Free Until You by Bertrice Small Page B

route to take in this matter. “The lady has taken a lover, cousin. He is the Earl of Glenkirk, and their passion for each other is both public and palpable. You cannot possibly wed her now.”
    “I will kill this Earl of Glenkirk!” Logan shouted, jumping from his chair. “I warned Rosamund that I should destroy any man who tried to take her from me! Where is she? Where is he?”
    “Sit down, Logan,” his cousin ordered in a hard voice. “The Earl of Glenkirk is a cherished friend of the king’s. He is a widower with a grown son and grandchildren. He has not been to court in almost two decades, but the king invited him to Stirling this Christmas, and he actually came. He and Rosamund Bolton took one look at each other, and while I do not pretend to understand it, they were lovers that same night, I am told. They have contracted that rarest of conditions: love. You can do nothing about it, Logan. Their hearts are engaged, and that is an end to it.”
    “She knew I wanted her for my wife,” the laird said, and he slumped again in the chair by the fire in his cousin’s apartments. Why did Rosamund not understand?
    “Did she say she would wed you, Logan? Was there an agreement legal and binding between you?” the earl probed. “If there was, you are at least entitled to damages for her betrayal.”
    “I told her I would come on St. Stephen’s Day to marry her,” he answered.
    “And what did she reply?” the earl asked quietly.
    Logan’s blue eyes grew thoughtful with his memories of that day. He and his clansmen had helped Rosamund entrap the thieves who had been pilfering her sheep. He had told her that while he was named for his mother’s family, Logan, his Christian name was Stephen, after the saint, and so he would come to wed her on St. Stephen’s Day, 26 December. She had sat there on her horse, and her amber eyes had looked directly at him when she said, “I will not marry you.” But she hadn’t meant it! She couldn’t have meant it. She was just being coquettish as all women were apt to be in situations like that.
    “What did she reply?” his cousin repeated.
    “She said no,” Logan told him. “But she was surely being coy.”
    “Obviously she was not,” the earl told him tartly. “I have seen her since she arrived here at Stirling, Logan. She does not strike me as a woman who dissembles or who blows this way and that. And her passion for Patrick Leslie is startlingly pure, as is his for her. When you see them together you will understand.”
    “You say he is an older man?” the laird asked his cousin.
    “Aye,” the earl answered.
    “Two of her husbands were older than she. While the second of them got children on her, they were but lasses. Is it possible, cousin, that she fears to wed with a young and vigorous man? Is that why she appears to fancy this graybeard lover?”
    Patrick Hepburn laughed aloud. “Put such notions from you, Logan,” he advised. “While the Earl of Glenkirk has seen a half century, he cannot be considered a graybeard. He is handsome and vigorous. Indeed, he seems to be in his prime, and his devotion to Rosamund Bolton cannot be questioned. I would swear there was sorcery involved if I believed in such things, which I don’t.”
    “I will not give her up!” the laird of Claven’s Carn said desperately. “I love her!”
    “You have no choice, Logan! You have no other choice!” the Earl of Bothwell shouted angrily. “Now, your brothers have been importuning me for months to find you a wife. I have put them off, respecting your pursuit of this Englishwoman. I can no longer, as head of this clan branch, ignore my duty to Claven’s Carn. I will find you a suitable wife, Logan. And you will wed with her and get heirs on her for the sake of your family. Put Rosamund Bolton from your mind.”
    “It is not my mind in which she has entrenched herself, Patrick. It is my heart,” the laird said sadly. “My brothers have sons. Let one of them take my place