Chapter 5: The Queen's Defeat
The feast had stretched into an eternity of simmering hostility. Elizabeth held her place beside him, back straight, eating little. Every swallow of wine felt like a victory. She deflected veiled insults about English delicacy with a quip about Scottish subtletty being an acquired taste. When a grizzled laird remarked on her “quiet tongue,” she smiled sweetly and asked if he’d prefer she shout like the rest of them. A brittle, tense laugh circled the table. Her own smile felt carved from wood.
Lachlan was a silent, brooding presence beside her. He drank, nodded to his men, spoke when necessary. But his energy was coiled, directed inward. Once, his thigh brushed against hers beneath the table. A jolt, hot and immediate, shot through her. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t acknowledge it either. It was just another unnoticed current in the storm-filled room.
When she finally pleaded a headache, the relief was so acute it weakened her knees. He merely nodded, his gaze following her as she walked the endless gauntlet from the dais. She felt the weight of a hundred eyes, and Janet’s triumphant stare burning into her back like a brand.
Her chambers were a sanctuary of comparative silence. The fire crackled, pushing back the deep, encroaching cold of the stone. She shut the heavy door and leaned against it, closing her eyes. The echoes of pipe music and laughter still seemed to bounce inside her skull.
She moved to the dressing table, her movements slow and drained. She lifted the silver and sapphire circlet from her head. It was surprisingly heavy. She set it down with a soft clink and stared at her reflection in the polished metal mirror. The woman there was pale, her eyes too bright, the careful composure beginning to fissure around the edges. She unfastened the heavy velvet overdress, letting it pool on the floor, and sat before the fire in just her shift and thin woolen robe.
The portrait of her father watched from the mantel. His painted eyes offered no counsel here, in this land of strangers and hostile beauty. She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and let the firelight dance over her. The brave queen was gone. Only Beth remained, tired and lonely and aching with a humiliation she hadn’t earned.
The door opened.
He didn’t knock. He just entered, as if it were his right. Perhaps it was. The thought was a fresh sting. He closed the door softly behind him and stood there, a dark silhouette against the richer dark of the hallway.
She didn’t turn. She kept her eyes on the flames, on the way they consumed a peat brick, crumbling it into glowing embers.
He moved further into the room. She heard the soft scuff of his boots on the rug, the quiet creak of his leather doublet as he came to stand near her chair. He didn’t sit. The silence between them was a physical thing, thick and charged.
“You held your own out there,” he said finally, his voice low.
“I held something,” she replied, her own voice thin. “I’m not sure it was my own.”
He was silent for a long moment. “You asked for no explanation in the hall.”
“You offered your hand. It seemed explanation enough for the court.” She finally looked up at him. His face was in shadow, the firelight catching the hard line of his jaw, the copper glints in his hair. “We are alone now.”
He exhaled, a rough sound. He dragged the room’s other chair closer and sat, facing her. The proximity was overwhelming. He still wore the scent of the hall—smoke and leather and male sweat. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his large hands hanging between them. He looked at the floor.
“Janet Mackenzie,” he began, the name an admission. “Her father is a powerful ally in the north. An agreement was… understood. Between our families. For years.”
Beth said nothing. The fire popped.
“When the crown was thrust upon me, the old agreements shifted. But she was… a known quantity.” His words were careful, wrestled from someplace deep. “The Pope’s decree changed the board. A Scottish bride for unity here, or an English bride for peace with a nation that has bled us for centuries. The choice was no choice at all.”
“So you sought comfort from her.” Beth’s voice was barely a whisper. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a weary recognition of a political reality she understood all too well.
His head jerked up, his eyes catching the firelight. “In the past. Not since the decree was read. Not since I gave my word in that chapel.” The intensity in his gaze was fierce, absolute. “What you saw tonight… that was her statement. Not mine.”
The air left her lungs in a slow, controlled breath. “Do you love her?”
The question hung in the space between them, fragile and dangerous. He didn’t look away. The pause stretched, filled with the shifting fire and the distant, mournful call of a watchman on the walls.
“No.” The word was raw, stripped bare. “Affection, once. A habit. The promise of a simpler life. But not love.”
A tremble started deep inside her, a release of a tension she hadn’t fully named. She nodded, looking back into the fire. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. She is… the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
He made a sound, a short, dismissive huff. “She’s a painting. All calculated light and pleasing composition.” He leaned forward, forcing her to look at him again. His voice dropped. “You’re the fire that throws the light.”
Her breath hitched. She had no defense against that. So she reached for her oldest one. A brittle smile touched her lips. “Well, she definitely doesn’t like me. I can’t say I blame her. I did, rather accidentally, steal her chance to be queen.”
She waited for the dry chuckle, the quirk of his lips that sometimes passed for a smile. It didn’t come.
He wasn’t laughing.
His expression was grave, his eyes searching hers with an unsettling directness. “This isn’t a joke, Elizabeth. This is the rest of our lives. That hall downstairs, those people waiting for one of us to falter… that is our world now.” He reached out, slowly, and his fingers brushed a single tear from her cheek that she hadn’t even felt fall. The calloused pad of his thumb was shockingly gentle against her skin. “I pushed a woman off my lap tonight because my wife asked me to. In front of all my chiefs. Do you know what that means?”
She was frozen, captivated by his touch, by the weight in his words. She shook her head slightly.
“It means I chose you.” The words were simple, final. “The alliance. The peace. You. The consequences of that choice will come. But in that moment, there was no other path.” His hand fell away, leaving her skin feeling cold. “So do not make light of it. Not with me.”