A Dangerous Love (49 page)

The men at the high board, privy to their conversation, laughed. Then Conal Bruce repeated what had been said to the men seated at the trestles below the high board. The hall erupted with good-natured laughter, for most of the Bruce clansmen, and not just a few of the Armstrongs, knew Agnes Carr well. A good meal at Cleit and talk of the village over the hill’s friendly whore took the darkness of the past weeks from the men. Life was going to get back to normal again.

Adair and the brothers adjourned to their places by the hall’s hearth, where a fire took the damp chill off the June evening. Outside the twilight would linger most of the night. The clansmen were now gathered in groups, talking or dicing. Beiste put his large head into Adair’s lap and gazed soulfully at her as she scratched his ears for him.

“Tell me about the coronation,” she said to Conal.

“Was it very grand?”

“More shabby, I would say,” Duncan remarked.

“Aye,” Murdoc nodded.

“Conal?” Adair looked questioningly at her husband.

“What do you know?” the laird asked.

“Only that the old king was slain by an assassin, or so Hercules Hepburn said when he came to tell me you were alive,” Adair answered him.

“Aye, he was slain. Word was brought to Linlithgow, where the prince, now the king, waited. He was devastated, they say, for he thought it could be different. No one knows who did it. Someone undoubtedly in the hire of one of the great lords. It might not have even been ordered by anyone, but just done by someone hoping to curry favor with his master who took the task upon himself,” the laird said.

Adair nodded, remembering the young page from Middlesham who had come to Stanton for her protection, and told her of her half brothers’ deaths after Bosworth. No man claiming a kingship for himself wanted a rival faction rising up to challenge him.

“The old king’s body was borne back to Stirling and placed in the Chapel Royal, where it lay beneath the royal standard until a coffin could be made. The new king rode from Linlithgow with Home, Angus, and Patrick Hepburn. He went into the chapel alone, I was told, and when he came out he gave his hand to each of the three to kiss. When they had the young king left them.

“They brought his brothers, the Duke of Ross and Prince John, to him for it was feared that malcontents on the losing side might take one of the lads, and attempt to form a rebellion around him. The old king was interred at Cambuskenneth beside the queen he had loved. And then we all returned to the palace at Scone for the king’s coronation. He ordered that we all be dressed in black, as he would be. His priest, however, prevailed upon him to wear a short cape in a color. He chose scarlet, and the Duke of Ross chose blue. There was a to-do because the king’s cousin wanted to wear a green cape. The king would not allow it. While he and Ross showed a bit of color for the people, the rest of us could wear naught but black. The king would see his fa
ther properly mourned, for he loved him even if his lords did not.

“Little had been prepared for the crowning. The Highland lords who had survived, and many of those in the far west, did not come. There were several bishops among the missing, including Elphinstone. No order of . . . what do you call it, the order in which the lords may enter?”

“Precedence,” Adair told him.

“Aye, precedence! None had been decided, for the parliament had not yet met to appoint office holders for the new king. Angus had been acting as regent for the king, and he decided that Home’s manner was offensive. It was, if the truth be known. The king had to soothe them both so that they would behave. Home was in rare form. He quarreled with his brother, the prior of Coldingham. Argyll and Lord Grey were not speaking, and some damned bishop from some unimportant see lectured us all on the sins of our actions coming to pass.

The greatest aids to the king were his brother, the Duke of Ross, who is yet a lad; and Robert Blacader, the good bishop of Glasgow who had supported him from the beginning. The rest of the lords squabbled and fought like children.”

“Were there any dignitaries from other countries at the coronation?” Adair asked.

“If there were I would not have known them,” Conal replied, “but it was a hurried and a very shabby affair to my eye. While Scone is the traditional place of crowning for Scottish kings, nothing had been prepared, and there had been two weeks between the battle at Sauchieburn and the coronation. A slightly moth-eaten gold canopy was found in the palace attics. It was held over the king’s head.

“When it was time for the king to be anointed he would permit only his two brothers and the clergy in the chapel with him. The rest of us stood in the doorway attempting to see something. As I was at the back I saw
virtually nothing. The Hepburn managed to make his way to the front of the pack. He is no great lord, but few would deny him, for he is the king’s closest friend. He told me the king was crowned kneeling, and that his diadem of gold and jewels kept slipping forward on his head because he had such a distaste for it that he had not allowed a fitting the previous day for the velvet lining it needed. They had had to measure from his caps, and it was not right.

“Later in the great hall of Scone Palace I stood in a long line with all of those who had come to see the fourth James crowned. The walls of the chamber were hung with banners belonging to all the clans represented there that day. I saw our Bruce banner in a prominent place, for our ancestor had once reigned as Scotland’s king. Home told me that the crown the king wore had been the Bruce’s, and because his head was so large all the other kings after him had had to line the crown with velvet to prevent it from falling from their heads. I waited with all the others to pledge my fealty as laird of the Bruces of Cleit. And Duncan pledged for the Armstrongs of Duffdour.”

“The king offered me his condolences,” Duncan said,
“and told me he would pray for my brother. It was a great kindness.”

“And afterward?” Adair asked them.

“There was a less than lavish banquet,” Conal said. “I have eaten better of my own food in my own hall.”

Duncan and Murdoc nodded in agreement.

“There was no dancing? No entertainment?” Adair was surprised.

“It was poorly done,” Conal said, “but how could it have been otherwise? The king’s father murdered after a battle in which his son took his throne. A court in mourning cannot celebrate the rise of a new king with joy. We are fortunate that no further bloodshed erupted.

There are those who are unhappy with the outcome of
Sauchieburn, but they will learn that this James means to rule as his father did not.”

“The king sent you a message, Adair,” young Murdoc said excitedly. “Tell her, Conal. Tell her what he said.”

Adair cocked her head and looked at her husband.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He asked to be remembered to you,” Conal an
swered a bit sourly.

“He said,” Murdoc told Adair, “ ‘My lord of Cleit, please be certain to remember us to our fair English cousin. And tell her that we hope to see her at court eventually.’ ”

“He did? Why, how kind of the king to remember me,” Adair murmured in bland tones, but her eyes were twinkling. Conal was jealous. The look upon his face told her that he was jealous. And the fact that he could hardly bear to mention the king’s greeting at all told her that he was jealous. Very jealous. Then she arose from her place. “Good night, brothers.” She held out her hand to her husband. “Will you come now, my lord, or later?”

And she smiled at him.

“Later,” he growled.

Adair curtsied and left the hall.

“I would have gone with her,” Duncan said with a small smile.

“We’ll see how you behave when you have your own wife, and her behavior tries your patience,” the laird replied.

“What has she done?” Murdoc asked. “Adair seems most amenable to me.”

“She’ll want to go to court,” Conal Bruce said. “Did you see how her eyes lit up when you prated the king’s words verbatim at her? She was raised in a court. It is a familiar place to her. I couldn’t wait to leave Scone, and they say Stirling, where the king will hold his court, is very grand. I am not a grand man. I am a simple border lord.”

“Whether or not you are right I do not know,” Duncan consoled his brother. “Get her with child now that you are home. A child will settle her down, and she will be content to bide at Cleit.”

“Aye,” Conal agreed absently as he sat staring into the fire.

“You’ll not do it here, laddie,” his elder brother remarked. “Go to her!”

The laird jumped up, and without another word hurried from the hall upstairs to the bedchamber he shared with Adair, slamming the door open and then shutting it with a very loud bang that rattled its hinges.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Adair said, flinging off her chamber robe to reveal her nakedness. She began tearing at his garments. “I don’t care if you stink of your horse, and Sauchieburn, and two weeks without bathing, I want you, my lord! And I am not of a mind to wait, Conal.”

“Jesu, woman,” he gasped, surprised, feeling his manhood beginning to swell in his breeks. “I want you too!”

They struggled together to remove his boots and clothing, kissing as they did so. And when he was naked he threw her to the bed and, without further ado, pressed his length into her welcoming body. She was warm, and she was very wet. “You’ve taken no lovers then while I was away,” he growled into her ear.

“Not a one,” she replied. “Ohh, yes, Conal, like that!

Do more,” Adair begged.

He reamed her slowly, slowly, going deeper and deeper into her sweetness. Her legs wrapped about him, and he slid as far as he could. Her hair smelled sweet, and her body seemed to fit his perfectly. She moved seductively against him. She moved in time with the strokes of his manhood. She made whimpering little sounds of pleasure, encouraging him onward until his head was spinning. And then too soon his juices filled her, and he groaned, disappointed.

Adair held him in her arms comfortingly. He was stil
l
inside her, and she realized that his lover’s lance had not lessened in either its size or its intensity. He had spilled his seed, but he was not yet satisfied. And then he began to move in her once more. He used her for some minutes, rested a time, and then began his sweet torture once again. Her pleasure exploded, and his mouth kissed hers, stifling her cries of delight. And still he remained within her, hard and hungry.

“You are going to kill me,” she whispered to him.

He laughed low. “I have missed you, that’s all,” he told her. Then he ground deeply into her again, and before many minutes had passed both the laird and Adair found themselves lost in a blaze of fiery passion that consumed them and then left them too weak to move as they fell into a deep sleep, fingers entwined.

A summer stretched before them. The bees buzzed in the heather that grew on the hillsides, and there was peace. Duncan Armstrong had gone to Duffdour, been welcomed by his clansmen and proclaimed their laird.

The Armstrongs of Duffdour had pledged loyalty to their new laird. Conal, Adair, and Murdoc missed him, however. Murdoc’s wound healed, but his sword arm remained stiff. Despite his distaste for war he practiced each day in the courtyard of the keep, until finally the stiffness released its hold on his body, returning only when the weather was particularly foul.

“Why do you do it when you dislike it so much?”
Adair asked him.

“The borders do not remain peaceful for long,” Murdoc told her. “My arm may be needed one day to help defend Cleit. Remember, Adair, that I am the youngest of our mother’s bairns. I must earn my keep, for I have neither lands nor coin to call mine. And only my brother’s kindness allows me a roof over my head.”

“When you are older, we will find you an heiress,” she told him, and he laughed.

Hercules Hepburn came to bring them news of the king in late July. “The king has stripped his father’s late favorite, Ramsay of Balmain, of the title the old king gave him, and given it to Patrick. He is now the Earl of Bothwell,” Hercules told them. “And the king is hearing all the cases of the four great criminal offenses.”

“What are they?” Adair asked, curious.

“Murder, arson, robbery, and rape,” he told her.

“Does the English king not hear such cases, my lady?”

“We have courts, with judges,” Adair replied. “Sometimes the king will hear a very important case, perhaps an accusation of treason.”

“We have not enough learned men,” Hercules Hepburn admitted. “And it is good for the king to involve himself personally. His father was too lenient in his judgments. Our King James is not. He hanged the only son of old Lord Drummond of Perth for causing the deaths of sixty Murray clansmen and women. Young Drummond, a most charming young man, and a favorite of the king’s, had been feuding with the Murrays. He fired a church into which they had fled his forces, causing those deaths. He said he meant only to singe their beards, but he had barred the only door. The king judged him guilty and saw him executed, standing by old Lord Drummond’s side as it was done. The king said he would show no favoritism in his justice.

“And how the people flock to him. He can go
nowhere without being surrounded by the common folk. They love him greatly. When he comes from the Tolbooth, where he has held court, a man goes before him shouting, ‘Make way! make way!’ But the people reach out to touch his garments, to grab at his hand and kiss it. I have never seen the like of it in all my life,” Hercules Hepburn said.

“Have all the lords reconciled with him now?” Conal Bruce asked.

Their guest drank deeply from his goblet. “Some, aye.

Others, nay, although they will come around eventually.

He called for them all to come to Edinburgh. Some of his closest associates wanted him to charge his father’s supporters with treason; others did not. Angus was most vocal in saying that charging a man with treason who had fought for his king was absurd. The king agreed. But he needed to overcome the charge of regicide that some foreign governments are crying.”