Still, Annabella had said graciously, “It’s a beautiful gift, Velvet, and I can tell ye’re happy wi’ my brother. I think he’s a lucky man.”
“Are ye finally wi’ child,” demanded Ian rudely, “that Alex would gie ye such a rich gift?” Ian had eaten a fine dinner that night and was full of Alex’s good wine and whiskey.
Velvet flushed and looked mutely at her husband, who said in a level voice, “I think ye’ve partaken a wee bit too generously of my hospitality, Ian. Ye may be my sister’s husband, but that doesna gie ye the right to ask such questions. When ’tis time to make an announcement, ye’ll be one of the first to know.”
“Then my lads are still yer heirs,” came Ian’s drunken reply.
Now Annabella flushed. “Ian!” she remonstrated.
“Ian,”he mimicked her, and then said threateningly, “Dinna tell me how to behave, woman, or ’twill be the worse for ye.” His eyes narrowed, and Bella edged nervously away from her husband.
Later when she was tucked up in bed with her husband, Velvet said, “I think Ian is beating your sister.”
Alex laughed. “He wouldn’t dare, lass. He hasna the guts for it. Besides, Bella wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Haven’t you noticed how quiet your sister is lately, Alex? Usually she’s waspish and quick, but recently she has been very subdued. I saw an ugly bruise on her breast tonight.”
“Perhaps Ian was simply a bit rough in his loving, sweetheart. Dinna worry about Bella. She’s nae been shy about voicing her displeasure over anything.”
The winter deepened, Velvet’s first winter in the north, and it was a ferocious one. Careful planning on their chief’s part, however, kept the people of Broc Ailien from starvation and freezing. The granaries ofDun Brocdoled out careful measures of grain to all on a weekly basis, and the earl permitted firewood to be harvested from his forests.
It was fortunate that the lovers enjoyed each other’s company, for the heavy snows precluded visits from even the master ofGrantholmand his wife, which was no loss in Velvet’s mind. She liked her sister-in-law, but Ian Grant was another matter. He made her uncomfortable, and she could see nothing about him that should have attracted Bella to him.
Velvet was growing to love this land of her husband’s. It was lonely, and God only knew it could be bleak on gray days, but even then the Highlands had a beauty all their own; the green pine forests sweeping down the snowy mountainsides, the deciduous trees bare and black against the flat skies. On clear nights the stars were big and bright, offering the illusion of nearness so that one was tempted to reach up and pluck them down. And somewhere in the forests below the wolves hunted, the packs stopping occasionally to howl triumphantly at the white winter moon.
Then as suddenly as winter had come it was gone, and the snows began to melt away during the longer days of spring. They were able to ride out again over the hills together, much to Velvet’s joy; she would accompany Alex when he went to check on his cattle herds, which had grown enormous this spring with all the births. Together they watched as the calves gamboled awkwardly with their mothers in the glen pastures.
She sighed deeply, so deeply that her mount grew restive beneath her. “They make me feel so guilty that I am not yet with child,” she mourned.
“We’ll just hae to try harder,” he teased her.
Secretly, Velvet was worried. She had become pregnant so quickly with Akbar’s child. Why was it taking so long with Alex? His seed was not barren, as Sybilla and the Gordon faces upon a number of older children in the glen told her. Why could she not conceive his child? It did not help to have anxious faces peering at her each time she entered the village, nor did she like the fact that Alanna Wythe was spreading the rumor that it was her witchcraft that was keeping Velvet from conceiving.
“If I believed that for one minute,” muttered Alex when he heard it, “I should strangle the bitch myself.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” said Velvet grimly, “for I’d have already done it!”
The word coming from the south where the king and Lord Bothwell were still at odds boded ill for Francis Stewart-Hepburn. In late May the parliament under the orders of the king, no doubt encouraged by Maitland, ratified the sentence of total forfeiture against the Earl of Bothwell. Francis Stewart-Hepburn, claimed the king, aspired to Scotland’s throne, and that was treason.
It was a ridiculous charge, and everyone knew it. The Scots nobility, usually at odds with each other as well as the throne, now saw John Maitland behind the king’s actions. Maitland wanted to destroy them in an effort to take their power for his own and thereby rule the king. Without a moment’s hesitation, they rallied behind the Earl of Bothwell in an effort to reconcile him to the king.
Francis Stewart-Hepburn wanted peace with his cousin, James Stewart. A brilliant intellectual, a man whose mind was far in advance of the time in which he lived, the one thing he did not want was to be king of Scotland or of any other land. The painful example of his late uncle, James Hepburn, the fifth Earl of Bothwell and the last husband of Mary, Queen of Scots haunted him.
When a proclamation for the raising of a levy to pursue the Earl of Bothwell was issued in early July, it was ignored by all. The king retired sulkily to his palace at Dalkeith for the remainder of the summer. On August first the earl was smuggled into the palace where the queen was to attempt to effect a meeting between the two. The king, however, suspecting something of this sort, sent his wife a message saying that he would punishanyonewho attempted to introduce his outlawed cousin into his presence. Disappointed, Bothwell retired, returning toHermitagein despair.
All of this was duly reported to the chiefs of the various powerful families in the Highlands. The Earl of Huntley, George Gordon, head of Clan Gordon, arranged for a secret meeting with Bothwell. If the Border lord fell, Huntley knew that Maitland would come after him next, for George Gordon was the most powerful man in the Highlands, the so-called “Cock of the North.” Bothwell slipped away fromHermitagealone while his Borderers, led by his half brother, Hercules, and his mistress, the Countess of Glenkirk, continued to raid along the border giving the illusion that he was still there.
Bothwell was passed from safe house to safe house until he finally arrived atDun Broc, his last stop before reachingHuntley.The Gordons of BrocCairn greeted him joyously, and as Bothwell swung Velvet up in an embrace she squealed to him, “Careful, Francis! I am with child! At long last I am to be a mother!” Lowering her carefully, he kissed her on both cheeks.
“Congratulations, sweetheart!” he said.
“Ye might at least hae told me first,” grumbled Alex, looking somewhat aggrieved.
“I planned to tell you today, but when Francis swept me up I had to say something. Oh, Alex”—she hugged him—“I am so happy!”
Her delight was so infectious that he couldn’t help but grin like a fool at her. It suddenly dawned on him that he was going to be a father! Velvet was to have a baby! He startled them all with a loud Highland whoop. Then, picking his wife up in his arms, he carried her into the castle.
“Put me down, you great fool!” Velvet protested. “I am not made of some delicate stuff that breaks easily. My mother bore eight children successfully. My sisters have never lost a child. Put me down!”
