Page 1 of Promise of a Knight
Chapter One
Caerlaverock Castle
Near the Scottish Border
Early July, 1503
“The queen will soon arrive in Scotland, daughter, and ye’ve been asked to join her court as a maid of honor.”
Alexandra Maxwell, tenth and youngest child of Lord and Lady Maxwell jerked her head up from the table where she’d been sitting, and not eating, the better part of the morning as her family broke their fast. Her father stared at her with his graying hair and thick, bushy brows. Deep wrinkles grooved his cheeks and forehead. The man was positively ancient. Beside him, her mother was also showing her age, though she’d taken the fashion of wearing a wig to hide how much her dark hair grayed. Thick powder covered her face, but not enough to hide her wrinkles either.
Alex dropped her spoon. “Me?” A maid of honor?Impossible.
Alex looked to two of her older sisters who stared at her with mixtures of relief, horror and jealousy. Miniatures of their mother. Mary and Agnes were married off already, living with their husbands, but Isobel and Katherine, they could easily have gone in her place.
“Aye,” Lord Maxwell, her father, said, both of his fists planted on the table as though he prepared for a battle.
Well, she supposed most of their conversations these days were battles.
“Why?” Questioning their father’s edicts was against the rules, but how could she not? He was obviously mistaken.
Lord Maxwell blew out a breath that reached so far down the table, the candle flames flickered the length of it. “For the verra same reason ye were punished the other day.”
Lord help her… Alex was punished all the time. At just shy of her twentieth birthday, she’d grown quite bored with the day-to-day, humdrum life that went on in the castle, and well, there was really nothing interesting to do unless it was frowned upon… She loved to sneak into her sisters rooms and switch out their face creams for cooking oils, or to tease her brothers who still lived at home into thinking their father had given a direct order for all the mattresses from every chamber to be brought to the courtyard for airing—in the rain or snow (she would have thought they’d not fall for that one so often). Most of all, she liked to escape that harridan of a maid they had following her around so she could eavesdrop on more fun goings-on. Perhaps her antics were a bit childish, but what else could she do? Embroidery and reading only went so far. She longed for adventure. And daydreaming… As she was doing just that moment.
“Eavesdropping, Alex,” her mother chimed, jerking her back to the present.
Nay, nay, nay!Listening in on her parents or her siblings was one thing but the king? The queen?
“Ye want me to… spy?” She shook her head. Nay, this couldn’t be happening. This was why she’d been chosen. Going to the Scottish court to serve the new bride of James IV, anEnglishprincess at that, was a grave punishment. No wonder they’d not given the job to one of her sisters. Alex gripped the edge of the table. “Father, please, dinna make me.”
Her father made hand motions at her mother, as if begging her to “deal” with their wayward child.
Beside her, Isobel pinched her while Katherine made a face. “Ye’re not fit to marry, Alex, not until ye’ve had a bit of refinement. Think on it that way.”
“She’ll likely be imprisoned for lack of refinement,” Katherine snipped.
Alex glowered at her older sisters. “More likely that I’ll be imprisoned for treason!”
Father slammed his hand on the table. “Ye’ll not be imprisoned, for ye’ll do yer best to keep our family’s name with honor attached to it. Dinna shame us.”
Alex pushed away from the table. “But ye’re to make me a traitor! Ye’ve shamed me already!”
Her mother hissed, also slamming her hand on the table. “Sit down, Alexandra. There’ll be no such talk of traitors and treason in this house. We are most loyal to our king and his new bride. And ye will do as ye are bid. We will not tolerate yer insolence on the matter.”
Alex slowly sank to her seat, her body trembling with hurt and anger. Gazing on her cold breakfast, she said, “Aye, Mother. What would ye have me do?”
Lady Maxwell pinned her with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, but it was her father who answered.
“Ye are to simply listen. With our lands bordering the English and plenty of the damned Sassenachs crossing our lands and pillaging our villages, we have a right to know if the queen is making the king more inclined to favor the English. Lord knows our country has had a time of it because of those bastards.” Her father glanced to each of his children, and Alex suddenly felt left out of this plot they’d concocted. She was to be their scapegoat.
“So listen well and report anything ye might hear,” Mother said.
Alex pressed her lips together and nodded. She’d not argue with them anymore, but she wasn’t certain she’d agree either. Nodding was different than outright declaring, wasn’t it?
“And there is one more thing,” her mother piped up. “Princess Margaret Tudor was given a gift at the proxy ceremony by the Earl of Bothwell who stood in for King James. A necklace of emeralds and amethysts. Colors that signify our great heaths in spring. I want ye to take it.”
“Mother!” Alex exclaimed. She glanced around the table to see what her siblings thought of such talk, but each of them had found a sudden interest in their porridge that they’d not had before. She’d find no ally among them.
