Lady With the Devil's Scar

by Sophia James

  All who had heard the exchange shook their heads and a sense of unease began to turn inside Marc. He had thought it only him to be astounded by her, but here even seasoned married soldiers were admitting her charm.

  Another thought blossomed. Perhaps in the world of the court, where comeliness was admired above all else, she might be saved.

  An edge of guilt worried him, however. Had he

  ruined her chances by taking her to his bed? Would the king see the truth of what lay between them on Isobel Dalceann’s face when he asked of their relationship?

  More lies.

  He cursed. He had never been careless before. He had never pined for a woman the morning after,

  either, and there were still three whole days and nights before reaching Edinburgh.

  If he had any honour at all, he would leave her alone and guide the hand of the king into setting up a union for her that would be both advantageous and effective. The very thought had him turning for the doorway and barking out orders to his men, irritation and rankle sending him outside to watch her step into a cart specially prepared to transport a prisoner.

  As if she had known him to be there, she turned and stood still, a woman caught in the vagaries of war and holding her head up high. Her hands worried the fabric of her skirt, which had the effect of outlining the curve of her bottom, and he felt such a forcible hitch of want he wondered if she could see it even from such a distance. The path they had travelled together focused into this very second, a hundred people around observing them and a king who would need to be cajoled to be kind.

  He could not jeopardise any of it by his own selfish want. She would find out exactly who he was when they reached Edinburgh. The faces of all the men he had slain came through the ether just as they did on nights when sleep seemed far away. A soldier who had hewn in blood and flesh a passageway for his life and far away from the charity of others.

  A bastard child.

  Even his name was not his own, but was one bestowed upon him as a squire by the lord he had trained under in Brittany. Girded with the sword, he had risen as another.

  The only way he could save Isobel Dalceann here was by letting her go. His fingers caught the cold hilt of his dirk and he cursed roundly in the language of his long-dead mother.

  * * *

  Night covered the land and for once it seemed that the skies would stay clear and the fires lit as far as the eye could see would not be doused by the opening heavens. The tent Isobel shared with her maid was ample and well appointed, a pile of furs laid out for slumber and the leather the shelter was fashioned of thick and waterproof.

  Only one day away from the town now. Tomorrow she would stand before the king and know her fate. Marc de Courtenay had not come near her since Ceann Gronna; even though she had searched for him amongst the columns of soldiers, he had been nowhere in sight.

  She wanted to ask for him, to see whether he might come and reassure her with his presence. But he did not come and she did not ask.

  Walking away from the tent towards a fire tended by a single soldier, she breathed in the air with relief. The tent was stuffy and a headache had begun to form. She might be dead by this time tomorrow, her head adorning a stake on the castle walls, a warning to others who might think to disobey a king.

  The glint of a sword in moonlight alerted her to the presence of another standing before a long line of bushes, lost in the shadow. She knew who it was by the fierce pull in her body and the unexpected rush of heat that left her breathless even before he spoke.

  ‘I need to talk to you, Lady Dalceann.’

  Stepping forwards, fire-flame caught Marc de Courtenay’s face and she saw his clothes were very different from the ones he had favoured at the keep. He now wore a tunic in blue and gold, a black wolf embroidered on it, teeth bared and tongue lolling. A flicker of recognition came and went as she looked upon it, wondering where she might have seen such a badge. Danger and menace draped him now, the falchion and roundel dagger part of his personality in a way that they had not seemed to be before. The formality of his address worried her, too, the tone he used distant and impersonal, and she simply nodded because she could not trust herself to speak.

  ‘We will come into Edinburgh around noon and the king will almost certainly summon you to court. David will ask for your fealty and your loyalty. He will demand your complete servitude. It is my advice that you give him these things irrespective of any allegiances you might already feel.’

  She knew what he meant immediately. ‘Allegiances such as the one held between us?’ His glance met hers, the planes of his cheeks caught in the light, all hollows and angles.

  ‘Yes.’ The word was ground out hard and his reply pierced everything soft inside her. ‘I can protect you only so far. You will need to do the rest yourself.’

  ‘How?’ The conversation had completely run away with her. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ It felt as if they had never lain together in the high room on a bed of pelts.

  ‘You are beautiful, Isobel. The most beautiful woman who will ever grace Edinburgh and David is a man of enough intelligence to understand the bargaining power of such comeliness.’

  He sounded tired, the edge of defeat in his words surprising. The message he conveyed also concerned her.

  ‘He would use me as a whore to trade favours with those who might pay?’

  ‘Nae.’ Snatching her hand into his own, he held it tight against his chest. She could feel the tension in him reverberate into her bones. ‘Not as a whore, damn it, but as a wife.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  He let her go as if she had burnt him and moved back.

  ‘There are things I have not told you, Isobel. Things that I should have maybe said...’

  ‘You are married?’

  ‘Not that.’ The sound was soft against the winds of night. ‘But I am a soldier whose existence is as precarious as your own, a soldier who survives under the shifting will of kings and in a hefty turn of coin.’

  Isobel could not for a second understand exactly what it was he said. ‘Who pays you?’

  ‘Philip of France.’ No warmth lingered as the truth fell bald between them. ‘I am here to make certain that the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France is adhered to in the way my liege would want it to be.’

  ‘Yet you came to Ceann Gronna as David’s commander?’

  ‘Every political promise demands much in the way of innocent blood. It is a fact.’ He did not even flinch as he said it, his face a mask of indifference.

  ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

  ‘Because in another day everyone else will be and I wanted you to hear it first from me.’

  ‘You would champion a cause even if you thought it unjust?’

  ‘There are always two sides to every squabble, Lady Dalceann.’

  ‘And you just choose the most lucrative? Like Ceann Gronna.’

  When he did not answer she posed her own question.

  ‘Work for me, then. Let me pay you in gold to order your men from their guard duty in the dungeons.’ She could not bargain for herself, as she knew with the king’s soldiers accompanying them it was far too late for that, but her clan might still be saved.

  He shook his head. ‘I cannot.’ The soft certainty of his answer made it all the more final.

  ‘Our night together meant nothing, then? Am I now only a woman whom you will sell for the greatest sum?’

  ‘Nay, Isobel you are a woman I will protect by doing such.’

  She drew back her hand and slapped his face so hard that her palm hurt. He didn’t move an inch and the outline of redness showed above the deep tan of his skin.

  ‘You are a coward to hide behind such untruth, Marc de Courtenay, and I would be a fool to take any such protection from you.’ Everything between them shattered into pieces, all the honour she had imbued into their stolen nights, gone.

  For a moment she thought he might say something to explain his actions, but he continued speaking
as if nothing had happened, a mask across any emotion.

  ‘Your gold will be placed into the hands of David as a surety. If you have knowledge of more, it might be wise to whet his appetite whilst pretending vagueness at the whereabouts. Anything of worth is a way of buying time. Remember that.’

  ‘So this is the end of us, of our time together?’

  ‘Nay, not quite.’ Reaching forwards he brought his lips down across her own, the anger in him pulsing as his tongue sought that which she tried to deny. She felt his hands at her nape, holding her to his kiss, and his teeth scraped across her bottom lip as he let her go.

  ‘Stay in the tent, Isobel. It is not safe for you to be out here alone.’

  And then he was gone, the quiet sound of his footsteps the only thing that was left.

  Her shaking fingers crept to her throat, feeling her pulse beneath, the beat racing against the promise of all that he had not offered, and she could not quite reconcile the man who had saved her at Ceann Gronna and kissed like that, with the soldier that he purported to be.

  * * *

  Marc leant back against the trunk of an elm, the rough ache of bark digging into his back like a penance.

  God, but she got to him with her bravery and her beauty. The stalk of greenery he swiped at dropped to the earth and he ground the leaves beneath his feet till there was nothing left.

  Like him!

  He should not have kissed her, he knew he should not have, but the sadness in her eyes had been too much to bear and so he had.

  For the first time ever he felt scared, for if anyone hurt her...

  No. He would not think like that. He had to find a way to keep Isobel Dalceann safe, no matter what it took. He saw her re-enter the tent and stayed watching for a good few hours past the midnight.

  * * *

  Mariner found him around three.

  ‘I thought you would be somewhere here.’

  He cocked his head, listening as the other spoke.

  ‘The woman has a way of getting under your skin. It’s her solitariness and her courage, I think, even aside from the way that she looks. Her father must have been a bastard. The men are taking bets on how long she will take to get the king beneath her spell.’

  ‘I hope the odds are short.’

  ‘Very. They have all fallen in love with her a little, I think.’

  ‘She’s barely spoken with them.’

  ‘The Dalceann myth is strong, though, aye, and she does nothing to lessen it. Everyone talks of her skills with the sword and the way she filled out her lad’s hose. Two sieges rebuffed and a campaign mounted in Ceann Gronna this time that was, at the least, salutary. Edinburgh will take to her like a man just out of the desert takes to water.’

  Like me, Marc thought, balling his fists against his thighs. The place around his heart was tight and sore.

  ‘Glencoe believes the king will marry her off to some rich baron who will never be able to control her. He says it would be a shame to see Lady Isobel Dalceann caged in by misunderstanding.’

  Marc stood at that, the image of her in the arms of a man who would never care for her as much as he...

  He stopped and put the thought away. Not for him. Not for him. Just keep her safe—that was all he could hope for—and then leave. The blackness in the heavens was endless when he looked up, the star of Sirius the brightest light in the sky.

  He would remember her on this star in all the years of his life to come, he promised himself, from Burgundy or from the battlefields somewhere in the dangerous parts of the Kingdom of France and he would pray to God every evening for her happiness and satisfaction.

  ‘I’ll stand watch till the dawn.’ Mariner’s voice broke into his reveries and, knowing he needed some hours of rest to face the morrow, he left his lonely vigil and made for bed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  She kept her head up and her hands still as she waited in the company of Marc de Courtenay for an audience with the king.

  A hundred people from the court of Edinburgh looked on, all their eyes pinned to her person. She did not glance directly at them, but above the height of their heads, so that she would not see what she supposed would be there.

  Hatred and abhorrence.

  She had heard the howls of anger directed towards her as they had made their way on foot up the Edinburgh Hill to the fortifications looming over them, tall houses crammed on each side and a smell unlike any she had ever encountered in the air.

  Now here at the Great Castle Isobel could not remember another time when she had felt so afraid.

  Marc beside her stood very still. War and battle walked with him like a companion, the greenness of his eyes exactly the colour she imagined menace might be, and watching everything.

  Small flashes of him loving her came to mind, but it was as if a different man now remained in the place of the other. No one here could doubt his strength or his ability to deal with danger. She saw the same thought in the eyes of onlookers when she finally did deign to look.

  So she was not the only one who had come to Edinburgh as an outlander. She wondered if he could feel the apprehension of the people as easily as she could, though the expression on his face suggested he had no mind for any of it. A loner. Philip’s minion. A man whose very job defined him. Not one inch of his body looked anything other than in control.

  A messenger finally approached and bade them forwards and double doors at one end of the room were opened.

  Inside, at the head of a room filled with more people, Isobel could make out the throne of the king.

  David the Second, King of the Scots, was not a large man or a particularly handsome one, but his eyes held the power of command and right now they were laid upon her person.

  ‘Lady Isobel Dalceann, my lord,’ a voice rang out. ‘The Chief of the Dalceann clan at Ceann Gronna keep in Fife and Sir Marc de Courtenay, the Wolf of Burgundy.’

  The Wolf of Burgundy?

  Isobel had heard that name so very many times in the years of her growing up. The Wolf of Burgundy was Marc de Courtenay, a warlord whose campaigns across the wider world had been the stuff of the songs of bards and minstrels for a decade?

  A man of bloodshed and battle. Had he not tried to tell her that last night? This was the man who seldom took prisoners and one who collected coin for all the souls who came against him. Even her name was as nothing compared to his own!

  Her world focused as the breath she held was punched from her body. She did not dare to look at him as David the King of the Scots continued to speak.

  ‘Home from the wild coast of Fife and a profitable campaign by the look, too. Do you have anything to say about it, de Courtenay?’

  ‘Indeed, sire.’ Marc bowed, the movement rough and awkward, lifting his head as he began to speak, his voice unhurried and steady.

  ‘Ceann Gronna is a keep that is now in the hands of the Scottish Crown, the last of its soldiers guarded in the dungeons. Glencoe and I crossed from the north this morning. The Earl of Huntworth,

  Archibald McQuarry, died by the sword after he broke all the rules of treaty and tried to steal gold marked as your bounty, my lord.’

  ‘And where is this gold now?’

  ‘It is here and at your disposal.’

  Isobel saw him place a sackcloth bag, specially furnished with handles and double bound in leather, at the king’s feet. She knew the load would be heavy, though it seemed in the way he held it to be as light as a feather. Grinding her teeth together, she did her best to appear a maid with little in the way of choice.

  ‘Was the keep razed?’

  ‘Nae. It lies intact, my lord.’

  ‘A treasure to be added to my stock, then, de Courtenay. Well done.’

  ‘The Chief of the clan of Dalceann, Lady Isobel, comes to the castle, too, sire. She comes under the weight of her father’s poor judgement, for it was Donald Dalceann who started the canker that has destroyed Ceann Gronna, giving his daughter no alternative but to try to save its people.
’

  ‘Step forwards.’ David’s voice brooked no disobedience as he gestured to her and Isobel tried her very hardest to appear as Marc had just stated it, the beleaguered offspring of an unwise parent.

  ‘You do not look like a witch,’ he said at length. ‘You do not have the appearance of one who has sold their soul to the Devil at all. What say you, de Courtenay?’

  ‘I say she is a woman who has been misled by the men around her. I say that the stories of her here in Edinburgh are false and that she bears the mark of her father’s duplicity on her cheek and nothing more.

  ‘I also say that around her neck I found this.’ He pulled out a chain and held it up. On the end of the silver was a tooth yellowed from age and inlaid on an ornate clasp. ‘When I took it from her she did not disappear into a puff of smoke as some said she would, sire. The trinket was nothing more than the denture of some marine animal found on the beaches around Ceann Gronna and kept as a reminder of the power of that which lies close by in the sea. No more than that. Lady Isobel Dalceann comes before you today, sire, with sorrow in her heart for the trouble her keep has caused you and the hope that the promise of more gold might be enough to let you understand her contrition and allow her to state abject loyalty to your cause.’

  ‘You words are strong, Sir Marc.’ The king stood and walked forwards so that he stood beside her, almost a half a head shorter than she was. She tried to curtsy in a way that was appropriate and did not look at him, as she had been instructed.

  When he lifted her chin, though, she had no other course but to meet his eyes. Fear held her immobile.

  ‘She is an admirable beauty. A rare and untarnished treasure. It would be a shame to see such comeliness gone.’

  Isobel swallowed. Did he mean that it would be?

  Marc, however, was not quite finished.

  ‘When you sent me into the lands of Fife, you made the promise of a reward should I come back with a triumph. My one wish is that Lady Isobel Dalceann be allowed to show her loyalty to the cause of Scotland and to your kingship, sire.’

  David stood still, watching Marc closely and running his fingers over the beard that covered his chin. Finally he spoke to her.