by King, Susan
He saw her with greater clarity than he had ever seen anyone in his life. In her translucent eyes, he glimpsed her vulnerable soul. He realized, despite the wilder elements in her nature, just how innocent she was, just how pure.
He knew then that he had made a true and binding promise. The words he had spoken were a flawed reflection of the power he felt between them, greater than that of friendship formed from necessity. He wondered, suddenly, what he had done. This did not feel at all like a fleeting agreement.
He intended to honor what he had said to her, for so long as she needed it of him. What had happened at this crossroads had spun him like a leaf in a storm. In the first moment of settling, he did not regret what he had done.
Just as in a game of cards, he had taken a chance, gambling what he had on a bright bit of luck. A marriage made by fate had fallen into his path when he was greatly in need of a wife.
The pledge needed one last thing to complete it. He lowered his head and touched his mouth to hers, a kiss like the graze of a feather, dry and soft, meant to be the sealing of a pact.
But she moaned, a little whisper of sound, and the pulse of his need, and her own, pounded through him with undeniable force. He angled his head and kissed her deeply, releasing the silk to plunge his fingers into the cloud of her hair, shaping his palms to her head.
Her right hand came up to touch his jaw. He dropped a hand to her waist and held her against him, knowing that she wanted to be in his arms, and that he wanted her there. He moved his mouth over hers, brushed his thumbs along her cheeks, and felt her lips open in tentative welcome.
She pulled back. "'Tis done," she said breathlessly. "'Tis made, this... marriage, this friendship that we have pledged."
"Friendship, if you wish," he said. He felt a bit short of breath himself, and curiously muddled.
"Is that what friends do, then, at the royal courts?" Her eyes twinkled, and her lips were still dark pink from the kiss. He laughed softly, and she did too. He liked the sound of it.
He gathered the scarf in one hand and stepped back, tying it about his neck once again. "Pray your pardon," he said. "I meant just to seal the pact with a chaste kiss."
"That wasna chaste." She still smiled, a little.
"It started out in that manner," he said. "I swear it." He took her arm and guided her out of the stone heart. "I promise you, 'twillna happen again."
She pushed slender fingers through her hair, as if befuddled. "What shall we do now?"
"We'll go to Rookhope," he said. "As we had planned."
"And then? Will you put me in your dungeon?"
"Ah, now, would I ask my wife to sleep in my dungeon?"
She tilted her head. "Will you let her have your fine bed?"
He pinched back a smile. "If she wants it."
"Aye, she does," she answered crisply. "You may have a pallet elsewhere." She flashed him a winsome smile, so charming that it might have broken any man's heart. It stirred his like wind through the trees, fresh and pure.
She turned away to walk to her horse, and he could not help but notice the sway of her hips beneath her skirt. Without asking for his assistance, she grasped the horse's mane and placed her foot on a rock in order to climb onto the horse's blanketed back. William stepped toward her and bent to scoop his hand under her narrow foot, boosting her easily onto the horse.
"So that is the way of it," he said, patting the horse's muzzle as he spoke to Tamsin. "The poor beleaguered husband must sleep in a cold corner, while the wife takes his fine, soft bed. I have wed myself a princess."
"If you dinna like it," she said, "we can dissolve the marriage whenever you wish—after my grandfather has told Baptiste Lallo to find himself another woman to scrub his pots and wipe his children's noses."
"And how do we dissolve our marriage pact?"
She cocked a brow at him. "That depends on whether we have a kind parting or an angry one."
"Kind, surely, having done such a favor of friendship for one another this day."
"Then we break a clay pot between us," she said.
"Easy enough," he said. "And angry?"
"We would face one another over the body of a dead animal, say our grievances, and go our ways."
He looked at her in dismay. "Like a hare or a bird?"
"Oh," she said, "like the body of your best horse." She lifted the reins and turned her mount to ride away.
William watched her, aware that a grimace soured his face. He walked to the bay and rubbed the gleaming red-brown shoulder.
"Dinna fret, lad," he said. "Dinna fret. For your sake, I will be careful and courteous to yon lass."
Chapter 16
"Both in a tune like two gipsies on a horse."
—Shakespeare, As You Like It
"My grandfather wanted to give Baptiste two horses and some gold coins as a dowry for me," she remarked, as they rode side by side later. She slid him a careful look.
A smile played at his lips. "He obviously preferred Baptiste to me. All I got was a neck scarf."
"Ah," she said. "The finest Oriental silk, embroidered by a princess of France and given to an earl of Lesser Egypt. My grandmother prefers you to Baptiste. She would never have given him that particular neck scarf." She tilted her head as she looked at him. "I think I too prefer you to Baptiste."
"And all the while, I thought you didna want to come with me for fear of my dungeon," he said.
Tamsin liked the way he kept his smiles low, so that the humor shone brighter in his clear blue eyes. She thought he enjoyed the teasing chatter between them as much as she did. "Ah, well, a fortnight in gentle confinement wouldna disturb me much. You did agree to give up your fine bed to me."
She hoped for another smile, but he grew solemn. "What happens in a fortnight, lass?"
She shrugged, wanting to preserve the lighthearted mood that had existed between them since their impulsive vows. "We shall break a jug and let ourselves free of this agreement."
He did not answer. The morning light glinted off his helmet, shadowing his face beneath. She watched him, noting the clean, balanced line of his profile, the sensuous curve of his lower lip, the slight droop of his eyelids when he was relaxed. His firm jaw-line was blurred by the dark sand of his beard. She remembered its brush over her skin when he had kissed her. At that memory, she touched her hand to her heart, as if to seal in the feeling that stirred through her.
The smoke of the fire that they had created inside the heart circle had cleared, and left her wondering just what she had done. She suspected, by William's long silence during the ride, that he wondered too. But she wanted only to live in the present moment. She liked riding with him at this leisurely pace, she enjoyed resting her gaze upon him, and she liked the teasing tone between them. He surprised her with as quick a wit as her father, though quieter and more wry.
She felt comfortable in his company, as if she had known him for years, as if she understood him like brother, friend, lover. Though she was unable to reconcile those impressions with what she had learned of him at Musgrave's castle, she told herself that he likely had good reasons for the secrets he kept, and for the motives that did not look wholesome on the outside.
He was capable of kindness and generosity, and had a strong regard for friendship. That in itself bespoke a loyal man, one to admire. Whatever she discovered of him, she would not forget that he had given her his friendship and his loyalty when she had needed help.
She had never had a truly close friend. His pledge to her had tugged firmly at her heart, and helped explain why she had followed through with this arrangement. Perhaps that bond would be enough later.
She glanced at him, and received one of those slow, quiet smiles. Her heart faltered, and she knew that a bond of friendship would never be enough.
* * *
By the time the sun shone high and bright overhead, her stomach rumbled with hunger and her bruised leg ached from riding. Tamsin was glad to see William raise his hand and point ahead. "There,
on that rise," he said, "sits Rookhope Tower."
She shielded her eyes with her gloved hand. In the distance, a gray stone tower rose above a walled yard. Massive and blocklike, made up of two main structures joined together, the keep had a machicolated parapet and a grim, nearly windowless facade. Set on a swath of cleared land surrounded by ditches, the site was protected on three sides by forestland and bare slopes. The fourth wall faced a deep chasm, a slash in the land.
"A strong tower," she said. "And difficult to breach."
"Aye. Rookhope is one of the strengths of the Border," he said. A flock of small black birds rose out of the forest and flew past the tower like a dark veil. "Ah, see there—some of the rooks for which the place was named centuries ago, when the first castle was built on this site."
"Rooks are called gypsy birds, did you know?" she asked.
"I have heard that, aye." He laughed low, as if to himself. "So the laird of Rookhope brings a gypsy bird to his nest."
She knew he made a pun. "Burd" was a Scots word for lass. "Aye, 'tis fitting," she agreed.
"Bluebonnets, just there," he said, as they followed the road, which she saw wound closer to Rookhope, "are called the gypsy flower." He gestured toward the blue blossoms on long, slender stalks that formed airy clusters along the edge of the earthen tract and sprinkled patches of color throughout the meadow. "They grow in abundance here. Named for the way they spread so freely over the land, taking root and sprouting where they will."
"They're bright and bonny, those gypsy flowers," she said.
He turned his head, and below the shade of his helmet brim, his gaze swept her up and down. "Aye," he murmured, and looked away. "I visited a gypsy camp with King James once," he said. "Though it was another band, not your grandfather's. I would have recognized him, and he me, otherwise," he said.
"King James visited my grandfather's band too," she said. "I was with them once when he came—I remember a very young man with long red hair and a lanky shape. He wore the guise of a beggar. He was alone, I think, though he came to see my grandfather at other times too. Certainly you werena with him. I would have remembered you," she added softly.
He shrugged. "I am near enough to the next man," he said. "Dark and tall. There are many like me."
She shook her head. "Your eyes are like those flowers there, bright blue. The color sparks, even from a distance."
He watched her for a moment, then unwound the scarf from his throat. "And yours," he said, "make this silk look dull."
She felt herself blush. He wound the cloth around his upper arm, tucking it with the nimble fingers of one hand. "How was it you traveled with the king?" she asked. "I know you were a friend to him, but I..." She hesitated. "I heard that you were a prisoner of the crown in those years."
He did not seem to mind that she knew that about him. "My father was hanged for a thief," he said. "And I was held as a pledge for my kinsmen. I was kept in a dark cell until they knew what to do with me. At the time, the earl of Angus had the young king under his thumb in captivity—a bored and intelligent lad greatly in need of a companion. I was given quarters near the king and allowed to share lessons and leisure time with him."
"Educated with a king?" she asked. "Fortunate, indeed."
"I suppose so," he said. "Though I would have traded it all for the life that was taken from me." Tamsin tilted her head, listening, waiting, but he said no more about that. "Even when James gained back his own freedom at the age of sixteen," he went on, "I didna acquire my own freedom legally until James granted it me when I was twenty. After that, I lived at court, and accompanied the king on his progresses about the country. I did a great deal of traveling myself, on errands for the crown."
"You stayed with the court after you were released?" she asked. "You didna go home to Rookhope?"
"Occasionally, but my family was no longer there," he answered. "The tower was held for me by kinsmen sent by Scott of Buccleuch, the chief of our name. My mother and my sister and brother were at Brentshaw, with my stepfather, Robert Maxwell, but I didna care to go there. So I lived wherever the court happened to be—at Edinburgh, Falkland, Linlithgow, or Stirling—or I stayed at a house I own in Edinburgh. Last year my mother was widowed again, and she wanted to go back to Rookhope with my sister, who is also a widow. Then I too chose to live at Rookhope," he said. "My daughter is in their care."
"Your kin are important to you," she said.
He nodded. "Aye." A curt answer, but deep pink stained his lean cheek, and a small muscle jumped in his jaw. Family, she realized, was essential to him. As were his private thoughts, for he said no more.
"After your confinement ended, you traveled with the king of Scotland?" she asked. "That must have been truly exciting."
His smile was rueful. "Aye. In my way, I have been a gypsy." He glanced at her.
"You went a-wandering?" she asked.
"On errands for the king, aye. I have been to England and Denmark, and to France, Italy, and Germany as well. And everywhere I went, lass," he added thoughtfully, "I saw traveling caravans of gypsies along the roadsides and in the fields, and at market fairs."
She nodded. "The Romany travel everywhere on the Continent, and in the eastern countries too, I hear. They are in great numbers in England and Scotland, although the English now are beginning to deport shiploads of them to Denmark. My grandparents came from France and traveled to England when they were young, wandering up into Scotland," she said.
"They havena traveled out of Scotland, then, for a long while," he said.
"They will stay here so long as they are welcome, I think," she said. "The Scots are more tolerant of the Romany than most other places. They have some freedom here to govern themselves."
"Have you been elsewhere?" he asked.
"Only in England, of a moonlit night." She smiled. "When I was small, I lived with my grandparents and spoke Romany and French. My father brought me to Merton when I was about six years of age. His grandmother—Mother Maisie—was there to help raise me, but I didna speak Scots or any English at all. Da hired a male tutor who spoke French to teach me Scots. I learned more than Scots from my dominie, for he also taught me to read English and Latin, and taught me some arithmetic too."
He glanced at her. "An educated gypsy lass? Unusual."
"You were educated with a king. We are both unusual in our education. And in our wandering natures, I think. Tell me about your journeys with the king."
He shrugged. "The most exciting moments were the times I accompanied him on his secret tours. He liked to go about his country disguised as a beggar or as a farmer. 'The Goodman of Ballangeich', he called himself then. We found trouble at times, especially in the inns, where there were often fights over gambling or Border matters. I dragged him to safety once or twice, when no one knew that they wrestled or argued with the king of Scotland. The more he went about, the more his disguises were for naught," he said with a fleeting grin. "The Scots are a canny lot. Some would say, 'Ho, there goes the king again', as he went by in his rags."
She chuckled. "Did you visit gypsy camps with him?"
"Aye, though I didna visit your grandfather's band myself. James mentioned an Egyptian earl named John Faw, who once cured his horse of a sickness, for which the king was very grateful. He must have meant your grandfather."
She nodded. "He did. He met with my grandfather a few times, even invited him to bring his troupe to the royal court to perform. Three years ago, when my grandfather brought his band to Falkland Palace, the king wrote out a note of privilege and safe conduct for him."
He frowned. "Was that your grandfather's band? I heard about the performance—many were impressed—and the writ."
"Then you know what came after."
"Aye, the king issued another writ a few months later. He took away the privileges of the first, and declared that all gypsies must leave the realm of Scotland. He seemed in a temper over it, as I recall."
She nodded. "The Romany are condemned by England and
Scotland both now, and so they go back and forth across the Border to avoid deportation and persecution in both countries. My grandfather was hurt by King James's betrayal of friendship."
"James had a fickle nature. Why did John Faw lose favor?"
"My grandfather hit him," she said.
William lifted his brows. "Hit the king?"
"About two years past, the king came to the camp guised as a farmer. He was drunk, for he had come from an inn where he had been dicing. When he came to the camp that night, he fondled one of the women in a rude manner. My grandfather hit him over the head with a bottle of wine that the king had given him."
William blinked his astonishment. "John Faw was lucky—he might have lost his life for such a deed."
"Perhaps he was saved because King James regarded him as an earl among his own people. And he had great respect for my grandfather's skill with horses. The king even consulted my grandmother about his future."
"Did she predict long life and good fortune? James had neither, in the end."
Tamsin stared at the blue flowers that lined the roadside. "She saw the truth, before anyone else," she said. "She knew that the king would come to an early death. I know she warned King James of ill health. But sometimes a heeding is for naught. Sometimes fate is too powerful a force."
"Fate," he said, "works its will with many."
"Aye." She glanced at him, feeling somber. "So now the king is dead, and his wee daughter has the throne."
"A teething bairn on a monarch's throne is far more trouble than you can imagine."
"'Tis well for the Romany," she said. "The Scots Privy Council canna be bothered with them just now, and my grandfather still has King James's writ of safe conduct. He uses it freely. Many Scots dinna know about the second writ banning us, so that he still gains privileges for his people." She tilted her head. "Have you seen wee Queen Mary?" she asked curiously.
"Aye. A bonny bairn, and a mighty difficulty for Scotland. Henry of England hovers over her cradle like a vulture."