His Border Bride

by Blythe Gifford

  She, too, had learned to fly without hood, jesses and bells. Now, she needed the courage that Wee One had, courage to leave the safety of captivity and fly free.

  Love is messier than that.

  Could she love him as he was?

  Could he possibly love her that way?

  In order to be sure, she would have to break every rule she knew.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  England—January 1358

  ‘England is colder than Scotland.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. England is further south. It’s always warmer in the south.’

  Gavin put another log on the fire, letting his fellow hostages argue without taking a side. The dreary January dampness seeped through the stones of Odiham Castle, but cold or colder, England wasn’t home.

  If Gavin had feared Edward might ease his captivity for his father’s sake, he was wrong. And glad of it. The other two hostages held here, a Stewart and a Ross, were confused enough when he appeared to replace the Douglas cousin whose name had been at the top of the list.

  ‘Why you?’ Stewart asked.

  All the arguments he had given King David went through his head. Because it will ease Lord Douglas’s anger. Because it will prove my loyalty to Scotland. Because I am half-English. Because I can atone for my father’s sins.

  Because she no longer wants me.

  ‘This I can do to give Scotland back her King. What more could I do, sitting on a border?’

  ‘Sip good brogat and love your woman,’ answered Ross.

  There was no answer to that. His marriage and his hopes for it were done. Like King David and his wife Joan Makepeace, they would live apart, for she could no longer bear the sight of him.

  Returning to Odiham Castle was like returning to the banishment of his youth. The life of a hostage was certainly better than that of a man in the dungeon, but the castle felt little more welcoming than the Tower of London. It was simply endless exile.

  Had this country ever really been his home?

  Where were the hills that brought the changeable weather, the light and shadow that shifted as the eye blinked, the scent of heather that softened the edge of autumn?

  He longed for all that and more.

  At first, he kept the lavender under his pillow, so his room would smell of home, but after the first week, he threw it away. It was too painful a reminder of what he had lost.

  King David had left his falcon behind and they were graciously allowed one last hunt before the season came to a close and winter came on.

  The bird, while worthy of a King, would have been no match for Wee One.

  A page appeared at the door. ‘There’s a visitor for Sir Gavin Fitzjohn,’ he began, nervously. ‘A lady.’

  The others stared at him, then Ross broke into a laugh. ‘Well, I guess you’ve found a way to have the lady, if not the brogat.’

  ‘Did she give her name?’ He could think of no woman in England who would know, or care, that he was here.

  The page shook his head. ‘But she wanted to see you alone.’

  Now both of his fellow prisoners whistled, though Stewart’s expression held more than a touch of jealousy.

  ‘In my solar, please,’ he said, grateful that Edward had at least provided each man with his own room. If one of his former lady friends thought to rekindle their relationship, he would not subject her to an audience for his rejection. On the other hand, he thought, as he climbed the stairs, Joan Makepeace had returned to England. Perhaps his aunt brought a message from the King not intended for other ears. ‘Just give me a moment.’

  He looked around the barren room. There was little to neaten for a visitor. But the scent of lavender still hung faintly in the air, even though he had thrown it out months ago.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Come.’

  The door swung open and Clare stepped across the threshold.

  Wordless, he watched her smile at his surprise. ‘My lady,’ he said, uncertain how he managed to make his tongue work. ‘You seem to find yourself on the wrong side of the border.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘In faith, husband, I do not know when I crossed it.’ Her glance was a mixture of shyness and confidence. ‘I have lost a beloved tercel who respects no boundaries and have travelled miles to find the bird and bring it home.’

  He thought to explain to her about kings and treaties, but all he could to do was look. ‘But the bird now belongs to the King, who will not give him up.’ His heart, pounding, his mouth, dry. ‘Ye broke nae rules, did ye?’

  ‘A few I’ll have to tell ye about.’ She smiled. ‘I have spoken to the King. Both of them. And they now understand that this bird and his falconer are wedded. And since the bird has been gone, it is the falconer’s heart that has broken.’

  Could she have turned two courts upside down for him? ‘Perhaps, then’ he began, barely able to whisper, ‘if you whistle, the bird will return to your fist.’

  She pursed her lips. What escaped was not the shrill, high-pitched shriek that had called Wee One to her, but the low, coaxing warble of their private moments. The one that grabbed his body’s memories.

  He took a step towards her, wanting to hold her, but afraid, now, as he had never been in battle. He had not been afraid of death. But to lose her twice, that he could not bear. ‘This bird you seek, I fear, will never be faultless.’

  ‘I have learned that perfection does not exist in following the rules, but in being true to our nature. Yours has two sides. Scots. English. Dark. Light. And in that, you are perfect.’

  ‘And so are you, my wee one.’ He would tell her over and over again until she believed him. ‘You soar above all others.’

  Epilogue

  Carr’s Tower—spring 1359

  She must have screamed in ecstasy after she came back to earth, for when she opened her eyes, he was leaning on his elbow, smiling at her as if she were the moon and the sun and the stars.

  She gave him a playful blow.

  ‘What was that for?’ he asked, eyes wide with fake innocence.

  She kissed him and when their lips reluctantly parted, she snuggled under the covers. ‘Inglisman.’

  ‘Frenchwoman.’ He swooped over and tickled her and she screamed with the glee of a child who is safely scared.

  She had wintered with him in England, and when the next ransom payment had come from David, Edward had allowed them to leave for home. She had learned, during that sojourn, that all Englishmen were not devils.

  And all Scots were not saints.

  And that peace blessed the heart as well as the land.

  She sighed, content. ‘Well, I can’t loll abed this morning. I’ve Beltane to bake for and Euphemia will be of little help this year.’ Walter and Euphemia had wed and their second boy had been born a few days before.

  ‘And we’ll dance beneath the stars,’ he said, a rough whisper in her ear, and they lolled abed some more.

  Finally, he squeezed her in a hug and they started to rise. ‘To think that it was only King David’s long captivity that gave me to you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Douglas’s promise that your father could choose your husband.’

  She sat up in the bed. ‘Because of my mother’s dying wish that my father choose my husband.’

  Now Gavin sat up slowly, questioning eyes locked on hers. ‘Your mother? He told me it was because of the death of your brother and David’s captivity.’

  ‘What brother?’

  Her realisation was reflected in his eyes.

  They leapt from bed, each throwing on only enough clothes to get to down the hall to the baron’s room. Gavin pounded, then pushed the door open, not caring what they might interrupt.

  ‘You lied—’

  ‘You conniving, sneaky—’

  ‘You made up the whole story!’

  ‘Both stories!’

  ‘What really happened?’ She was out of breath now, but out of anger, too.

  Her fat
her, still sitting before the fire with Murine, laughed. ‘Finally found out, did you? I was lucky that you were fighting with each other so long or you might have caught me earlier.’

  She laughed then. Gavin joined in. And her father, the most satisfied of all, roared.

  ‘Well, here’s the real story. The part I told you about getting William Douglas good and bungfued was true. But it was not to remind him of a promise he’d made to my wife or even to me because of having no sons. I gambled him for it.’

  ‘You staked my future on the dice?’

  ‘If I had lost, your future would have been the same as it was before. He’d have picked some man for reasons of his own. Some man whose favour he wanted. Who might not care a fig about our land. I wanted a man who belonged here.’ His grin softened. ‘And I found him.’

  Arm around her, Gavin nodded.

  She looked up at her husband, smiling. She had hesitated to give him her heart. The safety she had sought would not be found in this man. Loving him would always be a risk.

  Yet each of them would choose, always, to return to the other. Like the peregrines, mated for life.

  Later that morning, she looked to the skies. A few high clouds, a hint of warmth in the damp air. She inhaled the spring.

  In the barmkin, a new mews sat empty. Until now, her heart had not been ready for another bird. Maybe when summer came, she could search Hen Hole for a new falcon.

  Looking up, she saw a bird—no, two—flying closer. She squinted and blinked, trying to bring the shapes into focus, afraid to believe what she saw. But they flew together, down to the tower, and settled on the edge of the roof of the mews.

  ‘Returning to nest,’ she whispered. Wee One had found her mate, just as Clare had hoped.

  Yes, this season, Clare would look for a new brancher to train. Wee One’s.

  The birds flew away and Clare walked back to the house.

  By August, if Murine was right, she and Gavin would have a wee one of their own.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The peace that Gavin and Clare longed for did not last for ever, but King Edward never invaded Scotland again. That was left to his successor, Richard II, nearly thirty years later. The results—no engagement on the field of battle and the disgust of Scotland’s French allies—were remarkably similar to Edward’s experience in 1356. I explored the subsequent Scottish invasion of England in 1388 from the other side of the border in my previous book, In the Master’s Bed.

  King Edward, his brother John of Eltham, King David and Lord Douglas, later the first Earl of Douglas, are all real people and I have tried to be true to the facts we know.

  Gavin Fitzjohn, bastard son of John of Eltham, is my creation. John did die in Scotland, suddenly and with no clear explanation, at the age of twenty. Despite many brides that had been proposed for him, he was never formally betrothed. He did burn the abbey church at Lesmahagow. The legend in Scotland was that Edward killed his brother in anger for that act, but subsequent scholarship has refuted that claim.

  Lord Douglas, like many Scottish lords, had an on-and-off relationship with King David. David did make Douglas an Earl when he returned from England and just a few years later, Douglas rebelled—briefly—when the cost of payment of the ransom became too burdensome.

  The King’s cordial relationship with his brother-in-law Edward did not endear him to his fellow Scots. He did promote the solution of putting one of Edward’s sons on the Scottish throne should he die childless, a proposal universally rejected north of the border.

  When he did die without issue, his nephew, the ‘Stewart’ in this story, assumed the throne as Robert II, after a protest from Lord Douglas. It was the descendants of this Stewart/Stuart line, after marrying an English royal along the way, who finally united Scotland and England under one king, a Scot, more than two hundred years later.

  Gavin and Clare would both have been satisfied.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5534-4

  HIS BORDER BRIDE

  Copyright © 2010 by Wendy B. Gifford

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