Heart of Gold Read online

  Hearing the footsteps of someone passing in the hallway, Elizabeth cried out softly, suddenly alarmed. “Ambrose, we can’t. We’ll have your entire family banging on the door in a few moments. Everyone will want to see you, now that you’ve arrived.”

  He held her down.

  “Nay, lass,” the Highlander responded, brushing his lips over the soft ivory skin of her newly exposed breast. “My father is out hunting and my mother has ridden out with Cook to choose exactly what we will be serving at an upcoming wedding feast.”

  He drew his face back and smiled at her.

  “No one saw us arrive, other than Fiona.”

  “But Fiona saw you.”

  “Aye, and knowing the way my brother Alec feels about his wee angel—and she about him—they’re probably already locked away in their chamber, heedless to the goings on of this world.”

  “I like her very much,” Elizabeth whispered as she snuggled back into his embrace. “I know now why they call her the Angel of Skye. I don’t think I ever met a person as kind, as gentle, and as beautiful as she is.”

  “I have.”

  She stared at him.

  “You, my bonny lass,” he responded gazing into her eyes. “You are every bit as kind, as gentle, and as beautiful. Far more so, I would say.”

  “I love you, Ambrose.” Elizabeth hugged him tightly. “How did I ever live without you?”

  He whispered his response softly in her ear. “I don’t care to think of the past, my love. Only our wonderful future—and the next hour or two.”

  With the tip of his tongue, the Highlander traced a line along the skin of her velvety jaw to her waiting lips, finally reclaiming her mouth. His hands reached down and pushed her skirts up over her hips.

  “I was thinking of this all the way back from Stirling.”

  “Then it must have been a hard ride,” she whispered smilingly. “Very hard.”

  Elizabeth felt once again the surge of the raw desire that was swelling within her. Her lips responded to his, to the heat that was coursing through her veins. Whatever discretion remained within her dissipated like a morning mist. Indeed, the full sun of desire burst recklessly through. She opened her legs as he moved between them.

  Elizabeth’s senses were filled with him. The scent of him, the taste of him, the warm and throbbing pressure of his body against hers. God, how she missed him. How she loved him. How she wanted him.

  “An hour or two...” She moaned as he entered her. “But Ambrose, that’s the whole afternoon.”

  “Hmmm.” He pushed himself up on his hands as he drove to the very center of her. “Just what are we going to do with all that time?”

  Elizabeth smiled dreamily as she held him tight and gave in to the oncoming waves of pleasure.

  The late afternoon sun bathed the two lovers in a golden light, and Elizabeth lounged comfortably on top of the blond giant. Her chin was propped up on his chest, and Ambrose ran his hands gently through the soft waves of her unbound hair. The silky black tresses reached her shoulders now. His fingers traced a frown that was lining her forehead. He smiled.

  “Don’t mock me, Ambrose.”

  “Never would I mock you, lass,” he assured her, but the glint in his eyes undermined his words.

  “You are mocking me.” She lay her head down on his chest, averting her eyes.

  He rolled her onto her back at once and propped himself up on his elbow beside her.

  “Elizabeth,” he said seriously, “I just don’t understand what frightens you. That’s all.”

  “I am not frightened,” she snapped at him.

  “Ah, now, that’s more like my Elizabeth.”

  “Just...well, a bit nervous,” she continued in a softer tone. “And perhaps a little apprehensive, worried, and maybe...” She rolled her eyes toward the window. “Very well, I’m scared.” A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and dropped onto the down-filled mattress.

  “But why, lass?” he asked, perplexed. “Elizabeth, think now. You’ve painted in the studio of the master, Michelangelo. You’ve received the accolades of Giovanni de’ Medici, perhaps the greatest patron of the arts the world has ever known. You’ve painted the king of France, for God’s sake. The leaders of Europe recognize your talent. Why should you fear such...mundane work?”

  “Ambrose, it isn’t the work itself that bothers me.”

  “Then what?”

  “The queen,” she blurted out, turning her gaze back to him. “Queen Margaret.”

  He paused and looked at her gently. As he considered, his fingers traced the line of her jaw.

  “Isn’t this what you’ve wanted? To paint for her? To be recognized by the world as a woman, as well as the artist that you are?”

  She felt her eyes well up with tears. “You know that is what I want. But what I fear is what I don’t know—what I might have to give up in return.” She took hold of his hand as he brushed away a tear, and held his cool palm against her face. “I am happy now, Ambrose. Having you and Jaime. You two are everything to me. I won’t give up this happiness for any dreams that I might have harbored in the past. I love you too much to throw away what I have for some fleeting moment of fame.”

  “And I love you, too, Elizabeth.” The Highlander leaned down and placed a kiss on her soft lips. “What I told you before, when we were traveling in France, about Margaret thinking you could be a witch—”

  “I know. I know. You were just trying to scare me. That part of it doesn’t frighten me.”

  Ambrose gazed into her beautiful eyes.

  “If you don’t want to go through with traveling to Stirling Castle and painting the king and the rest of the royal family, that is fine with me, lass. But just remember this. The queen will exact no price from you. You are being presented to the Queen of Scotland as Elizabeth Boleyn Macpherson, a talented artist and the wife of her valued servant. I have brought her your work. She has seen it, and she loves it. She wants you at Stirling, for in becoming a member of her circle, you bring an added element of style to the Scottish court. An elegance, a bit of continental refinement. To her, the fact that you are a woman—albeit one with an enormous God-given talent—only makes it better. It adds a wee bit of notoriety to her reputation. Now Margaret can laugh at the other rulers of Europe and say, ‘You are all fools. I have the most talented painter of all here beside me...and she is a woman.’ Elizabeth, if ever there was a chance for you to demonstrate your artistic talents openly, it is in her court, my love.”

  Elizabeth gazed up at Ambrose, but her face was still clouded.

  “But Ambrose, she is sister to Henry, the King of England.”

  “Aye, she is. What’s in that?”

  “He is a brute.”

  “Well, lass, in many ways Margaret is a brute, too. But you were raised with your siblings—a condition, by the way, that Henry and Margaret did not share. Even though you three were all exposed to the same conditions growing up, each of you, as adults, took her own path. You, Mary, and the young one, Anne. Are you three the same person?”

  She shook her head. “But what I fear is that she will turn me over to the English. That she will send me back to England, separating me from you and Jaime, for what I did four years ago. For disobeying King Henry’s command.”

  Ambrose caressed her hair. “She is Scotland’s queen, my love. Her ties to her brother are few. Sending you back would be treachery of the vilest kind. She would never treat an invited guest so inhospitably.”

  The baron paused before continuing.

  “And what’s more, lass. I don’t think I’d be speaking beyond myself to say that she would never risk the wrath of the loyal Highland clans by sending one of their own to the south.” His gaze was steady and warm. “And you are one of us, now.”

  Elizabeth took his hand, and Ambrose brought her fingers to his lips.

  “Then...then you think I should go.”

  “Not you, lass,” he responded energetically. “We’ll go. That is, if you want to
do it.”

  Elizabeth could feel the excitement building within her. Her paintings had always presented her with a path to a new and different life. In doing what she loved, in practicing her craft, she had been forced to lose her identity. She had been required to live the life of another. That was why, when Ambrose had told her that she might still paint the Scottish royal family, she had recoiled in fear.

  Elizabeth did not want to go back to being someone else. She was a woman. She wanted to remain a woman.

  Phillipe de Anjou was dead. Elizabeth Boleyn was alive.

  “I do want to go, Ambrose. I do.”

  Chapter 30

  For the tenth time today, Elizabeth folded the letter at its seams and placed it on the table.

  Looking into the silvered glass, she gazed at the beautiful woman looking back at her. Never had there been such days of happiness, of joy.

  Outside her open window, she could hear the crowds in the street below, the bells ringing in the distance. The autumn afternoon air was crisp and filled with the smell of mutton roasting over an open fire. Her mouth was beginning to water from the aroma.

  She sat silently, her eyes taking in the flat stomach that would soon display the treasure it carried inside. She laughed quietly. Their child. Hers and Ambrose’s. A sister or brother to Jaime.

  And now, to top all this joy, she was to meet her sister Anne at last. Here, in this working room, within these walls, today.

  “Keep working,” she prodded herself aloud. “The time won’t go any faster if you just sit and wait.”

  She roused herself from the three-legged stool and went back to the canvas.

  A week after Elizabeth and Ambrose had married, the letter had arrived. Anne’s letter. She had read it again and again.

  Anne, the young girl she and Mary had left behind so many years back, had written with a heart full of love. Her words were not the words of the person their father had spoken of. No, this was a young woman who understood the pain of separation, the empty ache of loneliness. Anne wrote about how much she longed to see once again her only remaining sister, her beloved Elizabeth. She wrote of the trials of life at the English court. She wrote of Mary. Each time Elizabeth had moved through the text of the letter, she’d felt her heart swell with emotion at the sad lyric of her sister’s words.

  The letter had ended with Anne’s heartfelt disappointment at not being able to attend Elizabeth’s wedding, but she had asked for some chance to meet—to reunite—if only for a few moments. Anne had said she was sure she would be granted permission to come to visit the court of King Henry’s sister.

  If only, dearest sister, you could travel to Stirling...

  Elizabeth had written back at once. Of course they could meet at Stirling. At the Macphersons’ new town house there. Beneath the walled ramparts of the castle of Queen Margaret, where Elizabeth was to be presented at court.

  Elizabeth’s brushes flew over the canvas before her. The black, mischievous eyes, the pale, reaching hand, the last moments that she recalled of the time she spent with the energetic little sister. Elizabeth hoped Anne would like the portrait. It had been difficult to do a painting of such detail just from memory. But Elizabeth knew it was important for her sister to see the vivid image, and perhaps to know of the thoughts that the older sister, even through the passage of time and distance, had retained of the young woman.

  Ambrose had brought Elizabeth and little Jaime to Stirling over a month ago. Elizabeth had been presented at court and, to her surprise and dismay, had found herself, after spending some time in the queen’s company, accepting and even respecting Margaret as the strong survivor that the woman was. Sent away at age thirteen to marry King James IV of Scotland, Margaret—by her own admission no more than a pampered child—had been unhappy and lost for a long time. A stranger in a foreign land.

  But the turning wheel of Fortune would soon teach the young woman the hard lessons of life. Widowed at the age twenty-four, left in a wild and often barbarous country in the midst of social and political pandemonium after her husband’s death at Flodden field, Margaret Tudor had quickly learned the skills needed for survival.

  Elizabeth placed the brush with the others in the cup and wiped her hand with the rag on the side table. All the fears she had harbored before arriving at court had soon washed away after her first meetings with the queen. Ambrose had been right in everything he’d said. Elizabeth could clearly see that Margaret perceived herself as a patroness, a great and generous benefactor of the arts and of artists. But the one thing about the queen that most surprised Elizabeth only occurred to her in her observation of the people who surrounded Margaret. The queen was the benefactor of intelligent women. Women of learning and accomplishment. The ones who took their lives and their destinies into their own hands. Women like Margaret herself. Women like Elizabeth. The survivors, the strong.

  Then, yesterday evening, the man sent ahead by Anne had arrived with the news of her arrival by next noon.

  Even though she’d done it herself, Elizabeth now wished she had not sent Ambrose and Jaime away this morning. She’d told Ambrose that she wanted to greet her sister alone, to have a chance to renew their bond of sisterly love before presenting Anne to her husband and her daughter. But there was something else, as well. The damp chill of anxiety had begun to creep into Elizabeth’s bones. Even though their father had readily believed Jaime to be his eldest daughter’s child, Elizabeth could not be certain that Anne would believe the same thing.

  Even as a child, Anne had been intelligent beyond her years, and now Elizabeth was conscious of a nagging fear that her sister might discover the truth. After all, Jaime was Henry’s child, and with the dreams that Anne had of becoming queen, Elizabeth worried now what discovering Jaime’s true identity might mean to the ambitious young woman.

  It had been difficult to persuade Ambrose to go. He’d not wanted to leave her side, especially, as he jokingly put it, in her weakened condition. Finally, after a great deal of cajoling on her part, he’d reluctantly agreed to take Jaime for half a day’s ride and return at supper. But that was it. Elizabeth had known she would not be able to wheedle even a moment more out of him, and she cheerfully settled for their compromise. Indeed, since they’d wed, the Highlander had been true to his word—he had not left her alone for more than a day.

  Elizabeth smiled and gave a small sigh, thinking of the love that they shared. Life was bliss in Ambrose Macpherson’s arms.

  The painting was finished. Elizabeth stepped back and scanned the portrait with a critical eye. It was good work. And the young girl’s depiction successfully captured the very essence of what she remembered of Anne. But the setting in which she placed the girl was purely the product of her own imagination.

  Elizabeth depicted Anne standing before the high platform of an ornate altar. She was dressed in a crimson velvet gown, decorated with ermine, and a rich robe of purple velvet, also trimmed with strips of ermine. A golden coronet with a cap of pearls and stones covered her jet-black hair. Anne’s face contained all the vibrancy of a young girl, but her vestments conjured the image of a queen. Indeed, on the high royal seat before her sat Henry. Elizabeth smiled at her representation of the English king. The man looked aged and heavyset, and Anne’s arms were reaching out toward the king in a manner of confident entreaty.

  The likeness of Henry was probably enough for a beheading, Elizabeth thought, if she ever dared step foot again on English soil.

  The gentle knock at the door froze Elizabeth where she stood. She wiped her wet palms on her skirt and called quietly for her porter to step in.

  She watched in anticipation as the heavy door swung partially open. Instead of the serious expression of the old manservant, the bright face of one of the younger servants peeked inside.

  “They are here, m’lady.”

  Before Elizabeth could say a word, the door pushed open fully, and a tall, elegantly dressed young woman stepped in. Elizabeth recognized her at once.

 
; Taking the few short steps to meet her, Elizabeth embraced her sister tightly, gathering into her arms the beautiful creature. “Oh, my Anne. You are here. Here at last.”

  The painter felt her sister’s arms move around her, but she felt something else, as well.

  Elizabeth felt ice. A coldness as solid and palpable as ice. And she felt it instantly. She felt it the moment that she touched her. Surprised and momentarily confused, Elizabeth pulled back, struggling to hide her disappointment. She had been expecting Anne to have some similarity to Mary. Their sister had been affectionate, tender. Mary returned affection the way she breathed air. It was always natural, part of her.

  Elizabeth realized instantly that she had been mistaken. That she had been wrong in expecting so much. She couldn’t bring Mary back in Anne. Each one of them had her own individual traits that made her distinct. Anne was not Mary.

  Elizabeth watched as her sister stiffly extricated herself from her arms. Then the younger woman turned to Elizabeth’s gawking servant. “Leave us.”

  The serving girl nodded hurriedly and backed away at once, closing the door as she retreated.

  Elizabeth gazed as the hard smile that seemed to be carved on Anne’s face faded quickly. Too quickly. She wondered why the young woman had felt obliged to put on such a false show of joy. She stood silently, somewhat amazed at the hardness of the sparkling black eyes that were riveted to her own.

  Anne’s look was not one of sisterly affection.

  Finally the younger woman turned from Elizabeth and unclasped the traveling cloak that she wore. Now Elizabeth could fully appreciate the bright scarlet dress that Anne wore beneath. Sleeves of silk interwoven with fine gold thread puffed fashionably from long slits in the arms of the garment, catching Elizabeth’s eye.

  The elder sister watched in silence as Anne straightened and fluffed the sleeves, assuring herself that the lines of each showed appropriately.

  “You look beautiful in this dress, Anne. You’ve grown so much. So refined, so perfect.” Elizabeth smiled unconsciously. Hardly the child she’d seen last. “And you wear the cloth of gold. The English king’s—”