“They will tell him you came at once, they will tell him that you will come back. I will tell him when I see him after dinner this evening. And I will get the permit so that you can come tomorrow.”
“Archibald would never have let them close the door to me.”
Diplomatically, he says nothing.
Archibald is waiting for me, leaning against my throne in my presence chamber. He comes to me as I walk in and wraps me in his arms. He sees my flushed face and the tears in my eyes and at once he soothes me, whispers words of love in my ear, draws me away from all the people waiting to see me: the tenants who have come miles, the petitioners with their lawsuits, the debtors with their pledges, the endless population of people with troubles. “Her Grace will see you tomorrow,” he announces to the room and leads me to the privy chamber, past my waiting ladies, and into my bedroom. He closes the door behind us and unties the bow of my cape.
“Ard, I . . .”
“My love.”
Carefully, he unpins my velvet riding bonnet and puts it to one side. He pulls ivory hairpins from my plaited hair and it tumbles down over my shoulders. As if he cannot stop himself, he buries his face in it and inhales the scent of me. I hesitate, shaken with desire.
“The castle was locked . . .”
“I know.”
His skilled hands unlace my gown at the back and over my shoulders, shuck me out of the stiff stomacher, untie the ribbons of my skirt, drop it to the ground.
“I could not . . .”
“The chevalier is a weak fool. I adore you.”
He peels the embroidered sleeves from my arms, lifts the hem of my beautiful fine linen petticoat, and takes it over my head. I am naked before him but for a little shift. I fold my arms over my breasts and belly. Suddenly I am terribly shy. I have not stood naked in daylight before him since the birth of our baby, and I am conscious of the fatness of my belly, the roundness of my breasts.
Gently he takes one hand and puts it on the back of his neck, as if I should pull him into a kiss. He takes the other and puts it on the front of his breeches. He is not wearing a codpiece; the hard warmth under my hand is all him, all his desire for me.
“Oh, Ard,” I whisper. Everything that has happened this morning—my disappointment in being kept from my son, the locked castle, the insinuations of the chevalier—all fades away at his touch as he presses me against him, his hands on my half-naked buttocks, pulling me closer, as his mouth comes down on mine.
An hour later, when we are stirring in the big bed, I remember. “There are rumors against you,” I say.
“There are always rumors against great men,” he replies. He sits on the edge of my rumpled bed and pulls on his riding breeches over his lean thighs. I sit in the bed, a sheet caught up to my throat, and watch him. Even now, after an hour of lovemaking, I feel my desire rise at the sight of him. He knows this. He stands before me and lets me watch him lace the opening at the front of his breeches, drop a linen shirt over his broad, smooth chest, tie the white laces at his tanned throat.
I crawl down the bed towards him. I kneel up to put my lips to the base of his neck where I feel his pulse speed at the touch of my mouth. His hands come onto my shoulders, he presses me back towards the bed. I yield dreamily. “We have to go to dinner,” I remind him. “Everyone will be waiting.”
“Let them wait,” he says, and he pulls the sheet away from me.
Slowly, luxuriously, he takes a handful of my hair and kisses my neck, just below my ear. I let him trace a line of kisses down my breast.
“They tell me that you have my rents,” I say, distracted by the tide of pleasure that is rising up in me again.
“Hmm, some of them,” he says. “The tenants have no money. There is no law in the borders. How can anyone collect rents?”
“But you have some of them?”
He stops his gentle caress. “I do,” he says softly. “Of course. I never stopped working for you, though you were far away. I have done all I can to collect your dues.”
“Thank you,” I say.
He slides his thigh against me. I grip his waist and pull him towards me. His riding breeches are the softest of leathers, the touch of them against my naked skin causes ripples of pleasure. “And have you been living in my houses?”
“Yes, of course. How else could I guard your lands and collect your rents?”
He unties the laces on his breeches and I am eager for his touch. I pull the strings from the holes and feel for him.
“They will have told you about Janet Stewart,” he guesses, as my hands find him, and I give a little sigh.
“I did not believe a word,” I swear.
“It’s nothing,” he promises me. He is close, he is gently entering me; I can feel that I am dissolving with desire. “Just gossip. Believe in me now. Believe in this. Believe in us.”
With each command he thrusts gently inside me and I breathe “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1517
My son the king is moved from the plague-struck city to Craigmillar Castle, just an hour south of Edinburgh, where the Sieur de la Bastie is living. He says that I may come and stay for as long as I wish, that I must see my son without obstacle. I would be wise to leave Edinburgh during the time of sickness. I say that Archibald will come too, and Antoine rolls his handsome brown eyes and laughs at me. “You are a woman in love,” he says. “And you will not be warned. So come, bring the earl. I am always delighted to see him, whoever he is married to, today.”
I pay no attention to anything but his invitation, and Ard and I ride out, with James’s presents, the very next morning.
It is a tower castle built in the French style, with a handsome courtyard wall. “A toy castle,” Archibald says scathingly. “For a pretend chevalier.”
“Not every castle can be like Tantallon with the North Sea as its moat,” I tease him.
We ride in through the stone archway, the guards at attention on either side. They are beautifully turned out. I see new gates on the doorway and shiny new hinges. De la Bastie takes his duties as James’s guardian very seriously.
He is there to greet us at the doorway of the castle and comes himself to help me down from the saddle. Ard jumps down like a boy to be at my side first; but I see neither of them—not the handsome Frenchman nor the dazzling Scot—for in the doorway is Davy Lyndsay whom I have not seen for two years and beside him, standing alone, is my little boy, five-year-old James.
“Oh, James,” I say. “My boy, my son.”
The moment I see him, the loss of his younger brother, Alexander, strikes me again, and I can hardly stop myself from crying out. I don’t want to disturb him with my tears, so I bite my lip and I go carefully towards him, as if I were approaching a little merlin, a falcon that might bate away from me. He looks up at me, with eyes as bright and as dark as a merlin. “Lady Mother?” he asks in his clear little-boy voice.
I see that he is not sure who I am. He has been told that I will come, but he does not remember me and, in any case, I imagine I am much changed from the woman who kissed him good-bye and swore that she would come for him soon. We were in terrible danger then, I was pregnant, and I left him, certain that his crown and his blood would keep him safe, while Archibald’s name and behavior would endanger him. I left my son for love of my husband, and I don’t know even now if I did the right thing.
I drop to my knees so that he and I are face to face. “I am your mother,” I whisper. “I love you very much. I have missed you every day. I have prayed for you every night. I have longed—” again I have to swallow a sob “—I have longed to be with you.”
He is only five years old, but he seems far older, and reserved. He does not seem to doubt me, but clearly he does not want declarations of love nor his mother’s tears. He looks diffident, as if he would rather I was not kneeling in the yard before him, my eyes filled, my lip trembling.
“You are welcome to Craigmillar,” he says as he has been taught.
Davy Lyndsay bows low to me.