“Thirteen years ago, my husband and I were working a site near Chesters, which is very near Roxburghe lands,” Mrs. Simpson said. “I became friends with the housekeeper at Stonehaven and heard rumors. All hush-hush. But after the incident, the young lord was gone.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Mrs. Simpson wrapped her leathery hands around Rose’s. “Be careful what you bring into your heart, Rose. Hate is a darkness that once acted upon blights the soul. Men such as Roxburghe can turn a young woman’s head but beware the demon seed. He is the devil inside like his father before him.”
Ruark sat in the noisy dining hall, the early evening sunset slanting through the arched windows at his back. The food had ceased coming an hour ago, though most of the men present had not noticed, the noise of their voices rising and falling as they fiercely argued. No women were present, having been removed when Angus Murdoch returned carrying Hereford’s reply to the latest letter of negotiation, a lock of blood-caked hair, and a refusal to negotiate. He had arrived that afternoon with Ruark’s uncle, Duncan, bringing back Hereford’s demands and the grisly momento carried in a box, the current cause for the war cries.
Angus’s gaze went to Duncan, who stood with his shoulder braced against the window staring outside. Silence filled the old great hall. Duncan was a russet-haired giant among traditionally tall Kerr men. He had not spoken since his return.
“Hereford left Carlisle five days ago,” Duncan said. “He is taking Jamie and Rufus and Gavin to Alnwick Castle.”
Alnwick was in Northumberland. Although the castlehad fallen into disrepair since the days that Malcolm III of Scotland was killed there, in all Border warfare Alnwick was still one of the strongest fortresses on the English side. Rufus and Gavin Kerr were the two cousins captured with Jamie.
“The next gift we receive will no’ be so benign,” Duncan said.
A clansman down the long table slammed his fist down. “And I say Hereford’s actions can no’ remain unchecked.” The speaker was Angus, a bear of a man in his fifties with a scar across his cheek that bespoke of his own years in the earl of Roxburghe’s services. “Strike while he thinks we are indecisive.”
“Aye!” another shouted. “Enough is enough, I say.”
“We can no’ give him the ransom he wants,” Angus said.
“Ninety thousand pounds Anglish sterling. No one has that kind of wealth,” another shouted. “And what of Rufus and Gavin? Will Hereford remove one of their ears to go with that bloody lock of hair?”
Duncan folded his arms. “We can prepare another response and spend yet another month awaiting his and this can go on for a year. I say fight.”
Hearty exclamations rose. All eyes turned to Ruark.
Ruark had been listening in quiet fury to the back-and-forth talk, his legs stretched out in front of him, an empty plate to the side of his elbow.
These were his father’s allies and friends. Most of them family. Now they looked to him. Not everyone trusted him. His fame might reside in tales of his exploits on the sea, but he had not yet proven himself as their chieftain. If it was a war Hereford sought, then they were all nearly down that road.
“Do younotthink this is what Hereford wants us todo?” he asked in the silence now confronting him. “A war, so he will have an excuse to make outlaws of us all? Send dragoons down on your families? Do you not think he will welcome the fight?”
Duncan faced him. “And maybe you’ve forgotten a Kerr is no coward to run from a fight that began when Hereford killed your father.”
“I have forgotten nothing.”
Ruark held no illusions about his own character. But his uncle was a fool to think Ruark was anything like the younger man who had left Scotland years ago, or that his loyalties were anywhere but with Stonehaven. Nor was he a novice when it came to sailing into a broadside. Many an opponent had met his fate after lobbing the first salvo from a flawed position of power.
“Hereford’s first mistake is in thinking we are weak and without recourse,” Ruark said. “Do not let yourselves make the same mistake.”
The collective agreement came in mumbled ayes.
“The question is how we retrieve Jamie without more bloodshed. His or ours. I will not allow our actions this day to kill him.”
“Aye, but what choice has Hereford given us but to fight?” Angus asked.
“He has given us no choice,” Duncan said.
As if on cue, Colum arrived in the arched doorway. For the past few weeks, while negotiations had been going back and forth over the border in a useless time-consuming parley, Ruark had not been idle.
Colum gave Ruark a nod.
“But we are not helpless,” he told his men
Two men appeared with an elderly woman between them. It had been Rose who had inadvertently given him the break he had needed the night he had stayed at theabbey, when she had told him that Tucker was in Redesdale to bury an uncle. An uncle Ruark knew Tucker did not have. Ruark had sent a man there the very morning he’d left the abbey. An hour ago, Colum informed Ruark that his man had arrived with Countess Hereford’s former handmaiden. They had found her in Carlisle after the disgruntled widow of the recently deceased captain of the guard at Kirkland Park came across an old letter in her husband’s effects. After the exchange of a great deal of silver, the woman handed over the letter.
Wearing brown homespun that hung from her small frame and a faded purple-and-green plain wrap, Lady Hereford’s former maid looked terrified as she was brought to stand in front of the table, her eyes darting over the unfriendly bearded faces. She clutched the wrap tighter around her shoulders as if the cloth were an iron shield. Something about her seemed familiar ...
