Rebellion & In From The Cold (26 page)

Balls and receptions could wait.

“Victory at Prestonpans earned us more support.” Brigham flicked his cloak back, welcoming the damp evening air. “I doubt we tarry here much longer.”

“Councils,” Coll grumbled. “Every blessed day we have another council. If there’s a problem here, my lad, it’s between Lord George and O’Sullivan. I’ll swear, if one says black, the other before God will vow it to be white.”

“I know.” It was a matter that caused Brigham no little concern. “I’ll tell you true, Coll, O’Sullivan worries me. I prefer a commander a bit steadier, one who is less interested in routs than in overall victory.”

“We can have neither if we dally here in court.”

Brigham smiled, but he was looking out into the lowering night. “You miss your Highlands, Coll, and your wife.”

“Aye. It’s been barely two months since we left Glenroe, but we had little time together. With the bairn coming, I worry.”

“A man’s entitled to worry about the ones he loves.”

“There’s many a man with us who knows once the march south begins it could be a year before we see our homes and families again.” Because he had no wish to fall into a black mood, Coll slapped Brigham on the shoulder. “At least there’s plenty here for you to enjoy. The women are bonny. I wonder that you don’t pick out a wench to charm. I’d swear you’ve broken a dozen hearts with your indifference these past few weeks.”

“You could say I’ve something on my mind.” Someone, Brigham thought. The only one. “What do you say we crack a bottle and find a game?” He turned at Coll’s nod of assent, and together they started back across the courtyard.

Brigham noticed the woman step through the shadowy archway, but his gaze skimmed over her and passed without interest. He had taken only three steps when he stopped, turning slowly, deliberately, to
stare. The light was fading quickly, and he could see only that she was tall and very slender. A plaid was draped over her head and shoulders. She might have been a servant, or one of the ladies of the court taking the air. He wondered why a stranger should remind him so achingly of his porcelain shepherdess.

And though he couldn’t see her face, he was certain she was staring at him as intently as he stared at her.

The leap of attraction was unexpected. Annoyed with himself, Brigham turned again and continued on. Inexplicably, he was compelled to stop, to turn yet again. She was still there, standing in the fading light, her hands folded, her head held high.

“What the devil’s wrong with you?” Coll stopped and turned himself. Spotting the figure in the archway, he grinned. “Well, if that’s all. I don’t suppose you’ll want to dice with me now.”

“No, I …” Brigham let his words trail off as the woman lifted her hands to slip the plaid from her head. The last of the light fell over her hair. Like sunset, it gleamed.

“Serena?” He could only stare. She took a step toward him, and he saw her face, and that she was smiling. His boots rang against stone as he strode across the courtyard. Before she could say his name, he swept her up into his arms, then around and around in dizzying circles.

“So that’s the way of it,” Coll murmured as he watched his friend drag his sister close for a long, bruising kiss.

“Why are you here? How did you come?” Then Brigham kissed her again and swallowed her answer.

“Give way, man.” Coll plucked Serena from Brigham’s arms, kissed her hard, then set her on her feet. “What are you doing in Edinburgh, and where’s Maggie?”

“She’s here.” Breathless, Serena found herself swung back against Brigham’s side. “And Mother and Gwen and Malcolm, as well.” She reached out to give Coll’s beard a sisterly tug. “The Prince invited us to court. We arrived almost an hour ago, but didn’t know where to find you.”

“Maggie’s here? Is she well? Where is she?” With his usual impatience, Coll turned on his heel and strode off to see for himself.

“Brigham—”

“Say nothing.” He combed his hands through her hair, delighted with the feel of it, the scent of it. “Say nothing,” he repeated, and lowered his head.

He held her like that, mouth to mouth, body to body, while the shadows deepened. The weeks of separation melted away. Restless, his hands moved down her back, over her hips, up to her face, while his lips, heated with desire, had her moaning and straining against him.

“Beautiful, always more beautiful, Serena. A man could die from missing you.”

“I thought of you every day, and prayed. When we heard of the battles, I nearly went mad waiting for your letters telling me you were safe.” At last she drew away to look at him. Because he and Coll had ridden in from camp, he had yet to change to his court dress. With some relief, Serena noted that he was the same man who had ridden away from Glenroe nearly three months before.

“I was afraid you’d change somehow, being here.” She moistened her lips as she looked back toward the buildings. Nothing she had ever seen was more magnificent than the palace, with its towers and steeples with lights flickering behind its tall windows. “Everything here is so splendid. The palace, the abbey.”

“Wherever I am, nothing changes between us, Rena.”

She moved back into his arms to rest her head on his shoulder. “I was afraid it would. I prayed every day for you to be safe. And I prayed every day that you wouldn’t seek comfort in the arms of another woman.”

He laughed and kissed her hair. “I shan’t ask which you prayed for with more fervor. My love, there is no one else. Can be no one else. Tonight I shall find more than comfort in your arms.”

She smiled as she turned her lips to his cheek. “Would that we could. In truth, next to finding you safe, my dearest desire was to spend a night loving you.”

“Then I shall see to it that you have both your desires.”

She kissed him again and chuckled. “I’m to share a chamber with Gwen. It would be as unseemly, my lord, for you to come to my bed as it would for me to search the corridors for yours.”

“Tonight you share my chamber, as my wife.”

Her mouth opened in surprise as she stepped out of his arms. “That’s impossible.”

“It is very possible,” he corrected. “And it shall be.” Without giving her a chance to speak, he pulled her through the archway.

The Prince was in his apartments, preparing for that evening’s entertainment. Though Brigham’s request for an audience at that hour surprised him, he granted it.

“Your Highness.” Brigham bowed as he entered Charles’s sitting room.

“Good evening, Brigham. Madam,” he said as Serena sank into a curtsy. She would kill Brigham, she thought, for dragging her before the Prince without even a chance to wash off the travel dirt or take a comb to her hair. “You would be Miss MacGregor.” Charles drew Serena to her feet and kissed her hand. “It is easy to see why Lord Ashburn no longer notices the ladies at court.”

“Your Highness. It was good of you to allow me and my family to come.”

“I owe the MacGregors a great deal. They have stood behind my father, and behind me. Such loyalty is priceless. Will you sit?” He led her to a chair himself.

She had never seen a room like this one. The high ceiling was festooned with swirls and clusters of fruits and flowers, and from its center hung a dripping chandelier. Murals ran along the walls depicting Stuart victories in battle. A fire crackled in the hearth beside her chair. Music lay open on a harpsichord in the center of the room.

“Sire, I have a favor I would ask.”

Charles sat, then gestured Brigham to a chair. “I am sure I owe you more than one.”

“There is no debt for loyalty, Your Highness.”

Charles’s eyes softened. Serena saw then why he was called the Bonnie Prince. It wasn’t just his face and form, it was his heart. “No, but there can be gratitude. What would you ask of me?”

“I would wed Miss MacGregor.”

Charles’s smile spread as he tapped his fingertips on his knee. “I had already surmised as much. Shall I tell you, Miss MacGregor, that in Paris Lord Ashburn was very generous with the ladies at court? At Holyrood House he has proved most selfish.”

Serena kept her hands folded primly in her lap. “I believe Lord Ashburn is a wise warrior, sir. He has some knowledge of the fierce and terrible temper of Clan MacGregor.”

Highly entertained, Charles laughed. “So, I shall wish you well. Perhaps you would care to be married here, at court.”

“Yes, sir, and tonight,” Brigham said.

Now Charles’s pale brows rose. “Tonight, Brigham? Such haste is …” He let his words trail off as he glanced at Serena again. The firelight played seductively over her hair.” … understandable,” he decided. “Do you have the MacGregor’s permission?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then. You are both Catholic?” Receiving nods, he thought it through. “The abbey is convenient. There is a matter of the banns and so forth, but I believe if a man cannot deal with such
matters, he can hardly hope to win a throne.” He rose, bringing both Serena and Brigham to their feet. “I will see you wed tonight.”

Pale, not at all certain she wasn’t dreaming, Serena found her parents in their chamber.

“Serena.” Fiona sighed over the fact that her daughter still wore her traveling suit. “You must change. The Prince’s court is no place for muddy boots and soiled skirts.”

“Mama, I am to be wed.”

“Devil, lass.” Ian kissed her tumbled hair. “We’re aware of that.”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight?” Fiona rose from her chair. “But how—?”

“Brigham went to the Prince. He took me, like this.” Serena spread her muddy skirts, knowing her mother would understand her feelings on the matter.

“I see,” Fiona murmured.

“And he, they …” She looked from her mother to her father, then back again. “Mama.”

“Is it your wish to marry him?”

She hesitated, feeling the old doubts well up. Instinctively she lifted a hand to her breast. On a heavy chain under her bodice was the emerald Brigham had given her. “Aye,” she managed. “But it has all happened so fast.” He would be leaving again, she thought. Leaving to fight. “Aye,” she said, her voice stronger. “There is nothing I want more than to belong to him.”

Fiona slipped an arm around Serena’s shoulders. “Then we have much to do. Leave us, please, Ian, and send a servant for Maggie and Gwen.”

“Tossing me out, are you, my lady?”

Fiona held out a hand to him, even as Serena reached for his other. “I fear you would have a strong dislike for the woman’s work that must be done in the next few hours.”

“Aye, I’ll go willingly.” He paused a moment to draw Serena close. “You have always made me proud. Tonight I give you to another man, and you will take his name. But you will always be a MacGregor.” He kissed her. “Royal is our race, Serena, and rightly.”

There was no time to think, and certainly no time to dwell on the enormity of what she would do before the night was over. Servants rushed in and out of the chambers with jugs of hot water that Fiona scented delicately for her daughter’s bath. Gwen and Maggie chattered as they took out seams and sewed new ones on the dress Serena would wear to be married.

“It’s romantic,” Gwen said as she scanned her stitches with a critical eye.

“It’s madness.” Maggie glanced over, knowing Serena was soaking behind the screen. “Rena must have woven strong magic to make Brigham hurry so. He must not be so stuffy as I once thought.”

“Imagine.” Gwen shifted the ivory satin delicately. “Going to the Prince. We never had a chance to unpack from the journey before we’re changing Mother’s ball gown into Serena’s wedding gown.”

Maggie sat back, touching a hand to the mound of her belly. The baby she carried always became more active at night. The unpacking would have to wait, she thought, just as she and Coll would have to wait to have a proper reunion. She stifled a giggle as she remembered how he had roared when they had been interrupted just as they had started to become reacquainted. She looked over as Serena emerged, wrapped in towels, her skin and hair dripping.

“The dress will be beautiful,” Maggie told her, blinking back tears at the thought of the wedding. “And so will you.”

“By the fire,” Fiona ordered, armed with a brush. Knowing the trembles had nothing to do with a chill, Fiona began to soothe her daughter as she dried her hair. “A woman’s wedding is one of her most precious memories. Years from now, when you look back, what seems now like a dream will be very
clear.”

“Should I be so afraid?”

Fiona reached over Serena’s shoulder to take her hand. “I almost think the more you love, the sharper the fear.”

Serena gave a weak laugh. “Then I must love him more than I knew.”

“I could not wish a better man for you, Rena. When the fighting is done, you will have a good life together.”

“In England,” Serena managed.

Fiona began to stroke with the brush as she had so many times before. Her hands were gentle as she thought of this small pleasure that would soon be denied her.

“When I married your father, I left my family and my home. I had grown up with the sound of the sea, the smell of it. As a girl I would climb the cliffs and watch the waves break on the rocks below. The forest of Glenroe was foreign to me, and frightening. I wasn’t sure I could bear being so far away from everything I had known and loved.”

“How did you?”

“By loving your father more.”

They left her hair loose so that it streamed like candlelight down her back. The bodice of the gown was snug, skimming her breasts, leaving them to rise softly above as a resting place for a rope of pearls. The sleeves belled out, sheening down to her wrists. There was a glimmer of pearls on the skirt where it flared over hoops and petticoats. At the waist was a sash gathered up with a clutch of the palest pink wild roses. With her heart hammering, Serena stepped into the abbey.

It was a place of legends, of joy and despair, and of miracles. There she would be wed.

He was waiting for her. In the wavering light of lamps and candles, she walked to him. She had always thought he was at his most elegant in black, but she had never seen him look more handsome. Silver buttons glinted, adding richness to the severe cut of his coat. For the first time since she had known him, he wore a wig. The soft white added romance to his face, contrasting royally with the dark gray of his eyes.