Chapter Eighteen
“He’s gone?” John asked Duncan as Madeline stood beside the hearth in Glengarnock’s great hall, her sister and Robert sitting with refreshments. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
Duncan shrugged. “He’s gone, never returned from his trek to Edinburgh. Surely, the man didn’t meet with an untimely demise.”
“The man is built like a barbican and trained to kill. Nay likely. But where would he have gone?” John asked.
Duncan shrugged. “Probably nay back here if Lady Madeline is indeed the woman he wanted. Likely, he doesn’t even know your betrothal has dissolved. He thinks you will return with her as your wife and wants nothing to do with it.”
“How are his quarters?” John pressed.
Again, Duncan shrugged. “Intact. Abandoned. He’s left many items behind. He asked me to secure it until his return, but now I see it for the ruse it might have been.”
“He left three days before the ceremony,” Madeline thought aloud. “But he’s too responsible to abandon his post with no warning.”
Duncan looked at her. “Apparently, he isn’t.”
Madeline furrowed her brow.
“It just doesn’t make sense. He was the most loyal of all guardsmen to our faither,” Mariel interjected from her chair. “Madeline tells me he admitted detesting our faither. Surely, if he could continue employ with Harold Crawford for so long, returning here would be easy.”
“Abandoning anyone or anything just doesn’t fit with his character,” Madeline said, exchanging a troubled smile with her sister. She remembered how fondly he spoke of his brothers, of his family. She had seen his loyalty at Castle Ayr when the man had served her sire.
“My lady,” Duncan said. “I never came to know Teàrlach that well. He was friendly and great as a trainer, but a quiet sort, kept to himself when he wasn’t drilling the men. But he always struck me as loyal to a fault. I wager, he’s never abandoned a post before, but I bet his feelings for you ran deeper than his loyalty to Laird Moreville did… I apologize, for the way I once flirted with you. It’s obvious now why Teàrlach acted as if he wanted to kill me the day we visited Dungarnock. I wasn’t wise to your relations with each other. Teàrlach had made a point to keep the entire tryst a secret.”
John shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lady Madeline. Mayhap he’ll be back soon. And when he returns, I shall tell him of our circumstances as friends, and that you wait for him with the king’s blessing. I’m certain he’ll come for you at Dungarnock Tower.”
She nodded amiably, though the excitement of their journey home had drained away. What if Teàrlach didn’t come back? She swallowed, found her resolve, and accepted John’s fond farewell. Robert and Mariel escorted her out to collect their horses while John retired to his father’s solar to begin understanding the stacks of accounts piled upon his desk. Now that the man didn’t have to marry her, he had turned out to be quite kind.
A gentle summer shower sprinkled upon them. The countryside was gray.
A bad omen.
…
After a fortnight, Teàrlach MacGregor hadn’t returned.
“Sister, you must return with us. You simply must,” Mariel begged, as their horses were readied for departure.
“He’ll come back,” Madeline said, shaking her head. “I have to be here when he does.”
“May I scold you?” Mariel huffed, her hands on her hips, then continued without waiting for permission. “You’re being foolish. If he does come back, you have no idea when that will be. It’s unsafe for you to remain here, alone. Had I known this…” She shook her head. “Stop being so stubborn.”
Mariel looked to Robert for support, but surprisingly, Robert was slow to answer.
“I have to say, wife, that I agree. I would like to know she is safe with us. But remaining here is her decision. Lord knows if we’ve spent a fortnight trying to convince her and she still won’t budge on the matter, nothing is going to make her do so.”
“I don’t believe you’re taking her side on this issue, all of a sudden?” Mariel argued.
Robert took Mariel’s arms, sliding his hands down to hers to pick them up. “She’s well-guarded now. She has a home, plenty of staff here. Her garden is plentiful, her gates reinforced. If she’s happy here, then mayhap, we should relent and let it be.”
Mariel’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t believe this.” She pulled free from Robert and circumvented him, rounding back on Madeline. “Why are you being so stubborn? Never mind. ‘He’ll come back.’ But I worry, sister, what if he doesn’t?”
Mariel’s question had already been eating at her since her return to Dungarnock. What if he didn’t ever come back? As far as Teàrlach knew, she was a married woman now. Seeing each other would be painful for them both, if she were indeed married, and in honesty, Madeline wasn’t so certain she would want to see him again either, if that were the case. But as Madeline worked in her garden, long after Mariel and Robert had departed, harvesting the bounty that Teàrlach had planted, memories of her lover working shirtless to sow seeds for her assaulted her mind, the way he had stood so casually with his foot propped on the shovel and his arms draped across the end of the handle, regarding her. Lord, she missed him.
Fingal and Greta had returned to her, bringing their daughter, their daughter’s husband, and their grandchild, and John de Moreville had appointed five guardsmen to keep Dungarnock secure. A young, new maid kneeled a couple rows over from her, also working silently, plucking beans and dropping them into her apron held like a sling. The sun beat down on them. Madeline’s nose reddened. Her cheeks freckled.
She sat back and simply gazed ahead of her at nothing. Thoughts simmered in the back of her mind, taking shape. Teàrlach had mentioned taking her to the Highlands. What if he had gone home to the MacGregor stronghold? To his brothers? There was only one way to find out, and it required a long overland journey into the unknown.
She knew nothing of what lay beyond Ayrshire. Could she, one tiny woman, mayhap find the way to Laird Padraig MacGregor? It seemed impossible. But as the days accumulated upon her return, as Mariel had begged her to move south, her heart grew more and more restless. Dungarnock wasn’t the same without Teàrlach’s weekly visits, with so many bodies now filling the space. What was the point, after all that had happened, of sitting complacently at Dungarnock Tower, waiting for the proverbial rescuer to ride valiantly to his damsel in distress? She wanted Teàrlach now, and Teàrlach might not learn of the dissolution of her betrothal for months to come, if he had removed himself from the Lowland sphere of gossip. In his pain, what if he married another? What if he hated her now for not pleading to the king when he had asked her?
She stood and carried her parsnips to a basket, dropping her apron so that they tumbled out. She needed to move, shake off the restless ache that intensified in the pit of her stomach whenever she thought of Teàrlach retreating back in Edinburgh. She had to do something. It would be most unlike her, and it felt frightening, but there was no other option. She didn’t want to wait months until she saw him again. He had begged her to elope with him. He had begged her not to marry John. He might have lost faith in her love for him. If she found her way to him, mayhap it would restore his faith.
Aye, there was no other answer to her conundrum. Her mind, she realized, had already been made up, she had just needed time to convince her cowardly nerves to submit. As the tower slept that night, she pattered down the stairs in an old gown of coarse wool, past the guardsmen who slept on pallets in the great hall, and through the kitchen to the back door. My, but the tower really was insecure. Teàrlach had been right to be concerned. The ease at which she had just crept out with her pack over her shoulder, taking a bag of food from the pantries as she went, was unsettling. Anyone wanting entrance would be able to breach the threshold with little issue.
She crept through the gate, pulling it closed again, though unable to bar it behind her, and departed on the path she remembered to Kilbirnie. The nighttime shadows, silence, and rustling of plants in the midnight breeze filled her with wicked images, but she narrowed her gaze to the path before her and didn’t waver. As dawn broke, she had finally reached the fields upon which the fair had been celebrated. A peasant family in a nearby croft directed her down a country trail, less traveled and shorter in distance to Laird Barclay. It was there, she was told, she could gain better directions to such a castle as that of Clan Gregor and Laird MacGregor himself. And hopefully, Teàrlach.