Page 64 of Anice’s Bargain

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The next month in the castle flew by in a series of ploughed fields and planted beans, with James settling into his role of master of the land in Carlisle. The days were filled with doing what he could to set his people’s wrongs to right, and the nights were spent with his lovely wife, warm beneath sheets as they learned every sensual inch of one another’s bodies.

In only that short amount of time, the crops had begun to take root and grow. Dirty-kneed Graham children ran about together with the English-born children of Caldrick, armed with stones to throw at birds and animals who threatened the tender shoots. Thus far, they’d done a good job. Very little was lost and day by day, the fields filled in with green.

Cottages were freshly thatched and the construction of new ones had begun. The large amount of coin included with Anice’s dowry afforded enough food for the whole of Carlisle while they waited on their growing crops. The following years could sustain on what would be harvested.

And James had begun to learn to read in English, bit by bit, and had already begun to implement what he’d gleaned from the book Anice had given him.

The Graham reivers were adjusting well, and a sense of peace had settled between the Scottish and the English. Anice’s new maid was coming along nicely in her duties, spurred on to learn by her desire to repay the kindness bestowed upon her. Ava was pleased to return to her duties assisting the cook, and certainly, her pastries reflected as much. Even Drake had been satisfyingly out of the way for the better part of the month. Or at least from what James had seen.

Everything was going according to plan. Better than planned. James opened the shutters to let in the crisp spring air and stared out the window of his solar to where the neat rows of new, pale green plants grew. Peas and beans and wheat and oats and barley. They were planting life. Honor. Freedom.

Lord Bastionbury would be proud. Mayhap James would invite the older man to join them for the Lammas Day celebration in early August when the first wheat was harvested.

The murmur of male voices sounded just below James’s window where a patch of ivy grew over an alcove on the battlements. That the place was ideal for clandestine meetings and private discussions and located in such close proximity to the solar window was surely not a mistake, but the work of a crafty and clever lord.

“Do ye think it can be done?” a male voice asked.

“Ach, aye, I know it can.” The rattling voice was more familiar than James could ignore. His father.

The other man spoke again. “Ye were no’ there so verra long.”

“I assure ye, nearly a month was plenty long enough,” Laird Graham said. “I know every way in and out of Werrick, as well as any potential weakness. Do ye think you can round up the men?”

James strained to listen. Surely his father did not mean to try to take back Werrick after the forced marriage. It had been he who had secured this land. He’d even had his own tryst with Werrick’s healer.

His father’s fellow conspirator did not reply at first. “The men are happy here. They like working the land. They especially like a bellyful of hot food in their gullet every night. No’ just for them, but also for their wives and bairns.”

Laird Graham scoffed. The crass sound morphed into a great, wracking cough. He continued to do poorly despite the clean air at Carlisle and the onset of warmer weather blowing in. It wasn’t just the wheezing and persistent hacking, but also the sallow tinge to his face and the lines around his mouth that bespoke of an unmentioned pain. Isla had sent some bundled herbs for his father to burn, but James doubted the old man had gone through the effort.

“The men are content now,” Laird Graham agreed. “But what happens in several years when wielding a plough and scythe aren’t enough? When their souls crave adventure?”

“’Tis a quiet life,” the man said simply. “I like it.”

“Ye dinna miss reiving? Ye dinna miss plundering?” James’s father emphasized the last word.

The man didn’t reply this time, or if he did, James could not hear.

“How would ye feel if a sudden raid were to raze the lot of yer hard work to the ground?” The low menace in Laird Graham’s voice prickled James’s spine.

There was an unmistakable threat there, one that could put the whole of Carlisle in danger. This needed to stop. Now. And James would have to tread lightly with the topic, lest his father take it upon himself to enact his vengeance.

“I’ll speak to the men,” the nameless man said at last.

“Aye, see that ye do. I’ll have an answer from ye in three days’ time, aye?”

A grumble sounded in return.

“Think on it, lad,” Laird Graham said emphatically. “The purloined spoils of Werrick Castle, ours again.”

With that, the conversation ceased and the departure of footsteps crunching over the stone battlements moved in opposite directions. James dragged a hand through his hair. The quiet peace of his current life could not last forever. He knew that well enough, but he’d expected at least more than a month.

However, James now understood what the marital negotiations, the insistence that they remain at Werrick Castle until the nuptials, had truly been. A ploy, a way to learn the layout so that Laird Graham might relive the glorious plunder of Werrick one last time. And he’d exploited James’s desire for a more peaceful life to get him to comply. James’s stomach turned at how easily he’d been fooled.

He should have known better. A lifetime with his father’s perfidy and all-consuming egoism should have taught him better than to trust.

Now it was James’s people who would pay the price.