The Black Knave by PATRICIA POTTER

kitchens. She would soon be mistress, and she wanted to know the servants, the cook, the housekeeper. But all had turned their backs on her as if part of some vast conspiracy. “Jacobite.” She heard the word whispered as if a curse. They may not care for their lord, but they seemed to dislike Jacobites even more.
    She’d finally retreated. Temporarily. She would find a way to win their loyalty once she was married. She’d always had loyalty from those who had worked for her family. Kinsmen all, they were more family than servants. She remembered the mornings in the kitchens. The smell of pastries baking in the huge fireplace, the warm clucking of the cook, the blast of heat on a cold, wet day …
    Family, warmth, safety.
    She shivered, and Trilby’s hands stilled.
    “You look so bonny,” Trilby tried desperately to comfort her.
    But she was not bonny. She had never been pretty, though she’d been told she had pretty hair. She thought it too straight, too dark. Just as her lips were too wide and her chin too sharp. She didn’t even care about that now. In truth, mayhap it had been her plain looks that had prompted the marquis to offer an arrangement that would keep him from her bed.
    A knock came at the door. A man’s voice filtered through the door. “The vicar is ready.”
    Bethia swallowed through the rock in her throat. She’d had no attendants other than Trilby. Rory’s mother had died years earlier, and the marquis had not married again. Donald Forbes’s wife had died in childbirth, as had the babe. So Rory Forbes had no women in his immediate family. And apparently because she was Jacobite, none of the guests had offered to help her.
    But Trilby had provided all the help she needed. All she wanted. She did not think she could stand the ministrations of women who made no secret of their contempt. To them, she was a papist.
    Trilby squeezed her arm. Her one ally .
    Bethia tried to smile for Trilby’s sake and went to the door, opening it.
    She recognized the man who faced her. She had seen him about the courtyard.
    “The marquis sent me to escort you,” he said.
    So his lord—and soon to be hers—was afraid she might flee after all. God knew how much she’d wanted to. Instead, she said steadily, “I am ready.”
    “You are not going to the gallows, my lady,” the man said.
    “Am I not?” she asked.
    “Nay, I think not. I am Alister Armstrong, the blacksmith,” he said offering his arm to her. The arm that should have belonged to her father.
    For a moment, she wondered whether she should feel insulted. Instead, she felt a trifle reassured. The northern clans, including her own, paid little distinction to rank. Loyalty played a far stronger role as to who was the chief’s confidants. Mayhap her bridegroom-to-be wasn’t the fob she imagined if he had this man as friend.
    He quickly destroyed the illusion.
    “Lord Cumberland will escort you down the aisle,” he said. “I was sent to bring you to him.”
    Why had he not sent a lady? Afraid the bride might run?
    Her body stiffened. The last indignity. Instead of her father escorting her down the aisle, his murderer would do that deed. Instead of a host of friends sending her on her way, an enemy was sent to fetch her.
    She glared at her captor, studying him as a trapped fox might study the huntsman. “And why were you given such an honor?”
    “I was available,” he said with the tiniest pull of his lips. “But I did try to make myself that way.”
    “Why?”
    “I wanted you to know you have a friend here.”
    “A friend?” ‘Twas scarcely credible. She narrowed her eyes. He looked too small for a blacksmith. Most men in that profession were huge, their arms as wide as most men’s legs. But this Alister was lean and wiry with a merry little glint in his eyes.
    “Did my … the marquis send you here?”
    “He asked me to accompany you so you would not be alone.”
    “I am alone.”
    “Not quite so alone,” he said in a soft