They departed Claven’s Carn in the early morning even before the sunrise, although the sky about them was already light with the coming day. With hard riding they would reach Friarsgate in early evening. Now Baen was anxious to arrive at his destination. Thomas Bolton considered that in another two or three days he would be back at Otterly. As for Logan Hepburn, he was anxious to conclude this business with his stepdaughter and return home with his wife. With Rosamund’s three daughters all safely wed, his life would shortly return to normal. They did not spare the horses, stopping briefly at midday to rest them, and to eat and relieve themselves.
There was just the barest hint of warmth in the air as they rode. The skies above them were a flat and cloudless blue. The sun was warm upon their shoulders. The hills about them were beginning to show patches of new green amid their winter browns. The day waned, and the sun began to sink beneath the western horizon. Reds, oranges, and golds mingled together in a glorious daub of fiery colors. Pink and mauve clouds edged with golden light drifted overhead, and now there was no breeze stirring at all. Finally the skies above them began to fade into a deeper and deeper blue. And then below them as they topped the hills the twinkling lights of Friarsgate shone in welcome.
They stopped for a moment, and seeing Baen’s face Rosamund knew that Friarsgate would be in safe hands as long as he stood by Elizabeth’s side. The look upon his handsome countenance was one of pure love. His eyes swept over the meadows, the house, the lake, with something akin to joy, as if he could not believe he was here at last, and here to stay forevermore.
“We did not send a messenger ahead,” Rosamund said quietly.
Baen turned, flashing her a grin. “You want my arrival to be a surprise,” he said.
“I thought it best,” Rosamund replied. “She will be in the hall, and cannot hide away from you if we arrive unannounced. I will want the wedding tomorrow, Baen. The quicker it is over and done with the better for Elizabeth, and for you.”
“Aye. Whatever we have to settle between us will be best done when we are finally wed,” he agreed.
“My dear Rosamund, may we please continue on,” Lord Cambridge said in a voice that bordered on the pitiful. “My poor bottom has finally revolted with my weeks in the saddle, and I want my supper!”
With a chuckle she waved them on and they descended the hill to the house.
Chapter 14
Elizabeth Meredith looked up, startled, at the noisy entrance into her hall. She flushed upon seeing Baen MacColl, and struggled to her feet. “So,” she said scathingly. “They have managed to drag you from your father’s side. Well, you have wasted your time. I’ve decided I’ll not have you. Our handfast charade will have to do until it expires, and I will raise my own bairn without your help. Go away!”
Baen looked at Elizabeth with her big belly and thought her the most beautiful woman in the world. He walked swiftly to her, sweeping her into his arms and giving her a long, satisfying kiss. “I have never missed anyone in my life the way I have missed you, Elizabeth.”
She reared back with surprising agility for a woman in her condition. Her small hand flashed out, smacking his cheek. “You dare? You dare to kiss me, you rogue!” Her voice had a very sharp edge to it. “I told you if you left me to not return! I hate you!”
“Dearest girl, do not say it!” Lord Cambridge cried, his gloved hand flying to his heart in a gesture of deep destress. “I have traveled for weeks now into the icy winter Highlands and back to restore this fellow to you. Do not, I plead with you, tell me that it has all been in vain.” He sank into a chair, reaching out for the goblet of wine a servant brought him.
The barest of smiles flitted across Elizabeth Meredith’s face, and then it was gone. “You mock me, Uncle,” she responded. “Have I not said from the moment I knew I carried this bairn that I was capable of raising my child alone? I do not need this man.”
“What?” Baen said. “You seduce me, you vixen, let me go away, and now you play the injured party? You have boldly used me to get an heir for Friarsgate, Elizabeth, but the bairn is mine as well as yours. ’Twas my seed that took root in your womb.”
“Impudent bastard!” Elizabeth cried. “You did not cry off when I seduced you!”
He caught her hand and kissed it, drawing it to his heart. “I would have been a bigger fool than I have been, Elizabeth, had I refused you,” he told her, his gray eyes twinkling at her.
She snatched her hand from his gentle grasp. “Villain! Scots knave! Scroundrel and blackguard!” She hurled the epithets at him.
“Did you not call me something similar once?” Logan Hepburn remarked to his wife wryly.
“Aye, I believe I did,” she cooed back at him with a grin.
“I am going to bed!” Elizabeth said furiously.
“You most certainly are not!” Rosamund countered. “You are going to sit at your high board with your husband by your side and see we are decently fed. We have ridden all day on a handful of oatcakes and are hungry, my daughter.”
“He is not my husband!” Elizabeth shrieked.
“Did you or did you not handfast with him last summer?” Rosamund said.
Elizabeth glared at her mother sullenly. “Aye,” she muttered. “But a handfast isn’t a real marriage. ’Tis just a promise to marry, and I’ve changed my mind.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Rosamund said. “Tomorrow morning Father Mata will formalize the union you contracted with Baen MacColl while in the throes of your lust on a summer’s night. My grandson will be born on the proper side of the blanket, for he is the next heir to Friarsgate, damn it!”
“How can you be certain ’tis a lad?” Elizabeth snapped.
“Because Hays usually throw sons,” Baen said to her. He put a hard arm about her thickened waist, drawing her close to him, and his big hand caressed her belly, feeling the child within move strongly as he did so. He grinned, pleased. “Aye, ’tis a lad,” he said. “ ’Tis our son you carry, Elizabeth. Yours and mine.”
She had felt the child inside her move with the touch of its father’s hand. For a moment feelings of tenderness threatened to overwhelm her, but then Elizabeth hardened her heart against him once more. “You’ll never have Friarsgate,” she snarled at him.
“I don’t want it,” he replied. “I want you. I want our son and the other children we will have. Friarsgate is yours. You are its lady, and nothing can change that.”
“A husband can change that,” she said. “Do you think I am a fool, and do not know the law, Baen? A woman becomes chattel once in the hands of a man. My mother suffered that, but she escaped. I will not be any man’s possession!”
“Sit down, Elizabeth,” Rosamund told her daughter. “Sit down and read the marriage contract that Baen willingly signed, and that you must now sign.” She turned at the sound of a familiar footfall as her daughter sank heavily into a cushioned chair. “Ah, Mata, here you are. Come and witness Elizabeth’s signature. You will perform the marriage in the morning. Logan and I want to return home as quickly as possible. We have left the boys alone, and the boys do quarrel when we are not there to mediate.”
Elizabeth had spread the parchment out into what now passed for her lap. Her hazel-green eyes scanned the document. Baen was to hold the position of her steward, which was, she thought, honestly fair, but other than that nothing was to change. Friarsgate remained hers, and hers alone. And if she died it returned to her mother or her heir. Relief poured through her, and her heart stopped hammering in her chest. She drew a deep breath and said, “Someone find me a quill with which to sign this.” She arose and went to her place at the high board. When the inked quill was brought to her she signed the marriage contract, sanding it afterwards to fix her signature. She said nothing more, affixing her seal into the hot wax she poured on the document. Then she shoved it towards the manor priest. “Keep it safe, good Father Mata,” she told him.
The meal was now brought to the table, and Elizabeth was surprised at the bounty of her board, for
her guests had not sent a messenger ahead. It was obvious that her servants had been expecting company, even if she had not been. Baen took his place at her right hand. She glanced at him from beneath her thick lashes. He was so handsome. She wondered if their son—their child, she corrected herself—would look like him. She had noted the name of her bridegroom on the marriage document. Baen MacColl Hay. So he was at last taking his father’s surname. Hay, she decided, would be a less contentious name here in the borders.
He watched her carefully during the meal. Her appetite was good, he was relieved to see. The bairn would be born strong and healthy from a mother who ate as Elizabeth did. But then, she had always had an appetite that surprised him on a woman. He noted she watered her wine heavily. Curious, he thought.
When she saw his interest she said, “Pure wine does not agree with me now.”
They were the only words she spoke directly to him during the evening.
After the meal, when they all sat together by the fire, Elizabeth said, “We must send for Edmund and Maybel. I cannot wed without them by my side. They were with you at my birth, Mama. They should be here when I marry.”
“Send to them tonight then,” Rosamund said. “I will not linger another day.”
“Nor I,” Lord Cambridge said. “Another day of hard riding, and I can be home at Otterly tomorrow night. I have missed my Will, and I have missed my home. I want my own bed, and meals to please my palate, and long days in my library. I shall have to undo everything dear Will has done in my absence, for he will not have cataloged to suit me. And I shall have to do it surreptitiously, lest I hurt his feelings. In the end he will believe he has done it all for me, and I shall thank him profusely.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Uncle, you are ever the sly fox.” Then she slowly rose to her feet. “Now I have done all that is required of me I shall depart to my bed. Good night.”
“Shall you join her?” Thomas Bolton asked mischievously of Baen when he believed Elizabeth was out of their hearing. His amber-brown eyes twinkled.
“I think it wise I wait until Elizabeth asks me back into her bed,” Baen answered.
“Never!” Elizabeth snapped, for her hearing was very sharp and then she was gone.
Logan chuckled.
“I think you are very prudent,” Rosamund told him, throwing an annoyed glance towards her husband. “No matter what the marriage contract says, you must convince my daughter that you will keep to your bargain. And then when she has stopped spitting at you like an angry cat you will have to woo her all over again. But when you win her for good, Baen, it will be a victory worth having, I promise you.”
“Aye,” Baen told his mother-in-law. “Elizabeth is an incredible prize, lady, and well I know it. But she has never been easy.”
His companions laughed, and Rosamund admitted, “Nay, she never has.” Then she signaled to Albert, who hurried to her side. “Has the lady sent a messenger to Edmund and Maybel’s cottage?” she asked him.
“Yes, m’lady, on her way to her chamber,” the hall steward replied.
“Then we may retire too,” Rosamund said. “Baen, you know where Elizabeth’s chamber is, of course. Sleep in the room next to hers. The one before her door,” she said. “It has a connecting door for the time when you are forgiven,” Rosamund concluded with a small smile.
He nodded, and then replied, “I will see to the house then, madame.”
“That is as it should be,” she told him, and with a nod of her head turned away, taking Logan’s arm as they exited the hall.
“Well, dear boy, ’tis almost done now,” Lord Cambridge said. “You are the perfect husband for her. I knew it from the beginning.”
Baen laughed and sat down opposite the older man. “You are a fraud, Tom,” he told him. “You hoped for one of those overbred gentlemen of the court, not the bastard of a Highland chieftain. But I thank you for your kind words.”
“I considered the possibility of a nobler match,” Lord Cambridge admitted, “but the truth is there are more bastards at court, and while their blood is finer by far than yours, you are the nobler man, Baen. The moment I realized it I strove for a match between you and Elizabeth. You surely knew you had my approval and my cousin’s.”
“I knew,” Baen answered him quietly.
“I admire your loyalty and devotion to the master of Grayhaven. I hope you will now transfer those same emotions to Elizabeth. If you had only come to me and asked, I should have arranged for the family to speak with your father. But Elizabeth was no better, and she was childish in her unspoken insistence that you choose between her and your sire,” Lord Cambridge said. “Why did you not speak out?”
Baen sighed. “I did not really feel I was worthy of the heiress of Friarsgate,” he replied. “As much as I loved her I thought she should seek a greater name than mine.”
“Yet you allowed her to seduce you, which you had to know she did to keep you by her side,” Thomas Bolton remarked.
Again the tall Scot sighed. “It was dishonorable of me, I know, but I could not resist her. I have never known a woman who could bring my blood to a boil, but she can. I will never leave her again, Tom,” Baen promised.
“Dear, dear boy,” Lord Cambridge said with a smile, “it is most unlikely my darling Elizabeth will let you. She is certain to punish you for what she deems your disloyalty, but in time she can be brought around. No one is happier than I that this situation has resolved itself so well, but then I knew it would. I have successfully settled a trio of headstrong girls. I can hardly believe it of myself.” He stood. “Good night, dear boy! I will see you in the morning.” And Thomas Bolton almost skipped from the hall, so pleased was he with how everything had turned out.
Watching him go, Baen smiled. Lord Cambridge would always remain his favorite uncle, he thought, chuckling to himself. He arose and made his rounds, seeing that the fires were all banked and the candles snuffed but for the taper he carried. Then, climbing the stairs, he found his chamber and went to bed. He was awakened even before the sunrise by the hall steward, Albert, shaking his shoulder gently.
“Master, ’tis time to arise. The lady has ordered the ceremony be said directly after prime, and ’tis in but half an hour,” Albert told Baen.
Baen swung his long legs over the bed and sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Are there any flowers in the meadow or on the hillside yet?” he asked.
“Nay, master, but there is a bit of dried white heather hanging in the pantry,” Albert answered.
“Find Nancy, and ask her if she can spare a blue ribbon. She is not to tell her mistress, Albert. I would surprise my bride.”
“I understand, master,” the older man said. He was pleased that his mistress was to marry the Scot today. The Friarsgate folk had come to like and respect him. He hurried from the bedchamber to do Baen’s bidding.
Finding a pitcher of water in the warm ashes, Baen washed himself as best he could, and then dressed himself in his best breeches, carefully tucking his linen shirt into the waist of the garment. He did not own a doublet, but he donned his sleeveless leather jerkin with the horn buttons. Over it he set a length of red-black-and-yellow Hay plaid, pinning to it the clan badge his father had given him when he turned sixteen. The falcon on it had garnet eyes. He found his boots had been cleaned, and drew them on, pleased. He might not be an elegant gentleman of a noble house, but he would make Elizabeth a presentable husband nonetheless. Running his fingers through his thick locks to neaten them, he left the bedchamber and proceeded to the hall.
“You are prompt,” Elizabeth greeted him. She was wearing a pale blue velvet gown with an extra panel in it. It had puffed sleeves tied with cream-colored ribbons. Her breasts, fuller than he recalled, swelled dangerously over the neckline. Her belly could not be hidden. Her lovely blond hair was pulled back and twisted into a soft knot affixed with silver hairpins at the nape of her graceful neck. She wore a pearl-trimmed French cap atop her head, and about her neck a rope of large pearls.
She colored but then said in a sharp tone, “Do not think you can wheedle me, sir. You deserted me, and came back only because you were dragged. Will you run back to Scotland once the priest has wed us?”
“I will remain by your side always, Elizabeth,” he responded. “And I did not desert you, which you well know. I never made any pretext of remaining at Friarsgate. You knew I had to return to Grayhaven,” he said.
“I was with child!” she cried.
“A fact you were not even aware of at the time,” he countered. “You could have written to me. I do read and write, as you know.”
“I hate you!” she muttered angrily.
“And I love you,” he told her.
“Master?” Albert was at his side. In his hand was a bouquet made from three sprigs of dried white heather tied with a blue ribbon.
“Thank you,” Baen said. Then, turning to Elizabeth, he handed her the bouquet. “ ’Tis the best we can do. Nothing is yet in bloom. I don’t even know the month now.”
She took his offering, gazing at it, tears coming to her eyes, which she hurriedly blinked back. “ ’Tis April,” she said low. “April fifth.”
“A good month, and a good day for a wedding,” Baen told her.
“Ah, here you are,” Logan Hepburn said, coming into the hall. “I have come to lead you to the church, Elizabeth. With your permission, of course. Rosamund and Tom are waiting for you in the hall,” he said to Baen.
When the bridegroom had departed Elizabeth held out her little bouquet to her stepfather. “I want to hate him,” she said, “and then he goes and finds a way to bring me a bridal posy. How could he, Logan? How dare he be kind to me? He’s only marrying me because you and Uncle Thomas dragged him back here.”
“He’s marrying you because he loves you, Bessie,” Logan told the girl.
“Don’t call me Bessie!” she sobbed.
He took her by the arm. “Come along, you impossible little shrew. The priest is waiting. Baen loves you, Elizabeth. Do not be foolish, and do not be so stubborn that you will not admit to be true what you know in your heart is true.” And the laird of Claven’s Carn firmly led her from the hall.
The Last Heiress Page 33
