Knight of Grace. Sophia James

exactly what it was Grace was thinking. ‘He is far bigger than we had thought.’ Her husky lisp contained both tremor and question.

      Nerves, Grace decided and squeezed the hand that threaded through her own, trying to give some sort of reassurance. Anne and Ginny crowded in behind. Waiting. She felt their collected fear like an ache and gestured them back, behind her, where she could stand between any threat of violence, should it come from the Scots.

      ‘These are m-my cousins.’ She felt she had to say something as an awkward silence hung across the group and was pleased when her uncle tried to ease the tension.

      ‘The envoy led us to believe that you would be at Grantley before the last Sabbath, Laird Kerr.’

      ‘I was…detained.’

      Detained. The word held an edge of dark despair.

      By what? By whom?

      A woman, perhaps? The thought slipped into Grace’s mind as she observed him, for he had been married before. She knew, because Judith had overheard the king’s man saying so to his travelling companion, just before he had spoken of the lack of coinage the Kerrs were cursed with, and the desperate need of the Laird to find a woman of means.

      Means. Indeed she had that.

      With a substantial inheritance and a bloodline that was the very zenith of pure, her dowry would go far to help the ailing finances of any family down on its luck.

      Marriage! Would this stranger demand his conjugal rights this very evening in front of his band of men? Lord, even the idea of removing her clothes had the blood rushing to her cheeks.

      He would see.

      He would know.

      He would understand the truth of what before had only been whispered at and if he thought her ugly now… She shook her head. Hard. And feeling the sharp ends of Anne’s nails digging into the flesh of her inner arm, she tried to take charge.

      ‘W-Would you c-come inside and have a meal?’

      Better, she thought. Much better. At least every word was not cursed with a stammer. Raising her glance, she looked straight at the man who would be her husband. In the direct sunlight he had squinted his eyes and the gathering lines to each side of his face were…attractive. No other way to describe them. Much more attractive than his brother had been, and he was deemed a handsome man! Angry at her wayward musings, she spoke again.

      ‘Father O’B-Brian is still at prayer and could be so for a while. If you could p-p-poss-poss…’

      He stopped her simply by laying his hand across her own and she had the distinct impression of help.

       Help?

      Confused, she looked around. Judith’s eyes were filled with tears and weepy, and Anne and Ginny’s faces were pale. Lord, she prayed her cousins would not burst forth into noisy wailing. Not in front of these men. Not when the safety of Grantley depended on a marriage, signed, sealed and delivered.

      Sacrifice. Expediency. Words that had shaped her life for all her years and would now continue doing so. It was written in the blood of men and in the ink of kings.

      Irrevocable. Unalterable. Settled.

      There could be no going back or refusal. Her life for her family’s lands.

      She imagined herself with a sword in hand, beating back any enemy, protecting them with her finesse, winning a battle that no other ever could have…

      The thought was so ridiculous she began to smile, but caught back the humour as flinted steeled eyes met her own. And swallowed. Now was not the time for foolish flights of fancy.

      ‘My uncle has some f-fine Rhenish wine.’

      When Kerr inclined his head and gestured to his men, she felt a sigh of relief. Not quite time to leave, then. Still an hour or so before she would be wrenched from here and transplanted to Belridden, his keep a good forty miles to the north.

      With a heavy heart she led the men in and, conscious of the fact that the Laird of Kerr walked directly behind her, tried her hardest to minimise her limp.

      Following Lady Grace, Lachlan decided that her hair beneath the ugly skullcap was long and red. Not the quiet red of auburn or the burnished red of copper, her hair was a bright gilt shade that showed up in her brows and on the freckles that her cheeks were blemished with. And the skin on both her arms was strangely marred by dryness.

      She was not at all the girl he had expected. Nay, woman, he corrected himself, for he knew her to be twenty-six. Long past the more usual time of marriage, long past the silly vacuous age of rising hope. For that at least he was glad. He frowned as he remembered back to the things that were said of Lady Grace Stanton.

      Frightened. Temperate. Plain. A dreamer. Aye, and for these things she would do. And do well.

      No temptress to dole out her favours to other men when he was away from the Kerr land. No competition to Rebecca, either; with the quick tongue of his mistress silenced, he knew that life at Belridden would be much easier than if he had brought home a beauty.

      Lady Grace would suit him admirably. A homely and well-dowered wife. A woman who would not complain. A lady who would have the means to run his castle and the hips to bear his children. It was enough, and, if life had taught him anything, it had been not to expect too much.

      The flash of humour as she had tempted him with the wine had been worrying, though! He had seen that look before in the eyes of experienced courtesans. A certain arrogance and self-assurance that came with the innate confidence of beautiful women.

      Grace Stanton was hardly beautiful.

      And yet she was not ugly either. Not when the sun hit the light velvet of her eyes or shadowed deep dimples on each cheek. Not when her fingers had touched his arm and he had felt something more than mere indifference.

      Frowning he glanced over at the younger cousins. Frail, fragile and fearful.

      She protected them, supported them, held their shaking fingers in her own and shepherded them inside, like a mother hen might do to her chicks when the rowdy farmyard dog was nigh.

      He looked at his men and saw that their interest was firmly placed on his wife-to-be, and on the ring she wore.

      He had seen it immediately when first he had taken her hand.

      His brother’s ring.

      The gold insignia burnished by time.

      Ten months since Malcolm had been killed in an accident at Grantley with the explanations of his demise as patently false as the proffered sympathy. No body had ever been found, the ravine he had fallen into deep and craggy and a river at its bottom channelling out to sea. Lach’s brows drew together as he remembered the Earl of Carrick’s oldest son Stephen giving his grandmother and him a version of the death with lying eyes and a shaking voice. Fallen during a ride after giving his troth to Stephen’s cousin? Looking at the lady herself, Lach could not believe her to have inspired a proposal from a brother who had courted and left many of the beauties of both England and Scotland.

      Curtailed by politics, however, any revenge was compromised by the unchangeable declaration of meddlesome kings.

      A wife of means would be provided to pacify the Kerr clan for the loss of their kin. One brother for another and half of the spoils of the Stanton dowry to fill the empty coffers of Belridden. A quarter would go to Edward; a sop perhaps for Lionel, the Duke of Clarence, in his own bid for the Scottish throne, and the rest to David, a welcome windfall with the merks of the Berwick Treaty largely unpaid. When Lachlan had protested against the offer, it was made clear to him by David that he had no choice. Marry the girl or risk his lands! Put so succinctly, he had packed his things and headed south to get her: his brother’s intended, the Kerr ring still on her finger carved in gold and rubies. Unhidden.

      The bile rose in his throat. Had it just been he, he might well have laid his hands around the slim column of