The Thistle and the Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

of passion but, acutely conscious of his inexperience, he hesitated. There was a bitter sweetness in fifteen-year-old love that would never be equaled at another time of his life, he knew. She drew away from him. “They will find a bride for you from some foreign country,” she said sadly. “They will need to make some useful alliance.”
    “They have found brides for me before.” He snapped his fingers. “That for their foreign marriages! When I was very young it was decided I should marry the Lady Cecilia, second daughter of King Edward IV of England, but when Edward died his daughter was no longer considered a worthy consort. There was a new king on the throne—Richard III. I know because my mother insisted that I learn what was happening in other countries and particularly in England.”
    “It is a necessary part of the education of one who is to be King,” Margaret reminded him.
    “And Richard had a niece, the Lady Anne Suffolk, and he was eager for her to marry me. But it was not long before the Tudor Henry VII had ousted Richard from the throne and then Lady Anne, like Lady Cecilia, was no longer a worthy match for me. Foreign marriages! They often come to naught.” He boasted: “When I am King I shall choose my own bride and I know who she will be.”
    Margaret sighed and leaned against him. Why not? She was after all a Drummond and an ancestor of hers, Annabella Drummond, had married Robert III of Scotland.
    “Oh, James, would you indeed?”
    “You may trust me,” he assured her. “I would I were King now…But no…I don't.”
    His brows were drawn together. He wanted to see his father, to tell him what nonsense it was to think that
he
, his eldest son, James, who wished to live in peace with everyone, would everdream of harming him. James was imagining a pleasant scene when he would be brought face-to-face with his father and would heal the rift between him and his nobles; then he would take Margaret by the hand and say: “Father, this is the lady I have chosen to be my bride.” There would be great rejoicing throughout Scotland, for the discord would be healed by this marriage; Stirling would be the scene of joyous festivities and he would ride through the streets to Edinburgh, and there would be tournaments in the fields about the Castle and Holyrood House.
    It was such a pleasant dream that it was a pity to wake from it. But he did not wish to be King since that must mean his father would be dead. He hated the thought of death; it would always remind him of the death of his mother.
    Margaret understood; she pressed her lips tightly together because she knew it would hurt him if she said what was in her mind; she must not repeat what she had heard her father and his friends say, which was that it would be a good day for Scotland if James III were dethroned and his son set up in his place.
    Everyone at Stobhall talked of it. She had discussed it with her sisters, particularly the younger ones—Anabella, Eupheme and Sibylla. It was for this reason that her father had brought the young heir to the throne to Stobhall, that he might be here in the hands of his father's enemies when the need arose.
    “I hate death,” whispered James. “And my father would have to die before I could be King.”
    It was only about a year ago that his mother had died, and he was still aware of the void that had made in his life. It had changed the tenor of his days and he could still wake in the night and shed tears for the loss of his kind and tolerant mother.
    And when she was no longer there his father's enemies had decided to make him their figurehead. He should have protested, he knew; but Lord Drummond had brought him to Stobhall and here he had found Margaret.
    She was impatient of the course the talk was taking, for she did not wish to make him melancholy.
    “Let us take off our shoes,” she said, “and dabble our feet in the water.”
    She cried out in mock dismay as the cold water splashed abouther