Chapter 16
The knock on the chamber door came too early for Ruark.
He stirred the coals in the brazier. He had dressed hurriedly and his shirt hung loosely out of his leather breeches.
His long hair was unbound and he was unshaven.
His crimson-and-green plaid was draped over one shoulder, and he held his sword belt in his hand.
Rose stirred, but did not awaken completely until he bent and kissed her. Not even the brush of his morning stubble on her soft skin drew a protest when he kissed her again.
“Anaya will be here in a moment,” he said, leaning over her pliant form. “You have a long trip ahead of you.”
As if still drugged by last night’s passion, she opened her eyes and looked into his.
He waded through a whorl of his own hazy thoughts as he watched her stretch and look around her.
Though he was not one given to fancy, he thought she smiled as she turned her cheek into his arm and sleepily murmured something.
Anaya arrived in the room. Two of Ruark’s clansmen stood behind her. Rose saw them as Ruark brushed the hair from her cheek. “I have to go now, love.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. Their gazes locked. Emotions passed between them just as last night had come, then gone. A flash in the darkness. “Wait.”
The bed ropes creaked with her movement.
He patiently remained on the edge of the mattress as she sat up, her hands clutching the eiderdown to her breast. Her tousled red-gold hair tumbled over her shoulders but did not cloak the swell of her breasts.
She couldn’t wriggle out of the bed with him in the way, and he wanted it that way.
“You should not have allowed me to sleep.”
He brought her hand to his lips as if her worries were inconsequential, when in fact they mattered more than she could know. “Now, why would I have been so cruel as to awaken you?” He unfurled to his full height before she could speak. “Colum and McBain will be escorting you to Stonehaven, Rose.”
She flung her legs over the mattress. Dragging the eiderdown with her and working to clutch it around her bosoms, she followed him barefooted into the other room. “Ruark!”
She grabbed his hand, but it was not the strength in her grip that stopped him. It was the desperation in her voice.
He was not a man prone to whim.
But two things happened to him concurrently as his gaze fell first on the hand that held so tightly to his and then the rings—on her finger and the wishing ring on his. His tactile senses hummed.
And he had the most incongruous thought that no matter what happened hours from now, he would remain unharmed. He could jump off a cliff and would not die this day.
Then he laughed, because despite what the morning might hold, his brother would be coming home and Rose would be at Stonehaven when they returned there late tonight.
Aye, what more could a man want in one day?
“Another kiss to send me into battle, love?”
He held her hand fast as she tried to pull away. “This is my fight, too.”
“Nay, Rose. In this you have no say.”
He nodded to Anaya, who stood behind Rose. “Colum will be expecting you outside in a half hour. See that she is ready.”
He released his wife. Gripping the blanket tighter, she stared at him with eyes widened by fury. “And while you might think it highly improbable that I should care what happens to you . . . what happens to me if you are killed out there today? At least I should be with you.”
The men standing behind him in the corridor chuckled, but she silenced them with a glare. “You are outnumbered. I do not trust him.”
“Considering the warden’s nature, aye, in that we agree. But trying to kill me and doing so are not the same. Now you listen to me. If you have a care for my safety, you be in that carriage and gone before I meet Hereford.”
Halfway down the corridor, Ruark slipped the sword baldric over his shoulder. A half dozen of his clansmen walked beside and behind him, rapidly relating details of their preparations. The men were mustering, the horses being saddled now. Their spurs and weapons clanged in the stone corridor.
“Think Hereford’s men are nervous yet?” another said, a tall, bearded clansman as stocky as a rough-hewn log.
“Some of us saw Rufus,” a man in the back said, and Ruark recognized Angus’s voice. “Takin’ a piss at the latrine. Turned and waved to us on the hill afore the Anglish bastard what was guardin’ him pulled him back inside the tent.”
A ripple of laughter followed. All were in rousing fighting spirits.
Ruark adjusted the dirk at his waist. “Any word from Duncan?”
The men walking with him grew silent. He could feel the air chill, like the draft that twined around his calves as he stopped and faced them. Angus spoke first. “He’ll be here with the others,” he said, a slight edge to his voice. “Duncan would no’ miss this fight.”
“How many men have we?”
“Gavin’s family came in last night with fifty men. Ninety men now,” Angus said. “We’ve seen worse.”
Ruark looked at each man’s bearded countenance, knowing they awaited some signal to his mood. He gave Angus a hearty slap on the arm. “ ’Tis better than forty standing against three hundred, eh?”
They all laughed as Ruark turned on his heel, pushed through the doors, and walked out into the pungent dawn mist.
Smoke and morning fog layered the air like ghostly tentacles stretching out from the fields surrounding the old medieval abbey, an eerie contrast to the serenity of the morning. This was Scotland’s graveyard. A dozen major battles had been waged over these grounds across the centuries.
Ruark didn’t anticipate starting a war today.
Nor did he expect Hereford would want to take a chance on losing any monetary gain he hoped to make in this trade, especially if he wanted the Black Dragon.
But tension remained high on both sides, and today was as much about show of strength as it was about national pride and a little blowing off steam.
He would not want one of Hereford’s men thinking that just because the Scots were outnumbered on their own green earth that it meant a single one of them was easily defeated.
Ruark also knew that his own men looked to him for leadership. Allegiance in the Borders was earned, as much by resolve and action as by birthright and sometimes a great deal of gold.
The three men who had served as witnesses to the consummation of his marriage last night stood uneasily in the open awaiting him.
Two were robed clerics, the third, their resident English sympathizer, a dandy this dull morn if Ruark had ever seen one.
He wore a lacy jabot and breeches, and brown periwig slightly skewed as if he’d been dragged from sleep.
Next to them, McBain carried a sheaf of folded papers wrapped prettily in red ribbon.
Ruark thumbed through the contracts and marriage papers. Copies of everything had been made. More formal papers would be delivered by his solicitor later. “Has someone read these over?”
“Colum did, m’lord,” McBain said.
Ruark held out his hand. McBain presented a quill as Angus held a small jar of ink. “Which one of you is serving as emissary?” he asked the three men without looking up as he scrawled his signature across the bottom of each paper.
Acute silence answered Ruark. No doubt the three would rather be subjected to a tooth extraction than go down that hill and across that bridge into Hereford’s camp.
White flag or nay, no one wanted the task and didn’t consider the job part of their original agreement. Unfortunately, for them, Ruark did.
He raised his eyes and looked at the three, returning the papers to McBain to see that they were properly dried.
“I will go down there, my lord,” the taller cleric said. “ ’Tis the least I can do after a rather . . . invigorating night. Lord Hereford wants confirmation. There will be no denying the truth from my lips.”
One corner of Ruark’s mouth quirked. “What is your name?” He gave the quill over to Angus, who handed the pen and ink to someone else.
“Father Samuel. I am English,” he said almost defiantly. “Come to visit my brother.”
Ruark drew on his heavy gloves, eyeing him with interest. “Well, Father Samuel, you have done enough this day, and I have another emissary in mind.”
Sensing the bent of Ruark’s mind, the dandy straightened his brocade waistcoat with a jerk. “But I don’t ride a horse,” he protested.
“Then get the man a cart,” Ruark told Angus.
Angus shouted across the yard for a cart. The call went down the line of men saddling horses until the order reached the stable.
“But my lord . . .” the man rasped, justifiably terrified. “What if Lord Hereford makes me swear to something that is not true?”
“Then we will have a problem.”
On this precariously diplomatic note, the cart arrived, equipped with a white piece of linen tied to a hoe but no place to put the pole.
Angus drew his dagger with a flourish, cut a piece of rope and bound the hoe to the wooden bench.
In just as efficient a manner, he lifted their emissary into the cart.
Before Ruark made the suggestion, the second cleric volunteered to accompany the man, and he too made his way onto the bench beside the first. The man holding the pony’s halter walked the cart and riders to the hill’s edge to await the signal from the other side of the river.
They would meet Hereford’s representative on the arched stone bridge, exchange the necessary words and agreements as came with such dialogue, and then Ruark and Hereford would meet.
Ruark would give Hereford the signed documents.
In return, Jamie, Rufus and Gavin would be allowed to go free. Such was the way of negotiations.
Loki was brought forward. Ruark stepped into the stirrup and swung a leg over the saddle. He tossed a bag of gold to Father Samuel. “When the other two return, you will be free to go as well. I will trust you to share equally.”