Page 35 of My Warrior
An abrupt knock on her chamber door forced her to square her tired shoulders again. “Come,” she called out.
A servant lad plunged into the room. “My lady, you must come! There’s a brawl in the tiltyard!”
“Who?” she demanded, coming to her feet.
“Robbie,” the servant began. “He said…”
“What?”
The boy glanced warily about to make sure they were alone. “He said you’re coddling the Englishman, that you…”
“That I what?” she asked, her fury rising.
“That you… you wait upon him hand and foot like a…” It was obviously too crude a word for the servant to repeat.
Heat flared in Cambria’s blood. She snatched her father’s sword from the wall and stormed from the room.
The tiltyard was a shambles. Men fought each other, their swords nicking here and there to fleck blood across the polished mail. They hurled insults and kicked up straw and dust as they battled. Without hesitation, she stepped into the fray and confronted Robbie, her sword at the ready. One by one, the others ceased their fighting.
“What nasty rumor would you volley about now, Robbie?” she demanded.
Clearly surprised by the proximity of her blade, Robbie was struck speechless.
Sir Douglas, the man he fought, had no such affliction. “I’ll defend you, my lady, fear not,” he said, ready to champion her against Robbie’s accusations.
“Defend me against what?” he inquired, her eyes fixed on Robbie.
Douglas wouldn’t answer.
But Robbie found his voice. “You keep this English bastard for a pet while all of Scotland prepares for war!” he spat.
She knocked his sword away in one swift movement, catching him off guard, and lifted her own blade to his chest. “I keep him as a hostage,” she told him in a deceptively soft voice. “Do you have any idea what Edward will do to us if we harm a hair on de Ware’s head?”
“Let Edward come!” Robbie shouted, trying to inspire support in the others. “We’ll show him the might of the lion of the north!”
In an instant of awareness, Cambria learned what her father had known all along—Scotland was too weak to win this war by bloodshed. Robbie and the others were so blinded by their fervor that they wouldn’t recognize the possibility of defeat. The Gavin—the people, the land—these were what mattered, not the politics of distant London. She suddenly felt a rush of fierce pride and protectiveness that overcame all else.
“I will not allow Gavins to be slaughtered for your cause,” she stated.
“Then you’ll fight alongside the English…against us…against me?” Robbie demanded incredulously.
“Iwill never abandon Blackhaugh. Will you? Again?” she asked, raising a brow.
His face turned a mottled red. “I didnotabandon—“
“You left my father in his hour of need!” she cried.
Without warning, the torrents of pain she’d subdued from the cruel tragedy of her father’s death came unleashed. They overwhelmed her, and her vehemence made Robbie’s eyes widen as her blade hovered just inches from his heart.
“You left him to die for the Gavin, you son of a bitch, and yet I welcomed you back to Blackhaugh. I freed you from the hands of the enemy, and this is—“
“So now you’d deliver me into the hands of the enemy again? Nay, Cam! I’ll not live under the thumb of Edward—“
“Then go!” She pointed harshly with her sword. “Leave Blackhaugh—you and all others who would take up your cause! But take care you don’t show your face here again, for if you do, I shall follow my father’s advice and name you traitor!”
Robbie swept up his sword with a vengeance and glared at her. “Lads!” he called. “We’re no longer welcome here. Let us join the true Scots in their noble war!”
Although not a man dared reply, all of the renegades followed Robbie as he left the tiltyard.
