“The laundress does not wash your gowns, mistress,” Nancy said. “I look after them myself, and am most careful. But now that you mention it I have noted that your bodices are stretching across your bosom too tightly these days. And you are developing a belly beneath your skirts.” The words were no sooner from her mouth when Nancy gasped with the realization of what she had just said. “Mistress! I believe you are with child,” she gasped.
Elizabeth reached out to steady herself. “With child?” she repeated.
“When was your last moon link?” Nancy said, realizing that it had to be several months since she had prepared bleeding clothes for Elizabeth or taken stained chemises to the laundress. There could be no other explanation.
Elizabeth sat down heavily. “With child,” she said. What was the matter with her that she had not realized it? Of course she was with child. Although she knew her mother had ways of preventing conception, she had never needed to know them. Rosamund would have told her youngest daughter when she married. But all summer and into the early autumn she and Baen had made love at every opportunity. She blushed, remembering the many places where they had lain, lustily indulging their passion for each other. He was a virile man, and the women in her family were noted for their ability to produce healthy offspring. Aye, she was with child. Elizabeth began to laugh, and she laughed until the tears rolled down her pale cheeks.
“Mistress.” Nancy’s voice quavered. “Are you all right?” The serving woman thought it odd that Elizabeth found this news so amusing. The heiress of Friarsgate was carrying a nameless bastard child. Surely there was no humor in that.
“We must send for my mother,” Elizabeth said. “’Tis cold, but clear. A messenger is to ride with all haste to Claven’s Carn and fetch her back to me.”
“Will you write a message?” Nancy wanted to know.
“Nay. Just tell him to say I need my mother immediately,” Elizabeth replied.
At Claven’s Carn, Rosamund Bolton Hepburn queried the Friarsgate man. “Is my daughter all right? What has happened?” Elizabeth wasn’t the sort of girl to send for her mother except under the direst of circumstances, and perhaps not even then.
“My lady, I know nothing more than what Mistress Elizabeth’s tiring woman, Nancy, told me. I was to fetch you with all haste. But I can tell you that my mistress appears well.”
“What the hell is the wench up to now?” Logan Hepburn, the laird of Claven’s Carn, demanded to know of his wife.
Rosamund shook her head. “I do not know, but Elizabeth would not send for me in the dead of winter without cause.”
“I’ll go with you,” he replied, and was surprised when she did not argue with him. She was worried, and Rosamund was not a woman to jump at shadows. “If the weather holds I’ll ride down to St. Cuthbert’s and pay John a visit while you see what it is your daughter wants. When I return we will come home.”
“Is tomorrow too soon to leave?” Rosamund asked him.
“I can be ready,” Logan Hepburn said. She was worried.
They departed Claven’s Carn even before first light the following morning. Rosamund could reach Friarsgate the same day if she traveled early and long. Once over the border her husband left her with their clansmen to travel on to St. Cuthbert’s monastery, where his eldest son was now studying for the priesthood. He had a longer journey than Rosamund, but having made the journey once before he knew he could find shelter tonight with a border farmer who was related to the Hepburns. He traveled alone, leaving his clansmen to escort his wife. Shortly after dark they reached Friarsgate.
Rosamund hurried into the hall to find Elizabeth already at the high board eating.
“Come in, Mama!” The younger woman waved the older forward. “Albert! A plate for the lady Rosamund.”
“What is the matter?” Rosamund demanded, flinging her fur-lined cape at a servant and sitting down next to her daughter.
“How good you are,” Elizabeth said. “You came immediately, didn’t you?”
“You have never been a child to ask for my help, Bessie,” her mother said. “When you do then I know it is a serious matter.”
“Do not call me Bessie,” Elizabeth said softly, but there was an edge to her voice.
“Tell me,” Rosamund repeated.
“I know how you have fretted that there was no heir of my body to follow me here at Friarsgate. I wanted you to know, Mama, that come the spring there will be an heir, or perhaps an heiress, for Friarsgate. Are you not pleased?”
Rosamund heard her daughter’s words, but at first she could not absorb what Elizabeth was telling her. But then the import of her daughter’s announcement exploded in her brain. She gasped, and then she said, “What have you done, Bess—Elizabeth? What have you done?”
“I fell in love, Mama. Was that not allowed? You loved my father. You loved Lord Leslie. You love Logan. Philippa loves Crispin. Banon loves her Neville. Even Uncle Thomas loves his Will. Am I not permitted the same privilege? ‘You must marry, Elizabeth. We need a husband for you, Elizabeth. Friarsgate must have an heir, Elizabeth.’ Did you not all say it to me over and over and over again? So I went to court to please you all, but there was none for me there. Did you expect me to find a man of the land among those boring perfumed courtiers, Mama?”
“It’s the Scotsman, Baen MacColl, isn’t it?” Rosamund said.
“Of course it is Baen MacColl, Mama. Was he not perfect for me? For Friarsgate? But he would put his parent above me, and above what I had to offer him.”
“He has taken advantage of you!” Rosamund cried.
Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Nay, Mama. I took advantage of him. I seduced him boldly, and without a thought for what might come of our passion. I thought—nay, I believed—that because I loved him, because he said he loved me, that he would come to understand we were meant to be together here at Friarsgate. But none of it meant anything to him. His damned father, this master of Grayhaven, is more important to Baen than I am. Than Friarsgate is! He could have been the master here, but he chose to remain his father’s bastard. I never want to see him again!” Her voice was shaking.
