Blythe Gifford - Captive of the Border Lord

She felt herself rise from the stool and stand on her own two feet. No. She would not let him do this.

‘It will be me, then,’ she said. ‘I will stand surety for the Brunsons.’

What was the woman doing? Was she daft?

Carwell glared at Bessie Brunson, then turned to her brothers. Surely they would not allow this madness.

Or was it?

Shielding his eyes, hiding his thoughts, he assessed the options. It was not what the King expected, but the King had an eye for the ladies. An apology from a beautiful Brunson might soften his heart while a belligerent argument from either of her uncooperative brothers could very well make things worse.

But to put a woman at risk, even one as stubborn as Bessie Brunson … no.

‘Impossible,’ he said, as if it were his decision.

Bessie ignored him, facing her brother. ‘I can go to the King. I can explain—’

‘Explain?’ Rob raised his hands to heaven. ‘Even if you leave Willie Storwick to God, we invaded neutral territory and torched a tower. That’s the right of it.’

‘Aye.’ Carwell sighed. He knew. He had helped them do it. ‘The King wants your oath and a promise of good behaviour,’ he continued, finally. ‘Not an explanation.’

‘What the King wants,’ said John, ‘is retribution.’ His grim expression reflected Rob’s. John had grown up beside the King and knew him better than any of them. ‘He’ll want you in chains.’

Carwell forced back a shudder. ‘Or worse.’ The King had been ruled by others since he was a babe. He had years of wrongs to right.

Her cheeks lost colour and he braced to catch her, should she faint. Realising the risk, she would no longer want to go.

She didn’t even flinch. ‘So it shall be.’

‘You don’t know what you are saying.’ Life here was hard, but the threats were clear. Court was full of hidden dangers, deceptive as the quicksands he had learned to avoid in childhood. The smooth sands might look safe, but a single misstep would suck you into danger.

And death.

Bessie Brunson couldn’t even navigate a dance without stumbling.

‘Leave us,’ Rob said, standing. ‘This is a decision for family.’

Relieved, he nodded. He was not here to bargain with Bessie Brunson. Let her brothers deal with her.

He turned for the door, whispering in her ear as he left the room, ‘They will not allow you to go.’

She smiled. ‘They won’t be able to stop me.’

Bessie refused to watch him leave the room. There would be a price to pay for putting herself at his mercy, though she did not know yet what it would be.

The moment he left the room, the objections all came at once.

‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘It’s not your place.’

‘You mustn’t.’ Cate grabbed her arm. ‘I won’t let you.’

Her plea was the hardest to resist, for the secrets they shared were not for a king to know. But Cate, who had been like a sister, was a wife now. And Bessie was sleeping alone in an empty room.

She squeezed Cate’s fingers. ‘There is no one else,’ she said, calmly. ‘Johnnie’s defied him already. The King will clap him in irons without even listening.’ She shook her head. ‘And, Rob, the only way you know how to talk is with a sword. But if I go …’

What was that tickle in her stomach? Fear or excitement?

‘I’m a woman. I can’t give the family’s oath, so the King can’t force us into that. But perhaps I can make him listen long enough for me to explain.’

‘Explain how Willie Storwick died?’ John took his wife’s hand.

Bessie shrugged. ‘I need tell no lies. None of us killed him. No one need know more.’

Especially Laird Thomas Carwell.

‘I wish I had,’ Cate muttered.

‘But maybe I can make the King understand …’ What would she have him know? How the wind whined at the top of the hills? The purple of the thistle in the late-day sun? How days were spent with an eye ever looking south, waiting for raiders to sweep into the valley?

How precious this home, this life, these people were?

‘We do what we must to protect the family,’ Rob growled. ‘That’s all any man needs to understand.’

‘Carwell doesn’t,’ she said.

‘The King,’ said Johnnie, ‘cares nothing about our family. He cares only that what he wanted to happen did not .’

What he had wanted was for Johnnie to enforce the King’s will on the Brunsons. Instead, Johnnie had come home to himself. To know that family was first. Last. All.

‘If I do not go,’ she said, ‘if I do not try to sway him, he will come after all of us.’

‘He’ll come anyway,’ Johnnie said, with grim certainty. ‘One day.’

‘That may be, but my going would give you the winter.’ Would give them time .

Johnnie and Cate exchanged swift smiles. Rob ran his thumb over the hilt of his dirk.

She had always been closest to John and now he looked at her, puzzled. ‘I once suggested you go to court, didn’t I?’

‘Aye.’ And she had refused, knowing she would be mocked for her plain dress and her country ways. Things too selfish to concern her now.

He took her hands. ‘So your heart is set on this?’ John said. ‘On meeting the King?’

‘The King?’ She let her fingers rest in his. ‘Do you think I make this journey so I can skip to a minstrel’s tune?’ This trip was her duty. Her father would be ashamed to think she had spared a moment’s thought for clothes or music. Or herself.

Johnnie shook his head. ‘I don’t trust him around you.’

She bridled. ‘I’m not one to be blinded by a king.’

‘You needn’t worry about Bessie,’ Cate added, loyally.

John smiled at his wife. ‘It’s not Bessie or the King that I don’t trust. It’s Carwell.’

They shared the silence of agreement. There, of course, was the problem. None of them did.

‘But the King does.’ Don’t insult me . The sharpest words he had said. She shrugged off the memory. Her brothers might have ridden side by side with him, but she refused to trust the man, with his half-truths and his changeable eyes. ‘That’s what matters now. Besides, with time enough by his side, I can find a way to prove he betrayed us.’

Scarred Willie had escaped twice when they had allied with Carwell. Only when the Brunsons tracked him down alone did the man end up dead.

John sighed. ‘He swore he didn’t.’

Rob snorted. ‘And you believe him?’

‘You don’t kill a man without proof.’

‘You don’t send your sister to court with him either.’

She sighed. ‘Argue amongst yourselves,’ she said, reaching for the door. ‘I’ll be packing.’

And when she entered the courtyard, the first thing she saw was Thomas Carwell.

Carwell stepped smoothly away from the door when he saw the flash of her hair, bright as a red-breasted bird flying over the valley.

He raised his eyebrows, a silent question. ‘And?’

She cocked her head without smiling. ‘As close as you are standing to the door, did you not hear?’

He had tried to listen, dammit, but the walls were thick. ‘I heard only something of packing.’

Behind her, the door opened and Rob stepped out. ‘Bessie, come back here! I’ll not let you leave with that unreliable—’

He saw Carwell and snapped his lips shut.

‘You can say it.’

‘Turncoat.’

A man who hid his badge to disguise his loyalties .

He clamped his jaw against a harsh reply. The man didn’t trust him. So be it.

John’s grim face appeared over Rob’s shoulder. He spared Carwell barely a glance. ‘You know nothing of the court, Bessie. Stirling’s a nest of vipers. You’ll be eaten alive.’