Twice now, their brother, Archibald Douglas, had reached for the power of the crown, and twice he had lost and suffered a dramatic fall. The first time, he persuaded the newly widowed queen to wed him in secret without the permission of Parliament, which caused such a stir that the queen fled to England and the Douglas men holed up in their mighty fortress, Tantallon Castle, until the political winds changed again.
The second time, the conflict between the Douglases and their rival magnates descended into a bloody battle right in the streets of Edinburgh, which came to be known as the Battle of the Causeway. With the country on the brink of civil war, her brothers and uncle were charged with treason and fled the country to save their skins.
Margaret had bad memories of her own from that terrible day of bloodshed in Edinburgh.
“You’ll have your revenge on Wretched William now,” Lizzie said, using the nickname she had given Margaret’s former husband. “Archie will have him boiled in oil for what he did to you.”
“I don’t want vengeance.” That would give him too great a place in her thoughts, after she spent the last three years trying to forget. “All I ask is that I never have to see his face or hear his voice again.”
“Ye needn’t worry about that,” Lizzie huffed. “Wretched William doesn’t have the bollocks to show himself now that our family is on the rise again.”
“One thing is certain,” Alison said, turning to look at the empty field behind them, “ye won’t be living in a cottage in the village.”
Margaret felt the blood drain from her head.
“Now that the treason charges have been dropped,” Alison continued, “the queen cannot accuse the rest of us of being complicit and threaten us with imprisonment.”
The queen’s fury with Archie extended to the entire Douglas family. Alison’s husband, however, was such a powerful laird that they were safe from even the queen on his lands.
“You can live at Tantallon Castle,” Alison said. “But I expect you’ll spend a great deal of time at court again.”
“I don’t want any of that,” Margaret said.
“I doubt ye can convince our brothers of that,” Alison said. “Now that Archie is back, he’ll not have his sister—particularly his only unwed sister—living in a cottage.”
Margaret felt as if the ground was opening up beneath her. She wanted to argue that the men of her family had no right to tell her where and how to live. They had not cared what happened to her when they fled Scotland and left the rest of the family to face the consequences.
But Archibald Douglas, the 6th Earl of Angus, was not just her brother. He was the head of her family, the chief of the Douglases, and—most importantly of all—their young king’s stepfather. Now that Archie had returned with the backing of Henry VIII and many of the Scottish nobles, he was again one of the most powerful men in Scotland.
“If ye don’t wish to go, you can stay with us at the castle,” Alison said, putting an arm around Margaret’s shoulders. “Ye know my husband will not let Archie take you.”
That would cause a dangerous conflict between her brother and brother-in-law, which would be a poor way to repay Alison and her husband for all they had done for her.
“I won’t worry about it now,” she said, to calm herself. “I expect Archie will be too busy to bother with me for some time.”
“He’s already sent men to fetch you,” Lizzie said. “I rode hard to get here first to warn you, but they’ll be here soon.”
Margaret’s hand went to her throat. “They’re on their way?”
“Aye,” Lizzie said. “They weren’t far behind me.”
Margaret pushed through the door of Thomas’s cottage and sat down hard on one of the kitchen stools. Could she go back to the life she had before?
Did she have a choice?
She had grown up in one of Scotland’s most powerful families, accustomed to a life of great castles, fine gowns and jewels, and frequent visits to court. Her family’s fall—and everything she lost with it—had been hard, but she had gotten through it and survived.
She missed nothing of her former life. It had brought her too many sorrows.
The sound of pounding hooves of twenty horses arriving in the village filled the cottage, like an echo from her past, trampling on her hope of making a small, quiet life for herself.
###
Finn stood outside the door to the great hall of Huntly Castle, the seat of the mighty Gordon chieftain, the Earl of Huntly. A month ago, he’d been a member of the earl’s guard, a respected position for a warrior of the clan. And he gave it up for naught.
Asking Huntly to take him back was a humiliation he’d rather not face sober. Though he’d been drinking steadily all day in diligent preparation, he took out the flask for one last pull.
Ach, this could not be that bad. Even if Huntly threw him in the dungeon for fighting for a rival clan, at least Finn didn’t have to deliver a severed head this time.
