Maid of Deception (44 page)
Authors: Jennifer McGowan
Alasdair’s smile was slow and sure. “It is the love of a Scotsman, who hews to the old ways,” he said. “I doona care for your traditions much, but I suppose they are yours. If I could get you by betrothal, that was all the same to me. Jane let drop your Queen’s interest in our relic, an’ it’s an interest I was happy to fan, in my own fashion.” He lifted his brows at me and shrugged. “What? If giving your Queen a tinker’s forgery of our famed Fairy Flag would free you from such a farce, then I would prefer to make you my own according to a custom that means far more to me.”
“That snippet of the flag was—a forgery?” I asked.
Meg was right!
Even though I’d been the first to warn the Queen of the flag’s questionable provenance, when I’d watched Alasdair give her the gift, I’d believed in him completely. Clearly, so had Elizabeth. “You tricked the Queen?”
“You should know by now, my lady, I’d never give away something truly precious to me,” Alasdair said. “It’s not the way of the MacLeods to let beauty slip our grasp.” His words were softer now, huskier. “Beatrice. My dear, daft, determined love. When one of my family gives his heart, he gives everything. In accepting this troth to you, I granted you my soul and body and mind as well. None of that has changed. None of that will ever change.”
He reached down and pulled the clump of ribbons out of my hand, and the second collection of ribbons from my belt. “We have our own tradition on Skye, that a man may bind himself to a woman for a year and a day. In my country it is to see if the woman still meets with the man’s liking after that time.”
The wrongness of
that
idea managed to cut through my haze, at least. “Charming,” I said dryly.
He grinned at me. “If she does, then they are wed. If she does not, then he may return her to her family, with neither blemish nor stain upon her reputation.”
Oh, that is outside of enough.
“But that is preposter—”
“A moment, my lady.” Alasdair chuckled at my outrage. “That is my country, and this is your own. And as such I think a blending of the traditions is called for.” He unlaced the ribbons, smoothing each one out, until they hung in two loose bundles. “I would handfast myself to you, Beatrice, for a year and a day. But the burden of proof that we suit will lie not upon you but on me. If at that time you still wish us to wed, I will come for you. I will take you from your courts and kings, and take you off to the Isle of Skye for a proper Scottish wedding.”
“It’s so far away,” I murmured, held by his touch.
“ ’Tis. And your father lamented loud and long over this before we came to an agreement I should hope would please you well.” He leaned down to brush a kiss over my forehead. “Once the celebrations are past in Skye, we shall return to Marion Hall. That house is too large not to have a family of its own to fill it.”
I looked at him, stunned. “Marion Hall? You would live in England?”
Alasdair held my gaze, his eyes dark with emotion.
“For you, my lady, I would live in the shadow of the devil himself.”
“But I have lied to you and betrayed you at every turn!”
I protested, hating myself for now finally giving voice to my duplicity, when all I needed to do was agree. But Alasdair had to know. Had to realize what and who he was committing himself to. “We cannot suit, Alasdair,” I said. “I was attentive to you only because I was ordered to be. I disliked you from the start.”
“Did you, now?” He grinned then, and I stamped my foot in irritation.
“I did!” I said, balling my fists into my hips. “I only spoke with you on orders of the Queen.”
“And when we were in the labyrinth of Marion Hall, by the gold-laden spring, and you returned my kiss. Were you under orders then as well?”
“I— Well, I—”
“And on the North Terrace, when I sheltered you from the wind and held you close, were you merely following the directives of your Queen?”
“You don’t understand. That was—”
“And naught but three days ago, when you wept yourself to sleep on that same terrace, and I picked you up in my arms and all you could say was my name, over and over again,” he said, his words barely audible. “Whose command were you bowing to then?”
I blinked at him, my mouth going dry with surprise. “That was you?” I whispered. “You carried me?”
“I would carry you to the ends of the earth, my lady. One day you’ll understand that.” He held up the ribbons and called out into the darkness, “A hand with this, indeed?”
And then the woods seemed to give up its secrets, and
four Maids of Honor stepped forth, silent and beaming each of them—the grinning, forthright Jane; the knowing, sly Meg; the completely transported Anna, always in love with love; and finally the ethereal, magical Sophia. They came up to me and took the ribbons from Alasdair. “Wouldn’t want these to go to waste,” Meg said.
My father emerged from the shadows then, his grin filling his whole face. “A year and a day is not so long, is it, Beatrice? Time enough to serve your Queen, and evade what men she would tie you to?”
At Alasdair’s rumble I nodded, surprised to feel my eyes filling with tears. “I’ve spent most of my life evading the dictates of the monarchy,” I said, half-laughing. “I suppose I could spend another year.”
“I will return to Skye and prepare my family and men for what we must do to save our land and its treasures,” Alasdair said. “And then I shall come back to you.” He held out his hands, and showed me how to interlace my fingers with his, as the Maids of Honor carefully tied and knotted two dozen ribbons between us, sealing the contract. “I pledge my fortune to you, my lady. I will bring to you all that you and your family need.”
“What I need is you,” I whispered.
“Then it appears we are in luck.” He stared back at me, fierce and strong and steadfast, his love for me seeming to burst from within even as we stood there, hand in hand, linked together inextricably by two dozen strips of cloth and a fate that seemed unwilling to be denied. “Lady Beatrice Elizabeth Catherine Knowles,” he said. “In a year and a day,
when I come for you, will you be my wife?”
At that moment, under the starlit sky, there was only one response.
“Yes,” I whispered back.
We tarried a few minutes more in the great shadow of Windsor Castle, and in the even broader shadow of my Queen and country. Monarchs had made my family what it was, and monarchs would rule whatever my family would become. And because of that, as had been every generation before me, I was indeed indebted to the Crown.
So for the next year and one day, to Elizabeth Regnant, Gloriana most high, I would give all of those things my noble birth had already claimed for the Queen: my talents and my loyalty, my skills and my unstinting service.
But from this point and ever onward, to Alasdair MacLeod I would give the only thing that had ever been mine own.
My heart.
ࡅ ELIZABETH BEMIS-HITTINGER, BEMIS PROMOTIONS
JENNIFER McGOWAN was born in Ohio, grew up in Montana, and studied in Paris. She fell in love with the Elizabethan era as a college student and is now an unrepentant scholar of that period, happily splitting her time between the past and present. An RWA Golden Heart Award winner and multiple finalist, Jenn is the author of
Maid of Deception, Maid of Secrets,
and
A Thief Before Christmas
(a Maids of Honor e-short story). She lives in Ohio. Visit her (and the Maids of Honor) at
jennifermcgowan.com
.
Also by
Jennifer McGowan
Maid of Secrets
A Thief Before Christmas
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Stark
Jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Michael Frost
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Book design by Lucy Ruth Cummins
The text for this book is set in ArrusBT Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McGowan, Jennifer.
Maid of deception / Jennifer McGowan.
pages cm. — (Maids of Honor)
Summary: In 1559 England, Beatrice and her fellow Maids of Honor, Queen Elizabeth I’s secret all-female guard, must rely on their charm and deadly spying skills to investigate a brewing Scottish rebellion.
ISBN 978-1-4424-4141-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4424-4143-9 (eBook)
[1. Courts and courtiers—Fiction. 2. Spies—Fiction. 3. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 1533–1603—Fiction. 4. Insurgency—Fiction. 5. Sex role—Fiction. 6. Love—Fiction.
7. Scotland—History—16th century—Fiction. 8. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M4784867Maf 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013033412
CONTENTS
