by Border Lass
She bit her lower lip but rallied quickly. “Why did you not?”
He was in no more hurry to explain his actions than she was to explain hers. And he was not about to give her the satisfaction of hearing he’d followed her into Abbots’ House out of nothing more than the same curiosity she had stirred in him from the moment he’d laid eyes on her at Dunfermline. No man of sense would knowingly hand a woman a weapon of such magnitude.
Having seen her slip away from the princess and nip boldly into Abbots’ House as if she had every right—instead of no right at all—to do so had awakened the strong protective instinct that had leapt to life at seeing Simon Murray stab her in the chest with one damnably stiffened finger.
The plain fact was that Garth had followed without thought of consequence, and had stepped across the threshold to see her skirts whisking out of sight up the stairs. Voices from beyond them suggested others nearby—doubtless Carrick’s servants or some of the abbot’s, assisting Carrick’s people. At all events, he had not hesitated more than that second or two before hurrying after her.
He had been careful not to announce his presence by being heavy footed, but neither had he taken particular care to remain utterly silent. He knew he would have heard such an approach as his, had he been sneaking about as she had.
But so intent had she been on those murmurs supposedly too slight to be intelligible that she had not noticed him until he’d grabbed her. Even then, she had had enough sense not to draw the attention of the men in that room.
Had she seen them go into the house? Had she followed them, intending to hear what they said to each other? That thought gave him chills.
He told himself that the most likely people to be talking in that room—possibly the abbot’s own reception chamber—were servants. Anyone else entering it for privy conversation would have to be of equal rank to the house’s chief resident to dare usurp one of his privy chambers for such a talk.
But the present chief resident was not the Abbot of Scone.
Moreover, everyone had seen Carrick and his attendants making their slow progress to the abbey kirk. And most could deduce that the private chambers in Abbots’ House would be empty for an hour or two until the new sovereign’s chamberlain returned to assure that all was still in order for his grace’s comfort.
In fact, only one man would consider himself equal to that newly crowned King and thus rightfully entitled to usurp his grace’s chamber to his own use. And if the lass had purposefully listened to the Earl of Fife, now Governor of the Realm, speaking with a minion—or, worse, to another noble—she ought to be soundly skelped for such folly.
The thought of the consequences to her, had Fife caught her in the act, sent icy fear racing through him. But instead of chilling him, it ignited his temper.
He said grimly, “Do you know the penalty you’d face if I were to report what you were doing? Had the people in that room been only two of the abbot’s servants, it would be bad enough—”
“They were not servants,” she said. Then, clearly realizing that silence would have been wiser, she clapped her own neatly gloved hand over her mouth.
“How do you know they were not?” he demanded, clenching his fists to keep from shaking her.
“I . . . I don’t,” she said. “They didn’t sound like servants.”
“Then you must have heard words, lass. You could not otherwise be so sure. If they were not servants, you’d best pray they never learn you were outside that door. Consider who else might enter a room intended for use only by the man who will shortly become King of Scots. I can think of only one person.”
The roses in her cheeks paled so quickly he feared she would faint. Again he had to restrain himself, this time to avoid offering a hand to steady her.
The same instinct that had served him well in battle and tiltyard warned him not to touch her again—not yet. Whether it arose from a sense of self-preservation or a suspicion that her stubbornness would only increase if she recognized his concern he did not know. But when that instinct stirred, he obeyed it.
“I’ll accept that you did not recognize their voices,” he said. “But you did hear what they said. If you are wise, you will tell me what it was.” Putting steel in his voice, he added, “For your own safety, lass. If they learn that you were there—”
“How could they?”
“Anyone might have seen you come in. I did.”
Still, she hesitated.
His hands were fairly itching to shake the truth out of her when, out of the silence, he heard a distant, dull thud.
He held up a hand to warn her to keep silent.
“What?”
“Hush.” He moved silently to the door and put his ear against it. A moment later, he straightened and said, “Two men, going downstairs.”
“There are windows overlooking the front. We can see who they are.”
“Don’t be daft,” he snapped. “Someone—servant or otherwise—may be watching from those windows. We’ve both taken too much risk just by coming inside. The sooner we are out of here, the better I shall like it.”
“Coward. If you really wanted to know, you’d go and look.”
Narrowing his eyes, letting both his temper and his tension show, he said, “If you know what’s good for you, you will keep such opinions to yourself. I’ve a good mind to tell your brother Simon I found you in here, listening at doors.”
The remaining color drained from her face. “You . . . you wouldn’t!”
“Don’t count on that,” he said, praying she would believe him. “I’ll be here all day and for the Queen’s coronation tomorrow. If you have any wits at all, you’ll come to your senses and tell me the truth before we both leave Scone.”
He waited, hoping she would tell him at once. But he had taken her measure, whether he liked it or not, and he was not surprised when she kept silent.
“One thing more,” he said. “If you won’t tell me, then pray have the good sense not to tell anyone else. You cannot possibly know whom to trust.”
“I trust no one,” she said bluntly. “Are we just going to walk out together?”
“We are.”
“Then you’d better tell me your name, sir, lest someone see us together. It will hardly redound to my credit, or yours, if I cannot name you to anyone in my family or the princess’s household who may see us together.”
“I suspect that anyone who’d wonder at it has gone into the kirk,” he said.
“Are you so ashamed of your name?” she asked. “I should think you’d be proud of it. I do recognize a knightly girdle when I see one, after all, and yours is similar to the one my good-brother, Buccleuch, wears on such occasions.”
“If you hoped to startle me by announcing your kinship to Buccleuch, you’d have done better to consider what his opinion would be of your behavior here. I warrant I can describe it for you if you cannot imagine it for yourself.”
When she nibbled her lower lip again, he knew he had made his point. But then she said, “So you know Buccleuch. Must I ask him to tell me your name?”
He did not want to explain himself to Buccleuch any more than she did, so accepting defeat, he said, “My name is Garth Napier.” That was not all there was to it now, but she had deduced his knighthood, and he saw no reason to reveal more.
“I hope, Sir Garth Napier, that you don’t mean to escort me into the kirk and all the way to Isabel in front of everyone else in there.”
“Nay, lass,” he said, suppressing a smile at the reaction that would stir. “You’ll have to walk that path alone.”
She wouldn’t like that any better, but she had no choice.
Chapter 2
Amalie walked with Sir Garth downstairs, outside, and along the winding path to the abbey kirk without incident. As they wended their way through the crowd, she saw that the prelates, officers of state, and other powerful lords, all in their festive robes, had gathered at the front of the kirk, ready to take their part in the procession. Buccleuch
was somewhere among them and would likely see them and ask questions later. But she could not worry about that now.
Onlookers crowded them, making her extraordinarily aware of the tall, broad-shouldered, athletic looking knight beside her. With her hand resting on his muscular forearm, she noted its steadiness and recalled with awe his strength and the ease with which he had carried her. No one had carried her since she was a child, and Sir Garth Napier had done it as if she still were one.
Although she had seen him well enough to recognize him in the abbot’s chamber, the light there had not been good. At Dunfermline, she’d had little time to note his features and had seen only a stalwart man of fierce demeanor. Now, knowing he would vanish again and she might never have another chance, she wanted to get a good look at him. But their relative positions made it difficult.
She had seen that his face was a long oval, deeply tanned, and his cheekbones and the line of his brow were strongly chiseled. She noted now that his heavily lashed blue eyes sat deep under eyebrows a shade or two darker than his sun-streaked brown hair. His nose was aquiline, his mouth a straight line, for his lips pressed thin as he guided her deftly through the crowd to the kirk porch. His chin was firm with a cleft in the middle, and she had a notion he might be as stubborn as she was. Her eyes were almost level with his shoulder. Her head would just fit beneath his chin.
A boyish lock of hair had tumbled onto his forehead, and despite the fact that he was a head taller than she and she dared look up at him now only through her lashes in quick, darting glances, she saw how strikingly blue his eyes were. She looked away, hoping he would not detect her curiosity. She could not decide what to make of him, but she was sure she had never met another man like him.
He wore a doublet of dark-blue miniver-trimmed velvet and fashionable silk hose with one leg of striped blue-and-white, the other a plain dark blue—clothing of a nobleman of means. The wide knightly girdle of silver and bronze medallions linked round his hips held a long dirk with a jeweled hilt in a fine leather sheath. He did not wear a sword, because one did not attend the King’s coronation so armed.
Despite the constant murmur of the steadily increasing crowd as folks made way for them, she could hear the sheath make creaking noises as it shifted against the silver belt and wondered again at how silently he had crept up on her earlier.
His gaze shifted alertly right and left as they approached the steps, and then, before she could look away, it locked with hers and held it easily.
He grinned, and she noted flashing white teeth and the slash of a dimple near the left corner of his mouth. Heat flooded her cheeks and elsewhere within her.
Still walking as fast as the crowd would allow, he bent nearer, twinkling.
“What is it, lass?” he asked. “These folks care only about seeing the great lords and the King when he comes. They are paying us no heed.”
“You know what it is,” she muttered, glad he was no longer so stern but wishing he would not treat her lightly, either. What if he joked with his friends later, bragged that he had caught her so easily? “I cannot forget where we just were. How do you manage to walk through them all as if there were naught amiss in what we did? Buccleuch is here somewhere, and others who know me. What if they—”
“Forget that for now,” he said, still smiling as if he flirted with her. “Whether of high or low estate, we are all less likely to question folks who behave as if they have every right to do what they are doing. Confidence often wins the day when one holds no other weapon. Now, lass, smile and hold your head high, for here we are.”
Then, surprising her, he put his right hand over hers on his forearm and gave it a squeeze, murmuring, “Pretend you are her grace, the new Queen.” With that, he released her and reached for the door, sweeping a bow as he opened it for her.
The chanting of monks in their transept stalls spilled forth with an accompanying buzz of murmurs from the congregation.
The ceremony had not yet begun. Still, the chamber was crowded and Amalie had no idea where Isabel’s party would be, so her first inclination was to turn tail and flee rather than draw more attention to herself.
“Your grace,” her companion murmured as he stepped back, head still low.
His words and attitude tickled her sense of humor, and she flashed a smile that he could not see with his head still down. Swallowing, she faced forward again, raised her chin, and crossed the threshold. After that, it proved easy, because Sir Duncan Forrest, one of Isabel’s knights, approached her at once.
“This way, if you please, Lady Amalie,” he said. “I’m to take you forward.”
“Thank you,” she said with a smile and a surge of relief.
A green-carpeted aisle stretched up the center of the nave between rows of people standing or kneeling on prayer stools, but Sir Duncan guided Amalie to the narrow colonnade on the south side and escorted her forward to the second row.
Instead of the last stool in that row, which, as the youngest of the princess’s ladies, Amalie had expected to be hers, Isabel patted the one next to her own.
Nodding thanks to Sir Duncan, and doing her best not to trip over or step on any toes, she eased her way past Lady Sibylla, who smiled at her, Lady Susan, who did not, and the two older ladies, Nancy and Averil, to the place beside Isabel.
“Did you elude them, then?” the princess asked archly without bothering to lower her voice. Not that it mattered. The monks still chanted, and the additional buzz suggested that nearly everyone else was involved in private conversation.
It took Amalie a moment to remember eluding her parents, but then she said, “Oh, yes, thank heaven. I just pray that my mother did not see me slip away.”
“Nay, she did not, or she’d have said something as I passed,” Isabel said with a mischievous smile. “She has small respect for the blood royal, your mother.
“Nay, nay,” she added when Amalie moved to protest. “I ken fine that she means no offense. ’Tis naught but the pride she has in her own ancient lineage, and she is hardly alone in that. Many others look upon us Stewarts as upstarts. She’d have had no satisfaction from me today, although I own, the woman does frighten me witless. Does anyone ever go contrary to her wishes?”
Grateful not to have to answer more questions about her absence, long though it must have seemed, Amalie said, “Scarcely anyone dares. Simon is less submissive than the rest of us, and my father sometimes reveals a stubborn streak. But neither Meg nor I have stood up to her, unless one counts my unwillingness to go home. Mother did not press me to return, though. She suggested it only once, just before you invited me to join your household, but that was all. Simon did say I should go home at Yuletide, but that was when we were at Dunfermline.”
Remembering what else had happened there, and feeling herself flush at the memory, she added hastily, “Mother understood why I wanted to live with you. I did expect a summons from her after Simon told me to go home, but she sent none.”
“You knew that she and your father would be here, though,” Isabel said. “You told me so, and of course, nearly every noble family is here because most think it treasonous not to be. ’Tis only natural they would want to see you. I’m only surprised they did not look for you before now.”
“They did not attend his grace’s funeral, so they must not have arrived until late yesterday, and they most likely stayed with Murray cousins in town, so this morning was their first opportunity to look for me here. But Mother had that look of determination she gets when she has made up her mind to something.”
“Which is why you suspect she has a plan for you,” Isabel said, nodding. “But it is time that you think of marriage, my dear. If you fear they may try to force you to wed someone against your will, recall that Scottish law forbids that.”
Amalie allowed herself an inward sigh. Isabel barely knew Lady Murray and stood in awe of her. It ought to take little thought for her to understand how difficult it was for a daughter of Lady Murray’s to oppose her.
She was trying to think how she could phrase the point tactfully when Isabel said, “Here comes Annabella now. They must be about to begin.”
With no more fanfare than a low drum roll to silence the audience, Annabella Drummond, Countess of Carrick and later to be Queen of Scots, walked up the aisle alone, followed by two men-at-arms bearing the Stewart and Drummond banners. A chair of state awaited her at the front on the north side of the aisle, and when she reached it, she sat without further ceremony, facing the altar.
“She ought to have walked in with John,” Isabel muttered. “It is unfair to make her wait a full day for her own coronation. Few will pay it any heed, but of course, that is why Fife insisted on the delay, to belittle her position as Queen.”
Amalie wondered if others had heard Isabel. But despite the drum roll, the monks continued their chanting and the congregation its murmuring. Beside her, Lady Averil gave no sign of hearing. But she was devoted to Isabel and would not condemn anything she said.
The chanting ceased at last, the doors opened with a trumpet blare, and a choir of twenty small boys entered, two by two, singing their way to choir stalls in the north transept opposite the monks.
Acolytes followed, swinging censers and preceding the Lord Abbot of Scone and a train of bishops, abbots, and priors. Wearing their finest canonicals and robes, they proceeded to seats arranged in the chancel, flanking the high altar.
Before it, the throne sat on a low dais behind a table draped in white linen.
The choir fell silent, and pipes played in the invited barons. As Buccleuch passed, looking splendidly dignified in his long robe, his gaze caught Amalie’s, and she knew he had watched for her.
He and the other invited barons proceeded to the chancel steps, where they took places on either side.
Next, after a crash of cymbals, came the earls, who went up the steps and sat on chairs in front of the prelates on the north side of the chancel.