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nose as Laurie stepped into the sunlit room, she said, “Whatever is that dreadful smell?”
    “We had to hide from the raiders,” Laurie said quietly. “There was a boar, and when someone shot it—”
    “One does not wish to hear the sordid details,” Blanche said. “Nonetheless, why did you have to hide? One would presume that even murderous English invaders would not dare lay a hand on a daughter of Sir William Halliot.”
    “I do not know if they would have dared or not,” Laurie said. “I did not think I would be wise to test them.”
    “Wise? You think yourself wise, Laura? Such a notion is utterly laughable.”
    But Blanche did not laugh. Instead, she regarded Laurie with much the same expression of distaste as she might have assumed upon discovering a toad in her wardrobe.
    The silence lengthened until Laurie shivered.
    “If you are cold, you have only yourself to blame,” Blanche said unsympathetically. “You deserve beating.”
    Laurie did not reply.
    “If your father is sensible, this time he will take a good stout switch or a strap to you. He certainly will have much to say to you.”
    “Yes, madam. He is awaiting me even now in the hall.”
    “Then you must go to him at once.”
    “I… I would prefer to change my dress first and tidy my hair.”
    “One should be gratified to learn that for once you care about your appearance, I expect, but it is more important that your father see exactly how his daughter comports herself. I shall take you to him myself, as you are.”
    Swallowing hard, Laurie followed Blanche to the far end of the parlor, where a gallery led to the great hall and the main stairway. Determined to behave as though nothing were out of the ordinary, she strove to keep her head high.
    Ahead of her, Blanche passed gracefully through the arched entry to the hall. Ignoring members of the household and men-at-arms who attended to various duties there, she approached burly, richly attired Sir William Halliot, who sat in a carved wooden armchair, hunched over the high table.
    Surrounded by ledgers and numerous, important looking documents, he was carefully reading one of them and did not look up. A slender scribe perched on a stool beside him dipped his quill into the inkpot and wrote steadily on, clearly oblivious, as his master was, of Blanche’s approach.
    “Sir William,” she said in a clear, sharp voice that brought both men’s heads up, “you will be gratified to learn that your daughter has returned at last from her illicit morning ramble. Although she attempted to disobey your command that she present herself at once, I soon put a stop to that.”
    “So I see,” Sir William said gruffly, frowning at Laurie. “What the devil have you done to yourself, daughter? You look as if you’d been dragged through a swamp and half-drowned.”
    “I was caught in the rain, sir.”
    “Did you not have a cloak?”
    She had forgotten about her cloak. “I did have one, but I left it in Davy’s cottage when the raiders came. I don’t know what became of it after that.”
    “And your shoes?”
    Laurie looked down at the dirty bare toes peeping out from beneath her skirts. “I forgot them, too,” she said.
    “At Davy Elliot’s?”
    “No, sir, here,” she admitted with a sigh. “I do not like wearing shoes.”
    The hall had become uncommonly quiet—and extraordinarily so, considering the number of people there.
    Imperiously indifferent to the fascinated audience, Blanche said, “Such behavior must cease, Sir William. This unnatural girl has grown as wild as a gypsy and is a sad disgrace to the Halliot name.”
    “Now, madam, surely—”
    “You have allowed her to defy you for too long, sir,” Blanche went on without a pause. “She defies you in every way, even refusing every effort that you have made to see her properly married. Surely, you see now that she must be tamed before anyone will have her. Having flouted your orders yet again by running off to consort with low