I'm learning that words are only words without a voice
And I'm turning my way through sleepless nights dreaming of yours
I'm finding that silence only speaks through fingertips
And I'm tracing the path that once would lead me to your lips

Let me lay you down, your body pressed to me
Let the way you move be all the talk between
Something 'bout the way you linger on my skin -
Let me lay you down before you're only words again

February 17, 1565

She feels him curled against her back, the weight of his arm resting gently at her middle. His breath puffs warm at the nape of her neck, slow and rhythmless, letting her know that he slumbers on as the night turns toward dawn. Shifting to catch a glimpse of his face, she reaches for him – and her hands meet with empty air and cold, unoccupied bedding.

She dares not open her eyes.

If she doesn't open her eyes, she can preserve the heat of his skin and the curve of his lips resting upon her shoulder. At least for a moment, his spectre can linger with her.

And then – like all the mornings that have come before – it departs suddenly and cruelly.

The early hours stretch still and dark around her from where she rests beneath blankets meant to ward off the damp chill of the Scottish winter. The hearth burns bright with fresh peat and the earthy scent spreads through the room. She bats a hand at her cheeks, sweeping away the disintegrating fragments of the dream with her tears. Disoriented in her waking, her heart pounds wildly and her body trembles with fatigue. It takes a moment to recognize the unfamiliar room in which she has awakened.

Wemyss.

In these moments before the sun attempts to peek its way through the winter clouds and her maidservant arrives to help her dress for the day, she lets herself think of him.

And then the rap sounds at the door and duty arrives with her lady's maid. The grieving widow can no longer exist – nothing can remain except a queen.

She breathes in, then out, as the young girl approaches with a dressing gown. Her heartbeat slows to its normal cadence and her limbs steady as she climbs from the bed.

Another day has arrived.


She passes the morning in the solar adjacent to her bedchamber, receiving the occasional member of the local nobility and slowly embroidering tiny stitches upon a linen panel. A pile of correspondence rests on a nearby table, but she decides it can wait until the afternoon arrives.

The page enters and announces Sebastian's arrival.

She sets aside her needlework, lifts her head and attempts to recall the errand on which she had sent Bash just days before. Her cousin, she remembers, had required assistance in returning to Edinburgh after spending the entirety of his life hidden away in England. Sighing at the memory, she can hear the echoes of her mother's voice when she last visited France, recounting that "nasty" business with the House of Lennox.

Her mother would have opposed her decision to bring Henry back to Scotland, but she finds she cares less about what her mother might think as the years since her death move into the past. After what happened in France with the Lord Narcisse and his incessant desire to expunge Protestantism, she can no longer let herself sit idly by – she must do what is right.

Shaking her head, she tries to focus on Bash's report from the borderlands, but she fails to hear most of his words. As he relays how he located the Lord Darnley, a memory of the last time she and Francis saw Henry in France – where everyone remarked at their similar appearance as they stood next to one another – suddenly stirs in her mind. She quells the memory stiffly, forcing herself to think instead of James and his certain displeasure over Henry's return to Court, and allowing her gaze to rest upon the doorway behind Bash's head.

He finishes his report and steps aside, but she still does not look at him. She nods her head in his direction, smiling slightly and knowing he will voice his worry over her detached behavior when she shares a table with him, Kenna and Anne this evening.

But she doesn't care. The fleeting thought of Francis belongs in her chambers before the day begins – not here. This is Scotland. She is queen.

France lies behind her.

A trumpet blares just outside the door, heralding an arrival, and the page returns to the doorway to announce the newest visiting party.

"Your Grace," he addresses her with a reverent bow of his head. "May I present your cousin, Henry Stuart – the Lord Darnley."

She stands as the page exits. The visitor enters the room and drops to one knee, his head bent low. Her body knows before she does. The small hairs at her nape stand on end in premonition. The blood in her veins pulses and pulls toward him in recognition.

He raises his head and she gasps. Her knees threaten to buckle underneath her.

Time slows. She shakes her head to dispel the illusion, assured that the madness of her waking moments has at last invaded the day's later hours.

It can't be.

Her eyes settle once more on the figure before her, and the queen gives way to the wife who suddenly cannot trust what she sees before her. Through her own blurry vision, she watches as tears spill over silently out of familiar blue eyes – eyes that she will know until her dying breath.

It is not possible.

She wrenches away her gaze for just a moment to glance at Bash, who nods his head and moves timidly toward the doorway.

The catch of the latch signals her deputy's retreat.

She steps tentatively forward until only a handsbreadth separates them. He slowly rises from the floor and her hand reaches, shaking, to wipe away an errant teardrop on his face. Her fingers trace the neat mustache and the tuft of hair at his chin before lighting upon the deepening evidence of years that now lines his eyes.

"Is it really you?" she whispers, her voice cracking with disbelief.

"Please forgive me, my love," he starts softly. He falters as the weight of the reality of her – flesh and bone, and once more returned to him – threatens to crush him.

"There was no other way."


February 18, 1565

Wrapped in a warm cloak with her skirts to the side, she rides behind Bash as he leads her to a small croft just beyond the village of Dunkeld. The new moon illuminates little of the road ahead.

The hours since Francis left under the guise of visiting his father have proved themselves to be long and tortuous, their misery only lifting with the exhilaration of slipping away from the castle unnoticed after the night watch began. The shock of seeing him standing before her has faded with the hours – in its place the echo of his voice and its rushed accounting of the days since Narcisse threatened not only him but her and Catherine, and a growing desire to know him once more as her husband.

He left as quickly as he had arrived, careful not to draw the suspicion of anyone who might notice the closeness between them – a familiarity that could only have preceded their meeting at Wemyss. In his absence, she lapsed into a haze of stunned madness and remained in the solar until her maidservant came to stoke the dwindling fire. After a late dinner in his and Kenna's quarters, Bash put forth the skeleton of his plan.

Within the fortnight, they will all return to Edinburgh. Until then, this brief midnight tryst will have to be enough. She knows they can neither risk discovery of their intimacy nor introduce Francis to the Court too soon. With each gait of the horse beneath her, she thinks on those few who will know him upon sight and determines, somehow, that she will convince them the truth must remain undisclosed.

Only the lesser part of an hour has passed since their leave of the fortress walls, but the distance has stretched unendingly, achingly before her – each step a lifetime to her eager heart.

Bash helps her dismount and secures the horses before leading her into the home. A warm fire greets them as they enter the kitchen and Francis joins them from the next room. She watches as her good-brother walks quickly through the two rooms to assure himself of their safety and then departs through the door.

Though the night is cold and the clouds threaten with snow, she knows he will guard that door with his life.

"Let me take that," Francis speaks quietly. He lifts the cloak off of her shoulders and places it upon a peg fitted into the wall. Her fingers fidget, suddenly nervous at the thought of being alone with him. He reaches for her elbow, guiding her into the next room and latching the door behind him.

The chamber has no window, which both prevents escape of the heat from the kitchen's hearth and safeguards them from prying eyes. A candle rests upon a table next to a basin for washing, giving off sufficient light to make out the room's sparse furnishings.

In the moment she sits upon the bed, her nerves overcome her. She fears it has been too long, that they will have forgotten how to come together as man and wife. She questions her ability to bring him pleasure. Her years alone have wrested her of any confidence. There have been no lovers in her bed – only shadows of him that flee as she wakes.

He lowers himself next to her and uses his thumb to lift her chin and meet her eyes. Leaning in, he captures her lips gently and she feels herself respond.

She tastes his lips, somehow both familiar and new, and her anxieties dissipate.

Francis lives.


Author's Notes: You are all so wonderful with your reviews and requests for more! It continues to be a slow process for so many reasons, but it's a story I'm determined to finish and to finish well. I feel like a show claiming it was going to be creative within the framework of history should have been a little more creative within the framework of history, don't you? Anyway, thank you all for continuing to read and review!

Special thanks to Robin and Heather for the continued beta efforts and suggestions on how to bridge gaps and make the story seem like it naturally just branched off of 207. Lyrics at the top are from Catie King's "Lay You Down". I don't own them – they just give me major F/M feels every time I hear them, so I was excited to be able to work them into this installment.