CHAPTER 2 #2
Twice now, their brother, Archibald Douglas, had reached for the power of the crown, and twice he had lost and suffered a dramatic fall.
The first time, he persuaded the newly widowed queen to wed him in secret without the permission of Parliament, which caused such a stir that the queen fled to England and the Douglas men holed up in their mighty fortress, Tantallon Castle, until the political winds changed again.
The second time, the conflict between the Douglases and their rival magnates descended into a bloody battle right in the streets of Edinburgh, which came to be known as the Battle of the Causeway.
With the country on the brink of civil war, her brothers and uncle were charged with treason and fled the country to save their skins.
Margaret had bad memories of her own from that terrible day of bloodshed in Edinburgh.
“You’ll have your revenge on Wretched William now,” Lizzie said, using the nickname she had given Margaret’s former husband. “Archie will have him boiled in oil for what he did to you.”
“I don’t want vengeance.” That would give him too great a place in her thoughts, after she spent the last three years trying to forget. “All I ask is that I never have to see his face or hear his voice again.”
“Ye needn’t worry about that,” Lizzie huffed. “Wretched William doesn’t have the bollocks to show himself now that our family is on the rise again.”
“One thing is certain,” Alison said, turning to look at the empty field behind them, “ye won’t be living in a cottage in the village.”
Margaret felt the blood drain from her head.
“Now that the treason charges have been dropped,” Alison continued, “the queen cannot accuse the rest of us of being complicit and threaten us with imprisonment.”
The queen’s fury with Archie extended to the entire Douglas family. Alison’s husband, however, was such a powerful laird that they were safe from even the queen on his lands.
“You can live at Tantallon Castle,” Alison said. “But I expect you’ll spend a great deal of time at court again.”
“I don’t want any of that,” Margaret said.
“I doubt ye can convince our brothers of that,” Alison said. “Now that Archie is back, he’ll not have his sister—particularly his only unwed sister—living in a cottage.”
Margaret felt as if the ground was opening up beneath her. She wanted to argue that the men of her family had no right to tell her where and how to live. They had not cared what happened to her when they fled Scotland and left the rest of the family to face the consequences.
But Archibald Douglas, the 6th Earl of Angus, was not just her brother.
He was the head of her family, the chief of the Douglases, and—most importantly of all—their young king’s stepfather.
Now that Archie had returned with the backing of Henry VIII and many of the Scottish nobles, he was again one of the most powerful men in Scotland.
“If ye don’t wish to go, you can stay with us at the castle,” Alison said, putting an arm around Margaret’s shoulders. “Ye know my husband will not let Archie take you.”
That would cause a dangerous conflict between her brother and brother-in-law, which would be a poor way to repay Alison and her husband for all they had done for her.
“I won’t worry about it now,” she said, to calm herself. “I expect Archie will be too busy to bother with me for some time.”
“He’s already sent men to fetch you,” Lizzie said. “I rode hard to get here first to warn you, but they’ll be here soon.”
Margaret’s hand went to her throat. “They’re on their way?”
“Aye,” Lizzie said. “They weren’t far behind me.”
Margaret pushed through the door of Thomas’s cottage and sat down hard on one of the kitchen stools. Could she go back to the life she had before?
Did she have a choice?
She had grown up in one of Scotland’s most powerful families, accustomed to a life of great castles, fine gowns and jewels, and frequent visits to court. Her family’s fall—and everything she lost with it—had been hard, but she had gotten through it and survived.
She missed nothing of her former life. It had brought her too many sorrows.
The sound of pounding hooves of twenty horses arriving in the village filled the cottage, like an echo from her past, trampling on her hope of making a small, quiet life for herself.
###
Finn stood outside the door to the great hall of Huntly Castle, the seat of the mighty Gordon chieftain, the Earl of Huntly. A month ago, he’d been a member of the earl’s guard, a respected position for a warrior of the clan. And he gave it up for naught.
Asking Huntly to take him back was a humiliation he’d rather not face sober. Though he’d been drinking steadily all day in diligent preparation, he took out the flask for one last pull.
Ach, this could not be that bad. Even if Huntly threw him in the dungeon for fighting for a rival clan, at least Finn didn’t have to deliver a severed head this time.
Still, a man who underestimated the Gordons was a fool.
The Sinclair clan would burn down a village over a small slight, but no one could match the Gordons for cunning self-interest. While the Sinclairs stood their ground and died with the king in the Battle of Flodden, the two Gordon earls—Huntly and Sutherland—foresaw the outcome, took flight, and saved themselves.
A serving woman he suspected he had slept with greeted him when he entered the hall.
“Thought you could use this, Finlay Aluinn,” Handsome Finlay, she said, and handed him a large cup of whisky.
“Ach, lass, ye must have the sight,” Finn said and gave her a wink.
“’Tis been dull as dirt without ye.” She leaned close to speak in his ear. “I could meet ye in the stables tonight.”
He gave her a noncommittal smile. He could be in the dungeon by nightfall. Besides that, he had no interest, which was a startling revelation as she was precisely his kind of woman: a buxom and willing lass with no expectations beyond a good roll in the hay.
The hall was even more crowded than usual and abuzz with conversation, which made him wonder what had happened. Perhaps Huntly had negotiated a betrothal for his granddaughter. Whatever it was, Finn hoped it was good news that would make the earl receptive to taking him back into his guard.
He groaned when he saw his mother stalking across the hall toward him with his father in her wake.
Damn it, it was too late to escape. She’d seen him.
People said his mother had been a great beauty, but her firm belief that she married beneath her had imprinted a permanent frown of resentment on her face.
“We didn’t expect to find you here,” his mother said, jutting her chin out. “Thought you’d be living on Orkney.”
“Lovely to see you too, Mother,” he said, then nodded to his father, who was probably too drunk to notice.
“What did ye do to make my uncle Sinclair decide not to give ye the lands he promised?” she asked.
“The Sinclairs lost the battle,” Finn said.
“Ach, I told ye it would all be for naught,” his mother said, shaking her head.
She appeared to have forgotten she’d encouraged him to go.
“I have bad news, I’m afraid. Your uncle was killed, along with most of the Sinclair warriors who sailed to Orkney.” He told her about delivering the head as well, since she was bound to hear of it.
“Then my cousin George is chieftain now,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “He’ll make a strong chieftain.”
Finn was not surprised she took the death of her kinsmen in stride. His mother was not a sentimental woman.
“How did you survive the battle when so many others were lost?” she asked in the same tone George Sinclair had put the question to him.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Mother,” he said.
“Ye know that isn’t what shhe meant.” His father spoke in a slurred voice. “Ansswer your mother.”
“They had to pick someone to deliver the head. Guess I was just lucky,” Finn said with a shrug. The Orkney men said they chose him because of how bravely he fought, but his family would never believe that.
“So now you’ve come crawling back here to beg the Earl of Huntly to take ye back,” his mother said. “Ach, why did I expect more of ye?”
Lord above, he needed a drink. Where did that lass with the whisky go? Finn looked over his shoulder, hoping to see her, and instead saw his brother Bearach and his wife Curstag were here as well—and fast approaching. Nay, not them too.
Clearly, God had decided not to wait until he was dead to punish him for his sins.
“Unlike you, Bearach is a credit to this family,” his mother said when the couple joined them. “He was a hero in the fight against the Douglases at the Battle of the Causeway.”
Finn just smiled, which he knew would irritate her, and kept silent. But when his gaze caught Bearach’s, he could not avoid the bitter memory of finding his older brother cowering in a doorway during the battle.
Pull your sword and fight, damn it! Finn had shouted at him as half a dozen warriors came running toward them down the narrow street. While Finn fought them off, his brother took the opportunity to run.
The incident hung between them, poisoning the air like a fish gone bad.
Bearach resented that he owed his life to Finn and hated him for witnessing his cowardice.
Though Finn would never stoop to tell the tale, it would change nothing if he did.
He had long ago given up trying to persuade his family that he was anything other than a wastrel.
“What will ye do now?” Bearach’s wife, Curstag, asked.
Finn could no longer avoid looking at her. Curstag was a black-haired beauty, and despite his best efforts, he still remembered the feel of her voluptuous curves beneath his hands and the purr of her voice as she told him she loved him. He’d been sixteen and believed her.
She only asked the question to make him remember all of that, so he gave her a lazy smile to show her he had long since put that heartbreak behind him.
“I’ve come to speak with Huntly,” he said. “But first I have a lady waiting for me, so I’d best be off.”