“I can’t wait to meet this paragon,” Isabel said. “If half the things I’ve heard about him are true, he must be an impressive man.”
Izzie would get her wish sooner than they anticipated. As if on cue, the sound of hoofbeats below signaled the arrival of a rider.
A few minutes later, Joanna was holding a message from Jamie in her hands. Her eyes bulged as she started to read it, and she muttered something like “God in heaven!” Elizabeth was concerned until her sister-in-law started to laugh.
“What is it?” she asked.
There were tears of joy and pride in Joanna’s eyes as she handed the parchment to her. “Read for yourself, but your future husband isn’t going to be very happy when he hears about this.”
Elizabeth read it in stunned disbelief. Near the end she let out a cry that mirrored Joanna’s and threw her arms around her in celebration. Jo was right. Randolph wasn’t going to be happy. He was almost two months into his siege on Edinburgh Castle, and James had just taken Roxburgh Castle in one night.
They laughed until tears ran down their cheeks. The miraculous feat that they’d jested about moments before had come true. Jamie had done the impossible once again. In a move that no one—including the Bruce—was expecting, he’d seen an opportunity and had taken the castle by subterfuge the night before during the Shrove Tuesday celebrations.
And almost as wonderful to Elizabeth’s mind, after seeing to the destruction of the castle, her brother would arrive at Blackhouse within a fortnight to escort them to Edinburgh.
Overjoyed, Elizabeth went to share the news with Archie and her youngest brother, Hugh.
She only found one of them.
The bastard was toying with him. Thom attacked from the left and then from the right, but each time the captain deflected Thom’s sword with a deft twist of his hands, first slapping—hard—the flat of his blade to Thom’s shoulder and then his thigh. Letting him know that were they not sparring, his blade would have cut.
Thom didn’t need to look at his opponent’s face to know that he was gloating. The captain had been his enemy since Thom had stopped him from accosting Eoin MacLean’s wife last year. The bastard should be thanking him. The captain—Sir John Kerr—had suffered a beating at MacLean’s hands, instead of the slow death he would have had had Thom not intervened before he did more than grope.
But the captain didn’t see it that way, and he looked for any opportunity he could to make Thom look bad—especially, like now, when their lord was watching.
Over the past three years Thom had quietly been making a name for himself, and Edward Bruce, Earl of Carrick, had taken notice. The king’s only remaining brother had taken a personal interest in Thom’s training, and let him know that despite his late start and humble beginnings, Thom could rise high in his army. This offended the captain’s sense of order, and the earl’s favoritism only increased his resentment.
Thom had suffered for it. And not just from the captain. For the past three years he’d been subject to every kind of humiliation, heard countless crude comments about his birth, and endured every kind of drudgery and physical demand that were calculated to wear him down—to prove that a “peasant” couldn’t compete with men who’d been born to the battlefield. He’d wanted to quit more times than he could remember—usually when his bruised and battered muscles were burning, sweat was pouring from every orifice of his body, and he had taken another mouthful of dirt—but the thought of returning home in defeat had always stopped him. So he’d suffered and endured and eventually he’d earned their grudging respect. Most of them, at least.
“Perhaps you should stick to the hammer,” the captain taunted. “The sword is thenobleweapon of a knight. Brute strength won’t get you very far if you don’t learn how to use your edge.” Thom was used to the snide remarks about his birth and didn’t rise to the bait, which only served to annoy the captain. “Again,” Kerr (or as the men aptly called him, “Cur”) demanded, holding his sword out in front of him in a defensive position. Thom clenched his jaw and raised his hands to the right of his temple, preparing to attack.
“Don’t think so much,” one of the men gathered around watching suggested.
It was exactly Thom’s problem. He was not without strength or skill, but even after three years of constant training, he had not found the instinctive movements that seemed burned into the muscle of men who’d held a sword since youth.
As much as Thom hated to say it, the captain was right: brute strength would only take him so far. Which was why he was subjecting himself to Kerr’s humiliation at every opportunity. The captain might be a bastard, but he knew how to wield a sword.
Thom didn’t want to just be good, he wanted to be among the best. If that meant cramming fifteen years of training into a handful of years and listening to the captain’s slurs and taunts, he would suffer it gladly. He would do whatever it took.
With grim determination, Thom heeded the advice of the man who’d spoken and tried not to think too much as he stepped forward. He turned his hands, as if he meant to swing underhanded across, but then at the last minute, he rolled his wrist and used a downward motion. The captain was too good to be fooled. He blocked the blow, but when he did, Thom reacted, using the edge of the blade to roll over the captain’s sword and tap his ribs, signifying a cut.
Thom betrayed none of his satisfaction, but it was there in Kerr’s furious expression.
A few of the men clapped and cheered. Despite his rank, the captain was a crude braggart and not popular around camp.
The most important spectator clapped among them. When he finished, Carrick called Thom over. “Not bad, MacGowan. I see you are improving in your sword skills.”
Thom accepted the compliment with a nod. “The captain has taught me much.”
Carrick lifted a dark brow. “I see you’ve learned some diplomacy as well. You may become a knight yet.” His mouth twisted with amusement. “Assuming your horsemanship skills have progressed, that is?”
Thom didn’t bother hiding his grimace. His lack of fondness for horses (and theirs for him) wasn’t exactly a secret. He rode, but through sheer grit and determination. “I’m afraid not, my lord.”
Carrick laughed uproariously and clapped him on the back. “We’ll find you a sweet filly to tame yet. Which reminds me...” He gave Thom a knowing look. “You made quite the impression on our hostess with your heroics a few days ago.”
Thom winced a little at Edward Bruce’s attempt at humor. Like most men in camp, Carrick could be crude when it came to talking about women. Big Thom would have skinned him alive, if he’d heard Thom say half—a quarter—of the things that were said about women at camp. Thom might be of low birth, but he’d been raised to treat lasses—all lasses—with respect. Despite their supposed code of chivalry, from what Thom had seen, not all knights took it to heart.
But Carrick wasn’t all bad. Thom knew that many men didn’t like the king’s second-in-command, but he wasn’t one of them. Edward Bruce could be hotheaded and impulsive, but he was also bold, fierce, and aggressive on the battlefield. If he was in the shadow of his older brother and at times jealous, perhaps Thom understood. He knew what it was like to always be looking up.
