Surrender to the Scot

by Emma Prince

  “What are ye suggesting?” the Bruce asked.

  Kieran made his features expressionless. “I’d like permission to return to France, collect Lady Vivienne, and stow her someplace safe until we can be sure the threat has passed.”

  Jerome’s gaze shot to Elaine. Her brows rose in surprise, but then she met his eyes with a knowing look on her face.

  The Bruce, however, who hadn’t witnessed the taut bickering between Kieran and Vivienne—and wasn’t privy to Jerome’s suspicion that something other than animosity sparked between the two—merely nodded slowly.

  “Aye, indeed. All those who have aided us must be ensured safety and protection.” The King straightened in his seat abruptly. “Have ye heard of my Bodyguard Corps, man?”

  Kieran jerked in surprise. “Aye, of course.” His gaze flicked to Jerome. “They are the band of yer most trusted warriors, pledged to protect the innocent and serve yer cause in every way they can.”

  “If ye are to watch over this Lady Vivienne in my name, it seems only fitting that ye should enter the ranks of the Corps.” The Bruce rose, dropping the last vestiges of formality as he stepped from the dais. He extended his forearm to Kieran. “What do ye say, man? Will ye join?”

  A rare smile flashed over Kieran’s normally hard features as he clasped the Bruce’s arm. “Aye, it would be my honor, sire.”

  “Robert,” the Bruce corrected. “Ye are part of my inner circle now. I ken ye’re eager to be off, but before ye return to France, I’ll arrange for ye to meet with Ansel Sutherland and a few of the others in the Corps. For the time being, Jerome here can fill ye in on what it means to become a member of the team.”

  Jerome rose and stepped from the dais, giving Kieran a firm forearm shake. “Welcome to the family,” he said. “I cannae think of another man I’d trust more.”

  Elaine joined them as well. “Give my best to Lady Vivienne when you reach her,” she said warmly. “And keep her safe.”

  Kieran sobered. “I will.”

  The Bruce turned to Elaine and Jerome. “And as for ye two, I ken Scone must seem humble compared with King Philip’s court, but I’m keen to keep ye here.”

  Elaine blinked in surprise. “You…you wish for us to stay?”

  Though she and Jerome had spoken about their future, much had been unknown these past two months—other than the fact that whatever came, they would face it together.

  Elaine loved her family, but she didn’t wish to spend the rest of her days at sleepy Trellham Keep. Jerome would always have a place in his clan thanks to his devotion to Laird Munro, but he didn’t hold land of his own in the Highlands. And though Elaine had been dazzled by France, she’d said she couldn’t imagine living anywhere but Scotland now, much to Jerome’s gratification.

  But with so much uncertainty until de Soules’s conspiracy could be resolved once and for all, they hadn’t let themselves hope for any one outcome.

  Yet judging from the way Elaine’s eyes shone with eager anticipation, remaining at the Bruce’s court was her deepest desire.

  “Of course I want ye to stay!” the Bruce replied. “We still have this trade agreement with the French to nail down, and then there is the matter of redistributing the lands of de Soules and his allies.”

  “And after that?” Elaine asked hesitantly. “Jerome has the skills of a warrior to offer you, sire, but I have no special talents or abilities.”

  The Bruce folded her hand in both of his. “What was it Munro here said about ye the first time we met, lass? That ye were my fiercest supporter and most loyal subject?”

  Jerome swelled with pride, for the words were more apt than ever. For her part, Elaine’s cheeks turned rosy with a modest blush.

  The Bruce fixed her with a serious look. “Ye may no’ come with any fancy skills, but ye do possess the most valuable thing of all—loyalty.” He shifted to encompass Jerome with his gaze as well. “I couldnae ask for more after all ye’ve done. Stay, and honor me with yer presence.”

  Jerome had to clear his suddenly tight throat before he could answer. He looked to Elaine, whose eyes brimmed with happy tears. At her nod, he spoke. “The honor is ours, Robert.”

  The Bruce squeezed Elaine’s hand before releasing it, a pleased smile on his face.

  With the matter settled, Jerome drew a deep breath. “If ye dinnae need us for the moment, Robert, Elaine and I have some business to discuss.”

  “We do?” she asked, giving him a quizzical look.

  “Aye. We have a wedding to plan.”

  The Bruce threw his head back and laughed. “Off with ye then. I have an inkling just what this ‘planning’ will involve.”

  Kieran snorted and Elaine sucked in a scandalized breath, her cheeks burning red once more, but Jerome didn’t rise to the Bruce’s bait. Instead, he took Elaine’s hand and rushed them from the hall down one of the many branching corridors toward his chamber.

  “You can’t truly mean to—” Elaine huffed as he pulled her into his chamber and closed the door.

  “Why no’? We are finally free to wed. What better way to celebrate than this?” He dropped a searing kiss on her lips. To his satisfaction, he felt her instantly melt in surrender. He, too, yielded to the desire rising like a storm within him.

  “I love ye, Elaine,” he breathed, drawing her close. “I cannae wait to spend the rest of my life showing ye.”

  And he did just that.

  The End

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  Author’s Note

  As always, it is one of my great joys in writing historical romance to combine a fictional romantic storyline with real historical details. This book offered a rare and special opportunity particularly when it came to the history, because so much of the real events at this time were more remarkable than fiction!

  The drafting and delivery of the Declaration of Arbroath provided an amazing—and true—backdrop for my story. Considered the prototype for the United States Declaration of Independence, this document outlined the atrocities committed by the English against the Scots. It petitioned the Pope to acknowledge Scotland as an independent nation and reverse his decision to excommunicate Robert the Bruce.

  There were thought to be about fifty signatories on the declaration, including not only the Bruce’s noble allies, but also some who had been resistant to his reign. Not all the signatories could travel to add their seal in person, so many sent their seals to Scone, where the Bruce ran his parliament. I altered those events slightly, inventing the character of Jerome Munro to collect the seals rather than having the nobles simply send them themselves.

  A side-note on Scone—Scone Abbey has long been the site for the crowning of Scotland’s Kings. The famous Stone of Scone (or Stone of Destiny) was a large rock that had historically been used for the coronation of Scotland’s monarchs. In 1296, King Edward I of England stole the stone and had it moved to his court in Westminster. There he had it fitted into a wooden throne for England’s monarchs to sit on, symbolically indicating that England’s Kings were now rulers of Scotland as well. The stone remained in England for six centuries until it was ceremoniously returned to Edinburgh in 1996, where it remains—except in the event of a British coronation.

  Despite the removal of the stone, Scone Abbey served as the location of Scotland’s parliament for much of the medieval era. The original abbey, along with the palace added to accommodate the Bruce and other monarchs when they were at Scone, no longer exists. However, a depiction on the abbey’s seal, plus some architectural fragments, give historians a vague idea of what Scone would have looked like in the Bruce’s lifetime.

  It was built in the Romanesque style, with a central tower topped with a spire. It was likely surrounded by a ditch and wooden palisade for defense. An archaeological dig in 2008 revealed three complete human skeletons buried on the abbey’s ground, but they have
not been identified. A newer abbey and palace now rest atop the ruins of the old, making the history of Scone all the more layered.

  Returning to the Declaration of Arbroath—the lines I incorporated from the declaration, including the most-often quoted section (“As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honors that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”) came from a popular translation of the original Latin document. Those lines are displayed on the walls of the National Museum of Scotland.

  Once the declaration was drafted at Arbroath Abbey by Abbot Bernard of Kilwinning and the seals affixed, the Bruce sent the document, along with letters from himself and four of his bishops, to the Pope. The Papal court at this time had been established in Avignon, France, though to my knowledge the envoy did not receive a royal escort from King Philip V (called Philip the Tall) of France. I did, however, include a nod to the original members of the envoy: Bishop Kininmund, Sir Odard de Maubuisson, and Sir Adam Gordon (I gave Kieran the surname MacAdams in honor of Adam Gordon).

  Researching medieval France provided a fun challenge. Calais was indeed an important and bustling trading port at that time. Paris was a large city of roughly a quarter of a million people, and rapidly growing. As I described in the story, Paris was walled several times, each time growing larger to accommodate the expanding city. The land north and east of the Seine was dominated by trade and commerce, while the southwest side contained universities and scholars.

  The Île de la Cité, the Island of Paris, served as both the governmental and religious heart of the city. With the soaring, majestic Notre-Dame Cathedral on one end and the King’s palace on the other, it was a reminder to Paris’s rulers to balance the powers of church and state. Though the medieval palace no longer stands in its entirety, some of its most famous buildings, including the Sainte-Chapelle and the Hall of Soldiers, one of the many great halls in the palace, still survive.

  On the banks opposite the palace sat the Louvre, which used to be a military fortress, then the royal residence. But as Paris grew and experienced peace and prosperity, France’s Kings decided that living in a converted fortress wasn’t comfortable enough, hence the construction of the palace on the Île de la Cité. And now those lucky enough to visit Paris can look at art from the medieval era in the Louvre museum!

  By all accounts, Philip V was a smart and amiable King. He became King when his older brother, Louis X, died unexpectedly in 1316. He did indeed feud for several years with Edward II of England, for Edward refused to pay homage to Philip for lands he held in Gascony. Though Philip had his hands full with matters in his own country, he did support Robert the Bruce and allowed the Scottish envoy to pass through France to reach Avignon.

  And here is where the history gets really juicy. Patrick Dunbar, Earl of March, who was another member of the envoy delivering the declaration to Avignon, returned to Scotland before reaching the Papal court. Apparently he learned somewhere in France of a conspiracy against the Bruce and rushed back to Scone to warn the King. Though William de Soules (a real historical figure) wasn’t present amongst the envoy, Dunbar apparently learned of a connection between de Soules, who owned land in the Picardy region of France, and Edward Balliol, who was residing at Château de Hélicourt in the same area (which was where Edward Balliol’s father, John Balliol, died in 1314).

  De Soules had been given the position of royal Butler of Scotland by Robert the Bruce in 1318 (not a butler like we’d think of today—this was actually a hereditary court role of honor). All outward signs indicated that de Soules was a loyal supporter of the Bruce. He was even one of the signatories on the Declaration of Arbroath. But in fact de Soules deeply resented the Bruce.

  De Soules believed the Bruce had unjustly usurped the throne from the rightful line of successors, the Balliols. He also believed himself slighted when the Bruce redistributed lands and titles won back from the English as his campaign for freedom gained victories. De Soules began plotting to overthrow the Bruce and replace him with Edward Balliol, the son of the one-time puppet King for the English, John Balliol.

  He gathered a group of like-minded nobles who all felt similarly overlooked for the Bruce’s favors, as well as supporters of a Balliol King who would kowtow to England. Because of his position as Butler of Scotland, de Soules was close enough to the Bruce to formulate a bold assassination plan.

  Interestingly, despite fairly good record-keeping within the Bruce’s court at Scone, there are no records of what de Soules’s specific plan was, or just how close he got to executing it. Historians believe this is because the Bruce wished for the details to remain secret so that his opponents couldn’t replicate de Soules’s scheme. Therefore I fictionalized all the specifics of the attack, but the names I used for de Soules’s conspirators are historically accurate.

  In addition to William de Soules, Sir David de Brechin joined the conspiracy, along with Countess Agnes of Strathearn and Sirs John Logie, Gilbert Malherbe, Richard Broun, and Roger Mowbray. All of the co-conspirators had connections to both John Comyn, who had been a Balliol supporter and whom the Bruce had killed in a church, earning him his excommunication from the Pope, and Balliol himself. All had at one point or another supported either English rule over Scotland or Balliol’s puppet reign. The Bruce had been generous with pardons for those who had once been loyal to Balliol, Comyn, and even King Edward of England, yet his leniency didn’t prevent them from plotting against him.

  Once captured, Countess Agnes of Strathearn cooperated, resulting in her punishment of life in prison rather than death. De Brechin, Logie, Malherbe, and Broun were all beheaded. Mowbray did indeed die in custody before he could be executed, though judgement was passed on his remains. The Bruce still allowed him to receive a Christian burial, however. The judgements were passed down at what came to be infamously known as the “Black Parliament” in Scone in August of 1320.

  Like the countess, de Soules was also granted life in prison despite the fact that he was the architect of the conspiracy. This may have been because he cooperated and revealed the names of his co-conspirators, or maybe the Bruce thought it was a more fitting punishment to make him live out his days in a dungeon, as I portray it in my story. Either way, history was not quite through with de Soules, but I won’t say more, because it will play a part in the next book in the series, Kieran and Vivienne’s story!

  Edward Balliol, too, hasn’t reached the end of his story yet. He spent much of the first half of his life petitioning King Edward II to give him money, protection, land, and more based on the fact that his father and Edward’s had had an agreement. But after the Battle of Bannockburn, which proved Edward II to be ineffectual against the Scottish, and the death of Balliol’s father that same year in 1314, Edward Balliol shifted his attention from winning King Edward’s favor to eyeing the Scottish throne that had once been his father’s.

  It’s unclear exactly how large a role he played in the plotting of de Soules’s conspiracy, or if he expected to simply be installed as King once de Soules and his co-conspirators got rid of the Bruce. Either way, when the Bruce was made aware of the plot against him and captured de Soules and his allies, Balliol fled his estate in France and took refuge in Edward II’s court in London.

  Edward II could have been behind the entire scheme. Because of a treaty with the Bruce made in 1319, he couldn’t openly strike against the Scots. His direct attempts to defeat the Bruce—at the Battle of Bannockburn and in multiple attempts to retake Borderland strongholds like Berwick Castle—had been utterly disastrous. Still, he would have benefited immensely from the Bruce’s assassination and the installation of an English-sympathizing Balliol King.

  But thanks to several loyal Scots, de Soules’s conspiracy was foiled and the Bruce lived to rule another day. What was more, the Pope received the Declaration of Arbroath in June or July of 1320, just before the
Black Parliament, and decided in the Bruce’s favor, reversing his excommunication, recognizing Scotland’s independence, and writing personally to Edward II urging him to end his war with Scotland.

  Yet those familiar with Scotland’s history know that peace is always short-lived. Still, it was a joy to breathe life into the fascinating events of this time and layer them with my own fictitious tale. Thank you for journeying back to medieval Scotland with me, and look for more riveting history and unforgettable romance in the eighth book in the Highland Bodyguards series, Kieran and Vivienne’s story, coming mid-2018!

  Thank You!

  Thank you for taking the time to read Surrender to the Scot (Highland Bodyguards, Book 7)!

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  Books by Emma Prince

  Highland Bodyguards Series:

  The Lady’s Protector (Book 1)

  Heart’s Thief (Book 2)

  A Warrior’s Pledge (Book 3)

  Claimed by the Bounty Hunter (Book 4)

  A Highland Betrothal (Novella, Book 4.5)

  The Promise of a Highlander (Book 5)

  The Bastard Laird’s Bride (Book 6)

  Surrender to the Scot (Book 7)

  Book 8 (Vivienne and Kieran’s story) coming mid-2018!

  The Sinclair Brothers Trilogy: