Your castle of Fast would be near to ninety, I think. 'Edinburgh is little more than fifty, from here. 'You say that you have ridden ninety miles,' she said, without looking back. The young woman paced over to the rain-blurred window that looked out over the fair prospect of green Strathearn, water-meadows and wide pasture-lands lifting and lifting through rolling foothills to the great heather bastions of the Highland Line, all grey and indistinct today under the thin curtains of the rain. The servant reappeared, and was told to bring victuals, cold meats and wine. The grin died on his florid fleshy features. He looked up, and his fleering grey-blue eyes met her dark glowing ones. 'You are apt to be too close linked to…my father!' 'Often my news is good indeed – for the right folk! As I swear it is on this occasion, lass.' He sat down on a settle, unbidden, to pull off his great heavy thigh-length riding-boots. Logan was a great laugher, an unfailingly cheerful rogue. But she moved to pull a bell cord hanging amongst the rich arras, to summon a servant. 'I have never known your appearance herald aught but ill tidings,' she answered. You will pardon my mentioning it – but you show no haste to sustain me!' 'You will not deny me some small hospitality, Cousin? To stay a hungry and thirsty man who has ridden ninety miles and more this day. With your permission, of course, Mistress!' He chuckled, unbuckling his steel half-armour. And that he has not been to Court in Edinburgh since Yule.' That was sharp. When will Lennox be home? I know that he was here two days back. 'No need for my brave lads this journey, Mary. The Laird of Restalrig indeed was not a man who offended easily – nor could afford to be in sixteenth-century Scotland.
I think, sir? Usually with a band of cut-throat mosstroopers.' That was said no less calmly, factually, than the rest. 'I said that I came secretly, did I no'? My business is private, lassie. 'What is your business with the Duke?' she asked, at length.
She was very lovely altogether, that young woman, with an elfin fine-wrought beauty of feature, a slender but full-breasted figure, and a natural grace of carriage and inborn serenity of bearing which was as disturbing as it was fascinating to men. She did not answer at once, considering him closely, thoughtfully, with her lovely dark eyes. 'Fiend take him, then! I've ridden far and fast to see him. 'He's no' here? Where is he, lassie? Lennox. 'But Mistress if you prefer it – since mistress is a true description of my situation. 'Mary Gray will serve very well, sir,' she answered him coolly. 'Mary? Mistress? Or my lady? How do I call you, these days?'
I do not want my name shouted the length and breadth of Strathearn, lassie. The newcomer dismissed that with a flick of the wrist.
Robert Logan of Restalrig was not the man to stand on ceremony, even with dukes.Ī few strides inside, and he halted on the deer-skin strewed floor, to stare past the young woman who seemed to be that pleasant and comfortable room's sole occupant, peering into the corners already shadowed by the early February dusk of a wet day, as though he would root out, with his keen glance, anyone lurking therein.Ĭalmly the girl considered him, as she stood, a slight but shapely figure, beside the wide open fireplace where the birch logs sizzled and spluttered beneath the great stone-carved coat-of-arms. The servant, intending to show the hulking, travel-stained visitor into the lesser hall of Methven Castle, was shouldered roughly aside, and throwing the door wide, the newcomer stamped within, tossing his sodden cloak to the other and shaking the raindrops from his half-armoured person like a dog.