The Highlander's Virtuous Lady: A Historical Scottish Romance Novel

by Fiona Faris

  William blushed and inclined his head in an awkward bow.

  “My sword and lance shall always be yours, milady,” he said gallantly.

  “Speaking of having a daughter to give away in marriage, Wat,” Margaret turned to the old reiver. “I was wondering if you would do me the great honor of walking me down the aisle at my own. I have no one else, and I can think of none other I would rather have stand for my own father.”

  Auld Wat beamed.

  “It will be at our family chapel at Lochorwart,” Gilbert warned him, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “That will be far outwith the fastness of the Marchlands. And you will have to be on your best behavior; the king himself will be there. You would not want to cause a rammie with the Bruce.”

  “I better leave Auld Mary behind, then,” Wat said, winking at his wife. “She wad cause a rammie in an empty hoose.” He turned to Margaret. “The honor will be mine, lass.”

  After dinner, the men withdrew to Gilbert’s party’s encampment on the sward outside the keep, where the drinking continued. Dryhope was small, and its hall could not accommodate all of Gilbert’s retinue.

  The women retired to the solar.

  “You have a good man there, Margaret,” Mary observed.

  Margaret smiled at the compliment.

  “I think so,” she said.

  “And he seems to be favored by the king,” Mary added. “I see great things for you, lass, great advancement.”

  “I hope so, for Sir Gilbert’s sake. His family too have suffered so in this struggle.”

  “Never mind Sir Gilbert,” Joan said, placing her hand on her sister’s. “He is getting a fine virtuous lady as a wife. With you at his side, managing his affairs, he will progress far. I am thinking of you and your flourishing.”

  Margaret blanched.

  “After all I have suffered, I am grateful to be tolerated.” She sighed. “I fear that Gilbert will find me out and come to despise me and cast me aside.”

  Joan slapped Margaret hard on the face.

  “Listen to yourself and your self-pity,” she said in exasperation. “Gilbert Hay is friend and confidante to the King of Scots, his most trusted ally. He must be one of the most eligible bachelors in the realm. Yet he has come home to you. Does that not tell you something?”

  “It tells me that he is a chivalrous and charitable knight, who perhaps remembers the chaste and innocent girl he met eight years ago and whose memory blinds him to the fallen woman I am now, whose virtue has been broken. He will come to see his folly, and regret it, if I let him marry me.”

  Mary spat into the fire in disgust.

  “Chivalry and virtue, my arse. He loves you lass, and you love him. That’s the first and last of it all. Aye, you’ve been hurt. You’ve been hurt sorely. But love overcomes all hurt; it will heal ye. You’re no less a lady than ye were all those years ago, when ye first clapped eyes on his bonny manhood beside the Boat Pool. Aye,” she added, “Joan here has told me all about it. Your mother and I had mony a laugh owre the heid o’ it.”

  Margaret rounded on Joan.

  “Mother? You told our mother about that day at the pool?”

  “I did, and she enjoyed the tale. Even mother thought that yon wee bit of impropriety did not affect your virtue. It’s not as if you dropped your braies and ran to him with your tongue hanging out, any more,” she added knowingly, “that you gave yourself willingly to Moult in his chamber of horrors.”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed o’, lassie, when the beast took you by force,” Mary assured her fervently. “The fault lies not in your virtue, but in the evil heart of yon man.”

  “But he never took me,” Margaret confessed shyly. “He made me do disgusting things, but he never took me. I am still a virgin.”

  Both Joan and Mary gawped at her open-mouthed.

  “Then what, in God’s name, is all the fuss about?” Mary exclaimed. “Fine, he made you do some ugsome things, but… Christ, lassie, have ye never cleaned a rabbit or washed pigs’ guts for sausage skins?”

  “But it was still a violation.”

  “Nae doubt,” Mary agreed, “But that’s to his discredit, not to yours. And he didna take your maidenhead; ye still hae that to gi’e your man on your wedding night.”

  Joan wrapped her long arms around Margaret’s shoulders.

  “Think no worse of yourself for what has been done to you. None of what happened was your fault. You have absolutely nothing to reproach yourself with. You are still the virtuous lady you always were.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Margaret was received at Lochorwart by Gilbert’s parents with great warmth and affection. Lady Rachel Hay remarked that she was twice blessed; not only had her son returned to her, but she had acquired a daughter too. Sir Thomas feigned astonishment at the fact that Gilbert had managed to attract such a great beauty and immediately declared himself ‘smitten’ by her.

  After they had taken refreshment from their journey in the hall, Gilbert and his father withdrew to his father’s cabinet to discuss matters pertaining to the late war and to the management of the Hay estates, while Lady Rachel entertained Margaret and Lizzie in her boudoir.

  After their business had been concluded, Gilbert fetched Margaret and proposed a ride to see the lands around Lochorwart.

  It was a fine late summer’s day. A sultry heat had settled over the moorland, and the distant Lammermuir Hills to the north, the Moorfoots to the south, and the Cheviots to the east all lay in a misty haze beneath the vast open Lothian skies. They rode east along the tumbling banks of the Middleton Burn, then struck south across the moor until they reached a small lochan with crystal clear waters fringed by deep banks of reeds.

  “This is my Boat Pool,” Gilbert explained, “my special place. It is where I used to come when I wanted my own company and to contemplate the conundrums of life.”

  They dismounted and left their horses to wander, graze, and drink on the lochan side. The sat on a low grassy knoll overlooking the gleaming water.

  “And swim?” Margaret smiled elfishly from beneath the broad-brimmed hat she wore against the fierce rays of the sun, alluding to the day she had first laid eyes on him on the banks of the Tweed.

  “Aye.” He laughed bashfully. “And to swim too. There is none but an occasional shepherd to disturb you here, and that only rarely.”

  Margaret looked around the vast emptiness of the moorland.

  “It is very wild and lonely,” she observed. “All this space makes me quite giddy.”

  Gilbert snorted.

  “It is very different from the glens and forests of your homeland.”

  “Healing,” Margaret said, as if supplying the word to describe it accurately.

  Gilbert gave her a puzzled look.

  “The glens and forests of my home have been tainted by the evils that befell me there,” she explained in a murmur. “I no longer feel at home among them. This…” She swept her arm around the far horizons. “… is so different. I feel all my hurts easing here.”

  He reached for her hand and squeezed it warmly.

  “Was it so very terrible, what Moult did to you?”

  “I would not speak of it,” she said, drawing her hand away. “I want never to have to speak of it.”

  Gilbert slowly let out the breath he had been holding.

  “There are things too of which I would not speak, terrible things I witnessed and did in the war,” he said after a pause. “But not to speak of them leaves them to fester in the memory and poison your life. Speaking them, I have found, is like a kind of blood-letting, a kind of release. I have found this in my conversations with my father. Perhaps you should confide your feelings too.”

  Margaret gave a shiver, as if a sudden chill had run through her flesh, though the day remained hot and the air sultry. She drew up her long slender legs and hugged her knees. Gilbert ran a hand gently over the curve of her back, but she shivered again and flinched away from his touch.

 
“Don’t,” she said. “I am not ready.”

  He huffed an impatient sigh.

  “I only want to comfort you,” he softly chided. “I would do nothing to hurt you, my love.”

  Margaret met his anguished gaze and smiled sadly but reassuringly.

  “I know, my darling. And I do love you. It is just that… I am just not ready, yet.”

  “I understand, my love.” He smiled sadly back.

  He sprang to his feet, and his mood became suddenly buoyant.

  “Anyhow, I have shown you my special place. It is mine, but I wanted to share it with you. I want to share everything with you.”

  “And I want to share everything with you,” Margaret echoed.

  It felt like an exchange of vows, as sacred and as profound as the vows they would shortly be exchanging at the altar.

  It was a promise, and Gilbert clung to that promise with every hope for the future.

  “And how do you find Lochorwart?” Margaret asked Lizzie later in the bedchamber they were to share until Margaret’s nuptials.

  Lizzie knitted her brows.

  “It is a strange country, m’lady,” she mused aloud. “Have you seen the sky? There is no end to it!”

  Margaret laughed.

  “That is true,” she exclaimed. “There are no hills to contain it.”

  “And no forest, just wee bits of woodland,” Lizzie went on excitedly. “Who would have thought the world was so wide? It just goes on and on…”

  “All the way to Heaven,” Margaret completed the thought for her. “But do you like it, lass?”

  Lizzie considered it.

  “I like it well enough,” she reckoned. “Though I’m glad of these four walls. They keep me from flying away.”

  Margaret’s laughter tinkled like a bell.

  “But will you be happy biding here is what I’m asking, Lizzie. You won’t pine for the skimpy wee skies of Tweeddale?”

  Lizzie’s look grew suddenly serious.

  “This is like my life has begun again. Back in Neidpath, for all your kindness to me in lifting me out of my miserable life, I was still Lizzie Bryce, the scullery slattern. It was how everyone still saw me: a wee slut dressed up in silks and satins. But here I am free of all that, free of all that has gone before. Here I am a proper lady’s maid. I like it fine, m’lady.”

  A broad beaming smile split her girlish face. Her eyes shone, and she gave off a radiance that Margaret had never seen in her before. Lizzie was no longer oppressed by a feeling of unworthiness; she had left the shell of the ugly kale-worm behind and had emerged from it as a beautiful butterfly.

  “I am glad,” Margaret murmured, drawing her into a warm hug.

  But her gladness was laced with a thread of envy. Why could she not leave her ugly past behind?

  Chapter Forty

  Margaret’s wedding took place in late August. Lizzie was her maid, and Joan was her heavily pregnant matron of honor. Auld Wat stood in for the bride’s father. Patrick was Gilbert’s groomsman, while William Scott served as the bride’s knight.

  The family chapel was bright, with large Romanesque windows that flooded the interior with light, plump round arches, sturdy fluted pillars, deep barrel vaults, a large pointed steeple, and pretty pastel-colored decorative arcading. The stone floor had been thoroughly sluiced with water and scoured with brushes, and every niche and archway had been richly dressed with freshly picked cornflowers, daisies, and larkspurs.

  Margaret walked down the aisle, tall and slim and elegant in a white satin gown, which was watermarked with silver fleurs-de-lys, its stiff high bodice trimmed with tiny freshwater pearls, her head and face covered by a gauzy, gossamer veil held in place by the thin circlet of silver. She walked on the arm of Wat Scott, who strutted as tall and proud as a bantam cock on the midden but still came only halfway up to Margaret’s shoulder. Behind her came Joan and Lizzie in matching satin gowns, and William Scott with his hand on the hilt of the brightly polished sword at his waist. Margaret hoped that William, who was glowering around menacingly at the wedding guests, as if any one of them might at any moment jump up and try to abduct her, did not feel obliged to defend her from the groom.

  Among the wedding guests, King Robert and his queen, Elizabeth, sat at the rear of the chapel on a raised dais that had been constructed for the purpose. He was a tall, handsome, powerfully-built man with a mass of unruly black curls on his head and a thick well-groomed beard and long mustache, and his regal presence dominated the room. Elizabeth was a frail Irish woman, only recently returned from her long imprisonment in England.

  Wat handed Margaret into the safekeeping of Sir Gilbert, then took his seat beside Mary on Margaret’s family’s side of the chapel. The priest heard the couple exchange their vows and gave the Church’s blessing to the marriage. Gilbert and Margaret turned to face one another, and Gilbert raised her veil. A gasp of astonishment rose around the chapel, as Margaret’s beauty revealed itself to the degree that no one, not even her sister, had seen before. Gilbert’s heart leaped in his breast, and his voice failed him. Every person in the room fell into awed silence at the sight of Margaret’s piercing blue eyes and the almost translucent radiance of her skin, which illuminated the air around her like a halo.

  Gilbert slowly, reverently, inclined his face towards her and placed his lips gently on hers.

  “My Margaret,” he whispered.

  “My Gilbert,” she breathed the words out in response.

  Their arms slowly rose, and their bodies entwined in a tender embrace. A tear rolled down Auld Wat’s grizzled cheek.

  At the wedding feast, King Robert sat on Gilbert’s right hand, while Margaret sat on his left. A succession of sumptuous courses was borne into the hall by brightly liveried serving men and aproned maids, while flutes and fiddles played sedately in the musicians’ gallery that ran the width of the far end of the hall. Wine flowed copiously from an endless procession of jugs and flagons, though Margaret noticed that the king drank modestly, from a desire, she presumed, to keep a clear head. Forever holding court, the king would be bound by a need for constant diplomacy, even among his most loyal subjects and liegemen. The poor man, Margaret reflected, could never relax.

  King Robert leaned forward and spoke to her across her husband.

  “I hear your family suffered greatly for the sake of the nation,” he remarked in a deep sonorous voice.

  Margaret met his eye briefly, before dropping her own in deference to his authority.

  “It has been a nightmare, sire,” she admitted.

  “A nightmare from which we are beginning to awake, I trust?” He smiled at her kindly.

  “I hope so too, sire.”

  “I pray we may have peace to rebuild your kingdom,” Gilbert interjected. “We have scarce had peace since the death of Alexander.”

  “In truth,” Robert acknowledged. “And peace is something I would talk with you about.”

  “Indeed, sire?” Gilbert looked up.

  “Indeed… As you know,” Robert continued, “I am sending an embassy to England to negotiate a truce between our two sovereign kingdoms, and I want you to be part of that embassy.”

  “Me, sire?”

  “Aye, you, Gilbert.” Robert laid a hand on Gilbert’s shoulder. “You have been with me, steadfast, all through these most trying times. You commanded my bodyguard at Methven and stood with me even through our darkest hours, when you could have saved your skin as so many did by swearing allegiance to Edward. But you did not. You proved yourself willing to sacrifice everything to the Great Cause. Your loyalty is beyond doubt, and I need loyal men to defend the Great Cause in our negotiations with the English, men who will not betray it for advancement or gain.”

  “But I am just a lowly knight, my lord…”

  “Not for very much longer.” Robert winked. “I am giving you the earldom of Errol in Gowrie; you will also receive the barony of Slains in Aberdeenshire. This will make you one of the most powerful men in the realm, a man –
the English will soon learn – who is to be reckoned with.”

  Gilbert flushed and swallowed.

  “I am also appointing you my Lord High Constable. This ranks above all titles except those of the Royal Family. As Lord High Constable, you will be after myself the supreme officer of the Scottish army. And you, my lady,” the king added, leaning forward to address Margaret again, “shall embellish my court as a waiting lady to the queen.”

  “I… I am not worthy, my lord…” Gilbert stammered

  “Nonsense, man,” Robert scolded him. “You have proven your worth many times over during these past ten years or so. Your valiance and loyalty to my person, my family, and the kingdom are beyond reproach and much cherished by your liege.” Laying his arm across Gilbert’s shoulders and lowering his voice to a whisper, the king ceased to be king for a moment and spoke to him man to man. “This is your reward, my fere, for your friendship.”