“I do not think I could ever be as brave as you have been, mama,” Philippa said.

“I wanted you and your sisters to have a happier time in your childhoods than I did,” Rosamund told her daughter. “But you have had your share of sadness, too, my child. I know how hard it was for you to lose your father.”

“But if you married again, mama, we could have another father,” Philippa said.

“We will see,” Rosamund murmured, not noticing her cousin Tom wince.

“When will my sisters come home, mama?” Philippa asked.

“Soon,” Rosamund said. “Now find your bed, my daughter.”

Curtsying to her elders, Philippa left the hall. And soon Maybel and Edmund were gone. And Tom, after pouring himself a goblet of wine, swiftly sought his own chamber.

Rosamund arose from her place on the settle where she had sat with Philippa. “Come, my lord. I am certain you remember the way, but I shall lead you.” She glided from the hall, the laird of Claven’s Carn’s footsteps behind her. Reaching the guest chamber, she opened the door for him, gasping as he drew her inside and shut the door behind them firmly. “My lord!”

He stopped her mouth with a hard kiss. “Tonight, madame,” he told her, “we will begin to get to know each other as we should have years ago but that you kept marrying other men. We are getting too old for these games, Rosamund, my darling.” His arms tightened about her.

“I have not said I would marry you,” she whispered breathlessly.

He took an index finger and ran it from the top of her head down her nose and over her lips and chin in a tender gesture. “I have not asked you to marry me, Rosamund,” he told her softly. “I have just said it is past time we got to know each other, my darling.”

“You want to make love to me,” she answered him.

“Aye, I do,” he told her.

“Logan… oh, Logan, I do not know if I can ever love you as you love me,” Rosamund despaired.

“So you finally see that I love you,” he replied. “ ’Tis a start, my darling.” He kissed her face gently, moving his lips from her forehead to her eyelids to her nose and finally to her sweet mouth. Then the blue-blue eyes met her amber ones. His big hand caressed her cheek. “You will never love me as you loved Patrick Leslie, Rosamund, but you will love me. I promise you.”

Tears slipped down her face, and he kissed them away. Then, turning her about, he began to unlace the bodice of her plain brown velvet gown. His lips found the soft nape of her neck and pressed a kiss upon it. Rosamund sighed, wondering as she did why she had this sudden feeling of relief. He removed the bodice, laying it aside on a nearby chair. He undid the tapes of her skirts and lifted her from the puddle of material that slipped to the floor.

“You seem to be quite expert at this, Logan Hepburn,” Rosamund told him, beginning to regain her equilibrium. She was facing him now, and her fingers were undoing his doublet unimpeded.

He smiled a slow smile down at her. “I am,” he admitted modestly. Then he lifted her up and set her down upon the bed. Kneeling, he removed her slippers and stockings.

“I haven’t finished undressing you,” Rosamund said boldly.

“I can do it quicker,” he told her. “And I think it necessary tonight, my darling.” His hands undid his breeks. He removed his sherte and then sat to remove his shoes and his wool stockings from his big feet. He stood again, pulling his breeks off, then got into the bed with her. For modesty’s sake, he had left her in her chemise, but he was as naked as God had made him.

“You are a very big man,” she said, eyeing him.

“I am,” he agreed, untying the ribbons that held her chemise closed. He drew back the folds of fabric and stared. “God’s wounds, madame, you are incredibly beautiful,” he said admiringly. He did not touch her.

“Would you like me to remove my chemise now?” she asked softly. He was such a handsome man with his blue-blue eyes and his unruly black hair. Unable to help herself, she reached up and ran her hand through that hair.

“Nay,” he told her. “I want to absorb your beauty a little bit at a time, Rosamund. I am not a greedy man.” The dark head bent, and he kissed a single nipple.

She shivered with the pleasure that small touch offered her. It had been almost two years since she had lain in a man’s arms and received the homage of his love for her. “That was nice,” she told him.

“Good,” he said. “I want to know what pleases you, and then you shall learn what pleases me, Rosamund.”

“What if we discover that we do not enjoy each other?” she asked him.

“Why, then we shall go our separate ways, madame,” he replied blandly.

“What?” she cried. “You would seduce me and then desert me, you Scots scoundrel!” She pushed him away.

“Madame, ’twas you who introduced doubt into our passion,” he returned.

Rosamund sat up. What was she doing? She jumped from the bed, looking to gather up her other garments. “You shall not have me, you monster!”

“Oh, but I shall, my darling,” he said, rising and following her, drawing her back into his arms, drawing the chemise off of her. Her breasts were crushed against his lightly furred chest. Her belly pressed against his.

“Dammit, Logan! Would you commit rape?” she demanded of him. God’s blood! She had never felt so very naked before. She hammered against him with her fists. He enclosed her face between his big hands and kissed her, his mouth insistent, demanding, and moist against her lips, her face. He would not be denied, and the truth was, she realized, she didn’t want to be denied, either. She needed him as much as he needed her.

“If you truly want to go,” he said, suddenly releasing her, “then go, damn you! But if you remain, Rosamund, these fevered bodies of ours will shortly be one.” The blue-blue eyes looked straight at her.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Yes, you do!” he said fiercely.

“Do you really love me, Logan Hepburn?” she asked him.

“For as long as I can remember, Rosamund Bolton. Forever! And I always will,” he told her in a sure and quiet voice.

“Please God that I am not a fool,” she said.

He smiled at her. “We will talk about that on the morrow, my darling,” he told her, holding out his hand in silent invitation.

She took it, and he brought her back into the comfort of his embrace. Then they walked back to the bed. They lay together, slowly and tenderly exploring each other’s bodies. He caressed her breasts. She pressed kisses on his flat belly. Their mouths met again and again as their limbs intertwined, rolling this way and then that. Finally she lay beneath him, and with the most infinite care, indeed as if she were a virgin, he entered her body, pushing his thick length slowly, slowly and filling her full with his long-pent-up desire for her. Moving with a leisurely rhythm until she was whimpering softly and her head began to thrash with her rising pleasure. And when their need for each other reached its peak, they rose together, their fingers intertwined, until with great joy they fell back together into the abyss of warm and soothing release, fulfilled.

And afterwards he told her that on the morrow she would return with him to Claven’s Carn and they would be married. “If, of course, my darling, that is your wish, too,” he said smiling into her face, devouring her with his love until she could no longer bear it, for it was simply too sweet.

“I cannot live at Claven’s Carn always,” she said. “I am the lady of Friarsgate.”

“I cannot live at Friarsgate always,” he said. “I am the lord of Claven’s Carn.”

“Then we must be like the wealthy nobles who go back and forth between their homes and estates, Logan,” she told him. “Sometimes we will live in your house, and sometimes we will live in mine.”

“And if our countries continue to war?” he asked her.

“Then you must stay on your side of the border, and I will remain on mine,” Rosamund teased him with a smile.

“Of course,” he told her, “if we remain free of political entanglements and know nothing of the world outside of Friarsgate and Claven’s Carn, we shall never be separated.” Then he kissed the tip of her nose.

“What a clever man you are,” Rosamund told him. “I think I will marry you after all, Logan Hepburn.”

“And one day you will come to love me?” he said hopefully.

“I think some small part of me has always loved you, Logan,” she admitted. “And I will be a good wife to you and a good stepmother to your son. I promise.”

“And I will be a good father to your girls,” he vowed. “I remember their father, and he was an honorable man. I can be no less to you, or to them.”

“And if we should have bairns, Logan?” she asked.

“They will belong to Claven’s Carn,” he told her firmly.

She nodded. “Then it is settled, my lord. But if we are indeed to have bairns, you will have to pay more attention to me than you have been,” she teased him.

He grinned down at her. “Madame, I have already put a bairn in your belly, but until he objects, Rosamund, you and I will enjoy our bed sport.”

And Rosamund laughed aloud, her heart soaring with her happiness. Aye! She was indeed happy again, and she knew that with Logan Hepburn by her side she would be happy forever, no matter the world about them.

Epilogue

They were not married the next day, but rather a month later, on the eighteenth of October, St. Luke’s Day. The ceremony took place not at Friarsgate or at Claven’s Carn, but rather in the hills between both estates where the border between England and Scotland was acknowledged to be by both parties. The bride stood on the English side of that border. The bridegroom stood in Scotland. Both were smiling as they joined hands across that border. It was a perfect autumn day. The sky above was a clear, strong blue, and the bright sun was warm on their shoulders. The hills were dressed in russet and gold, and the air about them was soft, but there was no breeze.

The simple ceremony was performed by Prior Richard Bolton and Father Mata. The invited guests were few: Maybel, Edmund, Tom Bolton, Philippa, Banon, and Bessie Meredith, little John Hepburn. And when the formalities were over and done with, the laird of Claven’s Carn took his bride up on his horse and invited them all back to his keep for the celebration. There in the hall, as the day waned, his clansmen and clanswomen raised toast after toast to the newly wed couple, the pipes wailed, and there was much dancing. John Hepburn spent most of that afternoon curled in his new stepmother’s lap. Rosamund frequently caressed the little boy’s dark hair, wondering if the child she now carried would be dark-haired, too.

And eight months later Rosamund discovered that he was, when Alexander Hepburn was born into the world to the delight of his three half-sisters and his half-brother. He was christened at Friarsgate Church by Father Mata, Edmund and Tom standing as his godfathers and Maybel as his godmother. And watching, Philippa Meredith could but consider if this was the last of her mother’s children she would see born, for in ten more short months she was to go to court and join the queen’s household. In ten months she would see her friend Cecily FitzHugh again. She would be twelve years old. Old enough to be considered a possible match for the right young man. She wondered if that young man would be Giles FitzHugh, or perhaps another, someone she had yet to meet. Someone she did not even know. Someone with whom she would fall madly in love. As her mother had with Patrick Leslie.

“I cannot wait!” Philippa said softly to herself. “I cannot wait!” And she smiled as she contemplated her life to come.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

I hope you have enjoyed Book Two of The Friarsgate Inheritance. I will tell you that no one was more surprised than I was to have Patrick Leslie, the first Glenkirk earl, and the father of my very first heroine, Janet Leslie, a.k.a. Cyra Hafise (The Kadin), appear as the great love of Rosamund’s life. I had always wondered what had happened to him.

In Book Three of this series I will have some other surprises for you. Look for it in October 2004. In the meantime I hope you will visit my Web site at www.BertriceSmall.com or you may write to me at P.O. Box 765, Southold, NY 11971-0765. God bless, and much good future reading from your most faithful author,


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR