The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (57 page)

“So two of your five women are called Mary?”

“They are. It is a common name.”

“I know. I have a sister Mary, Mary Bruce … But you know that.”

“I do. A younger sister, of whom I reminded you when you first saw me.”

“Aye … But why did you not simply tell me who you were when first we met?”

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “I’ve been asking myself that same question ever since, and all I can think to say is that I was afraid.”

“Afraid? What on earth were you afraid of? You had every right to be there.”

The big green eyes flashed, warningly, he knew, though he could not have said how he knew. “I was afraid of you,” she said tartly. “You called out in the dark, and I sent Mary running off. Then I sat there, hoping you might fall back to sleep, but you did not. And then you called again in Gaelic, calling me to come out, and you sounded angry.”

“I wasn’t angry.”

“You called me child! Made me feel like a silly, wilful little girl again. That was what really frightened me and spurred me to the lie.”

“That frightened you? How, in God’s name?”

“Because I am
not
a child!” The great green eyes crackled with indignation. “I was—I am—betrothed to you, your wife to be. And I did not want your first impression of me to be one of childishness, of a little girl.” She caught herself and glanced away. One corner of her mouth curled in a wry half smile, and she shrugged her dainty shoulders. “I chose the lie and it was done and over. Or so I thought at the time. It was only afterwards that I began to see the problems that arose from the deception. I had no thought of lying—not wilfully, at the time.”

“I understand,” he said, realizing with mild surprise that he did. “Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that spring into being without our being aware that anything’s going on. So … you’re not angry with me?”

“For what?” She was smiling again. “For liking me even though you thought me someone else?
Should
I be angry?”

He thought about that, feeling better by the moment as his mind adjusted to the fact that all his fretting of the previous week had been for naught. But then he recalled what she had said about her own fears of being wed to someone whom she could not love, and he recalled, too, her high-handed dismissal of his claim of having liked her too much in too short a time.

“You are frowning again, my lord.”

“Don’t call me my lord. I’m your betrothed husband. My name is Robert. You can call me Rob, if it pleases you.”

“Rob, then. Tell me, Rob, if you will, what would you have done had I indeed been plain Mary Henderson?”

He looked back at her quickly, sensing the trap in the question, but having skirted the abyss thus far he was determined to avoid the edge and be completely honest. “In all conscience I don’t know, my lady. I was greatly taken with Mary Henderson despite having spent
but a short hour with her as company. The time I spent seeing her face and hearing her in my mind thereafter was vastly longer than the brief moments I spent looking at her and listening to her. But in the end, faced with the choice I had set myself, my duty was to Lady Isabella of Mar, and I would have been loath to wrong her. In fact, I doubt I could have, even had she been a warty crone with wens.” He could smile now, saying that, since he knew it would be taken for what it was, an exaggeration made in jest. “Yet the temptation was there, right enough—to run away with Mary Henderson and live with my guilt forever afterwards.”

“And might you truly have done that? Run away with a chit of a girl who knows nothing of the world you’ve been living in for years? A servant girl who had none of the”—she searched for the right word—“the
worldliness
of all the other women you’ve known?”

“No, I would not. You know that already.”

Her right eyebrow rose slightly and he looked away, towards the open gates, unwilling or unable to meet her look with equanimity. Somewhere beyond the gates, out of his sight, the downward-spiralling skylark returned to earth and its song was cut off. The blackbird sang yet, but it had moved, too, its liquid voice more distant than when he had first heard it. A bullock bellowed far off, and the sound made him aware of how he felt, awkward and stubborn and vaguely foolish, a gelded simulacrum of his former vital self.

“What now, then, Rob Bruce?”

The question, softly spoken, brought him back, and he turned quickly to look at her, feeling the sudden stab at his heart as her beautiful face filled his awareness again. And then, before he could lose heart, he spoke the words in his mind.

“Will you have me, lass?”

Her brows came very slightly together, and then she shook her head in a tiny gesture that, while not refusal, was not yet acceptance. “I am sworn to you, sir. I have no choice.”

“No, by God’s holy dominance, you do! That choice is yours and freely given. I might be as selfishly unthinking as you said a moment since, but I heeded what you had to say about being married to a
man you could not love. If that’s the way you feel I’ll let you go, for I doubt I could face a future with you, knowing you had no wish to be wed to me.”

“Oh … ” She watched him closely. “And you would do that willingly, for my sake?”

He felt as though his tongue were coated with coarse sand and the words emerged as a guttural, growling croak. “Aye, lady, I would. And will, if you but say the word. But not willingly … I have no wish to let you go, now that I’ve found you. None at all.”

“And what of your fears of being chained and tamed?”

He dipped his head to one side, smiling for the first time since he had stepped outside with her. “They vanished, my lady, dried up and disappeared as soon as I saw them for the boyish things they were. Now the fears that plague me are all fluttering around my dread of hearing you ask me to release you.”

“Then let them go, Sir Robert, and be rid of them. But ask yourself, before you say another word, if you are sure of what you want. You asked if I will have you, and I will, gladly. But now
I
ask, will you have
me
?”

He had once heard one of his grandfather’s men explain relief by saying that he felt as though the cares of all the world had been lifted from his shoulders, but he had been very young at the time and had puzzled over the meaning of those words. Now, in a flash, he understood them perfectly and felt the radiance in his own face as he smiled.

“Isabella MacWilliam of Mar, I will have you above and beyond all others if I can, and for all time.”

His reward came in the way she rose up from the seat and looked at him, her eyes glowing and then sparkling as they filled with tears. She reached out a hand to him and he took it and rose to stand beside her, drawing her close to his side and marvelling at the way the top of her head came barely to the centre of his chest. He stooped to kiss her, but she shrank back quickly and pressed her hand against his breastbone.

“Have a care, my lord,” she said, but through a smile. “There are folk around and we are betrothed, not
wed
.”

He laughed, throwing back his head and feeling the joy surge through him as he spun to see who had been watching them, but they were alone there in the open yard, and the lark had begun its upward spiral again, refreshed and strengthened by its rest, singing its heart out anew as it climbed towards the heavens. He spun back, pulled her forward before she could resist, and kissed her full on the wide, red lips that parted slightly in surprise as his hands closed upon her waist. It was a brief embrace and a briefer kiss, but the wonder of it lingered once they were apart again. He looked down at her, smiling, started to speak, then stopped.

“What?” she asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing, a mere memory … When we are wed, or even sooner if I behave well, will you show me again that vision I had never seen before?”

Colour surged into her cheeks and she gaped at him half-scandalized. But then she slapped him lightly on the arm and laid her other hand on his forearm, and together they walked slowly back into the house.

They met again at dinner that same night, and though Bruce marvelled that no one even thought to ask them how they had come to meet each other, he was far too busy staring at the wonder of her to pay attention to anything else that was going on in the great hall. He had taken care to look his best, in a dark blue quilted doublet of the rich French fabric known as damask, worn over hose of lighter blue and boots of fine doeskin. Isabella had changed into a gown of pale green, edged in gold, and her ebony hair, free of restraint save for a net of golden filigree studded with tiny green gems that matched her eyes, enhanced her beauty in a manner that took his breath away each time he looked at her.

He paid no attention at all to the food laid out for him and he heard little of the conversation around him, although at one point he had to rally himself to agree without demur when his father
suggested that, since his condition had improved so remarkably within a single day, they might be able to leave for Westminster in two days’ time. He was entranced by the vision Isabella presented for his admiration; enchanted by the smiles she sent his way; bewitched by the play of light upon her face and skin and hair. He was in fact, though he did not know it, the very picture of a man hopelessly in love.

Only at the end of dinner, when Isabella’s father led him aside to talk with him in private, did reality descend to bother him again. He expected Earl Domhnall to talk about his daughter at first, but the old man had apparently accepted the pair’s evident satisfaction with their situation as a matter requiring no further comment. His purpose in sequestering his future good-son was to bring up the matter of Bishop Wishart’s message, and even in his euphoria Bruce retained sufficient presence of mind to conceal the fact that he had already heard the gist of it.

He listened gravely, nodding from time to time, and when the old earl had finished, he told him what he had already told Nicol MacDuncan earlier, though this time he felt less of the resentment that had angered him then.

“Forgive me for being blunt, sir, but this
communication
, the message it contains, has nothing in it that I find attractive. Frankly, I’m greatly vexed. But I must ask you, is this an invitation, or is it an instruction?”

Domhnall blinked, taken aback. “It is not my place to judge that, Earl Robert. I am but the messenger, acting in good faith.”

“I don’t doubt that, my lord, nor would I dream of holding you accountable. But I fear Bishop Wishart may have miscalculated my priorities in the face of his own. He would have me hold myself in readiness, he says. In readiness for what? A return to Scotland at some undetermined time? In the event that the currently anointed King might fail in his duty? And to the insulting and disloyal exclusion of my own father, to whom this message should have been rightfully directed? Is my father even aware of this communication?” The
other man did not respond. “As I suspected. No, my lord, I can agree to none of that.”

“But— In God’s name, there’s nothing wrong in what the bishop asks. No insult intended. He’s merely thinking of the realm’s welfare—and your own, as Bruce.”

“Aye, I can see that. But Bruce stands banished from that realm today. Banished, my lord—our holdings forfeit to the ill will of our enemies, our very name tainted by lies and slurs. We chose to leave Scotland at my grandfather’s urging, and his reasons—our family’s reasons—were, as you well know, based soundly on the undying enmity of the Comyns, who are now all-powerful under King John. Since then we have renewed our oaths of fealty to England and its Crown—an oath that must equally apply to every man and woman in Scotland who holds lands in England. And yet, for taking it, we have been dispossessed of all our Scots holdings.”

Bruce eyed his future good-father, trying to gauge how deeply he might have offended him, and then continued, keeping his voice pleasant and level. “Those are my concerns in this. And the disloyalty to my father, whether intentional or no, is the greatest among them. I wonder how deeply Bishop Wishart considered them before asking you to come to me like this. And I wonder, too, if he thinks me ambitious enough to betray my own father. But here is my answer, for you to take to him. My loyalty—the Bruce loyalty—lies with Edward Plantagenet and is bound by oath. And neither my father nor I has seen any reason to doubt the goodwill or motive of England or its King—a thing we cannot say of Scotland.”

Domhnall had listened with pursed lips. “Aye, well. That’s not what I’d expected you to say, and I’d like to talk about it further, just between ourselves as family. But here’s neither the time nor the place.”

“That’s fine with me,” Bruce said quietly. “But my father must be included in the discussion—as family, as you say.” The Earl of Mar nodded, and Bruce felt relieved, for he had been dreading the inevitable airing of this subject with his father; he could easily imagine the anger and wounded dismay his report would provoke.
And yet he could think of no way to lessen the blow he must deliver to his father’s pride.

He laid a hand on Domhnall’s shoulder. “But before we join the company, my lord of Mar,” he went on, “I want to tell you something privily, as your good-son. No man can know with any certainty what lies ahead for him or his, but I will swear this to you in person. No matter what the future holds for all of us, I will cherish and revere your daughter for as long as we both shall live. She will be my wife and my countess, honoured and loved above all else in my life, and wherever I may go, so too will she, at my right hand.”

Domhnall of Mar inclined his head graciously. “I would expect no less,” he said. “But I am glad to hear you say it. So be it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE EARL OF CARRICK’S IDYLL

H
arry Percy had been right, as it transpired. Bruce was welcomed back into the royal favour without question, other than a momentary flicker of surprise on the part of King Edward when he first saw the young earl enter his royal presence. That brief hesitation, unnoticed by everyone but Bruce himself, who had been watching for it, confirmed what Percy had surmised: that the King had had too much on his mind in the past year to be aware that the young earl’s period of mourning for his grandsire’s death had passed and that it was time he returned to the world again.