Page 2 of A Constant Blaze

Or at least, so she had always believed.

Throwing off the heavy blankets, she rose from the big bed she’d first slept in as a young girl and paced to the window, throwing the shutters wide to cool her face and body in the chill wind. Before her spread out the ridged farming lands and the endless wild moors and forests of Ross, all crisscrossed with misty rivers and streams and lochs. Malcolm had made the isolated hall at Brecka his main residence because it was so hard to find, and he was so frequently pursued by the king’s men. Behind it rose the steep hill from which Gormflaith, Halla’s daughter, watched constantly for the return of the father she had never seen.

Halla leaned out, tilting her face into the damp wind, reaching for the serenity she had so painstakingly acquired. Malcolm MacHeth had never been a serene or tranquil man. But in spite of everything, she didn’t want to forget his face, even though she knew the decades would have altered it, as they had changed hers.

She was thirty-nine years old. Most women of her age and rank would have no greater concerns than households, children, and grandchildren. Few had ever exercised the power she had here in Ross. She had already ruled much longer than Malcolm ever had, longer than his father. And she did it well, better than either of them.

Not for the first time, she acknowledged that it would be hard to give up such power when Malcolm MacHeth, Earl of Ross, finally came home. Or when Donald, their elder son, finally decided there was no longer any point in waiting and hoping, and took up all of the reins of rule himself. And when he married, his lady, whoever she might be, would take the rest of Halla’s place as was only right.

Halla dreaded that day because she would have nothing to replace the huge responsibility she’d taken up so long ago. It was no longer possible for her to live like other women through her family alone. But she would adapt and change as necessary because she loved her children fiercely. She’d taught them to fight for their father’s right to be King of Scots, just as Malcolm would have wished.

Without warning, she shivered. One of those violent, spine-tingling shivers that warned of a future when someone would walk over her cold, earthy grave. Halla dreaded that. She wanted to be pushed out into the sea and be consumed in flames with her longship.

But perhaps the danger was not hers. She shivered again, reaching up to slam the shutters. Her sons were with their uncle still, fighting and raiding. Or perhaps on their way home. Either way, she had no cause beyond the normal to fear for them.

And yet she did.

*

“It’s done,” Fergus,the Lord of Galloway, told the young King of Scots, who was hawking in the Pentland Hills.

The king, a fair, handsome boy with a love of all things chivalric, rode with Fergus a little way apart from his courtiers, bestowing a genuine smile upon him. “Excellent! Wherearethe captured MacHeth sons?”

“Well,” Fergus confessed, “I only have Donald. Adam didn’t come, although with the bait of his brother, I could probably catch him, too. On the other hand, I don’t want a war in Galloway if I can help it. Donald is probably enough for our purposes.”

The king was still smiling as he gazed into the sky. His hawk had caught a sparrow. He held out his gloved hand, and the hawk flew toward it. “Then perhaps it’s time I visited Roxburgh. You’d better bring your prisoner there to join his father.”

“Yourprisoner, Your Grace,” Fergus said graciously. He wheeled his horse around and found the Lady Mairead of Kingowan almost in front of him, gazing upward at the soaring, hunting hawks.

Damn her, the woman moved like a snake, silent and inconvenient. But he knew how to deal with women, even dangerous ones. Especially when they were as comely as Mairead with her fair, flawless skin and fiery red hair mostly hidden beneath her almost decorous veil. Fergus, retreating from the royal presence as the rest of the court advanced, urged his horse even closer to the apparently distracted Lady Mairead.

“Lady Mairead,” he murmured. “I was just thinking of you. Can we escape this dullness, do you think?”

Yes, there it was, the betraying blush and flutter that meant a little dalliance would not be unacceptable.

“Slip away into the wood as you pass,” she breathed with unmistakable promise.

He watched from the corner of his eye as she began to walk her horse casually in that direction. Fergus’s blood heated. She was, in fact, a fine-looking woman. Keeping her silent for a few days would be no hardship. He wondered if she did more for his old friend Malcolm mac Aed—or Malcolm MacHeth as he was more popularly known—than carry his messages from prison.

An image of Halla, Malcolm’s lady, swam before his eyes. For a prisoner, Malcolm really was a lucky bastard. To have a pretty, willing woman visiting him in captivity and a beautiful, wise, and loyal one to come home to. Eventually. Well, the Lady of Ross was beyond Fergus’s reach, but Mairead, clearly, was not.

Pretending his young hawk had dropped something over the trees—when in fact the stupid bird was probably halfway home to Galloway—Fergus rode off to investigate. Although he made a lot of noise clumping about, Mairead didn’t immediately appear. He had to search for her, find her tracks. And they led straight through to the other side of the wood, back in the direction of Edinburgh.

*

Mairead was nobody’sfool, except perhaps Malcolm MacHeth’s. Giving Fergus the slip provided her with the time she needed to ride back to Edinburgh, summon her discreet messenger, and send him north to Ross.

That done, she cleansed and anointed her body, put on her best gown, and repaired to Fergus’s rooms in the city. She’d only just settled herself in his best chair and, making use of the expensive writing materials she found on the table, begun to write a dull letter to her husband, when the dark, wiry figure of Fergus came striding in, scowling, no doubt with irritation at being made a fool of. However, his expression when he caught sight of her was almost worth it.

“What-what—what the…” he spluttered.

“Where have you been?” Mairead demanded, throwing down her pen, which spattered ink over the vellum. Oh well, it would still do. “I’ve been waiting here for hours.”

“That’s funny. I was scouring the wood for hours.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Do I look like a woodsman’s daughter to you?”

His gaze swept over her person, betraying only too clearly what he’d like to do with it. “No,” he said hoarsely. “God, no.”

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