The Intended (9 page)

“You know the man, I take it?”

“He...He’s a great laird in the western
Highlands. Many know him.”

“And he’ll fetch a great ransom for Edward, I
understand.”

“Aye...if we can restore his health. He’s
been horribly wounded, and he took a severe beating in the castle
at Norwich.”

“So I understand.” Frances’s eyes sparkled
mischievously as she took Jaime’s hand. “But how on earth did you
manage to convince Lord Surrey to allow the Scot into the manor
house?”

Jaime flushed at the question. She had gone
to the earl, knowing of his kindness but with little hope. Nursing
Malcolm back to health in the stable cell seemed an impossible
task. Master Graves had said as much himself. Malcolm had a fever.
And the physician could hardly be expected to watch over him
carefully there. And the idea of her going to the stables every day
was sure to create a ruckus. So Jaime had to ask. The one question
she would never had dared to put to Edward, she felt quite
differently posing to the earl of Surrey.

“It took no effort at all, Frances,” Jaime
said softly, speaking truthfully. “Your husband knows the man. When
I told him the prisoner’s name, his face lit up immediately. It
seems that Malcolm MacLeod visited his old teacher Erasmus at a
time when Lord Surrey was under the old scholar’s tutelage.”

Frances shook her head with a smile. “Leave
it to Surrey to have a bond of friendship tying him to one whom
Edward considers a foe.”

Jaime looked up and studied the soft features
of the countess’s face. The affection for her husband glowed like
embers in her eyes. Frances caught Jaime’s gaze and returned a
smile.

“Surrey tells me that we will soon be
sisters,” Frances said casually, glancing out the window. Without
waiting for an answer, she turned and slipped her arm through
Jaime’s, leading her away and down the hall. “I suppose you already
know that it is hard for Edward to restrain himself once he’s set
his mind on what he wants.”

Jaime played with the folds of her skirt as
the two women made their way down the hall. “I have seen more
variations of Edward’s moods these past few days than I have seen
in the past year.” She paused not knowing how much she could reveal
about her recent discomfort. With Mary, it was difficult to discuss
Edward’s ardent advances, since she was an innocent—like Jaime
herself. Mary had only a romantic vision of life around her. When
Edward had forcibly kissed Jaime in the garden only yesterday—right
before her very eyes—Mary had thought it a romantic gesture, one
she’d become dreamy-eyed about when they’d gotten back to the
bedchamber they shared. She hadn’t even paused to think of Jaime’s
reaction to the moment.

But here, with Frances, Jaime weighed the
risk of unburdening herself. The countess, though only four years
her senior, was an experienced woman in matters of the heart. She
was a woman happily married to an adoring husband. And she
understood the difference between lust and love. There were times
that Jaime sorely missed her own family. Right now, she especially
wished she had her mother here to talk to.

“Is something bothering you, Jaime?” Frances
probed. “Because if Edward’s moodiness gives you pause at all, then
you should talk about it—before all this marriage talk goes much
further.”

“There is so much that is being assumed by
Edward and by the family.” Jaime caught the other woman’s concerned
gaze and quickly placed a hand on hers. “Please don’t take my words
incorrectly, Frances. There is very little in this world that I
would cherish more than becoming a sister to you. This family has
done so much for me this past year. And my affection for
Edward...well, I respect him and have been honored by the attention
he has bestowed on me since my grandfather died.” She searched for
the words to explain Edward’s latest behavior—and her response to
it. “But lately—and especially since this latest conquest—I find
myself...well, fearing him. I am discovering things about him that
I hadn’t seen before. But if only there were some way...You see, I
never know...”

“And you wish Edward were a bit more
predictable,” Frances put quietly.

“Aye!” Jaime looked down, suddenly ashamed
and unsure of herself. “Frances, I am so uncertain of this match!
The world seems to know my future, but, to be honest, neither I nor
my family have given any consent to such a union. Again, I know I
should be honored by Edward’s attentions, but he is...he is
so...”

Jaime stopped, suddenly concerned that the
discomfort she felt from discussing this topic would far exceed the
benefit she might gain from it. This was Edward’s family, the
Howard household, after all, and she still merely a guest. And an
ungrateful guest, at that. She glanced up at her friend’s pretty,
composed face as Frances began to speak.

“When I was sixteen, my father and Surrey’s
father sat down together and arranged our marriage.” Frances held
Jaime’s hand as they walked, but her eyes took on a faraway look.
“Surrey had seen me at court, and of course, I had seen him, as
well. He was—as he is today—dashing and courtly, handsome and
yet...there was something more. I suppose it was the poet in him
that won my heart.”

“And you got to know him well at court?”

“Nay!” Frances smiled. “I was too shy! A mere
slip of a girl. We hardly exchanged a word. But he approached his
father anyway, and the families were delighted with the match.”

“As you certainly must have been.”

“I? My dear, I was terrified. You see, what
you perceive in Edward, I, too, could see in Surrey. I thought him
moody and...well, rough. I feared what marriage to a man like that
would bring.” She looked into Jaime’s eyes. “But unlike you, I had
no choice in the matter. No consent to bestow or to withhold. I
simply obeyed my parents’ wishes. I don’t know if I would have
married him if I had been given the choice.”

“But you have such a wonderful marriage,
Frances.”

“Aye, Jaime. But that’s the point, isn’t it?
We women never truly know our future in marriage until our fates
are sealed.”

Jaime considered the depth of her friend’s
words as they descended the circular stone steps to the palace’s
ground level. Was Frances telling her that she should close her
eyes and assume that Edward would become the wonderful husband that
Surrey became? Or was she just simply telling her the futility of
such worries? Either way, Jaime would have to accept Edward for
what he was...and pray for good fortune. Sometimes Jaime felt she
was a bit too practical for such religion.

“Well, we are here,” Frances said, raising
her finely arched brows and inclining her head in the direction of
the corridor that led to Master Graves’s surgery. “I believe this
is where you were headed, my dear friend, before I took to boring
you with my silly tales.”

“I? Headed to the surgery?”

Knowing from Frances’s look that it was
foolish to try to deceive her, Jaime turned and looked down the
hall. There were so many prying eyes and wagging tongues in the
palace. She hesitated, trying to decide on the wisdom of going
openly to Malcolm—and the safety of caring for him there. With
Edward gone for at least a fortnight, she knew that he offered no
immediate threat to Malcolm’s life. But what about the others? she
wondered. Undoubtedly, there would be gossip. She tried to consider
what would come of her actions once Edward returned to
Kenninghall.

“Go, Jaime,” Frances whispered encouragingly.
“There has been no arrangement made for you to marry him, yet. Do
what your heart and your head tell you is the right thing. And if
any problems arise from your care, tell Edward that I insisted on
you caring for his prize.”

With a quick nod to her friend, Jaime
scurried away down the corridor, her thoughts now only on Malcolm
and on the rough handling he had endured on his journey here. She
wondered if he still burned with fever.

It was easy to pretend to be asleep.

After the painful and exhausting trip up from
the stable yards, the tough part was staying awake. Though Malcolm
had gotten more information than he’d ever thought imaginable, just
lying still and pretending unconsciousness, he now found himself
constantly dozing and fought off sleep with every ounce of strength
he had.

He now knew, at least, that he was in East
Anglia, at Kenninghall—the residence of Thomas Howard, duke of
Norfolk. And though he was being kept prisoner, he’d been moved out
of the foul stable cell at the command of Henry Howard, the earl of
Surrey. Biting the inside of his swollen cheek to ward off a wave
of weariness, Malcolm thought back on Harry Surrey, the young man
he’d found studying with his own master, Erasmus, a few years back.
Malcolm remembered him clearly, a sharp-eyed and open-minded lad.
Friendly even, the Highlander recalled, in spite of being the
offspring of the pig who had betrayed a parlayed truce and attacked
the Scottish king at Flodden Field.

Malcolm knew though, that he was the prisoner
of Edward, Henry’s younger brother, the duke of Norfolk’s second
son. And he knew, as well, which side of the family Edward took
after; stabbing the Highlander in the back, Edward was a coward who
had not even had the courage to face him. As a result, the man’s
face was none too clear in Malcolm’s memory. He’d been far too
angry with Jaime in the castle at Norwich to even notice the man at
her side. But Malcolm understood it now—this Edward was the man to
whom Jaime had betrayed him.

He could hear the rustle of skirts by his
bed. At least, he thought the sound was near. The rustling soon
gave way to a soft buzzing that the Highlander quickly realized was
whispering. The words were indistinct—smatterings of sentences were
all he could make out. It sounded like directions of some sort.
Aye, that was it—the physician was giving directions. A soft voice
responded, a soft voice with only the faintest lilt of Scottish
tongue.

Damn her, he thought. He had conjured her
like a specter in his mind, only to have her leap from his
imagination into physical shape. He tried to clench his swollen
fingers into a fist—testing his strength as he imagined an assault
upon her.

Jaime couldn’t tear her gaze away from his
pallid face. The physician continued on with his instructions, and
she listened. Malcolm’s fever was dangerously high, but the
physician believed their patient still had a good chance of pulling
through. She committed to memory everything Master Graves told her.
The older man hadn’t the luxury of being able to remain beside
Malcolm. He’d been called to Cambridge for a few days, and he’d
have to take his good-for-nothing assistant with him. And as far as
getting any help from the others in the household—well, Graves was
less than happy with the attention Malcolm had received the night
before in the stables.

So the physician left Malcolm in her care,
and in spite of what anyone thought of the appropriateness of her
presence in the surgery, Jaime would remain where she was
needed.

Once the physician had left her alone, Jaime
moved quickly, bringing a bowl of cool water to Malcolm’s bedside.
His skin had taken on a gray, clammy look to it and, in spite of
his shivering, beads of sweat were standing out on his face before
disappearing into the brown locks of hair. She looked at his
parched, cracked lips. Reaching down, she tried to lift his head
with one hand, but his muscles were rigid, and she knew she could
not do it alone. Looking about for another way, she spotted a
number of folded cloths on a small stool by the door. Balancing the
bowl carefully beside him on the bed, she turned to move across the
room.

The crash of the bowl to the floor behind her
spun her around in alarm. Malcolm lay as he had before, his arm in
the same position at his side. She bent down to pick up the wooden
bowl, all the while scolding herself harshly for her ineptness.
This time she fetched the folded cloths before filling the bowl
again with fresh water from a jar on the far side of the room.
Moving back to the bedside, Jaime placed the bowl carefully on the
other side of her injured patient. She leaned over Malcolm, trying
to push the linens under his battered head. If she could only raise
him a bit, then she might be able to pour the liquid in small
portions down his throat without choking him to death.

This time she saw it. His injured hand jerked
and struck the bowl, sending it flying off the bed. As the bowl
went crashing to the floor, Jaime’s eyes traveled quickly from
Malcolm’s fingers, bloated and useless on the edge of the bed, back
to his face. He appeared, beneath his bruised exterior, to be
unconscious. She moved her hand and placed it on his brow. He was
burning up with fever. If she could only get him to drink
something, she could then use the damp cloths to sponge off his
body, cooling him in the process.

Straightening up from the side of the bed,
she moved around and fetched the bowl again. Wordlessly, she
crossed the room to fill the bowl with fresh water, reminding
herself that it was completely natural for Malcolm to have fits
when he was burning with fever.

This time she tried to be smarter. Jaime
dragged a three-legged chair to the bedside and went back for the
pitcher, the bowl, and a spoon, placing them all on the seat.
Turning back to her patient, she swore under her breath; his head
had slipped off the makeshift pillow. She reached with both hands
and tried to elevate him again—but his head seemed to be growing
heavier by the moment. Finally, having worked herself into a glow,
Jaime succeeded in raising his head, and sat by his side on the
bed.

With one hand holding his head steady, Jaime
reached for the bowl and the spoon and placed them both on her lap.
Taking a spoonful of water, she brought it carefully—and vainly—to
his lips. Her patient wouldn’t budge. She could not coax, cajole,
or force his sealed lips open.