Calculating carefully, he moved into the figure, and when the dance stopped several minutes later, Christina Anders found herself opposite Patrick Leslie. Clamping an arm about her waist, he looked down, and asked, "Wine, madame?"

She nodded, and he brought it.

"Tonight?" he asked bluntly.

Caught unawares, she nodded mutely.

"What time?"

"Eleven," she said softly.

Smiling, he bowed and walked away.

Christina sat sipping her wine. It had been so easy. She was sorry that she had no rooms of her own in which to entertain him. The queen's maids of honor slept dormitory-fashion near their mistress. Once the queen had been put to bed she would be free to go to him. Her heart beat faster. His manner told her that he would be a masterful lover.

Margaret Olson approached her. "The Scots stallion grows impatient to mount his mare," she said softly. "It's time to put the queen to bed."

Christina laughed. "You are such a bitch, Mag! All right, but let's hurry! I have a rendezvous with Lord Leslie tonight" She smiled proudly.

"He's a big, handsome thing," said Margaret. "I cannot decide who to sleep with. Both Lord Home and Lord Grey have asked me."

"Try one this week, and the other next. Soon they'll all be going back to Scotland, and we'll be left to return home."

"I won't," said Margaret Olson. "I am going with the queen. She asked me a few minutes ago. and she is going to ask you too. Be nice to your lover if you want to keep him when we go to Scotland."

"He has a wife there, Margaret."

"I know. I have heard the men speak of her. They say she is beautiful and headstrong. They call her the Virtuous Countess. That information should be of some help to you, my dear."

Giggling, the two maids of honor hurried to their mistress's side. With a flurry of flying skirts, Queen Anna and her ladies fled the hall, pursued by a group of shouting young men. Gaining the safety of the royal apartments, they collapsed, laughing madly. Countess Olafson, who was, at twenty-four, the oldest of the queen's ladies, tried to bring about some order.

"Ladies! Ladies! His majesty will soon be here, and there is much to do. Karen, you keep watch outside the door, and tell us when the king is coming. Inge and Olga, see to the bed. Margaret and Christina, you two help me undress her majesty."

They hurried to prepare the room and the young queen for her eager bridegroom. The scented sheets were warmed, the queen undressed and wrapped in a lovely white silk nightgown embroidered in silver and gold thread. While Margaret and Christina put the queen's wedding gown away, Countess Olafson sat the girl down and brushed her long yellow-blond hair.

Suddenly Mistress Karen burst into the room. "They're coming, your majesty! The king and his men are coming!"

The queen was hurried into the bed. She sat, plump pillows at her back, her blond hair unbound, looking flushed and a bit afraid. The door flew open and the king was half-shoved, half-carried into the room by the boisterous Scots and Danish noblemen.


“Yer majesty, his majesty," said drunk Lord Grey.

“Look, gentlemen," said James Stewart triumphantly, "my sweet Annie awaits me in our bed as a good wife should! Does this not portend a happy marriage for us?"

The queen's ladies giggled, and the king's gentlemen gently hustled him behind a screen, where they undressed him and put a silk nightshirt on him. They helped him into the bed, and he sat next to his young queen while a servant passed wine to the assembled, and health was drunk to their majesties from silver goblets. At last, with much good-natured joking and laughing, the courtiers left James and Anna to their pleasure.

In the silence that followed, the king turned to his wife and said, "Now, madame, I should like that kiss I asked ye for three and a half weeks ago."

Shyly Anna lifted her chaste lips to her husband. Touching them with his own. he gradually increased the pressure, forcing her back onto the pillows. He opened her nightgown and gazed with pleasure at the fresh, virgin body that belonged to him alone. She murmured a faint protest as he kissed and caressed her. As his desire mounted, Anna lay quietly acquiescent, her blue eyes closed.

Actually she liked what James was doing to her, and she liked the delicious tingly feelings that were racing up and down her spine and fluttering inside her. She wondered if there was something she could do that would make James feel as good as she felt. She would ask him later on when she knew him better.

Sitting her up, he pulled her nightgown over head and tossed it on the floor. He stood and yanked his own -nightshirt off. Anna's eyes widened in shock. Between her husband's legs was a mass of reddish fur, and sticking out from the middle of that fur a great live tiling that bobbed up and down, and pointed straight at her. Shrieking, she shrank back, covering her eyes with her hands.

James looked surprised. "I've nae stuck it in ye yet, Annie luv."

"Stick it in me?" she quavered. "Why?"

James looked faintly annoyed. "Did no one speak to ye about a wife's duties, Annie?"

"I was told I must submit to my lord in all things," she whispered.

He looked relieved. "That's right, luv. Ye must submit to me in all things. Now this." he said grasping his maleness, "is my manroot, and between yer legs is a sweet little hole where I shall put it. Ye'll like it, Annie, I promise. 'Twill feel so good." The king had never had a virgin, but his lust was hot, and he had no intention of allowing this foolish girl to deny him.

"Will it hurt me?" she asked him, for somewhere in the dim recesses of her mind she remembered her older sisters talking, and there was something she couldn't quite put her finger on now.

"Aye," he answered her matter-of-factly, "but only the first time, luvie."

"No," she said. "I don't like to hurt, and I don't want you to stick me with that ugly thing." She pointed at him and shuddered.

James was stymied. " 'Tis a husband's right!" he protested.

Her rosebud mouth pouted. "No," she repeated – firmly.

James Stewart's eyes grew crafty. "Very well, my sweet," he said, getting back into the bed. "We'll just kiss and cuddle a bit then."

"Yes, I like that," the little queen answered him happily.

James drew his wife into his arms. Kissing her deeply, he began to caress her expertly, until she was squirming with uncontrolled excitement. Before she realized what was happening, he mounted her and, guiding himself, pushed into her. Gasping, she struggled beneath him. Bucking her body so as to throw him off. she succeeded only in driving him further into her. Suddenly he drew back and plunged deep. Anna screamed in genuine pain, but James covered her mouth with his and kept up the rhythmic movement, ignoring the warm trickle that flowed down the insides of her thighs.

As the pain eased, Anna felt herself begin to enjoy what was happening to her. She was still angry with her husband for deceiving her. Then, suddenly, the body laboring over her stiffened, jerked several times, and collapsed. Anna felt strangely unhappy. In the silence that followed, the clock on the mantel struck eleven.

At the other end of the house, in the apartments of the Earl of Glenkirk, there were fires in both the anteroom and the bedroom. Patrick Leslie stood before the anteroom fireplace wondering if he had done the right thing in encouraging Mistress Anders. Guiltily, he realized that a good whore would have served his purposes. But when he heard the door open behind him and turned to see her, he was glad he had asked her.

"Come in, Mistress Anders."

She was wearing the same dress she had worn earlier. And she was even lovelier by firelight.

"Will ye join me in a goblet of wine, my dear? I hae a lovely white-delicate and sweet." His eyes caressed her warmly.

"Thank you, my lord," she said in a soft voice, and stood by his chair looking into the fire.

He poured the wine. Handing the goblet to her, he watched as she drained it. The earl sat down in his chair and, reaching up, pulled Christina into his lap and kissed her. "Dinna be shy wi me, little Cairi," he said.

"What is it you call me, my lord?" she asked him.

"Cairi. The Gaelic for Christina is Cairistiona. 'Cairi' simply means 'wee Christina,' and yer a wee bit of a thing."

She snuggled into his lap.

"How old are ye?" he asked her.

"Seventeen, my lord."

"Jesu, I am thirty-seven! I could be yer father."

"But you are not, Patrick," she said, pressing herself against him. Pulling his head down, she kissed him passionately. "I came to have you make love to me." Standing up, she slowly undid her dark velvet dress. Next came her snowy petticoats, silk underblouse, and beribboned busk. She stepped out of them wearing only dark silk stockings upon which were embroidered tiny gold butterflies.

She was unbelievably exciting. Smiling slowly, he stood up and followed her lead until he stood tall and naked above her.

She looked up at him and ordered, "Take off my stockings."

Kneeling, he slowly rolled them down, one at a time, and then slipped each one off its small, slim foot. The perfume of her body drove him nearly mad. She had anticipated this when, earlier, she had stroked musk on her freshly washed skin. Still kneeling, he pulled her down to the floor in front of the fireplace. Christina spread her legs wide and held out her arms to receive him.

She was warm, and sweet, and experienced, and he was immensely pleased. The woman beneath him moved smoothly, and he allowed her release twice before taking his own. He rolled off her, and they lay relaxed before the fire.

"You think I am overbold," she said quietly in her low, husky voice, "but I wanted you, Patrick Leslie. I have never been any man's mistress, but I want to be yours."

"Why me?" He was flattered, but he was also no fool.

"Because I want you, and because for once in my life I should like to have a normal relationship with a man. My first husband was an old man who could not perform in a normal manner. My second husband, having deflowered me, was no longer interested. My third is a child, and I am free to do as I choose. I choose to become your mistress."

"Only while I am here," said the earl. "When I return home, my dear, ye'll cease to exist for me. I may sleep wi ye now, but make no mistake, little Cairi, I love my wife."

"I agree to those terms, Patrick. And now, as it is damnably cold on this floor, may we please get into bed?"

He stood and, scooping her up, walked into the bedroom and put her into the bed. "I feared a long, cold winter, Cairi. Now, though it will still be long, it will nae be cold," he said. He climbed into bed with her.

Chapter 18

FOR the first time in her married life Catriona Leslie was really on her own. She closed her Edinburgh house, telling Mrs. Kerr that she would return when the court reconvened. To the horror of Glenkirk's captain-at-arms, she planned on riding home immediately, without a proper escort.

"Well all be murdered on the road, sure as hell,” grumbled Conall More-Leslie.

"Five gold pieces we make it safely," she laughed.

"Jesu, madame, the earl will skin me if anything happens to ye!"

"Leave her be!" snapped his sister, Ellen. "She needs to go home, for whether or not she realizes it she gains strength from Glenkirk. There is little likelihood of the earl returning before spring, and she will be less lonely among her bairns."

They did not, however, travel poorly escorted. Learning of her plans, Francis Stewart-Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, offered to escort her himself. She could hardly turn down James Stewart's favorite cousin, and regent of Scotland.

Francis Stewart-Hepburn was a tall, handsome man with dark auburn hair, an elegantly barbered short beard, and piercing blue eyes. He was an educated man, unfortunately born in advance of his proper time. His amazing fund of knowledge and his many scientific experiments terrified the superstitious-educated and uneducated alike. Though he alternated between new and old kirk, he was not a particularly religious man. Too, sad women trying to bring excitement into their lives by playing at witchcraft, had sometimes named Lord Bothwell as their leader. Francis Hepburn was therefore whispered to be a warlock. He was not, but rumors often persist.

Cat knew the rumor to be nonsense, but it amused Francis Hepburn's macabre sense of humor not to deny it. Besides, it terrified his cousin James, who alternated between love and hate for Francis. For some reason the king brought out the devil in Bothwell. Although Francis was fond of his cousin, as one might be fond of a clumsy hunting dog, there were times when he simply could not resist playing on the king's absurd fears.