Now she looked up at him. “I will not leave Dunglais as long as Fiona needs me, my lord,” Alix told him. “You have my word on it. If you remarry then of course I would go, for it would not be seemly for me to remain when you had a wife to watch over your daughter.” She rubbed the mare’s nose again. “She is beautiful, and I have never had a finer horse. I had to leave my beast behind when I departed Wu . . . my former home. You were right when you said I didn’t want them to know I was going.” She began to walk the mare about the courtyard following little Fiona’s pony.
“Why didn’t you want them to know?” he asked her softly.
“As I have previously mentioned, my deceased husband’s father wished to marry me as he had no wife and no other heirs. The very thought was repellent to me despite the fact he is a decent man. I know he would have been good to me, but I thought of him more like a parent than a husband. How could I lay with a man who had been a father figure to me? How could I couple with him and give him a child?” Alix shuddered. “I told him the church would not allow it. But he said he could get a dispensation since there was no blood involved between us. When he sent the local priest off to York with his request and a pouch of coins to expedite that desire, I knew I must flee. I waited until he planned a two-day hunt to stock the house larder for the winter, and then I made my own plans. I told everyone that I would fast and pray for two days while their master was gone, and I was not to be disturbed. And early in the morning, before my father-in-law was even gone off to hunt, I made good my escape. I did not take my horse, and it was mine not his, because I did not want it known I was gone.”
“It was a very brave thing you did,” the laird told her, “but where did you plan to go when you left? Why did you come north instead of remaining in England?”
“I was afraid to stay in England for fear someone would recognize me from King Henry’s court. The Yorkists are not kind to their enemies. I hoped at first I might return to Queen Margaret, but then I realized that would be the first place Sir Udolf would seek for me. And I knew that with his honorable offer of marriage the queen would send me back to him.” Alix sighed. “I thought then that if I could reach the Scots court your queen might take me into her service, and I would be safe.”
“But would not Queen Marie wonder why you did not return to Queen Margaret?” the laird asked Alix, curious.
“Your queen will give mine sanctuary, but nothing else. It is unlikely they will ever meet. Poor King Henry will never regain his throne, I think, and Scotland must deal with England. While a slim thread of blood connects these two queens, it is not enough for Queen Marie to endanger her own child’s throne by antagonizing England’s new king. And that king may bluster and blow, but he will not start a war over such a trifle. Henry of Lancaster is finished. Eventually he will be seduced into venturing back into England, where he will be captured and killed. If the queen and the prince travel with him their lives will be forfeit too,” Alix told the laird.
He was surprised by her grasp of the situation, but then he thought he shouldn’t be. She had been raised in a royal court. She was intelligent and understood the dynamics of the situation. “Aye,” he agreed with her. “You are correct, Alix Givet.”
“I want nothing to do with this situation,” Alix continued. “I never wanted to be a creature of the court like my mother. And in the end I suspect my father, except for his deep loyalty to his countrywoman, would have been content to settle in a quiet village somewhere and live out his life in peace. I would have liked that too.” She sighed.
They had traversed the courtyard several times now. Arriving back at the stable, Alix gave Darach’s reins back to the head stableman. “I will exercise her daily,” she told him with a sweet smile.
The man nodded. “She’ll be ready for you, mistress,” he told her.
“Fiona,” Alix called to her little charge. “Come now and bring Stormy back. She needs to go into her warm stable.”
The child obeyed, but both the laird and Alix could tell she was reluctant to leave her beloved new pony.
“You are good with her,” the laird noted. “She already loves you.”
“I love her,” Alix responded. “She is a dear little girl.” Then she said boldly, “Her blue eyes. Are they her mother’s?”
“Aye,” he said tersely.
“I thought as much, but everything else about her is you, my lord. No one would mistake her for anyone else’s daughter,” Alix remarked.
“Can I ride out with Stormy tomorrow?” Fiona asked, coming up to her father. She handed the pony’s reins to the head stableman. “Can I, Da? Can I?”
“There is too much snow on the hills right now, Fiona,” the laird answered.
“Daaa!” Fiona stamped her little foot.
“Fiona, your father has spoken true. There is too much snow outside the gates. And hungry wolves, and badgers too just waiting for a fat pony and a sweet little lass. We will ride in the courtyard,” Alix told the child. “And please do not stamp your foot again at your father. It is disrespectful.”
“But, Alix, I can’t gallop in the courtyard,” Fiona protested.
“We don’t have to ride at all,” Alix responded calmly.
Fiona’s lower lip formed itself into a pout. Her blue eyes were mutinous.
Alix took the child’s hand in hers. “Come, and let us go in now. I have it on the best authority that Cook is serving baked apples and sugar wafers today.”
The laird almost laughed aloud as the rebellion disappeared swiftly from his daughter’s eyes and the pout was replaced with a wide smile.
“Ilovebaked apples and sugar wafers,” Fiona said as she trotted obediently by Alix’s side back towards the keep.
“Has a way wi’ the bairn, she does,” the head stableman remarked, and then he disappeared into the stable with Fiona’s pony.
The laird chuckled. Alix did manage Fiona very well. Everyone noted it. Fenella and Iver in the hall, and now the stableman. He was almost jealous at the lovely English girl’s way with his child, but he knew he couldn’t handle Fiona; and her old nurse, now happily ensconced in a cottage in his village, had not been able to since Fiona began to walk. It had been a miracle the child hadn’t done herself a serious mischief. It was a great relief to have his daughter in such good and capable hands. Now maybe everyone would cease their nagging about his lack of a wife. Fiona was his heiress, and that was that.
He had a young uncle, Robert Ferguson of Drumcairn, who had been responsible for bringing Robena Ramsay to his attention and helping him to arrange the match between the Scotts and the Ramsays. Ever since Robena’s betrayal of her husband, his uncle had been desperate to correct what he deemed his error in judgment. He was always riding over from his own holding to Dunglais, and each visit brought with it a new candidate for his nephew’s hand. And the more the laird refused, the harder his uncle tried. Malcolm Scott tolerated his uncle because he was his late mother’s much younger half brother, and she had loved him well. But he had no intention of remarrying and being made a fool of again by any woman.
