The Border Lord's Bride (36 page)

"I prefer the red figures," he said, moving a pawn.

Ellen nodded. Then she moved a pawn.

They played for a long time, and Ellen found herself rather pleased that he was a worthy opponent. "You play well," she finally told him.

"As do you, madam," he answered her. "Who taught you?"

"My grandsire," Ellen answered.

"You played only with him?" Sir Roger wondered.

"Nay, I often played with King James when I was in his aunt‘s household," Ellen explained to her companion.

"Did you beat him?" Sir Roger asked, curious.

"More often than not," Ellen said without embarrassment.

He laughed, genuinely amused. "Modesty is not your strong suit, madam," he told her. "This is a side of you I did not expect."

"Why did you kidnap me?" she asked him quietly.

"Your husband embarrassed me, and cost me my king‘s favor. I have told you before that I simply wished to take something of value from him, as he had taken something of value from me. He will find us eventually, for he is a determined man. You should know he has scoured the borders all summer for any trace of you, madam."

"When he finds me he will kill you," Ellen said.

"Or I will kill him. Check, madam, and mate," Sir Roger replied. "Another game?" He gave her a small smile. "Either way, I win this game we play."

"If you are dead I cannot see how you could possibly win," Ellen said irritably.

"Your husband won the first game by conducting those ferocious border raids late last spring and into early summer. I had gathered together a goodly group of English borderers myself, and had been successfully attacking on the Scots side of the border. But then the laird of Duffdour gathered a great grouping of borders from several clans and came after us. Immediately my people began to flee back to their own homes and villages to protect themselves, to protect their women and their stock. Your husband destroyed my little army and won the second game. His actions caused King Henry to exile me from his favor for my failures here in the borders. That I had hitherto been successful made no difference. Your king‘s ridiculous support of the pretender has unnerved and irritated Henry Tudor greatly. England has had enough of civil wars."

"Then England should keep to its side of the border," Ellen retorted pertly.

"Alas, madam, neither the English nor the Scots are capable of doing that. It is a centuries-old dispute. You are from the Highlands, and it is difficult to explain to one who was not born to it.

We shall never stop playing the game, and game three between the laird of Duffdour and Sir Roger Colby is now on. If I kill your husband I win, especially if I should keep you for my own.

My prestige will once again be restored, and I shall be able to bring men to my side. We will raid into Scotland, and my king will be pleased with my actions. I shall again be in his favor."

"And if Duncan kills you, which he most certainly will?" Ellen asked him.

"I still win," Sir Roger said, "for I shall have died attempting to restore my honor, and England‘s, which will regain me, if posthumously, my king‘s respect."

"You are mad," Ellen told him. His reasoning frightened her.

"Perhaps," he said. "Pay attention, madam! If you move that knight the game will surely end, and when it does I will leave you."

Ellen stood up. "I can play no more," she said.

He looked across the table at her. "Sit down, madam," he ordered her in a cold voice. "You are behaving like a child." His hand swept the figures on the board away. "We will begin again," Sir Roger told her, setting all the figures back up, "and you will make the very first move."

His demeanor, his tone, angered Ellen, and she played him with a fierce concentration, determined to win.

"We will set a wager," he suddenly said. "If you win you get to slap me, which you very much wish to do right now. But if I win I get to take a kiss from your lips."

"I am a married woman, not your mistress!" she snapped at him.

"All women, madam, are whores and sluts at heart. I am a man of great experience, and that I know for truth. When you lose I will take my kiss, and I will wager you will enjoy it in your secret heart, even if you try to tell yourself that you feel guilt." Then he laughed again, and devoted his energies back to winning the game.

Furious, Ellen played skillfully against him. Her hand longed to smack his smug face. He was a horrible, horrible man! She must concentrate her energies into planning her escape from Colby Castle.

"Checkmate, madam," he said suddenly.

Ellen looked down at the board and realized her anger had cost her the game. She jumped up from her chair, not knowing what she should do or where she should go.

Reaching out, Roger Colby caught her hand and drew her around and away from the table. "You have lost, madam," he said softly. "You are now honor bound to pay your debt to me." He drew her closer, laughing softly as he saw the stubborn set of her face. "Do you truly think a small kiss so great a sin, madam?" One arm imprisoned her against him. His other hand tipped her face up toward his. "You are young, and very pretty, madam. I will wager your husband took much pleasure of you, and you of him. You have been gone from each other for almost two months now. Does your laird keep a mistress among his clanswomen, I wonder?" he asked her softly. "A lusty man cannot be too long without a woman. He sickens if his lust is not sated."

His voice was low and almost musical. It seemed to hold her in its spell. She struggled feebly against him. "Let me go," Ellen said, fighting to control the tremor that had taken over her voice.

In response he drew one of her small hands up to his lips and kissed it slowly, lingeringly, first her fingers, and then, turning it over, he pressed a second hot kiss on the palm. "Forgive me, madam, but I could not resist," he told her. Then he released her. "I have enjoyed our game," Sir Roger said. "Good night, madam." And he was gone through the door. The key turned in the lock, and Ellen heard his footsteps retreating down the stairs.

Shaken, she sat heavily down in a chair, and a shudder raced through her. All these weeks she had been separated from her husband she had thought only of her love for him, and her fears for their infant bairn. She had not considered that Duncan might be feeling lust. She had not felt lust.

She had been far too concerned with surviving to feel lust. But then, men were different, as the king‘s aunt was forever telling her ladies.

Balgair MacArthur had repelled her. The thought of coupling with him had been repulsive. He had been dirty and rough, and his heart was black. She knew with certainty that he would never have brought her to passion. She knew better than to flirt with the king, but she had wondered once or twice whether, if she had, he would have flirted back. Made love to her? And then Duncan Armstrong had come into her life. She had found him attractive from the start, but had never dared to dream he would become her husband. But he had. He was the only man who had ever really kissed her, touched her, coupled with her. And she loved him.

Was Duncan being faithful to her? Truly faithful? Or was Sir Roger, who was a man himself, and certainly knew other men well, correct? Was Duncan sating his lusts with a mistress? God only knew that little slut Evina would have been happy to serve her lord in such a capacity. So here she was, Ellen thought morbidly, a captive heaven only knew how far from Duffdour, while her husband was amusing himself with some easy, nubile slut. It wasn‘t fair! He should be even now riding for Colby Castle to retrieve her and kill Sir Roger. Ellen burst into tears. It just wasn‘t fair!

But Duncan Armstrong wasn‘t riding for Colby Castle because he had yet to learn of its existence. "Where the hell can she be?" he demanded to his brother Conal. "It‘s as if the earth opened up and swallowed her. Jesu! You don‘t think the bastard killed her, do you?" The color drained from his handsome face.

"Nay, he‘ll not have killed her," Conal said, and the other men in the hall nodded, agreeing. "If he killed her there would be nothing more between you but revenge, and Roger Colby wants more from you than that. What we have to learn is where he has gone to ground, the wily fox.

Since he‘s not in Devil‘s Glen, and it has remained deserted, according to our spies, then he must have another place to which he could run."

"It cannot be too far over the border," Hercules Hepburn said, "for after he made off with her she was not seen again by any."

"Any on this side of the border," Duncan Armstrong remarked. "How far could he have gotten if he rode the night through?"

"A good distance, but now we must wonder in which direction he rode," Conal Bruce noted.

"I want her home, and ‘tis already early autumn. How will I find her if the snows come early? I need her! Willie needs her," the laird of Duffdour said brokenly. He had lost weight in the past few weeks. His face was gaunt from lack of sleep, his eyes haunted with the thought he somehow could have prevented this.

"Has anyone seen Johnston?" Hercules Hepburn asked. "He might know."

"No one has seen him since he was taken. I doubt that he would know anything of value,"

Duncan said. "If I ever get my hands on the man I‘ll kill him, the dirty traitor!"

"He‘s already been condemned by the king, and if is caught will be hanged," Hercules said.

"Bothwell is not pleased."

"We‘ll have to send out parties of clansmen again to search for Ellen," Conal Bruce suggested.

"Nay, she‘s not in Scotland," Duncan said. "Of that I am certain. She‘s somewhere in England, and armed clansmen will hardly be welcome on the other side of the border, given our

enthusiastic activity of the past few years. We will have to go into England in ones and twos, not wearing our plaids or our badges. We must travel discreetly, not drawing attention to ourselves.

We can send out two dozen or more men in as many directions to track down the den into which our English fox has retreated with his captive. We will find Ellen, and we will bring her home,"

the laird of Duffdour declared. "And then I will kill Sir Roger Colby. No one else may do the deed. He is mine, and mine alone!"

And the men in the hall cheered both his declaration and his determination. You did not steal a man‘s wife and live to tell the tale.

Henry, king of England, the seventh of that name, was irritated beyond all measure. The king of Scotland had taken into his kingdom an impostor he was advancing as the younger son of King Edward IV. He had even married this fellow to the Earl of Huntley‘s beautiful daughter, Katherine Gordon, in his efforts to further the actions of that dead king‘s sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, in her vengeful cause against Henry Tudor. King Henry wondered how George

Gordon felt about having his daughter put into such a tenuous arrangement, but then, it was said the foolish girl was wildly in love with the young man who claimed to be England‘s true king.

Lady Gordon, however, it was said, had pleaded with James Stewart not to arrange the marriage.

Seated in his privy chamber with his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and his own wife, Elizabeth, daughter of the late King Edward IV, Henry Tudor said, "He must know the man he champions is a fraud. He has to know!"

"Aye, he is aware of it," the king‘s mother said.

"How can you be certain of such a thing?" Elizabeth the queen asked.

"Your half sister will have told him," Margaret Beaufort said. "Remember that I spoke with her that last unfortunate time she came to court. She told me that the page who slept in your brothers‘ bedchamber had witnessed their murders and their bodies being removed after Henry defeated King Richard at Market Bosworth. The assassins never saw the other boy, and when they had departed Middlesham he fled north to Adair at Stanton. Adair has made a place for herself in Scotland. King James knows her relationship to King Edward, to you, my dear Elizabeth. You may be certain he has called upon Adair and shown her this impostor."

"But what if, in an effort to revenge herself on me, she has told James Stewart that this fellow is indeed Richard of York?" King Henry wanted to know. "I was not kind to her that last time she came to court. And if she inherited one thing from her father, King Edward, it was pride. And she was furious at the blackening of King Richard‘s name."

"She was always Uncle Dickon‘s favorite, although in fairness I should say that he tried not to play favorites," Elizabeth said a bit petulantly. "Still, it was obvious."

"You were not kind to her either," Margaret Beaufort said softly. "Any other woman would want revenge on the Tudors, and perhaps given the opportunity Adair would take it. But not in this manner. Adair had too much pride in her royal blood to lie over something as serious as this.

Nay. She will have told King James this man is not her half brother. And I will wager he did not know who she was, and, of course, the real Richard would have known Adair Radcliffe."

"James Stewart is like a thorn in my thumb," Henry Tudor said. "A thorn that needs to be removed as quickly as possible."

"And who would you have as king of Scotland?" his mother asked astutely.

"I don‘t care who is king of Scotland as long as I can manage him," King Henry said. "He has a brother or two, doesn‘t he? Younger sons of kings are always eager to be kings themselves, and usually not too scrupulous as to how to gain their goals."

"Do nothing precipitously," Margaret Beaufort warned. "You are usually a cautious and

thoughtful man, my son, but James Stewart would appear to be your bête noire. I suspect this championing of the impostor is done in an effort to keep you from the incessant border warfare that goes on. You have encouraged it, you know."

"Only to keep James Stewart out of mischief while I solidified my own position," the king said.

"But of course that fool Colby caused so much havoc that the Scots struck back in force, and caused a great deal of damage on our side of the border. At least a dozen villages were burned and pillaged, fields burned, stock driven off. Women taken."