Page 24 of A Debt Inherited

Not enough to make him foolish. Enough to make him kind.

That was the worst of it.

He had spoken softly. He had said her name as though it were an answer to something. Lady Marjorie first, then Marjorie, then nothing at all. His hand had rested on the back of the chair by the bed, and the carved thistle on the rail had been split at the stem. She had fixed her eyes upon that split because it was better to count broken wood than the steps between the door and her.

She had not screamed.

“My lady?”

The room returned: grey glass, poor fire, Elspeth’s bloodless face, the folded cloths shut away.

Marjorie lowered her hand. “You will say nothing.”

“No, my lady.”

“To my mother.”

Elspeth did not answer.

Marjorie turned. “To my mother, Elspeth.”

The maid’s mouth trembled once, then steadied. “No, my lady.”

The answer came too quickly.

Marjorie crossed to the chair and sat before her knees failed her. The room did not tilt. She had thought it might. Instead, everything sharpened: the coal’s red eye in the grate, the pin lying apart from the saucer, the faint steam gone from the basin. Her hands lay still. Her back remained straight. Her voice, when she found it, did not break.

“How far?”

Elspeth looked at her.

“If there has been no cloth since September. How far?”

“Two months, my lady. Perhaps more, if—”

“Do not finish.”

Elspeth stopped.

Two months. Perhaps more.

Marjorie shut her eyes. The dinner where Hugh had spoken to Dr Kerr about tenant fever. The morning he had sent Alexander a carved horse from Edinburgh. The afternoon Lady Isobel had slept in the chair by the window and woken with Hugh’s name half-formed in warning. The night of rain.

Her stomach turned.

Elspeth was beside her with the basin. Marjorie took it and held it in her lap until the sickness passed without result. Even that mercy felt ungenerous.

“Shall I fetch water?”

“No.”

“Shall I send for Mrs Mackay?”

“No.”

A pause.

“Shall I send for Lady Isobel?”