“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.