“Nay, tomorrow we must prepare for the raiders. Then the day after I will go to Claven’s Carn. Tom, will you come with us?”
“Dearest girl, I thought you would never ask! Of course I will come with you. I cannot miss meeting your brazen Scot.”
“Mata will take her,” Edmund said, glancing curiously from Tom to Rosamund. “One of us must remain here to oversee the preparations.”
“Agreed!” Rosamund decided. Then she stood up. “I am tired, and am glad to sleep in my own bed after these many months. Good night.” She walked slowly from the hall.
“Will you not go with her, old woman?” Edmund asked his wife.
“Nay,” Maybel responded. “She is Annie’s responsibility now.”
“You are surprised that she has changed,” Lord Cambridge noted.
Edmund nodded slowly. “It is time,” he said, “but I am still surprised by it. I think you may have eased her way at court.”
“We Boltons are not a great or influential name,” Tom replied. “I had a younger sister who died in childhood. Rosamund reminds me of Mary, and I have come to love her as I would my sister. It was her friendship with the queen that smoothed the path before her. She will tell you all, but the queen was so fond of her that she asked Rosamund to write her most personal correspondence. Not official documents but letters to her father, her family, her close friends. She thought Rosamund had a fine hand.”
“Oh, I cannot wait to tell Henry Bolton that!” Maybel exulted.
“He has been to Friarsgate?” Lord Cambridge said.
“Nay,” Edmund replied. “He knew she was gone, and he wrote to ask that we notify him when she returned.”
“Do not, at least not yet,” Lord Cambridge said. “Give Rosamund time to straighten this business out with the Hepburns. Rosamund does not need another annoyance, and surely Henry Bolton is a great irritation to her,” he finished with a smile. He stood up. “I shall follow my cousin’s good advice and go to my bed now. Good night, cousins.” And he departed the hall.
“I wonder if he would make a good mate for our niece,” Maybel said thoughtfully. “Rosamund tells me he intends to remain a while.”
“I do not think so, wife,” Edmund told her. “It is as he has said. He harbors brotherly feelings for her. And, she, I believe, treats him the way she would have treated her brother had he lived. Nay, put those thoughts from your head, woman. Thomas Bolton is not the marrying kind. Of that I am firmly convinced.”
Rosamund was up early. She ate scantily after the mass, and then hurried to the little privy chamber where she had her manor records. Everything was, she was pleased to see, in perfect order. Her uncle came and told her he had already given the order for the flocks to be gathered into three large groupings instead of the smaller clusters.
“Put them in the three meadows bordering the lake,” Rosamund said. “They cannot be driven off easily from there. And I want bonfires prepared at each site, and armed men with the shepherds, and more dogs. Whoever finds themselves under attack will light their fire to alert the rest of us. There will be no more sheep stolen from Friarsgate by those damned Scots!”
It took the entire day to bring the various flocks of sheep in from their pastures and resettle them in the meadows that Rosamund had designated. It was four days until the full moon, but the lady of Friarsgate ordered that all be ready by the following day. Lord Cambridge, who put in an appearance in early afternoon, was amazed by the activity and surprised by his cousin’s air of authority. This was the same woman who had lain swooning in the king’s embrace. His respect for her grew mightily, and he suddenly realized that only a woman of such strong character could have survived Henry Tudor and not been destroyed by him. It was she who had wisely broken off the liaison and kept the king’s friendship in the bargain.
On the following day they departed for Claven’s Carn, Father Mata their guide and strangely their protector, for no one would attack a priest. Particularly a priest related by blood to the Hepburn himself. Rosamund had never been over the border, and she was surprised that the landscape was similar to that of Friarsgate. They rode for several hours beneath a bright blue sky, the sun at first in their faces, and then finally overhead, warming their shoulders. They spoke little, although the priest had assured Rosamund that it could not possibly be his half-brother who was stealing her sheep.
“Claven’s Carn,” Father Mata finally said, pointing.
Ahead of them, atop a heather-covered hill, they saw it. A stone keep, dark and very old in appearance. There were two towers. They approached the edifice slowly. Its gates were open, and they rode through into the courtyard. To Rosamund’s surprise Logan Hepburn was there, obviously awaiting her.
“You sent to him that we were coming?” she asked the priest.
“Aye,” he answered. “You could hardly appear unannounced, my lady. We do not do that here in the borders. The Hepburn would want to be here for your visit, and he does have other business to attend to, so I sent to him.”
The blue-blue eyes looked up at her. She stared haughtily down on him from her horse. “I have come to say one thing, Logan Hepburn. If you raid my flocks again I will see you hanged for it!”
“Welcome to Claven’s Carn,” he replied, smiling at her. He reached up, his fingers fastening tightly about her waist, to lift her from her mount. “You are more beautiful than ever, if such a thing is possible. And I am not raiding your flocks.”
“You lie!”she spat at him.
He took her chin between his thumb and his forefinger, forcing her head up so she had to look directly at him. “I do not lie, madame!Now, tell me who this overdressed fop is who accompanies you. If he is a new husband be warned I shall be forced to kill him on the spot.”
Lord Cambridge slid lazily from the saddle. “I am her cousin, my lord,” he told Logan Hepburn. Then he said to Rosamund, “You are right, dear girl. His eyes are blue-blue and really quite marvelous.”
“Tom!”
Logan Hepburn burst out laughing. He clapped Lord Cambridge on the back, staggering him, and said, “Come into the hall. I’ve some fine whiskey I keep for friends.”
