The Rock Read online

  He gave her a wry look that said otherwise. “I survived.” Why did she think he left out a “barely” in there? “But it’s not anything I’m anxious to repeat.”

  “The swimming?” She knew he’d been worried about that.

  He didn’t bother hiding his grimace. “Let’s just say I got a lot better—quickly—but I will always prefer mountains to the sea.”

  Knowing there was only so much he could tell her, she didn’t question him any further, but promise or not, she intended to do a very thorough inspection of him later.

  She hadn’t realized she’d been watching the door until Thom asked, “Are you waiting for someone?”

  She shrugged, which only seemed to increase his curiosity.

  “I hope I do not have cause to be jealous?” There might have been a certain sharpness to the question behind the lazy tone.

  She had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing and couldn’t resist teasing him. “Well, he is extremely handsome and talented and is doing a great favor for me.”

  Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood for teasing. It had been too long for both of them. “Ella . . .” he warned.

  “There he is right now.”

  Thom’s eyes moved to the door and a moment later, his gaze turned back to hers. “Which one?”

  “Both, but in this case I was referring to the younger of the two.”

  His father and Johnny had just walked into the room, Johnny carrying the favor. Elizabeth rushed forward to greet them, and a space beside her and Thom on the bench was made for them to sit. If anyone thought it odd that the village smithy and his son were seated at the high table, no one said anything.

  “Is it ready?” she asked Johnny.

  Thom’s younger brother nodded. “Aye.”

  He handed it to her, and she in turn handed it to Thom.

  “What is this?” he asked, eyeing the long, linen-wrapped package.

  “A gift. Something to show how proud I am of you.”

  He took it in his hands. Having made enough of them—including the one that hadn’t left Jamie’s side since he’d been given it (and had inspired all the envy Elizabeth knew it would)—Thom had to know what it was.

  He gave her a questioning look and unbound it. Jamie and Jo knew what she’d done, but the others were watching with interest as he drew out the long sword.

  It was nearly the match for the one Thom had made Jamie in skill and design. The blade was strong and perfectly balanced and weighted, the handle and grip tight and molded for his hand, and the hilt and scabbard were decorated with enough gold and precious stones to be fit for a king. Indeed, she suspected when the king saw this one, he would be demanding that Thom finish the one he’d promised to make for him after he’d seen Jamie’s.

  One day Johnny might even surpass his brother in sword making. But the design and the scene and words etched on the blade—that was all her. Maybe Thom wouldn’t be the only one in the family making swords for kings.

  She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Thom speechless before as he took in the picture of the famous castle on the Rock etched on the blade. “You did this?”

  She beamed with pleasure. The work on the sword had kept her busy, but she’d also liked it. A lot. Enough to make her hope that it might keep her busy some more in the future. “Johnny and I work well together,” she said with a wink in Johnny’s direction.

  They already had plans for a few more. Thom would be busy in the months ahead readying for war and so would she. She’d found a cure for her restlessness—although she suspected it might have something to do with the man at her side as well.

  “I hope I did the words right,” Johnny said. “Lady Elizabeth”—she cleared her voice and he smiled sheepishly—“Ella said you had an affinity for French.”

  Elizabeth was trying not to laugh.

  Thommy shot her a look. “She did, did she?”

  “It says ‘Climb high where honor leads,’ ” she translated.

  Their eyes held. “It’s perfect,” he said, his voice thick. “Thank you.”

  She nodded. Seeing how moved he was, her chest swelled to bursting. But then one of the maidservants passed by with a tray of mutton and it was her stomach that swelled—and turned upside down. The wave of nausea hit her so hard she had to grab the edge of the table to steady herself.

  Thom reached for her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “The smell,” she said, fighting to keep the contents of her stomach in place.

  Thom must have looked so worried that Jo took pity on him—on both of them because Elizabeth was just as unaware of what was going on as Thom.

  “I think you might need to move up the wedding a week or two,” Jo said to her husband.

  “Why?” Jamie asked.

  Jo looked around at all of them as if she couldn’t believe they could be so dense. Only Thom’s father seemed to have guessed, and he was almost as pale as Elizabeth.

  “Because as it is, your first nephew or niece is going to be awfully big for eight months.”

  Elizabeth was stunned, but she recovered quickly. Her future husband, future brother-in-law, future father-in-law, and brother, however, didn’t demonstrate such resilience. Good gracious, she had never seen so many big men look close to fainting before!

  “Will they be all right?” she asked Jo worriedly.

  “In about eight months give or take. Just get ready for the—”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish before the fussing started. Thom growled for someone to get her a pillow—ten pillows, damn it!—not listening when she said she didn’t need one; Jamie called for wine, whether it was for himself or for her, she wasn’t sure; and Johnny and Big Thom took turns asking her if she needed anything and if she felt okay—every five minutes.

  It was going to be a long eight months.

  But the good news was that a few days later, she found herself standing before a priest with Thom—her brother and sister-in-law at their side just as they’d been all those years ago—repeating the vows that would bind her to the noble man who’d captured her heart when he’d rescued her from a tree.

  It had taken her awhile to recognize it, but she would never forget it again. Thom had always been her rock, and she would hold on to him forever.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE TAKING OF Roxburgh Castle on Shrove Tuesday 1314 by Sir James Douglas and—not to be outdone—the taking of Edinburgh Castle three and a half weeks later on March 14, 1314, by Sir Thomas Randolph are two of the most renowned events in the almost unbelievable Bruce journey to kingship.

  Douglas’s taking of Roxburgh during the Shrove Tuesday celebration happened much as I described it: he and sixty or so of his men took advantage of the garrison’s inattention and crawled through the field of livestock on all fours in black cloaks to disguise themselves. Using their ingenious rope scaling ladders, they scrambled over the wall and took the castle. I fictitiously gave credit to my sharpshooter Gregor MacGregor, but the incident with the keeper did happen. Guillemin Fiennes, the Gascon commander, had holed up in a tower but was compelled to surrender after being wounded (mortally it turned out) by an arrow to his face.

  Historian David Cornell has posited that Bruce hadn’t ordered Douglas to take the castle, but that it was a “rogue operation” by Douglas, who decided to try on his own after watching the castle for a while (David Cornell, Bannockburn: The Triumph of Robert the Bruce [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009], 118). Noting the “audacity of the operation,” Cornell calls it a “momentous feat of arms” (ibid., 118, 120), which is probably putting it lightly.

  There is a great story by Sir Walter Scott surrounding Douglas’s capture of Roxburgh. After climbing the wall and dropping down into the castle, Douglas comes upon a woman who is singing to her baby the infamous lullaby about the Black Douglas: “Hush ye, hush ye, little pet ye, Hush ye, hush ye, do not fret ye, The Black Douglas shall not get ye,” after which Douglas puts a hand on her shoulder and sa