Should she pull the blanket away? Kiss him? Or simply lay across his chest to stir his passion? Men, once roused, needed no force, Long Mary had said. In fact, once roused, a woman could not restrain a man, no more than he could restrain himself.
She was counting on that. Counting on him taking her before he had fully roused from sleep. Before he could recognise and reject her.
She paused. Maybe, in dreams, he would think she was that other wife, the one he still loved. The one he must still love. Maybe then he would love her as she wished.
What do you want? I want him to love me, not her.
She lay down on the blanket, stretched out beside him and put her lips on his.
* * *
At first, Thomas relished the dream, even knowing his body tortured him. No, the body did not lie. She was his wife. And he wanted her. So he kept his eyes closed, not wanting to wake, wanting to enjoy the dream, the safe illusion, for those few minutes when he could love her and there would be no pain.
For either of them.
But then, eyes still closed, he knew. It was not a dream.
Her breasts, naked, seared his chest. Her lips, her kiss, still inexperienced, played around his mouth. And between his legs, he was ready, more than ready, to take her.
He opened his eyes and wished he hadn’t.
All he had dreamed of lay beside him. Her hair, red as the fire’s flame, cascading over white shoulders and whiter breasts. The arcs of her curved places, lips, brows, breasts and hips, each echoed the other.
Each seemed made to meet with his.
Her eyes were closed, so she did not see that he no longer slept. He grabbed her wrists, moving her arms away from his shoulders, and rolled her away from him and on to her back.
Her eyes met his then, and in the fading fire’s glow he saw disappointment. And pain.
‘Did you think to trick me into being your husband in fact?’
‘Trick you? Into something you wanted as much as I?’
Her honesty again. Her fatal honesty.
‘You know the reasons why we can’t.’
‘And care for none of them.’
He let her go and sat up, then reached for the blanket from the bed to wrap it around her, careful not to let his hands brush against her skin.
‘Do you know,’ she said, in a voice steadier than he could muster, ‘that you are the first person to notice that I feel the cold?’
He stared at her. When had he started noticing such things about her?
From the first.
‘The women I’ve known have been...delicate.’
Her laugh was short and sharp. ‘I am not.’
He stood. Not touching was harder the closer he was to her. ‘Are you sure?’
‘The thistle is no delicate flower.’
He had to smile at that. He had thought her prickly as a thistle. Once. ‘Even a thistle will die once plucked.’
‘Is that what you think?’ She stood, too, coming towards him, backing him against the bed. ‘That I’ve been plucked away from my family and tossed into the middle of Stirling Castle and now I will shrivel up and die?’
‘Some would.’ She was getting too close. He was getting too close, too close to revealing things he did not want anyone to know. ‘I’m trying to protect you.’
‘You want to protect me? I think it is really yourself you want to protect.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Do you prefer to return to your empty castle and mourn your dead wife?’
He snapped his head to meet her gaze. And the shock was not that she had uncovered his hidden fear. It was the realisation that he had not mourned his dead wife in a long, long time.
* * *
I was right, she thought, as she watched his face. His wife died in childbirth and he had thought to spare me that fate.
She stretched out her hand, but he flinched and turned away and she let it drop.
A foolish plan. Foolish hopes. Now she had reminded him of the pain. Brought it all back, so close and real that he would never risk loving her.
He was a man who would not let her be cold, but refused the one thing that would warm her.
She coughed, to clear a path for the words to come. ‘It seems, then, that we will not be truly betrothed. But if we are not to be wed in truth, then I will go back to sleep with the women.’
‘Do not go back to the Marys,’ he said. ‘That would shame us both and tempt the King to give you to Sinclair.’
She shook her head. ‘Brunson women are strong—’ the tears in her eyes belied those words ‘—but I am not strong enough to lie beside you and not want you.’
He gathered his clothes and dressed hurriedly. ‘Then I will leave you to sleep here. Alone.’
The door seemed impossibly loud on closing.
Chapter Fourteen
She regretted it all on waking.
Brunson women are strong. An idle boast. She had been weak. Sought pleasure instead of cleaving to duty.
Allowed herself to be seduced, and not only by Carwell. She had been led astray by music and dancing and borrowed chains of gold, thinking she could dance in truth, as lightly as he did, between pleasure and duty.
And she had failed.
Now she was as good as married to a man who would not bed her. One she could neither leave nor live with. She had trusted him, in vain, and remembered, too late, she should have trusted him not at all. For he betrayed her hopes, as surely as he had betrayed her family.
And now, unless the King forgave her family and let her go home to break this damnable betrothal, she would be a hostage to Carwell for ever.
* * *
To Carwell’s relief, the negotiators returned from Berwick the next day. With the treaty signed, he would be free to leave the court, though Christmas was less than a week away and the king would no doubt press him to stay for the Yuletide celebrations.
The King summoned him, along with the other key lords and advisors, to his chambers to hear a reading of the terms. It opened with the usual bureaucratic language and he found his mind wandering to thoughts of red hair and firelight.
‘What’s that part again?’ the King asked. ‘About the salmon?’
‘The trade violation, Your Grace. You recall. By the merchants in Edinburgh.’
‘Ah, yes.’ The King waved him on.
Thomas forced his mind away from Bessie and to the treaty. This was the culmination of all he had worked for, to ensure that Angus would be punished.
But as the reading continued, more and more of the language was unfamiliar. And not just the parts that dealt with salmon.
He listened with a rising sense of horror as the next section was recited.
Angus would forfeit all his lands and castles, but he would be allowed to live in exile in England.
‘No!’ he shouted, not even realising he had risen. ‘I can’t accept this.’
‘You?’ The King stared at him with a gaze no longer a boy’s. ‘It is not for you to accept.’
‘It is not what was agreed.’ He could say little else about the secret negotiations with the watchful eyes of the official ambassadors upon him.
‘I agreed,’ the King said. ‘You must be content.’
‘But it was to be settled another way.’ How much could he reveal? And what difference did it make now?
‘It is settled this way.’ The King looked as pained as Thomas felt. ‘My uncle the King has an irrational attachment to the man. He badgered me until I...’ He shrugged.
Gave in.
The young, new King who had already failed to capture his hated enemy had failed to hold firm. The Great Oath he had demanded of his lords would remain just that: words on the wind. Angus, the man he and the King had vowed to destroy, would slip across the border unharmed to enjoy life and liberty, no doubt, at the English King’s court.
Thomas slumped back into his seat. All of it, everything, done for naught. Had he betrayed the Brunsons? Well, he could justify that. Scarre
d Willie might have escaped once, but Angus would not. Angus would be caught and punished. That was to have excused everything he had done.
Now he could rationalise no more.
The reading of the treaty resumed, covering up the awkward silence. And as the words piled one atop the other, his horror grew.
He rose again. ‘We cannot accept these terms. They would allow the English Wardens to invade Scotland to keep the peace.’
‘Only if you can’t do it,’ the King snapped.
‘But this...’ Fury near choked him at the thought of the English Warden riding into Liddesdale to mete out his own justice on the Brunsons. ‘Impossible to accept. Send back a—’
‘It’s signed.’
Speechless, he stared at the King, feeling as if his life’s blood had drained away, leaving him a cold, empty husk. He forced a word through dry lips. ‘Signed?’
James smiled. ‘Five years of peace. Agreed and arranged.’
‘But to give them permission to cross the border, to invade—’
King James spoke quickly, as if he had already rationalised the agreement to himself. ‘They can already do so if they are chasing a raider in Hot Trod.’
‘So then we’ll have the same right. To invade their territory.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
The King hurried on. ‘Listen. Here, in the next part.’ His voice was rising. ‘Read it.’
The negotiator read on. ‘And Wardens shall meet by February, 1529, to schedule regular Truce Days...’
‘That’s it. That part.’ He stared at Carwell. ‘You and the other Wardens will hold regular Truce Days. As long as you keep the peace, there’ll be no need for them to cross.’
‘And no reason for them to settle disputes, either. If they have the right to invade, why should they come to heel on Truce Day?’
The others looked around, uneasy.
He picked up his sword and stormed out, not waiting for leave. He could hear no more. And as he strode Stirling’s corridors, he realised he had tried to manage things behind the scenes one time too many.
The King’s interests and those of the Borderers had diverged, just as the Brunsons had expected.
And none of his machinations had stopped it.
* * *
He circled the walls in the December snowfall until the first heat of anger passed and he realised, with growing dread, that Bessie would have to be told what had happened.
Weeks ago, he had thought, foolishly, that he would confess all. That he had conspired with the English Warden. Why. He had thought to do that when, triumphant, he could announce that his hated enemy Angus had been captured so that justice would be done and revenge taken.
The Brunsons, of all people, understood revenge.
But not now. Not when Angus would be lounging at King Henry’s court. There would be no justice, no closure, no way to justify an agreement that had seemed worth everything he made it.
Now there was just failure. And the King’s expectation that he would walk through the farce of scheduling Truce Days.
* * *
He found her, after a long search, in the dark, hot kitchen beneath the Great Hall, looking as comfortable as if she were in her own.
The servants, on the other hand, did not.
When she saw him, she asked no questions, but immediately untied her apron and silently followed him back to their room.
A strong woman. And one who knew the value of silence.
The bed loomed, accusingly, before him, but this was the only place he could speak without being overheard.
He began abruptly. Honeyed words had failed him now. ‘The treaty has been signed.’
‘Yet you are not pleased.’
‘The terms are not what I would have wished. Nor will your brothers be content.’
He gave a quick explanation, keeping his voice smooth as he added the provisions about Angus.
‘And?’ she said, when he had finished. ‘What’s the worst part?’
‘If the English are not satisfied with punishment for the Scots, they will have the authority to invade and obtain their own redress.’
Her eyes widened. ‘So the duties of the Warden...’
‘Become useless, yes.’ Strange. That had been the least of the things that angered him. The position that had seemed the pinnacle of his desire only months ago.
‘I’m sorry.’ She touched his shoulder and he let her, needing her comfort. After all the years of regret, he had expected the signatures of kings to make him whole again.
They had not and would not. He saw that now. Even if Angus had been beheaded and Carwell made Warden for life, in the end, there would be only the empty castle and the sound of the sea.
But now, this woman, the one he had thought to protect, reached out to comfort him.
And he took it. God forgive him, he took it.
A kiss, soft and searching at first, then eager. Hands that had been too long empty wanting to be filled with her breasts, wanting to bring her delight. The blood pounding through him, his seed, even, wanting to create life, finally. Wanting to leave behind the past and the loss and to create something new. Even if he could not picture it, even if he did not know what it was. He knew it involved this woman.
The body does not lie.
He had said that, not truly understanding what it meant. He had been trying to lie, to himself, to her. Trying to protect himself as the moat protected his castle, thinking if he let no one in, no further harm could come to him.
And now, his walls were crumbling.
He could not take her roughly. Not when he was her first.
How long had it been since he had taken a woman? But this one was not the pale wraith his wife had been. She was strong. She had promised that. Strong enough to accept him as the earth might revel in a pounding rain.
He paused, though he knew he could wait no more than an instant, and met her eyes.
She knew his question, reaching for his hands and placing them on her hip bones. ‘No Brunson-born woman has ever died that way.’
Thinking his wife had died in childbirth. Thinking to reassure him that she would not.
He swooped down to take her lips again. Let her think so.
It was better that way.
* * *
At the beginning, she moved as awkwardly at the dance of love as she ever had at the galliard. Did a nose go here? An arm there? How did bodies fit together?
She had never loved a man before, but soon, her body began to move with his as if they were dancing, as if she did not need to be taught the steps. Even without music, her body found her rhythm, and his. Here, there was no one else to call or criticise steps that belonged to them alone.
Then she did not think at all.
Dimly, she realised that this was why there would always be children. Why families continued down the ages. This was no tentative kiss of a stripling boy and a young girl. This was a force of nature. Sure as the stars, strong as the wind...they sang of the Brunsons.
And this? This was more powerful than either of those.
He was tender and fierce. Touching her, at the beginning, with careful hands. Cupping her head. Stroking her arm. Lifting her chin oh, so carefully.
And she, mindful of the hurts in his heart, tried to be gentle as well. To coax his spirit, as well as his body, ignorant of both as she might be.
But then there was less care, less tenderness and only the eagerness of need meeting need. This was no step-touch, matched to a measured beat, nor a kiss after a tournament, performed as a pageant for an audience. It was the wildness of the reel, swirling in rhythms too personal to share.
And then he was inside her, privy to every secret she had tried to hide with silence.
She stiffened. Resisted. Lost the rhythm of this new dance. All the strength she had boasted of suddenly weakness. How could any man be so deep, so close, and not merge with her very bones? Surely now this man must know her more deeply than anyone before.
>
More deeply than she knew herself.
But that must mean that she could know him, too.
She stilled, trying to sense his secrets. Felt vulnerability, coupled with strength. And then felt herself surrender to his desire. And her own.
Hard, strong, urgent, seeking. Relentless as the wind on the hills.
Or the waves of the sea.
Then, he shuddered and was still, as if he had reached the hill’s peak and need climb no more.
Wrapped in his arms, warm and safe, she wondered at it. Was there something...more she should feel? Well, there would be time to discover that, too. Tonight, she was content.
And she held him until they both slept while some dim portion of her mind whispered in her dreams.
You are betrothed.
False as that betrothal might have been, it was real now. More real than anything she had ever felt in her life.
* * *
He woke and the realisation of what he had done crashed over him in a wave.
He had promised to protect her. Instead, he had married her, telling her it would save her, and her family, from harm. Telling himself the betrothal would be ended and he would not be married in fact.
Yet despite his vow never again to be responsible for a woman, every step of this dangerous dance had brought them closer.
And now he had taken her in fact.
He sat up, unsure of the day or time, and looked over at her, sprawled on the sheets beside him. So intent had he been on the joining, he had not even seen to her satisfaction. Yet in her sleep, she smiled.
She would not smile when she woke.
His first wife never had.
* * *
He had loved Annabell. At least, that’s what he told himself.
She had been small and dainty with golden hair and a tinkling laugh and more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen when he was twenty and two.
And if she did not enjoy their joining, he told himself it was because she was so delicate.
She was the youngest daughter of a Lothian lord. And while Carwell Castle was the finest in Dumfries, French wine and travelling musicians were scarce so far west.
She missed them.
And while she played the lute and danced the galliard to perfection, she had little expertise, and less interest, in provisioning for men at arms.
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