“You are very discreet,” he teased.

“I don’t want to be discreet,” Rosamund told him. “I want to shout from all the rooftops of Stirling that I am in love and am loved in return.” She chuckled. “People would think me mad, especially if they knew the circumstances of our love, my lord.”

He nodded. “I can hear the gossips now. There is old Glenkirk, come down from his Highland eyrie, and carrying on wi a lass young enough to be his daughter.”

“But there will be others who say old Glenkirk is a lucky devil to have such a lusty young mistress and keep her satisfied, too,” Rosamund teased him back.

He laughed. “I suspect you care no more than I do what people say, Rosamund.”

“I don’t care,” she admitted. “Once I might have cared, but no more. I have outlived three husbands. I have spent my entire life doing what was expected of me, doing what I was told, for I am naught but a mere woman. But I have given Friarsgate three little heiresses, and I have kept the land well and will continue to do so with the help of my uncle Edmund. Now I wish to live for myself, if only for a little while.”

“Tell me about Friarsgate,” he said.

“It is beautiful and fertile. The house sits above a lake. I raise sheep. We prepare our own wool and weave our own cloth, which is highly sought after by the mercers in Carlisle and the low countries. I have cattle and horses, as well. We are safe from our border neighbors because the land about my valley is ringed with steep hills. No one can steal our livestock because they cannot escape with it without being caught. I love it there! It is the best place in all the world, Patrick. Now, you tell me of Glenkirk.”

“It sits in the eastern Highlands between two rivers. My castle is small. Until I was sent to San Lorenzo by our Jamie, I was naught but the laird of Glenkirk. The king wished to honor the Duke of San Lorenzo by sending a nobleman, and so I was created the Earl of Glenkirk. We raise sheep and Highland cattle. I have two children: a daughter, Janet, and a son, Adam.”

“Yet you speak only of your son,” Rosamund noted.

“My lass was stolen away by slavers when we were in San Lorenzo. She was to wed with the duke’s heir. We had just celebrated the betrothal when she was taken. We tried to regain her custody, but could not.” His face wore an expression of intense pain. “I cannot speak of it, Rosamund. Please understand and ask me no more.”

She kissed him tenderly. “I understand,” she said.

For a moment all was silent in the chamber, and then the earl said, “Tell me of this Logan Hepburn who pursues you.”

“A most irritating man,” Rosamund replied. “He claims to have been in love with me since I was six years of age. He says he saw me at a cattle market at Drumfie with my uncle. He appeared at Friarsgate just before I wed with my Owein. He had, he said, come courting. I told him I was to marry, and then the bold creature showed up at my wedding with his brothers and their pipes! They brought whiskey and salmon. I should have sent him packing then and there, but Owein found it amusing. After Owein’s death, Queen Katherine asked me back to court. She thought to cheer me, though if the truth be known I hated to leave my home and could scarcely wait to return. And when I did, there was Logan Hepburn! He announced we were to wed on St. Stephen’s day, and he would come for me then.”

“He’s a bold fellow,” the earl said thoughtfully.

“He is irritating and brash,” Rosamund said heatedly. “Thank God your queen sent me an invitation to come to this court. I should have had to fortify my house to keep that damned borderer out. He wants a son and an heir of me. Well, he had best find someone more willing, for I will not be broodmare to his stallion!” Then her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Patrick! What if…”

“There is no possibility, lass,” he told her. “Before I returned home from San Lorenzo, I contracted an illness. My face blew up like a sheep’s bladder, and my manhood ached and burned by turns. The old woman who nursed me told me that my seed would be barren from that point on. I have had several mistresses in the intervening years, and none has claimed a bairn by me. I have never cared until now, though I swear I do not consider you a broodmare to my stallion,” he finished with a small smile.

She giggled, and reaching down, stroked his now-flaccid rod. “You do, however, my lord, have some most impressive stallionlike qualities.” Her fingers teased his length and found their way beneath to fondle his twin pouches.

He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensations she was engendering with her daring play. “I had been told you English were cold creatures,” he bedeviled her wickedly.

“Whoever gave you such an idea, my lord?” she murmured, and then she squeezed him, causing him to groan with his budding arousal.

“I cannot remember, madame, but I am relieved to learn it a lie,” the earl said.

“I suspect his majesty could tell you that. It is said King Jamie is hot-blooded by nature. So, too, is his queen. Considering the bairns born to them, it would seem truth.”

“Aye, but among those bairns not a living heir,” the earl noted.

“This time will be different,” Rosamund said. “Come the spring the queen will deliver a healthy son, my lord. We all pray for it.”

“Do you have the lang eey like our Jamie, then?” he asked. His hand cupped a breast, and he tenderly fondled it. The little nipple instantly thrust itself forth to salute him. He bent his dark head and kissed it. His tongue licked at it in a leisurely fashion.

Rosamund sighed deeply. Every touch of his hand, his mouth, offered her the most incredible pleasure. While she had loved Owein, it had never been that way with him. Not like this. Nor her own king, who had taken her briefly for his mistress on her last visit to court. Nay. Henry Tudor was always interested in only one thing: his own gratification. This man, however, Patrick Leslie, Earl of Glenkirk, a man she knew hardly at all, this man opened her eyes in a single night of passion to the reality of what love truly was. “I think I will die if you leave me now,” she said, voicing her thoughts to him with daring audacity.

He kissed her sweetly, his lips brushing hers tenderly. “We are not meant to part for now, my love, but one day we will, for your heart is at Friarsgate and mine at Glenkirk. This is how it should be, for we are both loyal to our lands and our people. Once, I think, we may have neglected our responsibilities in favor of our love. We are being given the chance now to right that wrong. Do you understand me, Rosamund?”

“Nay,” she replied. “I do not.”

“What I believe, my love, is considered a heresy, but nonetheless I believe it. I think that we live other lives, in other times and places. I recall that when I arrived in San Lorenzo I had the most incredible sense that I had been there before. I would find my way to certain locations without the benefit of direction. Throughout my life it has been that way. An old clanswoman on my lands has the lang eey, and she told me I have lived before, as have most souls. I believe her. Tonight, when we first met in this time and this place, we both experienced a sense of familiarity, a strong feeling that we knew each other well. You are not a woman with loose morals, yet here we lie together in our bed, and I am about to make love to you for a second time this night. Do you understand now, Rosamund?”

She nodded. “Aye and yet nay,” she told him.

“Can you accept this magic between us, or shall we part and pretend that it never happened?” he asked her.

“How could I possibly deny the wonder of what is between us?” she cried softly. “I cannot! I hear what you tell me, but it seems so impossible. Still, I do lie here in your arms, and I feel as if I never want to leave you, that I shall die if you send me away!”

“I will not send you away, Rosamund. Yet there will come a time, as I have said, when we will both know we must part for the sake of others. But that time is not now. For a while the fates will allow us this idyll, and we will be grateful,” he told her.

“Could you not have found me sooner, my lord?” she said with utmost seriousness.

He smiled down on her, his green eyes filled with pure love. Then he kissed her mouth and said, “Be silent, my love, and let me join with you once more.”

“Yes!” She said the single word, her own love shining forth from her amber eyes. Then she opened her arms to him and took him into her embrace.

For a second time they met passion. For a second time they cried aloud as it swept over them, rendering them both weak with satisfaction. The length and breadth of him filled her love sheath. The rhythm they created was overpowering in the pleasure it offered. Her body arced against him in her great desire. He forced her down, thrusting and parrying with his lance as he brought them to a perfect heaven once again.

“I die!” she sobbed as her desire grew and grew until it burst in a frenetic rush of his love juices that left them both half-conscious and gasping for breath.

“You are the most incredible woman,” he finally managed to say, his dark head resting upon her white bosom.

“And you astonishing, my dear lord of Glenkirk. You tell me you are past fifty, and yet you make love like a younger man,” she said with admiration.

He chuckled. “It is only young men who claim excess virility and work to make the myth a truth. A man of my years knows his limits, although tonight I have surpassed even myself, my love, but that is due to you, I suspect. You inspire me.”

“Take your ease, then, my lord, for soon you must help me find my way back to my own chamber. I have absolutely no idea where I am right now,” she told him laughing.

“You are in my arms, where you should be,” he said. “I will help you find your way back,” he promised, “but first let us regain our strength, Rosamund.”

She nodded in agreement and closed her eyes, feeling safer and more content than she had felt in many months. This was what it was like to be really loved, she thought happily. If only the whole world could feel just like this.

They dozed for a short time, wrapped in each other’s arms, savoring the warmth of their love. But finally the Earl of Glenkirk rose reluctantly and dressed himself. When he was clothed, he handed her the garments he had discarded upon the stool earlier, ordering her to dress within the comfort of their bed, for the air was bitterly cold. Finally he led her from his little chamber through the darkened corridors of the castle, asking her as they went exactly where her own chamber was. She told him, and to her surprise, they were quickly there. They kissed hungrily, desperately, as if they would never again be together. Then he turned swiftly and hurried off, back into the darkness of the hallway.

Rosamund slipped quietly into her little chamber. Annie was dozing in a chair by the embers of the fire. She started awake as her mistress entered. “I am glad you were not worried,” Rosamund said to her.

“Lord Cambridge come to me, my lady. He said you might be very late.” She rose from her place, yawning and stretching. Then, peeping through the heavy velvet curtain covering the single window, she said, “ ’Tis already false dawn. You had best get into bed, my lady, if you are to have any rest before the mass.”

“Build up the fire,” Rosamund ordered her, “and heat some water. I stink of passion and cannot enter the queen’s presence until I have washed. Neither will I enter my bed until I am fresh.”

Annie looked shocked with her mistress’ pronouncement.

“I have taken the Earl of Glenkirk as a lover, Annie,” Rosamund said bluntly. “You will not gossip about it with the other servants even if they ask you. Do you understand me, girl?”

“Aye, my lady,” Annie said. “But it ain’t right, a respectable lady such as yourself!” she burst out.

“I am widowed, Annie, and were you not my confidante when I was with the king?” Rosamund asked her servingwoman.

“That was different,” Annie said. “You was just obeying our king. There was no harm in it as long as good Queen Katherine didn’t know or be shamed by it.”

“Nay, Annie, ’twas no different than all of my life before it,” Rosamund said. “I have always done what I was asked. What was expected of me. Now, however, I shall do what I want. I shall live my life to please myself and no one else! Do you understand?”

“What of the laird of Claven’s Carn?” Annie asked. “He ain’t going to marry with a lady who lifts her skirts so easily, my lady.”

Rosamund slapped her servant. “You presume upon our friendship, Annie,” she said. “Do you wish me to send you home to Friarsgate? I shall do it, for there are plenty who would be willing to serve me-and keep their tongues silent. I will tell you what I told Logan Hepburn. I do not wish to marry again! And I will not be forced to it. Friarsgate has an heiress, and two more besides. I will unite my daughters one day in marriages that will bring honor and wealth to our family. Logan Hepburn wants a son. He needs an heir for Claven’s Carn. Let him get it upon some sweet young virgin who will adore him and be a good wife to him. I am not that woman. King Henry’s mother, she who was my guardian, once told me that a woman must marry first for her family. Twice at the most. But after that, the Venerable Margaret said, a woman should marry where it suited her. Twice my uncle Henry Bolton has made marriages for me. My third husband was the king’s choice. Now it is my choice, and I choose no husband! Do you understand me, Annie? I will do as I please now.”