“You’ll stay the night?” the laird said.
“I will,” Lord Cambridge responded. “Will your brothers be joining us?”
“They were lost at Flodden,” Logan replied.
“Ah, your sorrow is great, my lord. A winter of mourning will ease your heart, I am sure,” came the reply.
In the morning Tom returned to Friarsgate, eager to impart all that he knew to Rosamund.
She wept learning of Jeannie and her child. “And the wee laddie she bore last year motherless. Ah, cousin, these are hard times for us all.”
“They are,” he agreed.
Afterwards, when she had gone from the hall, Edmund asked Tom, “Will he come courting, do you think?”
“Perhaps, but I have advised him not to appear until at least midsummer,” Tom replied. “She liked Jeannie.”
“Aye, she did,” Edmund agreed.
“You must tell Maybel to hold her peace,” Tom said.
“Aye,” Edmund agreed. “I will remind my well-meaning spouse that if she natters on at Rosamund about Logan Hepburn being a bachelor once more, it could drive the lass away. Of course, Logan may do that himself if he goes on about bairns,” Edmund chuckled.
“I’ve warned him about that, too,” Tom responded, chuckling himself.
They celebrated the festive holidays, which concluded with Twelfth Night in early January. Tom was once again generous with Rosamund’s daughters. She was amazed that he had managed to find gifts for them all under the circumstances.
“Perhaps in the spring,” he told her, “I may travel into Scotland and see about that ship we want to built. It has been a year now since I first suggested it, dear girl.”
“We have lost no time,” she assured him. “The new flocks we bought last summer are doing very well. We’ll have quite a birthing of lambs next month.”
“I have never understood why sheep insist on having their offspring in February,” he said. “The weather is foul, and the wolves are hunting vigorously.”
“No one has ever understood sheep,” Rosamund told him, laughing. “It is their own way, and they will have it, I fear. At least I have the flocks all gathered in now that the snows are covering the grazing on the hillsides.”
The winter had now set in about them. Tom returned to Otterly to husband his own estate and attend to his business affairs. The days were beginning to grow visibly longer again by Candlemas on February second. Father Mata was teaching Rosamund’s daughters six mornings a week. The three girls sat at the high board and studied diligently, for both their mother and their uncles had said it was important, no matter what others might say. All of them could read and write now. The young priest taught them Latin, not simply the church Latin needed for the mass but the Latin that was spoken within the civilized nations. Rosamund taught them French even as their father had taught her when they first met. They already knew their numbers and simple arithmetic. Rosamund and Edmund schooled Philippa in how to keep Friarsgate’s accounts, as the responsibility would one day be hers.
“Great lords have others to do this for them,” Rosamund said, “but a wise woman knows how to manage her monies herself, lest those others attempt to cheat her because she is a woman or make mistakes. It is not easy to manage Friarsgate, but if you would keep it safe you must learn, Philippa. Do you understand me, my child?”
Philippa nodded. “Aye, mama, I do. But when I marry one day, will my husband not take on this task for me?”
“Friarsgate will belong to you, Philippa, not your husband. You are the heiress to Friarsgate, my daughter. It will be yours until you pass it on to your eldest-born son or daughter,” Rosamund explained. “It will never be your husband’s property. I am the last Bolton of Friarsgate. You will be the Meredith of Friarsgate, but your heir, and I do hope it is a son, will be the next lord or lady of this manor. My unfortunate uncle Henry could never live with this knowledge. For him Friarsgate is the Boltons’, but our sons are now all gone.”
“What about Uncle Henry’s son, mama?” Philippa asked innocently.
“He could never be the heir unless your sisters and I were gone from this earth,” she said. “I have not seen him since he was a child. He was an obnoxious little boy, strutting and making pronouncements.”
“They say he is a robber chief now,” Philippa said.
“So I am told,” Rosamund replied. “Who told you that?”
“Maybel did. She said Uncle Henry’s son is even worse than his strumpet mother,” Philippa repeated.
“I suspect Maybel is right,” Rosamund answered her daughter, “but she should not have said it to you, Philippa. Put my wicked uncle and his offspring from your mind. They will have nothing to do with your life.”
“Yes, mama,” the little girl said dutifully.
Rosamund sought out her old nursemaid. “Do not speak to the girls about my uncle’s son. You will frighten them, Maybel.”
“Very little frightens that trio,” Maybel answered pithily.
“That is because they are young and sheltered. They have not lived as I did as a child. I don’t want them to be afraid of the Boltons.”
“You keep them too close, Rosamund,” Maybel said. “Philippa has been to Queen Margaret’s court. I think you should take her to her own king’s court to meet our good queen. She was once your friend. Perhaps she will favor Philippa if she knows her. Philippa will be ten in April. It is time you begin seeking out a worthy husband for her.”
“Not yet,” Rosamund said. “Perhaps when she is twelve.”
“All the good matches will be taken if you wait too long,” Maybel replied, outraged by Rosamund’s attitude.
“Why, you had two husbands by the time you were her age, and a third two years after you were twelve.”
“Which is precisely why I shall wait until Philippa is older. I don’t want her marrying some graybeard. I want her to fall in love and marry a man closer to her in age, who will hopefully be her one and only husband,” Rosamund said.
“Romantic twaddle!” Maybel huffed.
“But she is my child,” Rosamund said, “and I will plan her life, as it is my right to do. I mean to plan wisely for Philippa and her sisters.”
“They may have their own plans,” Maybel said sharply.
The hillside now began to grow green with the coming of spring. The ewes proudly shepherded their new offspring into the meadows beneath the warm spring sun. The fields were plowed and the grain sown in those being used this year. The orchards came into full bloom. Rosamund’s second daughter, Banon, celebrated her eighth birthday on the fifteenth day of March. Philippa turned ten at the end of April, and Bessie was six by the end of May. Tom came from Otterly, as he had for the two previous birthday celebrations. He brought Bessie a small terrier pup as a present. She squealed with delight upon opening the basket in which he had placed it, and then she hugged him. The squirming puppy jumped from its basket and scampered across the garden with Bessie in hot pursuit, causing them all to laugh. It was at that moment uninvited guests arrived, ushered into the gardens by a house servant.
“Such gaiety,” Henry Bolton said. He was accompanied by a tall young man whom Rosamund immediately recognized as her cousin Henry the younger.
She arose. “Uncle, this is a surprise, but you are, of course, welcome.” She deliberately ignored her cousin.
“I have brought my son with me today. He has been living with me,” Henry said.
“I had heard he has taken to robbery, uncle,” Rosamund replied.
“Nay, nay, niece. He is a reformed man. Aren’t you, my son?” Henry said.
“Yes, father,” the young man responded. His gaze had fastened upon Philippa. “Is that the heiress to Friarsgate?” he asked his sire.
“You have never been noted for your subtlety, cousin,” Rosamund told him. “But if you think to wed my daughter, put it from your mind. I told your father this in December.” She glared at her relations.