“My love, my love,” Rowan said, and she struggled for control, anxious not to make Daniel cry.
“I…”
“It’s all right,” he said. “Everything will be all right,” he vowed, and then he smiled. “Because I will never leave you again. Ever. I have served my country, and we both served the queen we love, with all that was in us. But now I have discovered that the Scotland that I love is here on my own land and in my heart, that I cannot change other men, and I certainly can’t change the world. So…I will always do what I can to speak for the queen, to create peace and reason. But I will never leave you again.”
She stroked Daniel’s hair, meeting Rowan’s eyes, and smiled, though her own eyes remained damp. “And I will love you forever,” she breathed. “And ever.”
FATE WAS KIND to them.
Even the great preacher Knox was furious when he found out that decisions of the soul were being tried and judged on a political basis.
The Reverend Miller and the Reverend Donahue were arrested to stand trial. The poets of the day wrote beautiful stories about Laird Rowan’s rescue of his lady wife, and their status was assured in Scotland, their home secure.
Queen Mary miscarried, and the fierce maternal instinct that had made her proclaim for Bothwell was gone, but the people—her people, who had so loved their beautiful queen—could not forgive what they believed to be her complicity in a murder perpetuated so that she could marry her lover.
She escaped her captivity from the Douglas stronghold, helped by several members of the family, and fled to England.
Rowan and Gwenyth traveled many times to see her throughout the years of her incarceration by her cousin, gratified to find that Elizabeth—though refusing to see her cousin—also for many years refused her lords’ urging when they suggested that Mary was a threat against the state and should be executed. There was still the possibility of a Catholic uprising, and Elizabeth was too wise to incite it.
As the years passed, Daniel was joined by Ian, Mark, Ewan, Haven, Mary and Elizabeth. Gwenyth’s children were with her when Rowan, every bit the great knight as when she had met him, when she and Mary had both been such young women, came to her with word of Mary of Scotland’s death. He tried to break the news to her gently, told her that Mary had been surrounded by those she loved when she had walked to the scaffold, that no one there, not her enemies, not Elizabeth’s servants, could say that she died with anything other than the greatest composure and dignity. She had offered her love to those around her, and she had assured them all that she knew she would find her place in Heaven with her God, and that she was weary and ready to rest.
The threats and the pressure had grown too many and too great. Queen Elizabeth had felt forced to give in.
Headstrong, passionate, determined to be the best ruler she could be, prey to plots around her, still seeking the best in men, Mary, beautiful, vivacious, tempestuous Mary, Queen of Scots, had ended her days with grace and elegance.
No matter how Rowan tried to ease the blow, Gwenyth was heartsick. She cried for days on end. She needed time alone. Rowan gave her that time. He was busy, the threat of war with England looming on the horizon. Mary’s people might have turned against her when she had needed them, but they didn’t intend to tolerate her death now. But James, her son, now grown, lived with the dream that had been bred into him: that of the joint thrones of Scotland and England. He could have led the country to war, but he did not.
Several weeks after the queen’s death, Gwenyth rose from her chair when the family had ended supper and walked around behind her husband, slipping an arm around him, pressing a kiss against his cheek. “I need you so tonight,” she whispered.
Rowan rose a little too quickly.
“Good heavens,” Daniel said lightly, shaking his head.
“What on earth does that mean?” Marcy—as their Mary was called—demanded.
Daniel, fully a man then, laughed and looked at his parents, then apologized. “I’m so sorry. But you two have been married these many, many, many—”
“Aye, Daniel, move it on,” Rowan said.
“Well, it is almost embarrassing,” Ian put in.
“What are you talking about?” Marcy persisted.
“It means we’re seeking a name for a new baby,” Daniel said with a soft groan.
“Daniel, it is a problem we will just have to deal with,” Rowan said firmly, and winked at Gwenyth. Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he swept his protesting wife off her feet and, ignoring their handsome brood of children, carried her laughing all the way up the stairs.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-0832-5
THE QUEEN’S LADY
Copyright © 2007 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
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