The Virgin's Debt

by Tatiana March

  ‘Aye.’ Agnes turned to go. ‘A priest. You’ll find them in the chapel.’ She shouted the words over her shoulder on her way out, the hasty manner of her retreat an admission that even her bold nature wouldn’t challenge his distrust of clergymen.

  ‘In the chapel,’ Duncan muttered, and stormed up the stairs as fast as his infirm foot would allow. He knew that Katrina had taken to going in and kneeling between the rows of ramshackle furniture to say her prayers. He had accepted it as her right, as long as she didn’t try to dilute his hatred of the church.

  The door clattered against the wall as Duncan strode in and carried on past the armoire that blocked his way. He was about to roar out his disapproval over too much religion in his house when Katrina turned to look at him, and he caught the sight of her tear-stained face. Beside her, a handsome man in priest’s dark robes knelt in prayer, a soft stream of Latin flowing from his lips.

  Duncan stopped as if he had collided with a fist. Katrina’s stricken expression and the careless swipe with the back of her hand across her face to blot away the tears spoke of heartbreak.

  He had done that to her.

  Made her live in sin.

  He hadn’t considered that in her devout mind she had compromised her immortal soul, and needed the help of a priest to soften the remorse and ease her fear over what would happen to her when she died.

  ‘What has he been threatening you with?’ Duncan said, advancing past a dismantled bedstead. ‘Hellfire and damnation and eternal suffering?’

  ‘No...’ Katrina glanced at the priest. ‘He is praying for me.’

  It pierced Duncan’s conscience, and his heart, that she was forced to seeking consolation from another man. ‘You.’ He limped closer and glowered over the kneeling priest. ‘I don’t want to hear about the punishments you have in store for sinners. Your time is coming to an end. Reformation is in the air, and soon people will rebel against the shackles of the Church. You and your brethren will be stripped of your power.’

  ‘My power comes from God, and if he takes it away, I will concede to his will.’

  Ignoring the priest’s response, Duncan turned to Katrina. ‘I will marry you. Send the priest away. Your immortal soul will be safe without his prayers.’

  Katrina closed her eyes. She exhaled a slow breath of relief, and Duncan saw her chest rise and fall under the green gown she had made from the moth-eaten velvet curtains he had torn down in the great hall. Affection surged inside him. He didn’t care if her refusal to accept any gifts from him was a true reluctance to be in his debt, or a carefully constructed ploy to win his trust.

  It had endeared her to him nonetheless.

  ‘Excellent.’ The priest clambered to his feet. ‘I will conduct the ceremony at once.’

  ‘No you won’t.’ Duncan extended a hand to help Katrina up. Her evident joy as she reached out to him added to his guilt. She had only been asking for what was the right of any woman.

  To have her position regulated by law.

  ‘A marriage will have the same validity whether made between two people in privacy or performed by the pope himself in front of a thousand witnesses,’ Duncan pointed out.

  The priest cleared his throat. ‘I don’t disagree, but it might be wiser to celebrate this particular wedding in the chapel, in front of witnesses.’ With an astonishing agility for a man wearing heavy robes, he rushed past the armoire to the doorway and shouted out an invitation for those within hearing distance to make their way to the chapel.

  Barely an instant later, Agnes and Margaret and Joan slipped inside and found a place to stand between the furniture. Duncan rolled his eyes. Either the women had been listening on the stairs, or the priest’s voice, accustomed to bellowing out sermons, echoed through the house better than his own commands.

  Jackson rushed in after the women, out of breath, perspiration from the frantic dash through the bailey and up the stairs beading on his brow. ‘Knights are riding up the hill,’ he blurted out. ‘It’s a fine sight, with standards flapping in the breeze, and the armour on the men and their horses glinting in the evening sun.’

  ‘Knights?’ Duncan said. ‘Who could be coming here?’ He turned to Katrina. ‘I’ll go outside and investigate. We can do this later.’

  She clung to his hand, and with a surprising strength she spun him back to face the priest. ‘We’ll get married now,’ she yelled, a trace of desperation in her voice.

  ‘Will you, Duncan Rothmore, take this woman to be your wedded wife?’ The priest rattled out the question.

  ‘Yes,’ Duncan said, baffled at how the man was getting straight to the point. In his experience, no clergyman had ever passed up an opportunity to preach.

  ‘Will you, Katrina McLeod, take this man to be your wedded husband?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and turned to the priest. ‘It’s done,’ she said with a deep sigh. ‘For better or worse, it’s done.’

  Duncan stared at the pair of them. Baffled thoughts whirled around his mind. The priest had made a mistake. His bride was Katrina MacLelland, not McLeod. Why had she not corrected the mistake? Was his marriage valid or not? Something was going on that he didn’t understand, and the frustration of the mystery churned in his gut.

  Duncan lifted his hand to demand silence, so he could use his authority as the head of the household to force answers to the questions that bothered him, but a trumpet sounded outside. A second later, a heavy fist pummelled at the front door, the force of the blasts echoing throughout the castle.

  ‘What in hell is going on?’ Duncan asked, and limped his way to the stairs. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw the rest of the wedding party forming into a raggedy procession behind him.

  Too preoccupied by the intrusion to worry about his sudden entry into the wedded state, Duncan crossed the great hall and pulled the door open. Anger niggled inside him that he hadn’t completed mending the chains and pulleys to raise the drawbridge. Even without water in the moat, it would have improved his position if the visitors hadn’t been able to crowd into the bailey so easily.

  His eyes widened at the sight that met him.

  A knight on foot waited on either side of the front steps, their horses held by squires standing a short distance farther back. Between the two dismounted knights, three more in full armour sat on horseback, the outer ones bearing streaming purple standards decorated with a pair of crossed yellow arrows. The one in the centre wore fine German armour with the same arrow pattern on the breastplate. Behind them, the row of armed knights stretched through the bailey and out of the gate.

  ‘The King’s Arrow?’ Duncan said.

  ‘Stefan Navarro, come to collect his bride, the Countess of Glenstrachan,’ chanted the knight standing to the right of the steps.

  Duncan watched in silence as Katrina stepped out from his shadow.

  ‘Too late,’ she said. ‘The Countess of Glenstrachan is already married to Duncan Rothmore.’

  ‘I have a letter from the King confirming our betrothal two years ago.’ Stefan Navarro, the formidable warrior known as The King’s Arrow, nodded to the knight standing to the left of the steps, who offered a rolled sheet of parchment to Katrina.

  She didn’t reach out to accept the letter. ‘I have petitioned to the King to be allowed to marry Duncan Rothmore instead.’

  ‘And how has the King replied?’ Navarro asked. Locks of ebony hair whipped in the wind around his face, partly obscuring his steely grey eyes and blunt jaw. ‘Has he conceded to your request?’

  ‘The messenger has yet to return.’ Katrina craned her neck to meet the challenging stare of the huge knight on horseback.

  ‘You have defied your King,’ Navarro warned her. ‘He can make you drown for your disobedience, as easily as he drowns the rats that scurry through the sewers, and he will not hesitate to sentence your husband to hang for his part in the disloyalty.’

  ‘I’ve offered to give up my lands if the King does not approve of my marriage,’ Katrina replied. She stood str
aight, holding her head high, not shrinking beneath the scrutiny of her jilted suitor, but the tremor in her voice revealed her anxiety.

  As Duncan watched the exchange, confused thoughts chased each other in his head. McLeod. The Earl of Glenstrachan, old and ill. With one daughter, who would upon his death be the Countess of Glenstrachan.

  His wife.

  If you could live in a fine castle, with well-trained servants and two hundred knights to command, would you want to?

  ‘Why?’ he rasped. ‘Why have you done this?’

  Katrina turned to him. Her pinched expression revealed her worry and guilt. ‘Because I’d rather live in poverty with you than in luxury married to a man I fear and loathe.’

  Duncan gave his head a sharp shake, as if trying to force some order into the tumult that reigned inside his mind. ‘Your rebellion may cost you your life, and mine.’ His tone was gruff.

  ‘I’m willing to die.’ Katrina’s eyes searched his, uncertain and pleading. ‘And I had started to hope that you wouldn’t resent me for asking you to make the same sacrifice.’

  The noises in the bailey faded in Duncan’s ears. The creaking of the leather harnesses, the sharp sounds of metal armour, the restless shifting of horses, it all seemed to cease.

  Death.

  Often, he’d been forced to face the prospect on the battlefield. Many times he’d been ready to fall beneath a sword wielded by the enemy, seeking to meet his own mortality, to end a life that held too little promise, too little happiness.

  But that would have been a death with honour.

  A fitting end for the life of a noble knight.

  Now he faced shame, not just for himself, but for his family. Notoriously fickle and unpredictable, King James might see his unapproved marriage as an act of treason. As well as sentencing him to hang, the King might order the Barony of Rothmore to be forfeited to the Crown.

  The lands, the caste, the army of two hundred knights.

  Taken away. Given to others.

  Three centuries of tradition would come to an end. The honour of the Rothmore name would be trampled into dust beneath the feet of the jeering crowd that gathered to witness his execution outside Edinburg Castle.

  ‘You didn’t ask me to make the sacrifice,’ Duncan said hoarsely. ‘You took.’

  Katrina moved toward him. Without thinking, he raised his hands, palms up, in a forestalling measure to keep her from getting any closer. Comprehension flickered across her face, and Duncan could tell that she had understood the words he had left unsaid.

  I never took. Even when I had the right, I waited for you to give.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her tearful whisper drifted between them, too low for others to hear.

  Duncan nodded in acceptance of her apology, a small stiff nod that he tried to stop but couldn’t. Deep down, he knew he couldn’t blame her for acting as she had. When she saw his reluctant response, Katrina’s rigid posture eased. A current of understanding flowed between them, and another unwelcome emotion stirred in Duncan’s chest.

  Death would bring a new kind of loss to him now—that of a woman’s tenderness, a treasure he had only just won. A reluctant pride followed on the heels of the regret. What would the country think of him as a man, when they learnt that Katrina had married him, in preference to Navarro, in defiance of the command of the King?

  There was only one answer.

  After they died, troubadours would sing of a great love between them.

  The thought pulled his mouth into a bitter sneer.

  Brushing away his rambling thoughts, Duncan turned his attention to Stefan Navarro. The bastard son of a Scottish mother and a Spanish father, The King’s Arrow was feared by all and trusted by none, but considered a fair fighter in a battle.

  As their gazes met, a look of hesitation filled the dark knight’s stormy eyes.

  ‘How did you know where to find the Countess?’ Duncan asked.

  ‘My letter to the King gave the direction,’ Katrina cut in.

  Navarro’s lips curled in a humourless smile. ‘The King told me where to fetch my bride, as well as telling me that a woman doesn’t know her own mind until a man makes it up for her. His parting words were a warning that I might make a wasted journey.’

  ‘If the King told you where to fetch your bride, would he not also have sent a reply to her petition?’ Duncan asked. ‘A messenger on a fast horse would easily get here before two dozen knights riding in full armour.’

  Navarro contemplated him in silence. Then he nodded to one of the knights on foot, who retrieved a letter from a concealed pocket inside his tunic and offered it to Katrina. She accepted it with a hesitant lift of her arm.

  ‘The King’s seal is unbroken.’ She looked up at Navarro. ‘You haven’t read the letter.’

  ‘I may have the courage to intercept a message from my sovereign, but I’m not foolish enough to tamper with the contents.’ He gestured to Katrina. ‘Open it.’

  Katrina turned to pass the letter to Duncan.

  ‘It’s addressed to you,’ he said.

  Silence fell as she broke the wax seal, folded the sheet open, and read the contents. ‘The King accepts my petition.’ She pressed the letter to her chest. Tears glinted in her eyes as she smiled at Duncan. ‘It will be the King’s pleasure to confirm the title of the new Earl of Glenstrachan upon his valued vassal whose decision to give up the Barony of Rothmore caused the King great concern.’ She lowered the letter. ‘Well, do you want it? The castle and the lands and the two hundred knights, or shall I offer them to be forfeited and given to The King’s Arrow instead?’

  ‘I want them,’ Duncan said simply.

  He turned to look at Navarro who sat on his horse. ‘I have no shelter to offer here, but you and your knights are welcome to stay at Rothmore Castle which is only a short ride away.’

  The formidable knight raised one hand encased in a heavy gauntlet. Behind him, the line of knights on horseback made an orderly turn and started to ride out. The two knights on foot mounted to join the others, making it into a group of five that faced them.

  ‘I’ll ride back to Edinburg with the news,’ Navarro said. His gaze swept over Katrina and fell on Duncan. ‘Congratulations on your marriage. You may have won this time, but I look forward to one day testing my skill against yours on the tourney field.’ With a brief nod, he took his leave.

  Five minutes later, nothing remained of the small army but a cloud of dust floating on the air, and the faint tremor in the ground as the riders picked up their pace on their way down the hill.

  Duncan exhaled a slow breath. It didn’t settle the tension that seethed inside him. The fear of death and disgrace had passed, but other emotions crowded his mind. Emotions he had no control over, no means to suppress.

  ‘Come.’ He spoke to Katrina without looking at her. ‘We never concluded our conversation about what I expect from you. It’s time we did.’

  Chapter Seven

  Katrina followed Rothmore as he set off with striding steps toward the benches around the big oak table, circling past Father William who hovered by the entrance. At the far end of the room, Jackson stood, leaning one shoulder against the wall, his curious eyes flickering between his master and mistress.

  When Rothmore spotted the servant, he came to a sudden halt.

  He spun on his boot heels and changed direction, charging toward the kitchen. Agnes stepped out from the shadows, filling the doorway, her usually sour features gloating with satisfaction at seeing her master wed and restored to his former wealth.

  Swerving like a drunkard in midstep to avoid her, Rothmore headed for the narrow stone staircase that led to the upper floors. On the landing, Margaret lingered behind Joan, reaching on tiptoe to peer over the shoulder of the taller maid.

  Reeling out a litany of curses, Rothmore squeezed past the pair. ‘Can’t a man find any privacy in his own house?’ he muttered.

  Katrina’s stomach knotted as she heard the anger in his voice. What had she done? Sh
e had lost sight of what was important, had sacrificed the dignity of the man who had begun to matter to her more and more each day that passed. In the process of protecting her inheritance, she might have thrown away the trust and the high regard of Rothmore, the man who was now her husband. A shiver shook her as she stared at his back and saw it remain rigid with the effort of controlling the fury that must right now be seething inside him.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if God forgives your deceit more easily than man.’

  With that sinister statement, he pushed the chapel door open and ushered her inside. Taking a quick survey of the ramshackle furniture that cluttered the lofty space, he yanked a broken chair over to the doorway and shoved it against the oak panel, blocking access, in case anyone attempted to interrupt them.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Katrina tried to swallow her unease. Her heart drummed like that of a mouse trapped in a cage with an eagle preparing to hunt. ‘I should have told you. A man’s life is too high a stake to wager without his consent.’

  ‘Life?’ Rothmore bellowed. ‘I care nothing about my life.’

  He took a step closer and stood like an avenging angel before her, scowling down at her quivering features. ‘Ever since birth, I’ve had just one goal—to be a man of honour, so that despite my handicap I can stand with pride alongside other knights. I’ve fought a hundred battles to make sure I’m not a blot of shame on the Rothmore crest. Today, you risked robbing me of that pride.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Katrina whispered.

  ‘Sorry?’ Rothmore’s mouth tightened. ‘You made me go against my King. If he had not approved your petition, I’d now stand accused of being a traitor. For centuries to come, I’d be remembered as the man who brought shame to a noble house of knights. My cousin would be ruined. His daughters would become unmarriageable. The Rothmore name would be stained forever. All my efforts over the years would have been in vain.’

  ‘I...I wanted to tell you who I am...ask you to marry me.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ His voice was soft.

  ‘I...’

  Katrina fell silent. She had no words. They both knew that an honourable knight would never have defied the King’s command in such a bold manner. She hadn’t asked, because she had known the answer. It would have been no, perhaps a refusal tempered with a genuine regret, but a refusal nonetheless.