The Captive Heart

Chapter Eighteen

In the half-light of an early dawn Fyfa shook her mistress roughly awake.

Opening her eyes, Robena Ramsay snarled, "What is it? The sun is not even up yet, and you waken me?"

"He's gone!" Fyfa said.

"Gone? Who is gone?" And then Robena's blue eyes snapped fully open. "What the hell do you mean? How could he be gone? He was chained to the bedstead. He cannot be gone."

"Well, he is," Fyfa said bluntly.

Robena's eyes narrowed speculatively. "Did you or your brother…" she began.

"Of course not!" Fyfa snapped.

"Then how?" Robena demanded to know. "How?"

"The bedposts were not as sturdy as you might have supposed," Fyfa said. "He snapped them in two, took his clothing and boots from the chest, and fled."

"You put his garments in the same room where I had him imprisoned?" Robena jumped up from her bed and hit Fyfa a blow.

" 'Twas not me," Fyfa said, rubbing her cheek. " 'Twas you, mistress. You had my brother disrobe Beinn when he had dragged him into the house. I was not there. I suspect in your eagerness to see him naked you stuffed his clothing in the nearest chest, giving no thought to the possibility he might escape."

"None have ever escaped me before," Robena said, sitting heavily upon her bed.

"The laird will know now," Fyfa said, and her voice shook.

"Perhaps," Robena mused. "Or perhaps not."

"Beinn is loyal to his master," Fyfa reminded her mistress.

"But he is also a proud man," Robena replied. "I wonder if he will be willing to admit that I beat him and forced him to my will. Ahh, and I had such fine plans for him for today," she sighed.

"But why was he here in the first place?" Fyfa wondered aloud. "It was not his time to come with supplies. And Rafe found him at the new grave."

"I don't know why he was here," Robena said. "It doesn't matter to me. He knows nothing of Sir Udolf. Why would he? It is not his concern."

"Perhaps the laird's men found Sir Udolf's horse," Fyfa suggested.

"More likely some traveler on foot found it and claimed it for himself," Robena said cynically. "You fret too much, Fyfa. Aye, Beinn has probably returned to Dunglais, and he will have found a way to explain the manacles and chains, but I doubt he has told my husband the truth. How could he, and keep his position? Everyone knows that Colm was always very jealous of me, of the men who admired me. Do you really think he would believe the truth if Beinn had the courage to tell him? Nay. My husband's captain will want to keep his position at Dunglais. Do not men always wish to keep what is theirs, Fyfa? We are still safe, for my husband would not want known what he has done to me. I am not pleased, however, by a dreary, lonely winter."

"It is only September, mistress," Fyfa said dryly. "Time enough yet to catch some unsuspecting traveler in your web."

Robena brightened. "Aye," she said. "And I have other plans to execute as well. I have decided that I want my daughter. Sir Udolf told me that my husband's whore is raising Fiona and that the brat even addresses her as her mother. I will not have another woman mothering my child, nor will I reason with him in this matter. If he does not wish his bigamy revealed, nor his bastard rendered publicly illegitimate, he will give me my child. I shall take her, and he will keep his mouth shut or I will expose him, expose his bastards to the world. He will have no legitimate heir then."

"Mistress," Fyfa said, "this is no place for a little maid gently reared."

"She will be a help to you," Robena said carelessly. "And if she is pretty she will help me to lure travelers to our cottage. There are men in this world, Fyfa, who prefer very young lovers." And Robena laughed.

Fyfa shuddered at the cruel sound. While she did not wish to find herself and her helpless brother once again without a home, she almost wished that the laird would come and put an end to her mistress's cruel debauchery. "I'll get your meal," she said, and hurried from the bedchamber.

The autumn came to the borders. It was now October, and the weather had been beautiful and unusual for so late in the year. Her instincts had been right. No one came from Dunglais. She had set Rafe to watching the keep. Certainly at this age her daughter rode out regularly. Once she learned Fiona's habits, she would ride out on Beinn's horse, which Rafe had found the day he had brought Beinn to her, and she would take the child herself. Robena smiled. Aye, it was a far better plan. She would gain Fiona almost immediately, and Fyfa would then have someone to help her with the chores.

The brat would quickly learn that she was no longer her father's pet. Robena wondered if her daughter had ever been whipped. Well, let her disobey her mother's wishes and Fiona's bottom would soon be introduced to the hazel switch. A good beating never hurt a child. He own father had whipped her with great regularity until she had grown breasts, and then her mother would not permit it. Robena arose from her bed and began to prepare for the day ahead.

She had lost a lover, but there would be another eventually, and in the meantime there would be Fiona to amuse her.

Fyfa, of course, did not think her mistress's plan a sound one. "You are safe and comfortable here," she said. "You have the opportunity to enjoy a lover now and again. Even if you manage to take your daughter from your husband, he will certainly come after her. And this time he will kill you. When he hired my brother and me he was quite honest about you and what you had done. He did not kill you then because he wanted to be able to say with complete truth to your family that he had not slain you even though it was his right to do so. He identified the body of that poor beggar woman you killed out on the moor and exchanged clothing with as your body. He let her lay there for months in the open so that she would be unrecognizable but for the clothing she wore, in order to give truth to the lie that you were dead, mistress. He protected you and kept your father's family from further embarrassment, thereby preventing a feud."

"I would have liked a feud between the Ramsays and the Scotts," Robena said. "Perhaps I shall cause one by letting my da know I am alive and how ill treated I have been by Colm." She giggled. "Imagine all those clansmen fighting and dying over me!"

"If you keep on like this, mistress," Fyfa warned, "the laird will indeed kill you, and he has every right to do so. And if he kills you then he can in truth wed his mistress. Do you want that? Isn't is better for you to have this hold over him that you now have?"

"But he doesn't know I have a hold over him," Robena said irritably.

"He will when you take his daughter," Fyfa said. "Even if he comes and takes her back he will know that you know his secrets. You are fortunate that he does not know yours. Do not bait him. You would be wise to leave the child with him and not be bothered. Then you can live your life as you will, and he will never be the wiser. Knowing what you know, there is always time to expose his bigamy. Wouldn't you gain more satisfaction exposing his bastards after his death? Then your child should inherit."

"I want my daughter now!" Robena said. "I do not want her calling another woman her mother. I am her mother. She belongs to me and not to this Englishwoman. He can have his whore, but I will have my bairn."

"You haven't seen her since she was two years old," Fyfa reminded her mistress. "And the laird told me you rejected her from birth."

"But she is mine," Robena responded, "and I want what is mine."

Fyfa shook her head. There was no reasoning with her mistress when she got into a mood like this. Robena Ramsay was a woman who always needed something to do and now, bereft of her recent lover, she was looking about for that something. She will bring trouble down on us all, Fyfa thought unhappily, but there was nothing she could do. She was a servant. A favored servant to be sure, but a servant nonetheless. "Sit down at the table," she said. "You need to eat." And when she had finished cooking and serving Robena, Fyfa stepped outside of her kitchen to work in her little garden.

The day was fair and the air still held a hint of warmth. The trees and the hills were now bright with color. Fyfa watched with trepidation as her brother Rafe set off on Beinn's horse towards Dunglais. She had a very dark premonition about what was to come, but short of going to the laird herself there was nothing to be done. She couldn't risk losing their place. While Fyfa knew that she could always fend for herself, there was her poor lack-witted brother to consider. She saw how people treated folk like Rafe. Their own elder half brother had been cruel to him. Fyfa sighed. What was going to happen was going to happen.

At Dunglais the beautiful autumn weather and the knowledge that the church had lifted the threat of Sir Udolf from the laird and his wife brought about a happy change. Alix could no longer ride, but now that she was free to move outside of the keep's walls she would sometimes take her son in the pony cart while Fiona rode by her side. On other days Alix would walk with Fiona on the moors. They treasured these days, as winter was certain to set in sooner than later. One early November afternoon Alix and her stepdaughter walked out of sight of the keep picking late flowers that had escaped a recent frost and gathering small plants that had medicinal value which they carefully put in a willow basket.

"I have to stop a moment," Alix said. She was breathing hard, and her belly was very big. "I shall be glad to have his child born. I so dislike being encumbered."

"Will you sit, Mam?" Fiona asked her.

Alix laughed wryly. "Oh, Fi, if I sit I shall not be able to get up again unless someone comes to winch me onto my feet."

Fiona giggled. "He's going to be a big lad, Mam," she said.

"You keep saying he," his stepmother noted.

" 'Tis a lad, Mam. I just know it. And James will have a playmate," Fiona said.

"You don't want a little sister?" Alix asked her.

"I am too big now to enjoy a little sister," Fiona said. "Remember, I am to be nine. But you must be sure my brother is not born on my birthday. I do not wish to share."

"I have already told him, but we shall see if he is an obedient lad," Alix replied, smiling at Fiona. How she loved her, Alix thought. Fiona was starting to look less like a young child and more like young girl. And with order and peace in her life now, Fiona was less and less prone to mood swings. She was learning self-control. "I think I have walked far enough today," Alix decided.

"I told you you should have taken the cart," Fiona responded. "Your burden is great now, and the bairn due to be born in another few weeks."

"You sound like Fenella," Alix teased the girl.

They turned together to walk back, Alix moving slowly, Fiona carrying the basket with their treasures. And then behind them they heard hoofbeats. A rider came up beside them and blocked their path. Alix moved to protect her stepdaughter. Then she realized that the horse's rider was a woman.

"Is this girl Fiona Scott?" the woman asked in a hard voice.

"Who wishes to know?" Alix said quietly. She was less frightened now that she saw the horse's rider was a woman.

"Who are you?" the woman now demanded.

"I am the Laird of Dunglais's wife," Alix said.

"His whore, you mean," the woman declared. "Is this the laird's daughter?"

Fiona stepped forward. "Do not dare speak to my mam like that!" she cried.

The woman laughed scornfully. "Your mam?" she said derisively. "She is not your mother. I am your mother, you little brat!"

"The mother who birthed me is dead," Fiona said heatedly.

"I am not dead, brat! Your father imprisoned me in a cottage out on the moor with two servants when I refused to give him another child. 'Tis true you were a disappointment to us both, but there it was. When I wanted to go back to court your father refused to allow it unless I gave him a son. I tried to run away from him, and when he caught me he put me in that cottage." She moved her horse between Alix and Fiona. Robena looked down at Alix. "Did you give him a son, whore? And I see your belly is big again. But know that you are not his wife. I am! Your bastards will inherit nothing from their father." She leaned down from her saddle, and gripping Fiona by her long black hair, so much like her own, she yanked her roughly up and over her saddle. "Tell my husband that I have taken my daughter. No whore will raise her or be called her man whist I live." Then, turning her horse about, she rode off with the girl, who had begun to scream and kick in an attempt to escape her captor.

Alix had teetered dangerously when Robena had drawn her mount around, for the creature's nose just brushed her. She struggled to remain on her feet, and when she had finally regained a firm footing she stood stock-still in shock for a moment or two. That the woman who had just stolen Fiona was who she said she was Alex had not even the slightest doubt. While Fiona did favor her handsome father, she also had some of her mother in her, and Alix had recognized it. Not just the silky black hair, but the bright blue eyes and the slight slant of those eyes. Robena Ramsay lived, and Alix Givet was indeed the laird's whore and her sons his bastards.

How could he have done this to her? Alix asked herself as she attempted to run back toward the keep. Did he really love her? Or was he just so desperate for sons that he did what he felt he had to do? Either way it didn't matter. She was shamed, and her children were stained with the mark of bastardy. She would never forgive him. But for now, alerting her hus-the laird-that Robena had kidnapped Fiona was more important than her outrage and her sense of betrayal. Her breath coming in short pants she gained the lowered drawbridge and stumbled across it, crying loudly, "Fetch the laird! Saddle his horse! To horse, men of Dunglais! To horse!"

Beinn came running, and Alix collapsed against him. "My lady, my lady! What is the matter?" He looked past her. "Where is Mistress Fiona?"

"The laird's wife has her," Alix gasped.

Beinn stiffened. "My lady, you are the laird's wife," he said.

Alix looked up into his big, honest face. "Nay, I am his whore, and the wife who he married ten years ago has come out of whatever private hell she inhabits and stolen Fiona away. Get my-his daughter-back!"

Malcolm Scott ran from the house. "What has happened?" he asked her.

Alix looked up at him with angry eyes. She wanted to slay him where he stood, but now was not the time to give way to her fury. Fiona must be rescued from that horrible woman and brought home to Dunglais. "Your wife accosted us on the moor and took Fiona away," she told him.

He didn't bother to deny or explain. Ignoring her, he said to Beinn, "The bitch can't have gotten far on foot."

"She was a-horse," Alix said stonily. Then she turned on her heel and left them.

Beinn shrugged fatalistically. It was obviously his horse.

"We'll go alone," Malcolm Scott said. "We can't have this getting out of hand, or the Ramsays will be at my door spoiling for a fight. Damn!"

A stable boy ran up with the laird's big stallion and Beinn's new large gelding. The two men mounted. When they approached the gate, the laird gave instructions that the drawbridge should be drawn up after them and the gates closed until he and Be inn returned.

"Robbers have stolen Mistress Fiona," he explained. "Beinn and I will go after them and fetch my daughter home again, but the keep must be secured." Then he and his captain rode across the oak drawbridge and out onto the moor. "She'll be heading for her cottage in all likelihood," Malcolm Scott said.

Beinn nodded in agreement.

"She knows the penalty of exposing herself. I warned her that if she could not settle herself peaceably I would intern her in the dungeon of the old tower by Dunglais Water. I probably should have done it in the first place, but I could not bear to think of anyone living in that dark and damp pile of rock," the laird said.

"You should have strangled her when you caught her with Black Ian," Beinn said bluntly. "She had already been tainted by him, and I'm not so certain the Ramsays didn't cheat you when they gave you their daughter to wife. I never knew such a high-strung lass as the lady Robena. But until now she has been content to abide in her confinement."

"I couldn't kill her, Beinn. Even when I saw what she had done to that poor creature she killed in order to hide her tracks. She was a woman, and she had given me my daughter. But now I will kill her when I catch her. I have no other choice. I did not lie to the Ramsays seven years ago. Thank God they will never know of this incident."

"What will you do with Fyfa and her half-wit of a brother?" Beinn wanted to know. "You have been candid with her all along. But if you kill the lady she will know."

"They will have a choice of either remaining in the cottage, or leaving. If they leave, I will see they have the means to begin anew wherever they go," the laird said. "I will not kill Robena in their sight, so they will never know what has happened to her, and I suspect that will suit Fyfa well. She is a practical woman."

"And pretty too," Beinn said with a small smile.

The laird laughed. " 'Tis not often you speak of a woman, old friend."

"She's a good woman, my lord. When her father's heir sent them away, she remained with Rafe to look after him, for he could not fend for himself. She might have found employment alone, but who would have cared for him? I admire her."

The laird chuckled. "You're a good man yourself, Beinn," he said.

Am I? Beinn wondered, remembering his hours as Robena Ramsay's captive. At the last, when he had had her on her back, he had found a certain enjoyment in fucking the vicious little bitch. He would not be sorry to see her dead.

The two men galloped their horses across the moor in the direction of Robena's cottage. Finally they saw a horse ahead of them and they spurred the mounts to catch up.

She heard them coming. She did not bother to even turn. The young girl across her saddle had ceased to struggle and was half-conscious. But her horse began to slow its gait, limping, and she cursed volubly, finally drawing to a stop. There was no help for it. She couldn't have the damned animal collapsing beneath her.

Fiona whimpered. "Da! Mam!" she sobbed.

"Shut your mouth, you little brat. I'm your mother, and if I have to beat you to death to understand that, I will!" She dug her fingers into the girl's scalp and yanked cruelly on the dark hair so like her own.

Fiona cried out softly.

The laird and his captain had finally reached her. Malcolm Scott looked at the woman who had once been his wife. She was still beautiful, but there was something dissolute about the shape of her mouth he had never before noticed, and her beautiful bright blue eyes were hard and merciless. "You will return my daughter to me, Robena," Malcolm Scott said in a quiet but firm voice.

"Our daughter, Colm," she answered him.

"You rejected her at birth, and when you deserted her at two you relinquished your right to call her yours," he replied. "Fiona is my daughter."

"She calls your whore Mam. Do you think I will let her be raised by that whey-faced English bitch, Colm? Do you think I will let her call that woman Mother?"

"Alix has been more of a mother to Fiona than you ever were," the laird told her, "and she has spent more time with her than you ever did. Beinn, get Fiona."

Robena backed her horse away. "Stay where you are!" she cried.

"I spared your life seven years ago, Robena," the laird said. "I will not spare you again. I warned you then if you defied me I would put you in the tower dungeon."

"You will never put me there, Colm, and you shall not have Fiona back!" Robena Ramsay screamed at him. And then, pulling her horse about, she kicked the injured beast, who leaped forward, startled, and disappeared from sight with its shrieking rider and Fiona.

"What the hell…" the laird cried out.

"Wait, my lord, wait!" Beinn shouted, and jumping from his own horse he walked carefully forward. "Dear God," he said, for the moorland disappeared suddenly and unexpectedly at the point where they were standing, giving way to a steep drop down into a fast running water that tumbled over its rocky streambed. "We must go on foot, my lord. Hurry! Hurry!" And he immediately began the descent downward.

Malcolm Scott swiftly joined him, and together the two men made the climb down to where Robena Ramsay's horse lay in a crumbled heap, its rider and passengers beneath it. Quickly the two men struggled to move the dead animal enough so they might get to the child. The angle of Robena's neck indicated that she had been killed in the fall. They both crossed themselves at the realization. A little groan from Fiona increased their sense of urgency as they reached her. Carefully Beinn extricated the girl from the tangle, and they climbed the steep incline once again. Gaining the top, the laird mounted his horse and reached out for his child. Cradled in his arms she opened her eyes, smiled, and said, "Da!" Then her eyes closed again. Her breathing was labored. Her little face pale.

Malcolm Scott sent his captain on ahead to alert the keep and see it was opened to him. Then he slowly and carefully made his way back to Dunglais, his injured daughter in his arms. As he clopped across the lowered drawbridge into the keep's courtyard he saw Alix and Fenella waiting. Beinn took Fiona from his master, and following instructions from the women, brought the child into the dwelling. When the laird finally reached the hall it was empty. "Where is my daughter?" he asked a pale-faced Iver.

"They have taken the little mistress to her bedchamber, my lord." Tears sprang into the steward's eyes. "She is grievously injured, I fear. I have sent for the priest."

Malcolm Scott felt as if an icy hand had clutched his heart. He ran up the staircase to the upper hall and into Fiona's room. His daughter, white as snow, lay upon her bed. Alix sat on one side of her, holding her small hand. Fenella on the other. Her gown was wet and streaked with dirt. Her small face was dirty from her tears. "Why is she not clean and dry?" he demanded in a fierce voice.

Alix looked up at him but said nothing.

"We dare not move her, my lord. It is too painful for her," Fenella said. What she did not say was apparent.

Fiona Scott was dying. Her little body had been crushed by the weight of Robena and Robena's horse. Her bones were fractured and broken. Her innards were shattered beyond any repair that might be done had they had a physician to aid them. But at the sound of her father's voice she opened her eyes and whispered, "Da!"

He was at her side in a moment, taking the little hand that Fenella relinquished. "I am here, my sweet bairn," he told her, fighting to hold back his own tears. "I am so sorry, Fi. I am so sorry I could not protect you better."

"Love… each other," Fiona whispered to him. "Love… my… mam. I… love her."

"I love Alix, my bairn," he told Fiona. "I love your mam."

Fiona turned her head slowly, painfully so she might look at Alix. "Tell… my… brothers… that I… loved… them," and then she died with a small shudder.

He looked across at Alix. "I do love you," he told her.

Alix arose from the dead child's side. "I will never forgive you for what you have done to all of our bairns," she told him. Then she walked slowly from the death chamber.

Malcolm Scott put his head down and began to cry. Shocked to see her master so distraught, Fenella crept from the room. Her own heart was filled with sorrow, but her head was clearer than either her master or her mistress. Going to the hall, she found Iver waiting. "The little mistress is dead," she said to him even as Father Donald ran into the hall and heard her tragic words.

The priest crossed himself. "Where is she?" he said.

"I'll take you," Fenella said, and led Father Donald upstairs to the bedchamber where the young girl lay. As she could hear the laird still sobbing over his daughter, Fenella pointed to the door and retreated.

Father Donald entered the room. Without a word he took out his holy oil and anointed the Fiona with it. Then he knelt by her bedside and prayed. When he had finished he arose and went to the still-weeping laird. "Come, my lord, we need to speak," he said. "Fiona will be taken care of by the women." He led the laird from his daughter's chamber downstairs and into Malcolm Scott's own privy chamber. He seated his master, and pouring them both a dram cup of the laird's own smoky peat whiskey, he sat opposite him. "Now, my lord, tell me what has happened."

"I am responsible for my own daughter's death," the laird said bleakly. "I should have killed Robena when I first found her with my half brother."

"But we settled this matter with Robena Ramsay years ago," Father Donald said. "Did you not send her away? Why was she still on your lands?"

"I sent her from the keep," Malcolm Scott replied. "If I had sent her back to her family it would have caused all manner of difficulty. Her behavior shamed them, and they would not have accepted her back. It would have made ill will between our clans. Are there not enough feuds in the borders that I would start another over a woman like that? And where would she have gone? I had not the heart despite all she did, despite her character, to send her into the world. She would have ended up God knows where."

Father Donald sighed, shaking his head. "Your heart is too good, my lord. So you isolated her in a cottage with two servants and only Beinn went with supplies several times a year. Did he know she was there?"

"Aye. I had to tell him, but he kept my secret."

"Did he know that St. Andrew's had given you a bill of divorcement dissolving your marriage to Robena Ramsay?" the priest queried the laird.

"Aye, that too. He knew my marriage to Alix was true and not bigamous," Malcolm Scott responded.

"Yet I am puzzled why Robena chose this moment to attempt to take Fiona from you," Father Donald said.

"She has lived out on the moor peaceably for seven years. Why did she suddenly want the daughter she had always rejected? I am totally confused by it," the laird admitted. "I know she had learned of Alix, and Robena was always a jealous woman."

"You will have to go and speak with Fyfa, for she may be able to shed light on this matter. What will you do with her and Rafe now?"

"They may have a lifetime tenancy in the cottage," Malcolm Scott told the priest. "They did their duty and cared for her. She was not an easy woman. But to kill Fiona…" He struggled to keep the tears pricking at his eyelids from falling. Men did not weep like women, but Blessed Mother! This was his child. He had lost his daughter and would never again see her laughing face, hear her giggle, receive her sweet kiss on his cheek.

"Where is Robena's body?" the priest asked. He felt like weeping too.

"Where she died," the laird replied stonily. "Let her rot where she fell!"

"Beinn and I will bury her," Father Donald said. "No one else should be involved. And tomorrow you will go to the cottage and speak with Fyfa and Rafe. It is possible they will know what happened to bring this mood upon her. Now go to your wife and comfort her, for Fiona was as much a daughter to her as she was to you. It must have been quite a shock to her to meet up with Robena."

"More than you can know, Good Father. There never seemed to be a reason to tell Alix the whole truth." He flushed guiltily. "And I never told Robena about the bill of divorcement. She would not have accepted it. So she believed herself still my wife. I can but imagine what Robena said to Alix. Now she believes I have made a bigamous marriage with her, and that her children are stained with the shame of bastardy."

"Jesu! Mother Mary and Joseph!" Father Donald swore, unable to contain himself. "I cannot believe you were so imprudent as to not tell Robena that she was no longer your wife! Aye, I can well imagine what she said to Alix. You are a fool, Malcolm Scott," the priest scolded. "Go and find your wife at once so her mind may be put to rest! And when this matter is finally all over and done with you will come to me for a penance. Aye, I must think upon what God would want you to suffer in order to expunge your cruel thoughtlessness to that sweet faithful young woman who is your wife. Go now!"

Malcolm Scott arose, leaving his little privy chamber to seek out Alix. He found her in the hall where the body of his daughter had now been brought. His wife and Fenella were bathing the small corpse. Unable to help himself, he stood watching them, tears pouring down his face. And then he saw that they too wept as they cleanse and dressed Fiona in her finest gown. It was a new one of scarlet velvet that Alix had made to give to the girl on her ninth birthday, which she would now never see. He watched as the two women plaited Fiona's long black hair, weaving red ribbons into the braids as they worked. When they had finished, they made to lift the girl's body into a plain wood coffin Beinn had carried into the hall.

The laird stepped forward then, taking his daughter's broken body and gently setting it into the plain wooden box. Then he lifted it up and placed it on the high board. Wordlessly Fenella brought four brass candlesticks to set on either side of the coffin and at each end of it. Alix lay the late flowers they had been gathering earlier around the simple box. She looked upon the child she had come to love as her own and gently caressed her face.

"Lambkin," he said softly to her.

Alix turned to look at him, and seeing his face so filled with sorrow, her own anger suddenly left her. She knew how much Colm loved his daughter, and when he held out his arms to her she went into them without hesitation. He had lied to her and bastardized their children, but they had both loved Fiona. It was time for mourning and not for recriminations.

"I have not betrayed you, lambkin, nor shamed our son, or the bairn now in your belly preparing to be born," Malcolm Scott told his wife. "Come and sit by the fire with me, and I will explain it all to you." Taking her by the hand, he led her to the settle and they sat together. "After Robena's betrayal of me I wanted to kill her, but I could not. I put her from the keep into an isolated cottage out on the moor. And then Father Donald applied to the bishop of St. Andrew's to obtain a bill of divorcement for me. And the late king, my friend, spoke up in my behalf. The divorce was granted. I did not tell Robena because I did not ever want to see her again. It took me two years before I could excise from my mind the picture of her and my brother together in each other's arms. I saw she was properly cared for and unable to leave her confinement. The horse she rode today she stole. I did not wed you under false pretenses, Alix. I was free to wed you. Did you truly believe that I could be so dishonorable, lambkin? You are my beloved wife, and our son is no bastard, nor will any of the bairns you give me be bastards."

"I forgive you, Colm," Alix sniffled softly.

"You forgive me?" Her words astonished him. "For what am I being forgiven?"

"When you did not tell me all of this before we wed, you committed a sin of omission, my lord," she told him. "Did you think me so silly a creature that I could not bear to hear the truth from you?" When she looked up at him he saw her dark lashes, so in contrast with her honey-blond hair, had clumped with her weeping.

"I did not think it was necessary to burden you with the whole sordid tale," he said feebly. "I never thought you would meet up with Robena Ramsay. I saw her sequestered and cut off from decent folk. This should not have happened."

"But it did happen," Alix said. "Now, is there anything else you have neglected to tell me about yourself and your life, my lord? Are there any other surprises you have for me that I must face? I am but a frail female after all."

"You are the strongest woman I have ever known or am likely to know," he told her. "Do you truly forgive me, lambkin, for my sin of omission?" And he smiled down into her face, brushing her lips gently with his own.

"I do, Colm. I do!" Alix said to him, wrapping her arms about him and kissing him back. "You are my love and my life." And then she laughed softly as the child in her womb stirred strongly. Alix put her hand upon her belly. "He is almost ready to be born," she said to her husband.

"He? Until now you have not been certain," the laird replied.

"Fiona said it was another son for you. I believe she somehow knew," Alix said, kissing him again.

And Fiona's intuition indeed proved correct when her second brother, Andrew Donald, was born on the last day of November. A gentleman from the beginning, he had not taken his sister's birthday for his own.

And when the spring came the Laird of Dunglais, his wife, and sons visited the little churchyard in Dunglais village where Fiona was buried and discovered that flowers springing from the warm earth had covered the girl's grave yet nowhere else in the little church graveyard did flowers bloom.

"Our daughter is safe and well," Malcolm Scott declared, his voice catching.

"She will always be with us, Colm. Her last wish for us was that we live and love happily in her memory," Alix said as James clung to her skirt and Andrew babbled in her arms contentedly.

"We shall, lambkin," the Laird of Dunglais promised his wife. "We shall!"

And two years later on the first day of May, Alix bore her husband a daughter, whom they named Fiona after the child they had lost. And eventually girlish laughter was once again heard in the keep at Dunglais as Scotland enjoyed peace in the borders for a brief time.