“Bring me my ink and quill to the bed, with a tray,” her mother commanded weakly. “I have a letter to write.”
Tosia waited untilher mother busied herself at the bed-table with her quill before bolting from their simple home and racing for the heather-filled field beyond the house. In her rush to leave, to catch her breath from the harrowing news, she’d left her arasaid hanging on its peg beside the hearth.
But she didn’t need it. The air held warm notes, but they didn’t compare to the heat boiling under Tosia’s skin.
She ran until her breath was lost in the wind, whipping her hair in a wild swirl around her head. She ran until her chest was ready to burst and the soles of her feet were sore from the stones that bit through the thin leather of her shoes. The chill in the air went unnoticed until she’d thrown herself into the damp grass, and the roots of a rowan tree caught her when she collapsed against the trunk. The cool dew seeped through her kirtle.
Why? Why had her mother agreed to such an arrangement?
The Black Douglas? The vile man who had decimated his own lands? Who fed men into a Scottish killing field? Who slaughtered without thought or conscience? Where did his violent nature end? A man, nay a demon such as that, would kill her for sure.
The Black Douglas’s reputation had spread from the lowlands to the Highlands, of how he put a whole castle of English to death with only his small band of men. Of how he decapitated his enemies and burned everything — everything! — in his own keep, his own birthright, his very home, and the men inside it, to the ground rather than let the English live there. Who did such a thing? How did anyone conceive such a contemptible idea? He wasn’t a man. He was a monster.
Tosia rested her arms across her knees and dropped her head to her forearms, trying to close out the world. The sooner the world fell away, the sooner she could pretend that her mother was mistaken, that she wasn’t cursed to marry a monster.
How wasthisthe best solution for her? For her brother? Her tears whetted her dirty skirts as she wept away this horrid news.
“Tosia, please. ‘Tis no’ that bad,” Tavish’s voice carried over the hill to her space under the comforting rowan leaves. His voice deepened as he walked closer. “He canna be all bad if he is a friend to the king.”
“How do ye know?” Tosia countered, her voice muffled by her sleeves. “He is the king’s vicious dog, and ye dinna know the king. If he permits his beast to ravage the glen, then how can the king be a good man?”
Tavish sat heavily next to her, bumping his shoulder against hers. “The king is fighting for us, for the Scots, after years of tyranny by the English. That stands for something.”
Wiping her damp face on her sleeve, Tosia raised her eyes to Tavish’s matching hazel gaze, one that must have been a gift from their absent father, as their mother had eyes as green as the hills in the morn. Tavish’s eyes were soft, his concern for her painted on his face. Not that his fate was any better, but at least he didn’t have to dread the prospect of marrying the Black Douglas.
Or share a wedding bed with him.
Tosia shuddered.
She didn’t answer her brother — instead she stared into the distance, wondering how far she might make it if she started running and didn’t stop. Tavish nudged her again.
“The King would find ye. There is no place ye can hide, so put that foolish notion from your mind,” Tavish advised.
Tosia pursed her lips. Tavish always seemed to know what she was thinking — they were close enough in age to be oft mistaken as twins, and Tavish acted the role of an older brother often enough. The idea of running had crossed her mind.
“How did ye know what I was thinking?”
Tavish groaned as he stretched his long legs in front of him. “Ye canna hide anything on your face. It speaks louder than your mouth.”
Her lips squeezed harder.
“What am I going to do, Tavish? I canna wed the man. His vile reputation aside, I dinna even know him!”
“Aye, I can see your problem with that. But, this is a union sanctioned by the king to a mighty Laird. Ye will be a lady. And what if the man is a beast with a heart of gold? Stranger things have happened. And he, too, is fighting for his land. And rumor has a way of gaining traction where it shouldn’t. Maybe he’s no’ the demon rumor makes him out to be.”
The wind gusted up and blew locks of her honey-bronze hair across her face. She brushed them aside as she glared at her brother. She hated to admit his words might have merit. This time, she nudged him.
His shoulder was hard, solid muscle. Tosia sighed. When had he grown from a boy to a man?
“Ugh. I hate it when ye make sense. I have no argument against what ye say.”
Tavish got to his feet and reached a dirt-encrusted hand to her. “Come. The sunlight fades and mother will be wanting dinner.” He helped her stand, then whirled her to face him when she bent to brush dirt crumbs from her skirts. “And, my dear sister, I shall be there with ye, and I vow I will no’ let the men lay a wayward hand upon ye.”
Tosia clasped her slender fingers atop his. “Tavish, ye shall be little more than a squire, beholden to your laird. If ye tells ye to step away, your loyalties will have to be with him. Dinna misconstrue this, brother, ye are just as stuck in this new union as I.”
She placed a tender hand on the patchy scruff of his cheek, then stepped away, heading home in the gray gloaming of the night.
Toward home for one of the last times.
