A Dangerous Love (41 page)

“Why should I remain?” Adair replied softly.

“I have offered you marriage. Is that not an honorable proposal?” he said.

“You want an unpaid housekeeper,” Adair answered him.

“Then I will pay you to remain. Six groats a year, your board, and two gowns,” the laird offered her. “The coins payable today, October first, each year you remain with me. You may make the gowns whenever it pleases you from the cloth in the keep’s storage chamber.”

“So you admit that all you wanted of me is to be your housekeeper. You are insulting. I was born the Countess of Stanton, not a servant. Farewell and good hunting, my lord,” Adair said angrily.

“How do you propose to get back to Stanton?” he demanded of her.

“I have feet,” she said scathingly. “I managed to find my way from London to Stanton without anyone’s aid.”

She looked defiantly at him.

“You’ll be killed, raped, or worse,” he told her. “A woman alone, tramping over the hills to England. Have you lost whatever wits you had? You aren’t going anywhere!”

“Conal, in the name of all that is holy, tell Adair the truth,” Duncan begged the laird. “Tell her that you love her, because it is obvious to everyone in the keep that you do. And she loves you, but she is as stubborn as you are and will not admit to it.”

“You cannot make him say what is not so, Duncan,
 
for if I understand one thing about your brother it is that he is an honorable man. He does not love me.”

The laird stood tongue-tied. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to cry out that he did indeed love her. But before everyone in the keep? His men? The servants who had now come up from the kitchens? His brothers?

They would think him a fool, and he would not be made to appear as if he were. He stood silent.

Adair looked at him. She was angry, but still her eyes filled with tears. “Farewell, my lord,” she said, and turned to leave the hall.

“Conal! You can’t let her go,” Murdoc cried. “She is carrying your child!”

The laird of Cleit felt as if he had been hit a mon-strous blow in his belly. His chest felt tight and actually painful. Then his anger exploded as he stepped forward and grasped Adair’s arm in a hard grip. “You bitch! You would leave me, and not tell me you were carrying my child? Know that our bairn is the only thing that prevents me from strangling you where you stand, Adair.”

She slapped him as hard as she could with her other hand. “
Our bairn
? Nay, my lord.
Your
bastard!” And when she went to slap him a second blow he grabbed the wrist of her hand in a terrible grip. “You are hurting me!” she cried.

“Holding you thus is the only thing now that keeps me from killing you,” he snarled. “Understand one thing, Adair. You are going nowhere. You are mine. You were from the moment we met, and you will always be.

I have asked you to wed me, and now you will, for my bairn will not be born without its name.”

“I will not wed you, Conal, and you cannot force me, for you do not love me. I was married the first time by proxy, and knew naught of it until I was faced by a pockmarked boy crowing his sovereignty over me. A second time for convenience. But if I marry again it will be for love and no other reason, for now I have nothing to offer a husband but my own love and loyalty. I am no 
more the Countess of Stanton. I am no longer a landowner. I have only myself to give, and I will not give myself away to a man who cares so little for me that he cannot say he loves me, and mean it from his heart.”

“You are going nowhere,” he repeated in a tight voice. Then he dragged her from the hall, and upstairs to their bedchamber. Forcing her into the room, he closed the door behind her, and taking a key from his key ring, he locked the door. “We will discuss this further when I return from hunting,” he told her.

“There is nothing to discuss,” she yelled through the door as she heard him walking away and back down the stairs.

Back in the hall Conal Bruce turned to his brothers and his servants. “I have locked the recalcitrant wench in my bedchamber. Elsbeth, neither you nor the others are to go near that door while I am gone. Let Adair’s temper cool a bit. By evening I expect she will be more reasonable.”

“More likely her heart will be further hardened against you, my lord,” Elsbeth told him. “Why do you not just tell her you love her, and be done with it?”

“What makes you think I do?” he asked of her.

Elsbeth snorted derisively, while Flora and Grizel were both wearing knowing smiles upon their faces.

Behind him he heard his two brothers snickering, and he could sense the grins upon the faces of his men. “She will see reason eventually,” Conal Bruce said. “She does not want our child born on the wrong side of the blanket like she was.”

“She knew nothing of her true sire until she was six,”

Elsbeth reminded him. “She never felt bastard-born, for John Radcliffe loved her dearly. She was his daughter no matter who got her on her mother. She does not really understand the consequences of a bastard-born child, for she never had to, even in the royal nursery.”

“My bairn will not be born labeled bastard,” the laird
 
said. “She carries my child. I am willing to wed her. The priest will wed us, by proxy if necessary.”

But Adair continued to prove difficult. She would not even speak to Conal Bruce when he returned from hunting that day and released her from her prison.

She stamped down into the hall, ate her meal, and went into the kitchens. When the other servants had retired to their quarters in the attic, Conal Bruce sat grimly waiting in the hall for Adair to return. When she finally did she ignored him as she went about her duties for the evening. Then she prepared to return to the kitchens.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded of her.

“I have concluded my duties for the day,” she said. “I am now going to bed.”

“You sleep with me, Adair,” he said fiercely.

“You did not say that bedding me would be part of my duties for the six groats a year I am to be paid,” she returned sweetly. “I must insist on at least ten groats if I am to fuck you on a regular basis. And you have not yet given me my coins for the year ahead,” Adair reminded him. She held out her hand, palm turned up.

“Then you plan to remain,” he countered, ignoring her demand for payment.

“Elsbeth has convinced me this evening that walking the many miles to Stanton might not be wise, given my condition. And then too I have considered seeing the look on your face when I birth your bastard. Especially if the child in my womb is a son. You do not have any other bastards, do you?” Adair asked him venomously.

Conal Bruce gritted his teeth. “Nay, I do not,” he said.

“At least, I know of none.”

“Then this will be your first,” she said. “How exciting for you. I am told it is quite an event for a man to have his first bastard.”

“I may kill you despite the bairn,” he snarled. “Get upstairs to our bedchamber!”

In bed she lay curled away from him. He did not press the issue although he longed to hold her, to caress her, to kiss her, to fill her with his lust.

The following day he sought out the priest in the nearby village and presented his problem.

The priest shook his head. “If she will not have you, my lord, there is little you can do to force her. If she had a guardian that would be a different matter, for it would be he who made the match.”

The laird considered the problem, and then asked, 
“Who could be her guardian?”

“The lady is not a child now, but if a blood relative could be found you could make a match for her with him,” the priest answered.

The laird thought on the matter for the next few days.

It was his brother, Duncan Armstrong, who came up with the solution.

“Adair is King Edward’s daughter,” Duncan said.

“King Edward the Fourth descends from King Edward the third a good century back. Another of his descendants was wed to our King James the First. This would give Adair and Prince James a blood tie. The prince is considered of age. Could not he be designated Adair’s guardian? And if that were the case, could not he, as Adair’s legal guardian, arrange a marriage agreement for you with Adair? The connection is tenuous at best, but there is still a blood tie,” Duncan finished.

“If I ask the prince for a favor,” Conal responded, 
“then I owe him a favor in return. There is trouble brew-ing between the king and his nobles.”

“That trouble has been coming to a head for years,”

Duncan remarked. “The king will not be able to hold on to his throne for much longer. Scotland wants and needs a strong man to lead it. This James Stewart is nothing like his father. But his son is a combination of both his father and his grandfather. Like this king he is an edu
cated man, but unlike this king he speaks the language of the Highlands, and is a fine athlete. He is a soldier, and a great lover of women. He does not scorn the company of the earls. Our prince is the kind of man we want as king.”

“But the king lives, and is in good health,” Conal said.

“The king lives, but he deeply mourns Queen Margaret. He has shut himself up in Stirling and will make no decisions. Sooner than later the clans will force him from the throne and put his son in his place,” Duncan said. “But if they think to rule the lad they are wrong.

The prince will be king.”

“And in return for the favor I ask him I will be beholden to Prince James. What if I am expected to join him when the earls decide to replace the king? What if they take their gamble at the wrong time, and lose, and I am named a conspirator?” Conal Bruce asked his oldest brother.

“Life is a gamble,” Duncan said dryly. “You have to decide what you want more, Conal. Do you want your son born legitimate? Or do you choose to cower here at Cleit, taking no chances and believing that you are safe?

Safe for what?”

“Do you know where Prince James is now?” the laird asked his brother. He was stung by Duncan Armstrong’s sharp words. Duncan had been his mother’s second-born son by her first husband, William Armstrong, the laird of Duffdour. His older brother, Ian, was the current laird. When their father had died, Euphemia Armstrong had remarried the laird of Cleit. Her oldest child remained at Duffdour. Her daughter was being brought up by the girl’s future husband’s family. Only Duncan had come with her to Cleit. But Duncan Armstrong was a man who moved easily through the borders. He knew many, and he knew much.

“Aye, he’s at Hailes with the Hepburn,” Duncan said.

“Do you want me to go to him and ask his help?”

“We’ll go together,” Conal Bruce said.

“You’re not afraid to leave Adair alone?” Duncan asked.

“Adair is not going anywhere. Murdoc will keep her amused, and Elsbeth will make certain that she does nothing foolish,” Conal said. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

Duncan nodded. “Aye, you’re right to go now. The sooner the better. She’s the perfect wife for you, you know.” He chuckled.

“That termagant? You have odd ideas, big brother,” 
the laird replied. “I’d not have her but that she is carrying my child.”

“You’re a bad liar, Conal,” Duncan told him. “You love her, and she loves you. I do not understand why neither of you can admit to it and be done with it. She nursed you like a bairn in your recent illness. She would scarce leave your side even to sleep. I’ll be glad when you two come to a peaceful arrangement.”

Conal Bruce announced that evening that he would be leaving Cleit on the morrow for a few days. “Duncan is going with me. Murdoc will have charge of the keep.

Adair, you may have the run of the keep again, but should you attempt to flee Murdoc has orders to lock you in our bedchamber. Do you understand?”

She glared at him. “Where would I go? Elsbeth continues to assure me that Stanton is no more. All I want to do is sleep in recent days. I am weak from puking, and can hardly eat a morsel. I am hardly able to escape my confinement, my lord.”

“Do you understand?” he repeated.

“Aye, I understand,” she snapped at him. “Where are you going?”

“Duncan and I have business at Hailes,” he replied.

She asked nothing more of him, and he left her sleeping when he departed the following morning. They rode from sunrise until almost sunset. With autumn the days were growing shorter each day. Arriving at the Hepburn’s keep, they joined Patrick Hepburn and Prince James in the hall. The last meal of the day was being
 
served, and it was not until after they had all eaten and were seated before the hearth that Conal Bruce set his problem before the prince and his host.

When he had finished his host burst out, “Jesu, Bruce!

Have you not told the wench you love her yet? You would not have this difficulty if you did.”

“ ’Tis not manly to gush about love with a woman,” 
the laird said, flushing.

“Hell, Jamie is forever telling women he loves them.

He’s already had one bastard, haven’t you, you young devil? Women need the reassurance of the words ‘I love you’ to reassure them that their man actually cares.

There is nothing to it. If you are afraid, do it at the height of passion, Conal Bruce.”

“She won’t believe me at this point,” the laird replied.

“She has waited months for me to say it, but I could not.

She threatened to leave me after her year and a day of servitude was up, and she would have but that my youngest brother blurted out that she was with child.

We have fought bitterly since then. If I tell Adair now that I love her she will not accept my words as truth. But I cannot wait to convince her. Our child must be born legitimate.” He sighed. “I need your help, Your Highness.”

“How can I be of help to you, my lord?” young James Stewart asked.

“The priest tells me that if a male blood relation of Adair’s were found, and he would agree to a marriage between us, then she must accept it. Adair is King Edward the Fourth’s natural daughter. That king descended from Lionel of Antwerp and Edmund of 
Langley, King Edward the Third’s third and fifth sons.