Alex could feel unbidden tears pricking the back of his eyelids, and he fought to prevent them from overflowing his eyes. “There’s no lass, Father,” he said quietly. “Ye know it.”
“Then go to England and wed wi’ the girl I chose for ye. She is yers for the asking, and both Adam de Marisco and I always hoped to unite our families by this marriage. It is my dying wish, Alex. I would not take ye from another, but if there is truly no other, then yemusthonor this betrothal to my friend’s daughter. Ye’ve never before objected to it. Do this final thing for me, my beloved son.”
In the last of the icy, howling winds of winter that roared about the dull gray stone turrets ofDun Broc, Alexander Gordon heard again the voice of his dead father importuning his speedy marriage. Seated at the high board in the Great Hall of his castle, he looked at his brother-in-law, Ian Grant, and knew he had no other choice but to marry. He had but lately overheard one of his nephews saying to the other, “Papa says that one day this will all be mine. I will be the earl.”
The innocent, yet prideful words spoken by his sister’s eldest child had suddenly brought home to Alex his father’s desperate dying wish.A Grant the next lord of BrocCairn? Never!
Alex understood why his father had made an English match for him. The English queen was, despite her age, a maiden, and no issue of hers would inherit the throne of England. It was her cousin, and his, young James Stewart, the king of Scotland, who would one day rule England.
Although Alex had spent as little time at the Scottish court as possible, even he could see Jamie Stewart’s eagerness to have his inheritance and flee south to a more civilized clime. The English nobility were less fractious than their Scots counterparts. The English kings had the kind of longevity a royal Stewart could not seem to count upon. Not one Scots king since the time of the first James Stewart had lived longer than forty years, and not one had died a natural death. The current Jamie must wish as would any normal man for a long life, but Scotland was not the place for it. When he inherited the throne of England and went south to claim it, those who went with him, and those already married to good English connections, would be the ones to prosper. That was why Angus Gordon had made an English match for his son.
Alex sat back in his chair and watched Ian Grant through narrowed eyes. Ian was a nice-enough fellow, but it was high time he made his own way. He had grown soft living atDun Brocwith all its small comforts. It was past time for him to return to his own holding in the glen below—a holding that he badly neglected—and made something of it. Forced back there, Alex thought with a wicked smile, his sister Annabella would be sure to ride her spouse hard to improve her lot.
“I’ll be leaving for England in a few weeks’ time,” Alex began.
“Why on earth are ye going there?” demanded his sister, stuffing a piece of pigeon pasty into her mouth. Bella had grown plump of late, Alex noted. Was she breeding again, or was it simply too much good living?
“I’m going to claim my bride, Bella. It’s high time I married and started a family. It was our father’s dying wish.”
Annabella Grant choked on her mouthful of pasty, looking stunned at her elder brother’s surprising revelation, but before she could swallow and speak, her husband was actually taking the initiative and speaking for them.
“Marry?Ye’re near thirty, man! If ye must wed, then why not wi’ a good Scots family? Why would ye blend yer blood with that of a damned Sassenach?”
“Because I was betrothed to the girl ten years ago, Ian, and there’s no one in Scotland I care enough to wed. Honor demands that I keep my word. Besides, she is the daughter of one of Father’s old friends.”
“Who?” Annabella had finally recovered enough to ask.
“A man by the name of Adam de Marisco. Father, it seems, spent time in France as a youth. Although de Marisco had an English father, his mother was French. It was at the home of her second husband, a chateau calledArchambault, that Father and Adam de Marisco met. They were both boys at the time, but there seems to have been a correspondence of many years’ standing between them after that. Ten years ago—it was the summer that Ian was courting ye, Bella, and ye’d no time for anything else—Father and I went south to England for a short time. There I was formally betrothed to de Marisco’s daughter who was then just a wee lass of five. I can barely remember the ceremony myself, and I remember less of the lass except that she was strong.”
“Strong?” Bella looked puzzled.
“She was the littlest, yet she was the leader of all the bairns.”
“So.” Bella sniffed. “Because of a dying wish made by a sentimental old man, ye’re going to get on yer horse and ride down to England to claim yer bride, are ye? Why this de Marisco man has probably forgotten all about ye and that silly betrothal! They’ll set the dogs on ye!”
“Och, brother, marry if ye must, but marry a good highland lass,” she went on. “Oh, I’ll admit I thought to see my oldest laddie in yer place here atDun Brocone day, Alex, but if that’s not to be ’tis not to be. Just don’t make a fool of yerself over something long forgot.”
“Aye,” put in Ian Grant. “Don’t make a fool of yerself before the Sassenachs, brother.”
Alex felt a bolt of irritation shoot through him. He loved his sister, but though Annabella was five years his junior, she had been born an old woman, and her husband was not much better. Neither he nor Bella had ever left the vicinity in which they had lived all their lives. They were two ingrown people who knew nothing of the outside world, and they were content to remain exactly as they had always been.
“Father has been in correspondence with Lord de Marisco without cease all these years, Bella,” Alex explained patiently. “There are two boxes in the library. One contains the letters they wrote to each other. I have recently browsed through them. Their friendship remained strong, as was mine, with de Marisco’s stepson, the Earl of Lynmouth, my betrothed’s half brother. Remember, we studied together in Paris? The other box contains miniatures of the de Marisco lass, painted each year immediately after her birthday. The betrothal is quite secure, Bella, and now with Father gone I must marry without delay. I think it’s time that ye take yer sons and go home, sister.Dun Brocwill be very much unsettled while I am away for I have already given orders that it be cleaned and freshened from towers to dungeons. The countess’s chambers will be redecorated for my bride. Yer own house must stand greatly in need of yer sure touch, Bella. Ye’ve not been there in over a year.”
“Are ye sending me from my home?” His sister looked aggrieved.
“No, sister, I am sending yeto yer home. Dun Brocceased to be yer home the day ye married Ian Grant, and my castle can only have one mistress: my wife. I am sure that yer husband misses his own house as well, eh, Ian?”
Ian Grant thought about the damp pile of dark gray stones in the glen that was calledGrantholm, and he shuddered. There was never enough money to make all the repairs it needed, nor enough wood to heat it, and it had a ghost that wailed and threw crockery when annoyed. Ian thought that perhaps a bog would be preferable, but then he caught his brother-in-law’s fierce look and stammered, “Oh, a-aye! ’Twill be good to get home a-a-again, Alex. I-indeed i-it w-will!”
Bella threw her husband a disgusted look. Ian was such a cowardly worm where Alex was concerned. Sometimes she questioned why she had ever married him, but immediately laughed inwardly, knowing the answer to that.No one!No one, she was certain, could love a woman the way her Ian did. It was his one talent.
She rounded on her brother. “So!” she snarled angrily. “I am no longer welcome in the house of my birth. I would have never guessed that ye felt that way, Alex, for ye hid it well from our parents. Our mother would shed bitter tears to see it, and our father would turn in his tomb if he but knew.”
“Mother wouldn’t let ye stay more than a week at a time before she died, Bella, and Father would have thrown ye out a month after that, but he was too ill to do so, and ’twas not my place then.” Alex’s voice was filled with amusement. Her guilt tactics might work well on Ian, but the new earl was made of stronger stuff. “Ye’re always welcome as a guest toDun Broc, but I’ll not have ye moving in on me so that yer weak-willed husband and yer snot-nosed sons can lord it over my inheritance. Father would have lived a long life had it not been for that hunting accident, and I am a young man yet, sister. I’ll have an heir within a year of the wedding ye can be sure, and another son for every year of the first five I’m wed. They’ll be plenty of Gordons forDun Broc!We’ve held this small scrap of Highland territory for over three hundred years, and we’ll hold it another three hundred! The Grants will have to be content withGrantholm, unless, of course, Ian, ye’re of a mind to go to court and serve Jamie Stewart.”
Ian Grant looked mightily uncomfortable, as Alex had known he would. Alex often wondered what it was about him that bound his ambitious sister to this rather cowardly fellow. He shrugged.
Annabella glared at her brother, and he smiled back at her. She was a pretty woman with dark brown hair and sharp gray-blue eyes. In face, form, and coloring she reminded him of their mother though she had not their mother’s sweetness of nature. “So,” she said archly, “so yer off to claim yer bride. I can only hope the lass is willing, brother dear.”
