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you,” Janet noted with a small smile.
    “He fusses like an old woman with one chick,” Fingal replied.
    Archie managed to dress his master in a pair of brown and black velvet canions, which were tight knee breeches. The stockings beneath them were brown, and his leather boots almost covered them. The matching black velvet doublet was embroidered with just the lightest touch of gold breaking the severity of the garment.
    Standing before his cousin, Lord Stewart, now fully dressed, said, “I have no idea where he managed to obtain such garb, or keep it so well hidden from me.”
    Archie grinned and handed his master a dark brown woolen cloak and a pair of brown leather gloves. “I dinna steal it,” he said. “Ye paid for it, my lord.”
    “I’m sure I did,” Fingal replied.
    “I had forgotten what a handsome devil ye are,” Janet said. She pushed a lock of her cousin’s dark hair from his forehead. “Do ye have a hat for him, Archie?”
    “No bloody hat,” Lord Stewart said firmly, “and especially if it has one of those damned drooping feathers hanging from it.”
    “I saved no coin for a hat, as I know how ye feel about them,” Archie said.
    Together the two cousins rode the distance between the city and the king’s favored palace, the men-at-arms surrounding them. The summer day was long, but it was close to sunset when they arrived. Janet Munro sent a page for the king and brought her cousin to her lover’s privy chamber to await James Stewart. It was close to an hour before he came. Outside the windows of the small room the skies grew scarlet with the sunset, and then darkened. A serving man came and lit the fire in the hearth, for the evening was cool and damp with a hint of a later rain.
    Finally James Stewart entered the chamber. He was a tall young man with the red-gold hair of his Tudor mother, and eyes that were gray in color but showed no expression at all. He held out his hand to Fingal Stewart, and a quick glance at Janet Munro told her she was dismissed. She curtsied and departed. “So,” the king said, “I am to understand we are cousins.”
    “Like you, my lord, I trace my descent from Robert the Third through his elder son, David,” Fingal Stewart explained. “You descend from his younger son, King James the First.”
    “I was not aware David Stewart had any offspring,” the young king replied.
    “Few were, my lord. His mistress was a Drummond. When Albany murdered him, her family protected her and the son she shortly bore. Albany was too busy consolidating his position, and frankly, I believe he forgot all about her. When King James the First returned home as a man, his cousin came and pledged his loyalty.”
    “A loyalty my great-great-grandfather certainly needed,” the young king remarked.
    “My ancestor was well schooled in loyalty to his king, and that king saw that he was legally able to take the surname of Stewart. He also gave his cousin a house in Edinburgh near the castle,” Fingal told his royal companion.
    “Where do the Munros come into your family tree?” the king asked.
    “My grandfather married a Munro who was the sister to Janet’s grandfather. I believe Jan was named for her, my lord.”
    The king nodded. “We are but distantly related now, you and I, Fingal Stewart, but blood is blood. Jan tells me you are loyal to me. Is that so? I am not so well loved by my earls, though the common folk revere me.” He looked closely at his companion.
    “I am loyal, my lord,” Fingal Stewart said without a moment’s hesitation.
    “When my father pushed his father from the throne,” the king wanted to know, “which side did Lord Stewart of Torra take then?”
    “Neither side, my lord. He remained in his house below Edinburgh Castle until all was settled. He had been loyal to King James the Third and was equally loyal to King James the Fourth,” Lord Stewart explained.
    “A prudent man,” the fifth James noted with a small chuckle. He had liked the candid