The Highlander's Virtuous Lady: A Historical Scottish Romance Novel

by Fiona Faris

  “Oh, he’s worried for her,” he said. “If anything were to happen to Mary, it would break him. But, look,” he added, running his eyes around the men who crowed the table. “These men live for the present. Such is the nature of their lives as outlaws, they don’t think too far into the future. For the present, the food on the table and those big-bellied flagons of ale are the whole of their care. Wat could easily have sent them to home to rest their bodies and take pleasure in their wives, and despite what he says, they all would have turned up for him at the appointed hour like obedient sheepdogs, eager for the work ahead. The whole purpose of this feast is to restore their spirits. If the earls and high lords were as good at marshaling their armies as Auld Wat is at marshaling his men, then the English would have been vanquished long ago.”

  “Should we go up?” Joan whispered, letting her hand stray to Patrick’s firm muscular thigh beneath the table.”

  Patrick smiled.

  “Did you not hear Wat?” he whispered mischievously. “This reiving isn’t done yet. What about our agreement: ‘Never while we are out on a raid’?”

  Joan dug her nails into Patrick’s leg and raked them up towards his groin.

  “Maybe this once…” She purred. “We can make an exception.”

  Patrick closed the chamber door behind them, and they quickly peeled off their damp clothes. It was still light outside the window, and their pale skin gleamed in the shade of the room. Patrick was already hard, and Joan grabbed his erection in her fist as they closed in an embrace. Patrick lifted her deftly and laid her on the bed.

  He knelt between her legs and buried his face in her sex. She threw her shorn head back and clutched fistfuls of the blanket as his lips fluttered over the lips of her vagina and his tongue parted and probed between them. He lapped the length of her, and she mewled like a kitten. Then he closed his lips around the swelling bud of her clitoris, and he sucked and ground it with his tongue.

  Her head thrashed from side to side, and her hands closed over the crown of his head, pushing it closer to her. He opened his mouth for air and licked her now distended bud with long smooth strokes. She felt her sudden wetness and pushed his head away from her.

  “Take me now,” she said, breathing out the words and gazing steadily into his eyes.

  He rolled her over, and she scrambled onto her knees and elbows on the edge of the bed. Her slim oval bottom parted to reveal the engorged lips of her labia. He stood behind her and positioned the head of his cock between their folds. She gasped with delight as he slid smoothly into her.

  She moved slowly against him, and he gently thrust back. He laid his hands on the smooth gleaming globes of her buttocks and began to caress them, making small swirling motions with the heels of his palms on her flesh. They continued to rock back and forth against each other, slowly, tenderly, wanting to prolong the moment of their lovemaking and enjoy the intimacy of their contact. He let the fingertips of one hand trail lightly down the crease between her buttocks and swirled his thumb over the brown pucker of her anus. She lifted her head and let out a throaty croon.

  They sustained the tender pace of their lovemaking until time itself melted away, and neither of them could have said how long it had endured. Little waves of sensation unfolded through them like a gently lapping tide, and they savored each and every one of them.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Patrick withdrew, and Joan rolled to the farther side of the bed. Patrick climbed onto the bed beside her and took her in his arms. She slid beneath him and reached down to take his cock and guide it back inside her. He smothered her cheeks and brow with kisses, then her mouth rose to his, and they locked in a deep and passionate embrace.

  The continued to move slowly and sinuously, Joan’s long slim legs entwining and disentwining around his powerful calves and thighs, her slender arms caressing his back and buttocks. He rose on an elbow and cupped one of her apple-like breasts in his hand, rolling the nipple softly between his thumb and forefinger. She groaned in ecstasy, her eyes closing tightly, her head arching back on the bolster. She felt his cock swell seemingly ever bigger within her while gasping at the tightening grip of her muscles.

  Again, after what seemed like an eternity, the live waves of sensation grew and joined, and then suddenly, gloriously, exploded over the sands of their lovemaking in a blindingly white cascade of pleasure. Her muscles contracted in a long series of spasms, while Patrick whined and panted as he emptied himself endlessly into her.

  As their passion subsided, they became aware of the shouts and laughter of the men in the hall below them. They touched foreheads and giggled.

  “They sound as if their spirits have been well and truly restored,” Joan murmured.

  “As have ours, my love,” Patrick whispered. “As have ours.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Moult had been as good as his word. The next morning, Lizzie Bryce presented herself to Margaret in her poor smock and red kerchief. She limped painfully as she entered the solar at Margaret’s bidding

  “The sheriff says I’m to bide here with you,” she said tearfully.

  Margaret smiled at her kindly and laid a hand on her painfully thin upper arm.

  “Yes, Lizzie,” she said. “Where you will be safe.”

  Lizzie looked up quickly, an ember of hope lowing into life amid the dark coals of her eyes.

  “Aye, Lizzie,” Margaret reassured her. “Yon brute, Hugh, will not misuse you while you are in my care.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Lizzie said, bobbing her head.

  Margaret contemplated the waif for a moment in silence.

  “But first.” Margaret then roused herself to business. “We must get you out of that ragged seckie and some of that glaur off you.”

  She had earlier ordered a large wooden tub to be brought to the solar, and it sat broad and squat beside the fire, on which a large kettle plumed stream from its spout.

  “Strip those rags from yourself and put them on the fire,” Margaret told her. “There’s a fine linen chemise warming over the chair for you; you can wear that until Sir Walter fetches some proper clothes for you.”

  Lizzie obediently complied, while Margaret took a cloth, lifted the kettle from the fire, and poured boiling water in a long steaming stream into the cold water that already quarter-filled the tub.

  “Now, come and kneel beside the tub.”

  Margaret gave an involuntary gasp when she turned and set eyes on the young girl’s nakedness. Her limbs were like sticks, her ribs showed clearly beneath her flesh, and the knobbled ridge of her backbone protruded the length of her torso from between the flat angel-wings of her shoulder blades.

  “Jesu, my poor bairn,” she mumbled. “You’re just a ruckle o’ bones covered owre with skin.”

  But it was the condition of that bleached white skin that horrified her most. Lizzie was covered in welts and bruises.

  “Did that big brute do that to you?” she asked, her fingertips flitting from one mark to the next.

  “He’s no’ the only one,” Lizzie confided with a dead-sullen voice. “Maist o’ the sheriff’s men misuse me.”

  Tears sprang to Margaret’s eyes.

  “But you’re just a child,” she whispered. “Are you bleeding yet?”

  Lizzie gave her a puzzled look.

  “Only when they shove their dowps into me.”

  Margaret drew her into a tight embrace. How could men be so cruel, so careless of a child’s helplessness and innocence?

  “Can I look?” she asked gently.

  Lizzie hesitated, then nodded.

  “Sit in this chair and draw up your knees.

  Lizzie did as she was bid, and Margaret examined her. Beneath a light peppering of dark hair, the lips of her vagina were torn and crusted with dried blood. The puckered entrance to her anus was also split by an angry-looking tear.

  “Oh, my bairn,” Margaret said with a sob. She helped her from the chair. “Come over to the tub.”

  Li
zzie knelt beside the tub, and Margaret gently inclined her forward until her head was over the lightly steaming water. She cupped the water over the girl’s long black tresses, then reached for a cake of castile soap scented with musk and cloves. She worked a lather deep into her scalp, then rinsed it with a jug of water infused with rosemary. She wrung the water from it and hung it like a rope over the girl’s shoulder.

  “Now, stand up and step into the water,” Margaret instructed her.

  Lizzie stepped into the tub and Margaret began to bathe her shoulders, arms, and torso with a flannel, dipping it into the soapy water and smoothing it gently over Lizzie’s damaged skin. The girl’s breasts were just beginning to form, and her nipples were like two small raspberry buds. Her hips were still as thin as a boy’s and her pelvic bones jutted sharply through her flesh. There was not an ounce of fat on her, Margaret observed.

  She eased Lizzie’s legs apart.

  “This is going to nip,” she warned.

  She pressed the flannel to Lizzie’s sex. Lizzie flinched and let out a sharp yelp of pain. The flannel came away stained red with blood. Margaret rinsed the cloth in the water and applied it again. Blood began to trickle down the inside of Lizzie’s bruised stick-like thighs. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “I have an ointment here,” Margaret said. “It contains an infusion of oak bark. It will help you heal.”

  After she had finished washing her, Margaret held Lizzie’s hand as she stepped from the tub and wrapped her in a sheet of soft linen. Lizzie sat again in the chair, while Margaret fetched a small clay pot from her bedchamber. Kneeling between Lizzie’s drawn-up legs, she smoothed the salve onto the inner and outer lips of her vagina and the cut in her anus.

  “There,” she said. “Now pull on that chemise, and we’ll comb out your hair.”

  Margaret stood behind the chair by the fire and began to tug out Lizzie’s tangles with a bone comb. She marveled at the lushness of Lizzie’s long black tresses; even though the rest of her was thin and wasted, her hair grew thick and strong. Combed out, it hung down to the girl’s waist like a jet-black cloth.

  “I’ve never had a bath before,” Lizzie confessed shyly.

  “Did you like it?”

  Lizzie screwed up her face.

  “No’ really,” she said. “Though I feel better for it now. My skin feels like it’s glowing.”

  “It is glowing, Lizzie,” Margaret affirmed. “You really are a pretty girl.”

  Lizzie blushed.

  “And my hair feels… I don’t know what it feels like… Lighter, and soft like silk.”

  “Have you ever felt silk, Lizzie?” Margaret teased.

  “Well, no.” Lizzie chuckled. “But I imagine it’s how my hair feels now.”

  Margaret laughed.

  “That’s a pretty answer,” she said, running her fingers through Lizzie’s long tresses. “Well, I have felt silk, and I can assure you it feels just as your hair does now.”

  They fell into a companionable silence, Lizzie watching the pictures form and disperse in the flames of the fire while Margaret drew the comb in long slow strokes through her hair.

  “I’m sorry for your mother,” Lizzie suddenly said.

  Margaret’s heart caught in her throat. She had all but forgotten her mother, so bound up she had become in tending to Lizzie.

  “I fear she is dead already,” Margaret replied, her voice wavering as the tears pressed behind her eyes. “She has given up; the suffering is all too much for her. She has lost her husband and her place. She will not eat the scraps that I throw to her; she just lies in the corner of that cage and waits for death.”

  “I never knew my mother. She died giving birth to me.”

  “Who brought you up?” Margaret asked, shocked out of her self-pity by Lizzie’s revelation.

  “Her mother. But she was old and died. After that, I ran the streets with the dogs and other orphans, until I was taken into service in the King’s Castle.”

  Margaret paused, the comb hanging in mid-air above Lizzie’s head.

  “But…” She gasped in shocked amazement. “That would have been when my father was sheriff. You would have been one of my father’s servants.”

  “I don’t know about that. I just fetched and carried for the cook and, every now and then, got to turn the spit. Though that was usually a laddie’s job.”

  Margaret had never considered the plight of the household’s baser servants before. They were invisible. She had never given them a thought, never even imagined their existence. She wondered how many Lizzies suffered in the belly of Oliver and Neidpath for the sake of her wants and needs.

  “Well,” she resumed combing out Lizzie’s long tresses, “you are a lady’s companion now. I will teach you how to stitch and sew and all the other virtues and accomplishments of ladyship. Who knows, in time we may even find you a fine knight to wed, and you will have a household of your own.”

  Lizzie looked around at her, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “Do you really think so, ma’am? Do you really think I could be a lady?”

  Could she? Margaret pondered. Could she really be raised from scullery maid to a lady?

  “Why not?” she said.

  Though, given the turn in her own fortunes and the fact that she too now found herself powerless and at the complete mercy of a vicious brute, she felt a little guilty at consoling the girl with such a doubtful hope.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Moult arrived at Neidpath in the late afternoon. With him, he brought a small kist of gowns and linens for Margaret’s ‘pet’.

  “My!” he exclaimed, setting eyes on Lizzie. “What a transformation you have wrought! Is this the same lousy bitch that you had sent up from the kitchens?”

  Margaret and Lizzie stood before him, eyes downcast.

  “And I see you have found something to your liking in the wardrobe I left you.”

  Margaret had relented and wore an emerald gown trimmed with gold stitching which she had found in the kist at the foot of her bed. Her long blonde hair had been freshly washed and goldened with a saffron rinse, and then combed and crowned with a thin braid. Earlier in the day, she had taught Lizzie the elements of hairdressing.

  “It would have been petulant of me to refuse your generosity, sire,” she acknowledged with a hint of sarcasm.

  Moult smiled and rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

  “Then may I further venture that we withdraw to my playroom for some sport?”

  Margaret turned and seated herself in one of the armchairs by the fire, indicating to her visitor.

  “Perhaps,” she replied noncommittally. “But first, we should take some wine. I would not that you found my hospitality wanting.”

  Moult sat down hurriedly in the chair, his smile broadening. He had not yet noticed that a shift had occurred and that he was now a guest in Margaret’s domain rather than she an inmate in his prison.

  “Lizzie,” she said. “Bring the wine from the sideboard.”

  Lizzie, still virginal in her chemise, went over to the sideboard and picked up a tray on which stood a wine flagon and two jewel-encrusted goblets. She carried it carefully across and placed it on the small table beside Margaret’s chair. Margaret lifted the lid of the flagon with her thumb and poured a measure of golden liquid into each goblet.

  “My lord,” she said, inclining her head as she handed Moult’s across.

  “My lady,” Moult acknowledged with a polite nod.

  “Shall your ‘maid’ be joining us in our play this evening?” Moult enquired, as if he were discussing their attendance at a banquet or entertainment rather than a chamber of horrors.

  “I think not,” Margaret said firmly. “She has had an exacting day, and she needs her rest. Another time, perhaps.”

  Moult conceded his assent with another polite nod.

  “As you wish, Margaret.”

  She shuddered at her name on his lips. It felt as if, in speaking it, he had touched her in her
most intimate place.

  “You have been busy, my lord?”

  Moult pursed his lips and stroked his short mustache.

  “Oh, you know how it is, having been a sheriff’s daughter yourself,” he reminded her with a flash of cruelty in his eyes. “The work is never done, with all those petty grievances that the peasants stack up against one another. A march stolen here, some sheep stolen there… It is a tiresome but necessary burden of office.”

  “Indeed, sire,” Margaret replied, glancing meaningly towards the window. “We all have our crosses to bear.”