Knights of de Ware 02 - My Warrior (2 page)

Nearby, Laird Angus Gavin chuckled, his voice both rough and warm, like strong mulled wine. “Temper, lass, temper.”

Cambria expelled a foggy puff of air and glared at her father over an indignant shoulder. He was a fine one to talk. She hadn’t inherited her fiery temperament from her timid deer of a mother, God rest her soul.

“I told that bloody addlepate to check the balance of the shafts this time before he gave them to me,” she fumed, swatting her hair back from her face. “These are utterly
useless!”

Her father nodded and wrapped a consoling arm around her. “I’ll speak to him, lass.”

“I’d have skewered that one,” she muttered, vengefully kicking over a toadstool.

She knew she was right. Although Malcolm the Steward oft complained about her distasteful penchant for what the old boar referred to as hunting, hawking, and hacking, even
he
had to admit she possessed considerable skill with the longbow.

She scooped up the faulty arrows with a swipe of her hand and flung the quiver over her shoulder. It wasn’t just the unbalanced shafts that upset her. She’d hardly been able to concentrate on anything lately.

Laird Angus took her hands between his own meaty paws and studied her face. “It’s the clan troubling you, and this inevitable war,” he guessed.

When she gazed into his wise old eyes, the anger drained out of her. Her father could always sense her worries. Indeed, she swore sometimes he could divine a person’s soul.

The trouble had begun a fortnight ago. Her cousin Robbie had been at the heart of it. Robbie, with his mischief-bright blue eyes and the unruly thatch of red hair that made him recognizable clear across the glen. The boy who’d waded with her in summer ponds and battled against her with the wooden swords of childhood, who’d lent her his shoulder to cry on when her mother died a dozen years past. It seemed only days ago that she and Robbie had been laughing over a cutthroat game of chess.

Everything was different now.

“Still pining over that upstart cousin?” the laird grumbled.

She poked at the wet carpet of last year’s leaves with the toe of her boot. “Robbie was right, you know. We owe a debt to the memory of Robert the Bruce. It’s up to us to continue his fight for the Scots cause.”

“Faugh!” Laird Angus barked. “What that young whelp Robbie knows about the Scots cause would fit in a thimble. He’d get himself and half the clan slaughtered, and for what? He has no home now, no land. And,” he added pointedly, “no clan.”

She tried to ignore the hollow ache in her heart. Damn that fool Robbie. If
she
were laird, she’d forgive him, take him back into the clan, even if her father was too proud to do it. Robbie had only made a stupid mistake, after all, trying to convince her to join their cause, forgetting that her place was beside her father, who put clan before country.

She picked at a ragged fingernail and muttered, “The English are our enemy.”

“At times,” he agreed, bending stiffly to retrieve Cambria’s bow, “but so are the Highlanders.”

It was true. The Highlanders generally mistrusted the Border clans like the Gavins, with good cause. Loyalties along the Borders shifted as frequently as the tides of the North Sea, rallying to whoever commanded the superior power.

But there was no question in Cambria’s mind who wielded the mightier sword. She’d been raised alongside the great knights of Gavin. There wasn’t an Englishman alive who could match her magnificent clan warriors in strength, courage, and loyalty. She was sure Scotland would eventually triumph, and a Scots king would occupy the throne.

“There’s no unity among the clans,” Laird Angus said, “and there never will be.”

“But the Bruce—“

“Tried and failed.”

The wind swept out of Cambria’s sails. “Will you side against them then—Robbie and Graham and Jamie and all the others? If it comes to war, will you raise your sword against your own kin?”

“Robbie and the others betrayed the clan,” the laird snarled, his eyes trained on the path ahead. “They’re no longer Gavins. They abandoned their home. They abandoned their family. For God’s sake, they abandoned
you
, Cambria.”

She winced at the reminder. He was right, and the sting of that betrayal was like a thistle in her heart.

Silently she padded homeward beside her father, along the winding path they’d trod together from the time she’d taken her first steps. Any other day, she would have delighted in the songs of the wakening thrushes and sparrows and breathed deep the pungent fragrance of the towering pines.

But today, all she felt was a tight knot in her chest. The canopy overhead became a green blur as she fought back tears, clenching her hands into fists. She didn’t dare let her father see her cry, couldn’t let him doubt for a moment that she was strong enough to inherit the lairdship.

Laird Angus cleared his throat several times along the way, but she didn’t encourage him to speak. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what he intended to say.

At long last he stopped, leisurely uncorking the jack of ale at his hip and taking a long pull at it, then staring off into the wood. He offered her a drink, but she waved it away.

“Cam, lass,” he said, stuffing the cork back into the jack, “I’m far too old to be fighting battles I can’t win. Nay, don’t shake your head at me. We both know it’s true.”

She hated it when he spoke this way. He wasn’t growing old. He couldn’t grow old. He was all she had.

Laird Angus pressed his thumb into the palm of his hand, rubbing away the stiffness that had plagued him for the past several years. “I don’t intend to spend the last moments of my life engaged in war.”

She frowned. Wasn’t that what every warrior wanted? Surely these weren’t the words of the man who’d taught her to fight—sword, dagger, and fists—with her last breath, for every inch of Gavin land.

The laird continued more vehemently, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I want to know my family line will continue. And I want them to live in peace.”

She only stared at him, struck dumb. Was her father becoming soft with the advancing years? Not only did he suggest betraying his mother country, but he was hinting rather broadly—again—that he expected grandchildren from Cambria. She groaned inwardly. It was a point they’d argued to death.

She was ill-suited to be any man’s wife. Everyone knew it. She was the laird’s only child, and she’d been raised by her father and Malcolm the Steward to enjoy leadership, trained to inherit the Gavin clan and its responsibilities. There had been no time for courting, even if she’d had any inclination toward it, which she didn’t, and even if anyone had shown any interest in her whatsoever, which they hadn’t.

It wasn’t that she was uncomely. She’d seen her face often enough in mirrors to know that she bore no ugly marks or scars. It was just that the men who knew her looked upon her as the future laird of the Gavin—the land and the people—a woman of power, proud and unbiddable, qualities most undesirable in a wife.

Robbie had understood her. He’d respected her strengths and her intellect, and he’d shared her fascination with politics. But even he had never regarded her with anything save brotherly affection. The truth be told, Cambria herself rarely glanced twice at a man, except to admire his prowess on the battlefield or to assess his loyalty to the clan.

Her father had brought up marriage in the past, but their altercations had always flared quickly and subsided, like pine needles on the fire. Now, as she looked into his suddenly weary eyes, she felt a queer misgiving in the pit of her stomach.

“What’s this about, Father?”

He said something foul under his breath, then jutted out his gray-whiskered chin and spoke decisively. “Tomorrow a company of English knights will come to meet with me and our men, seeking my oath of allegiance to Balliol as king of Scotland.”

She sucked in her breath. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d admitted to possessing two heads. It wasn’t marriage he was bullying her into after all. It was something far worse.

“Balliol?” she whispered in shock. “King Edward’s puppet?”

Angus closed his lips firmly in legendary Gavin stubbornness.

“Of course you’ll refuse,” she said, trying to convince herself that the laird hadn’t lost his wits. The twinge in her stomach told her otherwise. “Father?”

The laird wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Father,” she bit out, trying to reason calmly with him, “you’re tired. Once you’ve slept on it, had a chance—“

“Cambria,” he chided.

Her temper snapped faster than a kindling twig. “But Balliol is not even Scots!”

“He was born in Scotland.”

She spat on the ground. “A pig born in a mews does not make it a dove.”

“Cambria,” he warned.

“Edward thinks to placate the Scots by putting that—“

“Cam.”

“That fawning runt of a—“

“Cambria!”

“What!”

“Listen to me,” he said with an uncharacteristic patience that worried her even more. “Accepting Balliol as king is our only hope to hold onto what lands we have. Now I’ve agreed to swear this oath, but only as long as the English guarantee that the Gavin property will remain in our name…mine and
yours,”
he added, poking her in the chest with a blunt finger. “You know what will happen to those who oppose the English…and lose.”

“The Gavins will win!”

“The Gavins couldn’t fight them even if we wished it,” Laird Angus muttered. “Our forces have been irreparably diminished because of the deserters.”

“They didn’t de-…desert us,” she retorted, stumbling over the very words she’d used herself when she found Robbie had gone. “They fight for Scotland now!
You
mean to desert us!”

“Don’t you understand?” The laird reddened, tensing his hands as if he fought the urge to throttle her. “If we fight the English, we’ll lose…everything—our land, our people, our way of life.”

She shook her head. The Gavins were invincible. Malcolm the Steward had said so countless times. “We won’t lose, Father,” she insisted, placing her palm square on his thick chest. “The Scots army will come to our aid.”

“Bah!” he scoffed, shaking off her hand. “They couldn’t agree on the proper way to put out a kitchen fire.”

Cambria’s ire rose at this insult. “It’s because they have no support from the likes of us. That’s the only reason they seem…”

“Inept?” her father supplied with caustic humor.

She exhaled sharply in frustration. “Father, you’re asking me to put away my sword in the midst of battle.”

“Cam, lass,” Laird Angus reasoned, “
you
should know the price of recklessness and poor timing. Haven’t you learned that lesson countless times from my own blade?”

His hand on her shoulder suddenly felt unbearably heavy.

“One way or another,” he continued, “England will conquer Scotland and crown whomever they wish. It’s my intent to keep as much as possible of the Gavin clan and property intact. Now is not the time for battle. The enemy’s sword is already at our throat, and the storm is upon us. Now is the time to gather what we’ll need to weather it.” He squeezed her shoulder, and then released her. “I’ve agreed to meet with one of King Edward’s knights, Lord Holden de Ware. He’s said to be a just man, one who can be trusted.”

“Trusted?” She wheeled away so he wouldn’t see the despair in her eyes. “
No
Englishman can be trusted,” she whispered. “Father, we’re Scots. How can you do this?”

“It’s already done, daughter,” he answered harshly, setting out for home. “Lord Holden’s men will be here tomorrow. I expect your full cooperation in making our English guests feel welcome.”

English guests? The twinge in her stomach blossomed into a full-blown ache as she followed her father in stunned silence over moss-covered stones, through leaves that might be the last to fall on Scots soil, and thought about the approaching invaders. If the English were indeed already making their way north, then it
was
too late. There was no choice to be made.

How had they come to this pass? In the space of a morning, her entire world had been turned upside down. Life would never be the same again. The wall she’d spent years building against the enemy shuddered dangerously with Laird Angus’s shocking pronouncement.

Cambria knew in her heart she couldn’t deny her father anything. The laird came first. That had been ingrained in her from the time she was old enough to gurgle out the words. The laird came first. And for the laird, the clan came first. There was no question about it. He was doing what he thought best for the clan.

She had to stand by him in this decision, which must have been as difficult for him to make as it was for her to accept. But, she decided, kicking a pebble from her path, she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“I trust they won’t stay overlong,” she muttered, frowning at the spongy ground.

“Several knights will no doubt remain to secure the castle.”

She sniffed. “Our winter provisions didn’t take into account extra guests.”

“Then it’s just as well the deserters have so kindly left their portions behind,” he countered dryly.

“Well,” she said, flicking a beetle from her cloak, “I won’t
kneel
to this…de Warren. I don’t care if he
is
a lord.”

“De Ware,” he corrected. “Lord Holden de Ware.”

“Hmph.”

“The de Wares are renowned for their swordsmanship and ferocity. Some call Lord Holden the Wolf. It’s said he’s never known defeat in battle.”

She bristled at this piece of nonsense. The man had obviously never fought a Scotsman.

They stopped on the grassy mound before Castle Blackhaugh, the ancient seat of the Gavin clan, and stood for a moment, looking up in reverence at the worn blue-gray stones.

“I’ll put the matter before the clan in the hall tonight,” the laird said. “It would ease the way had I your support.”

She stiffened.

“I know it’s a difficult thing I ask of you,” he said, “but please, daughter, for the sake of the Gavin, for the sake of your dear departed mother, and for an old man’s dreams, make no trouble for this English lord. He’ll be our only defender, and I’ve faith he’ll defend us well.”