but yer pretty face, Jamie. No father would want a lad with so little to offer, despite his pretty face.'
Jean Hay held her breath, not daring even to move.
'Well,' James Gordon allowed, 'I suppose I could wait to bed a wife. How much land in the glen, Angus?'
'We'll discuss it when we are back in Loch Brae, Jamie,' the laird said quietly, 'but 'tis agreed between us that ye will take Jean Hay to be yer wife in two years' time.'
'Aye,' James Gordon agreed, and the two men shook hands.
'Ye may kiss me, Jamie-boy,' Jeannie Hay said grandly, her heart pounding with excitement that she would finally have the man she wanted for a husband.
James Gordon looked at the young girl. Bending, he bussed her on her rosy cheek. 'Yer too young, lass, for the lips,' he told her sternly, seeing the mutinous look in her amber eyes.
Then to everyone's surprise Jeannie Hay answered meekly, 'Aye, Jamie. Whatever ye say.'
'Ye could take a lesson from yer little sister, Fiona Hay,' the laird said, a twinkle in his eyes.
Fiona looked outraged, but Janet Gordon Stewart laughed aloud, and her big husband chuckled, the deep sound rumbling about the room.
'The day I become a fool over a
'Take yer betrothed and go,' Angus Gordon said to his youngest brother, waiting until Jamie had departed with Jean Hay to look to his sister and brother-in-law. 'Say yer piece, Jan, for I know ye will anyway,' the laird told her with a small chuckle.
'Yer foolishness has gone on long enough, Angus,' Janet Stewart said sternly. 'When are ye going to set the day and wed with Fiona?'
“When she tells me that she loves me, sister, for to my surprise and my amazement, I seem to be in love with her, but I will not wed with a lass who does not love me,' he finished implacably.
'Nor would Fiona, with her unfortunate parents as an example, wed with a man who did not love her,' his sister answered him. 'A woman needs to know her man loves her, Angus. Only then will she dare to admit to her own feelings. Remember that we women are the weaker vessels.'
Janet Gordon Stewart shook her head. 'God help us all, then, for both ye and Fiona are so stubborn that ye may go to yer graves without ever being wed.'
PART II
Chapter 5
The coronation of James I and his queen, Joan Beaufort, was set for the fourteenth day of May. In that same week the king stood before his parliament, declaring firmly, 'If any man presume to make war against another, he shall suffer the full penalties of the law.' The pronouncement was greeted with a deep, respectful silence. In the month since the king had returned to Scotland, his nobility were learning to their great dismay that he was not at all his father's son. Rather he was his great-great-grandfather, Robert the Bruce, reborn, but, intrigued by the management of his government, a stronger king. The bonnet lairds and the general population were well pleased with this prince. The mighty were not, but it was too late. James Stewart had taken up the reins of his power most firmly. He would not be dislodged.
To Angus and Fiona's great surprise they were housed with their royal master and mistress in Perth. They had been given a small apartment with a bedchamber that had its own fireplace, a day room with a second fireplace, and two smaller rooms off the day room, one for their clothing and the other for Nelly. The windows of their apartment looked out over the river and to the bens beyond the town.
'I don't know if we are deserving of such luxury,' Fiona said, 'but I canna say I dislike it.' She plucked a strawberry from a dish at her elbow and plopped it in her mouth. 'Anything we desire at our beck and call, Angus. 'Tis not a bad life, is it?'
He laughed. 'Don't get used to it, lassie,' he advised her. 'I promised the king to bide with him but a short while. We'll be back at Loch Brae by autumn, I promise ye. I do not intend venturing far from home again unless the king truly needs me, but once I am well out of his sight, he will forget us, I am certain, for we are really of no import to him, Fiona Hay. Remember that, and don't be lulled into a sense of false importance because ye now serve the queen at this moment. She, too, will forget.'
'I know,' Fiona admitted, 'and I also will be glad to be back at Loch Brae, Angus. However, I canna help but have a wee bit of fun, since we are forced to remain at court for the next few months. What stories I'll have to tell our Morag!'
The coronation was celebrated at Scone Abbey with all the pomp and circumstance the Scots could muster. The king and the queen in their ermine-trimmed robes were both attractive in their youth, yet most dignified. There was something very assuring about the pair. And afterward when they rode, crowned, through the city, the crowds cheered mightily at the sight of their sovereigns, men tossing their caps in the air in celebration, women wiping joyful tears from their eyes.
' 'Tis a pity we could not have the stone to crown ye on, my liege,' the Earl of Atholl told his nephew.
'I was long ago crowned upon the stone,' the king said with a smile, and then went on to explain how Angus Gordon had
'This bonnet laird is too clever to my mind,' Atholl told his eldest son, who would shortly depart for England as a hostage. 'I will not be sorry to see the back of him and his equally canny mistress. She is too close to the queen, this wench of no importance.'
Now truly king, James Stewart began to rule as Scotland had never been ruled. Immediately he forced through the parliament several new laws. Next James set about reclaiming crown properties that had been usurped or badly managed by his unfaithful vassals during the regency and the reign of the two previous weak monarchs. This was a highly unpopular move. The king complicated matters further by insisting that every nobleman and woman, every laird of the realm, bring the patent for his or her lands to be examined by the king's justices that their validity might be attested to and reconfirmed. Those who could not prove their rightful ownership of their lands and titles were carefully examined as to their loyalties over the past years. They were either reissued their rights by the king's court or had their properties confiscated. The appropriated lands were then given to James Stewart, and he, in turn,
