“I have heard you beat him badly,” Fingal Stewart remarked.
“I did!” Maggie admitted, restraining a wicked grin that threatened to break out upon her face. “I had to so he would give up and go away. I never expected the wretched weasel to go crying to the king. The damned fool had not a chance of outrunning me. Even if I had loved him, and I certainly did not, I could not have thrown the race, for everyone in the Borders knows there is none who can run as fast as I do. I outran him and rode the course a-horse as he sat nursing his bloodied feet, the fool!”
“Yer a hard lass,” Fingal Stewart said, his tone grudgingly admiring, “but to carry all the responsibility ye have carried, ye must be hard. But I can beat ye, Maggie Kerr, and I will.” He sat down in the chair by the fire, and surprising her, reached out and yanked her into his lap. “That’s better,” he said. “Now tell me more about yerself, and I will tell ye about myself. I’d like us to at least be friends before I bed ye.”
Maggie made a quick attempt to bolt, but Fingal Stewart pulled her back, his arm tightening about her.
“Nah, nah, lassie, yer my wife. A husband has the right to cuddle with his woman.” His gray eyes caught her hazel eyes. “Have ye not cuddled with a sweetheart?”
“I’ve never had a sweetheart, my lord. Do ye think me wanton? I have more important things to be about,” Maggie told him angrily. She was not comfortable. She didn’t like being imprisoned by his arm. Her head had no place to go but his shoulder. She could smell the damp leather of his garments. It was strong, and it was too masculine. He reeked of power, and it frightened her. “Let me go,” she said, attempting to keep her voice level and without fear. “Please release me, my lord.”
“Yer afraid,” he said, surprised. “Why are ye afraid?”
“I don’t wish to be constrained,” Maggie answered him.
He was silent a moment and then said, “I am but attempting to know my wife, lady. If I loosen my arm, will you remain in my lap for the interim? I know your word will be good.”
“Ohh, that is so unfair!” Maggie cried softly.
“Why?” His tone was innocent of any deception, but they both knew better.
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “So you either hold me within yer embrace, or trust me to remain within it by my own choice,” Maggie said. “And ye do not think it an unfair preference ye put before me?”
“Nay,” he replied in the same bland tone. “Ye are too used to gaining yer own way, Margaret Jean Kerr. Now there will be times in the future when it will amuse me to let ye run headstrong as yer grandfather has done these seventeen years, but ye will not always have yer way with me. I’ll be wearing the breeks in this family.”
She stiffened. First with the use of her full Christian name—how had he known it?—and then with her outrage at his speech. “Ohh, yer an arrogant man!” she told him. She was actually more at a loss for words than she had ever been. Never had she been spoken to in such a manner. She was Maggie Kerr, the heiress to Brae Aisir, damn it!
“Excellent!” he praised her. “Yer beginning to understand me. I am Fingal David Stewart, Lord of Torra and one day laird of Brae Aisir. I am arrogant, but not without cause. I descend from kings, lass, and the master of Scotland himself has sent me to marry ye, get bairns on ye, and keep the Aisir nam Breug as it has always been. My family has ever been faithful, and I will not shame them or their memory. Now will ye let me court ye, or will this be a war between us?”
His arm had loosened from about her. Maggie jumped from his lap. She had made him no promises, and she would make him none. “I don’t know,” she said in answer to his question. Then she ran from the library.
Fin sat before the small chamber’s little hearth for some time after she had gone.
He had had enough experience with women to know she was confused and frightened.God deliver me from skittish virgins, Fingal Stewart thought to himself, but he knew that her fear of intimacy between them wasn’t really the problem. Once he could kiss and caress her, he would win her over, and their bedsport would be pleasant, not that that mattered. Her duty would be to produce bairns for Brae Aisir; sons and daughters to ally them with other border families. But that wasn’t the true difficulty between them.
It was control of the Aisir nam Breug that stood between them. The old laird had been wrong not to impress upon his heiress that it would be her husband controlling the pass, and not Mad Maggie Kerr. Still he had a great deal to learn about that traverse, and it was Maggie who would have to teach him for her grandfather was old. He had already turned his duties over to the lass. Oh, Fingal Stewart could beat his bride in the physical challenge she demanded. Of that he had no doubt, though others had failed. But it was his education regarding the Aisir nam Breug that would win Maggie’s heart once she realized he could manage the responsibilities involved.
Martinmas came, and they still had not enough meat to last the winter. They hunted each day from dawn to dusk as the days shortened. Slowly the cold larder began to fill up. The meat from the deer they took was butchered. It hung alongside strings of rabbits, geese, and ducks. The boar, however, continued to elude them, but Maggie didn’t care now that she was satisfied the keep and village were safe from starvation.
Like many border keeps, the Kerrs had royal permission to fish in the streams, rivers, and lochs in their area. They smoked and salted their catch, storing them in barrels. Dugald Kerr was a kindly man. He allowed the head of each household in his village to trap two coneys a month for their families and to lay away a small keg of salted fish. It was considered a generous gesture, especially given that the laird allowed them to grind in his mill the little grain they grew each growing season. The miller, of course, was allowed to take a tenth share for his trouble.
On St. Andrew’s Day, Maggie pronounced the larder was filled to capacity. The weather was growing colder each day, and the nights were much longer now than they had been in September. The moat beneath the drawbridge was covered by a thin sheet of ice most mornings. It melted away during the daylight hours, but re-formed each night. Eventually it would not melt until spring. The stone walls of the keep began to show rimes of frost except in the few chambers where the hearths blazed. The men-at-arms began to sleep in the hall most nights now, for their barracks just within the walls had no hearth. In the stables and barn, those caring for the beasts slept with them in the hay for warmth.
The first day of December dawned sunny and unnaturally mild. A peddler asked shelter for the night. He would be traveling through the Aisir nam Breug in the morning. He had come from Perth via Stirling and Edinburgh. The peddler brought with him a large fund of gossip he was only too willing to share with the hall. He was surprised to learn the heiress to Brae Aisir had a husband, and one who had been sent by the king himself.
“Our Jamie has gone to France to seek a bride,” he began, and he chuckled. “He’s well funded to go courting, thanks to the church.”
“What has the church to do with it?” the old laird asked.
“Why, sir, with these Protestant heretics rising up all over across the water, and even in England, our king’s allegiance to Holy Mother Church is a valuable commodity for the pope to have. The king needs an income, and the church is wealthy. I heard he is to have seventy-two thousand Scots pounds over the next few years. ’Tis a fortune! And three of our most important abbeys and three priories of great consequence are to be given to his bastards for their income. He has six, and I’m told his latest mistress, Janet Munro, is with child.” The peddler chortled. “Why, this fifth Jamie is every bit the man his da was, God bless him!” The peddler raised his tankard, drank to the king’s health, and continued on with his gossip.
“They say he can have his choice of a wife from among the noble and royal families in Italy, France, and Denmark. That devil who rules England, King Henry, has even suggested a match with Princess Mary, his daughter,” the peddler said. “And our Jamie has been presented with many diplomatic honors by those wooing him.”
“The king prefers a French match,” Lord Stewart said quietly.
“Aye! Aye! So he does,” the peddler agreed. “They say the Duke of Vendôme is offering one hundred thousand gold crowns as a dower for his daughter, Marie. But the king turned the lass down.”
“How on earth could you know that?” Lord Stewart demanded.
