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we get to Dunmor, laddie, the sooner we may begin to plan a fine revenge upon Sir Jasper Keane and his ilk. Neither my honor nor yers will be satisfied until the Englishman has paid for Eufemia’s life wi’ his own, but first we’ll hae a bit of fun wi’ him.” He waved his hand and the horses were brought. Mounting his stallion, he took little George Hamilton from old Una and placed the sniveling child on the saddle before him. “Dinna greet, Geordie,” he warned the boy sternly, “else ye frighten the horses. Yer a Hamilton, and Hamiltons are nae afeared of anything save God himself, eh?”
    The little lad turned large blue eyes upon the earl and nodded solemnly at the fierce-browed man who held him and whose words were strangely comforting. Then he looked about him for a brief moment and felt proud. No one else had so fine a horse as this one. Old Una and his sister Mary were pillion upon a small gelding, and Rob was forced to ride wi’ Meg. “I’ll nae greet,” he lisped up at the earl.
    “Good lad!” came the reply as their party began to move off.
    Robert Hamilton, his sister slumped half conscious behind him, glanced back for just a moment at his family’s home as they rode away. Culcairn House stood bleak against the lowering skies. Its blackened stones and charred timbers, still smoking, seemed to cry out to him for vengeance. In the rising wind he would have sworn that he could yet hear Eufemia’s screams. Aye! The earl was right, and he, too, wanted his revenge. Only when he had taken that revenge would Eufemia be put truly to rest. Whatever her behavior, she had been his sister. When he thought of her in the future he would remember the happy times. Remember her last words to him, Save the bairns!
    In the end, the goodness that Robert Hamilton believed in all women had overcome everything else wicked that had festered in his elder sister’s soul, and for the first and only time in her life, she had thought of the rest of them. She would be revenged. Aye! She would be revenged! The laird of Culcairn turned his face from the tragic ruins of his ancestral home and, digging his heels into his horse, rode off into the rising storm.

PART ONE
    The Border Bride

Chapter One

    Middleham Castle sat firmly upon the southern hills, its great gray walls and towers looming over the village of Wensleydale. The king was in residence on this fine late September day, for his banner with its white boar flew from the topmost turret. His coronation was almost three months past, and his entry into his city of York several weeks ago had been in incredible triumph. How they loved him, his beloved northerners, and how warmly they had taken Anne and little Edward to their hearts as well. It had been such a triumph that he had stayed longer than he had anticipated, allowing the investiture of Edward as Prince of Wales to take place in York Minster. Now, when he should be on his way south, he had escorted his son and his queen here to Middleham, his favorite home, that he might have a few days’ respite before picking up his duties again. Neddie, as the little prince was fondly called by his intimates, would, of course, remain here when his father, the king, departed.
    Richard, King of England, reached for his goblet and gazed with a beneficent look about the family solar. His wife’s widowed cousin, Lady Rowena Grey, and her little daughter had come to stay these few precious days with them. Sweet Row, born into a lesser branch of the Neville family, had been orphaned young and raised by his father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, with his own dear wife. She was, in fact, the best friend that Anne had, although the two women had been separated for many years.
    Anne Neville’s first husband had been a Prince of Wales, the son of King Henry VI and his queen, Margaret of Anjou. Rowena, on the other hand, had been married on her thirteenth birthday to Henry Grey, Baron Greyfaire, an unimportant border lord who possessed a small