This Heart of Mine (74 page)

For the last course there were, as a special treat, pears stewed with cinnamon sticks, fat purple grapes from France, early apples up from Devon, a cake soaked in marsala, and dainty sugar wafers.

Afterwards, Skye’s children entertained the rest of the family, which tonight included Sir Robert Small and his sister, Dame Cecily, with a musicale. Velvet was accomplished on the virginal, Deirdre on the harp Padraic on the oboe, Murrough on the drum. Willow, of all Skye’s children, had a clear, sweet voice, which she now raised in song. Soon she was joined by the rest of the gathered guests, and the old hall of
Queen’s Malvern
rang with happy voices.

Afterwards, as their elders sat at the high board enjoying the last of the wine, the younger folk and their children joined in games of blindman’s buff, hide-and-seek, and hide-the-slipper. There was much laughter and squealing. Watching, Skye smiled with pleasure. She enjoyed having her family about her, although it frankly amazed her that at almost fifty-one years of age she was a grandmother to twenty-seven children. No, she amended to herself silently, twenty-eight, if she counted Velvet’s little daughter in India. At this moment fourteen of those children were in her house, and she suddenly realized that, despite the fact that she loved each and every one, she would be mightily relieved when they all went home. She laughed softly, and Adam raised a questioning eyebrow.

“I adore them,” she said softly. “but I’ll be glad when they’ve scattered again.”

He nodded, smiling, but Dame Cecily, who had fox-sharp ears despite her age, mourned, “It’ll be like a tomb.”

“Deirdre has begged you to go and stay with her,” Skye reminded her old friend. “She never feels happier than when you’re with her.”

The elderly lady preened with pleasure. “Well, perhaps,”
she allowed, “I might pay her a short visit. I do enjoy the children so very much.”

“I suspect, although she has said nothing to me yet, Dame Cecily, that Deirdre is breeding again. You could be an enormous help to her,” Skye said.

“I will speak to her, Skye, for she will tell me if I ask, and if there is a new baby coming in the spring then I shall most certainly be needed at
Blackthorn Priory
for many months to come.”

Skye put her hand over Dame Cecily’s and smiled warmly at her. “Yes, my dearest friend, we most certainly will always need you. You have been our rock these many years, and I pray that you will always be here with us.”

Dame Cecily squeezed Skye’s hand. “Not always, my dear. That is not possible, but for as long as the good Lord will allow. Remember that I was seventy-six this past May. If the good Lord will permit that I see Velvet’s first child, then I shall count myself ready to leave this earth.”

Skye looked across the room at her youngest child. Velvet sat quietly with her husband by the fireplace. When two of her little nieces, Cecily and Gabrielle Edwardes, tried to draw her into their game of hide-the-slipper, she refused, giving them a shake of her head and a wan smile. Yes, thought Skye, it is better that she go off to Scotland as soon as possible. Her child’s loss is still too open a wound. She needs to begin her new life quickly. She should have another baby as soon as possible. Dear God, let her conceive quickly!

Velvet felt her mother’s gaze upon her and felt uncomfortable. Standing, she said to Alex, “I am tired and want to go to bed now.”

She looked so drawn that he was suddenly concerned for her. “Are ye all right, lass?”

“Just tired,” she repeated.

“I think we can leave the hall without causing undue attention,” he replied, putting his hand beneath her elbow.

Watching them slip quietly from the room, Skye prayed again for her daughter; prayed that she would be happy at long last, that her life would finally be a calm and contented one, and most of all that she would learn to love her husband once again.

Gaining their apartments, Velvet and Alex found Pansy and Dugald awaiting them, and Velvet was struck with a sense of déjà vu. While Alex and his serving man went into the smaller bedroom, Pansy helped her mistress to disrobe. Taking her
gown away, she brought her mistress a basin of warm water scented with gillyflowers and a cake of Velvet’s hard-milled soap.

“The jasmine is almost gone, m’lady, and we can’t get it here in England.”

“Don’t use it,” Velvet ordered tersely. “Put it away somewhere, for I don’t want to be reminded of India.”

“Yes, m’lady,” said a subdued Pansy.

“Are you happy, Pansy? And what does Dugald think of little Dugie?”

“Proud as a peacock, he is, m’lady! You’d think he’d done it all hisself, and he’s anxious to have another, he says.” She chuckled. “Easy for him to say, ain’t it?”

Velvet smiled. “He’s a good man, Pansy, and I can see from the look in his eyes when he gazes at you that he loves you. Take good care of him, girl.”

“Aye, m’lady, I will, for as God is me judge I never thought to see him again! ’Tis lucky I am!”

The little maid worked efficiently, taking her mistress’s undergarments, stockings, and shoes and hurriedly putting them away. Picking out a gossamer silk night rail the color of apricots, she started to lower it over Velvet’s head, but her mistress pushed it away.

“No,” she said. “I am chilled, Pansy, and I will freeze in that gown. Give me a plain, white silk night rail.”

Pansy raised her eyebrows but said nothing, instead obeying her mistress and handing her a simple, white silk gown with long, full sleeves that tied with blue silk ribbons at the neck.

Velvet bowed the ribbons prettily and then, having cleaned her teeth with a mixture of pumice and mint leaves, got into bed. “Leave me now, Pansy, and you needn’t come until I send for you in the morning. I may sleep late, and ’twill give you time with your husband and child. Good night.”

“Good night, m’lady, and God bless you!” Pansy curtsied and was gone from the room.

Velvet reached for the chamber stick on the table by the bed and blew it out. The low fire would light Alex’s way. She snuggled down, drawing the covers well over her shoulders and head until only her nose was visible outside the coverlet. Still, she was cold, and she shivered. Then she realized it was not the late August night air that chilled her, but rather fear. She was afraid, and it fretted her to admit to it. She was no virgin bride awaiting her husband. She was a woman who had accepted two men as husbands in her short lifetime and had borne a child. Hearing Alex come into the room, she closed
her eyes tightly and breathed slowly and evenly. Perhaps he would believe her to be already asleep.

She felt the cool night air as he raised the coverlet, and the bed sagged with his weight as he entered it. She stiffened slightly as his long, lean body moved next to hers. When he reached out to draw her against him, she panicked completely and cried out,
“No!”

For a moment Alex was shocked. She was his wife, not some captive wench about to be ravished. His first instinct was to be angry, then he felt her shaking and said gently, “Velvet, lass, I only want to hold ye. It’s been so damned long! If it distresses ye, however, I won’t.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but she did not deny him and gradually her trembling subsided to the tiniest of quivers.

He lay there in the darkness, for the fire had become only a small orange glow, his wife against him, spoon-fashion, obviously terrified that he would demand his
rights
, and he realized in a great burst of clarity the source of her pain. For two and a half years Velvet had been very much alive to him, while he had been dead to her. While he was biding his time amusing himself with Alanna Wythe, she had built a new life with another man, only to be torn brutally from that man and that life. She had great courage. He had already heard her praises sung by the usually taciturn Dugald, who had told him a wild tale of how Velvet had saved the lives of both Pansy and little Dugie.

“She’s a great lady, m’lord! A great lady! She’ll breed up fine sons for BrocCairn!” Dugald had said.

Alex smiled to himself in the darkness. There could be no sons unless Velvet’s heartbreak healed, and he must be the one to heal it, for his stubborn pride had been a prime factor in breaking that brave, young heart. “Don’t be afraid of me, Velvet,” he said to her softly. “I understand. I truly do.”

“I feel so foolish,” she answered him, “but I am not yet ready for this part of our marriage, Alex. Please be patient with me. I am trying, I swear it!”

“I understand,” he repeated. “I was dead to ye, but Akbar is not.”

“Yes.”

“Then I must woo ye from him, lass, and I will try to do so. I am not a man for the lute and love songs. I cannot compose a verse to save my soul, but I will show ye that I love ye in other ways if ye will give me the chance. Will ye, lass?”

She was silent a moment, and then she said, “Aye.” Nothing more, but she turned in his arms so that she faced him,
and, taking his head between her hands, she kissed him on the mouth before turning her back to him again.

Alex’s heart soared! He felt like a young lad with his first lass. It would not be easy, he knew. He must swallow his pride to win back his wife’s heart and soul from another man, but he would do it! He wanted her! Oh, how he wanted her, and whatever he had to do, it mattered not as long as Velvet would smile at him again with love in her eyes as she had those two and a half years ago. Pushing her thick hair from her neck, he placed a quick kiss on the soft skin at the nape. “Good night, lass,” he said.

“Good night, my lord,” was her reply.

O
n the last day of August in the year 1591, the Earl of BrocCairn’s party crossed over the Cheviot Hills and rode through the invisible gateway that separated England from Scotland. They had traveled slowly, for Velvet was still worn out from her long voyage. It had been a strange week for Alex since he reclaimed his wife. Velvet remained subdued in both manner and speech with him, but at least she had stopped trembling against him during the night. He knew that if he made love to her she would acquiesce, but it would have been like rape to him. He waited for her to want him again even as he wanted her. Patience, Skye had said, and she had been so very right. He only hoped that he had enough patience, for it was not easy to lay with Velvet night after night without loving her.

The air was yet warm in the Cheviots during the day; still, there were already signs of autumn around them. The heather had begun to bloom, and Velvet saw whole hillsides of the purple-pink flowers. The bumblebees loved the heather and flew busily from flower to flower gathering the nectar that would make their delicious honey. The whortleberry bushes were long stripped of their delicious fruit, but already the foliage had begun to assume its rosy-red autumnal tints. Here and there flocks of Cheviot sheep grazed the seemingly peaceful land, but the men of BrocCairn were ever-watchful for an unseen enemy who might attack without warning.

Alex had sent a messenger on to
Hermitage
requesting the hospitality of his cousin, the Earl of Bothwell. Bothwell was once again in his royal cousin James’s bad graces, and Lord Home had been sent in early summer to arrest him. Sandy Home, however, had decided that he preferred hunting and fishing with Francis Stewart-Hepburn to arresting him, and he had remained at
Hermitage
with his friend.

Most believed that the royal wrath against the Earl of Bothwell had been brought to a fine froth by the king’s chancellor, John Maitland. Maitland had caused Bothwell to be imprisoned
in Edinburgh Castle for several months, but on Midsummer’s Eve the earl had escaped and publicly mocked Maitland at Nether Bow, daring him to come out of his house, where, rumor had it, the chancellor was cowering in a cabinet, to return the earl to prison. All of Edinburgh had enjoyed a good laugh at Master Maitland’s expense, and he had not forgotten it. Learning from the king’s chamber boy that James secretly coveted Catriona Leslie, the beautiful Countess of Glenkirk, Maitland allowed the king to learn that both Bothwell and Lady Leslie sought divorces from their spouses and planned to marry. In fact, Margaret Douglas, Bothwell’s wife, had already been granted her decree. James had then used Bothwell’s past misdemeanors and “his lewd conduct wi’ a certain lady of the court” as excuses to outlaw his cousin. And he had prevented Lady Leslie’s divorce. The lady, however, was not to be bullied by the king and remained with her lover in defiance of the Stewart’s anger.

Under normal circumstances, Alex would have avoided Bothwell’s hospitality at this time. He had no desire to bring the king’s temper down on BrocCairn. Velvet, however, was simply not strong enough to ride too great a distance at a stretch, yet, and he had to break their journey at
Hermitage.
Perhaps, he hoped, the king would not learn of it.

The stone keep that was Bothwell’s home had no sooner come into view when its great gates opened and a small party of horsemen rode out to meet them.

Francis Stewart-Hepburn’s face was split in a huge smile as he greeted his cousin of BrocCairn. “Alex! ’Tis good to see ye!” Then he turned to Velvet, and his smile softened. “I’m glad ye’re home safe, lass,” he said quietly.