Free A Cruel Courtship by Candace Robb

herself as if feeling threatened.
    ‘Are you cold, Mistress?’ Celia inquired, and was rewarded by Margaret’s expression of gratitude as she rose and, making her excuses, withdrew to their chamber.
    ‘What was so distressing about a mantle for a kinswoman?’ Celia asked when they were alone, settled on the bed.
    Margaret’s face was in shadow, but her hands plucked nervously at her skirt. ‘Euphemia MacFarlane is a great seer. My mother was sent by herparents to live with Euphemia to learn about the Sight.’
    ‘She does not bide in Perth?’
    ‘No. She lives far to the west.’ Margaret hugged herself. ‘Ma’s weaving a border for the mantle, a border of owls. They are special to Great-Aunt Euphemia.’
    Celia was puzzled. ‘You laughed at my fear the other night.’
    ‘I know.’
    Celia realised her mistress was shivering and she fetched her favourite plaid.
    Margaret pulled it around her shoulders and up around her neck despite the warmth of the evening.
    ‘Ma said she has had no visions since the one of Kinnoull Hill. But while in the chapel – Celia, I felt Roger fall to his death. I thought I was falling, but then I saw him lying dead at the foot of the rock.’ Margaret crossed herself. ‘I was so frightened.’
    ‘Heaven have mercy on us.’ Celia crossed herself. She had much feared that Margaret was developing the Sight, for she was changing in subtle ways, becoming secretive, praying far more than was her wont. ‘But you were smiling when you returned to the hall.’
    ‘Dame Bethag had eased my mind.’ Margaret took a deep breath and let it out as a groan. ‘She is right, I carry such a weight. I must put my trust in God and believe that He will guide me. I have waited for the time to tell you, Celia – I–’
    A knock on the door brought both of them to their feet.
    ‘Tell no one,’ Margaret whispered.
    ‘I swear,’ said Celia, hurt that her mistress felt the need to command her silence and frustrated by the interruption.
    Ada entered the room, breaking the tension with a good-natured chuckle. ‘Your father is a difficult man to escape, Maggie. You are blessed with a perceptive handmaid.’ Ada gave Celia a warm smile. ‘I could see that all his talk of Euphemia and her owls distressed you. Oh that man!’
    Celia was relieved to hear her mistress laugh.
    ‘Ada, you do my heart good. And you are right about Celia.’ Margaret shed the plaid. ‘Will Da join us for the evening meal?’
    Ada shook her head. ‘He is apparently in the habit of eating with the prioress’s kinsmen and the chaplain. Thanks be to God.’
    Andrew no longer cursed David for escaping through the drain. He was grateful that God had spared him and Matthew, for the guards sent through it afterwards were now very ill. He believed Sir Francis and Sir Marmaduke had sent them through to impress upon Longshanks’s royal lieutenant John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and his treasurer the hated Hugh Cressingham, the seriousness with which they took desertion. It had seemed that David’s disappearance had beenforgotten – a week had passed since he’d gone missing – when the administrators paused at Soutra for a night on their way to Stirling with their horse and foot soldiers. It was only then that the search had been ordered.
    ‘No one is likely to try the drain again,’ said Father Obert after Mass. ‘My flesh crawls to recall the suffering of those two when we took communion to them in the infirmary.’
    ‘I pray for them,’ said Andrew. The men’s faces and hands had been covered with suppurating sores and they were feverish and weak. Had his loyal servant Matthew not been ill with a rheumy cough, he and Andrew would have been the first through the diseased drain. He had been frustrated when he’d realised how ill Matthew was, and how impossible stealth would be with the young man’s wet cough. But as it turned out, Andrew thanked God for sparing him and Matthew. ‘I doubt David went far before illness