“Have you ever thought I might be crying because I have a Scotsman in my house?” She gave a shaky laugh then, when his expression didn’t change, she followed it with a sigh of resignation. He was waiting for her to speak and, surprisingly, she found herself wanting to tell him about it. It was a story she never expected to recount, and it took a moment for her to find the right words. Drawing a breath, and faltering slightly, she began. “They came in the early morning. Although he was a tenant, my father was a wealthy farmer and that meant we were always in danger. The men who worked on the farm also guarded us. On this particular day, one of the farm cats had given birth in the barn and then gone missing. I’d taken a basket to gather up the kittens and bring them up to the house. When I emerged from the barn, the sky was black and orange over the house. I knew immediately what it was. It meant that my family were all dead and our home was ablaze. One of the new men my father had taken on recently was with the reivers. He noticed me and grabbed me. He threw me down on the ground and tried to—” Her voice had been carefully neutral until then, but she gagged on the word.

“To rape you.” Fraser said it for her.

“Yes. But I had a knife. The borders are a wild place to grow up, and my father insisted that we all knew how to defend ourselves. I only had one chance, but I made it a good one. That reiver was never going to rape anyone again by the time I’d finished with him. The townspeople were on their way by then. They’d been alerted by the flames, and I could hear their shouts as they approached. But the other reivers wanted their revenge for what I’d done. The one I’d cut was their leader’s son, you see. Strangely, none of them wanted to try the same thing he had.” Her smile was lopsided, and her hand crept up to her shoulder as though feeling the scars through the cloth of her gown. “You know the rest.”

“You were lucky to survive,” Fraser said gently.

She looked up at him then. She felt the smile that was not a smile still trembling on her lips. “Is that what you call it? Lucky? You asked me why I make myself invisible. I do it to ensure I never have to see the look of disgust in the eyes of another. Those reivers didn’t kill me, but when they scorched my flesh so that it looks like rough cloth or crumpled, discarded parchment, they killed any chance I might have of a normal life.”

Wordlessly, Fraser handed back her spectacles, and she quickly slipped them on. They finished their chores in silence.

“I didn’t know I cried in my sleep,” Martha said eventually, keeping her head bent over the dishes she was stacking.

“Aye, ’tis woeful hard on the heart to hear it.” He started to go out of the room, but turned around again, his big frame filling the doorway. “Oh, and, crabbit one?”

“Yes?” Her voice was wary. She blinked at him, aware that her pupils were magnified even further by the thick lenses.

“You don’t see disgust in my eyes.” His smile was warm on her face and, nervously, she lowered her head again.

Chapter Eight

Christmas came and went, and Jack’s health continued to improve steadily. The festive season provided everyone with a momentary relief from their fears about what might happen if the king’s men arrived before he was well enough to set out for the border. Christmas was always a vibrant affair at Delacourt Grange, and Tom carried armfuls of greenery into the house for Rosie and Harry to use as decoration. Mrs. Glover tolerated the boughs of evergreens which invaded her precious rooms, but she drew the line at mistletoe, which—with its risqué connotations and implied encouragement of kissing games—she considered ungenteel, if not downright unholy. She fought a constant battle, in between cooking a feast fit for a small army, against its introduction by the maidservants and footmen.

On Christmas day a yule log was lit in the fireplace. The family and staff indulged in a day of celebration, gift giving and frivolity. Mr. Delacourt, generally the most abstemious of hosts, made a bowl of punch which caused Fraser, when called upon to sample a cup, to choke at its fiery effects. Harry laughed as Jack, also required to sample the brew, mopped his streaming eyes but diplomatically pronounced it very fine. Tom joined the family for dinner being, as Rosie pointed out, more a family friend than an employee. Rosie wore a gown of ruby damask silk over an underskirt of embroidered lace, and Martha donned a new dress in a deep sapphire hue trimmed with silver ribbon.

“You look vastly pretty today, Martha,” Rosie told her.

“Nonsense,” Martha said, with a look of considerable surprise at her reflection in the mirror. “I couldn’t look pretty if I tried.”

“But you do,” Rosie insisted. “I don’t know what it is—mayhap ’tis that colour suits you—but there is a bloom about you I’ve not seen before. You look very well indeed.”

The gentlemen, when they joined them, were clad in full-skirted coats and knee breeches. Jack had borrowed his garments from Mr. Delacourt, while Fraser was rather less fine in Tom’s second-best suit. That evening, Rosie played the harpsichord and they sang traditional songs. Fraser and Jack, both possessed of fine baritone voices, taught them a few Scottish ballads which they had learned as children. There was much amusement when Fraser tried to get Martha to sing. He raised his brows at Harry, who seemed to find the suggestion particularly amusing.

“Cousin Martha couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.” Harry had all the diplomacy of his twelve years.

“It’s true,” Martha said, when Fraser began to reproach the lad. “I am tone deaf.”

“I like it not when you talk ill of yourself or allow others to do so,” he told her under his breath.

Martha looked up at him, surprised to see a fiercely protective light in his eyes. “But indeed, it would be foolish of me to pretend I can sing when I cannot.”

“You know very well that’s not what I mean.”

Tom, with a skill no-one had ever suspected he possessed, took Rosie’s place and played a few country dances on his fiddle. Jack held out his hand to Rosie who, blushing slightly, allowed him to lead her around the room while Mr. Delacourt looked in approbation from a punch-induced haze. Rosie’s cheeks were becomingly pink, her eyes shining and lips parted.

“Will ye dance with me, lass?” Fraser turned to Martha.

“Oh, no, I don’t dance.” She shook her head determinedly.

He quirked an eyebrow at her but did not persist. Which was what she wanted, after all. So why did she feel so disappointed?

Later, Tom returned to his own quarters above the stables, and Mr. Delacourt, drowsy from the effects of overindulgence, followed Harry upstairs to bed. It was with some consternation that Martha noticed Rosie slip out of the room and Jack follow her.

“Dance with me now.” Fraser held out his hand to her.

“I must go after Rosie…”

“She will be safe with Lord Jack. You need not fear for her while she is with him. He is an honourable man. Dance with me.”

“We have no music,” she said, searching wildly for another excuse.

“We don’t need it,” he replied, drawing her close.

This was a very different dance to the light country dances in which Jack and Rosie had indulged. Fraser demanded eye contact throughout. Martha’s high colour and deeper breathing owed nothing to the physical activity and everything to his nearness. As he drew her tantalisingly close and then whirled her away as the convention of the dance dictated, she wanted to cry out with longing. She finally understood what Mrs. Glover meant when she said that dancing was the devil’s way of getting a maiden to misbehave. For the first time in her life, Martha actually wanted to misbehave. Desperate to ensure Fraser couldn’t sense her emotions, she arched her back, straining her body away from him.