Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy Two 02]

by Border Lass

  “A cozy armful?”

  “I didn’t mean that part! I meant—”

  “But you thought I looked as if I would be a cozy armful?”

  “Aye, sure, and I was right,” he said, drawing her close again and nuzzling her neck before his lips captured hers and they began all over again.

  The next time they lay back together, Amalie gazed up at the ceiling over her bed, then at the bed curtains and beyond into the room itself, thinking how odd it was to be in her own bed with the man she had married.

  “You know,” she said quietly. “I half expected never to come home again. But now that I have, I’m glad I did.”

  “But this is no longer your home, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Westruther is, and we must go there very soon.”

  “No,” she said and then smiled when she felt him tense. “It is not Westruther, the place, but Westruther, the man, that is my home now. I will be content, sir, wherever you are.”

  Epilogue

  Christmas 1390, Westruther

  He never tired of watching her.

  Standing in the open doorway and looking out over the snowy slope below, he paid no heed to the chilly air he was letting inside. As he watched her heave a snowball at young Michael, he recalled the day he had first seen her, and smiled.

  His nieces and nephews were all pelting her now, shrieking in their delight. He heard Amalie’s laughter and a shriek or two from her as well. His mother and Joan, and Joan’s husband, stood nearby, watching them all fondly.

  He and Amalie had settled in well and happily at Westruther. Her sister Meg’s little daughter was nearly three months old now, and in a few months, he and Amalie would have a bairn of their own. Boyd no longer troubled them in any way, having—by most accounts—suffered a fatal accident on his way back to Lauder Castle.

  Harsh weather had cut Fife’s Border progress short before it had well begun, so he was back in Stirling. With luck, something new would turn his attention elsewhere. He had shown them how well he protected himself, and even Archie Douglas could do nothing about that—yet.

  To be sure, they had made a dangerously powerful, implacable enemy in Fife. But Garth knew that he and Amalie had powerful friends, as well, and would deal with trouble together if and as it ever came.

  In the meantime, Garth thought he might lob a few snowballs himself.

  He turned to pull the door shut, and when he turned back, he saw that she had noticed him. She was smiling.

  She watched him stride down the hill toward her and felt the familiar sense of rightness she always felt in his presence.

  One of Joan’s three little girls shrieked, “Aunt Amalie, look out!”

  Whirling, she dodged another snowball that Michael had flung, scooped up one of her own to fling back at him, and then turned to meet her husband.

  “Happy, sweetheart?” he said, pulling her into his arms.

  She nodded, snuggling against him.

  From time to time, she still dreamed of the old mill, but golden sunbeams danced on the scattered grain now, Garth was the man in her dreams, and all was well.

  Dear Reader,

  Border Lass’s heroine, Lady Amalie Murray, was a challenging but very interesting character to develop, as you might imagine. Because of her history (Border Wedding), I wanted her to have a big, fierce, teddy bear as her hero, and I was fortunate to find excellent examples in my son and a number of his friends.

  Translating certain illustrative incidents they provided (by example) from the twenty-first century, back to the fourteenth, proved an interesting challenge, too.

  Garth as hero was just fun. I had worried and stewed over his name, going through lists of Scottish names of the period, but at first nothing excited me. I came up with his surname first. It was easier, because I wanted him related to Buccleuch (Wat Scott), and the Napiers were close allies of the Scotts. Once I landed on Napier, the name Garth began to stand out on all the lists as a nice punchy-sounding first name to go with it.

  I grew up with a friend named Garth, too, and that helped. Because it is the Scottish form of Gareth, one of the nicknames is Gary, which did not fit my hero at all. So the other primary nickname, Gar, is what he became to friends and family.

  The business of Scottish and English titles has long fascinated me, and Border Lass gave me a chance to explore their evolution a little more. Knighthood was primary even after the fourteenth century, but things were definitely evolving.

  To illustrate that further, I’ve described a number of times the annoyance that the Earl of Fife felt at not having a more notable title. That particularly annoyed him during a visit to Scotland by John of Gaunt, then the English Duke of Lancaster.

  They were both younger sons of kings and both had served as longtime “temporary” rulers, yet Lancaster lorded it over Fife because the title of duke is higher than that of earl (nowadays, two levels higher).

  In 1400, Fife at last became Duke of Albany (the ancient name of Scotland). His was the second Scottish dukedom created. The first was Duke of Rothesay, granted at the same time to David Stewart, Earl of Carrick and heir to the throne.

  The King of Scots then offered a third dukedom, Duke of Douglas, to Archie the Grim, but Archie turned it down with contempt. What was this foolish new title compared with that of the ever great, most honorable Earldom of Douglas? He wanted no part of it.

  Archie died shortly thereafter. He has long drawn the esteem of historians and the near reverence of his descendants as a fiercely able and successful Border chief, although at the time he failed to achieve the popularity of his predecessor.

  Two of Archie’s children, the Master of Douglas and a daughter, married members of Scotland’s royal family. And, according to Britain’s Dictionary of National Biography, by the time Archie the Grim died, the Douglases were not only the greatest power in the Borders but also “the most powerful family in Scotland.”

  Sir Will Douglas, Lord of Nithsdale, is a more controversial character, at least with regard to his death. The Dictionary of National Biography dates his death after 1392, because of a name on the Scottish Exchequer Rolls. However, Douglas sources put it in 1390. Even the DNB sets what it calls “the duel” with Lord Clifford in 1390. The Douglas sources say Will died then, in Danzig. From the beginning, historians and others have debated whether Lord Clifford or someone else was responsible.

  I’m sure some of you are curious about the ages at which the laws of fourteenth-century Scotland considered children old enough to contract a valid marriage. According to The Law Relating to the Formation and Annulment of Marriage and Allied Matters by Joseph Jackson (London, 1951) and other sources, in both Scotland and England, boys could legally marry at fourteen and girls at twelve.

  My primary source for Douglas history is A History of the House of Douglas, Volume I, by the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell (London, 1902). Another is The Black Douglases by Michael Brown (Scotland, 1998).

  Other sources are The Scotts of Buccleuch by William Fraser (Edinburgh, 1878), Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser (New York, 1972), The Border Reivers by Godfrey Watson(London, 1975), Border Raids and Reivers by Robert Borland (Dumfries, Thomas Fraser, date unknown), and others.

  As always, I’d also like to thank my terrific agents, Lucy Childs and Aaron Priest, my wonderful editor Frances Jalet-Miller, Art Director Diane Luger and artist Claire Brown for Border Wedding’s wonderful cover, Senior Editor and Editorial Director Amy Pierpont, Beth de Guzman, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, and everyone else at Hachette Book Group’s Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) who contributed to making this book what it is.

  If you enjoyed Border Lass, please look for Lady Sibylla’s story in the third book in this trilogy, Border Moonlight, at your favorite bookstore in January 2009. In the meantime, Suas Alba!

  Sincerely,

  http://home.att.net/~amandascott

  amandascott@worldnet.att.net

  MORE PASSION, ADVENTURE, AND ROMANCE ON THE SCOTTI
SH BORDERS!

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  Border Moonlight

  AVAILABLE IN MASS MARKET JANUARY 2009.

  Chapter 1

  Scottish Borders, Spring 1391

  The child’s scream shattered the morning stillness.

  Whipping her head toward the sound, which had come from somewhere near the river Tweed, flowing mightily a short distance away, Lady Sibylla Cavers reined in the silvery gray gelding she rode. Pushing back the sable-lined hood of her long, dark-green wool cloak, she listened, frowning.

  The scream came again and seemed closer.

  Spurring the gray, Sibylla rode toward the river until she saw through a break in the trees lining the riverbank a tiny, splashing figure a quarter mile to the west, moving steadily toward her, a victim of the river’s powerful, sweeping spring flow.

  Without hesitation, Sibylla wheeled her mount eastward and urged it to a gallop, hoping it could outrun the river to the next ford. With her hood bobbing and long, thick dark auburn plaits flying, she kept her sharp ears aprick for more screams to tell her the child still lived, and help her estimate how fast it was moving.

  As her sense of urgency grew, she leaned low along the gelding’s neck and urged it to go faster.

  The ford she remembered was not far, if it still was a ford. She knew only what she had gleaned about the Tweed during the princess Isabel Stewart’s eight-month-long residence at Sweethope Hill, but her own experience with other rivers, burns, and rills warned her that even trustworthy fords that had remained so for years had a way of vanishing in a heavy spate, and usually did so just when one needed most urgently to cross to the other side.

  As a member of the princess’s household, she had had few chances to explore beyond the landscape nearest Sweethope Hill House, and the Tweed lay three miles away. She knew the banks of Eden Water better, because it flowed right around the eastern base of Sweethope Hill on its way south to join the Tweed.

  At present, the river was a thick, muddy brown color and carried branches, twigs, and even larger items in its grip.

  She could see a long, half-submerged log in the distance, which had apparently snagged near the opposite shore just before the river bent southward. Branches with enough still-clinging dry leaves to look like spiky plumes shot out in several directions, making the log easy to see. Other objects swept right past it, as the child would if she could not intercept it.

  The ford lay just ahead with sunlight gleaming on water-filled ruts of the worn track that approached it. Although the river was much higher than usual, hoofprints in the mud indicated that, not long before, horses had used the crossing.

  Reining the gray to a trot and turning, half-certain she would see nothing but churning water, she saw with profound relief that the child still splashed, albeit with less energy than before.

  She heard no more screams, and the child’s strength was clearly waning, so she had little time left to save it. At best, she would have only one chance.

  At the ford, she urged the gray into the water. The horse was reluctant, but she was an experienced horsewoman, and she knew it was strong.

  Forcing it into the swift flow, she discovered only when it was in up to its withers that the muddy water was even deeper there than she had expected. Nevertheless, the horse obeyed, leaning into the river’s flow to steady itself.

  Keeping firm control of it, she fixed her eyes on the child, urging the gelding forward a few more steps until the little one was coming right toward them.

  When it was near enough, Sibylla resisted trying to grab one of the thin, flailing arms with her gloved hand, and grabbed clothing instead, praying that the cloth would not tear as the water fought to rip the terrified child from her grip. The river thrust hard against the horse, eddying angrily around the already skittish beast.

  The child proved shockingly heavy and awkward to hold. Then, just as she thought she had a firm grip, the gelding shifted a foreleg, turning slightly eastward.

  The combination of the child’s water-logged weight and the river’s mighty flow pulled the little one under the horse’s neck and forced Sibylla to lean hard to retain her grip. Before she knew what was happening, she was in the icy water.

  Long practice compelled her to hold on to the reins. But the startled horse, already struggling to return to firm ground, jerked its head up, nearly yanking the reins free. Sibylla’s skirts and heavy cloak threatened to sink her, and the combined forces of the river and the child’s weight were dragging her eastward with a strength impossible to resist. Worse, the child had grabbed hold of her arm and, shrieking now in its terror, tried to climb right onto her.

  Sibylla let go of the reins and, submerging, used her left hand to release the clasp at the neck of her cloak as she tried desperately to keep the child’s head out of the water and find footing beneath them. The water pulled one boot off, and she kicked the other away.

  Although her feet briefly touched bottom as she tried to right herself and the cloak’s weight vanished when the river swept it away, she could find only water under her now. Whatever had remained of the ford was behind them.

  Pulse pounding, trying not to swallow the cold, muddy water, she fought to reach the surface and to keep them both afloat. But the river, determined to claim them, swept them inexorably toward the sea.

  Simon, Lord of Elishaw, returning from a visit to kinsmen with his usual, modest tail of six armed men, had forded the Tweed sometime before on his way south to Elishaw. He’d also heard the screaming child and turned back at once.

  By the time he and his men reached the riverbank, the screams were well east of them, but Simon easily spotted the frantically splashing child. Beyond, in the distance, he discerned through the shrubbery a lone rider racing along the opposite bank, either a woman or a man in a dark-green cloak. Whoever it was, with the river as high as it was, and the current as strong, the person would likely need help.

  As Simon turned east, one of his men shouted, “There be another lad in the water yonder, m’lord!”

  Glancing back to see more splashes, Simon said curtly, “You men do what you must to rescue him. I’m going after the other one. Hodge, you come with me!” he added, singling out the largest and strongest of his men.

  Then, giving spur to his mount with mental thanks to God that he was riding a sure-footed horse of good speed, Simon followed the narrow, rutted track along the riverbank, watching through trees and shrubbery as well as he could in passing, to keep an eye on the child and on the lone rider ahead.

  As he rode, he wondered how two children might have ended up in the river. If they had been playing on its banks, they both wanted skelping—if they lived long enough. If not . . .

  Half of his mind continued to toy with possibilities, as it was wont to do when faced with any problem, but as he drew nearer, he saw that the other rider was female and realized the shrubbery had concealed her flying plaits before.

  Forgetting all else, he focused his mind on how he could aid her.

  She forced her mount into the river at the ford where he and his men had crossed the Tweed earlier, and he noted how nervous her horse was of the moving water and how deftly she managed it. As the thought crossed his mind, the lass leaned to grab the child racing toward her, and he saw with approval that she was wise enough to grab hold of the front of its garments rather than trying to catch one of its madly waving arms. Still, he doubted that any female would be strong enough to hold on to it in such a current.

  He spurred his horse again, his vivid imagination warning him of what was bound to happen split seconds before she fell in. She had briefly slowed the child’s progress at the ford, and the south-bank entry to it lay just yards away from him.

  She bobbed up straightaway and still had hold of the child. But the river had both of them and moved fast enough to make him fear he’d not catch up in time, let alone get ahead of them as he must if he were to be of any help.

  The woods near the
river were thicker ahead where the river bent southward and then bent due east again a half mile later.

  He could shorten the distance by cutting straight across the field instead of following the river. Then, if the two of them could avoid drowning before he got to them, and if his horse could avoid putting a foot in a rabbit hole or worse . . .

  Sibylla held on to the child by sheer willpower. She resisted fighting the current, tried to relax a little, and put her energy into kicking and keeping her head and the child’s above water as she let the river carry them.

  She hoped she could keep her wits about her long enough to think what to do, but the icy water made it hard to breathe, let alone think, and although the child seemed lighter now with the water bearing them both along, she knew they did not have long to survive unless they could reach one of the riverbanks.

  Being adventurous by nature, and having grown up at Akermoor Castle within a mile’s distance of its own loch to the west and the Ale Water to the east, and having been blessed then with an older brother determined to teach her how to survive the commonest perils of Border life and to look after herself, she was an excellent swimmer and possessed the ability to remain calm in a crisis.

  She knew she could not successfully fight the strong current but must try to work with it, so the first thing she had done was command the child to help. By shouting at it to kick harder, she managed to shift her grip to the back of its clothing near its neck, so that by floating it on its back, she could keep its head up by bending her wrist sharply and keeping her right arm straight while she paddled with her left hand. Her body had thus shifted almost onto its side, and she found it easier to kick hard while the child floated above her legs, also kicking.