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A woman who refused to be one. How did he treat such a woman?
He thrust his hand to shake hers, as he had the others, but she did not reach out, deigning only a curt nod. He returned it, his hand dropping awkwardly to his side as he suppressed his resentment. Then he broke away from her stare, his gaze falling, without deliberate intent, to search for breasts and hips. He found only edges, no curves. No comfort for a man there.
And based on the expressions of the other men, none sought.
‘Are you a Brunson, then?’ he asked. She looked like some cousin, long forgotten.
She lifted her chin and gave a quick shake of her head, ruffling her cropped hair. ‘I’m a Gilnock.’
The Gilnock family were distant kin, descended from the same brown-eyed, bloodthirsty Norseman as the Brunsons—and the only family on the Border more unforgiving than his own.
‘But she’s under our roof now,’ Rob said. Under Brunson protection, as might happen when a child was orphaned.
With a quick motion, she dismissed her men and moved closer to Rob and John.
‘I must speak with you, Rob,’ she said. Her voice surprised John. It was lower than he expected, the words round and deep and shimmering as if she were whispering secrets in the dark. ‘Your father died with his word unkept. What happens now?’
‘He was not your father,’ John retorted, wondering what had been promised. Yet she seemed more a Brunson than he, as if she had donned men’s clothes in order to usurp his place.
‘He was my headman,’ she answered, looking at the new headman when she answered. ‘Sworn to protect my family.’
‘A Brunson gave you his word,’ Rob said, anger edging his words. ‘It will be kept.’
On the border, a man’s word was good after death. At court, it might not be good after dinner.
‘When?’ she asked.
‘After he’s buried,’ Rob answered. ‘It must wait.’ He looked at John, the glance a warning. ‘As must other things.’
Cate caught the look and turned to John. ‘You do not come because of his death?’ Her eyes, assessing him, seemed ready to judge his answer. Not for this woman the warmth he usually felt from her kind. She seemed as cold and fierce as his brother.
Rob might want him to wait for the burial, but his father was dead and the king alive. And impatient. ‘I bring a summons from the king.’
‘You mean from his uncles or his mother or his stepfather?’ Rob looked no more willing to listen than Cate Gilnock.
John understood his hesitation. James, six years younger than John, had been king since birth, but he’d been under the control of others for the sixteen years since then. ‘From none of those. It’s his personal rule, now. No one else’s.’
They sat, silent, thinking of all this meant.
‘A man with much to prove, then,’ Rob said.
Did Rob speak of the king? Or himself?
Cate’s lips twisted in a smirk. ‘So what message is so important that your bairn king would send you here, all dressed in armour, to tell us?’
The harness and badge he’d been so proud to wear had impressed the beauties at court. ‘He’s your king, too.’
‘Is he?’ She shrugged dismissal. ‘I’ve never met him, never sworn my allegiance. My family and my own right arm keep me safe, not your king.’
‘But he will.’ He fought the tug of her voice, a strange combination of scorn and seduction. ‘He commands our men to join him in war against the traitor who has held him captive for the past two years.’
The ‘traitor’ had once been a duly appointed regent, but all things change.
Cate, not Rob, jumped in to answer. ‘And the wee king sent you to tell us, did he? You might have spared your horse. Brunson men will ride for no king of Fife. They ride to fulfil the promise of Geordie the Red and put Scarred Willie Storwick dead in the ground.’
He wondered what the man had done to earn such vengeance, but it mattered not. If that was his father’s promise, it would be broken.
‘The king commands you to fight his enemies, not each other. There’ll be no more raiding and reiving and thieving of cattle and sheep. I come to carry out the king’s will.’
And to earn his place at the king’s side, but that would not sway them.
‘And do you also come to stop the sun from rising of a morning?’ The curve at the corner of her mouth was a poor substitute for a smile.
If a man had said it, John might have answered with a fist to his gab. ‘The king wants—’
‘The king doesn’t rule here.’ Rob’s words were low and hard, his expression the one that had earned him the nickname Black. ‘We do.’
I do, he might have said, for his brother would be the one to say where the Brunsons would ride.
Yesterday, the decision would have been his father’s.
‘Surely your loyalty does not rest with the English king?’
‘My family holds my loyalty,’ his brother said. ‘Who holds yours?’
He and his family had parted ways years before. Nothing had made that more clear than returning to them. ‘We all owe loyalty to the throne. Scotland must be one country or it will be no country at all.’
‘I owe nothing to your bairn king,’ Cate said, heading for the door. ‘Go back and tell him to leave us be.’
No one followed her.
John looked back at Rob, waiting for a decision, but his brother seemed frozen with grief. The son most like his father, Rob had been prepared all his life to lead the family, but uncertainty lay beneath the stubborn set of his jaw.
Borderers had long held themselves above the king of either country.
No, now was not the moment to force a sorrowing son to choose between his father’s promise and the king’s command.
But if Cate released Rob from his father’s promise, then the choice would be easier. John would have to wrestle only with his brother’s stubbornness instead of with a dead man’s ghost. No, in order for the Brunson men to ride east to meet the king, Cate Gilnock must drop her demands and step aside.
So John would persuade her to do exactly that.
And quickly. The king was expecting John to deliver Brunson men before the first frost.
Brew was served and the sharing of stories began, stories of Geordie the Red at his best. And his worst.
Refusing to share in laughter and tears he did not feel, John left Rob and the rest in the hall and went in search of a place to stow his gear and his armour.
Avoiding the floor where his father’s body lay, he made his way to the open sleeping room on the upper level. He had travelled alone, without even a squire, for speed and secrecy, so he wrestled his armour off by himself.
He would certainly not beg his brother for help.
Instead, he pondered the problem of Cate Gilnock.
For the few days of the wake and burial, he would leave Rob to mourn and turn his charm on the woman. By the time his father was in the ground, he’d have her ready to release Rob from whatever promise she’d been given.
She looked and sounded like no woman he had ever met, yet underneath, he had no doubt that she was the same as all the rest. With the right handling, she’d be persuaded to peace.
Reason would be useless, of course. Near as useless as, he feared, it would be against his brother. But there were other ways.
His family might confound him, but women did not. He knew how to flatter and cajole them, how to overcome their feigned resistance, and how to coax a smile or a kiss. He and the king had shared their fill of women and John had even taught the younger man a thing or two, though in truth, the king needed little teaching in this realm.
He headed down the stairs to find her, a smile returning to his face. No doubt Cate Gilnock had never been wooed by a man before, acting as she did. All she needed was a honeyed word and a winning smile and she’d soon be releasing Rob from the daft-headed promise his father had made.
And Brunson men would be riding to join their king.
Cate forced herself to walk down the tower’s steps when she left him, though everything in her screamed to run. She only ran towards things now, never away.
Fear only encouraged them.
But this one, with his smooth tongue and his knightly armour, this one scared her as none had in years. Not because she thought he would hurt her body. She’d let no man do that ever again.
And if one did, she would not let herself feel it.
No, it was because of the judgement she saw in his eyes, criticising the rough armour she had forged around her life, carefully as bits of iron hidden between the quilted layers of her jack-of-plaites vest.
If he knew the truth, it would be worse.
She escaped to the stables, where her sleuth dog had been banished until the burial. Usually, Belde was ever at her side, holding her fear at bay, but a dog in the house with the dead could be killed if he got too close to the body.
She would let herself be killed first.
Tail wagging, Belde sniffed her from the toes up, his usual greeting. It took longer this time, because he caught an unfamiliar scent.
‘That’s a new Brunson you smell,’ she muttered, scratching behind his ears. A Brunson who threatened the fragile barrier that protected her. ‘Bite him when you see him.’
Intent to understand the new scent, the dog didn’t lift his head. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his reddish fur. There would be no tears, but this creature would be the only one allowed to see her sorrow.
The men accepted her silently. Braw Cate, they called her, and if she was not exactly a comrade in arms, none of them saw her as a woman. That part of her had died and she would let no one resurrect it.
Especially a blue-eyed Brunson.
She lifted her head and settled a firm expression on her face.
Sorrow would be left on the dog’s coat.
John found her in the soft, grey light of the afternoon doing something he’d never seen a woman do: waving a sword at her fading shadow in a corner of the courtyard.
He watched her from the doorway, more baffled than ever. She was slim and strong. Bone and sinew bent to her will. This was not, he could tell, the first time she had lifted a blade, but the sword, more than half her height, was one a man needed two hands to wield.
What kind of woman tried the same?
Quietly, he unsheathed his dagger and crept around the edge of the yard. It was no match for her sword, but confronted with a weapon in a man’s hand, she’d no doubt gasp and blush and step aside.
She heard him before he got within a sword’s length and whirled to meet him. He lifted his weapon and crossed it with hers.
‘Surrender?’ he said with a smile.
Instead, she knocked his dagger aside. ‘Never.’
Then, lips set, eyes narrowed, she pointed the sword at his chest, as if to make a touch.
Or something even more deadly.
He tightened his grip on the dagger and took a step back, wishing he still wore his armour. On his guard, he countered her, exhilaration warring with annoyance as they circled each other. He had learned to fight in this very yard, learned because it was a matter of life and death, but his style had been polished beside the king, who had picked up an adult sword at thirteen.
Partnering with King James, guided by the same master, he had developed swift elegance that allowed his opponent to increase his skills without either fighter being hurt.
Even disadvantaged by his weapon, he should be able to toy with this woman until she lowered her blade.
Yet she knew none of those rules. She swung her sword with the bluntness of a warrior astride a hobbler pony, fending off an enemy brandishing a pike. Her sword’s thrust carried urgency, even passion, that somehow stirred his blood.
Even his loins.
He jumped just in time to escape a touch. Now was not the time for distractions. He had expected a playful joust. Instead, he faced a warrior.
He swung high, but she held up her sword, turned sideways, to block his stroke. A clever move, but lifting the two-handed sword had strained her strength and when she lowered it, her arms shook.
Seizing on her weakness, he attacked and they crossed blades again. Prepared now, he leveraged his strength against her sword. Though she kept her grip, he pushed the blade away, coming close enough to feel her chest rise and fall, nearly touching his.
Close enough that his mind wandered, careless of the blades, thinking that under her tunic and vest, she had breasts. Now he could see her face, the angles of it, sharp and cleanly sculpted as her sword. Yet thick lashes edged her brown eyes, disguising some of the hatred there.
‘Surrender now?’
Panting, she shook her head. Yet her lips parted, tempting him to take them. She was, after all, a woman. A kiss would be mightier than a sword.
He pushed her sword arm down, pulled her to him and took her lips.
She yielded for a breath, no more.
But it was long enough for him to lose his thoughts, to forget she held a sword and remember only that she was a woman, breasts soft against his chest, smelling of heather …
In a flash, she turned stiff as a sword and leaned away, though her lips did not leave his, so he thought she only teased.
When he felt the point of a dirk at his throat, he knew she did not.
‘Let me go,’ she said, her lips still close enough that they moved over his, ‘or you’ll be bleeding and I’ll leave you to it, I swear.’
He eased his arms from her back and she pushed him away, wiped her mouth and spat into the dirt.
