Part 2 (1/2)
Rosamund sighed deeply. Every touch of his hand, his mouth, offered her the most incredible pleasure. While she had loved Owein, it had never been that way with him. Not like this. Nor her own king, who had taken her briefly for his mistress on her last visit to court. Nay. Henry Tudor was always interested in only one thing: his own gratification. This man, however, Patrick Leslie, Earl of Glenkirk, a man she knew hardly at all, this man opened her eyes in a single night of pa.s.sion to the reality of what love truly was. ”I think I will die if you leave me now,” she said, voicing her thoughts to him with daring audacity.
He kissed her sweetly, his lips brus.h.i.+ng hers tenderly. ”We are not meant to part for now, my love, but one day we will, for your heart is at Friarsgate and mine at Glenkirk. This is how it should be, for we are both loyal to our lands and our people. Once, I think, we may have neglected our responsibilities in favor of our love. We are being given the chance now to right that wrong. Do you understand me, Rosamund?”
”Nay,” she replied. ”I do not.”
”What I believe, my love, is considered a heresy, but nonetheless I believe it. I think that we live other lives, in other times and places. I recall that when I arrived in San Lorenzo I had the most incredible sense that I had been there before. I would find my way to certain locations without the benefit of direction. Throughout my life it has been that way. An old clanswoman on my lands has the lang eey, and she told me I have lived before, as have most souls. I believe her. Tonight, when we first met in this time and this place, we both experienced a sense of familiarity, a strong feeling that we knew each other well. You are not a woman with loose morals, yet here we lie together in our bed, and I am about to make love to you for a second time this night. Do you understand now, Rosamund?”
She nodded. ”Aye and yet nay,” she told him.
”Can you accept this magic between us, or shall we part and pretend that it never happened?” he asked her.
”How could I possibly deny the wonder of what is between us?” she cried softly. ”I cannot! I hear what you tell me, but it seems so impossible. Still, I do lie here in your arms, and I feel as if I never want to leave you, that I shall die if you send me away!”
”I will not send you away, Rosamund. Yet there will come a time, as I have said, when we will both know we must part for the sake of others. But that time is not now. For a while the fates will allow us this idyll, and we will be grateful,” he told her.
”Could you not have found me sooner, my lord?” she said with utmost seriousness.
He smiled down on her, his green eyes filled with pure love. Then he kissed her mouth and said, ”Be silent, my love, and let me join with you once more.”
”Yes!” She said the single word, her own love s.h.i.+ning forth from her amber eyes. Then she opened her arms to him and took him into her embrace.
For a second time they met pa.s.sion. For a second time they cried aloud as it swept over them, rendering them both weak with satisfaction. The length and breadth of him filled her love sheath. The rhythm they created was overpowering in the pleasure it offered. Her body arced against him in her great desire. He forced her down, thrusting and parrying with his lance as he brought them to a perfect heaven once again.
”I die!” she sobbed as her desire grew and grew until it burst in a frenetic rush of his love juices that left them both half-conscious and gasping for breath.
”You are the most incredible woman,” he finally managed to say, his dark head resting upon her white bosom.
”And you astonis.h.i.+ng, my dear lord of Glenkirk. You tell me you are past fifty, and yet you make love like a younger man,” she said with admiration.
He chuckled. ”It is only young men who claim excess virility and work to make the myth a truth. A man of my years knows his limits, although tonight I have surpa.s.sed even myself, my love, but that is due to you, I suspect. You inspire me.”
”Take your ease, then, my lord, for soon you must help me find my way back to my own chamber. I have absolutely no idea where I am right now,” she told him laughing.
”You are in my arms, where you should be,” he said. ”I will help you find your way back,” he promised, ”but first let us regain our strength, Rosamund.”
She nodded in agreement and closed her eyes, feeling safer and more content than she had felt in many months. This was what it was like to be really loved, she thought happily. If only the whole world could feel just like this.
They dozed for a short time, wrapped in each other's arms, savoring the warmth of their love. But finally the Earl of Glenkirk rose reluctantly and dressed himself. When he was clothed, he handed her the garments he had discarded upon the stool earlier, ordering her to dress within the comfort of their bed, for the air was bitterly cold. Finally he led her from his little chamber through the darkened corridors of the castle, asking her as they went exactly where her own chamber was. She told him, and to her surprise, they were quickly there. They kissed hungrily, desperately, as if they would never again be together. Then he turned swiftly and hurried off, back into the darkness of the hallway.
Rosamund slipped quietly into her little chamber. Annie was dozing in a chair by the embers of the fire. She started awake as her mistress entered. ”I am glad you were not worried,” Rosamund said to her.
”Lord Cambridge come to me, my lady. He said you might be very late.” She rose from her place, yawning and stretching. Then, peeping through the heavy velvet curtain covering the single window, she said, ” 'Tis already false dawn. You had best get into bed, my lady, if you are to have any rest before the ma.s.s.”
”Build up the fire,” Rosamund ordered her, ”and heat some water. I stink of pa.s.sion and cannot enter the queen's presence until I have washed. Neither will I enter my bed until I am fresh.”
Annie looked shocked with her mistress' p.r.o.nouncement.
”I have taken the Earl of Glenkirk as a lover, Annie,” Rosamund said bluntly. ”You will not gossip about it with the other servants even if they ask you. Do you understand me, girl?”
”Aye, my lady,” Annie said. ”But it ain't right, a respectable lady such as yourself!” she burst out.
”I am widowed, Annie, and were you not my confidante when I was with the king?” Rosamund asked her servingwoman.
”That was different,” Annie said. ”You was just obeying our king. There was no harm in it as long as good Queen Katherine didn't know or be shamed by it.”
”Nay, Annie, 'twas no different than all of my life before it,” Rosamund said. ”I have always done what I was asked. What was expected of me. Now, however, I shall do what I want. I shall live my life to please myself and no one else! Do you understand?”
”What of the laird of Claven's Carn?” Annie asked. ”He ain't going to marry with a lady who lifts her skirts so easily, my lady.”
Rosamund slapped her servant. ”You presume upon our friends.h.i.+p, Annie,” she said. ”Do you wish me to send you home to Friarsgate? I shall do it, for there are plenty who would be willing to serve me-and keep their tongues silent. I will tell you what I told Logan Hepburn. I do not wish to marry again! And I will not be forced to it. Friarsgate has an heiress, and two more besides. I will unite my daughters one day in marriages that will bring honor and wealth to our family. Logan Hepburn wants a son. He needs an heir for Claven's Carn. Let him get it upon some sweet young virgin who will adore him and be a good wife to him. I am not that woman. King Henry's mother, she who was my guardian, once told me that a woman must marry first for her family. Twice at the most. But after that, the Venerable Margaret said, a woman should marry where it suited her. Twice my uncle Henry Bolton has made marriages for me. My third husband was the king's choice. Now it is my choice, and I choose no husband! Do you understand me, Annie? I will do as I please now.”
Annie rubbed her cheek and sniffled softly. ”Yes, my lady,” she said.
”Good. Then we are agreed, and you will serve me without question, eh?”
”Yes, my lady.”
”Go about your duties, then,” Rosamund instructed her servant, and she sat down upon the bed while Annie built the fire back up and began to heat the water for her ablutions.
What a night it had been! She had been at court only a short time, yet now, as the day of Christ's Eve dawned, she was filled with a joy such as she had never known. She knew not where this was all leading, but she realized, to her surprise, that she had no fears in the matter. She was truly, deeply in love for the first time in all of her twenty-two years. She would follow where the road led, and when it ended . . . well, she would worry about that when it happened. For now she meant to live for the moment, and the moment was Patrick Leslie, Earl of Glenkirk.
Chapter 2.
King James looked closely at his old friend the Earl of Glenkirk. ”By the rood, Patrick, if I did not know better I would say you were in love!” he exclaimed.
Patrick smiled. ”Why do you think it impossible for me to be in love, Jamie?” he inquired of the king. ”Am I not a man like any other?”
”A man, aye, but like any other? Nay, Patrick, you are not. You were my amba.s.sador to San Lorenzo. It was an important a.s.signment for an unimportant Highland laird. I created you an earl to honor San Lorenzo's duke. And you served me well until the tragedy of your daughter, Janet. Then, without even waiting for my permission, you packed up your family and returned home. You stopped at court only long enough to give me your report, and then you disappeared into your Highland eyrie for the next eighteen years. You would still be there had I not called you back to me. I do not know of any other man so loyal to my crown who would do that, Patrick. You were ever my friend, even from the very beginning, unlike some whom I must smile at, praise, and bestow honors upon. You do not dissemble. Your word is your bond. I can trust you.”
”So you said when you asked me to go to San Lorenzo,” the earl replied dryly. ”And suddenly you have called me back to your side, Jamie. Why?”
”First you must tell me who the lady is, Patrick,” the king teased his old friend.
The earl smiled. ”A gentleman does not gossip like a cotter's wife,” he said. ”I know you possess a good soul of patience, Jamie. I will tell you in time, but not now.”
The king grinned. ”Ahh, then it is love,” he chortled. ”I shall be watching you, my lord of Glenkirk.” Then he grew serious again. ”Patrick, I need you to return to San Lorenzo for me.”
”You have a competent amba.s.sador there,” the earl responded.
”Aye, Ian McDuff is indeed competent, but he is not the diplomat that you were, Patrick. And I very much need a diplomat. You know that the pope is forming what he refers to as the Holy League. He wishes the French out of the northern Italian states, and he cannot do it himself. So he is declaring a righteous war against them, inviting others to join in his cause with promise of eternal salvation, among other rewards. My bombastic young brother-in-law, Henry of England, is his loudest supporter. I am invited to join them, but I cannot. Will not. This aggression is wrong, Patrick!”
”And the French are our auld alliance. You are an honorable man, Jamie, and I know that you would not turn upon a friend without good reason. And there is no good reason, is there?”
”Only Henry Tudor's intense desire to please the pope in order to gain more power than England now has,” James Stewart replied. ”Spain, of course, joins the pope and England. Venice and the Holy Roman Empire have joined, as well, but before it goes any farther, I would make an attempt to stop them. I must do it in secret and in a place no one would suspect if they knew of my plans. I do not want the most powerful of the Christian states fighting with one another when we should be mounting a crusade against the Turks in Constantinople. And, too, my brother-in-law knows that, unlike him, I am an honorable man. I will not betray an ally even for my own advantage, as he would. He knows I cannot join this league against the French. He seeks to turn the Holy Father against me-against Scotland. You must meet with Venice's and the emperor's representatives in San Lorenzo, Patrick. You must convince them that this league is but England's plan to achieve a dominant hold over us all. There are parties within each of these countries who understand this. I am in contact with them, and they will arrange for delegates from their governments to be in San Lorenzo to hear you out. Instinct tells me it is unlikely we can succeed, but we must try, Patrick.”
”There will be war with England sooner than later,” the earl sighed.