The Last Heiress (34 page)

The knowledge that his own passions were stoking hers filled him with an incredible sense of power. He had wanted her. Now he needed her. She was necessary to life itself. She shuddered beneath him, and, unable to sustain himself further, he loosed his love juices into her fevered young body, growling into her ear as he did so, “Now, you border witch, are you satisfied?” And to his surprise she answered him.

“Not yet, hinny love! This is but our beginning.”

He fell away from her, laughing, a sound that was part amusement and part relief. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! What am I to do with you?” he asked her.

“Love me more!” she told him, flinging herself atop him so that their bodies met.

“You are newly breached, sweetheart,” he said. “And I need some sleep.”

“Do you not want to make love to me again?” she asked him.

“I will need some sleep in order to recover my strength,” he explained.

“I have seen the stallion mount several mares in succession out in the fields,” she told him, sounding puzzled.

“As much as I would like to be the stallion, I am but a man,” he told her. “And you should not be found in my bed on the morrow, sweetheart.”

“Aye,” she agreed. “What is between us should remain between us only for now.” She slipped from the bed and donned her chemise, which he had not seen before. Then, going to the door, she turned and smiled a sweet smile at him. “Good night, Baen,” she said, and was gone.

He lay back in his bed, considering the last hour and what he had shared with Elizabeth Meredith. She had boldly seduced him. He almost laughed aloud again. And he had allowed himself to be seduced, even though he knew better. But there was no going back. He could not change what had happened, and the truth was, he didn’t want to change it. He loved the brazen baggage. He loved the lady of Friarsgate. Then his thoughts grew sober. It could not happen again. He owed his father his loyalty, and it was a loyalty he could not share with Elizabeth Meredith.

But Elizabeth would not be deterred. She entrapped him in a barn the following day, and before he knew it he was fucking her lustily in a stall full of sweet-smelling hay. She shamelessly pulled him beneath a hedgerow in a sheep meadow one afternoon, and they coupled despite his laughing protests. She teased him wickedly with little touches and kisses when no one else was looking. She came to his chamber each night, and he could not refuse her. He felt complete now only when he was with her. When he was filling her with his passion.

When she lay beneath him crying out with her own need. It was madness, yet neither of them could cease indulging in their desperate hunger for each other. Elizabeth was certain her plan was succeeding.

Soon he would be hers forever!

“I will surely get you with child,” he warned her one night as they lay, limbs entwined, in his bed. “I don’t want you shamed by a bastard, as my mother was shamed. I don’t want the child ridiculed by the circumstances of his birth. I will have to leave you soon, sweetheart. We do not speak of it now, but you know it.”

“Handfast with me,” Elizabeth said casually. “That way if you return to your father’s house, any child that comes of our love will be legitimate. A handfast is good for only a year and a day, Baen. If I do not have a child in that time then there is no harm done to anyone. Soon it will be Michaelmas, and many handfast secretly then. If you would leave me, then a handfast between us will protect me.”

“You know I must go,” he told her unhappily. “I have never made a secret of it.”

“You could come back,” Elizabeth said. “I do not believe your father needs you more than I do, Baen. He has two legitimate sons. If you were not so stubborn you would see that. We are equals in so many ways, my darling. Are you telling me that the master of Grayhaven is such a tyrant that he would forbid you marriage to an heiress with good lands? That he doesn’t want you to be happy?”

“I warned you!” he growled at her. She was confusing him.

She pulled his head to hers and kissed him passionately. “Aye,” she agreed. “You warned me, but I did not believe that once we became lovers, you could so casually cast me aside. I am not some cotter’s daughter or tavern wench!” Her hand reached down to fondle him, and he grew instantly hard within her warm, taunting fingers. Then Elizabeth boldly mounted him, feeling his length slip into her love passage, filling it with his bulk and his heat. “Can you so easily desert me, my love?” she demanded of him, riding him, seeing the lust rising in his stormy gray eyes.

His hands reached up to crush her two breasts. “We will handfast, you hot-blooded border bitch, because I love you, and to protect any fruit of our passion. But my first loyalty will always be to he who sired me and acknowledged me as his own.” He rolled her over and began pumping her fiercely.

Elizabeth cried out, half with anger, half with pleasure. “You bastard!” she hissed at him, and he laughed.

“There has never been any doubt of that, sweetheart,” he told her.

The air crackled with their determination and energy as they made passionate love. Their need for each other had but grown over the weeks since Elizabeth had first come to Baen’s bed. They both admitted to being in love, but it made no difference. Their loyalties were divided, and neither would give way to the other.

“I hate you!” she cried in the throes of her desire for him.

“Liar!” he mocked her, kissing her hungrily until her mouth was bruised.

Elizabeth struggled to restrain her tears. Then she realized he had not gone yet. There was still time, and she would handfast with him to bind him even closer. She let the passion they shared sweep over her like a great wave of water, and cried out with her satisfaction at the same moment he cried out with his.

What had begun in secret between them was now an open affair.

There was no one at Friarsgate who did not know the lady was in love—and in bed—with the Scot. Maybel fretted to Lord Cambridge, who was preparing to return home to Otterly.

“She has wantonly thrown away her virtue, Tom. Who will have her now?”

“She wants none but him, my dear,” Thomas Bolton said gently.

“A Scot? What will Rosamund say?” the old woman worried.

“She encouraged Elizabeth to it, so relieved was she that her daughter had finally found a man she could love, and share Friarsgate with, Maybel.”

“Even now he plans to return to Scotland,” Maybel said. “I have heard him say it. Now that Edmund can take up some of his duties again he will go.”

“Aye, he will go,” Elizabeth said coming upon them, “but you and Edmund will go to your cottage to live, for my great-uncle can no longer bear the burden of this estate. I am not such a fool that I do not know that. If Baen leaves me, I will manage my lands without help.

Have I not trained all my life for this role?”

“And who will take care of you?” Maybel wanted to know. “You are strong even for a woman, my child, but you are not invincible.”

“Nancy takes care of me, thanks to you,” Elizabeth said, hugging the older woman warmly. “And Jane has directed the housemaids while you nursed our Edmund. You trained her yourself, Maybel, and she is quite competent, you must agree.” She turned to Lord Cambridge. “When will you leave, Uncle?”

“Two days after Michaelmas,” he said. “Will writes that my wing is now ready for habitation, and my books have arrived from London.

But I do love Michaelmas here at Friarsgate, dear girl. So I will not go until October first.”

“I am sorry you must go at all,” Elizabeth told him, “for I do enjoy your companionship, Uncle. Soon I shall be alone with only myself for company,” she said seriously. “But I shall be so busy I shall probably not notice my lack at all. Is Edmund awake, Maybel?”

“Aye, and anxious to see you,” Maybel replied.

“I’ll go to him now, and tell him of my plans,” Elizabeth said, and departed her hall.

“What is to become of her?” Maybel said, shaking her grizzled head.

“The land consumes her. She loves the Scot, but she will let him go from her. And what is the matter with him that he would leave her when he loves her too? His sire must be a monster to demand such loyalty of the lad.”

“I think,” Lord Cambridge told Maybel, “that both Elizabeth and Baen are confused. She cleaves to Friarsgate as if it were the most important thing in her life, and he clings to his sire for the same reason, when the truth is they should be pledging their loyalty to each other.

I do not think the master of Grayhaven would forbid his son a rich wife. Even a rich English wife. But I suspect Baen, in his misguided loyalty for his father, will say naught of Elizabeth to the fellow. Still, I do believe that love can surmount much that is foolish in this old world, dear Maybel. Let them be parted for the long, cold winter months. If the spring comes and neither has overcome their stubborn-ness, then we must do something ourselves to bring about this happy union for everyone’s sake, but most especially for Elizabeth and Baen.”

“Why is it that you always make problems that are difficult seem so simple to correct, Thomas Bolton?” she asked him wryly.

“It is a gift, dear Maybel,” he told her with a grin. “It is my fate to bring happiness to all who surround me, all whom I love.” And Thomas Bolton chuckled.

“You mock yourself, Tom Bolton, but you speak the truth,” Maybel told him. “Never have I known a kinder and more generous man than you are. What a shame that the Boltons should die with you.”

“That too is fate,” Lord Cambridge said quietly.

Michaelmas, celebrated on the twenty-ninth of the month, was a perfect late-September day, with bright sunshine and clear blue skies.

A pole was set up before the house, and atop it Elizabeth had set one of the beautiful kid gloves with its pearl embroidery that she had worn at court. Around the pole visiting merchants would set up their booths to ply their wares. In order to participate they had to swear before Father Mata that they would give a portion of their profits to the church.

Elizabeth paid her servants for their year’s labor, warning them not to lose their wages in careless gambling or purchasing shoddy products from the fair’s booths.

In midafternoon, as the fair was at its height, she found her lover and led him away from the festivities to stand beside the lake. “It is time,” she told him quietly, taking his hands in hers and facing him,

“for us to handfast ourselves to each other, my darling Scot. In God’s presence beneath the blue sky I gladly take thee, Baen MacColl, as my husband for a year and a day. May Jesu and his dear Mother Mary bless us.”

“And in God’s presence beneath this canopy of blue sky I gladly take thee, Elizabeth Meredith, for my wife for the term of a year and a day,” he replied. “May Jesu and his sweet Mother Mary bless us.”

“There, now that was not so difficult, was it?” she teased him.

“Nay,” he agreed, “it was not.”

“And we will tell no one of our handfast,” she said. “Will you swear it?” Now when he remained with her they would all know it was because he loved her better than his father, and not because she entrapped him into a handfast union, Elizabeth thought.

“Aye,” he said. “I swear it.” He was already ashamed, knowing that soon he would depart Friarsgate for Grayhaven, and it was unlikely he would ever see her again. And in a year and a day she would be free to wed a man who was worthy of her. His heart was breaking with this knowledge, but he had warned her, hadn’t he?

William Smythe had returned to Friarsgate the day before Michaelmas to escort his master back to Otterly. Now, on the morning of October first, the two men and their escort prepared to take their leave of Elizabeth.

“It has been a very interesting year, dear girl,” Thomas Bolton declared. “I am most devastated to have failed you in your search for a husband.”

“I am not an easy girl, Uncle. Do not all say it of me? I have already chosen my own mate, and despite your most delicate discretion you are well aware of it,” Elizabeth said with a smile. She patted his velvet-clad arm.

“He will return to you,” Lord Cambridge said encouragingly.

“If he leaves me, Uncle, he need not return,” Elizabeth replied quietly.

“Do not be foolish, niece,” Lord Cambridge warned her. “He must work out his loyalties in his own time, and if you do not force the issue he will. And he will return, for even a fool can see he loves you.”

Thomas Bolton kissed her on both cheeks. “Now bid my good Will farewell, dear girl.”

“I will miss you, William Smythe,” Elizabeth said. “Go with God, and take care of my uncle as you have done so well these past nine years.” She kissed his cheek.

Lord Cambridge’s secretary and companion bowed low. “Listen to him, Mistress Elizabeth. We but seek your happiness.”

“Come along, Will!” Lord Cambridge, now mounted, called. “I am eager to return home! Good-bye, dear girl!”

Elizabeth watched the two men as they rode off from the house surrounded by their men-at-arms. She loved Thomas Bolton and would miss his amusing presence in the hall. And Edmund and Maybel had departed yesterday for their own cottage. Still weak and not fully recovered, Edmund had ridden in a cart with his wife. Maybel had wept, of course, as if she would never see Elizabeth or the house again.

“You but go down the path a piece,” Elizabeth said, laughing.

“I know! I know!” Maybel sobbed, “but I have spent most of my life in this house looking after the lady of Friarsgate. And Edmund has stewarded the estate since he was barely out of boyhood.”

“So it is time then for you to go home, and look after each other, and enjoy the days remaining to you,” Elizabeth said. But she knew her house would be very lonely without Maybel and Edmund. She had written her mother, and Rosamund had fully approved Elizabeth’s decision, not that she had needed Rosamund’s permission. She was the lady of Friarsgate, and had been for eight years.

Two days ago it had not been so, but today there was a distinct nip in the air. It was autumn. October. And before they knew it winter would be upon them. And she would spend the long nights wrapped in her handfast husband’s arms making sweet love. She sought Baen now, having last seen him in the hall bidding her uncle good-bye. Returning to the hall she asked Albert, “Where is Master Baen?”