Adair laughed. “I am far more content being the lady of Cleit,” she told him. “My New Year’s gift to my husband was to tell him of the child we will have by late summer. It will be a son this time, I am certain.”
“So you finally told him!” Janet Douglas Hepburn laughed.
The other ladies tendered their good wishes while the men clapped Conal Bruce on his back and congratu-lated him. He then told them how Adair had tricked him into coming to Hailes by not revealing her condition until they arrived. The men chuckled, and the king shook a finger at Adair with a smile.
“Was it that you longed to see me again so desperately, cousin, that you would prevaricate with your good lord?” he teased her.
“Of course it was,” Adair replied, her violet eyes twinkling with mischief. “There could certainly be no other reason,cousin.”
And good-natured laughter filled the hall.
Amazingly, the next few days remained rain and snow free. The last day of their visit, which was Twelfth Night, arrived. The day was spent in feasting and merriment.
There was entertainment in the form of a man with a pack of dancing dogs, and musicians and pipers. There was even a small troupe of mummers who came to perform. The following morning the guests all departed Hailes Castle, thanking their hosts for a grand visit.
“I am so glad we have met,” the young Countess of Bothwell told Adair. “Perhaps next summer we can meet again with our bairns.”
“You would be most welcome at Cleit,” Adair told her. “The keep is small, but I have made it quite civilized.”
The two women kissed in farewell.
The day grew grayer and lowering as they traveled the distance from Hailes back to Cleit. The cold was damp and cutting. An hour from their journey’s end it began to snow. At first it was but a flurry. Then the snow began to drift down gently. Adair thanked God that they were so close to home, for with each step that they traveled the snow grew thicker and heavier. By the time they reached Cleit they could barely make out more than a few feet ahead of them. And when they dismounted their horses in the courtyard and looked through to where they had come from, the animals’footprints in the snow were already covered, and beyond the keep entrance it was a solid sheet of white.
The winter had finally set in, and it snowed all through the night. In the morning the hills around and beyond them were garbed in white. It remained that way until the spring came. Murdoc reported to his brother that it had been deadly dull while they had been gone. He was most anxious to hear about Hailes, and how they had celebrated.
“Was our cousin Alpin there?” he asked Conal.
“If he was he managed to keep out of my sight,” the laird replied.
Elsbeth was outraged that Adair had discovered she was with child and not told the laird until they were at Hailes. “I do not know what has made you so difficult,”she said. “Do you want to lose this child too?”
“I won’t lose my son,” Adair told her old nurse.
“A son, is it?” Elsbeth said. “And you’ve been given the second sight now, then?”
Adair laughed. “I just sense in my heart that this is a lad I will bear. He will be a strong bairn, unlike my poor wee Jane.”
The winter passed slowly, finally melting into spring.
The hills began to color green again. Adair’s belly had begun to show, and she was well pleased and happierthan she could ever remember being in all her life.
In late April word came that Janet Douglas Hepburn had given birth to a daughter, baptized Janet, in mid-January. The baby was strong and healthy, but her mother had died at the beginning of April. Patrick Hepburn, grieving for his wife, had brought a wet nurse into Hailes, and then departed to join the king. Their friendship was a strong one, and the king had rewarded that friendship by making the earl master of the king’s household, custodian of Edinburgh Castle, and sheriff principal of Edinburgh and Haddington. His brother, Adam, had been made master of the royal stables.
Adair was saddened to learn of Janet Douglas Hepburn’s death, but then she remembered that the young Countess of Bothwell had practically foretold her own end when they had spoken at Hailes during the New Year’s celebration. Still, she had thought that the Hepburn’s wife was simply being affected by the child she carried. Obviously she had not been. Adair shivered with the memory of their conversation as the child within her moved strongly.
Then one night the watch reported signal fires sprout-ing upon the hills. The English had come raiding. Cleit lit its own fire to warn those beyond them. The courtyard gates were closed, locked, and barred. Cleit had the advantage of its location upon a small hill. The hillside was kept clear of trees and bushes behind which an enemy might take shelter or hide. Cleit would not be an easy keep to take, and raiders usually passed it by for just that reason. The village over the hill, however, was vulnerable, and the laird invited its inhabitants to shelter in the keep. The laird had his men drive Cleit’s cattle off on the principle that it would be easier to steal the herd if it were all together than to go chasing after the individual beasts. They would lose some, but not all.
This time the raiders came to the keep and attempted to storm it. The gates, however, held, and Cleit’s archers had deadly accuracy. After two days theEnglish borderers moved on in search of easier pick-ings. When they had gone the laird and his brother had taken a party of their own clansmen and gone after the English, managing to save the village over the hill from too much pillaging and damage. They drove the raiders back over the borders, and then returned home. But the entire spring and summer the border roiled with unrest.
They learned the reason for the unusual activity from Hercules Hepburn, who had come to Cleit to see if they were all right.
“It’s the English king,” he told them wearily, for he had been involved in several skirmishes over the last few weeks.
“What has happened?” Adair asked him. “We had an uneasy truce, but we had one nonetheless.”
“King Henry is unhappy that the old king was over-thrown and killed,” Hercules answered her query.
“Why should he care?” Conal Bruce wanted to know.
