8
Cate was aware of Ross the instant he passed through the entrance to the great hall. Though he appeared drawn and pale under the weathered bronze of his skin, no one else had his air of command or ability to dominate his surroundings. No one possessed his casual grace or darkly handsome features. Of course, few others wore a plaid, either, though there were a handful of other Scots at court as pledges for the treaty with Henry.
Her heart stuttered in her chest, doubling its beat. She tracked him with her gaze until he was lost from view somewhere in the far end of the vast hall. Suddenly, the holiday evening seemed twice as bright.
The windows and doors of the hall were hung with swags of red-berried holly, bay and ivy interspersed with thick sprigs of mistletoe and other evergreen boughs that released their scent into the warm air. More garlands draped the front edge of the dais where stood the high table, and framed the king’s arms on the wall behind it. Pomanders made of apples stuck with cloves were heaped in bowls along the high table’s length, while wide ribbons made swaths of color between them. Behind these, Henry and his queen, with his attendants to his right and her ladies to her left, sipped their wine and waited to be entertained.
Cate, along with several of the other ladies invited by the queen, had directed the hanging of the greenery, and made the pomanders. The decorations were meant to remain in place for the six weeks between now and Candlemas. The meal took so long, however, that she began to wonder if they would last out the evening.
At last the cheese and nuts were removed and lower tables broken down and set against the walls. The pantomime to be presented by a traveling troupe was about to begin. After it would come dancing to harp, lute and vielle, beginning with a carol dance. Other merrymaking would fill the time until the midnight Angel’s or Christ’s Mass, which glorified the arrival of the light of salvation at the darkest hour of the darkest date in the depth of winter.
Pantomime had never been a favorite of Cate’s; she had not missed it after it was banned following a horrific Danse Macabre put on by Henry’s master of revels at Westminster a few months before. It was surprising that the mummers had been allowed into the palace this evening. She supposed the tradition of their presence during the Christmas season was too strong to be denied, or else the king meant to replace old memories with new. As the men with white powdered faces and rich costumes came forward, she turned away in search of Ross’s tall figure.
There he was, with one shoulder propped against the support post nearest the entrance. Marguerite must have been talking to him, for she was just walking away. Her shoulders had a defeated droop that made Cate frown as she wondered what had been discussed between them. She must ask her sister when they were alone.
An abrupt movement at the edge of Cate’s vision brought her head around again. Ross had been joined by three men. She took a swift step forward as she saw one of them jab at his side and the Scotsman wrench away. Fury gripped her and she narrowed her gaze upon the black doublet of the man who had tried to prod Ross’s injury. Though he stood with his back to her, she would have known him anywhere.
What could he hope to gain, unless it was to goad Ross into stepping outside to cross swords while he was less than fit? That was, just possibly, the reason Trilborn had friends with him.
Cate made no decision to move. One moment she stood in ladylike composure, and the next she was striding toward the trio surrounding Ross. She stepped among them in a flurry of crimson velvet and veiling edged with gold braid, her smile cold as she swept them with contempt.
Ross rested his hand on his dirk, she saw. He must not be allowed to draw it, for that could be taken as an insult requiring redress.
“Ross, my dear sir, how laggard you are,” she said, allowing her voice and her gaze to soften as she reached to take his arm. “You promised that we would dance, if you recall. ’Twas at Winchester.”
“Oh, aye. And?”
Drollery lurked in the mountain-blue of his eyes. He knew what she was doing and thought it comical in some fashion. So it might be, though she would not give over because of it. “If you will not come to me, then I must come to you, for I intend to hold you to your word. A carol dance will follow the mummery, so you may sing to me as we caper.”
“But, Lady Catherine,” Trilborn exclaimed.
“My lord?”
This was the first time she had seen the earl since the incident in the corridor; he’d apparently nursed his own wounds in solitude this past week. His nose was still discolored and a little crooked from where Ross’s blow had broken it, and he wore a high collar to his chin to cover the site where she had bitten him.
The anger that leaped to her gaze seemed to give him pause, for he lowered his head with the pretence of a humble bow. “Your pardon, but I’d meant to ask you to step out onto the floor.”
“I must refuse,” she answered at once.
“Because of the small misunderstanding between us? I was hasty, I will admit, my feelings too strong. I hoped for an opportunity to beg forgiveness.”
Cate gave that suggestion the answer it deserved, which was none at all. Turning her back upon Trilborn, settling her gaze on Ross’s face, she asked, “Shall we, sir?”
“We’re to caper, is it?” The Scotsman smiled down at her, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm so she was aware of the hard bunch of muscles there that showed his readiness for action in case of need.
“Merrily, as ’tis the season.” Her heart beat a wild tattoo against her ribs and the warmth in her cheeks seemed to heat the air around her. Her greatest fear was that Trilborn would lay hands upon her, or upon Ross. Though she knew the Scotsman would fight like a demon, in either case, she was not certain he could survive it.
“I was speaking to the lady, Dunbar!”
“Her wishes must take precedence, Trilborn, especially as she is one of the incomparable Graces of Graydon.”
“By God’s beard, I’ll not be passed over this way!”
“You have your friends about you,” Ross said over his shoulder as he led her from among them. “Mayhap one of them will partner you in the dance.”
The wrath that dawned on Trilborn’s face was most satisfying. Head high, looking neither right nor left at the audience that had gathered, Cate walked with Ross Dunbar to the edge of the cleared space before the high table. And if her heart was attempting to tear its way from under the silk of her bodice, only she knew it.
“Tit for tat, one rescue for another,” Ross said, his voice deep and low near her ear as they waited for the mummery to end. “We should be equal now.”
“Hardly, sir. You have rendered two to my one.” She kept a cordial smile upon her face and her gaze on one of the mimes, who seemed in acute distress over the fate of the actor costumed as a white mouse.
“I count it differently. You not only sewed up my belly, but came of a night to rout my fever.”
“To tend your wound was the least I could do. For the other, you are mistaken. ’Twas Gwynne.”
Ross’s smile was wry. “I’ll admit I thought it a dream until now, when I am with you again.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Half-mad with delirium I might have been, but scent and touch do not lie. Nor was I so far gone, now I think back on it, as to miss the rare colors of a most glorious black eye.”
“Oh!” She clapped a hand to her face, covering where her cheek had indeed been so bruised by Trilborn’s blow that color from it seeped upward to give her eye all the shades of the rainbow. For some few days after the meeting with Trilborn she had resorted to paints of the sort used by Spanish ladies, and had only ceased that morning.
“Not,” Ross added with great magnanimity, “that it appears so now. No, and I was never so addled in the head as to mistake old for young or plain for fair.”
“Fie, sir!” Cate railed with heat rising under her skin. “Is that any way to speak of the woman who bathed and dressed you as if—how was that you put it?—oh, yes, as if you were a babe in swaddling?”
“I cry foul, milady. Words spoken in the heat of the moment should not be used against a man. But if you will not have it even between us, then I’ve no objection to being saved yet again.”
She glanced up at him, searching his face. “Some men would.”
“Aye, and some come nigh to slicing their own throats while shaving, but it doesn’t make them wiser for it. Take yon Trilborn, for instance.”
“You take him, as I have no use for his fine self.” Her answer was stiff in her annoyance at the turn of subject. She would far rather have spoken of what was between the two of them alone.
The Scotsman ignored her ill humor. “He intends to have you to wife, and minds not at all if he earns your hate in the process.”
“So you’ve pointed out before, and I told you—”
“You place your confidence in the protection of your curse, though it’s done little to prevent two attacks so far.”
“It sent you to stop them, did it not?”
“You may think so if it pleases you. But I believe you would be wiser to look around you for another husband, as you’ve no wish to warm Trilborn’s bed.”
“What? Seek out a third prospective husband to fend off, when I have two already? I may as well choose a few more for an even dozen.”
“Now there’s a thought,” he said with an affable nod, “being there’s safety in a crowd.”
“I’d sooner go into a nunnery!”
He scowled down at her. “You never mean it.”
“At least it would be quiet and free of strife,” she said with a toss of her head. “I’m sure Henry’s mother, half a nun herself, could arrange it.”
“Mayhap, but would she go against the king’s will?”
“She might if convinced I have a true vocation.”
“Ah, well, in that case,” he said, taking her hand and leading her forward as the dance began to form. “But it would still be a tragedy.”
Cate was barely aware of the circle of dancers or the start of the music for the carol dance, paid scant attention to the first line sung that must be repeated by each pair of dancers as they added their own line to the carol. “Why a tragedy?” she demanded. “Many women dedicate their lives to the service of God.”
“Those without a prayer otherwise.” He made his bow, his smile irreverent and lacking in apology for the punning quip.
“You are mistaken. My sisters and I were placed with the nuns for our education, and spent many happy hours tending herbs and vegetables, bees and sheep. Many women had taken refuge there from the ills of marriage.”
“And a fine thing, if they were content. But it might have been better had they chosen a man who’d not use them ill in the first place.”
“Fine talk, when you must know few choose at all.”
If she sounded bitter, she could not help it. There had been too many betrothals foisted upon her and her sisters, arrangements that might have ended in tragedy of a different kind had the men involved not died.
Ross stared down at her averted face a long moment as they circled each other with arms akimbo. When he answered, his voice was abrupt. “I spoke without thought. But I will not be put off by this wandering from where we started. Why will you not admit you came—”
“Hush,” she said, with a quick glance around her. “And make ready, for it’s almost our turn to sing.”
It was upon them within the instant, a list of nine items brought from a peddler’s pack as gifts for the New Year, each of them more fanciful than the first. Cate expected that she would be required to carry the burden of remembering their sequence, but it was not so. Ross’s fine baritone rang out in perfect measure and progression, adding ten silver bells as their contribution even as he moved with smooth grace around the circle, turning, twisting, taking her hand and walking around her, then moving down the line.
She was loath to be separated from him. She followed him with her gaze while she slipped through the intricate winding of couples. Men stepped warily around him, or so it appeared. Women smiled and gave him their hands all too readily, while brushing against him in the turns. Not that Ross noticed any of it, she thought. Features grim, and favoring his left side, he worked his way purposefully from one partner to the next until he was before her once more.
“Does your wound pain you?” she asked in concern as they swept together and then apart again with a flourishing bow of greeting. “Would you prefer to sit this out?”
“And break the circle? I’d not think of it.”
His breathing was less strained than hers, his smile just as easy as when they began. He was stronger than she might have expected, given his ordeal. Another day or two and no one would guess he had been close to death.
“You were there, admit it.”
The demand came from behind her as he circled her once more and then danced to the fore again. He was relentless in his will. He would not stop until he had his answer.
“Oh, very well!” she exclaimed, with a swift glance toward their neighboring partners. “I was there. What of it?”
“Why would you deny it? Did it please you to make me think I dreamed you beside my bed?”
“I was not meant to be there,” she said in a strained whisper as she danced close and away again. “If anyone knew…”
“It was a grave risk.”
“I am aware, believe me.” She gave him a fulminating glance, thinking of how she had traversed the cold corridors of the palace in one of Gwynne’s loose day robes and with a thick peasant’s kerchief covering her hair. More than once while traipsing back and forth, she had been forced to step into a storeroom, doorway or the darker shadows to avoid meeting those she knew.
“Why would you chance it?”
“You ventured more for me, and suffered more.”
“Nothing that might affect my future.”
Her glance was scathing. “I should think being killed an almighty affect!”
“Mayhap keeping you safe from Trilborn is my purpose in being allowed to live,” he suggested with a whimsical smile.
“Henry has had a bellyful of wrangling nobles, every one of them thinking himself the equal of a king. He will brook no meeting with sword or lance that he has not specifically decreed.”
“That isn’t my intention. At least, not unless I’m forced to it.”
What was he saying? Surely not what it sounded? “What else?” she asked with more than a little wariness.
“A husband acceptable to Henry, one who would not misuse you, should solve your dilemma. Add to that the joy of snatching the bride he wants from Trilborn’s grasp, and the thing begins to have merit.”
“You swore you would not agree!” she reminded to him in sibilant undertones. “If this is the way you repay my efforts to lower your fever, then I am sorry I bothered!”
“Are ye, now?”
No, it was not true. He had been so near perfect a specimen of manhood as he lay sprawled on his bed. She had taken guilty pleasure in running a cool cloth over the muscled expanse of his chest, along his arms, down the long, firm length of his thighs. And if she had lifted a corner of the sheet that covered him while Gwynne’s back was turned, who was to know? Unless it was he? Unless his suggestion came from some awareness of that heart-stopping instant of intimacy that gained her the knowledge of just how well, how bountifully, he was made?
“That was before I knew your danger,” he was saying.
“Yes, and before you saw how I could be used to spite your old enemy.”
“You would rather be wed to him? It may come to that if you refuse. I don’t see Henry handing over your share of your father’s estates to a nunnery, as he must if you escape behind its walls.”
Dread caught her by the throat, squeezing slowly so she felt the full pain of it. “It isn’t that, you know it isn’t.”
“Because you think I may die then? The reaper comes for all of us, soon or late. We do what we are allowed, betimes.”
“But don’t you see the feud with Trilborn may be your death? The vengeance and betrayal are there waiting, have always been there. They could overtake you if you defy the curse.”
“They may do it, any road. I might as well make what goes before count for something.”
“You can’t!”
“No?”
He watched her as he asked it, his eyes dark with unnamable impulses. She held his gaze, regardless, because she must. “No, not…not ever.”
“Ah, well,” he said with a smile that did not light his eyes, “as you will, milady.”
“You must promise me you will not change,” she insisted.
He shook his head. “Whist, now, lass. It’s time for us to sing again.”
The Yule log, tall as a man and so large four could not reach around it so it might burn the entire twelve days of Christmas, made the great hall insufferably hot. When Cate and her sister left to don cloaks and gloves for the midnight mass, Ross made his way outside. Greenwich Palace overlooked the Thames, and the deeper basin of a shipyard in a long curve of the river some distance away. It was a fair prospect during the day, though only pinpricks of light from stern lanterns could be seen in the darkness. Nearer at hand, the river was quiet and nearly empty of traffic.
Ross took a well-worn path that led downhill, winding through a copse of leafless horse chestnuts and beside a stone wall before ending at the riverside. The quiet rush and gurgle of the water drew him to the edge. A pair of black swans approached, silent and almost invisible in the night, their eyes reflecting small pinpoints of light from the dimly glowing palace. He squatted and held out his hand to them, but they floated away when they saw he had nothing to feed them. Chuckling, he remained there on his haunches.
The weather had turned somewhat warmer but was still cool and damp. The breeze off the water felt so good on Ross’s flushed face that he was barely aware of the smell of mud, decaying vegetation, and human and animal waste. Plucking a dried reed that grew at the river’s edge, he fashioned a rough flute and piped an air that had often sent men marching into battle with their plaids swinging and their swords weighty on their backs.
It had scarce been two hours since he’d eaten, but he was hungry again. No doubt he would be until he was fit once more. Tomorrow would see a great feast at Henry’s expense. The boar Ross had killed in the New Forest would play its part. It most likely lay in salt somewhere in the bowels of the palace, after being dragged from the wood on his instructions and transported with the carts that had come from Winchester. He looked forward to sinking his teeth into it.
He’d saved the beast’s tusks. One day they would grace the hall of his home, when his father had gone to a reiver’s reward. They would be a souvenir of a miserable yet magical night.
For this evening of dancing and singing, and of looking into Cate’s face, flushed with effort and firelight, he required no reminder. It would live in the deepest part of his mind for many a long year, mayhap forever.
By all the saints, but she was bonny, brave and true, a woman in a thousand.
But not for him, never for him. If he told himself so often enough, he might one day come to accept it.
Not that he felt anything beyond the concern any man might have for her plight. It was no fault of his that she had been lost in the wood or come under his protection. That Trilborn was sniffing around her was Henry’s problem, though Ross was certain his old enemy’s interest had sharpened once he saw she might be awarded to a Dunbar. If the man had never panted after her before, he would have conceived a sudden passion. It was how he was made.
A dull thump, followed by a creaking sound, floated over the dark surface of the river. Hard upon it came a whispered reprimand. Ross lifted his head, quartering the shimmering flow with narrowed eyes.
Just beyond where he hunkered in the reeds, a boat eased downriver, drifting with the outgoing tide until it turned toward the palace. Had it not been so silent, Ross might have shrugged it off as some nobleman returning from a carouse in freer surroundings than Henry’s staid court. The oars were muffled, however, and the occupants swathed in cloaks and wearing broad-brimmed hats that left their faces in shadow.
Ross eased flat with the same slow care he’d have used if stalking a herd of nervous cattle. As he watched, the boat landed well above the stone dock that served the palace. Two men leaped ashore and made their way swiftly along the outer wall. They paused at a rustic gate, one from which kitchen refuse was taken away or slops emptied into the river. It swung open, and the two night visitors vanished within.
As it began to close again, it seemed to stick. The man stationed at the gate stepped forward to give it a hard pull. Light from somewhere inside glittered upon silver braid outlining a black tunic, winked over silver chains that held a black cloak. The way the man moved, the way he looked back over his shoulder before the gate thudded shut, made the hair on Ross’s neck stand up like a dog’s ruff.
Trilborn, by the bones of Saint Peter.
Trilborn had admitted the newcomers, though what he could be about was more than Ross could guess. Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be good.
Ross sprang to his feet, brushed mud from his plaid with a quick gesture while keeping watch for more visitors, departing guests or sentries. A guard appeared on the wall high above his head, too far away to be a concern. Whistling a little, trying to act as if he’d been attending to an urgent call of nature in the open air, Ross strolled in the general direction of the gate where the men had disappeared.
Guards, a pair of them, came to attention as he approached. Where they had been moments before, he could not guess, but they were certainly on watch now. To be admitted presented no difficulty, however; there was more than one advantage in being among the few known for wearing a plaid at Henry’s court. Either that, or the men on duty could not conceive of anyone asking entry at such a noisome back passage unless he belonged inside the palace.
Ross made his way across the muck-littered space between the gate and a heavy door in the stone wall. Easing inside, he paused in the square entrance. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing to the right except the distant clatter as Henry’s kitchen staff labored over a feast for several thousand to be served on the morrow, he turned swiftly in the opposite direction.
He had taken only a few steps when the bells began to peal from the king’s chapel. Matins, the midnight hour. It was time for the first mass of Christmastide. Hardly a soul in the whole palace would fail to head to the chapel, there to kneel with tightly closed eyes for the holiest of all celebrations. Trilborn had chosen well for his clandestine meeting, if that was what he had in hand.
Ross thought he had lost the men for long moments as the rough corridor he traveled filled with serving staff hurrying toward the chapel. Carried along with them, he entered a series of public rooms leading one into the other. These in their turn were crowded with men-at-arms, minstrels, members of Henry’s yeoman guard, lords and their ladies hurrying with cloaks lifting behind their shoulders, and nuns in flying wimples. He dodged among them, protecting his side as best he might while using his height to see above their heads.
It was in an antechamber that he spied his quarry again, a square room with a wooden floor that rumbled and squeaked with every footstep, and tapestries that shuddered in the draft that wafted from where its doors stood open to allow free passage. The men, three in number with Trilborn, had diverged from the main herd to enter a connecting chamber to what seemed to be a series of cabinet rooms. Ross forged after them, cleaving his way at a diagonal through the bustling throng while keeping his eye on the flash of silver braid. He did not try to close the distance, until the trio disappeared through a door at the far end.
Before he reached it, a cloaked figure hurried to catch the heavy door panel before it closed. His face was concealed by a hood, but its width, as if it covered a headdress in the latest horned style, indicated a female. The light of a lamp, burning with a trio of wicks in its shallow bowl on a corner tripod, picked out the device embroidered upon the flowing velvet cloak she wore. It was that of the dowager queen, Elizabeth Woodville, wife of the late Edward IV and mother to Henry’s queen of the same given name.
Elizabeth Woodville despised her son-in-law, so it was said, naming him a usurper with little royal blood in his veins, and that from the wrong side of the blanket and in his mother’s line. That was true as far as it went. Edward IV and Richard III had both descended from the eldest son of Edward III, while Henry’s line derived from the third son, John of Gaunt, and his mistress, Katherine Swynford. John of Gaunt had married the woman when he was able, and their offspring were made legitimate by royal order, but that hardly mattered in the Yorkist view. It was only the removal of all other Lancaster claimants to the throne, during the internecine fighting called the War of the Roses, that allowed Henry to come to the fore.
A body would think the dowager queen would be in sympathy with Henry, Ross mused, as she was not from a titled family. More, her own marriage to Edward IV had been declared invalid by his brother, Richard, and her children therefore illegitimate. Edward, it seemed, had signed a betrothal contract, a legally binding instrument of marriage, with another lady prior to his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.
The cynical claimed the dowager queen’s partiality to the York cause had more to do with greed than loyalty. She, along with her sons from a previous marriage, her brothers and any number of other blood relatives, had held vast estates and rich offices while Edward was king. Richard had confiscated most of it on his brother’s death, but a return to a Yorkist regime might well set it all back in place again.
Whatever Trilborn was about in company with the royal lady, it seemed unlikely to be to Henry VII’s benefit. It might well be a matter of treason.
“Ross? Are you not going to the mass?”
So great was his concentration on the closed door that he’d failed to see Lady Catherine sweeping toward him. His frown as he spun at the sound of her voice must have been fearsome; she, her sister and their serving woman just behind them, all stopped as if they had run into a stone wall.
“Aye,” he said, keeping his voice a low rumble, “I’ll join you in a minute or two.”
“You will have to stand if you delay,” Marguerite informed him.
“On my own head be it,” he said shortly.
Cate studied him, her gaze intent. “You are so recently come from your bed, and you look flushed. What are you—”
“Not now.” He made a swift gesture with one hand. “Later.”
She was not pleased. Her gaze went to the closed door that was his target. When Marguerite would have said something more, however, Cate put out a hand to stop her. “Yes,” she said as she moved away. “Later.”
It sounded more a threat than a promise. Ross allowed a wry smile to quirk a corner of his mouth before he turned back to the business at hand.
Skulking in dark corners and eavesdropping on private conversations was not his idea of proper conduct for the next laird of the Clan Dunbar. Some things had to be done, however. Moving with purpose, he continued on across the larger chamber that gave access to the room that interested him. Making every effort to appear as if he had serious business within, he opened the door and stepped inside.
No convenient lamp burned here, not even a candle. It was, Ross realized, simply an antechamber where those who waited for an audience with the king could confer, dictate to a scribe or speak in private to a member of Henry’s council. Ross paused a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness, noting a bench under the single window, a writing table, a chair, a stool. Of greater interest was yet another door to one side, narrow in width, half concealed by draping curtains, and with a sliver of light beneath it.
Easing forward with soundless footsteps on one of Henry’s Saracen carpets, he reached the door. He turned to place his shoulders against the wall beside it and leaned his head back.
The wall felt substantial, comfortingly firm behind him, for he was suddenly weary beyond all reason. Yet his purpose was to make sense of the low mutter of voices he could hear in the next room, filtering around the door. He closed his eyes, the better to hear.
“Margaret…Burgundy…tidings…”
“…Yorkist…”
“…by spring’s end, early…”
“…boy prince…puppet…”
“…thousand…German, well-armed…”
“…payment for…”
It was maddening to be unable to hear clearly. Ross could only guess the subject under discussion, and therefore its trend. Still, the pertinent fact appeared to be that Trilborn and the dowager queen were in league with those who sought to oust Henry VII from his throne.
It seemed that he and the English king had a common enemy, Ross thought with grim amusement. It was almost enough to put him in charity with the monarch.
Still, what arrogance, to penetrate to the very heart of Henry’s favorite palace to thrash out their plan. Even given that the entire court would be at mass, it was still breathtaking in its daring. Was it Trilborn’s choice, or the artful cunning of the dowager queen? She had a knack for intrigue, or so said the stories.
Trilborn had almost surely thrown in his lot with the Yorkist faction. He was part of the scheme to remove Henry, one that involved Margaret, Elizabeth Woodville’s daughter who was also the dowager duchess of Burgundy, and an army of mercenaries that would land somewhere in England in late spring or early summer. Their purpose was to place a child king on the throne. No doubt Elizabeth Woodville expected to be named queen regnant until he came of age, a position with only slightly less pomp and authority than being queen in her own right. The boy’s supporters would then reap rewards beyond their most avaricious dreams.
Did the woman really believe she would be putting her own child on the throne in the person of the boy? Or was this the most cynical of power grabs, made in full expectation that the young boy mentioned in whispers was an imposter who would eventually be deposed? Or did that matter when, as with Henry himself, might of arms instead of birthright would dictate the outcome? Did God decide on the battlefield who would or would not be king as some suggested, so that whoever was the victor could claim to rule by divine right?
The stability of the throne of England was not his concern, Ross told himself with scathing disdain. If Henry died in the clash of foreign armies, it meant a likely end to Ross’s own enforced stay on English soil. He could go home to Scotland, take his place in his father’s keep and among his uncles and his cousins on their midnight cattle raids.
It would mean an end to any pretence of a betrothal to Lady Catherine Milton of Graydon, accursed Grace that she was. No more singing, dancing, arguments or quick, laughing comments; no more sweet, untutored kisses.
What to do with these bits he had learned? This was something requiring careful deliberation, a minute weighing of consequences, Ross thought. Mayhap he should take himself to mass and see if guidance came to him there.