Highlander's Forbidden Love: Only love can heal the scars of the past...

by Faris, Fiona

  Elizabeth, her cheeks streaked with tears, her brow furrowed in desperate appeal, spread her hands imploringly.

  “That is not true,” she cried.

  “He has used you,” Gilbert insisted, meeting the challenge of her appeal by throwing out his chin. “He has used you to take his pleasure and to infiltrate this household. He has used you like the men at the King’s Castle in Peebles used you not so long ago.”

  Elizabeth let out a long, heartrending wail of anguish.

  “Gilbert!” Margaret’s voice was dark and redolent with warning and reproach. “That is cruel. It is not the same thing at all. The lass has feelings for this Comyn lad, whatever those feelings might be. She had no feelings for the men who abused her as a child.”

  Gilbert colored and looked down shamefaced at his feet. He remained silent for a moment while he fought to regain control of his emotions.

  “But the fact remains,” he resumed eventually, his voice low and measured, “he has taken advantage of you and whatever feelings you had for him, of your innocence and your gentle, trusting nature, in pursuit of his treacherous designs.”

  “It is not like that, I tell you.”

  Gilbert’s fury flared again.

  “Do not presume to ‘tell’ me!”

  “Peace, Gilbert, Elizabeth, the pair of you,” Margaret intervened, rising from her chair and wiping the remnants of her tears from her eyes. “It is what it is. Mistakes have been made, and the important thing now is how we move on from where we are. Duncan Comyn is a fugitive—”

  “And it is only a matter of time until he is apprehended,” Gilbert interjected. “My men are scouring the country, and a bounty has been placed on his head. He will not escape.”

  “You must put him behind you, Elizabeth, and look to the future. Matthew Fitt asked me for permission to pay court to you. I withheld my permission, but on reflection, and in light of recent events, he might not be a bad prospect.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, her eyes wide with alarm, but Margaret raised her hand to forestall her objection. She turned to Gilbert.

  “You, as a high officer of the realm, could ennoble him, or, having the ear of the king, arrange for his advancement under royal patronage… How is Matthew, in any case?”

  “He has a cracked skull, but it will mend. Apart from that, he is whole.”

  “Thank goodness.” Margaret released a sigh.

  “Unlike Aonghas,” Gilbert added grimly. “Yon Comyn has much to answer for.”

  “Aonghas did not die by Duncan’s hand,” Elizabeth retorted. “Nor did he break Matthew’s head.”

  Gilbert bristled and was about to reply, but Margaret quickly pre-empted him.

  “When he is mended, then, we shall speak of this matter again,” she said. “Matthew is a good and handsome man,” she added, turning to Elizabeth. “And if my eyes do not deceive me at dine, you have some feelings for him too. He is certainly much taken by you.”

  Elizabeth let her eyes fall demurely. It was true; she found Matthew kind and gallant and handsome, and the sight of him stirred a warm feeling in her stomach.

  “But it is Duncan that I want,” she said, almost under her breath. “Matthew is a fine and noble man, but he is not Duncan.”

  Margaret smiled at her fondly, almost as if Elizabeth were a child who would not eat her kale but would rather suck on a lump of çucre candi.

  “As I say,” she reiterated firmly, “we shall speak of this matter again, just as soon as Matthew is well again.”

  “And the Comyn traitor is hanged,” Gilbert added.

  Elizabeth rushed forward and clutched Gilbert’s hands.

  “Can he not be spared?” she beseeched, falling to her knees before him. “Whatever his business here, he has become disillusioned and has deserted it. He is determined to leave the country for France and never to return. He asked me to go with him – that’s how much he loves me – and I would gladly share his trials and tribulations as an exile. He has done no harm and could do no harm if he were allowed to live out his life beyond these shores. Can you not show clemency?”

  Gilbert let out a long, slow breath.

  “The man is a traitor, and we cannot suffer traitors to live. There is no guarantee that he will not return to wreak mischief and vengeance on those whom he perceives as having ‘wronged’ him and his kin. Indeed, I would think less of him as a man were he to fail to stand up for his inheritance. Forby, he must be made an example of, to show clearly our strength and that we will not tolerate, let alone forgive, challenges to our authority. And King Robert is, after all, the rightful king, and that order must be maintained; otherwise, we would have anarchy.”

  “I am surprised,” Elizabeth said archly. “Especially as you were a rebel once yourself, struggling against the ‘rightful’ rule of the Balliols. Have you no sympathy for Duncan?”

  “I have every sympathy,” Gilbert replied, surprising himself as much as Elizabeth with his reply. “Aye, and I could have had no complaint had I been put to death for my ‘treachery’, as so many good men were in those days at the hands of the English. That is the nature of ‘right’: the length of your sword and the strength of your arm. And woe betide anyone who seeks to weaken it.”

  Margaret came and placed her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. Gently, she eased her to her feet.

  “That is the way of things, my dear. The more I hear, the more I believe that Duncan Comyn is a fine man whose feelings and intentions towards you are sincere and honorable. But he is more than Duncan Comyn, the man. He is part of a web of allegiance and duty that sets him at odds with us. You too are now more than Lizzie Bryce, the poor wee lassie who came to me in need of love and protection. You are now also part of a web that is larger than yourself, and which fates both you and Duncan Comyn to be forever estranged.”

  “Then I would that you released me from that web,” Elizabeth said in a low, steady voice. “I would that you released me from your service and from my obligations for you.”

  Margaret looked at her in astonishment.

  “You do love him, don’t you? You would give up all you have to be with him.”

  “I do, and I would,” Elizabeth affirmed.

  “You don’t know what you are saying.” Gilbert scoffed dismissively, but there was more than a waver of doubt in his voice. “You would throw away your prospects for a life of poverty and hardship?”

  “I would.”

  “Do not be so hasty.” Margaret smiled, having regained the composure that Elizabeth’s confident assertion had shaken.

  “In any case,” Gilbert concluded harshly, “the matter does not arise. Young Nicholas will have his wish; the man who has so upset you will face execution when he is caught.”

  * * *

  Later, after Elizabeth had retired to bed and they were alone in the solar, sitting opposite one another in their armchairs beside the fire, Gilbert caught Margaret gazing at him thoughtfully.

  “What?” he asked, almost blushing with self-consciousness.

  Margaret let her gaze linger for a few moments. He is just as handsome, she thought, as he was when I first set eyes on him some fifteen years ago. His dark hair was a little grizzled with gray at the temples, his eyes heavier, his brow a little more creased, but all that just lent gravitas to his bearing. He was, after all, not a young and carefree knight any longer; he was a statesman, with the cares of a kingdom weighing upon him.

  “I just sometimes wonder if you are the same man I married,” she mused aloud.

  He gave her a puzzled frown.

  “I mean, since you have risen in the service of the king, you have become more hard-hearted and inflexible. You have lost that element of the reiver in you, that devil-may-care attitude. I remember when you would have put Elizabeth on a horse, slapped its rump with the flat of your sword, and bid her fly and be happy with her lover. Now you appear to have become a crabbit auld magistrate.”

  “Are you taking the lassie’s side?”
r />   She pursed her lips.

  “No, I’m taking no sides,” she said after some consideration, “just making an observation. Your decision is no doubt the correct one for a crabbit auld magistrate to make. I’m only saying that the Gilbert I married would have thrown the cage door wide and damned the consequences.”

  Gilbert set his lips into a frown.

  “I am like two men,” he began. “The Gilbert you married and the king’s counsel I have become. The Gilbert you married is not unsympathetic to the lovers’ plight, but he must put his personal feelings aside while he is dispensing the king’s justice. I cannot be partial in the case of Elizabeth or any other favorite; that would be unjust.”

  Margaret rose and moved across to him. She smoothed her pale blue gown beneath her long thighs and sat in her husband’s lap.

  “That is an insidious position you find yourself in, my Lord,” she said, cupping his strong jaw in her hand. “You must be forever torn between your affections and your duty.”

  “As you said to Elizabeth, such is the order of things,” he said, combing his fingers down through her long silver-blonde hair.

  He sighed.

  “But you are definitely still the beautiful Margaret I fell in love with at Neidpath all those years ago. So much has happened since that time.”

  “Aye… War, exile, loss…”

  “And overcoming those tribulations to rise in the world,” Gilbert added. “Who would have thought, in our darkest days, that I would have an earldom and be High Constable of Scotland.”

  “I only ever hoped that you would be returned to me,” Margaret mused aloud. “That was all I ever wanted, you and I together. You and I were everything.”

  They fell silent, each meditating on their own memories of those times.

  “That must seem to Elizabeth how it is now, with her and this Duncan Comyn.”

  Gilbert stirred uncomfortably.

  “It is not the same thing at all,” he muttered.

  “How is it not?” Margaret asked, shuffling around to capture his eye with hers.

  “It just… isn’t,” Gilbert said, easing her gently from his lap and standing up. “It just isn’t.”

  “As you will.” Margaret sighed, stepping away from him and resuming her seat on the other side of the fireplace while he leaned on the mantelpiece and stared into the flames. “But I do wonder, what great harm would it do, either to the security of the realm or to the demands of justice, if Elizabeth and her man were allowed to just slip away and face their destiny together. I’m sure the Gilbert I fell in love with would wonder that too.”

  A shadow of doubt flickered momentarily across his face.

  What harm would it do, he wondered?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Slains Castle

  Battlements

  Elizabeth stood on the battlements of Slains Castle. It was a drizzly day, and a fine smirr covered the coast, coating everything it fell upon with a sticky dampness. The sea lay, as it were, asleep, its swell rising and falling lazily beyond the long flat headland on which Slains stood.

  She yearned for Duncan. Her yearning was heightened by a taut anxiety for his safety. Where had he gone? Whence had he fled, once he had escaped the corrie behind the Cullen’s cottage? He had not yet been apprehended, of that she was sure; she would have heard. And, in any case, the entire retinue of Gilbert’s men-at-arms still went out every morning, north, south, east, and west, to continue the hunt, returning only at nightfall, tired and hungry and empty-handed, leaving the castle eerily silent for the duration of the entire day, echoing the empty hunger she felt in her heart.

  She peered along the broad sweep of the bay and saw Mairi, a small hunched figure in the distance, working over her creel at the front of her cottage. It had been a week since the raid that had taken her husband, Micheil, and Elizabeth had not yet found the courage to visit her. Looking at the pathetic figure working in the rain, she resolved to delay no longer.

  She hurried down the turret stairs, and already dressed in her outdoor robes, left the castle by the main gatehouse. As she passed beneath the gate and out over the drawbridge, she caught sight of Sanderson from the corner of her eye. Sanderson lodged in the gatehouse, and nothing and no one entered or exited the castle without his knowing it. She wondered if he would follow her, as – she suspected – he had been following her every move since she had arrived at Slains. She did not care whether he followed her that day or not; in fact, it would please her to think of him drenched by the smirr on a fool’s errand.

  She carefully picked her way down the rain-slicked cliff path to the beach and tramped along the shingle towards the distant cottage, her hood pulled close about her face. Like the castle, the beach too was eerily silent. There was no wind, and the sea lay slack and lethargic in the bay. The gulls huddled on their ledges and crevices, awaiting the return of the warm upward thermals that would lift them like kites above their fishing grounds. All Elizabeth could hear was the loud crunch of her feet on the loose pebbles as she marched along.

  In due course, she stood before Mairi at the door to her cottage. She was carefully packing her creel with dried and salted herrings, her baby in a sling over her breast.

  “Mairi,” Elizabeth greeted her in a small mournful voice.

  “Lady Elizabeth,” Mairi returned, pausing only for a second in her task.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you until now. I have been forbidden to leave the castle. I am only here today because—”

  “The Earl has joined the hunt for Maister Duncan,” Mairi finished the sentence for her. “I wish them fine sport!”

  Elizabeth bit her lip.

  “Have you had any news of him?”

  Mairi pierced her with a sharp eye as if deciding whether she was to be trusted.

  “He returned the second night after my Micheil was taken, to gather some clothes and to help me bury my man. We rowed him out beyond the Bullers and buried him beneath the waves. The ground about here is too hard,” she added, casting a glance around at the shale and rocks,” there is not enough soil to cover a mouse.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Elizabeth murmured.

  “Aye.” Mairi sighed. “He was a good man. He looked after me and the bairn well.”

  “What will you do now?”

  Again, Mairi shot her an appraising look and again decided that Elizabeth could be trusted.

  “I don’t know how much you know of the business that brought him here, but he arrived with a pouchful of sillar with which to grease some palms. He gave the sillar to me the night we buried my Micheil, to help me on my way. There is enough for me to set up in business for myself in Aberdon. An auld carle there has an inn for sale, down by the port. I have a mind to buy it. Meanwhile, I have enough saut-herrin’ to hawk around the doors until the deal comes through.”

  “You will be well set, then, Mairi.”

  “Aye,” she reckoned, with a sad frown. “But I’d gi’e it all to see my man again, even if it were for only one last time.”

  “I’m sure,” Elizabeth said, thinking of what she would give to see Duncan again.

  She hesitated before asking her next question.

  “Did Duncan… Did Duncan speak of his plans?”

  Another cloud of suspicion passed over Mairi’s countenance but then cleared.

  “Not as such,” she replied uncertainly. “But he kept back enough of the sillar to pay for his passage back o’er the sea to France. I reckon he is minded to flee hame, to fight another day.”

  “Won’t the ports be being watched?” Elizabeth’s eyes widened in apprehension.

  Mairi nodded as she swung the heavy creel onto her back, setting the straps on her shoulders and placing her forehead in the broad hempen band that steadied the weight of the burden.

  “Aye, he maun lie low a bittie, till the hue and cry die down, afore he can slip out of the country. Be careful though,” she added, looking deep and meaningfully into Elizabeth’s eyes.
“If you’re minded to go with him, dinna lead the Hays to him when you seek him out. I’ve nae doubt they’ll be watching you like hawks.”

  Heaving the creel higher on her back, she turned and took a few steps along the shingle, then paused.

  “He did say that, if I saw you, I was to say that you might find your selkie clothes where the wild posy grows. I don’t know if that means anything to you. It means nocht to me.”