Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (42 page)

As the bride continued with her vows, Sibylla looked down at her husband’s beaming nephew, smiled back at him, and raised a finger to her lips.

Wat Scott, on his other side, bent and whispered in his son’s ear.

Robbie Scott nodded once, listened, then nodded again, whereupon Wat lifted him up and held him so he could see better. Sibylla smiled again when she saw the little boy put a hand over his mouth as if to remind himself to keep still.

“. . . in sickness and in health, to be bonlich and buxom in bed and at board . . .”

Hearing Lady Murray, soon to be Lady Cavers, promising to be meek and obedient, Sibylla glanced at Simon and found his gaze waiting to catch hers, his eyes as brimful of amusement as she knew hers must be.

He put a hand to the small of her back and rubbed it, plainly not caring a whit if people behind them saw him stroking his wife. As she leaned into his hand, to savor its warmth, she thought how different it all was from four years before.

It was the same wee kirk, and less than a fortnight short of the anniversary. But no rain fell today, and wedding guests packed the kirk, so it was much warmer inside. Also, the bride and groom looked happy to be there.

Geordie Denholm stood on the other side of Simon with Alice beside him and Rosalie next to Alice. Geordie and Alice were not yet betrothed, but the Colvilles were no longer an issue, the Douglas having hanged both for their crimes. Sir Malcolm’s lady had said she thought Geordie would do very well for Alice, so Sibylla and Simon considered that matter settled.

The Douglas was present, too, in the front row of guests. The two-year-old truce, amended to include his new rules for resolving grievances across the line, would, they hoped, continue for at least the original ten years. The reiving had not stopped, but families deprived of their beasts were more apt to see justice now.

Cecil Percy had brought his wife and family to visit Elishaw in May, and his eldest son had taken a strong liking to Rosalie. Rosalie, having learned in Edinburgh that there were many fish in the barrel, had kept the lad at arm’s length.

Simon thought she was turning into an accomplished flirt, but Sibylla knew that Annabel remained confident of another English alliance.

The priest murmured to the bridal pair, and they turned to face their guests.

“I present to you Sir Malcolm and Lady Cavers,” the priest said solemnly.

The piper skirled a tune, and they came down the steps to receive the felicitations of their guests.

“How are you feeling, Sibylla?” Amalie demanded as she approached. “I saw Simon rubbing your back.”

A mother for more than two months, Amalie had regained her usual figure. Her son was with his nurse at Akermoor, where the whole family was staying.

Sibylla grinned at her. “I’m fine,” she said. “Sakes, I’m barely three months along, but your brother is already proving to be as certain of what is good for me as Garth was when you were with child. I marvel now that you did not murder him,” she added, with a teasing look at Simon.

“Take care, my love,” he said, smiling and holding her gaze. “If I hear much more of that, I’ll put you to bed as soon as we get back.”

“Aye, sure, you may, but only if you promise to join me there, my lord.”

With that, surrounded by laughing kinsmen and merrily chattering friends, they followed the newly married couple outside into the sunny street.

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed
Border Moonlight
. Its title derives from a mixture of old reivers’ cries, particularly those of the Scotts of Buccleuch and Scotts of Harden.

The lady Catherine Gordon of Huntly is a product of the author’s imagination, although her “father,” Sir John Gordon of Huntly, was the last in the male line of the Gordons of Huntly. The author also took literary license with the date of his death, moving it up a few years from 1408. He was succeeded by his sister Elizabeth, who married a Seton. His descendants have held Huntly Castle since then.

The Earl of Fife ruled Scotland until his death in 1420.

The truce to which Scotland and England agreed in 1389, nearly a year after the Battle of Otterburn, was renegotiated in 1391 to include Archie the Grim’s rules for redressing grievances across the line. Despite those rules, reiving had become such an integral part of Border economy that it continued for two hundred years. After the union of Scotland and England, stiffer Elizabethan laws finally put an end to it.

The river Tweed rarely behaves as it did in
Border Moonlight
. It is generally a calm and beautiful river, the fourth longest in Scotland with the second largest water-shed. As a point of trivia, according to the
Encyclopedia of Scotland
, although tweed cloth is produced in some Tweed towns, the name does not derive from the river. It comes from a “misreading in London of the Scots word ‘tweel’ or ‘twill.’ ”

If you wondered about bridges, the Tweed was bridge-free from Berwick all the way to Peebles through the year 1654. Few bridges existed in the Borders, because Borderers saw them only as rash invitations to invaders.

The Abbot’s Ford mentioned in
Border Moonlight
belonged to Melrose Abbey and lay about three miles west of it. Sir Walter Scott, the poet, built his home there and called it Abbotsford. The cluster of shiels or huts the abbey provided for pilgrims near the confluence of Gala Water with the Tweed grew to be the town of Galashiels.

The game of dames, which dates to as early as 1100 in southern France, was an early form of what the British call draughts and Americans call checkers. It derived from chess and was played on a chessboard. For more information, see
Board and Table Games From Many Civilizations
by R. C. Bell (New York, 1979) or
Birth of the Chess Queen
by Marilyn Yalom (New York, 2004).

My primary sources for Douglas history were
A History of the House of Douglas,
Vol. I, by the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell (London, 1902), and
The Black Douglases
by Michael Brown (Scotland, 1998).

Other sources include
The Scotts of Buccleuch
by William Fraser (Edinburgh, 1878),
Steel Bonnets
by George MacDonald Fraser (New York, 1972),
The Border Reivers
by Godfrey Watson
(London, 1975),
Border Raids and Reivers
by Robert Borland (Dumfries, Thomas Fraser, date unknown).

As always, I’d like to thank my wonderful agents, Lucy Childs and Aaron Priest, my terrific editor Frances Jalet-Miller, Art Director Diane Luger, cover artist Claire Brown, Senior Editor and Editorial Director Amy Pierpont, Vice President and Editor in Chief Beth de Guzman, and everyone else at Hachette Book Group’s Grand Central Publishing who contributed to making this book what it is.

I’d also like to thank copyeditor Sean Devlin, a master of the craft.

If you enjoyed
Border Moonlight
, please look for
Tamed by a Laird
at your favorite bookstore in July 2009. In the meantime,
Suas Alba!

Sincerely,

http://home.att.net/~amandascott
[email protected]

Please turn this page for a preview of

Tamed by a Laird

Available in mass market July 2009

Chapter 1

Annandale, Scotland, March 1374

S
eventeen-year-old Janet, Baroness Easdale of that Ilk— but Jenny Easdale to her friends and family—was trying to ignore the hamlike hand on her right thigh of the man to whom, just hours earlier, she had pledged her troth. To that end, she intently studied the five jugglers performing in the center of Annan House’s lower hall, trying to decide which of them might be her maidservant’s older brother.

Since Jenny’s betrothed was drunk and she had no information about Peg’s brother other than that he was a juggler in the company of minstrels and players entertaining the guests at her betrothal feast, her efforts bore no fruit.

Reid Douglas squeezed her thigh, making it more difficult than ever to ignore him. And, as all five jugglers wore the short cote hardies and varicolored hose favored by minstrels of every sort, she saw little to choose between them.

“Give me a kiss,” Reid muttered loudly and too close to her right ear, slurring his words. “ ’Tis my right now, lass, and I’ve had none o’ ye.”

She glanced at him, exerting herself to conceal her disdain. He was nearly four years older than she was and handsome enough, she supposed, and doubtless all men got drunk from time to time. But Jenny had not chosen Reid and wanted nothing to do with him.

However, Lord Dunwythie—her uncle by marriage— and his lady wife, Phaeline, had made it plain that Jenny’s opinion of Reid Douglas was of no importance whatsoever. Had her father still been alive, perhaps . . .

“Come now, Jenny, kiss me,” Reid said more forcefully, leaning so near that she feared he might topple over and knock her right off her back-stool. His breath stank of ale and the quantities of food he had eaten, and she shrank from the odor.

“What’s this?” he demanded, frowning. “Now ye’re too good for me, are ye? Faith, but I’ll welcome the schooling of ye after we’ve wed.”

Meeting his gaze, she put her hand atop the one on her thigh, wrapped her fingers around his middle finger, and bent it sharply upward. “Pray, sir,” she said politely as he winced and snatched his hand away, “have the goodness to wait until after the wedding to make yourself so free of my person. I like it not.”

“By my faith, ye’ll pay heavily for such behavior then,” he snarled, putting his face too close to hers again. “Just a month, Jenny lass, three Sundays for the banns, then six days more till I become Easdale of Easdale. Think well on that.”

“You are mistaken, sir,” she said. “Although others may address you then as ‘my lord,’ I shall remain Easdale of Easdale. My father explained to me long ago that when

I became Baroness Easdale in my own right, my husband would take but a pretender’s styling until he and I produce an heir to the barony. Your title will no longer be a mere styling then, but you will
not
become Easdale of Easdale unless I will it so. And I have seen naught in you yet to make that likely.”

“Aye, well, we’ll see about that, but a betrothed man has rights, too,” he snapped. “Ye’ll soon be finding out just what they are, too, I promise ye.”

“Here now, lad,” Lord Dunwythie said from Reid’s other side, putting a hand on the younger man’s right shoulder and visibly exerting pressure. “Lower your voice. Ye’ve had too much to drink, which can surprise no one, but—”

“A man’s entitled to drink to his own betrothal, is he not?” Reid interjected, shrugging his shoulder free and shifting his heavy frown to his lordship.

“Aye, sure,” Dunwythie replied mildly. “But he should not treat his intended lady unkindly. Nor should his actions distract his guests from the entertainment—which, I’d remind ye, I’ve provided for them this evening at great expense.”

Realizing that their discussion had drawn the attention of the powerfully built gentleman at Lord Dunwythie’s left, and unexpectedly meeting his enigmatic dark gaze, Jenny raised her chin a little and returned her attention to the jugglers.

Sir Hugh Douglas had sharp ears. Despite a desultory conversation with his host that now and again required his dutiful attention, his younger brother Reid’s muttered words to his betrothed had drawn his notice before Lord Dunwythie had even glanced toward the two.

Hugh was observant, too, and he’d noted a spark in Janet Easdale’s eyes that he had easily identified as anger. When he saw his brother snatch his hand out from under the table, he guessed that Reid had taken an unwanted liberty. Reid was clearly inebriated, but it looked as if the lass could manage him. He’d noticed little else about her other than a pair of deep dimples that appeared as she hastily turned away, but Reid’s behavior was no real concern of Hugh’s in any event.

He liked the lad well enough, although he had seen little of him over the years. Reid had been their sister Phae-line’s favorite brother from birth, years before she had married. The lad had been ten when their mother died, and Phaeline had insisted then that he’d do better to live with her at Annan House than at Thornhill.

Their father had not objected. Nor had Hugh. At the time of his mother’s death, he was serving as squire to his cousin Sir Archibald Douglas. After winning his spurs on the field of battle two years later, he had continued to follow Archie.

He had done so, in fact, until the King of Scots had sent Archie to France as envoy to the French court. Hugh had married shortly thereafter, and he and his beloved Ella had been expecting their first child when his father died.

Ella and their wee daughter had died just a few months after Hugh’s father did, and in his grief, he had been content to leave Reid with Phaeline and devote his efforts to his Thornhill estates. Having had an opportunity to observe Reid closely for the past two days, he decided that Phaeline’s upbringing left much to be desired, but he found it hard to care much. In truth, he had found it hard since the deaths of his wife and daughter to care much about anyone or anything except Thornhill.