Page 60 of The Scottish Bride

“It may. I must—I would find the bookseller there. He has the pages.”

“The Rhymer’s book?” Liam asked abruptly. “You never said.”

“I did not tell you because you want this thing of me too.”

“What is this book?” the abbot asked. “Tell us. We are not a threat, my dear.”

She sighed, then relented. “My great-grandfather wrote of many things in a poor hand on scraps of paper. He gave them to me to copy out. He said they were very important to him. So when Brother Gideon talked of the bookseller and binder in Selkirk, I knew he could prepare the pages I copied into a book. My husband knew of it. I brought the pages to the bookbinder when he was here at Holyoak. But I do not know why anyone should want it but my kinfolk,” she added fervently.

“Is the book safe in this man’s keeping?” Liam sounded gruff.

“It should be. But I want to fetch it before Comyn can find it.”

“And so you should.” She had not expected so calm a response from him. She frowned, seeing again that something distracted him. She could sense his feelings somehow, like clear warm waves of awareness, as if they were wrapped with her own. Wanting to ask what bothered him, she could not.

Seton of Dalrinnie. Resentment returned like a slamming door. She looked away. She had said too much, feeling as protective of Thomas’s writings now as the day he had entrusted his bookish little granddaughter with his work.

The abbot sipped his ale. “So you need to get the bound book. Then what?”

“I would take it to my sisters at Kincraig,” she said. “I cannot return to Dalrinnie, for King Edward gave Comyn the keeping of it. But I refused to marry Sir Malise, so he cannot claim my right to the castle or any of my property.”

“Therein lies the problem and the solution both, I believe.”

“I do not understand. If I take to a convent, I would give up my claim to earthly possessions and properties.”

“And Dalrinnie and your property, including that book, would be like leather balls, rolling free,” the abbot said. “Edward would pounce.”

“The king could assert that your properties reverted to him, as can happen when unmarried or widowed women enter the sisterhood,” Liam added. “That is English law, not Scots or Irish, as is honored here. The king would claim the Rhymer’s work that way. So a convent is not the answer.”

“I see,” she said. “I promised Grandda that I would protect his legacy. If entering a convent would undo that, then I cannot.”

“Lady Thomasina,” the abbot said, “I met Thomas the Rhymer years ago. An impressive fellow. And he might say that the most important thing to protect in this predicament is you, my lady. You are his legacy, you and your kin, even more so than his writings.”

“My sisters and brother and I? That may be so.”

“It is so,” Liam’s murmured.

The abbot smiled. “There is one course of action that will ensure what you need.”

Seeing the quick sparkle in the old monk’s dark-circled eyes, she had a sudden clear thought that made her gasp. “You think I should marry another?”

He smiled. “Thomas’s lass indeed. Yes, I think you should marry…Sir William.”

“Marry you?” She looked at Liam, bewildered.

His gaze was a steady blue clarity. “It is up to the lady.”

“This is the most direct way to stop Sir Malise, I think,” said Abbot Murdoch.

“If I agree, if we did—” She breathed in, out, vying for purchase as if she climbed a height. “The king could order our arrest. Or our deaths, both of us.”

“Edward is predictable in his anger,” the abbot agreed. “But I recommend this.”

“What of you?” She turned to Liam, her heart a drum, beating out hopes, fears.

“If you marry someone now, it would deter Comyn.” He spoke calmly, without emotion, yet his eyes were keenly blue, a sea-depth she could not quite read. Then he shrugged. “Or he might find a way around it.”

“He would make me a widow and have done with it. That is what he would do.”