Bertrice Small - Until You

In the morning he bid them all farewell. Bessie, who had become the earl’s special pet, cried to see him go. Dermid would accompany his master, but he would return in time for the birth of his first child in December. Edmund and Maybel were genuinely sorry to see Patrick depart. Rosamund put on a brave face, but Annie howled and cried until Maybel threatened to smack her.

“He’ll be back, you foolish lass,” she told the girl. “Were you not wed by a bishop in a cathedral? And is it not his child you carry?”

“Be brave, lass,” Dermid said. “I have to go home and tell my ma, now, don’t I?”

The two men mounted their horses, and Rosamund, standing by the earl’s stirrup, looked up with a tearstained face and whispered, “Remember I love you, Patrick.”

He leaned down, lifted her up enough to kiss her lips, and replied, “And remember that I love you, Rosamund Bolton.” Then he set her down again.

The others dispersed, returning to their duties, but Rosamund remained, watching until nothing of Patrick Leslie, Earl of Glenkirk, was visible but a faint cloud of golden dust. Returning to her bedchamber, she flung herself on the bed they had shared and wept wildly. The scent of him was yet on the pillows. I cannot bear it, she thought desperately. I cannot live without him for six months. Oh, God! Why did I not have Mata marry us now? Why did I not at least go with him? But she knew the answers to her questions even as she silently voiced them. The earl’s son must approve a match between his long-widowed father and the lady of Friarsgate. Nor could she leave her girls again. Since their father’s tragic death she had spent too much time away from them. Rosamund wished her cousin Tom were here now to comfort her. Then she sighed, and rising from her bed, she washed the tears from her face. She had duties to complete, and if she did not return to the hall soon, her daughters would be frightened. Taking a deep breath, the lady of Friarsgate walked from her bedchamber and down the staircase to where they all awaited her anxiously.

Apeddler, making his way back into England, stopped at Friarsgate in late October. He had spent the previous night at Claven’s Carn. The lady of the house, he informed those assembled in Rosamund’s hall, had a fine new son born earlier in the month. The lord was very pleased and was eager to show his heir to all who entered Claven’s Carn.

“He got her with child quick enough,” Rosamund said dryly. “She must have conceived on her wedding night, or shortly thereafter.”

“It might have been your laddie,” Maybel murmured softly.

Rosamund shot her a hard look. “I had no desire to wed with the lord of Claven’s Carn, and well you know it. Patrick and I will marry next year if his son does not disapprove. It is what I want. It is what he wants.”

“And if his son should not be content to see his father remarried, what then?” Maybel demanded, ever protective of Rosamund.

“Then we will continue on as we have,” came the answer. “Adam Leslie may want to meet me before he gives his father a blessing on this match. If he does, I should certainly understand.”

Maybel sighed. “Another old husband! I do not know why you would prefer Lord Leslie to Logan Hepburn.”

Rosamund laughed. “I cannot explain it to you, dearest. I simply did not love Logan, but from the moment our eyes met, I knew Patrick Leslie was my destiny.”

“A bitter destiny, I’m thinking,” Maybel muttered.

“But it is mine to choose,” Rosamund replied quietly. “No longer will I be told what I must do and whom I must wed. Those days are over.”

“I never thought to hear you speak like this,” Maybel responded. “That you would throw away your responsibilities astounds me.”

“I am not eschewing my obligations, Maybel. I will always fulfill my duties where Friarsgate and my family are concerned. But why must I be unhappy by doing so?”

Maybel sighed. “I do want you happy, but I don’t understand why you could not be happy with the lord of Claven’s Carn.”

“Well, I couldn’t,” Rosamund said, her patience wearing thin. “And he is wed now to a good lass who has given him the desired son and heir.”

Maybel opened her mouth to speak again, but her husband leaned from his chair and put a warning hand on her shoulder. With a sigh of frustration, Maybel grew silent at last.

“Will Uncle Patrick return to us soon?” Philippa asked her mother.

Rosamund shook her head. “We shall not see him until next spring,” she said.

“I want him to come home!” Bessie wailed, large tears rolling down her rosy little cheeks.

“So do I, baby,” Rosamund replied, “but we must winter alone before we see the Earl of Glenkirk again.”

“I want Uncle Tom back,” Banon spoke up. “When will he return, mama?”

“Now, your uncle Thomas may well be back in time for the feast of Christ’s Mass,” Rosamund told her daughters with a smile. “I am certain he will bring you all lovely presents. He will soon be our neighbor, and won’t that be fun?”

The three little girls all agreed it would indeed be grand to have Uncle Thomas as their neighbor.

“What will happen to your uncle Henry when Uncle Tom comes to live in his house?” Philippa queried her mother.

“It will no longer be Henry Bolton’s house,” Rosamund answered her daughter, surprised that she even knew of the man. She had not seen him in several years, and while Philippa might have seen him once, she would have been very young. How had she remembered this relation? “Who has spoken to you of my uncle Henry?” she asked.

“I have,” Edmund replied. “She is the heiress to Friarsgate, and it is important that she know her family’s history, niece. It is better that it comes from me. I am more objective in the matter.”

“And I do not understand why,” Rosamund answered him. “Henry Bolton was never kind to you.”

“But even given that I was born on the wrong side of the blanket,” Edmund responded, “Henry could not take away the plain fact that I was the eldest and that our father loved me every bit as much as he loved Richard, Guy, and Henry. Because he was the youngest of us, he always felt it necessary to try harder. That trait developed into a foolish superiority as he grew older and comprehended that Richard and I were not legitimate while he and Guy were. Yet our father showed no preference among us. It has been quite frustrating for him, Rosamund. He has lived his entire life being haughty and arrogant because he was legitimate, and what has it gained him? His dismissive and overbearing attitude did not bring him happiness or love. It brought him two legitimate sons, one who died young and the other who is a thief. It brought him a second wife who whored with any and all, spawning a passel of bairns your uncle dared not deny for fear of being made a fool. And yet everyone knew. It gained him naught but your scorn. And now he is brought low. Only the kindness of Thomas Bolton will allow him to live out his days in comfort.”

“He doesn’t deserve it,” Rosamund said bitterly.

“Nay, he does not,” Edmund agreed. “Yet your cousin Tom will keep his word. He is a truly good Christian, Rosamund, whatever else he may be. And you have found your own happiness at last, so be generous of heart, niece, and forgive Henry Bolton. I have, and Richard did long ago.”

Rosamund was thoughtful for a long moment, and then she said, “If Tom returns for Christ’s Mass and the feast days following it, perhaps I shall invite my uncle Henry to be with us.”

“More you the fool,” Maybel said low.

“He is a toothless dog, wife,” Edmund answered her.

“Even a toothless dog may be dangerous if he is rabid,” she snapped sharply.

“If it would make you uncomfortable then I shall not ask him,” Rosamund said soothingly to her old nursemaid.

“Nay,” Maybel replied. “I’ll not be responsible for preventing you from making your peace with the old devil, if you will make it. He’ll be dead soon enough.”

In early December a letter came to Friarsgate from Glenkirk, brought by one of the Leslie clansmen. He was given shelter for the night and a hot meal. Dermid returned with him just in time for his son’s birth. Rosamund sat down to read what her lover had written. She would give the messenger a letter to return to Glenkirk. Patrick wrote that his trip home had been uneventful. His son had taken fine care of Glenkirk in his absence. He had already spoken to Adam in confidence regarding their marriage. His daughter-in-law, Anne, was not told.

Adam was agreeable to this match between his father, particularly understanding that there would be no offspring due to his father’s condition. He would, however, come with his father to Edinburgh in the spring to meet Rosamund. The earl wrote to Rosamund that because the winter was setting in, he did not know if he might communicate with her again. They would meet at an inn in Edinburgh called the Unicorn and Crown on the first day of April. They would visit the king at court and ask his permission to be wed in his own chapel by the young archbishop of St. Andrew’s, Alexander Stewart. They would then return to Friarsgate while Adam Leslie rode north with the news of his father’s marriage. In the autumn, Patrick and Rosamund would travel to Glenkirk for the winter months. The earl spoke of his love for her and of how he missed Rosamund. His nights, he wrote, were long, cold, and dreary without her, his days gray and gloomy. He missed the sound of her voice, her laughter. He wished nothing more than to have her within his arms once again. “I will never love anyone as I love you, sweetheart,” he concluded.

Rosamund read the missive, smiling with her happiness. She turned to the clansman who had brought it. “Have you been in the castle’s Great Hall, lad?”

“Aye, m’lady,” he replied.

“And has the painting of the earl been delivered and hung?”

“It came in the summer when the earl be away. Lady Anne were very surprised to see it. It was nae hung until the master returned. It be a fine painting. So lifelike, m’lady. All who see it say so.”

Rosamund nodded. “The painting of me in this hall was painted by the same artist,” she said.

“Aye,” the clansman said. “I can see ’tis similar.”

“I will be sending you home with a message for the earl,” Rosamund told him.

“Thank ye, m’lady,” the messenger said, and he went off with a servant to be given a sleeping space.

“I must be in Edinburgh on April first,” Rosamund said.

“Oh, mama, must you go away again?” Philippa protested.

“Would you like to come with me?” her mother inquired.

“Me?” Philippa squealed excitedly. “Go with you to Edinburgh? Oh, mama! Aye, I should very much like to go with you. I have never been anywhere in all of my life.”

“I did not go to King Henry’s court until I was thirteen,” her mother replied.

“Will I meet King James, mama? And Queen Margaret? Will we go to the Scots court?” Philippa demanded.

“Yes,” her mother said, smiling. “We may even celebrate your ninth birthday there. Would you like that, Philippa?”

Philippa’s face shone with her approval.

“You spoil her,” Maybel said. “You must not spoil her.”

“Children should be spoiled. Lord knows you did your best to spoil me, though you forget it now,” Rosamund teased the older woman gently.

“I tried only to make up for Henry Bolton when you were a wee thing,” Maybel defended herself. “I had no opportunity to spoil you once you were in Hugh Cabot’s charge, for he enjoyed spoiling you himself, God assoil his good soul!”

“Aye, God bless both Hugh Cabot and Owein Meredith,” Rosamund responded.

The Leslie clansman departed the following morning with a letter to his master from the lady of Friarsgate. Her correspondence to him was much as his to her had been. She had written of her loneliness without him, a loneliness such as she had never known in all her life until now. She had written of her daughters and of her estate, of their preparations for winter and how they were waiting eagerly for Tom’s return. She told him that Claven’s Carn had an heir at last. And she closed by sending him her undying love and telling him how eager she was for their reunion on the first of April, that she would bring Philippa to Edinburgh so both his only son and her eldest daughter could witness their marriage vows. She put a drop of her white heather scent upon the parchment, smiling as she did so.

On the twenty-first of December, St. Thomas’ Day, Tom appeared back at Friarsgate, bringing with him her uncle Henry. The children swarmed about this favorite relation hardly noticing their great-uncle. Rosamund, however, was shocked. Henry Bolton had indeed changed for the worse. He was gaunt, and his face wore a death’s-head.