The Border Lord's Bride (24 page)

"You are too bold by far to speak to me like that," the king said, stung.

"I told you he was a fraud before I ever laid eyes upon him!" Adair snapped.

"Seek your husband, madam," James Stewart said, stomping off.

Adair curtsied, but when Ellen did the same the king reached out and took her by the arm. She looked up at him, surprised. "She should not have spoken to you that way."

"I am too ill tempered to rejoin the court," he admitted to her. "We will go back to my privy chamber and play a game of chess. I need better mastery of myself before I face anyone else."

He practically dragged her along.

Ellen stood stock-still, forcing the king to stop. "Your humor will be the worse if you lose to me, my good lord," she gently teased him. "And Duncan will be wondering by now where I have gotten to, and he will worry."

"I‘ll send someone to him to tell him where you are," was his reply.

"Oh, he will be very reassured to learn that I am with you in your privy chamber. I don‘t even know where we are to sleep," Ellen protested. "I am a country woman, and not used to these hours you keep here at court."

The king snorted, disbelieving, at her complaint. "Everything has been arranged for my guests, and considering that I invited the Bruces and the Armstrongs to court, I am hardly likely to leave you without a bed," he said. He hailed a passing manservant. "Go back into the Lyon Chamber and seek out the laird of Duffdour, Duncan Armstrong. Tell him that I am playing chess with his wife."

"Yes, my lord," the servant said, eyeing Ellen curiously. She did not seem at all like the king‘s type, but then he shrugged and hurried off.

"I can but imagine what the man makes of your words," she said irritably. "By morning it will be all over court that you and I were alone. A page would have been more discreet, my lord. Would you sully my reputation?"

"If I meant to sully your good name, my bonny, I should have done it long since," James Stewart said dryly with a grin. He was beginning to feel a little bit better. Ellen had always had a knack for restoring his good humor in spite of himself. "And I order you not to beat me tonight. I need a victory, no matter how small. I knew it! I knew that Margaret of Burgundy was a duplicitous bitch. When could the English ever truly be trusted?" He flung open the door to his privy chamber and drew her in. "Set up the chessboard, my bonny, and I will fetch us some wine to take the chill off the evening."

Ellen did as she had been bidden, finding the chess set where it had always been, bringing the checkered board to the small game table that was set between the chair and the settle before the hearth. She then fetched the rectangular chased-silver box that held the pieces, which were fashioned from ivory and dark green agate. Placing the pieces in their proper order on either side of the board, she sat down to wait for her partner. Shortly the king joined her, handing her a goblet of sweet wine and seating himself opposite her.

"If you knew the Duchess of Burgundy could not be trusted, why did you take this Perkin Warbeck into your care?" Ellen asked.

"Because there was always the chance he was the genuine prince, but I suspect he is the by-blow of one of her Anjou Plantagenet relations," the king responded.

"Will you expose him for the fraud he is?" Ellen asked, moving a piece thoughtfully.

"Nay. I mean to use him, as the old duchess knew I would, even if I did find her protégé out.

And I shall go on as if I believe he is young Richard of York," the king said. "He can be more useful to me actually than he will be to Burgundy."

"How?" Ellen asked.

"First I‘ll use him to put a stop to the Earl of Huntley‘s disobedience. The Gordons have caused me difficulties for several years now, but the earl came to court this Christmas. The beautiful Katherine Gordon, who has been in my aunt‘s household, has fallen in love with my faux prince." The king chuckled. "I mean to marry him to her."

"You think Huntley such a fool?" Ellen said softly.

"I think Huntley an ambitious man. The thought that his daughter might one day be queen of England will be much too much for him to resist." James Stewart laughed again. "And with that marriage, and the faint hope of his daughter‘s queenship, the Gordons are mine once again. How can he betray the man who gave his child a throne?"

"There will be no throne, my lord, and you well know it. Whatever happens, poor Katherine Gordon will be caught up in it. The Gordons will hardly thank you for that," Ellen told him seriously.

"I will plead that I was as duped as they were," the king said.

"You have become ruthless, my lord," Ellen responded softly. "I have never before known you to be such."

"You have never before seen that side of me," James Stewart said. "I am a royal Stewart, my bonny, and we are ruthless. It is our nature to be so. It is said that a king may be loved or he may be feared. I intend to be both loved and feared."

Ellen shook her head as she moved her knight. "Katherine Gordon is a proud girl, and I cannot say that I like her particularly well, but I must now pity her for what you are doing in this game you play."

"Do not pity her, my bonny," the king said. "The wench fancies herself in love with our faux prince, and is as ambitious as her sire. She already pictures a crown upon her head." He chuckled. "I have told you that my family is merciless in its desire to rule well. Now let me tell you a tale of my great-grandfather, the first James. Check and mate, my bonny," James Stewart said, ending their game.

"Either you have grown more skilled at this, or I have not been paying proper attention," Ellen complained, but she was smiling, for she had restored his good humor.

He laughed. "Will you stay and hear the story of James the First?"

Ellen nodded. "Aye, I will."

"That James had been sent from Scotland at a young age. He was to go to France, for he was his father‘s only surviving son. That king feared for his life, as he was aged, and was no longer certain he could protect his little son. But the lad‘s ship was captured by English pirates, and the young prince taken to the English court, where he was well treated and grew up. When he returned to Scotland with his English wife, Joan, he was welcomed, and became beloved.

"But in the north the MacDonald lord of the isles, like all his kind before and after, warred against the king‘s authority. James the First had slowly and carefully built a network of spies in the north, but the one thing he lacked was someone close to the MacDonald. And then that lord sent his bastard brother, the MacDonald of Nairn, to court to spy upon my great-grandfather. At the same time Black Angus Gordon, the laird of Loch Brae, arrived with his mistress, Fiona Hay.

The laird was deeply in love with his mistress, and intended to wed her when they returned home.

"My great-grandfather, however, saw that the MacDonald of Nairn was very taken with Fiona Hay. He coerced Nairn‘s cousin, a young woman wed to a border lord, to entice him into kidnapping Fiona Hay as she traveled back to Brae. Then he sent Black Angus south to fetch his English queen‘s cousin and bring her back to court. Fiona Hay prepared to depart the court of James the First, but before she went my great-grandfather told her that he and his queen wanted Angus Gordon to wed with the queen‘s English cousin, so she must step aside for the royal wishes.

"She was, my ancestor‘s diaries reveal, devastated. Next the king said that word of a plot by the MacDonald of Nairn to kidnap Fiona Hay had come to his ears. She would allow it, and go north with Nairn to spy for her king. She finally agreed, but not before extracting a promise from my great-grandsire to repair her home and deposit a sum of monies for her with an Edinburgh goldsmith. The bargain was struck, and Fiona Hay reluctantly went north to do as she had been bidden.

"Of course, Angus Gordon was not meant to wed with the queen‘s cousin at all, and he was devastated to learn of his mistress‘s disappearance, but according to his king no trace of the lass could be found, although a great search had been made. He returned to his home at Loch Brae heartbroken," James Stewart told Ellen.

"Did this MacDonald of Nairn kidnap Fiona Hay?" she asked.

"He did, and he married her. Some few years later my ancestor marched into the Highlands. He shamed the chieftains he had called to Inverness. A short while later they burned the town in retaliation. King James the First marched into the Highlands to punish the chieftains. The MacDonald of Nairn was killed in the ensuing battle, and his castle burned and destroyed. Fiona Hay took her children, for by then she had three, and returned to her tower home near Brae. It was there, shortly thereafter, that the laird of Loch Brae found her, and they were reunited and wed."

"So there was a happy ending after all, despite King James the First‘s perfidy," Ellen noted. "But you are as ruthless as your great-grandfather was, my lord. And you are not ashamed of it, for you relate this story with pride." She worried her lower lip with her teeth. "I do not know this man you have revealed to me tonight. The James Stewart whom I know is a kind and caring man.

He would not use an innocent girl‘s dream of becoming a queen, for most girls dream like that, to further his own purposes. I am suddenly afraid of you, my good lord. What will you do to gain your own will, and where will it stop?" Her gray-blue eyes were wet with unshed tears, and she was shocked to have seen this other side of a king she had always admired and trusted. Now she didn‘t know what to think.

"I have never betrayed you, my bonny," James Stewart said quietly. "Indeed, when I gave you to Duffdour it was because I could see you liked him, and that he was already a little bit in love with you. It pleased me to see you both happy."

Ellen flushed with the half rebuke, but then she said, "If you saw that he cared for me, and that I did not find him repulsive, my lord, then you put us together to bind him ever closer to you. Had I been an heiress of importance you would not have given me to Duncan Armstrong, and we both know it. It cost you naught to see us wed, and you gain from it, do you not?"

The king chuckled. "Is Duffdour aware of how clever you are, my bonny. You think like your husband, with a sharp clarity, and you have an honest tongue. There are so few who will speak plainly to a king. I value you for that, and always have."

Ellen stood up and shook her green velvet skirts. "Please, my lord," she said. "I am fair worn-out by our trip to Linlithgow. I would find my husband and seek our bed."

He nodded, smiling at her. "Aye, your day has been long, Ellen. Will we still be friends despite the fact that I have disappointed you?"

"Oh, my lord, I am not disappointed. I am surprised you have revealed this side of yourself to me. I must think on it, but you will always have my friendship and my loyalty. The mistake was mine. I have ever thought of you as a man, and you are not just a man. You are a man who is king of Scotland." She curtsied to him, then backed from the privy chamber. Outside the door she found the young page waiting. He escorted her back to the great hall, where she quickly found her husband.

Duncan Armstrong slipped an arm about his wife. "Are you all right?" he asked her anxiously, for Ellen seemed pale to him. "Adair returned to the hall in a high fury."

"Did she tell you?" Ellen wanted to know.

"Tell me what?" he countered.

"Then she has not." Ellen sighed. She glanced about. "Where is Adair?"

"She and Conal went off to find a private spot," the laird told her.

"We must find a quiet spot as well, so I may tell you all that has transpired," Ellen said, low.

"Come, I know a place." And she led him through the Lyon Chamber and into the chapel. It was empty. Taking his hand, she led him to the front of the chapel and, pulling Duncan aside into a corner, Ellen began to speak. She told her husband that Adair had told the king that the prince was indeed false, but that the king insisted he would not expose him, and indeed would marry him to Katherine Gordon. "Adair is furious, and would expose the Duchess of Burgundy‘s pawn if she could, but she must consider what the king would do if she did, for he has his own plans."

"She must think of Cleit first," Duncan said sternly. "This matter between kings has little to do with us. Adair must remember Conal and their children. Let our King Jamie tweak the nose of the Tudor king if it pleases him. It should not matter to us."

"Adair is angry that someone would impersonate her dead half brother. This young man showed absolutely no recognition of her. It is obvious that whoever trained this fellow did not know all the intimate details of King Edward‘s household. All he knows would have been public

knowledge. I suspect he might not even be English," Ellen told Duncan. "But Adair loved her siblings. This masquerade hurts her."

"But it has naught to do with her," Duncan Armstrong said in practical tones. "She knows her brothers were murdered at Middlesham, although the only witness to the deed is now himself dead. This pretender—the reasons behind his appearance—is nothing to Adair. Certainly she understands the reasoning behind it all. She must turn her head away from it. In a few days we will return home to the borders. We were invited for but one reason, and, that reason satisfied, it is unlikely we will come again to court."

"I wish we might go home right now," Ellen said, putting her head on his shoulder.

"So do I," Duncan Armstrong agreed, "but for now I think it incumbent upon us that we seek where we are to lay our heads this night, and for the next few nights."

Returning to the great hall, they found Conal and Adair looking nonplussed.

"You and I have been given a bed in a tiny chamber," Adair told her sister-in-law. "Our husbands must find their own place to sleep."

Ellen couldn‘t help but giggle, and the giggle grew into a burst of unrestrained laugher. "Oh, how typical of the court. Because we were specially invited they have provided a bed for you and me, Adair, but our men must fend for themselves, for they only escorted us. Well, Linlithgow is not a huge palace, and from what I saw in the Lyon Chamber tonight, everyone of even the smallest importance is here for the Christmas revels. I suppose we are fortunate someone thought to give us a bed at all."