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3: SOME THINGS ARE BEST LEFT IN THE PAST

“WHAT ARE YE doing, lass?”

Bonnie glanced up, from where she was cleaning up the last vestiges of stew, to see a short, heavyset woman with greying black hair standing at the foot of the stairs.

“Ainslie,” Bonnie greeted her, forcing a smile.

“Don’t mind me … I just had a spill, that’s all.”

Ainslie Boyd, the keep’s head laundress, made a clucking sound and bustled across the floor toward her.

“What happened?”

“I dropped my supper.” Bonnie’s cheeks warmed as she lied.

It was easier not to tell the truth.

Ainslie was her friend—a kindly woman with a bawdy sense of humor that Bonnie had always appreciated—yet she didn’t want to see pity light in her eyes when she told her of her aunt and cousin’s bullying.

Ainslie halted, her warm blue eyes settling upon Bonnie’s face.

The way her expression clouded then made Bonnie’s stomach clench.

Of course, the woman knew she was lying—yet she was too kind to say so.

“Oh, lass, so ye haven’t eaten?” she asked softly.

Bonnie shook her head.

“And ye’ve been weeping,” Ainslie observed.

Bonnie waved her concern away.

“I’ll be fine … it’s just been a long day.”

“Well, ye can’t go to bed hungry,” Ainslie said briskly.

She then headed toward the spence at the far end of the kitchens.

“I’ll fetch ye a morsel.”

Bonnie rose to her feet, alarm rippling through her.

“But my aunt—”

“Don’t fash, lass … Lorna won’t notice anything’s missing.”

Bonnie wasn’t so sure.

Her aunt had an eye like a goshawk on the hunt for such things.

Nevertheless, she followed Ainslie to the large room beyond the kitchen, where shelves covered the walls.

The air was filled with the smells of ripening cheese and cured meats, and the musty scent of grain.

“Here, let’s have ourselves some cheese and oatcakes,” Ainslie announced, helping herself to a wheel of cheese that had already been started, and a basket of oatcakes that had been left over from the noon meal.

The older woman then flashed Bonnie a cheeky smile.

“I was feeling a bit peckish myself … so I waited until I saw Lorna and the twins retire to their quarters before coming down here.”

Bonnie’s gaze widened.

Unlike her, Ainslie wasn’t afraid of the head cook.

Of course, she was older than Lorna, and her husband was chamberlain of the keep.

Following Ainslie out of the spence to the table that dominated the kitchens, Bonnie took a seat opposite her, watching as she cut a few thin slices of cheese.

Her friend’s hands were reddened and chapped—not surprising since she spent her days working with her team of laundresses.

The mix of hot water, ash, and lye they used to clean clothing and linen was hard on the skin.

Nervousness fluttered in Bonnie’s belly as she took an oatcake with a piece of cheese from Ainslie.

“Are ye certain, no one will notice this?”

The head laundress met her eye before winking.

“Don’t worry, when I come down here tomorrow morning, I’ll let Lorna know I raided her spence … I don’t want her blaming ye.”

Bonnie’s lips parted.

Once again, Ainslie’s boldness awed her—she wished she could be so daring.

Ainslie’s gaze held hers then.

“What really happened to yer supper?”

The moment drew out before Bonnie sighed, her shoulders slumping.

There wasn’t any point in hiding the truth.

“Morag deliberately dropped it on the floor.”

Ainslie’s brow furrowed.

Silence fell between the two women as they started on their oatcakes and cheese—but after she’d finished her second oatcake, Ainslie finally replied, “Someone should take a stick to that lass.”

Bonnie snorted.

“Aye, although she just follows her mother’s example.”

Ainslie’s frown deepened.

“I swear Lorna gets sourer by the year,” she muttered.

“She was always sullen, even when she was young. Yer mother was the prettiest of the two sisters, yet when Lorna wed the head groom, she was well pleased with herself. Meanwhile, yer mother …” Ainslie’s voice trailed off then, and a shadow fell over her blue eyes.

“Disgraced herself,” Bonnie murmured, completing the sentence.

She knew little of Greer Fraser, except that she’d been a lass of uncommon beauty, who’d foolishly had a dalliance with a man far above her rank.

The liaison had ended with an unwanted pregnancy, and then she’d died shortly after giving birth.

Bonnie had been saved, yet her mother had bled out.

There hadn’t been anything the midwife, or the healer, could do to save her.

Bonnie’s oatcake turned to ashes in her mouth, and she swallowed with difficulty.

“No one speaks of my mother,” she whispered then.

“It’s as if everyone wishes to forget her.”

Ainslie stiffened.

“Some things are best left in the past,” she replied, her voice unusually subdued.

“It was tragic what happened to her … and folk tend to get superstitious about such things.”

Bonnie put down the oatcake she’d been eating, her gaze pinning her friend to the spot.

“No one ever speaks of my father either,” she pointed out.

“I have no idea who he is.”

“None of us know,” Ainslie replied softly.

“There were rumors, of course …”

Bonnie’s breathing quickened.

This was a first—until now she’d heard nothing at all about her father’s identity.

Her questions usually met a wall of silence.

She leaned forward. “Rumors of who?”

Ainslie’s blue eyes unfocused then, as if she were suddenly back in the past, reliving the events of five and twenty years previous, when wee Bonnie Fraser had come squalling into the world, motherless and unwanted.

“He” —Ainslie began, before catching herself.

She shook her head then, a faint blush rising to her plump cheeks— “It’s best not to indulge in idle speculation,” she said quickly.

“It won’t help ye.”

Disappointment pressed down on Bonnie’s breastbone at these words.

For a moment there, she’d thought Ainslie was about to reveal something important, yet—just like her aunt did whenever Bonnie questioned her about her origins—she went silent.

“God’s troth,” she muttered.

“Everyone is so secretive … ye would think my father was the King of Scotland.”

The head laundress snorted at such a ridiculous notion.

“Lorna wanted to give ye to the nuns at Iona, ye know?” She favored Bonnie with a brittle smile as she subtly steered their conversation in another direction.

“But Duncan Stewart wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted she take ye into her household and raise ye as her own.”

Despite her simmering frustration, Bonnie’s mouth curved.

The seneschal of Stirling Castle was a good man; he’d always treated her well.

Nonetheless, as much as a nun’s life didn’t appeal to her, she wondered if she’d have been happier growing up elsewhere.

“My aunt blamed me when Uncle Ennis left,” Bonnie admitted then, her faint smile fading.

“She said I put too much strain on their marriage.”

Ennis would have stayed if it weren’t for ye , her aunt had once raged at her.

What man wants a bastard supping at the same table as his bairns?

Ye robbed my girls of a father!

Bonnie lifted her oatcake to her lips once more.

A moment later, she lowered it.

Although she hadn’t eaten much, talking about her aunt dulled her appetite.

“That had nothing to do with ye, lass,” Ainslie replied softly.

Bonnie nodded. She appreciated Ainslie’s candor.

Despite the age gap, a strong bond had developed between them over the years.

Nonetheless, there were certain subjects they rarely broached: one was Bonnie’s parents.

Yet Ainslie showed no such reluctance when it came to criticizing the head cook of Stirling Castle.

“Lorna has no power over ye these days,” Ainslie went on, brushing crumbs off her ample bosom.

“Remember that ye answer to the seneschal … not to her.”

Bonnie stifled a flinch.

Ainslie meant well, yet her bluntness stung.

“That’s easier said than done,” she murmured.

“She’s still my aunt, my elder … and some chains are hard to break.”

Leaving the kitchens behind, Bonnie climbed the stairs to the upper levels of the keep.

After sharing the oatcakes and cheese, she and Ainslie cleared up the crumbs and wiped the table down.

The head laundress had then returned to the chambers she shared with her husband, while Bonnie took a lantern and made the steep climb up the servants’ stairs toward her own quarters.

Up and up, she went, making her way to the west tower.

There she took another spiraling stairwell and finally reached the tiny attic—her sleeping space ever since she was old enough to leave her aunt.

Climbing the ladder into the loft, Bonnie shivered.

There was no hearth up here, and the night outside was cold.

Nonetheless, she was used to the cold and damp, and she put up with it gladly if it meant she slept apart from her aunt and cousins.

Moonlight filtered in through the tiny window, bringing with it an icy draft.

The sacking Bonnie usually hung over it had come loose, and so she set down her flickering lantern, shuffled across to the window, and replaced the covering.

Then, sitting back on her heels, she surveyed her tiny chamber.

It really was cramped, yet it was her sanctuary.

From when she retired every evening, to when she rose with the dawn, no one made any demands on her.

In here, she could float away on daydreams, could pretend she were someone else.

Bonnie had little in the way of possessions.

A sheepskin and a pile of coarse blankets made up her bed.

Next to it was a low stool, where a bone comb—the only thing of her mother’s she owned—and a bouquet of dried lavender sat.

Its sharp scent wafted across the attic, a familiar, comforting smell.

Bonnie moved over to the bed and placed the lantern upon the stool.

She then unlaced her kirtle and wriggled out of it, hanging it up on the wall next to another, identical, plain brown kirtle.

They were her only dresses.

Clad in her léine and shivering from the chill, Bonnie hurriedly unbound her hair from where she kept it pulled back from her face during the day.

She then combed out her red curls as best she could.

Teeth chattering, she pulled the shutter down over the lantern and climbed into bed, hauling the covers high up around her chin.

She’d managed to get her hands on a few extra blankets this winter, and it made all the difference.

The weight of them pushed her down into the sheepskin.

The sensation was comforting; she felt cocooned, embraced.

Lying there, Bonnie heard the familiar pattering of tiny feet in the rafters above her head.

The rats and mice who shared her attic were busy tonight.

Her mouth curved. The rodents didn’t bother her.

At least they let her be.

And as she often did, when she was alone, Bonnie closed her eyes and imagined that she wasn’t a lowly chambermaid tucked up in her cold and drafty attic.

It was a habit she’d started years earlier, a way of escaping the drudgery of her life.

“Lady Fraser,” she murmured, her mouth lifting at the corners.

Aye, instead of the bastard daughter of a disgraced cook, she was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary herself and resided in one of the comfortable bedchambers on the lower floors.

A warm hearth would crackle all night, and she would recline on soft sheets with lilac-scented pillows.

A maid waited on her, of course, brushing out her hair every eve, as the pair of them gossiped about the day’s events.

“I shall wear the sea-green surcote today,” she continued, as she imagined her maid helping her dress in the morning.

“The one that matches my eyes.”

She was now a well-dressed lady, walking through the hallways of Stirling Castle.

And tonight, she passed the tall man with flowing white-blond hair—and this time, their gazes met.

She altered her fantasy then.

Now they were wedded.

They walked in the gardens of Stirling Castle together, arm in arm, supped together, and talked for hours.

And then later, in the privacy of their bedchamber, Bonnie’s laird peeled off her gown while murmuring endearments.

A sigh gusted out of Bonnie as she imagined what it would feel like to have his lips upon her skin—to have him kiss his way down her body.