Prologue
“E
ngland.”
Cameron Wallace bitterly spat the word as though it was something ghastly clinging to the tip of his tongue, a foul taste he desperately wanted to rid his mouth of, though to his chagrin, it seemed to be settling in for a long time.
A taste that would linger no matter how he tried to wash it out with water, wine, or ale.
A taste he was going to have to get used to if his father had any say in it, and the old man usually did.
“Aye, and not just England,” Laird Cawley informed him haughtily. “London.”
They were strolling the lush gardens just outside the walls of Wallace Castle, their faces dappled by the rays of summer sunshine streaming through the branches overhead.
The fruit trees on either side of them formed a sort of natural corridor; they had been carefully planted that way, in the same way that every bush and flower in the garden had been meticulously arranged into a sort of wondrous blooming maze.
It had always seemed more than a little fanciful to Cameron, and he wasn’t alone in thinking so.
Many members of the Wallace clan had been given over to grumbling amongst themselves over the years that Laird Cawley was, in some ways, not quite “Scottish enough.” He had English blood in his veins, after all; it was a single female ancestor going back five generations, but still, Scotsmen tended to have long memories when it came to that sort of thing.
It wasn’t just that, either. Cawley had always professed to largely dislike the English like any other red-blooded Scotsman, but he had also made a point of studying English customs and behaviors.
He privately collected English literature and pored over it at great length.
When pressed about it, he had generally defended himself with the time-honored motto “know thy enemy.”
More than once, though, Cameron couldn’t help but wonder whether it might be more a case of admiring one’s enemy.
When the Wallace clan had been menaced by the McDougals and it had seemed as though they would need powerful allies to come to their aid (else they might face utter eradication), Laird Cawley had made the choice to send his eldest daughter Darina to London to wed an Englishman.
Generally, the family members had not been especially delighted by the prospect of marrying into an English family, but even so, they had understood that desperate times called for desperate measures and that the survival of their clan was paramount.
They’d thankfully been spared that fate in the end when Darina had chosen to marry Fergus McDougal, the scion of the enemy clan, thus ceasing the hostilities between them.
They were enjoying peace. Prosperity. They were finally rebuilding after a long nightmare.
So, naturally, the question on Cameron’s mind was: “Why, Father? Why should it be necessary for you to send me there, of all places? Could you not dispatch me to the Barbary Coasts and the domain of bloodthirsty pirates? Or into a den of lions or a nest of poisonous serpents? Why must I go to London?”
“Why must you be so bloody melodramatic is the real question,” Cawley grunted in response.
“Have we not ended our conflict with the McDougals?” Cameron went on. “Surely we do not still require the aid of the English against them?”
“Not against them, no,” Cawley conceded.
“But there are plenty of other clans in these Highlands who would gladly take what is ours if given the opportunity. Clans who might not be dissuaded by our new alliance. We must continue to build our strength and resources to discourage such incursions, and I have every confidence that forging connections with the English will do precisely that.”
“Do these English families have warriors tucked away in the spare rooms of their manors, then?” Cameron asked sourly.
“Do they have garrisons of soldiers hidden in their wine cellars and behind the curtains of their drawing rooms? If so, would such men truly be any match for a horde of Scottish fighters?”
“Your sardonic tone has been noted,” his father replied dryly.
“You know full well that wealthy English families do not have their own standing armies. Many of them, however, have nearly bottomless purses. Which could be used to support our efforts in other ways—procuring the finest weapons and armor for our people, for example, or stockpiling enough food for them to keep fighting, or hiring mercenaries to train and bolster our forces if need be.”
“And all of this against enemies which are entirely theoretical.”
Cawley sighed heavily and stepped forward, placing his hands on his son’s shoulders. “Cameron. Have I not done everything I possibly could to demonstrate to you and your siblings how much I love you and desire to protect you?”
“Of course, Father.”
The laird nodded. “Good. Then I beg of you: Consider this a logical extension of that. By the time new enemies make themselves known, it could well be too late to forge such necessary alliances. Then we would be acting from a position of weakness, not strength, and that is unacceptable to me.”
Cameron relented. “Very well. I doubt that my presence in London will be especially welcome, but I shall do what I can. I suppose you will want me to call on certain potential allies and sway them to our cause? What shall I tell them we offer in return other than our undying gratitude?”
Cawley shook his head. “You misunderstand, my boy. I am not sending you to persuade wealthy English gentlemen to join us. I am sending you to woo and marry one of their daughters.”
His son’s jaw dropped. “You cannot possibly be serious.”
“Indeed I am.”
“But…that’s ludicrous! Why would any English nobleman have any interest in such an arrangement? They hate Scottish folk with a fiery passion, so how can you imagine they would want one of their daughters to marry me?”
“They do not hate us,” the laird replied evenly.
“They disdain us, aye, because they have conquered us, but largely, they do not know enough about us to hate us. You will show them what pleasant and civilized people we can be. You will demonstrate that their idea of us as filthy barbarians with faces painted blue and necklaces of eyes and fingers is untrue. And what’s more, you will make them see the benefits of their daughters birthing and raising offspring, which will be heirs to both English and Scottish nobility. ”
“And what of me, Father?” Cameron knew this sounded selfish, but he didn’t much care. “I am to marry the daughter of some odious English aristocrat, is that it? Are there no Scottish lasses I might be wed to who could likewise bolster our family’s resources and defenses?”
“To be perfectly frank, no, there are not,” Cawley informed him flatly.
“I have made inquiries, and I am not satisfied that any laird’s daughter who is currently available would provide us with the same assurances as this course of action.
Therefore, you will do your duty to your clan by doing as I ask. ”
“Do you not see that in the name of defending us from rivals, you might in fact be provoking them with this course of action? If they see that you have chosen to marry me off to an Englishwoman instead of a Scottish one—and, in doing so, have given an English family a foothold here in the Highlands, which is the last thing anyone here wants—then they may join forces to attack us en masse!”
“I have weighed our options and come to the conclusion that they would not mobilize such a devastating force to assault us over with something as minor as a wedding. Cameron, I know this is not happy news for you, but it need not be any great tragedy either! There are plenty of comely and charming young women in England.”
“None of whom will wish to have anything to do with me,” Cameron pointed out darkly. “I shall only manage to embarrass myself while I am there.”
“You shall do no such thing! I have arranged for the rental of a townhouse for you to stay in while you are there, and my acquaintance, Lord Jasper Collingsworth, has agreed to instruct you in proper conduct while making your introductions to the local luminaries. You will have nothing to worry about in that regard. You will represent us wonderfully and make me very proud; I have no doubt of that. Unless you choose to fail on purpose, and I refuse to believe you would do me such a dishonor.”
Cameron squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. This was terribly unwelcome news, and it made him angry and heartsick to hear it, but in the end, Cawley was quite correct. He would never do anything to deliberately disobey his father.
“When am I meant to leave for this expedition?” he asked glumly.
“Your carriage will set off for London first thing tomorrow,” Cawley said.
“That should give you plenty of time to say your farewells to your siblings and so forth. We shall make the announcement at supper tonight. And Cameron…thank you. I know how unhappy you are with this plan, but you will soon see the wisdom in it, I promise you!”
Cameron highly doubted it.