A Dangerous Love by Bertrice Small

Author:Bertrice Small [Small, Bertrice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-10-12T10:40:48+00:00

kissed many women in his day, but none had affected him quite like this. Adair was wrong,

though she might not know it. He would have her. And soon.

Chapter 10

he Scotland into which Adair had been brought

was not a peaceful place. Its king, the third

James Stewart, was hardly beloved among his rough

barony. He had inherited his throne when he was but

eight years of age. His mother, Marie of Gueldres, was

the niece of the Duke of Burgundy. She had been

brought up in a civilized court, and brought her influ

ence to Scotland when she had married James II, to

whom she gave four sons and two daughters in the

eleven years of their marriage. Her eldest son, James III,

looked like her, with his olive complexion, dark hair, and fine

dark eyes. Sadly she died when he was eleven, and two years

later the other good influence in James’s life, Bishop

Kennedy, died.

It was then that the Boyd family staged a political coup, seizing the boy king at Linlithgow, and taking him to Edinburgh. There Lord Boyd dispensed with those who had aided him in his

endeavor, forced the young king to stand with him, and for the next four years controlled the

government. He arranged a marriage for the king with Margaret of Denmark, daughter of King

Christian. The union officially brought into Scotland those islands that had been virtually Scots anyway, the Shetlands and the Orkneys. The marriage took place in 1469, and while the king had

been deemed by Parliament capable of ruling four years earlier, it wasn’t until his marriage that James III took up the reins of government. One of his first acts was to drive the Boyd family from their power base.

But James III was not a man who gloried in martial endeavors or rough ways. He was artistic in

temperament, and unsuited to rule over the rough northern land into which he had been born to

rule. And Scotland was a lawless country beset by economic troubles. Its nobles were constantly fomenting trouble with the king or with one another. And the powers in England and Europe

were always interfering with Scotland’s government, and subverting its earls either against the king or against one another.

The king’s passions were for the arts. Matters of state interested him but little. He surrounded himself with a group of artists, poets, writers, intellectuals, architects, and craftsmen, even excluding his nobility from his council. Those few nobles who understood something of James

III’s personality nonetheless resented his attitude. As for those nobles who were less sensitive, they disliked the king and were jealous of his friendships with others. Still, they did not object to his weakness when it came to punishing them for their lawlessness. James was always willing to

be bought off for hard coin. It helped him to pay for his extravagances.

Scotland was beset with famine and depression, yet the king did not see it. He collected

beautiful jewelry and exquisite manuscripts. He purchased a fine altarpiece by the artist Hugo van der Goes that showed James and Margaret at prayer. The king supported a group of poets, and

oversaw the minting of beautiful coinage.

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