A Cruel Courtship Read Online Free PDF

Margaret asked. ‘You must have had a vision.’ Not to mention that it was not her mother’s wont to be concerned about the consequences of another’s affliction.
    Christiana’s pained expression suggested an affection of which Margaret had not been aware.
    ‘What have you seen, Ma?’
    ‘I told you, I saw how he limps.’ Christiana looked at the tangled yarn and tablets in Margaret’s lap. ‘Oh, put that aside, Maggie. I haven’t the strength to work on it anyway.’
    Margaret persisted, finding the painstaking unravelling calming. ‘Did you see Roger often?’
    ‘I asked after him daily. When he was able to walk along the gallery he came to see me at least once a day. He is a good man, Maggie, a kind man. He told me you spoke of annulling your marriage. Did you?’
    Margaret was confused by her mother’s sudden approval of Roger, whom she usually disliked. ‘You know of our troubles,’ she said. ‘Some things cannot be mended.’
    ‘But you came now to see him?’
    ‘I loved him once,’ Margaret said. ‘We are still man and wife in the eyes of the Kirk.’
    ‘Indeed you are, and he means to keep it so. Pity.You are only nineteen and so pretty – we might have found you a more worthy husband.’
    ‘But you just said he is a good man.’
    ‘Did I?’ Her mother looked at her with an expression so blank Margaret thought it must be sincere.
    ‘Ma, do you know where was he going?’
    Christiana averted her eyes, but not before Margaret saw a shadow fall across them. ‘He did not say.’ She shifted in her chair and fussed with her sleeves. ‘Why are you for Stirling? What is there for you?’ Her voice trembled.
    Margaret could not confide in her mother; in her state she could not be trusted to practise discretion. ‘I have been lonely. Ada has invited me to her home in Stirling for a while. There is nothing holding me in Perth, so I am accompanying her.’
    ‘If only you’d had children. They give a woman purpose.’
    Margaret agreed. But God had not yet granted her children.
    ‘Would that you had the Sight,’ Christiana murmured, then shook her head fiercely. ‘No, no I did not mean to curse you with this wretchedness.’
    This wretchedness . Margaret shivered. ‘Why did you choose to weave a border of owls, Ma?’
    ‘Aunt Euphemia said owls had the wisdom of women and lived in the moon’s cycles, as we do. I feel the need of the owl’s strength.’
    ‘Celia told me that her ma believed that when anowl alights on a roof and wakes the household the master is marked for death. Have you ever heard that?’
    ‘I recall something like that. There are no roofs in this border.’
    Not wishing her mother to read anything in her eyes, Margaret kept them lowered and tried to focus on the matter of her mission to Stirling.
    But what came to mind was David, the Welsh archer James had brought to her in Perth, the man who’d deserted the English army at Soutra, intent on finding William Wallace and fighting for him. He’d brought news of her brother Andrew.
    She remembered how shocked she’d been by the archer’s condition. ‘But you should be abed,’ she’d said to David, looking askance at James. It was inhuman to push this man to speak to her when he was so ill. He was sweating and obviously weak with fever, and his hands and face were disfigured with a crimson rash. Margaret tried to keep her gaze from it after expressing her sympathy that the brothers at the spital had been unable to ease it.
    David had lifted his hands, turned them over to reveal oozing scabs on his palms, and shaken his head. ‘It was not for this I was at the spital, Dame Margaret. It is the price I paid for my freedom. I escaped by crawling out of the infirmary drain, which carries away the blood and offal.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Freedom to choose for whom I fight –that is not so easily won. When I heard that youwere Father Andrew’s sister I asked to come to see you.’
    Celia brought cushions for the one