Page 3 of A Constant Blaze

“I thought not,” she purred, standing up to let him embrace her exotically scented person before she pulled free and spun around to seize her cloak and the half-finished letter. “On the other hand, you are too late. My husband misses me. I’ve been summoned home.”

It spoke volumes for Fergus’s frustration that it was late in the evening before he even thought to inquire who had left Edinburgh that afternoon while he’d been raking through the woods. And by then, he hadn’t a hope of catching them.

*

To counteract therumors that were already seeping in from Galloway, King Malcolm left Fergus in Edinburgh while he and the Earl of Strathearn traveled in private to Roxburgh.

King Malcolm had met the prisoner in Roxburgh castle once before, when he’d first become king and had gone through curiosity to see what sort of a monster he held that was so frightening even his grandfather King David hadn’t had the courage to kill him. Or so young King Malcolm had told himself. In reality, he’d been well aware there were other reasons no one would execute that other Malcolm, the son of Aed, reasons to do with tradition and honor as well as pragmatism.

The prisoner represented a royal kindred that had been wronged by the king’s own. They were cousins, distant but undeniable. Malcolm MacHeth could only be killed in battle, for those reasons. And because a martyr with heirs to his cause was a focus for the swirling discontent in the country, from slighted or greedy nobles to hungry bondsmen and serfs who’d suffered from raids or taxation.

The chamber housing Malcolm MacHeth was not uncomfortable. He had a tiny window, high up in the wall, that allowed in fresh air and light. He had a fireplace for warmth in winter, a bed to sleep in, a bench to sit on, and books to read. He was allowed to exercise in the big inner courtyard, to ride and practice jousting, archery, and swordplay. He had respectable clothes, books, writing materials, and an old harp to strum. He was even allowed an occasional female visitor, although none from his family, who would have been instantly seized.

As soon as the guard opened his cell door, Malcolm rose from the bench on which he’d been reading. He would have been warned to expect the king. A beam of sunlight shone from the high window onto the bench, falling partially still on the tall, saturnine prisoner. The other half of his face remained in shadow, and the king wondered if that was deliberate, to hide his true thoughts or to confuse his visitors.

Malcolm MacHeth bowed to the king but did not kneel. He had a certain stature, a presence that the young king envied because it wasn’t haughty or arrogant, just…confident. Which was odd in a man who’d been incarcerated since the age of twenty-two. But then, he’d been in arms against King David since the age of thirteen.

Although now over forty years old, no grey marred the dark head of Malcolm mac Aed, one-time Earl of Ross. There was no submission in his somehow insolent stance. And if there was weariness or even hopelessness in his heart—God knew there should have been after all this time—it was well hidden behind the steady, intelligent dark eyes. If the king hadn’t known better, he’d have imagined the prisoner was mocking him for coming here, for betraying there was something important in the wind.

Suddenly, the king felt uneasy. He should have left this to others, not turned up here like a child at a fair, avid to see the great attraction and the effect on him of the king’s mighty presence. It was Malcolm MacHeth’s presence that seemed likely to dominate this encounter if the king wasn’t very careful.

The King of Scots straightened to his full, slightly gangly height and looked straight into his enemy’s dark eyes. There was an edge of hardness there that he hadn’t noticed before, a spark of something very like danger that made the king glad, suddenly, that he hadn’t come alone. This was the man who’d turned the kingdom upside down, who’d fought and killed ruthlessly from a tender age to take Scotland’s crown.Hiscrown.

Malcolm lifted his chin to give himself courage. “Good day to you, sir,” he said in English, grand and yet amiable. “I see that you are well.”

“As are you, sir, by appearance,” Malcolm MacHeth replied politely. “I’m honored to receive you in my humble dwelling.”

“Actually, you are,” the king said, scowling, though he recovered his grand manner almost at once. “But what am I thinking? You must forgive my discourtesy. I have brought you another visitor.”

The prisoner’s eyebrows rose, but he did not move as the guard pushed Donald MacHeth into the room.

Unarmed but unbound and with few hurts apart from those healing after his fight with Fergus of Galloway’s men, Donald stood stock-still beside the king, his gaze fixed on his father. His Adam’s apple wobbled as he swallowed. Tall, dark, lean, with those liquid dark eyes, he was unmistakably a MacHeth. Malcolm’s eldest son and heir.

And his father didn’t know him.

For the first time, the king felt ashamed, almost guilty. But he’d gone too far to back down at this stage. “I see introductions are required. Malcolm, son of Aed, meet Donald, son of…yourself.”

Malcolm’s lips parted in shock. Although this was what the king had wanted to provoke in his unflappable prisoner, for some reason, the success didn’t make him happy.

Without permission, Donald took a stumbling step forward and fell to his knees—as he hadn’t before the king.

“Father,” Donald whispered, bowing his head. “Forgive me.”

Malcolm stared, unmoving. Then, as if he couldn’t help it, his hand reached down, touching the bowed head of the son he hadn’t laid eyes on in over twenty years. “Forgiveyou? For what?”

Donald’s voice was hoarse, difficult, almost as if he were being strangled. “Being taken, being here. Thatyouare still here.”

“Well, I can’t blame you for either of the latter,” Malcolm said with a hint of the humor that must have been his saving grace through his long isolation from the world. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I can’t yet be sorry.” He grasped his son’s hair, tilting up his head. A smile flickered across his face. Donald’s breath caught.

The king couldn’t doubt the charged emotion between the two. He’d imagined somehow that there would be more anger, more gnashing of teeth than this silent, curiously helpless staring. He wondered what thoughts filled Donald’s head, as he finally beheld his legendary parent, and something almost like jealousy pulled at him. He could never have been king without the death of his own father, whom he missed suddenly with the force of an armored punch in the chest.

“I see your mother in you,” Malcolm said softly to his son.

“I see my brother in you,” Donald said. “I never expected that.”

“Where is your brother?”

“In Ross.” In response to Malcolm’s tug, he stumbled to his feet. His father held him by the shoulders in a grip that must have hurt. The man’s knuckles were white.

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