This Heart of Mine (3 page)

His laughter rumbled about the room. “Our little daughter
would be quite shocked,” he said, smiling at Skye. “She considers us a most respectable and staid couple.”

“And so she should,” replied Velvet’s mother. “She is much too young to be considering the ways of a man and a woman. There is plenty of time for her to think about those things after we return from India. Let her have her childhood first.”

“She is betrothed, Skye.”

“She has long since forgotten BrocCairn’s son, Adam. The betrothal took place when she was five, and you will remember I allowed it only because you swore to me she might make her own choice when the time came. I will not force Velvet into a marriage as my father forced me. Besides, although BrocCairn corresponds with you, his son has shown no interest in Velvet at all over the years. There is plenty of time yet to worry about such things. In the meantime, let Velvet be a little girl without a worry or care beyond her horses and the sweetmeats she constantly manages to weasel out of you and her brothers. She is really quite spoilt.”

“You’re right,” he agreed with her, smiling as he thought of his only and much-beloved child. “There is time for Velvet. More than enough time.”

Now is the month of May, when merry lads do play!
Fa la la la la la la, la la!
Fa la la la la la la!

Each with his bonnie lass, a-dancin on the grass!
Fa la la la la!
Fa la la la la la la, la! la la! la la!

—Sixteenth-century tune

“W
hat the hell d’ye mean by ‘marry without delay,’ Father?” Alexander Gordon glowered down from his great height upon his bedridden father, but the Earl of BrocCairn was not intimidated by his son’s look. It was a look he’d often worn upon his own face in his younger days when someone more powerful than he was dictating to him. God, he thought, looking up at Alex, he looks just like I once did. He has the same height and lanky frame, a face that looks as if it was hewn from rock, and my black hair. Why, up until I had this damned accident, we were often taken for brothers.

Angus Gordon sighed deeply. He hated admitting his own weakness, but gritting his teeth, he said, “It should be clear to ye, Alex, that I will not survive to see the spring. Each day I find myself growing weaker, unable to do even the simplest things for myself. Hell, man! I can’t even stand to piss! I don’t want to live like this, and the physician from Aberdeen says I will get no better. I know I’m dying.”

“Damnation!” The younger man shifted his feet, obviously made quite uncomfortable by his father’s bluntness.

“I will be dead within a few weeks, Alex, and ye’re my only male heir,” continued the Earl of BrocCairn. “Wi’ yer mother and brother, Nigel, gone in last year’s epidemic, I have no one but ye and yer sister. I would rather not pass
Dun Broc
on to Annabella and her weak-willed husband who does not bear my name. Ye have a betrothed wife, Alex.
Marry her!
Get me a grandson on her body!”

“God’s foot, Father! A little English girl I haven’t seen in years? A child barely half grown, let alone capable of mothering a bairn of her own! Yer illness has addled yer wits!” Alexander Gordon’s voice was full of pity.

“Aye,” his father retorted sharply, “ye’ve not seen the lass since the day of yer betrothal. Whose fault was that, my son? Are ye aware of how long ago it took place? Almost ten years have passed, and de Marisco’s lass is full grown now and ripe for wedding. Ye have but to claim her!”

“Is there another, perhaps, who has captured yer heart?” Angus Gordon went on suddenly. “If there is, I’d not force this match upon ye, for I want ye to be happy with yer wife, Alex, as I was with mine. Yer mother was the love of my life, and as sad as I am to be leaving ye, I’ll be glad to be wi’ her again. It’s been a long year since my Isabelle left me.” His voice trailed off sadly.

Alex could feel unbidden tears pricking the back of his eyelids, and he fought to prevent them from overflowing his eyes. “There’s no lass, Father,” he said quietly. “Ye know it.”

“Then go to England and wed wi’ the girl I chose for ye. She is yers for the asking, and both Adam de Marisco and I always hoped to unite our families by this marriage. It is my dying wish, Alex. I would not take ye from another, but if there is truly no other, then ye
must
honor this betrothal to my friend’s daughter. Ye’ve never before objected to it. Do this final thing for me, my beloved son.”

In the last of the icy, howling winds of winter that roared about the dull gray stone turrets of
Dun Broc
, Alexander Gordon heard again the voice of his dead father importuning his speedy marriage. Seated at the high board in the Great Hall of his castle, he looked at his brother-in-law, Ian Grant, and knew he had no other choice but to marry. He had but lately overheard one of his nephews saying to the other, “Papa says that one day this will all be mine. I will be the earl.”

The innocent, yet prideful words spoken by his sister’s eldest child had suddenly brought home to Alex his father’s desperate dying wish.
A Grant the next lord of BrocCairn? Never!

Alex understood why his father had made an English match for him. The English queen was, despite her age, a maiden, and no issue of hers would inherit the throne of England. It was her cousin, and his, young James Stewart, the king of Scotland, who would one day rule England.

Although Alex had spent as little time at the Scottish court as possible, even he could see Jamie Stewart’s eagerness to have his inheritance and flee south to a more civilized clime. The English nobility were less fractious than their Scots counterparts. The English kings had the kind of longevity a royal Stewart could not seem to count upon. Not one Scots king since the time of the first James Stewart had lived longer than forty years, and not one had died a natural death. The current Jamie must wish as would any normal man for a long life, but Scotland was not the place for it. When he inherited the throne of England and went south to claim it, those who went with
him, and those already married to good English connections, would be the ones to prosper. That was why Angus Gordon had made an English match for his son.

Alex sat back in his chair and watched Ian Grant through narrowed eyes. Ian was a nice-enough fellow, but it was high time he made his own way. He had grown soft living at
Dun Broc
with all its small comforts. It was past time for him to return to his own holding in the glen below—a holding that he badly neglected—and made something of it. Forced back there, Alex thought with a wicked smile, his sister Annabella would be sure to ride her spouse hard to improve her lot.

“I’ll be leaving for England in a few weeks’ time,” Alex began.

“Why on earth are ye going there?” demanded his sister, stuffing a piece of pigeon pasty into her mouth. Bella had grown plump of late, Alex noted. Was she breeding again, or was it simply too much good living?

“I’m going to claim my bride, Bella. It’s high time I married and started a family. It was our father’s dying wish.”

Annabella Grant choked on her mouthful of pasty, looking stunned at her elder brother’s surprising revelation, but before she could swallow and speak, her husband was actually taking the initiative and speaking for them.

“Marry?
Ye’re near thirty, man! If ye must wed, then why not wi’ a good Scots family? Why would ye blend yer blood with that of a damned Sassenach?”

“Because I was betrothed to the girl ten years ago, Ian, and there’s no one in Scotland I care enough to wed. Honor demands that I keep my word. Besides, she is the daughter of one of Father’s old friends.”

“Who?” Annabella had finally recovered enough to ask.

“A man by the name of Adam de Marisco. Father, it seems, spent time in France as a youth. Although de Marisco had an English father, his mother was French. It was at the home of her second husband, a chateau called
Archambault
, that Father and Adam de Marisco met. They were both boys at the time, but there seems to have been a correspondence of many years’ standing between them after that. Ten years ago—it was the summer that Ian was courting ye, Bella, and ye’d no time for anything else—Father and I went south to England for a short time. There I was formally betrothed to de Marisco’s daughter who was then just a wee lass of five. I can barely remember the ceremony myself, and I remember less of the lass except that she was strong.”

“Strong?” Bella looked puzzled.

“She was the littlest, yet she was the leader of all the bairns.”

“So.” Bella sniffed. “Because of a dying wish made by a sentimental old man, ye’re going to get on yer horse and ride down to England to claim yer bride, are ye? Why this de Marisco man has probably forgotten all about ye and that silly betrothal! They’ll set the dogs on ye!”

“Och, brother, marry if ye must, but marry a good highland lass,” she went on. “Oh, I’ll admit I thought to see my oldest laddie in yer place here at
Dun Broc
one day, Alex, but if that’s not to be ’tis not to be. Just don’t make a fool of yerself over something long forgot.”

“Aye,” put in Ian Grant. “Don’t make a fool of yerself before the Sassenachs, brother.”

Alex felt a bolt of irritation shoot through him. He loved his sister, but though Annabella was five years his junior, she had been born an old woman, and her husband was not much better. Neither he nor Bella had ever left the vicinity in which they had lived all their lives. They were two ingrown people who knew nothing of the outside world, and they were content to remain exactly as they had always been.

“Father has been in correspondence with Lord de Marisco without cease all these years, Bella,” Alex explained patiently. “There are two boxes in the library. One contains the letters they wrote to each other. I have recently browsed through them. Their friendship remained strong, as was mine, with de Marisco’s stepson, the Earl of Lynmouth, my betrothed’s half brother. Remember, we studied together in Paris? The other box contains miniatures of the de Marisco lass, painted each year immediately after her birthday. The betrothal is quite secure, Bella, and now with Father gone I must marry without delay. I think it’s time that ye take yer sons and go home, sister.
Dun Broc
will be very much unsettled while I am away for I have already given orders that it be cleaned and freshened from towers to dungeons. The countess’s chambers will be redecorated for my bride. Yer own house must stand greatly in need of yer sure touch, Bella. Ye’ve not been there in over a year.”

“Are ye sending me from my home?” His sister looked aggrieved.

“No, sister, I am sending ye
to yer home. Dun Broc
ceased to be yer home the day ye married Ian Grant, and my castle can only have one mistress: my wife. I am sure that yer husband misses his own house as well, eh, Ian?”

Ian Grant thought about the damp pile of dark gray stones
in the glen that was called
Grantholm
, and he shuddered. There was never enough money to make all the repairs it needed, nor enough wood to heat it, and it had a ghost that wailed and threw crockery when annoyed. Ian thought that perhaps a bog would be preferable, but then he caught his brother-in-law’s fierce look and stammered, “Oh, a-aye! ’Twill be good to get home a-a-again, Alex. I-indeed i-it w-will!”

Bella threw her husband a disgusted look. Ian was such a cowardly worm where Alex was concerned. Sometimes she questioned why she had ever married him, but immediately laughed inwardly, knowing the answer to that.
No one!
No one, she was certain, could love a woman the way her Ian did. It was his one talent.

She rounded on her brother. “So!” she snarled angrily. “I am no longer welcome in the house of my birth. I would have never guessed that ye felt that way, Alex, for ye hid it well from our parents. Our mother would shed bitter tears to see it, and our father would turn in his tomb if he but knew.”

“Mother wouldn’t let ye stay more than a week at a time before she died, Bella, and Father would have thrown ye out a month after that, but he was too ill to do so, and ’twas not my place then.” Alex’s voice was filled with amusement. Her guilt tactics might work well on Ian, but the new earl was made of stronger stuff. “Ye’re always welcome as a guest to
Dun Broc
, but I’ll not have ye moving in on me so that yer weak-willed husband and yer snot-nosed sons can lord it over my inheritance. Father would have lived a long life had it not been for that hunting accident, and I am a young man yet, sister. I’ll have an heir within a year of the wedding ye can be sure, and another son for every year of the first five I’m wed. They’ll be plenty of Gordons for
Dun Broc!
We’ve held this small scrap of Highland territory for over three hundred years, and we’ll hold it another three hundred! The Grants will have to be content with
Grantholm
, unless, of course, Ian, ye’re of a mind to go to court and serve Jamie Stewart.”