‘I can begin,’ she said, as if planning a banquet, ‘by telling them the King forced us to wed.’
He raised his brows. ‘That will sway them not at all.’
She stuck out her tongue and wrinkled her nose. ‘Then I’ll tell them I am like the First Brunson and I am going home to the sea.’
His blunt and beautiful wife had turned fanciful. He must be the one to speak plain. ‘I’ll ask them for nothing, you know.’ A wedding usually required a dowry. He wanted no Brunson sheep or cows.
The more proof he was besotted and his mind bewitched.
She shook her head. ‘They’ll want no favours.’
‘Then if they want to give me something of value, I’ll take a vow that they not make war against the King’s wishes.’
The reminder wiped the smile from her lips.
He pulled her to him, wrapping her in his arms. Once, he had been a man confident he could solve any problem. What an arrogant fool he had been. The King might call him a Brunson. Even the English Warden might doubt his loyalties. But to Bessie, family was all. She might say she loved him, but could she ever reconcile her duty to her family with marriage to him?
‘I know you’ve sacrificed,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve done everything you could for your family. Even marry me.’
She pushed herself away from him, out of his reach, but where he could see her, face to face.
Something seemed to swim behind her eyes, coming up from a great distance. Something she had tried to hide. Something she had tried to suppress. She clenched her fingers as if trying to hold it back, but it kept coming. Up through her eyes into tears. Into her throat where it stopped speech instead of letting the blunt words flow.
But finally it did come. Shaking words through shaking lips.
‘I did not do it for them.’ She pounded clenched fists against her chest. ‘I did it for me.’
* * *
She could not believe she had said it. Could not believe it was true.
I did it for me.
She had always been the steady, selfless one. She caused no trouble. She bore every burden, without being asked. She had even told herself that coming to court, being a hostage, was all for them.
It wasn’t.
It was a ruse. A feint. A secret, guilty grab for something she would never otherwise know, and now it had all unravelled. Exploded in her hands. She had reached out for something she wanted, thinking this way no one would be hurt. Instead, she had angered the King, got her family in worse trouble and married a man whose loyalties went far beyond the Brunsons.
And the thing she felt most guilty about was that she wasn’t sorry.
She looked at him again, no longer able to hide the longing in her eyes.
‘There’s the truth for you. Take it and twist it into what you will.’
His eyes shifted, fast as the inrushing tide. ‘You wanted to marry me? You did not do it only for family?’
She swallowed, then shook her head.
‘Why?’
Why, indeed. Her brothers protected her, of course. They stood between her and the dangers of the world, swords drawn, a bulwark strong as the tower’s stone walls.
But they did not care for her the way this man did. Oh, he would draw his sword for her, too. And had. But more, he noticed that when she was chilled, she needed something at the back of her neck and arms. That she slept with covers over her shoulder. And that when she was quiet, it was not always because she had nothing to say.
She looked at him now, knowing he was waiting. ‘Because you treated me as if I mattered.’
* * *
Thomas took her lips, ready to lose himself in her again, ready even to hope—
A knock. He recognised Hew’s knuckles. Bessie stirred and he let her go, reluctantly, then helped her tuck the blankets over her shoulders and close to her chin. ‘Come.’
The steward opened the door, but entered only a step. ‘A messenger, sir. From the King.’
So quickly, life intruded on dreams. ‘Take him to the private chamber. I’ll be right down.’
Hew nodded and closed the door behind him, glancing at Bessie before he left.
A message from the King. He did not like the implications. The man must have left Edinburgh before Parliament even ratified the treaty.
She threw back the covers at the same moment he did, reaching for her gown, only to remember it was now a salt-water-soaked rag. ‘Send me one of the serving girls. Ask her to bring a dress from my room.’
He opened his mouth to protest, but she raised her hand to silence the attempt. ‘If the King has put us into the quicksands, it will take the two of us together to get out.’
* * *
Not long after, Thomas greeted the King’s messenger. Hardened and officious, the man did not raise an eyebrow to see Bessie standing beside her husband.
Thomas wondered if he knew who she was.
He handed Thomas a parchment, but did not wait for him to read it. ‘This is official notice,’ he began, ‘that King James has declared as outlaws all those families who did not support him in his war against the traitor Angus.’
Beside him, Bessie turned stiff and still.
‘He directs you, as Warden of the March, to bring them to Edinburgh. For hanging.’
I’ll hold you responsible for the Brunsons, the King had said. But now he was forcing Thomas to choose.
His King.
Or his wife.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Joy drained from Bessie’s body. She looked at Thomas, unable to decipher his expression.
Bring them to Edinburgh. For hanging.
Was he thinking? Was he even debating King or kin?
Her choice was even more stark. Her husband or her brothers.
She should have known that it would come to this. Nights of dancing and lovemaking. Moments of happiness. Thinking she could chose pleasure over duty.
For her brother, at least, pleasure and family had melded in Cate, the woman who had brought him home to himself. But he was born a Brunson. Thomas was born a Carwell, his duty as Warden as much a part of him as the valley was to the Brunsons.
And still Thomas was silent.
‘Is there an answer?’ the messenger asked, finally.
‘What answer can any man give the King?’
Not an answer. She knew that now. Knew that Thomas never told a lie, but sometimes withheld the truth. But the messenger did not know that. He took his leave and she hoped that Hew would see that he had food and ale and a place to sleep before he left.
She could not.
The door closed, leaving them alone and silent.
And as quickly as the turn of the tide, she knew she had to go home again.
‘When do we leave?’ she asked, finally.
‘We do not leave. Did you not hear the man? Your brothers have been named traitors. You’ll be in danger with them.’
‘From you?’
He rose, took her face in his hands, his gaze as forceful as a kiss. ‘Never.’ But he did not force his lips on her.
She looked at him, trying to memorise his eyes, feeling the imprint of his body still on hers. ‘Still. I must go back.’ Whatever was to be, she must be there, not alone in this castle. ‘I will ride with you or ride alone.’
He sighed and dropped his hands. ‘Then we leave tomorrow.’
‘Will you try to take them?’ He would not succeed, but who would die in the attempt?
‘I will try to...find another way.’
But this was a trap more deadly than the sands. One, she feared, even Thomas Carwell could not elude.
* * *
They rode the two days back with more men than those he had brought to the wedding, little more than two months ago. Enough men that he could fight, if he chose.
She rode with him, at the head of the men, so that her brothers would not fire on them. Beyond that, she could not think except to pray there was another way.
And that Thomas would find
it.
She trusted Thomas would return her without attacking them. She hoped she was right.
But when the familiar tower came into view, something looked wrong.
Something smelled wrong.
She kicked her pony to a gallop and, behind her, the men rode faster.
Too late. The raiders had already struck and gone. The outbuildings were burned to scorched ground. Even the tower, final defence, had soot on the stones, as if the flames had turned angry when it would not burn.
She reached the gate first and saw Rob standing on the wall, tall and broad as ever. They had called him Black Rob, but his expression now was darker than that. He looked as if the fires of Hell had burned around him and he had seen Satan in the flames.
He raised the cross latch and pointed it at Carwell. ‘Get inside, Bessie. Carwell, if you or your men take a step, you’ll have an arrow in your throat.’
A few more men joined him, adding their threat to his.
‘Let him in, Rob,’ she said. ‘I’ll vouch for them.’
And she was relieved that Rob did not ask her why.
* * *
Carwell waited as Rob, no fool, disarmed him before he entered the courtyard and kept a dirk pointed at him while he did. Surrounded by the ashes of her home, Bessie clung to Rob’s arm. Both of them staggered, as if their legs had been wounded at the same time as their home.
She did not turn to her husband for comfort.
The thatched roofs of the kitchen and the public building in the courtyard had burned and collapsed. Tables and chests had dissolved into ash.
Bessie wandered into the kitchen, once her pride and private domain, and picked up a charred copper pot. He saw tears gather in her eyes.
They did not fall.
She looked at Rob, as if suddenly realising what had happened. ‘Did we lose...?’
Rob nodded his head. ‘Odd Jock. But they lost more.’ A note of pride in his voice.
‘Then where’s Johnnie? Where’s Cate?’
‘Riding. Making sure they struck no other of the family.’
‘Storwicks?’ Carwell asked, hoping the answer was that simple. It would be worse if it were Acre.
Rob met his eyes, one warrior to another. ‘Aye. And more. I thought I saw some Grahams and Rutledges. Even the Acre colours.’
Thomas looked over the wreckage. Probably Acre had joined forces with the Storwicks and brought along some men of his own. Revenge enough for all of them.
Rob frowned at him. ‘And I’ll hear no lectures from you about bringing them up on Truce Day.’
‘No,’ he said, trying to sort out what could come next. ‘You won’t. Because what they did is no longer an offence.’
Sorrow deepened in Bessie’s brown eyes. He had told her that, but the terms of a treaty had been abstract. Only now did she fully understand.
But it was all new to Rob. ‘What do you mean? You’re the Warden. I know the Border Laws, even when I break them.’
His throat closed as if a hand were choking him. ‘The new treaty gives the English the right to enforce the law if the English decide that I do not.’
‘And do we not have the same right?’ Rob snarled like an animal in pain.
‘No.’ More words would not make the answer sweeter.
‘Does the King of Fife think we will sit meekly and let the English ride against us at will?’ The anger Rob could not turn on his attackers gathered against Thomas. ‘Is that your justice, Warden?’
No. It was not. For the English would never admit that a raid was just a raid. It would always be punishment for an unpunished crime, real or imagined.
‘Not mine, but the English Warden’s, yes, I think so.’
‘You met with him,’ Bessie said, scorn and disbelief in her voice. ‘You knew he was going to do this and you didn’t warn them?’
He shook his head. ‘He threatened, yes, but then he promised to observe the Truce Day.’ Just as he had promised the English would accept the treaty they negotiated. Everything the man had said was a lie. A half-truth. An evasion.
And what had Thomas said but the same?
* * *
Bessie stared at her husband, this man she loved, her life suddenly in ashes as cold as those at her feet.
‘The English Warden “said” and you believed him?’ She searched for certainty in Thomas’s eyes. Did she know him at all? ‘How could you trust the man?’
Yet hadn’t she done the same? Believed in a man who had betrayed her?
It would be easier to blame him, to hold him responsible and to hate him. But she could not even stand on that certain ground. It was not only Thomas she did not trust. She wondered whether she could trust herself.
The body does not lie.
Or does it?
She thought she knew this man. Told herself that he cared for her. Let herself be lulled into forgetting who she was and where her duty lay. And now, her family had paid for her selfishness.
Thomas met her eyes, nothing shielding his. ‘I should not have believed him. It was not his first betrayal.’
At his words, she stilled, somehow knowing what was to come. What she had always suspected. What she had explained away when she no longer wanted to believe it.
Rob pulled his sword and pointed it at the man’s chest. ‘Talk.’
Thomas stood calmly, head up, shoulders square. ‘Last autumn, I was in secret negotiations with the English Warden about the treaty.’ He spoke to her, as if they were alone. ‘You held me responsible for what happened that day. I was. The agreement was he gave me the English ringleader of a plot against King James. In return, he got Scarred Willie on Truce Day.’
Everything she had feared and not wanted to believe was true. Thomas Carwell had let Cate’s rapist go free.
But Thomas had never known of that, the worst of Storwick’s crimes. Only five people knew that. And one of them was dead.
Still, she protested, trying to excuse her husband. ‘But you came with us. You tracked him with us.’
‘And never caught him,’ Rob said. ‘It’s what Johnnie and I said all along. He was letting the man know our every plan.’
Carwell shook his head. ‘No. The rest was all happenstance.’
Rob snorted. ‘Don’t believe him.’
‘There is no reason you should, but it’s the truth. I told Lord Acre he could have Scarred Willie. I never said he could keep the man.’
Bessie looked from one to the other. What was the truth?
‘So you knew about this treaty all along,’ Rob said. ‘You knew what they would do.’
He shook his head. ‘Everything was changed from what we agreed. I did it all because I wanted Angus turned over for trial. For what he did to my father.’
She saw a moment of understanding in Rob’s eyes, but the sword pointed at Carwell’s chest did not waver.
‘And,’ Thomas added, ‘so did the King. Or so he said.’
Rob shook his head, as if Thomas were an innocent. ‘Kings do as they please.’
‘And now,’ Bessie began, looking at Rob, ‘it pleases the King to name the Brunsons outlaws.’ She did not look at Thomas again. If she did, she might not have the strength to turn away. ‘Carwell is to bring you to Edinburgh to hang.’
For the first time, Rob smiled. ‘It’s Carwell who is going to hang.’ He pushed Thomas to his knees. Thomas, who had been disarmed and stood there defenceless and at her brother’s mercy.
Rob grabbed a rope from his horse and knotted it around her husband’s neck.
Something shifted within her. Here she was, home again. Solidly on Brunson earth, surrounded by Brunson stone and Brunson brothers. She should have felt fully a Brunson again. No questions any more of who or what she was or where her loyalties lay.
She looked at Rob, knowing he expected her unwavering support. Yet she put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder.
And he reached up to squeeze her fingers.
‘Not unless you hang me first,’ she said. ‘He’s my hus
band.’
‘Husband?’ Rob, shocked, let the rope go slack. ‘I put her in your care and this is what happens.’
‘A betrothal only,’ he said, as he had explained to her so often. ‘To keep the King from putting her in worse hands.’
Yet she could not keep the angry words back. ‘Worse than yours?’ Hands, lips, eyes she could not trust. No more than she could trust her own. Or could she?
‘When I kill him, you will be betrothed no longer,’ Rob said.
She held her breath, waiting to feel relief and rightness, waiting to feel like a Brunson again.
It did not come.
When she had left this tower, she left a world immovable and certain as the hills. She was a Brunson. Could imagine nothing else. And the Brunson decision, Rob’s decision, was clear. Carwell must die.
But her answer, her heart, said otherwise.
She put her hand on Rob’s sword, pushing it away. ‘You will not kill him. He is my husband.’
Thomas turned to her, sharply. ‘You don’t have to, Bessie. You are home. Just as I promised. No need—’
She shook her head. ‘I would have no other.’
‘Even though...?’
‘Even though.’
She steadied him as he rose from his knees, his eyes full of unmistakable joy. And when he tried to speak, she put a finger on his lips, not wanting words.
So he took her in his arms and let his lips speak in other ways.
Behind her, Rob tried to yell, ‘I will not give permission.’
She broke the kiss and leaned against Thomas, careful to stay between him and Rob’s sword. ‘I did not ask for it.’
Her brother’s sword wavered. ‘If you do this, you will no longer be a Brunson.’
Yes, I will. But I will also be something more.
Some day, when Rob fell in love, he would understand that.
‘The King told me that if the Brunsons continued to raid, he’d hold me responsible.’ Thomas’s words rumbled in his chest. ‘So I suppose that will make me part-Brunson.’
Agony strained Rob’s face. Her poor brother. The oldest. Head of the clan. He had known no other world. Never been presented with other choices. Never been taken away from this tower, as she and Johnnie had, and forced to re-examine everything he thought he knew. She feared what might happen if he were ever confronted with something that cracked his world.
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