The Spitfire (37 page)

It was probably the longest speech Lona had made in her entire life. It came from her heart, and Arabella knew that she could confide in Lona without fear. “No, it really isn’t all right, Lona,” she told her servant. “I am going to divorce the earl.”

“What?”
Lena’s face registered her total astonishment. “‘Bella, you can’t!”

“I must,” Arabella answered, and then she went on to explain the situation to Lona.

“That’s just plain daft,” Lona said matter-of-factly when her mistress had finished with her explanations. “Listen, m’lady, we’ll just sneak out of Linlithgow tonight, and no one, especially the king, will be the wiser. He don’t dare to pursue you openly.”

“Go to the door, Lona, and open it,” Arabella instructed her servant, and when Lona obeyed, flinging the door wide, she found her way firmly blocked by two guardsmen.

“Well!” Lona said, closing the door with a bang. “If that don’t beat all! How did you know, ‘Bella?”

“I didn’t, really, but the king said he would not let me go, and so I suspected I would find myself under guard sooner or later,” Arabella told her friend.

“What about the secret passage?” Lona said craftily.

“I imagine we will now find it locked from the other side should we check,” Arabella replied, “but go through and see, Lona. Perhaps there is a chance.”

Taking the candle the king had so recently set down, Lona popped into the passageway, disappearing quickly, only to return as quickly. “Locked!” she told Arabella.

“Jamie is no fool,” the Countess of Dunmor said.

“He has no right to do this to you, m’lady, even if he is a king,” Lona said indignantly. “What will the earl say when he finds out? He’ll come after you for certain!”

“No, Lona, he will not. With luck, Tavis will never know of my liaison with the king. He will assume I have been my usual willful self, and he will be very angry with me. Angry enough that I believe he will seek elsewhere for another wife. I could not remarry him under the circumstances, knowing that I had lain with his nephew. He would feel dishonored, though I divorce him in order not to dishonor him. He would feel betrayed by Jamie, and I cannot do that to him, for Tavis has always held the Stewarts above all. He is a man who prizes loyalty. Let him think it is I who have been disloyal to him, not the king. Dunmor is not important like Angus, or Argyll, or Huntley, but Tavis is a Royal Stewart, and I will not be responsible for causing a rift within the clan.”

“Give Greyfaire up, ‘Bella!” Lona cried. “Tis not worth your unhappiness.”

“To Sir Jasper Keane?
Never!
Not while there is breath in my body, Lona! What of your family? Already that bastard has drained off our youth, leaving the keep to be defended by old men, women and children. The orchards are dying for lack of care, and half the fields lie fallow for want of young men to work them. Greyfaire’s people will go half hungry this winter despite the good growing year, thanks to Sir Jasper Keane, who makes merry at King Henry’s court while my people starve! No, Lona! I will not let Greyfaire go.”

“What of wee Mistress Maggie?” Lona demanded.

“I intend taking Margaret with us,” Arabella said. “I cannot leave my daughter behind.”

Lona shook her head. “The earl is going to kill you for certain, m’lady,” she told her mistress gravely. “That little lass is the light of his life.”

“If he cared so very much about Margaret,” Arabella said tartly, “he would have seen to her inheritance instead of avoiding the issue.”

Lona clamped her lips shut at that, for she knew there was no arguing with Arabella when she set her mind to something. She wished she could speak with her father, who was the wisest person she had ever personally known. She did not think FitzWalter would approve of Arabella divorcing her husband in order to gain King James’ help so that she might recover the rights to Greyfaire for her daughter’s dowry. Was Greyfaire really worth all the misery that Arabella was going to cause both herself and the man she loved? Lona somehow did not think it was, but then she had not been the heiress to Greyfaire Keep. She was only one of FitzWalter’s girls. The nobility thought differently than just plain folks did.

Lona sighed gustily. Fergus MacMichael had been courting her for some months now. She had held him off, encouraging him one moment, flirting with other men the next, to poor Fergus’ distress. Still the young clansman had not given up on her, Lona thought with a small smile. “Get it all out of yerself, lassie,” he had told her patiently before she had left Dunmor to come to court with Arabella. “When we wed I’ll nae put up wi’ yer casting eyes on other men.”

“Indeed,” she had answered him pertly. “You’ve not asked me to marry you, Fergus MacMichael, and I’m not sure I would if you did!”

He had chuckled, a rich, knowing sound that had sent little shivers up and down her backbone. “The day I first laid eyes on ye, Lona, as bedraggled as a wet sparrow ye were too, I knew ye were mine,” he said.

Lona sighed again. He was a man, was Fergus MacMichael! For a minute she closed her eyes and remembered his arms about her, his warm lips upon hers. She wanted to be his wife, and now that she was in danger of losing him, she realized it plainly. Damn ‘Bella, and her pigheaded passion for that mouldering heap of stones called Greyfaire! Could she not see that Dunmor was better? She didn’t have to do this! She could refuse the king and go home. Why did she persist in her stubbornness? Still, she loved Arabella Grey, and she would remain loyal to her even at the cost of her own happiness, Lona told herself. At least she would see Fergus a final time when they went to Dunmor to fetch wee Maggie.

For the next few days they were kept busy packing, for Arabella had decided she would leave for Dunmor Castle as soon as her divorce from Tavis Stewart was granted and her debt to the king paid. The court need only know that Arabella longed for her child, and as her husband was away, had decided to return home. There would be no gossip about a divorce because no one would know about it until the Earl of Dunmor told them himself. She would leave it to Tavis to say what he pleased about the matter. She would not even mind if he intimated that it was he who instigated the proceedings.

Arabella returned from the Great Hall one evening to be greeted by a grim-faced Lona who handed her a rolled parchment. With suddenly shaking fingers she undid the dark purple ribbon holding the tightly bound parchment closed and spread it open upon the table. The written words formally dissolving her marriage to Tavis Stewart swam before her eyes. Several quick tears splashed down upon the parchment before she could catch them, and she wiped at them with her sleeve, smearing the ink in several places.

“Send it back to the bishop, m’lady,” Lona begged her. “Tell him ‘twas all a mistake and that you don’t want a divorce from his lordship!”

“I have the right to use my maiden name again,” Arabella said tonelessly, and then rolling the parchment back up and tying it, she handed it to Lona. “Put this in a safe place, Lona, and see to my bath. I expect the king will be visiting me tonight. In just a few more days we will begin our journey home to Greyfaire. Won’t you be glad to see your father, and mother, and Rowan and your sisters again?”

Lona almost wept with frustration. It was so obvious that Arabella was miserable. She was ruining her whole life, and Lona suspected that she knew it. Why was she deliberately and heedlessly pushing forward with her own destruction when she could, with just a word, save herself?

“Don’t dally, Lona,” Arabella scolded her servant, and then she shivered. “God’s bones, I’m cold!”

Lona moved silently about the room. There was nothing that she could say that would make any difference now. Hurrying to the door, she called the page who was at their disposal these days and sent him off to arrange for bathwater. Within a short period of time, footmen were trekking into the apartments with buckets of hot water run up from the kitchens for her ladyship, the Countess of Dunmor. Since the trip was not a short one, Lona poured several of the buckets into the black iron cauldron she kept over the fire in the dayroom in order to have boiling water with which to reheat the tub when necessary.

Arabella wandered aimlessly from room to room as the work was being done, and when the last footman had departed the apartments, Lona helped her mistress to disrobe, and pinning up her long, glorious hair, settled her in the tub, which was fragrant with the scent of heather.

“All right,” said Lona, sounding more like her own mother than like herself. “What’s done is done, ‘Bella! If you’re determined to go through with this folly, then you had best put a smile on your face, for no man likes a sour woman.”

The sharp words had a steadying influence on Arabella. Lona was right. No one had forced her into this position. She had had the option of giving Greyfaire up. It was she who had decided not to do so. Nothing, she knew, was free in this life, even for Arabella Grey. If the king kept his part of the bargain—and certainly obtaining her a divorce was included in that agreement—then she would keep her part of the bargain.

A knock sounded upon the door, and Lona scurried to answer it. She returned bearing a carved wooden box. “The page wore no badge, or insignia or service, but I think I’ve seen him with the king’s people,” Lona said.

“Open the box,” Arabella commanded her servant.

The girl complied and then said, “There’s another parchment, and…ohhh! Oh, ‘Bella! ‘Tis the most beautiful strand of pearls I’ve ever seen!” She held up a long rope of luminescent pearls, just faintly tinged with pink, from which hung a carved heart of red-gold studded with smaller pearls.

“Oh my!” Arabella exclaimed, surprised. She had hardly expected such a gift. Then her common sense took over. “Open the parchment,” she instructed Lona, “and let me see it.”

When Lona held out the parchment, Arabella scanned it carefully. Jamie Stewart had more than kept his bargain. Not only had he written to King Henry regarding her plight and requesting the return of Greyfaire for his young kinswoman, Lady Margaret Stewart, as the copy Lona was holding attested to, he had enclosed a second message to Henry Tudor introducing his fellow monarch to Lady Arabella Grey. There was no way the English king could avoid seeing Arabella without giving offense to his fellow ruler in the north.

“I am now deeply in the king’s debt, Lona,” Arabella told her serving woman with a gusty sigh. “Put these away, for they are important, and then scrub me well. The king, I am told, is offended by those who do not bathe.”

“Perhaps, then,” Lona replied with a giggle, “you shouldn’t, m’lady.” She replaced the parchments in the box and set them aside before taking up a cloth to soap it.

Arabella could not refrain from chuckling, but then she grew serious again. “Oh, Lona! I am so confused, for I know not if what I do is right, and yet I cannot help myself! It is as if the very stones of Greyfaire cry out to me.”

“‘Tis done now, ‘Bella, and it seems to me you have little choice left. I suppose you could tell the king that you had changed your mind, but I suspect that it would anger him greatly. We both know that you must keep your bargain, and that being your father’s daughter, you will. Best to put a good face on it. My father always said that those who show weakness will be to those who don’t. You’ve been strong all along, m’lady. This is not the time to grow weak.”

Arabella nodded. “Aye,” she said quietly, and then standing up, she stepped from her tub.

Lona took a towel from the rack by the fire where it had been warming and briskly rubbed her mistress down until her soft skin was dry and glowed with good health. “I’ll get ye a clean silk shift,” she told her mistress.

“She will nae need it,” the king said. He was standing in the secret door, which had opened silently. “Ye may go, lassie,” he told Lona. “Yer dismissed for the night.”

Without a word Lona curtsied to the king and departed the bedchamber, closing the door behind her as she went.

“I do not like being taken unawares, particularly before I have finished my toilette,” Arabella said coldly, “and in future, my lord, I will dismiss my own servants.”

“Proud,” the king said. “Proud and beautiful. Such pride must surely be inborn that the heiress of a tumbled-down stone keep would have it in such measure.” His blue eyes swept slowly over her, examining her carefully with a connoisseur’s practiced eye. “Damn me, madame, but you are even lovelier than I could have possibly anticipated. Methinks our bargain is a poor one that I must let you go after only three nights of bliss.”

Naked!
She was standing naked before a man other than her husband, Arabella thought, and yet she was not in the least embarrassed by her situation. It was most puzzling indeed. “A bargain, my lord, is a bargain,” she said calmly, “and if I remember correctly, there was no guarantee of bliss. You agreed to intercede with King Henry on my behalf, and I agreed to allow you three nights in my bed, but there was certainly no discussion of bliss.”

The king chuckled. “Do ye nae think, madame, that we are capable of gieing each other bliss?” he said, casually removing his silk shirt and his hose, which were the only garments that he had been wearing. He stood before her naked, and seeing that Arabella’s gaze was somewhat fixed somewhere past his right shoulder, he chuckled again. “I am said to be a fine figure of a man, sweetheart. Would ye nae look at me? I am certainly enjoying looking at ye.”

“I did not think you had come to
look,
my lord,” Arabella answered archly, annoyed at having shown such cowardice before him. She turned her cool gaze upon the king, her green eyes sweeping boldly over him as if she were quite used to perusing naked men. He was, as he said, a fine figure of a man, big and tall, with long limbs that were well fleshed and a long torso that was lightly covered with auburn hair matching that upon his bush and upon his head. She willed herself not to blush as her glance moved over the most intimate part of him. He was certainly most well-endowed, but then as her husband was always reminding her, the Stewart men were.

She had great strength, James Stewart thought, watching her face carefully as she looked her fill at him. He would have almost thought her a woman of vast experience had not the most delicate blush of pink stained her cheeks. He doubted that she herself was even aware of the blush, for it was so faint. Walking over to Arabella, he pulled the tortoiseshell pins from her hair slowly, one by one, watching with delight as her pale gold tresses tumbled to the floor, cloaking her like a silken mantle.