Bride of the Solway. Joanna Maitland

to you later. For the present, I have more important work to do, in dealing with your lover.’ Leaning forward, he took hold of Hera’s rein and kicked his own mount into a fast trot, pulling Ross’s unwilling mare after him. They were twenty yards away before Ned, standing open-mouthed, hauled himself into the saddle of the second horse and galloped after his master.

      Behind them, the girl shouted something, but her words were carried off by the wind. Ross and his captors were alone.

      ‘Oh, Miss Cassie! Ye’re fair drookit! Just look at you! Did ye not think to take a cloak, at least?’

      ‘If I’d stopped to find a cloak, I’d not have got away at all.’ Cassandra forced herself to smile at the maid who was fussing around with warm towels and a dry nightgown.

      ‘But you didna get away, dearie,’ Morag said sadly. ‘And after this, the laird will make sure to keep ye even closer. When he saw that you’d climbed down from your chamber, he was that fashed, he nearly threw Tam out after you. We could hear him yelling, from down in the kitchen. Tam’s to put bars on yer window, first thing in the morn.’ Morag began to towel Cassandra’s sodden mane of hair. ‘My, but ye’re soaked, lassie. ’Twas a daft thing to do. You’ll be getting the ague, next.’

      ‘That’s what he said, too,’ murmured Cassandra, snuggling into the thick wrapper that Morag had added over her nightdress.

      ‘The laird said that?’ Morag sounded astonished.

      ‘Not he,’ said Cassandra, on the thread of a laugh. ‘Jamie Elliott cares not a whit whether I live or die, provided that I do not inconvenience him and his plans.’

      ‘Wheesht, lassie!’ Morag’s finger went to her lips. Her eyes registered shock. And fear.

      ‘It’s no more than the truth,’ Cassandra said, though more quietly than before. ‘If I died of the ague, my brother would think himself relieved of an unwelcome burden.’

      Morag looked grim, but she did not attempt to argue. The whole household knew what the laird thought of his young half-sister. And how unfairly he treated her.

      ‘Morag,’ said Cassandra urgently, ‘when the laird and the men come back, you must do your best to find out what they have done with him. Please.’

      ‘What d’ye mean?’

      ‘The man who tried to rescue me.’

      ‘Rescue…? I think you’d better start at the beginning, Miss Cassie. You’ve got my head in a whirl.’

      Cassandra patted the woman’s work-roughened hand and let out a long sigh. ‘Aye, I suppose… Well…I thought Jamie planned to leave me locked in the little parlour downstairs. I was surprised when Tam said I was to be locked in my own chamber instead. Until I thought about it, of course. From the parlour, I might have been able to speak to someone outside, even when the shutters were barred. From my own chamber, there was no chance of that. Not without shouting and being caught. It’s too high up.’

      ‘D’ye tell me you climbed down the wall?’

      ‘I… No, I didn’t. But Jamie must think I did.’

      ‘But if the door was locked—’

      Cassandra smiled knowingly. ‘There are ways of getting a key from the other side of a door, you know, Morag.’

      The maid looked unconvinced.

      ‘You’ll keep my secret, Morag?’

      The woman nodded.

      Cassandra knew Morag was to be trusted. ‘I slipped a paper under the door and then I turned the key from the inside. It took a while. It was very stiff. Then I pushed it out and it fell on the floor. I was lucky. It fell onto the paper and there was just room to pull it back under the door.’

      ‘Oh!’ said Morag in wonderment.

      ‘It’s an old trick. I’m surprised Jamie didn’t work it out. Maybe he was fooled because I relocked the door and left the key there. And the window open.’

      ‘But why did you go off in just yer thin gown? And not even a pair of shoon on yer feet?’

      ‘It was all I had, apart from a shawl. And I lost that when Lucifer bolted. Jamie had Tam clear out my clothes press. He said I should get used to living in a shift. That’s how I’d be dressed when I was taken to the Bedlam, he said.’ Cassandra swallowed hard at the terrifying memory, even more terrifying now that she had tried, and failed, to escape.

      ‘He’ll not send ye there,’ Morag said firmly. ‘Nobody thinks ye’re mad. And he canna marry you out of the asylum, can he?’

      ‘But he says I’m a…a harlot. Like my…’ her voice dropped to a strangled whisper ‘…like my mother. He could confine me for that. You know he could.’

      ‘He’ll not do that. He’ll…he’d have yer godfather to reckon with if he did, and he’ll not take the chance of that.’ Morag nodded, as if to confirm the truth of her words.

      And it was true, Cassandra thought. Her godfather, Sir Angus Fergusson, had once promised to stand by her, even though he had been estranged from the family for many years. And he wielded just as much clout as Jamie, perhaps more. If only she’d been able to reach him…

      ‘Was that where you were going?’ At Cassandra’s answering nod, Morag burst out, ‘You were going to cross the Solway in the mirk? Alone? Ye are mad, lassie!’

      ‘It wasn’t that dark. Not till the storm came. And I was going to get Shona to take me across. Only Lucifer bolted in the storm. It was all I could do to hang on to him.’ She did not add that she had been hanging on while being dragged along the ground. Better to let Morag think that she had still been on his back.

      ‘Ye might have ended up in the quicksands,’ Morag breathed in horror.

      ‘Well, I didn’t. A man caught us. He… I couldn’t see him very well in the gloom, but he spoke like a gentleman.’ She smiled to herself. He had acted like a gentleman, too. Such fancy manners he had. Ross Graham. Who stopped to introduce himself in the middle of a thunderstorm.

      ‘But the laird wouldna lay hands on a gentleman, surely?’

      ‘I doubt he knows, Morag. They bound him and gagged him before he had a chance to say a word. And in the dark, no one would be able to tell from his clothes. Besides, they were all dripping wet.’ She stopped, twisting her hands together. ‘You must find out what they did with him, Morag. You must. Even if they…even if they’ve killed him.’ She shut her eyes tightly for a second against the horrifying picture her own words had conjured up. Jamie would not stoop to murder. Would he?

       Chapter Two

       R oss opened his eyes. He could see absolutely nothing. It was pitch dark. But he did not need his eyes to know just what sort of place he was in. His nose told him that. It reeked of damp and decay. More muted was a clear reminder of the stench of human bodies kept imprisoned for too long. There was something else, too, that he could not quite identify.

      Where was he? He stretched out a hand, touching damp straw over the stone floor where he lay. He had already felt the cold eating into his body. Clearly, this place—whatever it was—never saw the sun. He made to sit up. Too quickly. A searing pain in the back of his skull stopped him dead.

      Ah, yes. Now he remembered. He had tried to escape when they reached the outskirts of Dumfries and had been struck down for his pains. He put a hand to the back of his head and gingerly felt for blood. There appeared to be none, though there was a distinct lump under his hair. Well, he had suffered worse in the wars. He would mend. At least Elliott and his dastardly companion had untied his arms.

      Ross felt about in the dark. He had been thrown down near a wall and so he sat up, rather more cautiously than before, and leant his aching head against it for a few moments. Where was he? Somewhere in Dumfries, he supposed, but clearly a prisoner of the