel added simply, “it will kill me.”

“You love him!” Catherine spoke in wonder. “Yet he is nothing like the lads of whom we dreamed as girls.”

“What did I know then?”

“There seems a darkness in him,” Catherine proposed, “a ruthlessness.”

Isobel conceded, “They do not call him Devil Black for naught. Yet he has claimed my heart.” The next words came harder. “My sorrow lies in the fact that he can never love me. His heart will always belong to another.” She told Catherine briefly, in a whisper, of the woman who had died in MacNab’s hands, and the grief that yet rode Dougal MacRae.

“It is a grief that time has not put right,” she concluded. “I cannot put it right, either. I fear nothing can.”

“Except your love for him,” said Catherine, almost with her old innocence. “I know love can overcome anything. You must believe!”

“I wish I could,” Isobel said sadly. “My heart is not the hopeful thing it was, when we were girls. But oh, Catherine, I never dreamed it could love so strong. If I follow it, I will follow him anywhere—through any difficulty, storm or fire—if only he will let me.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“You must allow me to accompany you,” Isobel beseeched her husband, not for the first time. “As your wife, it is my right to be there and speak on your behalf. It may make a difference. I have much to say to the King, and you shall not face him alone.”

And, Isobel thought to herself, she refused to watch Dougal ride from her, not knowing if she would ever see him again. The summons from the King had come three days ago, and since then she had been sick over it, and desperate to persuade Dougal round to her thinking.

She could beg the King for her husband’s life if necessary, and promise anything in return for mercy. But Dougal shook his head, a closed look coming to his face—just like every other time she asked him.

“Stay here,” he bade, “where you are safe.”

“What good is my safety, if I lose you?” They stood in the bedchamber they now once more shared. “If you do not return to me?” Isobel felt perilously close to tears—they threatened to blind and choke her. “I could not bear it!”

Dougal caught her shoulders between his hands and stared into her eyes, and she found herself unable to hide anything from him. All her love and longing must be visible, for he lowered his voice and his tone became unusually gentle.

“Do not worry, Wife, I will return. Do I not take your brother-in-law, the erstwhile Thomas, with me to speak as to the situation, and MacNab’s part in it? The King shall hear how events transpired, and that MacNab is not blameless.”