Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] by Border Wedding Read Free Book Online Page B

water. Amalie, you go along and help her.”
    “Aye, madam,” Amalie said.
    “Prithee, madam . . .” Meg began, only to bite off the rest of her words when Amalie pinched her arm.
    “Yes, Meg, what is it?” Lady Murray asked.
    Thinking quickly, Meg said, “Must I try to pack all I own in two baskets?”
    “Nay, just such clothing and other items as you will need for comfort until your father can arrange to send the rest of your things to you. Two baskets should suffice, but judge for yourself. I know you will be sensible in your choosing.”
    “Thank you,” Meg said, feeling heat in her cheeks at the unexpected compliment. Such moments were rare.
    When they reached the stair hall, Amalie said, “You were about to ask her if I should pack, too, weren’t you?”
    “I was, aye, for it would be as well to know, don’t you agree?”
    “You should say no more about my going, Meg. If you don’t irritate her by pressing her, she is going to let me go. One could just see that.”
    “I saw nothing of the sort,” Meg said as she followed her up the stairs. “I will agree that she is thinking about it, but she may as easily decide
not
to let you go.”
    “Nay, for if she means to forbid something, she does so at once. Also, recall that when Father said he’d find a serving woman, she said I might be going.”
    “She did not exactly say that you
are
going, though.”
    “She said enough. Sithee, it is only when she thinks she sees merit in a plan but needs to sort details out for herself that she delays. In this instance, I warrant she will quickly see how much safer you will be if I ride with you.”
    “Aye, perhaps, but that respectable serving woman Father is seeking would do as much to ensure my safety without your going.”
    “She would not,” Amalie said. “Just consider those reivers, who are nearly all of the sort our lady mother calls Scottish brutes and ruffians. Do you think they would show the same respect to a serving woman of their own class as they would to me—to the two of us?”
    Meg smiled again. “Surely, you do not think them any rougher than our brothers’ henchmen—Simon’s in particular, of course, but even Tom’s men are surly—as are most others of their ilk that we’ve known, English or Scot. Do you think Sir Walter cannot control his men?”
    Meg had lowered her voice in hopes of keeping it from echoing up and down the stairwell to anyone within earshot. Amalie did not bother to lower hers.
    “What do we know about him?” she demanded. “Why should he care what they do? Is our father not forcing him into this marriage just as he is forcing you? What if Sir Walter were to decide to abandon you, or kill you, along the way?”
    “Don’t be foolish,” Meg said. “He may be angry, but he has no cause to take out his anger on me.”
    “Faugh,” Amalie said, rudely echoing one of their father’s favorite epithets. “Men always take out their anger on the women closest to them. One has only to think of our brothers and our father—or, indeed, of any man we have ever met.”
    “That may sometimes be true,” Meg said. “But you will not pretend that any of them has ever killed a woman merely because someone else has angered him.”
    “We cannot know all they have done,” Amalie said. “We see them only when they are here. They may do all sorts of horrid things elsewhere.”
    Although Meg could believe the ambitious Simon capable of almost anything if he thought it would gain him what he wanted, she could not imagine merry Tom behaving as Amalie suggested. Shaking her head at her sister, she said, “You know our lady mother disapproves of exaggeration, dearling. Do contain your fancies until we are alone where no one else might hear them.”
    “They may be fancies,” Amalie said. “But you know our mother well enough to know she harbors the same opinion of those men.”
    “Even so, you ought not to say such things where others may hear you.”
    Having reached the