by Sophia James
‘When any royal minor ascends to any throne there is a mad scramble for power from those who would gain from it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I got in the way.’
‘But this scar looks v-very old. How old were you when you “got in the way”?’
‘Six. A year younger than David.’
Horror was easily heard in her voice. ‘The king’s enemies thought that you were him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Protection.’
‘Of David.’
He nodded. ‘We were of much the same age and build and my father was happy to oblige the royal minders for an undisclosed sum. When there was danger, I was dressed as him.’
‘Your life for g-gold?’
‘An easy exchange for everybody.’
‘Except for you. You have other scars—’
His thumb covered her words, cutting them off.
‘No more politics, Grace. For the moment let it just be us, aye?’
But she had not finished. ‘Celeste said that you were l-lovers once?’
He threaded one hand through the darkness of his hair, the unhealed cuts on his fingers catching.
‘Once, when we were bairns.’ He was dismissive, as though it was something he had almost forgotten about.
‘And Ruth, your first wife. What of h-her?’
‘Did I love her? Is that what you are asking of me, Grace?’
She nodded.
‘I married her when her husband was killed. Then I was away so much that I found I could not blame her for…looking elsewhere.’
‘Malcolm?’ She pulled back.
‘My brother always made sport of what he could not have. The child that lies in the cemetery of Belridden was theirs.’
‘Lizzie said that p-people believed you poisoned Ruth…?’
When he shook his head Grace suddenly sat up. ‘It was M-Malcolm, wasn’t it?’
‘She implied that it was so just before she died.’
‘To m-more than just you?’
‘She was on her death-bed and many were there to help her soul find the peace it never had in life.’
‘So your brother left the k-keep and the Lairdship fell to you when it was known he was dead? But now he wants it back?’
‘For a Sassenach, you are a clever wee thing.’
‘Why did he wait this long to challenge you?’
‘His servant was seen in London and my guess is that’s where he was too. Garnering support. It would be easier to return to the Borders with an army behind his back, and if the English were offering…’ He let the sentiment hang.
‘Kenneth MacIndoe was the one I saw behind the tithe barn. He w-was here.’
‘I thought as much.’
‘But you n-never said.’
‘These lands have been disputed ever since…’
‘For ever.’ She filled in the word as he brought her hand to his lips and kissed each finger one by one. My God, he thought as he felt her move beneath him, suggestive and eager. She was entangling him in a web. Not with Celeste, not with Ruth, not with the many other women who had warmed his bed across years of loneliness, had he felt like this. They had not smelled like Grace, nor felt like Grace nor tasted like Grace. His finger measured the pulse at her wrist and the racing beat made him smile. She did not hide her sensuality like the others, or use it to her advantage as a bargaining point, and when he had not saved her after Malcolm had kidnapped her she had come with a knife into the dungeons of Watchlaw and saved him, saved them, with monks’ clothes and the waiting horses. No pouting or moping or sulking either. God, that was the most refreshing thing of all. She was a woman who practised neither the deceit of guile nor the constant whine of helplessness and recrimination.
He felt the quick thud of his own heart as it tripped into a landscape it had not before ventured near. Tenderness. Attachment. Contentment.
When she opened her legs he mounted her quickly and hard, disorientated by want and desire and by the need to make her his own. For ever.
Chapter Fifteen
She had not stuttered in days, she thought as they rode into Edinburgh in the late afternoon and in the company of the King’s men. Not when she was nervous or worried. Not even when the party escorting them up into Scotland had arrived at Ravenwood. She had not stuttered because Lachlan was with her, and he thought her beautiful.
They had lain together every night for the past week, cradling, needing, caught in the force of an elemental completeness. Not a little thing; breath and strength and blinded touch and secrets whispered under the cover of darkness. Lachlan understood her as no other person ever had and yet still the words that shimmered between them were unexpressed, teetering above the others of seduction and passion. Pure and honest, yet held hidden.
I. Love. You.
Simple.
Unsaid.
Tightly wound in the protection of her heart because if he did not say them back…
No. It was enough. This. It was enough to be near him, to touch him, to feel the warmth of his arms about her, protecting her, giving her a place in his life. How she hated it when the sun came up and she lost him to soldiering and intrigue and the world of men, and now to Edinburgh and his king and a court that had little liking for the English.
When her hands tightened over his he looked down, a question on his brow, but distant, as if he watched for danger even here in the city of a country he had served for ever.
He was dressed again in his Scottish clothes, the plaid today embellished with the brooch of the Kerrs, a silver stag whose points were studded with gold. His hair was plaited on each side and the rest was left long and dark, a Lord of the Marches hemmed in by small cobbled lanes. She reminded herself that he had lived in the world of courts and kings all of his life, but today he neither looked pleased nor comfortable as they wove their way up to the castle.
Edinburgh Castle was built on a huge stone rising hundreds of feet above the valley floor. Lachlan had told her of it on the way up, black rock that sealed the vent of an ancient volcano, and the sight was enthralling.
‘David has asked for us to come to him.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Now.’
Unspoken worry surfaced.
‘So soon?’
He nodded and she saw how tired he looked, his arm still healing and his eyes reddened from the long ride. When had he last slept she wondered. Really slept? Each time at Ravenwood when she had awakened in the night he had been unsettled, the beat of his toes against the mattress suggesting a weighty problem that he dwelled upon. The king’s reaction, perhaps, or his brother’s betrayal? At least Duncan and Alistair and the others still alive after the battle against the English had been ransomed and were home again safely. Just one less worry in the core of all the rest.
The King greeted Lachlan effusively. He was not to be thrown in a dungeon, then, for breaking the peace against Edward. The panic that had encased her settled to a quieter distance as she stood waiting to be presented to David, King of the Scots.
He was a fair man with a full beard and an aquiline nose, the creases around his eyes suggesting laughter. On the fourth finger of his right hand he wore a wide ring, the gold burnished with the crest of the lion of Scotland, and his robes were rich.
When he turned towards her she sank into a deep curtsy and dropped her glance, surprised when he leant over and took her by the hand.
‘So you are Lachlan’s wife, the Stanton heiress?’ he said and smiled.
‘I am, your Grace.’
His smile deepened.
‘Then I can well see why two men should claim you.’
‘Two men?’ Lachlan stepped forward, anger in his query.
‘Your brother Malcolm is here. He arrived a week ago under the protection of a missive from Edward and insists that his was the prior claim to her hand.’
Silence, as each person in the room determined the consequences of such a
claim.
‘There is, however, a larger problem again, for Edward is displeased at your foray into England and your subsequent escape. He wants your head.’
‘And you will give it to him?’ Tension coated the softly said words.
‘Your brother has allies in Stewart and Douglas. They too are demanding some retribution.’
‘You called me back to Edinburgh to tell me this? That my brother believes he has a claim to my wife? Lord help me, if only you had sent warning…’
‘You would have left. Left Belridden and Scotland, left a place that is rightfully yours.’
Grace felt in the King’s words a grain of truth. Placeless. Homeless. As Lachlan had always been. Until now. She sensed the struggle in him and did not want to be the reason he would for ever after feel…stateless. When David’s eyes met hers, she listened.
‘Your husband has given me his life for nigh on thirty years. Now I would like to give something back to him…’
She nodded.
‘I will not lose Grace.’ Lachlan’s words seemed strangled from very want and the grip on her hand tightened.
‘And you shall not have to.’ David raised his glass. ‘I have suggested a tourney, a way of resolving differences here in Edinburgh. The winner takes the Lairdship and as you and your men are the far better fighters, Lachlan, winning should be easy. Quite frankly, I was amazed that your brother even agreed to such a proposal.’
‘No.’ This time there was no mistaking Lachlan’s intentions. ‘My brother is a murderer…’
‘Yet he would say that of you. He would say that your first wife Ruth was poisoned and that it was you who did it, no matter what words to the contrary were forced from her mouth in the final moments of her existence.’
‘My brother loved her as I did not and she claimed to bear his child. What reason should I have for killing her when she meant so little to me?’
‘Lust. Jealousy. Revenge. Malcolm was quick to name more than a few motives when I questioned him on the very same thing. He is clever, Lach, and so full of anger I would counsel caution.’
The world began to spin for Grace and she held on to the back of a high chair at her side. All this was her fault and Lachlan was in danger now because of her actions.
‘How many knights?’ His voice cut into her thoughts.
‘Twenty each.’
‘And when is this tourney to take place?’
‘In two weeks.’
Standing now against the glass pane at the end of the room, her husband was silhouetted in the bright light and looked dangerous in a way she could not even begin to describe. ‘Where is my brother?’ A simple question with a wealth of intent placed in it.
‘With Douglas, but I should warn you that many are waiting for their own chance to rule Scotland should you try to seek revenge.’ He lowered his voice. ‘If you take matters into your own hands, this very kingdom could totter.’
Grace thought of kingdoms and monarchs and the way politics suggested each man should sacrifice everything for the greater good. She remembered her father and mother uttering the very same words and shivered.
Lachlan felt anger reform, change and bind into a different cadence. If he took Grace and ran, they might run for ever. He felt it in the sheer temerity of his brother’s demands and so far nothing had been said of Grace’s lies in the whole saga. Why not? he wondered. Why had Malcolm not exposed her as a liar?
A shared guilt, probably. The yellow-haired cousin’s muteness and the power of her uncle and his standing with Edward were large barriers to the truth.
David’s proposal was like a gilded dagger and he could not trust in luck or skill as his king had suggested, for Malcolm was a cheat.
‘I shall also name some rules of my own.’ David’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘You shall not meet your brother before the tourney. He shall stay in the north and you here, as my guest. Your wife will be housed with the MacDonald and his family. It is only proper.’
‘Proper?’ Anger filled him. Proper for him to be parted from Grace? He was amazed when he saw his wife nod.
Fourteen days. Bleakness overcame him and he nearly refused but a small hand wormed its way into his and he knew that he could not condemn Grace to a lifetime of running.
Lady Claire MacDonald was a woman of means and morals, with a house renowned for its attention to the detail of making it safe. A good choice for Grace, but a poor one for him. There would be no visits beneath the shady cloak of darkness. The glint in David’s eyes told Lachlan that he was probably thinking the very same thing.
‘You’ll need time between now and then to hone your skills in jousting and swordsmanship.’
The tapestried curtains opened and Lachlan knew that this meeting was at an end. Clever bastard, David. No time for arguments. He wondered if there was some sort of unseen gesture he made to his servant denoting the finish of a session. A tug on the curtain, perhaps? A stamp of the feet?
With a quick nod he turned and walked out into the company of his gathering men.
John Murray was waiting for them and he looked as unhappy as Lachlan.
‘Rumour has it there is to be a tourney between you and your brother and the Lairdship of Belridden is the prize.’ John Murray looked at him for confirmation, nodding as he received it. ‘I’ll stand with you then in the challenge, Lach. Alec and Ian could ride up from Belridden with the others. How many did he name?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Enough men for Malcolm to hide behind, then?’
Lachlan began to smile. ‘Well, two can play at that game, aye?’
‘You would kill him?’
He meant to say that he would. Meant to say it, but found that he could not quite. Malcolm was his brother and all that was left of his family. The thought was disquieting and he shook it away as the approach of a group of well-dressed women curtailed their conversation.
Grace watched him take the hand of a russet-haired woman who pressed in close.
‘Alice.’ He kissed the offered fingers in a manner that was so French she was taken aback. She never quite had the measure of Lachlan Kerr and he always seemed much greater than the sum of all his parts.
‘Lachlan? I had heard you were in Edinburgh.’ Her voice was honey warm and her smile beguiling, the gown she wore denoting both great wealth and taste.
‘May I present my wife to you? Lady Grace Kerr, this is Lady Alice Drummond.’
The woman sunk into a curtsy and Grace did the same, feeling the other’s eyes on the shortness of her hair. She was calculating the relationship between them, Grace thought, and seeing her as no threat at all, as an elaborately bejewelled hand threaded through Lachlan’s sleeve.
‘I want you to come to a banquet I am having tomorrow. And you too, John, of course. I shall expect you at around eleven in the morning. My mother will be pleased to meet you again too, Lach.’
Familiar terms, then. When her husband turned down the invite he said nothing about the conditions that the king had just exacted, nothing of her incarceration in the house of MacDonald or of his in the castle of Edinburgh.
Celeste. Alice. Ruth. Rebecca. How many other women had there been in his life? Married once, but claimed a hundred times. Looking at him here in court, she could well see why. He was beautiful in the way of a man that knew his own strength and walked his world easily, a man who carried the scars of valour and secrets in his pale blue eyes. Those eyes were at this second fastened on her in a look that was puzzled, the flat of his hand in the small of her back guiding her away from everyone and towards a doorway she had not seen before.
The room was huge, a fire burning bright in the grate and food and wine left for them on a sideboard.
Lachlan poured two generous drinks and handed her the pewter tumbler. Finishing his, he poured himself another and drank that one just as quickly before starting on a third.
‘In vino veritas,’ he enunciated, the amusement in his words bringing a smile to her face.
In
wine there is truth.
‘Shall we stay or leave, Grace? If you feel I might not win…’
She stopped him. ‘If you leave, you will lose your home.’
‘You are my home. Just you.’
He did not move forwards or touch her, but the air that swirled about them changed for ever. Her choice. His honesty. No lust at all involved. The candour of an unexpected confession. She could barely answer him. ‘So you are saying…’
‘I will go where you will it. Together.’
The muscles in the side of his jaw flexed. Not flowery prose, but enough, though it seemed to Grace that his breath was shaky. The seconds of silence stretched out. ‘So if I wished to return to my holdings in England, you would follow?’
‘I would.’ Ground out and barely audible.
These were not the love words she had imagined in her dreams, but something much more real. He would give up even Scotland for her, a country that had marked his body during a lifetime of fighting. Tears filled her eyes. Tears not of sadness, but of wonderment, for no one ever before had given her such a gift.
‘I love you, Lachlan.’
There. It was said.
‘I have loved you since the first moment I saw you at Grantley and each day a little more again. But I would not take you from Belridden because the keep is your sanctuary after thirty-three years of wandering and it is mine as well.’
Home. Not just his now, but hers too. She had not realised how much she had wanted a place to call home, had not seen that, in his deliverance, came hers also.
They looked at each other, overwhelmed by the give and take of truth, but still not touching.
‘If you stay with me now, Grace, I shall never let you go.’
‘I know.’
‘No matter how much that you should will it.’
‘I know.’
Repeated. Again.
‘In two minutes the door will be opened and you will be taken to the house of MacDonald.’ He finished his drink and the distance between them seemed lessened. ‘Promise me that you shall stay there safe. Promise me that you shall not go out alone or be swayed by any argument to leave the place, no matter who should make it…’