The Border Trilogy Read Free

“I’ll be rid of them soon,” he murmured, folding her into his arms and lowering his mouth to hers.
    Astonished though she was, the unexpected heat of his passion transmitted itself to her at once, flooding through her body, electrifying every nerve end. Mary Kate had never been kissed in such a way in all her eighteen years, and shock held her rigid for several seconds before she collected her senses sufficiently to shove her small hands against his broad chest in an attempt to free herself.
    He released her with a sigh. “If you insist, lassie, but I enjoyed the experience very much and look forward to repeating it as soon as may be.” Bowing deeply, he turned on his heel and strode off down the gallery.
    Mary Kate stood for a moment, breathless, her cheeks flushed, her emotions on end. Surely, she thought, only a man bred in the borders would dare to use her so. The odd thing was that she was not as angry as, by rights, she ought to have been. Instead, she was strangely excited by the fact that he had wished to take such liberties with her. Reaching distractedly for the door latch, she had begun to lift it before young Graham’s words echoed tantalizingly through her mind.
    Kenneth Gillespie’s reaction to the new arrivals had given her a fleeting notion of intrigue afoot, and that notion had later been reinforced by Douglas’s wary attitude when he signed to the others to leave the hall. Were borderers, she mused now, not noted for their constant plotting and devilry? Suddenly convinced that Douglas had come to Critchfield to meet Sir William MacGaurie for some secret purpose, she allowed curiosity to overcome good sense without putting up so much as a token battle. With a darting glance in either direction to assure herself that the gallery was empty, she hastened after Douglas.
    As she approached the room that she had seen him enter at the far end of the gallery, she could hear the low murmur of masculine voices, but she had to put her ear right against the door before she could make out any words.
    “That Babington business,” one man was saying, “has convinced Elizabeth at last that her own life is in jeopardy so long as Mary lives. I doubt there be any practicable course left to us now, MacGaurie.”
    “Sir Anthony Babington,” replied a second, more gravelly voice, “though his heart was true, was a young fool, but more important than that is the fact that he was no more than a pawn for that devil Walsingham.”
    A murmur of protest greeted the remark, and Mary Kate searched her memory. The name Babington was unknown to her, but Francis Walsingham she knew to be Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, a man renowned for his devious nature.
    The gravelly voice was speaking again in reply to the protests. “Nay, lads, ’tis true enough. My sources are infallible. ’Twas a wicked plot devised by Walsingham himself to entrap our unfortunate queen, and Babington walked into it just as tidily as you please. In point of fact, Mary’s own courier was Walsingham’s man, and Elizabeth was never in danger from anyone, least of all Babington. Walsingham intercepted all his letters to Mary and hers to him from the outset.”
    Outraged voices demanded to know whether Douglas thought the king would act upon such information, and after he had replied somewhat vaguely, Mary Kate soon learned from the lively conversation that followed that a commission had recently been formed in England to try the Scottish queen for treason as a result of her part in Sir Anthony Babington’s assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth.
    “They meet in the Star Chamber almost as we speak,” said the gravelly voice, “and ’tis certain I am that they will demand her death.”
    Mary Kate froze. Rather than bringing news of the Scottish queen’s imminent release, as she had so naively suggested to Kenneth Gillespie, she realized with horror that Sir William MacGaurie had brought warning of Mary’s imminent danger of execution