A moment of guilt overwhelmed the king, but he manfully swallowed it back. "Angus, my old friend," he began, "there has been a terrible happening. Fiona has been abducted on her way home to Brae. We can find no trace of her. We don't even know who took her." He went on to explain to the stunned laird. When he had finished he said, his voice rich with sympathy, "I am so sorry, Angus Gordon, but I will give ye the queen's cousin to wife if ye will have her. I know first ye will want time to recover from this tragedy."
Angus Gordon was numb with shock, but not so numb that he did not quickly refuse the king's apparently generous offer. "My liege, if the truth be known, Mistress Williams is pretty, and she is certainly sweet-natured and obedient, but as God is my witness, my liege, she is the dullest female I have ever met. I thank ye, but I will not wed her. I must go home to Brae, and I must search for my lass, for if I can't have her to wife, I will have no woman to wife. 'Twas not to be a marriage of convenience or one in which lands were exchanged. I love my lass. There is no other for me." He quaffed down the rest of his wine, then arose.
The king stood, too. He put a hand on the laird's shoulder. "Go and take yer rest, Angus. My page will take ye to a comfortable chamber, for the apartment ye shared with Fiona is stripped bare. Come to me in the morning before ye depart."
When the laird had departed, the king poured himself another goblet of red wine and sat down again before the fire. Slowly he rotated the goblet back and forth between his palms. Angus Gordon must absolutely not mount a search for Fiona Hay. There was always the danger he might stumble upon something. There was also a chance that he might remember The MacDonald of Nairn's interest in Fiona and then go to Nairn, where she was undoubtedly now in residence. There would certainly be an altercation. No matter who won it, James Stewart would lose. No. Angus Gordon could not look for his beloved. She was proving invaluable, as he had thought she would. Only the day before he had received her first communication, reassuring him that the Lord of the Isles did not mean to pledge him fealty yet, but neither would he provoke a confrontation. There would be peace in the winter months. James Stewart would have to find another mission for Angus Gordon in order to keep him from the highlands, if he was to keep Fiona Hay there, too. The king put his mind to the problem.
In the morning, after Prime, the laird of Loch Brae returned to the king's privy chamber to bid him farewell, but the king said, "I can't let ye go yet, Angus. I need someone I can absolutely trust to go to England to see that the hostages are being treated well. I am sending Atholl, and he wants ye with him. Ye will also arrange for the English to wait a wee bit longer for their first payment for my maintenance."
"My lord! I have been away from home for too long. My lass is missing, and I must find her! I have done yer bidding, and in doing so Fiona has been lost to me. Don't ask anything else of me, I beg ye!" He had not slept the whole night through thinking of Fiona. Who had taken her and why? Was she yet alive? He had to know!
"Angus, I need ye, " the king said again. "I will mount another search for Mistress Hay, I swear it! But if ye don't go with Atholl, I will not get the truth. One of his sons volunteered to go as a hostage. 'Twas done, I know, to prove his family's loyalty to me. Atholl will surely return and complain to me in order to get better treatment for the hostages, whom I know from my own experience are being well treated by the English. If ye are there to testify to this, then I will not have to bother them about Atholl's complaints. It is also important that the English wait for their payment. It is proving difficult to collect the moneys needed and to maintain my government. If ye do this for me, I will create ye Earl of Brae," the king said slyly.
"I must find my lass," the laird said stubbornly.
"We'll find her, Angus," the king said soothingly, "but are ye truly certain ye'll want her back? She was taken over a month ago, and if she is alive, who knows what may have befallen her, poor lass. Her captors were obviously the worst of highland bandits and may not have treated her gently. It is a harsh world, I fear."
"I want my lass back," the laird said once again, "and I will find her, my liege. Somewhere, someone saw something."
"Angus, Angus, don't make me do this," the king said. "If ye will not go to England willingly, then I must command ye to go."
The laird was surprised. "Ye would do that?"
"Aye," the king told him. "I must rule all of Scotland, or I canna rule at all, Angus. We will seek for Fiona Hay again, but while we do, ye will go to England in my service. Atholl leaves in a week. That will give ye time to go home to Brae and tell yer family of what has transpired. Then ye must return, Angus. If ye attempt to defy me I will put ye and yer whole family to the horn. Even my cousin, Hamish Stewart. While ye were gone, I executed Duke Murdoch and his ilk. They were my own kin, but a danger to Scotland for their unbridled ambition. They lie in their graves now, Angus Gordon, because I will be king in fact and not just in title. Can ye understand?"
The laird nodded. Strangely he did understand, but it did not make it any easier to accept the disappearance of his Fiona. "I'll leave for Brae now," he said, "and be back in five days' time, my liege. I will accept yer pledge to seek after Fiona Hay, for if she is not dead, then whatever has happened, she will be my wife. I love my lass." Standing, he bowed, and departed the king's privy chamber.
James Stewart felt his shoulders beginning to relax even as the door closed behind the laird of Loch Brae. It had been a near thing. He hadn't been certain that his friend would not defy him, risking a charge of treason for the love of Fiona Hay. The king was glad he had not.
The laird of Loch Brae sensed he was being spied upon, but he did not look up. Instead he mounted his horse and rode through the gates of the palace at Scone onto the road that would eventually lead him to Brae. Fiona would have taken this very road a little over a month ago. Who had taken his brazen wench and why? He had no enemies that he could recall who would do such a thing. Perhaps it had just been, as everyone seemed to think, a crime of opportunity, but if it was, why had no trace of Fiona, Nelly, and the baggage cart been found?
What a great stubborn fool he had been! Not once, even after Fiona had showed him she loved him, had he told her that he loved her. How that must have hurt her, and he hadn't meant to hurt her. His sister Janet had always said he was spoiled and wanted his own way all the time. He had always denied it, believing those qualities to be hers, not his. Now he realized that perhaps she had been right.
He did not regret taking Fiona Hay as his mistress in exchange for ihe cattle she had stolen from him. But after a few months he should have married the lass. He suspected he had been in love with her all along, from the moment she had ushered him into her tumbling-down tower house with such dignity and grace. She was every bit his equal, and he had always known it.
But he had never told her. Instead he had played a cruel game with her-taunting her, embarrassing her before all of Scotland, and pretending that he didn't care when the truth of the matter was he damned well cared. Now she was lost to him, and she didn't know that he loved her. Loved her above all women. Had always loved her, even if he hadn't admitted it. Had she, perhaps, known the feelings he couldn't, or wouldn't, express? Women were intuitive that way. Perhaps that was why she had been so patient with him.