The Spitfire (59 page)
Authors: Bertrice Small
“Is Margaret really dead, Tavis? Or was it simply a bad dream?” she asked him anxiously, and she shivered, though the day was warm.
“Our wee bairn is dead, lovey,” he told her as gently as he might, and worried to himself that her hand was so icy cold. “There was nae help for it, ye know. Mam said we did everything that we could. Many bairns survive the Spotting Sickness wi’ little discomfort, and others, like Maggie, are struck down so badly that there is simply nothing that can be done for them.”
She nodded sadly and a single tear rolled down her cheek. “She was such a little girl,” Arabella said helplessly. “Did you see how much she looked like you, Tavis? But for her eyes. Maggie had my mother’s lovely blue eyes.”
“We buried her next to yer mother, lovey. I thought ye would like it,” he told her gently, and climbing into bed next to her, he took her into the warm comfort of his arms.
Arabella closed her eyes wearily and tears streamed from beneath her lashes down her face. “I missed a whole year of her life, Tavis,” she whispered tragically.
“A whole year!
King Henry would not let me have her with me in France.”
“He was right, lovey,” the earl told the grieving mother. “‘Twas too dangerous.”
“I did it all for her, Tavis. So she might have Greyfaire. So she might be an heiress in her own right and beholden to none.”
“I know,” he said.
“Now there is nothing left,” Arabella said sadly. “Greyfaire is gone and our daughter is gone.” She laughed suddenly. A harsh and terrible sound. “It was
all
for nothing, Tavis. I destroyed our life together, and I sold my body that I might regain Greyfaire for Margaret. Now I have neither. It is surely God’s judgment upon me for my overweening pride and my many other sins.” She sighed deeply. “Perhaps Father Anselm was right when he told me so long ago that women should be meek and humble, and trust themselves to their men.”
Tavis Stewart burst out laughing at this last. He simply couldn’t help it. “Arabella Grey,” he said finally. “Yer tired, and yer badly worn wi’ yer grief; but I dinna believe for one moment that ye think ye should be either meek or humble. God’s teeth, lassie! Ye dinna know the meaning of either word, but I would nae be displeased if ye would entrust yerself to me again.”
“What?”
She shook off his arms and, turning her head, looked directly at him. She was not sure that she shouldn’t be very angry at him for laughing at her, and she was certainly not sure that she fully understood him. “What do you mean,” she demanded suspiciously, “‘entrust myself to you’?”
“Arabella Grey,” he said tenderly, “will ye be my wife again? I love ye, and I always hae loved ye. I think that ye hae always loved me too.”
“Aye,” she said simply. The time for dissemblance between them was long past. She did love him, and whatever anger she may have felt toward him was long gone. That he would want to renew their life together was most tempting.
“Then will ye marry me, lassie? Will ye be my wee English wife once more?”
“I was the Duc de Lambour’s mistress,” she told him honestly. There must be no secrets between them. Nothing that might ever separate them again.
“I know,” he said quietly.
“And it matters not at all to you, Tavis?” she probed skillfully.
“The Duc de Lambour’s English mistress was nae my wife,” he replied. “Nor was the bold English wench who spent three days wi’ my nephew, Jamie,” the earl told her calmly.
She was thunderstruck.
“You…you knew?”
she gasped, and her pale skin grew pink with her blush.
“Aye, I knew,” he said. “Nae at first, mind ye, but Donald, in a nasty mood, suggested it, and though I denied it, it set me to thinking. Why did Jamie help ye? Oh, he’s a good lad, but nae known for his charity. Ye made some damned unholy bargain wi’ the laddie. It was then that I understood, lovey. I understood why ye hae divorced me. That ye nae bring shame upon my name. Was that nae the reason, Arabella? And I knew then that ye truly loved me, lassie. Loved me even as I love ye.”
“I could not have told you, Tavis,” she admitted frankly. “Not that I feared what you might say, for I did not, but I could not drive a wedge between you and your king. Poor Jamie has few souls he can really trust, and you, my darling, have ever been loyal. ‘Tis one of the things I love you for, Tavis Stewart. Your sense of honor.”
He smiled at her. “I understood that as well, lovey. Are ye nae fortunate to hae so perceptive a man who loves ye?” he teased her.
“Aye, Tavis Stewart, I am,” she said with complete sincerity. Then her brow furrowed. “My lord! I cannot leave the few souls who have remained here at Greyfaire to fend for themselves. What can I do? They have been loyal to the Greys to the bitter end. I cannot desert them!”
“Nay,” he agreed with her. “Ye canna, but I think I know what ye might do, lovey, to help them. The border is safe for now, wi’ Sir Jasper Keane having taken up his residence in Hell. Though I expect there’ll be plenty of border clashes between England and Scotland in times to come, for ‘tis our nature, I fear, to go roving, it will nae ever again be like it was. Let us divide your lands in several portions. We will set upon these lands good tenants to farm them. We will have built stout stone cottages to house them, and the revenues from their rents and kind will be set aside for our next daughter as her dowry. When she marries, the income from the estate will be passed on to her.”
“Aye,” she agreed, “‘tis a good plan, and the stones for the cottages, Tavis, will come from the keep itself,” she told him.
“You would destroy Greyfaire Keep, lovey?” He was astounded.
“The keep was built by the Greys, my lord. Only Greys have resided here all these centuries, but for Sir Jasper’s unfortunate and brief tenure. I am the last of the Greys. It is only fitting that I determine the keep’s fate. It has outlived its strategic usefulness now, I fear. If I leave it standing, it will become a haven for every outlaw roaming the border. What an ignominious end to a house whose honor has always been paramount. That must not be, Tavis. Is it not better that I dismantle the keep in order to put it to better use? Besides, it is half destroyed as it is, thanks to Sir Jasper.”
Arabella Grey did not leave her lands until the keep had begun to be dismantled. She had, as the earl suggested, divided her estate into portions. She awarded those portions to the few young men who had so loyally remained by her side, giving them the first year rent-free. FitzWalter had been awarded the largest portion rent-free for his lifetime, to be passed on to his male descendants thereafter at a nominal rental.
The first stones removed from the keep were used to rebuild Greyfaire church, much to the delight of old Father Anselm. And while the clansmen called from Dunmor worked to tear the small castle down, the new tenant farmers and their families tilled their fields, planted their orchards, and cared for the sheep and cattle, as well as the geese and the laying hens that their lady had so generously supplied.
One condition of tenancy, however, had been that all the men take wives. Those without them had chosen to marry the widows amongst them, thus providing homes for the women, their children, and the few remaining elders. When the keep was finally dismantled, the clansmen would remain on to help the Greyfaire folk build their houses before the winter returned. There might have been some who thought the alliance between the Greyfaire folk and the clansmen from Dunmor odd, but the two groups quickly found that they had much in common.
Content that her people were now safe, Arabella Grey, the heiress of Greyfaire, remarried Tavis Stewart, the Earl of Dunmor, on the tenth of June, in the year of our Lord, 1491.
“Would you not prefer that we be wed at Dunmor?” she asked him when she had decided that she might at last leave Greyfaire.
“Nay,” he shook his head. “I married ye at Dunmor the last time, lovey, and we hae nothing but trouble. This time I will wed ye where I should hae wed the heiress of Greyfaire in the first place. We will wed here at Greyfaire. Yer own Father Anselm shall conduct the ceremony, and yer people will be about ye, lassie.”
“And this time, my lord, I shall even wear a wedding gown,” Arabella teased him mischievously.
“I’ll hae ye wi’ one or wi’ out one, lovey,” he told her with a grin. “And afterward—”
“And afterward,” she interrupted him, “we’ll go home, Tavis Stewart!” She stood upon her toes and kissed his mouth.
“Home?”
he said. His arms slipped about her, pulling her close, his dark green eyes smoldering with promises of passion to come.
“Aye, my lord,” Arabella Grey said, her own eyes bright with unshed tears, and filled to overflowing with her love for him. “Home.
Home to Dunmor!”
Author’s Note
The border country between England and Scotland was always a volatile place. On the eighth day of August 1503, Henry VII’s eldest daughter, thirteen-and-a-half-year-old Princess Margaret, married the thirty-one-year-old king of the Scots, James IV. It was hoped that this marriage would bring about a final peace between the two nations. Ten years later, however, on September 9, 1513, the young queen of Scotland was widowed. James IV, and practically every adult member of the Scots nobility foolish enough to follow him, was slaughtered in a battle with the English at Flodden Field.
James V, just seventeen months old, was coronated in the Chapel Royal of Stirling Castle on the twenty-first day of September of that same year, his mother’s bracelet, newly consecrated, being used to crown his little head. Once grown, James V took first one French queen, and being quickly widowed, took a second. He died following a battle with the English at Solway Moss on December 14, 1542. On his deathbed James V uttered the famous prophecy regarding the crown of Scotland, which had come to the Stewarts through a woman:
“It cam wi’ a lass, and ‘twill go wi’ a lass.”
The morbid portent proved untrue, and his infant daughter Mary inherited the throne of Scotland. Her history, a novel in itself, has been written many times.
Sent to France by her mother to keep her from the English, Mary was first married to and then widowed by young King Francois II. She returned in her late teens to Scotland, a stranger in her own land, to find herself embroiled not only with her own nobility, but with a fanatical Protestant clergy, neither of whom approved of a woman monarch, and certainly not a Catholic woman monarch. Despite this bigotry, Mary, Queen of Scots, offered religious freedom to all.
The young queen was married a second time in an effort to please her detractors. Her choice, her cousin, Lord Darnley, proved an unfortunate misalliance which produced but one son before Darnley was murdered under mysterious circumstances. Mary took a third husband, James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, and this time she married for love. It was a fatal misstep for a ruling monarch to follow her heart rather than her head, and it would ultimately lead to Mary’s downfall. Neither her nobles, the clergy, nor the people would accept her choice. Mary was forced to flee to England, where she was eventually executed, while James Hepburn fled to Denmark, where he died, unjustly imprisoned by the Danish authorities, who to this day refuse to allow his bones returned home to Scotland, which once again found itself burdened with an infant king.
Thus it was that when he was grown, James VI, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the great-grandson of James IV, inherited the English throne from the last member of the Tudor dynasty—Henry VII’s fabulous granddaughter, Elizabeth I. One hundred years had passed since little Margaret Tudor had traveled north as a bride, hopeful that this union of the Thistle and the Rose would bring peace. Now, as James VI of Scotland became James I of England, peace—if there can ever be real peace between the English and the Scots—was achieved.
If you have enjoyed
The Spitfire
, I hope you will take the time to write to me and tell me. Since it is my readers for whom I write, it is always a great pleasure to hear from you. And before I close, I want to thank my wonderful secretary, and dearest friend of four and a half years, Donna Tumolo, for her incredible efforts in helping me to get this novel to the publisher on time. Donna is moving to North Carolina, and I will miss her greatly. For now, however, I wish you all Good Reading!
Bertrice Small
June 12, 1989
About the Author
NY Times bestselling author Bertrice Small, known as "Lust's Leading Lady", is the author of 43 novels and novellas. She writes primarily in the Historical Romance genre, but has also done erotic contemporary and has a popular fantasy series. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her work. She lives on eastern Long Island.
Bertrice welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her
author bio page
at
www.ellorascave.com
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The Spitfire
ISBN 9781419939327
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The Spitfire Copyright © 2012 Bertrice Small
Edited by Raelene Gorlinsky
Cover design by Dar Albert
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Electronic book publication June 2012
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