"If her child died, she would not inherit. She is no blood kin. The land and titles would revert to the king, to be given at his discretion."
"But they would be given to me. The neighboring knight and servant who helped rid King Edward of many Scots—and brought down the murderess of a renowned French lord!"
"The king is fickle."
"Nay, lady, not when rewarding those who destroy his enemies. And now, my dear, Eleanor, you know all, you can die happy, and as to you ..."
He moved to strike; she went racing for her lost sword, but slid to the ground just short of the weapon as Fitzgerald came flying at her, arms around her lower body, throwing her to the ground.
The sword remained just out of reach.
She looked up. One of Fitzgerald's armor-clad warriors stared down at her.
To her surprise, he nudged the sword into her reach. She rolled over, bringing up her sword. She caught the first blow Fitzgerald cracked down upon her, sending him staggering back, but he was quickly at her again, the blade in the air. Again, and again. She skinned backward on the ground. She was certain that each additional blow would break her arms.
As desperate as she was to fight and save her life, she couldn't help the terror and the pain that filled her heart.
She would die. When she had just begun to know what it was to value her life.
When her child ...
It was unbearable.
It would happen.
Fitzgerald struck again. Her defense was far weaker. She had all but backed herself to a tree, and there, he would slice her in two.
He raised his sword arm ...
In seconds, a dozen thoughts filled her mind. She saw the sun dazzling through the branches of the trees overhead. She thought with dismay that her death would allow him to complete his thirst for greater power and land. She thought of Isobel, planning Alfred's death even now ...
She thought of the man she had come to love. And the way that his fervent passion for the land, his never faltering devotion, had come to be for her, as deep as the steadfast loyalty he gave to his friends, and his country, and his dreams of right and freedom.
She saw, from the corner of her eye, the little hovel in the forest, in which she had spent her last night, ruing the discomfort, yet knowing she would sleep anywhere to be with one man. She imagined movement, the stream of Scotsmen she had warned Fitzgerald might be within, and she thought that she was already dying, for her dream of salvation seemed almost real ... there was something ...
There was something.
There was not.
She closed her eyes, and braced herself to die.
But Fitzgerald's weapon never fell. Eleanor heard a sudden, earth-shattering clashing sound. And then, impossibly, Brendan's voice.
"I tend to be a moderate man; after all these years of battle, I believe in the law, Fitzgerald. And it's important to Eleanor that her name be cleared, though it is more important to me to slash you into bloody remnants. Still, I'll withhold my blade. But if my wife is in any way harmed, you'll never see justice. Gregory's mangled face would appear to be that of a sun god, next to all that I will do to you."
Eleanor's eyes flew open.
The earth-shattering sound had been Brendan's sword, meeting Fitzgerald's. The man had been unarmed; and forced to his knees. Brendan gazed contemptuously at Fitzgerald, then turned to her, his eyes sharper than any blade, his features wrought with tension.
"Eleanor ..." he reached for her.
"Brendan!" she shrieked. Fitzgerald had risen, and pulled a knife from a sheath at his calf. He was racing at Brendan. He turned in time, avoiding the knife that so easily might have pierced his heart. Fitzgerald's impetus brought him crashing into the tree. This time, Brendan raised his sword to sever the man in two.
But Eleanor found the strength to leap to her feet. "No! Brendan, we must keep him alive! Isobel killed Alain; he is to kill me for her."
Brendan lowered his sword very slowly and stared coolly at Fitzgerald. "So ..." he said.
"A lie!" Fitzgerald cried boldly. "She is lying!" He turned, looking for his men.
And it was then that both he, and Eleanor, realized that Brendan's men had surrounded the copse and the men, and that the English had knives at their throats, held there by the Scots. They had come from the house in the wood ...
Not bursting out. But slipping in through the rear, through the mud, then out upon their bellies, into the trees again, where they had surprised the English as Brendan had gone for Fitzgerald. The Englishmen remained held at bay by the silent, slippery Scots.
Except for one, who had apparently been about to protest
He lay with his mouth open, a stream of blood trailing from his throat. With amazement she saw that Corbin had been the one to kill him.
Corbin walked forward through the clearing, still wielding the knife with which he had slain the Englishman.
"Let me watch over this one, I beg you, Brendan, while you see to my lady cousin," he said, approaching Fitzgerald with death in his eyes. "If he so much as breathes with too much energy, I will start cutting the extremities from his body. Keep care that he live, of course, to clear Eleanor's good name."
With Corbin watching his back, Brendan once again reached down to take Eleanor into his arms.
She was shaking so badly that she couldn't have stood without him. Tears sprang to her eyes. She almost sank to the ground again.
He cradled her, pulled her close to him.
She felt his heart ... a thunder against her. She was where she was meant to be.
But she heard Corbin speaking again then, in deep anger. "Actually, I'm afraid that I can't just stand here, looking at this man!"
Brendan drew away from her, ready to stop Corbin from killing the man.
But Corbin hadn't slashed into Fitzgerald.
Instead, he knotted his fist and sent a blow into the man's face that must have cost him several teeth.
Fitzgerald slumped down, unconscious.
For a moment there was silence.
"What do we do with these—English?" she heard, a sentence spat out in Gaelic. Eleanor gave a glad cry, seeing that Hagar was on the English, covered with mud like the rest of the Scots, but stalwart well, and tall as he handled one of the men, his knife tight at the fellow's throat.
His query was met with a moment's silence. Eleanor knew what the men were thinking. These were Englishmen, enemies who had ridden north to attack not just her, but Scotland. They deserved death.
"No!" she protested, touching Brendan's arm, forcing his attention. "They—they knew nothing about Fitzgerald's real plan, the depths of his service to his king! Brendan, that fellow gave me my sword back when I was nearly down ... take them prisoners, return them to England."
Brendan looked back to her, eyes hard, muscles tight with tension.
"Collum he's near death."
"Brendan, if you kill them now, we will be no better than the English. We're at a truce—"
"They rode north," he said harshly.
"But the Scots are ... civilized," she said. "And there can be great strength in mercy."
"If you had died—"
"But I did not. I did not."
He looked at her a long while, then to his men. "Secure— the prisoners," he said at last.
One of the young Englishmen suddenly wept.
She didn't think that a man there, Scottish or English, thought any the worse of him for it.
When the men went through the English fallen, though, looking for the dead, and came upon the man Dirk, there was no hesitation.
Hagar went up to the body, and with a sudden, violent blow, severed the head.
The ride back to the castle was slow and laborious, Margot tending to their injured, carried in makeshift carts all the way home.
At one point, Eleanor rode between Hagar and Brendan.
"She knew that you were coming," Hagar told Brendan, something it seemed that he had said before. "She knew. I thought that
I would bring the others to safety, come back and find her slain, and myself able to bring down only a few in vengeance. But she knew that you would be on the road, somehow ..."
Brendan looked at Eleanor. "You knew that I would come somehow?"
She lowered her head. "Aye," she lied.
He didn't believe her.
"What faith," he murmured.
"God works in mysterious ways," she said, keeping her lashes lowered.
Brendan pressed no point with her at that time; indeed, on the two days it took them to return to the castle, they had little time together, and none of that alone. Brendan was frequency with Margot, rewinding Collum's bandages. They had removed the shaft of the arrow which had missed his lungs, and his heart, but there was a great danger that infection would take his life. Margot did seem to work magic with her healing; there were times when Collum could talk, a word or two, and there was a prayer that he would make it.
Brendan also wound up in frequent conversation with Corbin. When she approached, they would fall silent.
No matter what she said, if she pleaded, cajoled, or became angry, they pretended that there was no discussion between them of any importance, but when she expressed her concern for Alfred, alone at Clarin with Isobel, they seemed to exchange glances.
The two nights upon the road were dangerous; in the hours when Brendan did not stay awake, keeping guard, he lay down beside her, taking her into his arms with the deepest tenderness.
At last, they came to the hill north of the castle. The English were gone.
Fitzgerald's nose was broken and he had lost a number of teeth. He was a surly and taunting prisoner, and Eleanor kept her distance from him.
When they rode down the hill to the last valley before the castle, the gates opened. And as the horses streamed in, Wallace came out to meet them.
"Santa Lenora!" he said, ignoring Brendan and lifting her from her horse. "So you are home, well and good."
She smiled at him. "Aye. I am home."
Brendan dismounted behind her, slipping his arms around her. "Indeed, sir. My wife has come home."
She knew, in the bustle of their return, the quick attention first to their injured and then to their prisoners, that she was home.
Scotland had become her home.
She didn't need her name cleared for Clarin; Clarin should rightfully be managed by Alfred, if only word could reach him in time to save him from whatever fate Isobel might have planned for him. She would assume that both Eleanor and Corbin were dead by now.
This was now her place.
There was no rest for Brendan when they first returned; he made arrangements for the prisoners, including Fitzgerald, to be taken to Robert Bruce, and he spent time assuring himself that Collum and Lars were made as comfortable as possible as they healed. Eleanor wanted to help Margot, but she was ushered away.
"Tomorrow will be time enough for you to be the lady here, and the healer. Today, tonight, heal yourself. You're not ill?
You went through a great deal ... expecting a babe, as you are."
Eleanor smiled. "I'd been afraid as well, but... feel! Feel him kicking!"
"Him? It could be a her," Margot said, smiling as she felt the life that still fought hard within Eleanor's body.
"Brendan, I imagine, wants a boy."
"Brendan, I imagine, will want many," Margot said. "Still, you must rest. But, ah, first, there is someone who wants to see you." Margot had turned a long room on the opposite ell of the castle wall from the great hall into a place to tend their wounded.
She brought her to a bed in a warm corner near the fire. At first, Eleanor didn't recognize the swollen and bruised man there. Then she cried out, tears stinging her eyes.
"Gregory!" She lowered herself to her knees by his side. He was swollen from head to toe, so it seemed, bruised, battered, broken.
His lips moved. She saw his eyes in the puffs of his face, saw him try to smile. "The bones will heal," he managed to say. ' 'The fingernails ... they are no loss. I never meant to betray you."
"Gregory, poor Gregory! You suffered all this—for me!"
"My lady ... you killed him."
"I think I only survived because he talked about what he did to you," she told him. "I ... I brought him down. Hagar slew him."
"It's a blessing, to all Scotland," Gregory said.
It was an effort for him to talk. She gently set a kiss on his forehead, on the one point of flesh she could find that wasn't swollen.
"You must live," she told him.
"I will, my lady, I will."
That night, when Brendan at last returned to their room, she was waiting. Wine mulled over the fire. Steam rose from the dragon-headed bathtub. She had lain in the tub a long while herself already; she had paced the room a dozen times. She was anxious about Fitzgerald, worried that he'd somehow escape Robert Bruce, and more worried than ever about Alfred.
She was home now. She knew it.
But she needed to make one more trip to Clarin.
At length, as she paced, the door opened, and Brendan came in. He still wore the dust and dirt of mud and travel, his face streaked with it.
Heedless of the clean silk gown she wore, she raced across the room to him, throwing herself into his arms. His arms enwrapped her. She felt him trembling, and knew that she did so herself. She stepped away, biting lightly into her lip, keeping her lashes lowered.
"You will take a bath?"
' 'Oh?'' he queried, arms folding over his chest.' 'And you're going to make me?"
"I'm quite capable, you know."
With that, he lifted her, gown and all, and despite her shrieks, she found herself deposited in the water once again. And his muddied plaid was cast aside, and he was joining her.
"Brendan! The water, you'll ruin the very structure of the castle, you'll rain upon those below. Brendan—"
"Ah, but I am master of the castle," he reminded her, seating himself covered, and ducking his head and hair, shaking away the dirt, the grime, the tension.
He sat up straight again, flinging his hair back.
"You're soaking me, sir, soaking—"
He reached out, captured her head in both hands, and drew her to him, kissing her. When his lips broke from hers at last, she fell silent.
"Did you really think that I would come?" he asked her.
"I prayed that you could," she admitted.
"You told the others to go away; you were heedless of your own life."
"There was no choice," she told him. She set her hands upon his chest. "No choice. And Brendan, still, there must be something done. Alfred is at Clarin, with Isobel. She intended to see that we all died. She—"
He pressed a finger to her lips. "I know."
"Something must—"
"I know. But not tonight, my love, my wife."
She felt silent, meeting the deep blue of his eyes.
"Tonight... after all this ... it is the first night that we are here, together, and you are in truth, and before God, my wife. That you are alive," he said tensely, "is by the grace of God. That we are here now, together so, is no less than one of His most benevolent miracles."
He stood, stepping from the tub, reaching for her as well.
"Brendan ... the water."
He stood back, looking at her. "Ah, yes, the water ..."
He walked to her, slipped the sodden silk from her shoulders, skimmed it to the floor. Then he stood before her. His knuckles ran down the length of her arms, over a cheek, then down the valley between her breasts, and to her abdomen. He went down upon a knee, laying his face against her abdomen. She let her fingers fall into the dampness of his hair.
"I love you, Brendan, more than ... anything in the world. More than life," she whispered.
His lips pressed to her flesh, cherishing her. Then he stood, lifting her.
He smiled tenderly.
"And I love you, wife, more than anything in the world."
"More than Scotland?" she murmured.
<
br /> "Aye, lady," he said after a moment.' 'More than Scotland."
She smiled, doubting that was true.
It did not matter.
A fire burned in the hearth, creating the patterns upon his flesh that she so loved, rippling muscle, bronzing skin, creating magic.
And in the midst of the flames, he sought to prove how much he loved her.
In his arms, she did the same.
Chapter 23
They were making plans in the great hall, Eleanor realized as she came down the stairs. Many of them were gathered there; Eric, Corbin, Liam, de Longueville, and more. Wallace, she knew, had taken men and departed at dawn. A truce with the English would not last long. He had his followers, but a great army no more. He would take some time, and go home.
There was no peace or justice for him to be found in England.
She knew that they had been talking a long time, discussing the situation. She walked into the midst of them, but addressed Brendan.
"I must go to Clarin. Alfred is in danger."
"Aye, lady—Tonight."
"Tonight?" she said incredulously.
"Aye. Pack what you will," he told her.
She packed; she helped Margot with die wounded.
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