by Sophia James
Marc waited. The truth was close, he could feel it, he only needed to keep him talking.
‘She says there is proof.’
The whites of Huntworth’s eyes made him look more crazed than ever.
‘My father paid your aunt to keep you away from us, a memory that we did not want to come knocking at our door, and the plan worked until Philip sent you here and you began to snoop.’
‘So you are my brother?’ Marc was winded by the horror of this truth.
‘No. Your cousin. Quinlan, my father’s youngest brother, wanted you here amongst us, a child who had connections with the royal court of France. He was the dead wood on the family tree.’
‘So you killed him?’ The battle around was dimmer now, the truth of what he was hearing making it so.
‘Someone had to save the Huntworth name from being a laughing-stock. Archibald and I decided to.’
Marc swore. It was enough. He had heard enough.
‘Tell your brothers and father that you have failed in your quest, then, when you reach hell.’
With one parry he buried his blade into the heart of his cousin and watched the light fade from his eyes.
A moment later it was all over, the last Huntworth supporter dumped overboard to sink into the arms of the ocean.
One of his men had Anne of Kinburn, pulling her aboard easily from the place where she hung, half in and half out of the water. Her husband and his friend joined her, streams of cold flowing from their clothes. But the other woman was missing and so was Isobel.
Ten minutes since she had jumped overboard, Marc surmised, looking wildly around.
‘Isobel.’ He shouted her name and listened for an answer, the others on the craft doing the same. The mist had thickened and he could not make out an outline of anything.
‘Isobel.’
Still silence.
Stripping off his shoes, he dived into the water, stroking around the rim of the boat to see that she was not there hanging on and unable to reply.
There was nothing, so he set out further, his arms aching with the crawl of cold and the pain of the splinter which had pierced him.
He could not believe it.
‘Isobel. Isobel. Isobel.’ He called till his voice was rough and hoarse, the waves bigger now, dunking him under and making him cough. Still he stroked back and forth, his legs kicking the murky depths below in the hope of feeling her there and for the first time in his life he cried, the warm tears mixing with freezing salt and running down his cheeks like a child.
When he had lost Guy it felt nothing like this, nothing like this tearing pain of agony choking away life. Fisting his hand, he waved it at the heavens and screamed his anger.
The boat came out of the mist and he caught the side, swinging himself inside in one easy movement and ordering the oarsmen this way and that.
Anne of Kinburn was crying, the sound annoying him with all it implied. Mariner had recovered from his knock on the head, but he did not look at all well. The rest of his men sat as sentries for any sign of life as they trawled the water, up and down, up and down.
* * *
Four hours later he knew he had lost her, the Firth of Forth so frigid there could be no survival in such a temperature.
Nothing made sense any more—the soaked red sleeve of his kirtle, his lack of breath, the sun finally breaking through the mist and filling the ocean with emptiness.
Another boat had pulled alongside them, taking Anne, her husband and friend and Mariner with some of his men.
He refused to leave the craft, however, as the oarsmen agreed to look further.
By nightfall he knew he could search no more and with utter grief he gestured for the men to return to the wharf they had left a good ten hours earlier.
Chapter Nineteen
The people were kind and their fire was warm. Lady Linda Carr sat beside her crying, the blush on her face filled with pity.
‘I am sorry, Lady Dalceann, but I could not stop them.’
Isobel tried to focus her eyes on all that was happening about her. She knew she had reached the shore late in the night, dragging the big woman with her, but it had all seemed a blur after that.
Wriggling her toes and her fingers, she tried to work out what it was Lady Carr spoke of. She could still see, move and hear. The list went on as she tested various parts of her body.
‘Your hair is gone,’ the woman wailed as Isobel’s hands reached up. ‘It was caught in the wooden piles and they could not free you, so they cut it off to bring you up from the sea.’
Isobel felt the shorn tufts of her hair, the end of her tresses feeling strange and ragged. ‘It does not matter.’
Her rescuer, his wife and two young children huddled to one side.
She tried to sit up but a pain sliced across her temple so she lay back again, waiting till her vision cleared.
‘Where are we?’
Lady Carr was not certain and turned to the corner. The man stood, doffing his head at them as if they were great royalty. For the first time Isobel saw that Linda was draped in a blanket and that beneath the covers of the bed all she wore was a cotton shift.
‘Ye are in a village just north of Edinburgh, my lady. I am a fisherman and found you as I made to bring my boat up on to the hard. It has just come dawn so I will send word to your people. The lady here tells me that you were part of the king’s party making for Dunfermline.’ Again he bowed his head.
Marc. Lord, he must be frantic by now if he had managed to repel the Huntworth attack. She hardly dared ask the next question.
‘Were other people found?’
‘Two bodies of soldiers, my lady. The lady here did not recognise either.’
Lady Carr began to sob. ‘Oh, it was so terrible. I couldn’t look upon their poor faces, for they seemed—’
Isobel cut across the top of her and addressed the man. ‘Can you take us back to Edinburgh in your boat? I will make certain it is worth your while.’
She tried to sit up, the movement making her dizzy and sick.
‘I think it best if you stay lying down,’ Lady Carr said, ‘for your face is paper white.’
‘No. I need to be on that boat.’ Her legs felt like jelly as she hung them across the side of the bed, the earth cold and smooth beneath her bare feet. The two children watched her with enormous eyes as Linda laid the blanket about her shoulders. With her head thumping and her stomach turning, Isobel stood, collecting her clothes from the end of the bed and slowly following the woman out of the back door to a small room away from the house which would afford her some privacy to dress herself.
* * *
Marc wandered towards the wharf like a wraith. He had not slept and the dawn could not come fast enough for him to take out another craft and look for Isobel.
He felt the eyes of everyone upon him, his arm pulled up into a sling and his left eye swollen. Huntworth might have left his mark on him, but the
injuries inside were the ones that ached.
Isobel.
He wanted her. He wanted to feel her beside him as they marched into their future together. He wanted to love her until he was old and all their children had grown.
Now the past reached out again and grabbed him, again, the lonely life of the army, a man with no home save that in battle.
Mariner joined him as he covered the final yards on the wharf.
‘More bodies washed up this morning, but she was not amongst them.’ Hope flared and then dimmed. There were so many places, after all, that the currents could carry the drowned. ‘The king has sent word he will return this morning. It seems everyone in the court is in shock over McQuarry’s blatancy.’
He nodded, but he did not really listen. He did not care for the shock of others, removed as they were from the loss he knew. He did not want the king milling around him or the pity that he perceived here on the wharf amongst his own men.
All he wanted was her, Isobel, soft and warm and brave in his arms.
He remembered the last time he had seen her diving free into the water, unafraid, certain, the strong stroke of her arms lost in the mist even as he watched her go. She had brought back Lady Anne of Kinburn and her husband and his friend, but Linda Carr was still lost and Geoffrey Kinburn had intimated that the woman had been panicking. Marc’s memory of her was that of a large female. Had Isobel tried to calm her, had she attempted to bring her back, only to be pulled under by a stronger force? He shook his head and took in a breath.
No. He could not do this and live; he had to be at his best to find her again.
* * *
She was going to be sick. It was the motion of the sea and the dizziness in her head and the cold of the dawn rising slowly.
Her fingers closed white around the seat beneath her, wishing away nausea and the shaking that had begun as they had made their way to the shore, which had worsened considerably.
Simon, the stranger they had pulled from the water at Fife Ness, came to mind as she tried to still the chattering of her teeth and she closed her eyes against the memory.
‘Ahoy there!’ The fisherman’s voice was loud and, drawing herself up, she watched as the shape of another boat materialised a good two hundred yards away, the mist this morning light and patchy.
‘We are saved.’ Linda Carr began to shout out, her voice drifting across the water, the answering calls of other voices vying with it and a horn sounding.
Isobel’s heart started to pound. It was him. She knew that it was, coming through the first light to find her.
* * *
‘It’s a boat,’ Mariner observed, ‘with three people in it.’
‘A woman. One of them is a woman.’ Marc could see the bright swathe of gown on a figure that was large and rounded. Lady Linda Carr, perhaps? His eyes searched out the smaller outline next to her, looking for the long plait of hair.
His heart sank. A youth it seemed crouched beside the other as the boat came closer, dark hair cropped in the fashion preferred by the young pages and the only other occupant a fisherman by the looks, one of the many who plied this part of the Firth.
He let out the breath he was holding. Lord, that the one Isobel had gone to rescue had survived while she had perished; the very wrongness of it made anger turn.
Forty yards away now, then thirty.
Then there she was, Isobel, after all, white faced and staring, all words gone and lost as their eyes took in each other.
A miracle.
The noise of cheering was around him as the boat came aside and he felt his hand reach out and take hers, small and cold, lifting her over to him, her shaking body fitting beneath his cloak, her head under his chin lain against his heart and safe.
* * *
Everything felt warmer—the heavy wool of his cape wrapping her in heat, his body hard against her own, his hands holding on as if he might never let her go again.
‘Where the hell were you?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I have looked everywhere.’
The bandage on his left arm was thick.
‘Trying to get back to you.’ She had promised she would not cry, but now she did, her sobs almost as noisy as those of Lady Carr. She could not care. She had had enough of bravery and strength. All that was left was honesty.
‘Ah, love,’ he whispered, running his free hand through her shortened hair and she looked up.
‘They...c-cut it to s-save me.’ Vanity in the eye of the storm was so very unheroic, but he did not seem to be worrying, the smile in his eyes bright and true.
‘Is Stuart McQuarry dead?’ She needed to know that he was gone and that the episode at sea would not be repeated.
‘He is.’
‘I l-love y-you.’ Spoken through her shaking sobs.
Around them Isobel could see Mariner and the rest of his men listening, along with Lady Carr, who had finally ceased to cry, and five other soldiers from the court of David.
Was it dangerous to make such a proclamation? Would there be consequences even now? Closing her eyes, she simply rested against the danger because, in this very second, she was home.
* * *
They were summoned to the court the next morning for a session with the king.
Everyone was there when they arrived—no small number, either, leaving a passageway for them to travel through, hundreds of lords and ladies dressed in their very best.
Even the trumpeters sounded as they walked, the colours of David draped in long banners on the walls around them. The room had been decorated with other banners, too, she noticed, more festive and richly embellished. Every person that they passed was smiling.
David rose when they stopped before him, his gown of ermine and red undeniably luxurious. All Isobel could think of was the suitors. Was it today she would be torn away from Marc into a marriage?
‘You came to our court as the vanquished daughter of Ceann Gronna, Lady Dalceann, and you stand now as the saviour of four people with the loftiest names in Edinburgh.’
The Kinburns, who she had not noticed, stepped forwards as did Lady Linda Carr and her husband, all acknowledging the debt they owed to her by bowing low.
‘I said that I should give you the month to choose a suitor of good name and family. But I rescind that promise now. I wish to choose for you, and the man who will be yours will henceforth be an earl of my court and the head of an old and venerable family name.’
Isobel turned to catch Marc’s eyes, but he was not looking at her. His hands were tight fists at his side. Please God, let them not have come this far to be denied each other now! She bit down on protest as the king went on.
‘Step forwards, Sir Marc de Courtenay.’
Against the king Marc looked tall and broad, his hair pulled back and slicked with water.
‘You came to Edinburgh on a promise from the King of France and you have given good loyalty and service here, for which I thank you. There is another matter entirely, however, that I wish to pursue with you now. It is said that Stuart McQuarry, the Earl of Huntworth, is dead, his ill-made attempt on your life yesterday costing him and his men dearly. My own findings show that there is still one McQuarry heir left, however, a man who could take the title through his father’s name and use it wisely. That man is you, Lord Marc, the Earl of Huntworth.’
The crowd was as surprised as Isobel. Was what he was saying proven beyond doubt? She waited as Marc began to speak.
‘Then as the Earl I should like to put my name forwards as a suitor for Lady Isobel Dalceann.’
The king began to smile. ‘Isobel Dalceann, would you accept marriage with this man?’
‘Indeed I would, sir. He is exactly the husband that I want.’
* * *
Three hours later the celebrations were still in full swing, the marriage of the new Earl of Huntworth to Isobel Dalceann a party that many would remember for years.
Not a betrothal of convenience or politics or for the greed of possessions, but a marriage for love. Everyone came forward to offer them their most sincere and hearty best wishes.
* * *
Much later they lay in each other’s arms, the joy of for ever lingering in the kiss between them.
A full moon in a cloudless sky bathed the room in light and the fire in the hearth chased away the cold.
‘Thank the Lord you are a fine swimmer, Isobel. I should have known it after you brought me in through the waves on the beach at Fife Ness.’
She wriggled against him, her finger tracing the sensitive skin about his nipple.
‘After five hours I thought of simply giving up and letting the sea take me, but your love drew me on.’
‘If I had lost you...’ He let the words go because he could not imagine what he might qualify such a statement with.
‘You will never lose me because I love you, Marc.’
Turning into his beautiful wife’s warmth, he knew everything was right in his world and that finally he had found his place. Aye, the keep at Ceann Gronna and the castle at Stirling would ring
with the sound of their children and their children’s children.
Opening his palm, he laid it across her breast. ‘I give you my heart to keep, Isobel, always and for ever.’
When she smiled back he thought he had never seen her look more beautiful.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of My Fair Concubine by Jeannie Lin!
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Chapter One
China, Tang Dynasty—AD 824
Fei Long faced the last room at the end of the narrow hallway, unsheathed his sword and kicked the door open.
A feminine shriek pierced the air along with the frantic shuffle of feet as he strode through the entrance. The boarding room was a small one set above the teahouse below. The inhabitants, a man and a woman, flung themselves into the corner with nowhere to hide.
His gaze fixed on to the woman first. His sister’s hair was unbound and her eyes wide with fear. Pearl had their mother’s thoughtful features: the high forehead and the sharp angles that had softened since the last time he’d seen her. She was dressed only in pale linen underclothes. The man who was with her had enough daring to step in between them.