Page 1 of The Laird's Masked Passion

CHAPTER ONE

June 1594, St. Andrews, an inn near the cathedral

Had Lady Elspeth Fraser been invited to a funeral, she would have expected more cheer.

The chamber above the inn yard was handsomely appointed in that manner which proclaimed comfort without quite achieving it. A fire had been laid, though the June morning had little need of one. The air was thick with beeswax, lavender, and the salt-wet breath of St. Andrews.

Her mother, Lady Morven Fraser, stood behind her with a comb in one hand and a veil in the other, and had not spoken for nearly half an hour. This convinced Elspeth that something was very wrong indeed. Her mother had never been silent where a word might be shared. Yet now she drew the comb through Elspeth’s hair with trembling fingers and behaved as if speech itself had been outlawed.

“Maither,” Elspeth spoke at last, “if ye pull any harder, I shall arrive at Rose’s wedding without a scalp, and there are some brides who might take such a sacrifice as an ill omen.”

Her mother’s hand stilled. Across the room, her father, Thomas Fraser, looked up. He had been standing near the window for much of the morning, dressed in dark wool, with his gaze turned outward to the street below. Elspeth’s father had never needed to raise his voice to make a room smaller. He only had to look at it.

“Dinnae be foolish,” he grumbled.

Elspeth felt the first small sting of fear gather beneath her ribs. A fear that came wearing the garments of reason: a silent mother, a cold father, a missing maid and a wedding at which the bride had not met with the cousin who had been brought, supposedly, to help prepare her.

“Where is Rose?” Elspeth asked.

No one answered. Elspeth turned upon the stool, making her mother’s hands fall away.

“I have asked three times now. Where is Rose?”

Her father looked back toward the street. “Ye will see her soon enough.”

“That is what ye said when we arrived.”

“And it remains true.”

“It is a curious, Faither, that it grows nay more useful with repetition.”

Her mother drew in a sharp breath, almost a plea. “Elspeth?—”

“Enough,” her father ordered.

The word was quiet. It landed like a door barred from the other side.

Her mother’s lips pressed together. Color rose and vanished in her cheeks. Elspeth saw it, and the fear beneath her ribs sharpened.

Her mother was not merely silent. She had beensilenced.

Elspeth rose from the stool. The gown they had put on her whispered around her ankles, too fine for the task of helping another woman dress. It was ivory silk with narrow sleeves and a fall of embroidered cloth that had supposedly belonged to an aunt. Elspeth had objected to its splendor, saying Rose ought to be the finest dressed woman in the church, but her mother had insisted with an expression that made argument feel indecent.

Now, standing in it, Elspeth felt less adorned than wrapped.

“Skye should have been here,” she reminded them. “She always travels with me. Why hasn’t she come?”

“Skye wasnae needed,” her father replied.

Elspeth gave a short laugh. “That is the first untruth ye have told this morning which lacked even the courtesy of disguise.”

His gaze cut to her. She knew that look. It had bent stronger people than she, and in younger years her as well. But she was one-and-twenty now, and though obedience had been sewn into her upbringing as tightly as boning into a bodice, it had never fit comfortably.

“Something is wrong,” she spoke. “Rose isnae here. Skye isnae here. Maither hasnae said twenty words since dawn. Ye have answered every question as though it were treason. I am nae a child tae be led about by ribbons. What is happening?”

Her mother’s eyes filled. Her father turned from the window at last.

“What is happening is that ye will dae as ye are told.”