Until You (5 page)

“Yes!” She said the single word, her own love shining forth from her amber eyes. Then she opened her arms to him and took him into her embrace.

For a second time they met passion. For a second time they cried aloud as it swept over them, rendering them both weak with satisfaction. The length and breadth of him filled her love sheath. The rhythm they created was overpowering in the pleasure it offered. Her body arced against him in her great desire. He forced her down, thrusting and parrying with his lance as he brought them to a perfect heaven once again.

“I die!” she sobbed as her desire grew and grew until it burst in a frenetic rush of his love juices that left them both half-conscious and gasping for breath.

“You are the most incredible woman,” he finally managed to say, his dark head resting upon her white bosom.

“And you astonishing, my dear lord of Glenkirk. You tell me you are past fifty, and yet you make love like a younger man,” she said with admiration.

He chuckled. “It is only young men who claim excess virility and work to make the myth a truth. A man of my years knows his limits, although tonight I have surpassed even myself, my love, but that is due to you, I suspect. You inspire me.”

“Take your ease, then, my lord, for soon you must help me find my way back to my own chamber. I have absolutely no idea where I am right now,” she told him laughing.

“You are in my arms, where you should be,” he said. “I will help you find your way back,” he promised, “but first let us regain our strength, Rosamund.”

She nodded in agreement and closed her eyes, feeling safer and more content than she had felt in many months. This was what it was like to be really loved, she thought happily. If only the whole world could feel just like this.

They dozed for a short time, wrapped in each other’s arms, savoring the warmth of their love. But finally the Earl of Glenkirk rose reluctantly and dressed himself. When he was clothed, he handed her the garments he had discarded upon the stool earlier, ordering her to dress within the comfort of their bed, for the air was bitterly cold. Finally he led her from his little chamber through the darkened corridors of the castle, asking her as they went exactly where her own chamber was. She told him, and to her surprise, they were quickly there. They kissed hungrily, desperately, as if they would never again be together. Then he turned swiftly and hurried off, back into the darkness of the hallway.

Rosamund slipped quietly into her little chamber. Annie was dozing in a chair by the embers of the fire. She started awake as her mistress entered. “I am glad you were not worried,” Rosamund said to her.

“Lord Cambridge come to me, my lady. He said you might be very late.” She rose from her place, yawning and stretching. Then, peeping through the heavy velvet curtain covering the single window, she said, “ ’Tis already false dawn. You had best get into bed, my lady, if you are to have any rest before the mass.”

“Build up the fire,” Rosamund ordered her, “and heat some water. I stink of passion and cannot enter the queen’s presence until I have washed. Neither will I enter my bed until I am fresh.”

Annie looked shocked with her mistress’ pronouncement.

“I have taken the Earl of Glenkirk as a lover, Annie,” Rosamund said bluntly. “You will not gossip about it with the other servants even if they ask you. Do you understand me, girl?”

“Aye, my lady,” Annie said. “But it ain’t right, a respectable lady such as yourself!” she burst out.

“I am widowed, Annie, and were you not my confidante when I was with the king?” Rosamund asked her servingwoman.

“That was different,” Annie said. “You was just obeying our king. There was no harm in it as long as good Queen Katherine didn’t know or be shamed by it.”

“Nay, Annie, ’twas no different than all of my life before it,” Rosamund said. “I have always done what I was asked. What was expected of me. Now, however, I shall do what I want. I shall live my life to please myself and no one else! Do you understand?”

“What of the laird of Claven’s Carn?” Annie asked. “He ain’t going to marry with a lady who lifts her skirts so easily, my lady.”

Rosamund slapped her servant. “You presume upon our friendship, Annie,” she said. “Do you wish me to send you home to Friarsgate? I shall do it, for there are plenty who would be willing to serve me—and keep their tongues silent. I will tell you what I told Logan Hepburn. I do not wish to marry again! And I will not be forced to it. Friarsgate has an heiress, and two more besides. I will unite my daughters one day in marriages that will bring honor and wealth to our family. Logan Hepburn wants a son. He needs an heir for Claven’s Carn. Let him get it upon some sweet young virgin who will adore him and be a good wife to him. I am not that woman. King Henry’s mother, she who was my guardian, once told me that a woman must marry first for her family. Twice at the most. But after that, the Venerable Margaret said, a woman should marry where it suited her. Twice my uncle Henry Bolton has made marriages for me. My third husband was the king’s choice. Now it is my choice, and I choose no husband! Do you understand me, Annie? I will do as I please now.”

Annie rubbed her cheek and sniffled softly. “Yes, my lady,” she said.

“Good. Then we are agreed, and you will serve me without question, eh?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Go about your duties, then,” Rosamund instructed her servant, and she sat down upon the bed while Annie built the fire back up and began to heat the water for her ablutions.

What a night it had been! She had been at court only a short time, yet now, as the day of Christ’s Eve dawned, she was filled with a joy such as she had never known. She knew not where this was all leading, but she realized, to her surprise, that she had no fears in the matter. She was truly, deeply in love for the first time in all of her twenty-two years. She would follow where the road led, and when it ended . . . well, she would worry about that when it happened. For now she meant to live for the moment, and the moment was Patrick Leslie, Earl of Glenkirk.

K
ing James looked closely at his old friend the Earl of Glenkirk. “By the rood, Patrick, if I did not know better I would say you were in love!” he exclaimed.

Patrick smiled. “Why do you think it impossible for me to be in love, Jamie?” he inquired of the king. “Am I not a man like any other?”

“A man, aye, but like any other? Nay, Patrick, you are not. You were my ambassador to San Lorenzo. It was an important assignment for an unimportant Highland laird. I created you an earl to honor San Lorenzo’s duke. And you served me well until the tragedy of your daughter, Janet. Then, without even waiting for my permission, you packed up your family and returned home. You stopped at court only long enough to give me your report, and then you disappeared into your Highland eyrie for the next eighteen years. You would still be there had I not called you back to me. I do not know of any other man so loyal to my crown who would do that, Patrick. You were ever my friend, even from the very beginning, unlike some whom I must smile at, praise, and bestow honors upon. You do not dissemble. Your word is your bond. I can trust you.”

“So you said when you asked me to go to San Lorenzo,” the earl replied dryly. “And suddenly you have called me back to your side, Jamie. Why?”

“First you must tell me who the lady is, Patrick,” the king teased his old friend.

The earl smiled. “A gentleman does not gossip like a cotter’s wife,” he said. “I know you possess a good soul of patience, Jamie. I will tell you in time, but not now.”

The king grinned. “Ahh, then it is love,” he chortled. “I shall be watching you, my lord of Glenkirk.” Then he grew serious again. “Patrick, I need you to return to San Lorenzo for me.”

“You have a competent ambassador there,” the earl responded.

“Aye, Ian McDuff is indeed competent, but he is not the diplomat that you were, Patrick. And I very much need a diplomat. You know that the pope is forming what he refers to as the Holy League. He wishes the French out of the northern Italian states, and he cannot do it himself. So he is declaring a righteous war against them, inviting others to join in his cause with promise of eternal salvation, among other rewards. My bombastic young brother-in-law, Henry of England, is his loudest supporter. I am invited to join them, but I cannot. Will not. This aggression is wrong, Patrick!”

“And the French are our auld alliance. You are an honorable man, Jamie, and I know that you would not turn upon a friend without good reason. And there is no good reason, is there?”

“Only Henry Tudor’s intense desire to please the pope in order to gain more power than England now has,” James Stewart replied. “Spain, of course, joins the pope and England. Venice and the Holy Roman Empire have joined, as well, but before it goes any farther, I would make an attempt to stop them. I must do it in secret and in a place no one would suspect if they knew of my plans. I do not want the most powerful of the Christian states fighting with one another when we should be mounting a crusade against the Turks in Constantinople. And, too, my brother-in-law knows that, unlike him, I am an honorable man. I will not betray an ally even for my own advantage, as he would. He knows I cannot join this league against the French. He seeks to turn the Holy Father against me—against Scotland. You must meet with Venice’s and the emperor’s representatives in San Lorenzo, Patrick. You must convince them that this league is but England’s plan to achieve a dominant hold over us all. There are parties within each of these countries who understand this. I am in contact with them, and they will arrange for delegates from their governments to be in San Lorenzo to hear you out. Instinct tells me it is unlikely we can succeed, but we must try, Patrick.”

“There will be war with England sooner than later,” the earl sighed.

“I know,” the king replied. “My
lang eey
tells me so, yet I must do what I know is right in this matter. I do it for Scotland, Patrick.”

“Aye, and we have never had a better king then you, Jamie, the fourth of the Stewarts. But you should not have wed with England. You should have married Margaret Drummond. The Drummonds had given Scotland two queens, and good queens they were.” He sighed. “I mean no disrespect to your wee wife, Jamie.”

“I know,” the king answered, “and you are right. I knew I should not wed with England, and I avoided it as long as I could. But when my beloved Margaret and her sisters were poisoned, I had no more excuses. Many desired the match with the Tudor princess, and they believed that it would bring peace between our two nations. The peace has been a fragile one at best. But since my father-in-law’s death and the ascension of his son, I fear for us all. My wife’s brother is a determined man, and the wealth built up so carefully by his father makes him a powerful one, as well.”

“But Scotland is more prosperous and peaceful under your rule, Jamie, than it has been in centuries,” the earl noted. “It is obvious that we desire nothing more than peace in order to continue on as we have.”

“Aye, but Henry Tudor is an ambitious man, I fear,” the king replied. “He is jealous of the fact that I have been on good terms with the Holy See. He attempts to destroy that trust by his enthusiasm for the pope’s war, and he will succeed, I fear. You have heard about the matter of my wife’s jewels, have you not?”

The earl shook his head, puzzled. “Nay, I have not.”

“Of course,” the king said. “You are only just back at court. My wife’s grandmother, the Venerable Margaret, and her mother, the late Elizabeth of York, left their jewelry in three equal parts: to my Meg, to her sister, Mary, and to her brother’s good Queen Katherine. But the King of England refuses to send his elder sister her portion, making all sorts of excuses as to why he will not. Finally my wife wrote to her brother that she didn’t need the jewelry as much as she desired these mementos of her mother and grandmother, for I, her husband, would gift her with double their value. I can but imagine the sting that gave arrogant King Hal. Meg tells me he used to cheat at their nursery games, and whined and raged if he did not win. These are traits he has obviously carried with him into his manhood.”

“When do you want me to leave?” the earl asked.

“Not until after the Twelve Days of Christmas are over and done with,” the king answered. “I want it to appear as if I have just lured you back to court for the Christmas season for old time’s sake. And you came because it had been many years since you had paid your respects to me. The fact that you have involved yourself with a lady is all to the good. After the holidays have ended, you will disappear, and all will assume you have returned to Glenkirk. You know that there are spies here at my court, Patrick, and should they know my plans they would report back to England or Spain or even the pope himself. Your mission must be secret. I realize there is little chance of its success, but I do not want the waters muddied before I have at least attempted to stop this madness. Three years ago the Holy See formed an alliance with France to humble Venice. Now France is the enemy. I despair, Patrick, of this chess game my fellow monarchs play. And no one ever really wins! These politicians will be the ruin of the world.”