The Captive Heart (24 page)

They joined hands again, circling, broke apart as pairs once more but this time with different partners. The laird partnered the queen while David Grant danced with Alix, leaving Adam Hepburn with Eufemia Grant. Alix was flushed and laughing as the queen’s captain lifted her up to the shouts from his men-at-arms. They circled a third time and then danced together again, Alix with Adam Hepburn now. Finally the music ceased and the dance was ended.

Malcolm Scott made his way to Alix. He took her by the arm, and while the others began to chat among themselves, the laird took her from the hall. His face was dark with his anger. “I thought you were different from other women, but you are no better, Alix Givet!” he snarled at her.

“What is the matter, my lord?” Alix cried softly. “What have I done to offend?”

“Do you think I would not notice you shamelessly flirting with both Hepburn and Grant as you danced with them?” the laird demanded. “Did you think I did not see you at dinner with Hepburn, your two heads together? You swore to be honest with me, Alix!”

“And I have been. I am,” Alix responded. “I was not flirting as I danced. I was having a happy time much like I had at my godmother’s court. Did you expect me to put on a dour face when I danced with others? Am I only to smile at you, my lord?”

“Aye, damn it!” he almost shouted, and then he was kissing her hungrily, pushing her up against the stone wall of the corridor in which they stood. “You are mine, Alix!
Mine!
Both Hepburn and Grant were admiring you with their eyes. I saw it!”

Alix, reaching out, caressed his handsome face. “Colm, I am yours. I want no other, and that is the truth. I cannot stop other men from admiring me, and it is pleasant to be admired. But I do not encourage any man but you, my lord, and you know that to be a truth. I am not Robena Ramsay,” Alix told him boldly. He was jealous! She almost laughed aloud at the revelation. He was jealous! Did he love her? Or was it simply that he thought of her as his possession? She would never know until he told her. “Let us go back into the hall, my lord, before we are missed. The queen has not ended the evening yet, and we cannot depart until she does.”

He groaned low, pulling her against him. “I need you, Alix,” he told her.

“As I need you, my lord,” she reassured him, “but it is not to be until we return home to Dunglais. Now let us return to the hall.”

Malcolm Scott slept restlessly that night. So
this
was love. The desperation. The longing. The frustration. The burning need. He wasn’t certain he liked it, and yet he seemed to have no choice in the matter. Alix had been correct, of course. She had not been flirting; and both Hepburn and Grant had simply been having a good time as any man dancing with a pretty girl would have. Yet seeing her with other men had enraged him. He had never felt that way with Robena. He had always enjoyed watching her and seeing the effect she had on others.

It was not the case with Alix. He understood now he had married Robena Ramsay because he had believed it was time to take a wife. He had liked her at first for she seemed a pleasant enough lass. But he had not loved her. Not like he loved Alix. When she had run off with his half brother it had been his pride that had been hurt, not his heart. But if he ever lost Alix he knew it would kill him. He loved her. God and his Blessed Mother help him.
He loved her!
Now what the hell was he to do?

When the next day dawned the Laird of Dunglais had his duty to the queen to consider first and foremost. He ate oat stirabout, hard-boiled eggs, bread and cheese with Adam Hepburn, who then took him to see the fortification work now in progress.

“Our Jamie meant to fortify all of the shoreline of the Firth of Forth,” Hepburn informed his companion. “Since it opens to the sea it opens Scotland, particularly Edinburgh, to any enemy seeking to invade.”

“It’s an entry to the lowlands as well,” the laird noted.

“Aye, it is,” Hepburn agreed.

They climbed to the stone battlements that were now being finished and connected the east and west towers of Ravenscraig.

“You need at least two cannon openings on the land side as well,” the laird said.

“There are four facing the water as you will see,” Hepburn told him.

“The queen will have to set up a foundry here in Scotland. She cannot rely on her uncle entirely. He may cast her first weapons, but she will need to be independent of him eventually. If he dies, if he decides not to aid her, she must be able to fend for herself. She must be able to make her own ammunition. You need a reliable supply of ammunition. You can’t control the quality if you don’t make it,” Malcolm Scott said. “And you’ll need a goodly supply of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal for it. Saltpeter will be the most difficult to obtain, as it is in short supply. But large stones, the rounder the better, can also be used as ammunition.”

“I never knew any of this,” the Hepburn said.

“Jamie loved his guns, and frankly so did I,” the laird said.

“Is your keep armed?”

“Dunglais? Nay. I don’t have the means for it, but if I did I wouldn’t bother. I have no neighbors for miles, and the only conflict we see is nothing more than ordinary border skirmishes,” the laird told his companion.

“Six cannon are enough artillery for Ravenscraig?”

“Why would you need more? Especially if you build up other cannon forts along the coastline,” Malcolm Scott said.

“It will be some time before they can be finished,” Hepburn said.

“Scotland is at peace for now. The English prefer coming over the border and have no navy of any size with which to attack us. And they are too busy with their own civil strife to be bothered by us unless, of course, we poke the lion. The French are our allies. Who else is there? I’m a practical man, my lord. But the queen will make her own decisions in this matter. These battlements are well and strongly constructed. They will hold your artillery. I would see that sturdy wood shutters are made for the cannon ports to conceal them. I would not set my cannon on trestle benches like many do. Have good stone mounts in which to set them. I have heard that of late some are experimenting with wheels. It requires fewer men to move the weapons. The queen would have to ask her uncle, and he would have to speak with his foundry master.” The laird looked about. “ ’Tis a fair land, our Scotland,” he said, gazing out over the Firth of Forth and its surround of green hills.

“Aye,” Adam Hepburn agreed. Then he said, “The queen should be ready to receive us now. It is her custom to break her fast each morning in a small private chamber with her children. She worries about her lads. Alexander is the wild son, and unfortunately David and John follow his lead rather than young James.”

“They are braw lads,” Malcolm Scott said. “Jamie was proud of them.” He didn’t ask how the Hepburn of Hailes knew all this. The rumor had it that Adam Hepburn was the queen’s lover. Well, if he was, she was entitled to a bit of comfort. It didn’t stop Bishop Kennedy from attempting to discredit her, however.

Coming down from the battlement and reentering the great hall, they found the queen and Alix in conversation. The laird’s heart leaped at the sight of her. Seeing them, the queen waved them over and the two men joined her.

“Malcolm Scott has given me an excellent assessment of what you will need, Your Highness,” Adam Hepburn reported.

“I would say one or two more things,” the laird interjected. “They are beginning to cast cannons with cast iron now as well as bronze. Cast iron is stronger. Have at least half your supply made from it. And do not use serpentine powder. The sulfur and the saltpeter fall to the bottom of the barrels, leaving the charcoal on top. It means the powder has to be remixed on site. It can be dangerous.”

“Why does that happen?” the queen asked him. “How can it be prevented?”

“Saltpeter and sulfur are heavier elements than charcoal,” the laird explained. “The newer method is called
corning
. All of the ingredients are mixed wet and then spread out and formed into a cake, which dries hard. The cakes, when broken up into granules, have the advantage of staying dry and are easier to transport. It offers more firepower using less.” The laird did not tell the queen that the cannon that had killed the king had been loaded with too much corning. Its disadvantage was in making those loading the weapons understand they did not need as much. It was a better method nonetheless, and the king had approved it.

“The laird has suggested we set up a factory of our own to make the ammunition that you will need. And a foundry to cast our own cannon should your uncle’s help not be readily available to you,” the Hepburn of Hailes told the queen.

“You have been an enormous help to us, my lord,” Marie of Gueldres said.

“Madame, I will always be ready to aid you and the young king,” Malcolm Scott said. “I am honored you called upon me.”

“It was better that others not be aware I intended carrying out my husband’s plans to fortify the Firth of Forth,” the queen told him.

“Then if my service to you is done, madame, and with your permission, I will begin my return home on the morrow,” the laird said.

“It is but midautumn, my lord. Bide with us for a few more days,” the queen said. “I am enjoying muchly the company of Mistress Alix, and my son the company of your little daughter. She is a lively and outspoken lass. The king is not used to such.” The queen smiled a mischievous smile at Malcolm Scott.

Alix giggled. “She told the Duke of Albany this morning to mind his manners, which she thought no better than a cowherd’s when approaching his king.”

The queen laughed. “Alexander was mightily taken aback and equally offended, but the king was quite delighted to have a small defender.”

The invitation to remain had not been a request. It had been a command, and the laird knew it. He had bowed and acquiesced, but he wanted to go home. They hunted in the hills surrounding Ravenscraig over the next few days. The young king was not a particularly good horseman. Though he strove to hide it, he was afraid of the great black horse upon which they seated him. His three younger brothers took every opportunity to spook the animal, laughing as their older sibling clung to the beast. One morning, just as they had started out, the king fell off of his horse. He lay still for a moment or two.

“Is he dead?” Alexander Stewart wanted to know. “If he is dead then I am king!”

“I am afraid Your Grace is doomed to disappointment this time,” Adam Hepburn said dryly as the king groaned and sat up.

“What an unpleasant child,” Alix murmured to the laird as they rode back to the castle, for the accident had shaken the king, and their hunt that day was over before it even began. “How he covets his brother’s place.”

“If young James grows up, his brothers will give him nothing but difficulty, I fear,” Malcolm Scott replied quietly. “Come and walk with me on the beach, lass.”

She smiled a slow smile of assent and nodded.

When they had dismounted within the castle courtyard the laird took Alix’s hand, and they quickly departed across the drawbridge. The queen, seeing them go, raised a questioning eyebrow at the Hepburn of Hailes.

“I believe she is his mistress,” Adam Hepburn said softly. “They have been gone from their home for over ten days now, madame. I believe he misses her company.”

Marie of Gueldres laughed low. “He misses her body, my lord.”

“I do not enjoy being separated from you,” the Hepburn said quietly.

“Hush, my lord,” she told him. “In public we must both remain circumspect. As it is Bishop Kennedy has admonished me, although even he is not certain of what we share. I prefer he never be sure of that.”

“Why should you not be happy?” he demanded of her. “You are a widow, not a nun in a cloister.”

“I am happy, but I am also the guardian of Scotland’s king and the mother of his five siblings. Unlike a man, I may not flaunt my lover, my lord, and you well know it. Besides, there are those who, if they knew for certain, would be angry the king’s mother had taken for her lover a mere Hepburn and not an earl. They would say your family’s ambition was shameless. Are you ambitious, my lord?”

“All men are ambitious, madame, but not all men love you as I do,” he answered.

Marie of Gueldres smiled at him again. “And that is why you are my lover, Adam Hepburn. I know when a man’s heart is true.”

Then together they entered the castle while below them on the beach the Laird of Dunglais walked with Alix. A light wind was coming off the water. Above them the skies were partly cloudy. One moment the sun shone brightly, and then it was gone beneath the lowering gray. The dark waters of the Firth of Forth lapped at the shale beach. They walked hand in hand for some minutes, but then Alix shivered.

“You are cold,” he said.

“Aye, ’tis chilly along the water,” Alix admitted.

“The beach is low here,” he said. “We’ll climb up and walk back through the fields, lambkin.” He put his arm about her now, and together they mounted the hillock, easily gaining the field above it. They reached an open shed as it began to rain. “It’s only a shower,” he assured her as they ducked inside. And then he pulled her into his arms. “For the first time since we left Dunglais I have you alone and to myself,” he growled.

“Nay,” she said. “There was our first night at Ravenscraig when you accused me of flirting with other men and dragged me from the hall.”

“I’m a fool,” he said, and then he kissed her a slow, hot kiss, crushing her breasts against his leather-clad chest. The scent of her filled his nostrils, and his lust leaped.

“I miss you,” she admitted. “I miss being in your bed, in your arms, Colm.” Her fingers brushed lightly over the nape of his neck. Aye, she loved him.

The shed was filled with fresh hay. The laird pulled Alix down upon it. His hands pushed her skirts up, and he stroked the sensitive flesh on the insides of her thighs. The bodice of her gown felt as if it would burst open. He smiled down into her face, and she smiled back in agreement. No words were necessary. He wanted her, and she wanted him. The laird released his cock, which was already hard with his longing.