A Noble Treason

  PRAISE FOR A NOBLE DECEPTION,

  THE FIRST BOOK IN THE NOBLE HIGHLANDS SERIES

  “A truly magnificent read.”

  —Coffee Time Romance

  “…Anything but just another historical romance. It’s fun, with characters you can’t help but love, none of the usual cliché dangers, and just the right amount of romance.”

  —Fic Central Book Blog

  FAMILY, LOYALTY, HONOR.

  PASSION.

  Scotland, 1456 – The traitorous Earl of Douglas has fled to England, leaving his clansmen to die in his place on the battlefield of Arkinholm. Two Douglas lords are captured and await execution, their families stripped of all title and hunted. Many flee. One rebellious daughter remains behind.

  Find her. Protect her. That is the mission entrusted to Sir Dougall MacFadyen by his master. Find Eleanor Douglas and learn if she hides in the Highlands to free her father, the much maligned Lord Albermarle. What Dougall discovers is a woman taken refuge with outlaws, a woman as far from her genteel beginnings as possible, who is sweeter and more alive than ever. Courageous, clever, and determined, she is all Dougall desires—and a possible traitor to the Crown. But for Eleanor, he would give more than the heart she’s already stolen. He would give everything.

  A NOBLE TREASON

  Veronica Bale

  www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

  A NOBLE TREASON

  Copyright © 2016 Katherine Ellyse LeGrand

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

  ISBN 978-1-944262-08-2

  Ebook formatting by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  To my Christopher…as always.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the team at Boroughs Publishing Group for their dedication, expertise and their enthusiasm for my project. Michelle Klayman and Chris Keeslar especially have been absolutely wonderful, and their patience with me throughout the publication process has been sincerely appreciated. Thank you so much for believing in me. To my husband Jeff and my son Christopher, your constant and unwavering support means the world to me. Thank you both so much for giving me the time and encouragement to do what I love. And to my very dear readers, I would like to thank each and every one of you for giving me a reason to get to my computer every day and write.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  Also by Veronica Bale

  A Noble Treason

  One

  A malevolent wind streaked through the autumn air. Invisible fingers raked the masonry of Stirling Castle, which jutted into the night sky atop the rock cliff on which it had been built. The wind’s lamentations seeped through the chinks and cracks of the mortar, echoing through the castle’s corridors like the moan of the banshee.

  The sky was a dense, unyielding black this night. Not a star, not a hint of the moon’s pale glow, penetrated the ominous curtain that smothered the land below. Neither was there firelight to offer a flicker of comfort. Not on the wall walk of the castle, nor in the streets of the town below. Any torches that were lit were quickly snuffed out by the relentless wind.

  Safely contained within Stirling Castle’s royal apartments was a man. He sat in front of a grand hearth, idly watching the flames of a modest fire as they twitched and shuddered in their iron grille. His bejewelled fingers clutched at the fine furs draped over his shoulders, and he slouched, sulking, in a large armchair of carved oak. The seat and the armrests were padded in scarlet velvet, complementing the crimson in the plaid of Clan Stuart that draped his knees.

  Some might even jest that they complemented the crimson stain upon the man’s royal cheek, a mark left at birth, and one that was a source of great ridicule…but only when His Majesty was not around to hear it.

  A sharp, swift knock at the door made a welcome disruption from the wind.

  “Come,” the king called.

  The guardsman stationed outside clicked the iron latch. The door swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges. Silhouetted against the flat orange glow of the torchlit corridor, the queen consort, Mary of Guelders, waited patiently to be received. She stepped through to her husband’s chamber. Dismissed by a wave of the royal hand, the guardsman shut the door behind her.

  King James remained as he was; he did not look behind to acknowledge his wife as she crossed the room. Her skirts rustled and jerked with each waddling step she took. Reaching his chair, she lowered herself awkwardly to her knees, a task made difficult by her heavily pregnant belly. Taking his gold-encrusted hand in both of hers, she kissed his soft, pale knuckles.

  “Your Majesty.” Her elegant French lilt rippled over delicate lips.

  King James waggled his fingers, releasing her. Queen Mary struggled to her feet, and when the king swept an arm, inviting her to sit, she smiled gratefully. Her gray eyes swept the room. The mate for the chair in which her husband sat was next to the window. Too far from the warmth of the fire. Her only other option was a cushioned stool. It had no back and no armrests, but it was next to the hearth, and closest to the king. Mary knew which seat James would prefer she take.

  It was just as well. She desired warmth more than comfort anyway.

  The queen arranged herself atop the stool, curbing (as much as possible) the grunts of effort that seemed to accompany everything she did these days.

  There was a long pause in which the king said nothing. He simply continued to observe the restless flames, as though he’d forgotten his wife had joined him. Mary knew better than to interrupt. She rested her hands lightly on her belly and waited.

  “How are you feeling this night, my dear?” he enquired at long last. His was a cultured English accent, the baser Scots inflections of his subjects having been scrubbed from his speech during childhood.

  “I thank you, Your Majesty. I am well. The babe has been mercifully still this day, and I have been able to rest.” It was a lie. The truth made the king fidget, so Mary always lied.

  “And the children?”

  “They too are well, Your Majesty. I am told by Alexander’s nurse that he enjoyed the apples brought from York. And Marguerite and Mary have spent the day at their lessons. The harp master sends Your Majesty his praises of the princesses.”

  The king tisked. “I’ve bid you before. Do not call her Marguerite. It is Margaret. This is not the French court.”

  “Beg pardon, Your Majesty. Margaret. I forget myself.” Abashed, Queen Mary smoothed imaginary wrinkles from her lap.

  The king lapsed once more into silence. A long, slender finger stroked his lips in thought. The queen shifted subtly on her stool. The ache in her lower back intensified, and she longed for a padded backrest. To hell with the backrest, she longed for her bed, for a skin of hot water and a goblet of warm, spiced wine. Still, she dared not interrupt. The king could be quite petulant when he had a mind to take offense at something.

  “Parliament has sanctioned my declaration,” he announced. “The lands of the lesser Douglases are now lawfully considered forfeit.”

  “Of course they have. How could Parliament possibly deny their king’s demand in the face of such a monumental treason?”

  “You placate me, woman. They certainly never had a problem opposing my father. Nor did they think twice when they forced me to return the Douglas territory I confiscated last year.”

  “Ah, oui. I had forgotten.”

  “You’re forgetting quite a bit of late.” James flipped a mocking glance in her direction.

  Mary’s face stung as though she had been slapped. Mon Dieu, he was in a foul mood. Had he beckoned her merely for the sake of abusing someone? He knew full well how different Scottish parliament was to that of the French system in which she’d been raised. Like its English counterpart, the French monarch’s ruling hand was absolute; he made demands of his noble lords, not requests. Not so with these Scots and their backward system.

  Of course, if she had paid better attention during her lessons as a girl, the queen might have remembered
that now. Parliamentary customs among the different kingdoms had never been of much interest to young, pretty Mary of Guelders.

  “And you will proceed with the confiscations?”

  “Yes, and as swiftly and brutally as possible. I want the Black Douglases crushed. Once and for all. No longer will they stand in my way of ruling my own lands. They have brought this upon themselves.”

  “And what of the prisoners? Will you release them now that Lord Ormonde is dead?”

  A muscle twitched in James’s jaw as it did every time Hugh Douglas’s name was mentioned. The Earl of Ormonde was brother to the Earl of Douglas, the clan’s chief, who had led a rebellion against the Crown only two months ago. The uprising had been put to an end at the Battle of Arkinholm, where the Douglases and their supporters lost their campaign. The Earl of Douglas fled to England before the battle began, leaving his brothers to carry on the fight in his absence. One escaped, one had been killed in battle, and one, Hugh Douglas, had been captured. For over a month he was held prisoner with the rest of his traitorous kinsmen in Stirling Castle’s towerhouse.

  The king had delayed Ormonde’s trial, hoping that the threat of his brother’s execution might lure the Earl of Douglas back to Scotland. It was to no avail. When it was obvious that the Douglas chief was more interested in preserving his own head than saving his brother from the fate that should have been his, the king took Ormonde’s head.

  Ormonde’s body had been drawn and quartered; his sightless, tar-coated eyes now stared out over Stirling from atop the towerhouse gate—assuming there were still eyes in the head, and that the crows hadn’t been at them.

  It did not satisfy King James. He was furious that his revenge upon the Black Douglases would not be complete.

  “I’ll have them all beheaded, too.”

  “All?” Mary was surprised. “Even the Earl of Albermarle? I thought his supporters had pleaded with you to release him.”

  “Am I to dance to my nobles’ tune, then? Am I not king? Lord Erroll and his Clan Hay can be damned for all I care.”

  “And the Earl of Angus? Douglas the Red?”

  James’s lips twisted in consideration. “Yes, the Red Douglas suggested he should be spared as well. And I cannot jeopardize his loyalty. Not now, anyway. I shall have to sway his position with more lands, I think—which I’m perfectly prepared to do now that parliament has come through on the forfeitures of all Black Douglas holdings.”

  “And does Your Majesty feel confident the Red Douglas can be swayed?”

  “Of course. All men can be bought if the price suits. Every last one of those Douglas heads in my towerhouse will be mounted beside Ormonde’s, you mark my words. It is simply a question of when.”

  “As you will.” Mary bowed her head.

  More silence passed before James finally waved a pale hand. “Leave me.”

  “Humbly, Your Majesty.” Heaving herself off the stool, Mary curtseyed, and waddled away. The door opened without command, the sentry on the other side well trained at listening through thick oak for his cues.

  When the door shut behind her, Mary released a breath. What a brutal, bloody land this Scotland was. In her six years since landing on its rocky, jutting shores, she’d never been able to accustom herself with the fierce, intense hatred that spanned hundreds of years. Brother fought brother, families slaughtered their own. This feud with the Black Douglases was a prime example. George Douglas, Earl of Angus and chief of the Red Douglas line, had brought down his own Black Douglas kin. The ultimate betrayal.

  It troubled Mary of Guelders deeply. Pray her sweet, young son ruled in a more peaceful time than that in which he would grow to manhood.

  Pray her son lived to reach manhood, come to that.

  ***

  The wind that moaned through the enclosed halls of Stirling Castle’s royal apartments all but shrieked through the uncovered slits built into the masonry of the towerhouse cells. Even if there had been a moon this night, the openings in the wall were too narrow to admit any light it might have cast.

  It might as well have been a blessing. The less evidence of the outside world the prisoners had the better. A small mercy that they could not see the freedom they would never again enjoy.

  Amidst the surge-and-lull rhythm of the wind, there was a sinister scratching sound: sharp little nails scrabbling sickeningly across the stone floor. It was not long before those sharp nails were skittering over the leg of Edward Douglas, Earl of Albermarle.

  The earl had abhorred the sensation once…once, when he still had a scrap of his dignity to hold on to. That was when a scraggly, unwashed beard hadn’t grown to cover half his face, and when his tattered and blood-crusted clothing hadn’t stank of urine and worse.

  He didn’t mind the rats so much anymore; they had become his constant companions over the past month. Though, he damned the nasty little creatures to hell when they nibbled at him. He could do little to stop them, though. His leg bone was shattered in at least two places and had not been attended to since the battle. It throbbed day and night as it healed, unset and most likely crooked. Some days the pain was worse than others.

  When he was first taken prisoner, Lord Albermarle had been glad it wasn’t an open wound, which would fester. Not like Geordie Douglas, the aging crofter from Dumfries. It was a blade to the shoulder that brought Geordie down on the battlefield. Within days of being taken, he was writhing with fever.

  Now, though, Lord Albermarle wasn’t sure if he wouldn’t want the same for himself. He was a dead man either way, and at least Geordie had not suffered the agony of a clear mind before he expired.

  Edward Douglas’s mind was as clear as ever. He would never have thought it before now, but that was far worse than a shattered leg.

  That bloody mace. He hadn’t seen it coming. In one breath he was horsed, defending against the upward thrust of an opponent’s blade. The next he was falling from his saddle, the spiked iron ball taking him in the thigh. He hadn’t even seen the man who struck the blow, nor had he seen the second swing that crushed his shin.

  Whether the unseen man had been lucky in his strike, whether he’d aimed true, and why he’d stopped at the earl’s leg only—these were questions that had come afterward, in the long, dark hours of his incarceration. At the time of the injury, Lord Albermarle knew nothing but blinding pain. Around him the battle was being lost, and he’d been senseless to it all.

  By the time enough of his wits had returned, it was over. The dead lay where they’d fallen. Lifeless and drenched in their own blood were the loyal kin of the Black Douglas. The injured were hauled up and tossed onto a cart, Lord Albermarle among them. The uninjured survivors were bound together, tied to horses, and the lot was taken to Stirling.

  Hugh Douglas, Lord Ormonde, was one of the uninjured prisoners traveling by foot. He was not far from Lord Albermarle’s cart. In his haze of pain, the injured earl gazed upon his lord and leader’s face: haggard, bloodied, defeated. Yet still defiant.

  Of the injured that had been loaded onto the cart with him, most had died of their wounds by now. Like Geordie, the Dumfries crofter. Their moans and cries grew weaker over the days; they came less often as the men expired one by one.

  Lord Albermarle had no inkling of whether his sons, Edward and Brandon, were here with him.

  Not an inkling of whether they had survived the battle, or…

  Over the drone of the wind, Lord Albermarle heard the heavy, menacing footsteps of a gaoler’s boot. The metallic click of a lock being opened was followed by the high-pitched squeal of unoiled hinges. A sliver of thin, orange torchlight sliced through the void of blackness, falling on the earl’s dirty, sunken face.

  With the light at the man’s back, Lord Albermarle could not determine which of the guardsmen this one was—until the man carelessly tossed a crude wooden plate just out of his reach so the earl would have to struggle against his damaged leg to fetch it.

  “Supper,” barked the gaoler.

  Ah, so it was Frazer. A brute of a man as ugly as he was mean, with large, bulging eyes and the lower half of his jaw deformed from some long-ago battle. Frazer was one of the cruelest guards at Stirling. He made sure his charges knew it.