by Paula Quinn
Edmund didn’t participate as often as his Scottish kin did, but he enjoyed a bit of sport as much as the rest of them did. For now, though, he had a task to plan and see through. He would do what had to be done to stop the signing. Of that, he had no doubt. Scotland depended on it. According to Lord Lincoln, the duke was away from the castle, so this was the best time to go in and take what was his. The four of them would have no trouble taking all of Queensberry House down if they had to. The challenge of avoiding that scenario was more exciting to Edmund than tossing his sword around and hacking off the fingers of men who loved to point them. Thankfully, most of the men who rode with him agreed.
“The lad speaks true.” Luke rode up beside him while Darach leaped back to his feet and swore oaths at all three of them.
“About what?” Edmund asked with a bit of a drawn-out sigh. He knew what his cousin meant. They’d had this conversation a hundred times before.
“When d’ye think ye might start looking fer a wife and quit fighting Scotland’s battles?”
“Someone needs to do it, Luke. We’re being swallowed up by England. We’re about to lose our Parliament. The nobles tell us about the advantages of a political union with England, declaring that ’tis in our best interest fer peace and wealth. But ’tis the Protestants who will gain security in the realm, and we, the Catholics, who will lose all our rights. As MacGregors, have we not lost enough already? Our name is once again denied us and forbidden from being spoken. Everything our grandsire fought fer has been lost once again.”
“Aye, I know this, but we’re safe in Camlochlin.”
“Fer how long?” Edmund asked him. His cousin couldn’t answer. “ ’Tis not just about us, Luke. Scotland will suffer. Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath is openly against the union and has stated that the whole nation appears against it, but Queensberry and Lord Chancellor Seafield and their commissioners—all bought and paid fer—don’t listen. Other negotiators to the treaty have observed that ’tis contrary to the inclinations of at least three-fourths of the kingdom. But petitions from shires, burghs, and parishes have all but been ignored.” He set his determined gaze toward his destination. “Someone must make the men in power listen.”
Keeping his horse at an even pace with Edmund’s, Luke smiled at him. “Ye’re not Scottish.”
“It matters not. Scotland is my country.” Edmund glanced at him and scowled. “What the hell are ye still smiling about?”
“Ye’re more committed to Scotland and her sovereignty than most men who were born here. Fer ye, ’tis a choice to adopt her ways, and ye have. ’Tis an honorable thing, Edmund. I’m proud to call ye my kin. Unlike I am about those two.”
“Och, hell, Luke,” Darach complained, back in the saddle and riding up behind them. “Ye’re not goin’ to start in with all yer honor and knightly virtues drivel, are ye? Cal’s correct aboot ye.”
Luke laughed softly, letting Darach pass him. “Ye would do best to learn some of the drivel if ye ever mean to sing in Camlochlin’s halls.”
Darach swore something about singing that was lost on the wind as he kicked his stallion into a full gallop.
The dog that traveled with them had been Edmund’s from the moment it left its mother’s body. Ears perked at Darach’s furious departure, the beast merrily joined in the chase, catching up quickly with its prey.
“Sometimes,” Edmund said over Grendel’s loud barking and Darach’s subsequent shouts for the mongrel to let him go, “I think Darach enjoys having his arse removed from his saddle several times a day.”
“Aye,” Malcolm agreed, taking Luke’s place beside Edmund and watching the commotion ahead. “He’s the source of every silver hair on his mother’s head.”
Edmund laughed and then cringed a little at the oaths spilling from Darach’s lips, so unlike the eloquent poetry his father produced.
“Grendel!” he called out to the monstrous hound running away with Darach’s bonnet between his teeth and Darach losing ground behind him. “Good boy!”
Malcolm cheered the dog, then turned to his best friend. “If only we could get Grendel to close his jaws around Queensberry’s throat. After the duke shyt his breeches we could convince him not to sign.”
Edmund shook his head and smiled, watching his dog run in wide circles while Darach chased him. “Grendel wouldn’t harm a fly,” he said, his smile fading. “’Tis me whom the duke should fear.”
Chapter Two
I swear on m’ dead mother, ’twas longer than m’ forearm.”
Lady Amelia Bell stared, eyes wide, her mouth gaping slightly at her best friend, who was sitting across from her on the bed, and then the two burst into laughter.
“’Twasn’t humorous when I laid m’ eyes upon it,” Sarah Frazier confided, her green eyes bright with wickedness. “I felt like Eve when she first spied the serpent in the garden. I wanted to run, but the temptation was too great.”
Amelia gasped behind her palm. “Oh, Sarah! That is positively blasphemous!”
Sarah shook her head and flicked a lock of auburn hair off her shoulder. “Ye concern yourself overmuch with what others think.”
“I don’t!” Amelia charged, removing her hand from her mouth to fold her arms across her chest. “Save fer my father’s poor sake,” she added as an afterthought, always plagued by the troubles she caused him. “Do ye think I would sneak through the gardens to come and hear all yer sordid secrets if I cared what others thought? Ye know what my mother or uncle would do if they found out.”
“Aye,” Sarah agreed with her, falling back onto the mattress. “I don’t know which would anger them more, the topic of our conversations, or that ye sometimes spend yer nights in the servant’s quarters.”
“Both.” Amelia yawned and stretched out beside her.
“But still ye come.”
Turning to her, Amelia took her hand and held it to her cheek. “Ye have always been my dearest friend. I will never let my uncle’s title or my mother’s rigid intolerances stand in the way of that. I will do what I believe is right.”
Sarah’s smile softened against the flickering light of the twin candle flames and then faded. “Do ye believe that marryin’ the chancellor is the right thing then?”
Amelia looked away and shook her head. “It’s the right thing to do fer my parents, Sarah. My mother—”
“Yer mother is as much an insufferable snob as yer betrothed. Amelia, ye will not be happy as Walter Hamilton’s wife!”
Amelia knew her friend was correct, but what could she do? Bring disgrace on her parents yet again by rejecting a marriage proposal from the chancellor of Scotland? Her mother would never forgive her and her father, well, he never blamed her but wasn’t it bad enough that she was the reason for every gray hair on his head? “My sisters did not want to marry their husbands, Sarah. We are not afforded any silly notions of love. It is the price we pay fer nobility. Marrying the chancellor will help my father earn him the respect of many nobles and make him less beholden to my uncle. So that is what I must do, whether I want to or not.”
“But I don’t want you to leave Queensberry House, Amelia.” Sarah’s eyes glistened as the fears she’d tried to deny spilled forward. “Whatever will I do without ye when ye go to Banffshire with yer new husband?”
What would Amelia do without her? They were inseparable, friends since they had learned to take their first steps and stumbled straight for each other. Amelia’s mother had tried to keep them apart, scolding Archie the smith for not keeping a tighter rein on his child. But the truth of it was that Lady Millicent Bell was too occupied with kissing her brother the duke’s arse and trying to find suitable husbands for Amelia’s three older sisters to do anything truly drastic about her youngest daughter’s friendship with a servant. As the girls grew older, the hammer came down a bit harder, mostly due to Sarah’s less than modest behavior. But if it wasn’t for her friend’s sometimes crude tales of her affairs, Amelia would know absolutely nothing about the marriage bed. Her sist
ers certainly would never share their knowledge about what a man enjoyed in his bed.
“Do not worry over my betrothed, Sarah,” Amelia promised, heartbroken to be leaving Sarah, as well. “I will use what ye’ve taught me to convince Walter to send fer ye.”
Sarah didn’t look convinced as she swiped a tear off her cheek. “I wish ye were a servant with me, Amelia. Then ye could choose your own husband. I wish ye could persuade yer father to choose someone else. Is there nothin’ we can do?”
“The betrothal celebration is tomorrow—rather, today,” she corrected looking toward the window. “Besides, there is no one else who has offered for me.” Thanks to what her mother called her imprudent nature, there was no one else interested in her hand. Amelia did her best to avoid it, but misfortune seemed to follow her everywhere she went, in everything she did, beginning when she was a child and she dropped her uncle’s only son on his head. She had wanted to carry the tiny babe, but her request was denied. Undaunted, she’d lifted him from his cradle anyway. The babe didn’t die after the terrible accident, but he grew mad. Mad enough to cause his father to lock him away for good and her mother to forever blame her for everything that went wrong in their lives after that.
And, of course, she hadn’t intended to leave her embroidery on Walter’s chair when last he visited. She had no idea how the needle came to be sticking straight up, poking a three-inch hole into his buttocks.
She certainly hadn’t meant to douse four of her uncle’s men with dirty water last week. She hadn’t wanted Sarah to have to clean her shoes after she’d stepped in horse manure, so she’d cleaned them herself and tossed the water out her bedroom window. How was she to know her uncle’s men were directly below?
Things just went awry when Amelia was around. She didn’t like it any more than anyone else did, but she tried not to let it concern her to the point of distraction. She often failed.
“All will be well, Sarah, ye’ll see.” She patted her friend’s hand and did her best to mask her apprehension and misery. She didn’t want to leave Queensberry House, to be married to a man she barely liked simply to appease her mother’s desire to see her last daughter bound to a man of wealth and position. She didn’t want a life filled with no choices, full of obligations, a life without her dearest friend to help her forget her duty. But she would not bring her father further shame by refusing his choice of husbands before the entire realm. “The hour grows late and I must soon be off. Tell me more about the notorious rogue of Ayr, Lord Thomas Lamont, and his colossal…attribute.”
“Well.” Facing her best friend, Sarah snuggled deeper into her pillow and lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s Scottish, ye know. I tell ye, Amelia, God looks favorably upon the Scots. They tend to be better endowed than the English, and know more about how to use what they’ve been given.” She grinned, her apprehension over losing her friend banished by Amelia’s full attention.
“Did it pain ye?” Amelia asked, bringing her fingers to her mouth to stifle her audacious question, though no one was there to hear it but Sarah.
“Aye, but he was a gentle lover.”
Amelia closed her eyes and sighed wistfully while Sarah went on to describe her tryst with the Scottish nobleman. Would Walter be a gentle lover? Would she please him enough to bring a smile to his face hours afterward, the way Lord Lamont smiled when he spotted Sarah earlier today? She imagined her life with Walter. Would she ever find happiness with him? Her mother assured her that she would—if she worked hard at being a lady of grace and dignity, warmth and intelligence. Amelia didn’t particularly care for being those things. At least, not in the way her mother meant, which was, stand around and look pretty and keep her mouth shut. Amelia wanted love and the kind of passion that came without restrictions, the kind her father told her about in his stories of courtly love. But it wasn’t to be and she had learned to accept it.
She began to drift off to sleep, content to dream about the life she wanted. But the truth quickly dawned on her and she opened her eyes before she fell fully asleep. She sat up. Her betrothal was being announced tonight. She had to return to her room before her nursemaid Alice arose and found her missing!
“Sarah.” She shook her friend, not sure if Sarah was sleeping or not. “I must go.” She slipped out of the bed and rushed toward the door. “’Tis almost dawn! I shall see ye at the feast.” Reaching the door, she pressed her ear to the wood, listening for the sounds of anyone in the hall. She pulled on the handle and turned to cast her friend a lighthearted smile before she left. “I will try not to laugh if I run into Lord Lamont today.”
Amelia’s bare feet treaded lightly over the flagstone path leading to the main house. The garden was silent save for the cry of robin hatchlings demanding to be fed somewhere within her uncle’s carefully pruned trees. The fading moonlight cast deeper shadows along the arcade offering concealment beneath the high stone canopy from her nightly visit to the servant’s quarters. Normally, the garden was the safest route back to the house, but today the servants would be busy scurrying to and fro preparing for the festivities. Guests would be arriving from all over the kingdom for the weeklong celebration commemorating her uncle’s success at almost procuring Scotland’s vote in favor of the Union with England Act, and her betrothal to the Lord Chancellor of Scotland. Rooms had to be aired out and food had to be cooked. Indeed, some of the cooks were already about their duties, for the aromas of baking bread and smoky venison permeated the air.
She quickened her pace and muffled a screech when her toe dashed against the base of one of her mother’s beloved statues. Amelia glanced up and swore an oath at Neptune. There were ten of them lining the inside wall of the arcade, each meticulously placed between tall stone columns to appear framed within the arcade’s depressed arches, all life-size and carved in stone, all naked, or close to it, and ridiculously muscular. There was Zeus, Heracles, Apollo, Neptune, Apoxyomenos, the Dying Gaul, Hermes, Aesculapius, even a nude Caesar.
Paul Tolson, Queensberry House’s resident pastor, detested Millicent Bell’s affinity for Greek gods, but Amelia knew her mother’s devotion had less to do with pagan deities and more to do with the male physique. Amelia didn’t share her mother’s appreciation of bulging sinew and sheer brute strength. She much preferred a man like…him.
The sun began its lazy ascent over the garden, swathing the statue at the end of the arcade in warm hues of pale rose and gold. A replica of Michelangelo’s David stood sublime, supreme over the others. His posture was relaxed, exuding confidence, his grace divine before his battle with Goliath. His sling tossed casually over his shoulder depicted a man who used faith and cleverness, not brawn, to battle his enemy. Moving to stand below him, Amelia’s gaze drifted appreciatively over the sleek contours of his legs, so finely formed they made her heart flutter. Refined and vigilant, his body stood in absolute composure, conscious of his power to face his greatest enemy. Aye, she thought, backing up to sit for a moment or two on the marble bench before him, there was no man more perfect than David.
She knew she should make haste, but looking at David’s statue made her contemplate her future. Oh, how she wished for a man like David to come rescue her from her fate. A strong warrior who would never let harm befall her, even the harm she might bring upon herself, someone who wouldn’t force her into the sort of rigid life she was born into. How would she ever find happiness at Banffshire? Would her mother let her take David along?
She was so sleepy and lying down with Sarah had only made her more tired.
Her feet were cold, so she tucked them under her on the bench. She should have worn her slippers when she stole across the gardens earlier to be with Sarah. She sighed, thinking how angry her mother would be if she saw Amelia in such a disheveled state. She would just have to make certain that her mother never discovered her secret rendezvous with Sarah. She smiled at the beautiful face cast in stone and closed her eyes.
She dreamed she heard a dog barking somewhere in the distance.
> Chapter Three
Edmund and his cousins had attended many balls and gatherings without invitations in the past. This one was nothing new, save that there were more guards at Queensberry House and more nobles attending that might recognize Edmund or one of his cousins from a prior raid. They would have to enter the house with stealth and then blend in.
Leaving Grendel and their horses in a nearby stable, they crept across the garden lawns behind the house, using trees and the veil of darkness to hide their approach.
Edmund saw her as the sun began to spread its gossamer beams over the arcade, her back to him, locks of rich chestnut spilling to her hips as her head tilted upward at a statue of God’s warrior, David.
Silently, he signaled to the others to hold back lest she see them. He watched her, waiting for her to leave the arcade, but she remained still. In the silence of the earth poised on the brink of waking, he thought he could hear her breath, quickened by the view that captivated her. Who was she? What was she doing out here alone, clothed in her nightdress? His gaze followed her when she sat on a bench facing the sculpture.
He waited, counting his breaths while she remained motionless, her head resting against the column beside her. What was she doing? he wondered, when Malcolm tossed him a questioning look. He didn’t want to frighten her. One scream and she would alert the guards to their presence.
After twenty more breaths, he realized the lass must have fallen asleep. Leaving the cover of a thick apple tree trunk, he motioned for the others to breach the doors on the eastern wall. While they hastened forward, barely making a sound, Edmund made his way toward the arcade, crouching low when the heavy doors creaked open. He raised his palm to Lucan, who’d stopped to wait for him, gesturing for them to go on ahead of him. Edmund wanted to see her face, hoping it might convince him that she was made of flesh, and not an angel traipsing around in the dawn, waiting for her god to awaken. She piqued his curiosity. She enthralled him as it seemed David had enthralled her.