Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy Two 02] (2 page)

Seeing hers fly straight to its target, he frowned when he recognized a young courtier who had been shamelessly flirting with her an hour earlier.

As experienced as he was himself in the art of dalliance, he had easily read her behavior then as well-practiced but meaningless flirtation. She did not care a rap for the lad but was enjoying herself nonetheless.

The young man’s behavior seemed less playful, mayhap even predatory.

Despite that, the watcher was pleased to see her delight.

When she had arrived midmorning with the princess Isabel Stewart’s party, a wariness in the lass’s demeanor had done more to draw his attention than the simple elegance of her dress. In his twenty-five years, he had trained many dogs and horses, and had stalked deer. He’d spent much time in the woods, too, where he liked to sit quietly for no better reason than to see what he might see.

Such experience had stirred him to think the unruly crowd intimidated her, as a pack of wolves might intimidate a young doe that wandered naïvely into its midst.

He decided that was why he had kept an eye on her and had even begun to feel this odd sense of protectiveness toward her.

Most eyes focused on Princess Isabel, the young, beautiful, but still grieving widow of James, second Earl of Douglas, killed sixteen months before, during the victorious Battle of Otterburn. No one knew all the facts of his death, but the princess suspected murder and never hesitated to say so.

Others dismissed her suspicions as the imaginings of a mind distraught with grief, and the Douglases had hastily remarried her to one of their wealthier vassals. But she refused to live with her new husband, and the watcher doubted that the man wielded any influence over her. The princess had a mind of her own.

He’d never met her, but he had met her younger sister, Gelis, whose husband, Sir William Douglas, Laird of Nithsdale, was a longtime friend. Will was organizing an expedition to Prussia, to join a crusade, and since the Borders had been at peace for over a year, the watcher had decided to go with him, to search for new adventures.

Shifting his gaze from Isabel to scan the rest of her large party, he saw two Douglas knights he knew and his cousin, Sir Walter Scott, who had recently become Laird of Buccleuch.

The watcher’s gaze shifted back to the fascinating lass, whose merriment had changed to wariness again. She looked as if she watched for someone in particular.

When another lady walked up behind her and touched her arm she started, then smiled with relief.

From the strong resemblance between the two, he guessed they were sisters. Then Buccleuch joined them and slipped a possessive arm around the other woman. Such an intimate gesture told the watcher she must be his lady wife.

The watcher moved away then, because Buccleuch would recognize him and might motion him over to introduce him. Much as he would have liked the introduction, he did not want to draw attention to himself just yet.

Even so, he could not resist returning a half hour later to watch her again.

Buccleuch had moved on with his lady, and the lass stood near a roaring fire, chatting with another of Isabel’s ladies. Not far from them, children toasted bannocks and mutton collops at the flames.

Then, abruptly, a well-dressed man strode up to the two, caught the lass by an arm, and swung her to face him.

The watcher moved nearer, frowning.

The lass tried to pull away, but the man held her and put his face close to hers. Clearly berating her, he gave her arm a shake to punctuate his words.

The watcher stepped nearer, hesitant, thinking the man must be a kinsman of hers, one who had right and reason to speak so sharply to her.

But she resisted as if he were ordering her to do something against her will. She was growing angry, perhaps frightened.

The man shook a finger at her.

When she stepped back, he followed, emphasizing his words with his pointing finger, thumping her chest with it as he might an obstinate lad’s.

The watcher’s focus narrowed until he saw only the offensive finger.

A few long strides carried him within reach.

Grabbing the lout by an arm, just as the lout had grabbed her, he swung him and slammed a blow to his jaw powerful enough to send him to the ground and keep him quiet for a few minutes, at least.

Seeing the lass clap both hands to her mouth, looking half astonished and half frightened, he swept off his plumed cap, bowed with a smile, and said lightly, “I trust that churl will trouble you no further, my lady. You should keep clear of such men.”

She avoided his gaze as she murmured unsteadily, “Should I?’

“Aye, and with respect, I’d suggest that you rejoin the princess now and keep near her lest he try to accost you again.”

She looked at him then, revealing a pair of long-lashed, melting hazel-green eyes as she said in a surprisingly low, delightfully musical voice, “You should not have struck him, sir. But I own, it was wonderful to see him bested for once.”

“He looks somewhat familiar, my lady. I’m curious as to his name.”

Dryly, she said, “He is Simon Murray, sir, my elder brother.”

“Is he, indeed? I trust you’ll forgive me then if I don’t linger till he wakens.”

Her lips twitched with amusement, but she nodded.

As he turned away, he saw the princess approaching.

“Who was that?” he heard her ask the lass.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But he laid Simon out with one blow, so I do wonder who he can be.”

Sir Garth Napier smiled as he strode off.

It was always good to leave a woman wondering.

Chapter 1

Scone Abbey, 14 August 1390

S
cotland’s long-awaited Coronation Day had come at last, and a vast crowd had gathered to see what they could see. Although it might be hours yet before the ceremony ended and the newly crowned High King of Scots emerged from the abbey kirk, the teeming mass already overflowed the abbey grounds.

Scone Abbey sat on a terrace above the flat vale of the river Tay a few miles north of St. John’s town of Perth. Monastic buildings lay east and west of the kirk, while to its north stood a higher mound of grassy land, known as Moot Hill.

Minutes before, John Stewart, Earl of Carrick and heir to Scotland’s throne, had made his awkward way to the kirk from Abbots’ House, a three-story gray-stone building that stood between the kirk and the eastern monastic buildings. While Carrick prepared for the ceremony, those privileged to witness it would take their places.

The kirk being modestly appointed and small for its ilk, only royal family members, their attendants, and higher-ranking nobility could go inside. Even so, the crowd was enormous. Nearly everyone who was anyone had come, as well as many hundreds of lesser estate or none at all.

Carrick’s passage had occasioned much comment. He was thin, stooped, and pale, looked much older than his fifty years, and thanks to a kick from a horse years before, he walked with a limp. Worse, he was a man of peace and a scholar with no interest in politics. Put plainly, he was not what Scots expected their High King to be. They wanted their kings to be warriors who strode boldly and ruled decisively.

Carrick was unlikely to do either.

Movement near the largest of the eastern monastic buildings diverted the crowd’s attention as a group of six splendidly attired young noblewomen emerged.

Cheers erupted when people recognized the princess Isabel Stewart, one of the few popular members of the royal family. Her late husband, James, second Earl of Douglas, had been Scotland’s finest warrior, a great hero, and a man of enormous popularity. His death two years before, while leading a victorious Scottish army against a much larger English force at Otterburn, had shocked the entire country—hence the wild reaction to his tragically widowed countess.

Everyone knew she still grieved his loss and believed that murder, rather than fair battle, had taken him. That belief had strengthened with the undeniable murder in faraway Danzig of Will Douglas of Nithsdale, her sister Gelis’s husband.

Not only had Will been almost as beloved a hero as the second earl, but two sudden deaths by violence of popular Douglases had also raised more suspicions than those of their princess wives. Yet few men dared voice the growing suspicion that someone was efficiently eliminating any threat the royal Stewarts might face from the more powerful Douglases, or from anyone else for that matter.

The crowd had been watching for Isabel, because word had spread that the new sovereign and his wife were staying in Abbots’ House, and lesser members of his family in the eastern monastic buildings. The Austen Canons who normally inhabited those Spartan quarters, and the Abbot of Scone, had moved in with their brethren in the western buildings for the duration of the coronation activities.

Although Scone Abbey was of great importance to the country, it was not as grand as Dunfermline in Fife or Scone’s sister house, Dundrennan, in the Borders. But Scone had served as capital of the ancient Pictish kingdom, and therein lay its importance to the Scottish people and the reason their coronations took place there.

The princess Isabel and her five ladies walked two by two. Isabel walked with seventeen-year-old Lady Amalie Murray, whose neatly coiffed raven tresses, hazel-green eyes, and buxom figure provided a pleasing contrast to the princess’s fair, slender, blue-eyed beauty. Their gowns contrasted well, too, Isabel in pale primrose yellow satin trimmed with ermine, and the lady Amalie in leaf-green and pink silk with wide embroidered bands of edging. Isabel waved occasionally to the cheering crowd, but the other ladies paid them scant heed, chatting instead among themselves.

“ ’Tis a strange business, this, Isabel,” the lady Amalie said as her gaze moved warily over the raucous crowd. “When we arrived two days ago, all was fun and feasting. Then yesterday we attended a state funeral—although his grace, your father, has been dead now for a full three months. Then, more feasting after the funeral, and now, on the third day, we are finally to crown the new King of Scots.”

“In fact, ’tis my brother Fife who crowns him,” Isabel said with familiar bitterness. “As we have seen, all must be as Fife ordains. Even the name the new King must take is Fife’s own Sunday name of Robert. Thus, John Stewart, Earl of Carrick, is to become Robert the Third, because Fife declares that we cannot have a king named John without reminding people that John Balliol tried to steal the crown, even though that event happened years ago. If Carrick were to remain John, Fife says, he would have to be John the Second, which would give too much import to the usurper Balliol. Fife says
that
would undermine the line of Robert the Bruce.”

“But to make such decisions is the Earl of Fife’s duty, is it not?” Amalie said, still searching the crowd. “He
is
now Governor of the Realm, after all.”

“Aye, so he still calls himself,” Isabel said. “The truth is that his grace, my father, appointed Fife Governor because Father believed himself too old and infirm to rule properly. But in May, when he died, Fife’s right to the position of Governor died with him. Sithee, he held it only at the King’s pleasure.”

“When others said as much, Fife insisted that the right remained with him until we buried the old King and crowned a new one,” Amalie reminded her. “Moreover, besides being Earl of Fife, he is also Earl of Menteith. So the right to act as coroner today is reserved to him by tradition, is it not?”

“Nay, that is but the way he chooses to interpret that tradition. The right to act as coroner lies with his wife’s family, the MacDuffs, not with the earldom he assumed by marrying her. A MacDuff has placed the crown on the head of every new King of Scots since ancient times—until today.”

That Fife’s version differed from others’ did not surprise Amalie. He was not, in her experience, a man whose word one accepted without corroboration. Nearly everyone she knew distrusted him, save her brother Simon.

Simon admired Fife and had served him loyally for nearly eight years while, in effect, Fife had ruled Scotland. With the King less and less able to rule and Carrick uninterested, Fife had steadily acquired more and more power.

Isabel was frowning, which made her look older than her twenty-four years. With her fair hair and flawless skin, she was strikingly beautiful. But she had once been merry, forthright, and carefree. Since her beloved first husband’s death, she had lost much of the vivacity that had set her apart from other beautiful noblewomen.

As their party passed Abbots’ House to approach the kirk entrance, Amalie’s searching gaze lit at last on an older couple near the stone steps to the kirk porch.

“Faith, Isabel, my parents are waiting for me,” she muttered as she slowed to let the princess walk ahead of her.

A pair of stalwart knights preceded them, and because Amalie had been watching for her parents, she was sure that neither Sir Iagan nor Lady Murray had yet seen her. But they could not miss her if she walked up the steps right past them, as she would have to do to enter the kirk with Isabel.

“You cannot avoid them much longer,” Isabel said over her shoulder with one of her rare smiles. “They mean you no harm, after all.”

“I fear they may have found a husband for me,” Amalie said. “I’ve told them I don’t want one, but now that Buccleuch has succeeded to his father’s title and estates, I’m sure my mother will have persuaded my father that he can make an advantageous alliance for me just as he did for Meg. Faith, but Simon said as much eight months ago at Yuletide. He said that being good-sister to a man as powerful as Buccleuch will make up for all my faults. I’ve avoided seeing any of my family again until now only because, since then, you have rarely stayed anywhere longer than a fortnight.”

“You’ve few faults that I can see,” Isabel said. “I’ve told you myself that I know of more than one eligible young man who’d welcome you as his bride.”

“Well, I don’t want a young man or any other sort,” Amalie said. Isabel had been kind enough to provide a sanctuary when she had needed one. But Isabel did
not
know all there was to know about her, and Amalie did not intend to tell her.