The Border Hostage by Virginia Henley Page A

Blackadder, other animals from Douglas may have mysteriously found their way there. The broad meadow below Carlisle Castle was filled with horses. At first it seemed an impossible task to differentiate between a Douglas horse and any other, but Heath had worked with the animals for a month, and once he began to touch them, he recognized some of them. Moreover, the horses recognized him.
    Heath, disappointed that his stallion was not grazing with the other horses, returned to the inn to concoct a plan. He already knew the ideal time would be the night of the ball, but he still had to decide how to get the herd back to Douglas, undetected.
    Heath was not surprised to see Ramsay Douglas's two brothers, Gavin and Cameron, when he arrived back at the inn. Both captained Douglas vessels and had taken much-needed food supplies and fodder to Annan and its surrounding villages devastated by the recent raid, before anchoring in the River Eden at Carlisle. The minute Heath saw them, he knew they were the answer to his dilemma. He told them what he'd found at the castle and outlined his plan.
    “Lord Dacre would never raid a Douglas holding. He's Head Warden, sworn tae uphold the law. Are ye sure they're Douglas horses?” Cameron asked.
    “Do we care?” asked a grinning Gavin, ready to reive anything that belonged to the English.
    “I'd never steal anything that didn't belong to me,” Heath swore solemnly, and watched the Douglas brothers fall off their stools laughing. “Tell your crew to get theircarousing done tomorrow; they'll need to be sober the night after.”
    “Then we'd best get started!” Gavin declared.
    “Do you have a Douglas dress plaid I can borrow? I need a costume,” Heath explained.
    “Yer never attending a bloody fancy-dress ball?” Cameron almost choked with mirth.
    “We anchored next tae a Kennedy merchant ship. Ye'll likely run into yer father's wife at the party. Why don't ye wear a
Kennedy
plaid and shock the shit outa her ladyship?” Gavin said gleefully.
    “I would never put Lady Elizabeth in the position of explaining one of Lord Kennedy's bastards,” Heath said gallantly. Though he meant it, the Douglas brothers thought him most droll.
    On Friday, as promised, Lancelot Carleton arrived at Carlisle Castle. When he greeted his second cousin, Lady Elizabeth Kennedy, he found her in a rather petulant mood. “Your son, Heron, has been monopolizing my daughter. He has deliberately elbowed Christopher Dacre aside each and every time that young man has tried to pay attention to Beth.”
    Lance Carleton tried not to laugh in Elizabeth's face. Young Dacre was the wrong sort of man to let anyone elbow him aside, and the only female to whom he was likely to pay attention was Raven. “Surely Rob will want a Scots noble for your daughter?”
    “Over my dead body! Beth has too sweet and gentle a nature to be sacrificed to a coarse Scot. I have no intention of returning to Doon. Next week Beth and I plan to move into the old family home in the Rickergate, here in Carlisle.”
    “Elizabeth, I cannot believe you would jeopardize your marriage to the Lord of Galloway. It is unthinkable.”
    “It was unthinkable to have married him in the first place. Beth shall not be sacrificed as I was.”
    Lance Carleton was shocked. His second cousin Elizabeth had somehow managed to snare one of the wealthiestlairds of Clan Kennedy, so blood-proud they claimed they were descended from the Kings of Carrick, and the foolish female was now risking it all by setting herself against Rob Kennedy. It was like pitting a flea against a wily red fox.
    In the afternoon, when Thomas Dacre and Lancelot Carleton were drinking whisky, the subject of betrothals came up. Dacre seemed open enough to consider Raven Carleton and her dowry, but he would not agree to a firm commitment between her and his son, Christopher.
    “Your relative Elizabeth Kennedy makes no secret of the fact that she seeks a match between Christopher and her