Bond of Passion (22 page)

In the early months of their marriage he had actually come to like her for the qualities that had nothing to do with her gorgeous, tempting body. He saw kindness, thoughtfulness, and intelligence. It was her clever mind that he found truly pleased him, and her instant loyalty to Duin. Then, when they had finally joined their bodies, he had been astounded by the perfection of her body. It had aroused in him a passion such as he had never known. Some might have thought it lust, and perhaps in the beginning it had been. But not now. He was in love with his wife, and could not imagine his life without her. To his relief she had responded in kind to his passion. “Enough, sweetheart,” he begged her.

Annabella arose gracefully, slipping her arms about his neck, her lithe body pressing against him. “Dinna play the lover, my lord. I need ye inside of me. Deep inside! Afterward we will sport ourselves with kisses and caresses, but now I very much need to be fucked, Angus, my lord and husband.”

He pressed her back against the edge of the bed, pushing her down, drawing her legs up and over his shoulders. “I am happy to oblige ye, madam,” he said thickly, guiding his engorged cock into her with an audible sigh of pleasure.

Wet and hot, her sheath enclosed him eagerly, squeezing the long, thick peg that plunged itself into her right to the very hilt.

“Is that what ye desire, madam?” he demanded of her. He stood very still now.

“Aye!”
Holy Mother!
His cock throbbed with life as he stood over her. Her eyes were shut to better experience the sensations, and she repeated, “Oh, aye, Angus! But ’twill be even more perfect, my darling, if ye will . . . Ahhh! Oh! Aye! Just like that! Dinna stop! Dinna ye dare stop!” Her hands fisted themselves into the coverlet beneath.

At first he moved with slow and majestic strokes, pushing as deep as he could, slowly withdrawing almost all the way until he could see his tormenting was beginning to drive her wild with passion. After a time he increased his tempo, his cock flashing furiously back and forth with great rapidity. Her pleasurable moans of delight increased his own desire. He felt invincible. As if he could go on like this forever and ever.

They were both panting as each stroke of his cock brought them closer and closer to pure perfection. Annabella burned and froze with her need for him. She tightened herself about him again, wresting a cry of delight from him. Knowing that he wanted her, needed her, every bit as much as she did him excited Annabella. The rapture began to build, swiftly rising up to overwhelm her. She opened her mouth to scream her satisfaction as she was rocked by spasm after spasm after spasm.

Angus roared in reply as his love juices burst forth in a torrent of excess. For a few moments he remained buried within her, unable to withdraw, for she was so delicious. Finally he withdrew his temporarily appeased manhood from her momentarily gratified body. “Are ye content for the moment, ye lustful vixen?” he asked, smiling down at her.

“Aye, for the moment,” she teased back. Then she said, “Do ye think we’ve made another bairn, Angus?”

“There is time for us,” he answered.

“Nay, I have nae done my duty by ye or by Duin until I have given ye an heir. I wonder if the child I lost was a lad or a lass,” Annabella said. “I have often wondered.”

“Get under the coverlet,” he said, and he joined her. “Dinna think of it, sweetheart. God will provide us with an heir when the time is right.” His arms went about her, and he stroked her head comfortingly.

Ohh, she loved him! She had never thought it of herself that she could fall in love with a man who didn’t admit to loving her. But why on earth was she complaining? Annabella considered, as she drifted into sleep. Angus Ferguson was a good husband.

He kept no mistress and treated her with kindness and respect. But she loved him. She wanted him to love her. Could he love at all? Could he love her? Ever?

It was October when word finally reached Duin that the queen had been delivered on the nineteenth of June of a fair son who was to be called James, and would be the sixth of his name. But the queen remained estranged from her son’s father. Though he had been cleared of any culpability in the murder of David Riccio, Mary had come to despise the degenerate drunk Henry, Lord Darnley, had become.

“Poor lady,” Annabella said.

“She wed him willingly,” Agnes replied.

“What a hard-hearted little minx ye are,” Matthew Ferguson remarked.

“Well, she did,” Agnes retorted. “No one wanted her to wed him, but she insisted. Now she has discovered the truth of what he is, which her advisers saw beforehand. Didn’t Lord Bothwell say it the last time he visited?”

“She was in love,” Annabella told her sister. “A woman in love sometimes makes foolish choices.”

“Which is as good a reason as I can think of for this nebulous thing they call love having naught to do with marriage,” Agnes said. “Marriage has always been a practical matter between families, and so it should remain. The queen will have Darnley for a husband until death parts them.”

“He’ll drink himself to death sooner rather than later,” the earl said. “And Bothwell says he is riddled wi’ the pox.”

“He is one to talk, considering his amours,” Agnes said boldly.

“Aggie!” Annabella was shocked. “James Hepburn is a fine gentleman, and a close friend of this family. It does not become ye to repeat the tittle-tattle ye have heard from the servants, who no doubt tittle-tattle about ye. Perhaps ye should return home to Rath, for it would seem the freedoms we have allowed ye here at Duin have gone to yer head,” the countess said sternly.

“Ohh, dinna send me back to Rath!” Agnes Baird pleaded with her sister. “I couldn’t bear it, Annabella. It is so dull there, and our parents will be seeking to find a suitable husband for me. Robbie will nae chose a wife for himself until we are all wed, and Da grows anxious for another heir for Rath.”

“Well . . .” Annabella pretended to consider.

“Send the troublesome chatterbox back,” Matthew said mischievously.

Agnes turned on him furiously. “Oh! Ye!” she sputtered. “Ye’re only saying that to irritate me.”

“Please tell me that I have succeeded,” he teased her.

“Why do ye persist in being mean to me when I can see that ye’d rather kiss me?” Agnes taunted him. “Why don’t ye?”

Matthew Ferguson blushed bright red. Her instincts were correct, although he was not of a mind to admit to it yet. What if he did and she mocked him, as she was teasingly doing now? “Ye’re not old enough to be kissed,” he said loftily.

“Hah!” Agnes countered. “I’ll be sixteen in December!”

“Enough,” Annabella said quietly. “Behave yerself, Aggie, and ye may remain at Duin. Matthew, stop baiting her. My sister is nae too young to be kissed, but ye are too old to tease her in such a manner.”

Watching her gently chastise their siblings, Angus Ferguson grinned. What a woman she was, his Annabella!

October was gone with its grouse hunting. November came, and the pigs were slaughtered for the winter, save a few. Then it was December, and they celebrated Agnes Baird’s sixteenth birthday on the feast of Saint Nicholas, which fell on the sixth day of the month. Matthew Ferguson pulled her into a dark corner later, and gave Agnes her first kiss. She surprised him by kissing him back. January came, and then the short month of February.

It was at the end of that month that Bothwell appeared briefly at Duin. Closeted with Angus Ferguson in the earl’s privy chamber, he said without preamble, “Ye must nae be the last to know. Darnley is dead. Murdered. And there are those who would lay the blame at my door, but I swear to ye that I dinna do it.”

“Do ye know who did?” Angus asked his friend, pouring them two dram cups of his own smoky whiskey. He handed one to Bothwell. “And how?”

“I suspect Moray and Maitland had a hand in it. The queen’s half brother did his usual disappearing act before it happened, a sure sign that he was involved,” James Hepburn said dryly. “The queen had gone to the wedding of one of her servants. I was there too. We had visited Darnley earlier, for she will nae have him in the same house wi’ her any longer, and he has nae been well. He was lodged at Kirk o’ Field house. Someone filled the cellar wi’ gunpowder and blew it to smithereens. They found Darnley and his servant in the orchard garden. The servant had his throat cut, but it appeared as if someone had strangled Darnley as he fled.”

“Jesu!” Angus Ferguson swore softly. “And the queen?”

“Shocked and saddened, and totally unaware of how Darnley’s murder can be used against her,” James Hepburn replied. “Now that there is a male heir,
they
have decided to make her unessential. But they can’t dispense wi’ her as long as I am there to protect her, and I will be until my death.”

“The prince?”

“She put him wi’ John Erskine, the Earl of Mar. They are housed at Stirling. They won’t harm the bairn. ’Tis Mary they would be rid of, Angus,” Bothwell said.

“Ye must first defend yerself, James,” the Earl of Duin advised. “Ye canna help her if they tangle ye up in legalities. Maitland, for all his qualities as a good servant, would be the queen’s
only
trusted adviser, as Cecil is to Elizabeth. He is clever enough to manage Moray, but ye are a different animal. Ye’re in love wi’ her, and our queen hae not Elizabeth Tudor’s knack for survival. She is ruled by her heart, and she trusts too freely.”

James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, flushed at Angus Ferguson’s suggestion that he loved the queen. He did love her. He had ever since he had met her at the French court years earlier. But a Hepburn would never be considered worthy of Mary Stuart. He might be a man in love, but he was not a fool. “I have to protect her,” he said. “My honor will nae allow me to do otherwise, Angus.”

“Then first make certain they affix the blame for this murder on someone else, James. Whatever happens, I am yer friend and yer ally,” the Earl of Duin said quietly. “As ye will nae desert the queen, I will nae desert either of ye. I will keep the faith.”

Bothwell swallowed down the remainder of the whiskey in his dram cup in order to have time to regain control of his emotions. Finally he said, “I am grateful, Angus, for I know how much ye Fergusons of Duin prize your anonymity.”

“Send a messenger to me with updates of what is happening, so I may be prepared for whatever comes,” Angus told his friend.

Bothwell nodded, and then with the Earl of Duin by his side, took the offer of a fresh horse, departing to return to Edinburgh.

“What did he want?” Matthew Ferguson asked his brother afterward.

Angus shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “He just came to bring me word that Darnley has been murdered.”

“Did he do it?” Matthew asked.

“Nay.”

“Ye believe him?”

“I have known James Hepburn since we were wee lads. Is he capable of killing? Aye, he is. They want to blame him, for he is the queen’s best defense.”

“We should nae be involved in these matters,” Matthew said.

“I agree,” Angus replied. “But James Hepburn is my friend. Remember that, little brother. I dinna gie my friendship lightly, but I will also protect Duin.”

Annabella agreed with both her husband and with Matthew. A close friendship must not be betrayed, but neither must Duin be put in any danger. She was glad to be an unimportant woman married to an unimportant border lord. She had seen what power and the desire for ultimate power could do the night she had witnessed the murder of David Riccio. She felt great sympathy for her queen. Few women had her strength of character, or were capable of ruling over a land constantly fought over by a group of contentious lords and their families.

The queen’s cousin, Elizabeth Tudor, had learned the lessons of survival well in her difficult childhood. Mary, however, had been cosseted and pampered at every turn. She had been wise enough upon her return to Scotland to seek good counsel from her half brother, James Stewart, whom she had created Earl of Moray; and from William Maitland, whom she had made her secretary of state; but when her desires conflicted with that counsel, trouble was certain to ensue. Annabella wondered whether that trouble would now overwhelm Mary Stuart, and lead to her eventual downfall. Only time would reveal the answer to her question.

T
rue to his word, James Hepburn kept his friend Angus Ferguson fully informed of what was happening in Edinburgh with regard to the matter of Lord Darnley’s murder. Although Mary had never formally given him the crown matrimonial, she had allowed him to style himself king. He was buried with royal pomp and Roman Catholic rites and interred at Holyrood in a grave next to King James V. Mary had gone into official mourning, but after a few days had departed Edinburgh to mourn more privately by the sea.

No sooner had the queen departed than men holding up scandalously painted posters had begun to travel the streets of the city, crying that Bothwell had killed the queen’s husband—that the queen was in league with him in the murder. Darnley’s father, the Earl of Lennox, demanded that a trial be held to determine the murderer of his son. The queen was informed of all of this at her seaside residence. Finally there was no other solution than to try Bothwell to determine his guilt or his innocence in the matter, and silence the rumors.