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

by Fiona Faris

  “Indeed,” Moult echoed, draining his cup and rising to his feet. “Shall we go down, then?”

  Margaret blanched as she caught sight of the swelling in his hose.

  “A moment yet,” she insisted.

  Moult’s features twisted in rage and he suddenly reached out and grabbed a handful of Margaret’s hair.

  “Don’t try my patience, bitch!” He snarled. “Down those stairs, now!”

  He yanked her from the chair by the hair. She stumbled and sprawled across the floor.

  “My lady!” Lizzie cried.

  Moult turned to the girl and struck her a hard blow across the jaw with the back of his hand.

  “Quiet, you little whore, unless you want the skin flayed from your back.” He looked down at Margaret and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. “I can do that, you know. I have the instruments in my playroom. And I have honed the skill to perfection. Would you like to see that?”

  “N-no, my lord.” Margaret sobbed.

  “Then get yourself down there now, before I make a leather purse from the little slattern’s face.”

  Margaret pushed herself trembling to her feet and Moult shoved her towards the door. She stumbled again and almost fell, but she managed to keep her feet. Moult propelled her into the turret and down the spiral staircase to the hall.

  Torches had been placed in the sconces around the walls, and they illuminated the hall in a lurid flickering light. Once again, Margaret looked around at the timber-framed constructions, and her blood ran cold. She noticed for the first time the darker patches that stained the wooden floors beneath the gallows-like frames. Bloodstains, she suddenly realized; how many victims had already suffered at Moult’s hands in what used to be the center of her father’s house?

  Moult dropped the bar into the metal hasps that were bolted to the walls on either side of the doors.

  “So that we are not disturbed,” he explained.

  He began to walk around the devices, considering each one as he decided on which one he would play with Margaret. He passed a Judas chair, a tall, thin stool-shaped device with a wooden pyramid on top, an iron chair, with its sharp spikes lining the back, seat, armrests, and leg rests and its fire-grate underneath, a rack… He settled on a large X-shaped cross, with manacles high on the upper arms and shackles on the lower two.

  “Come here.”

  “Please, no,” Margaret pleaded.

  “Now!” Moult barked, his voice reverberating around the bare stone walls. “Or your mother will die tonight, smashed at the foot of the castle rock.”

  Sobbing and trembling, Margaret stepped towards him. He gestured to the manacles.

  “Put your wrists in those.”

  She stepped up to the cross and reached up her arms. Tall as she was, she had to stand on tiptoe before she could lay her wrists in the thick leather cuffs. Moult pulled a short ladder across and propped it against the structure. He climbed the first two rungs and laced the cuffs closed.

  “Spread your legs.”

  She scrabbled her toes across the floor towards the foot of each of the lower arms, taking most of her weight on her arms. Each shackle was attached to the wooden frame by a short length of chain. Moult crouched down and snapped the shackles shut around her ankles.

  “There,” he said as he straightened up.

  Margaret could barely move. Her arms and back ached with the strain of stretching upward, and her wrists felt they were about to break under her own weight. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she whimpered both from pain and fear at what was about to happen.

  She could hear Moult undressing behind her. His breath was coming in rapid, excited gasps. Then, suddenly, he appeared before her, standing on the other side of the cross.

  He was completely naked, apart from a close-fitting black leather hood, which covered his head and was fastened by a strap under his chin. His eyes gleamed from two holes that had been cut and hemmed with yellow hemp. His long thin cock was erect and lined with blue cord-like veins. A long dribble of pre-cum fell from its tip like a string of saliva.

  He stepped up to her and grabbed her chin and jaw above the angle of the cross and leered into her face.

  “Slut!’ He spat. “You were once the fine lady; now I am going to make you my slut, just to show you that you’re the fine lady no more.”

  He wet his hand with the pre-cum from his cock and smeared it over her face. She gagged and thought she would be sick. He watched her reaction carefully and grinned at it with satisfaction.

  “I am going to defile you, bitch, soil you, sully you.”

  He spun around and plucked a thin-bladed knife from a rack on the wall. Turning back, he pressed the sharp tip to her cheekbone, just below her eye.

  “You have such a noble face. You have such noble beauty. It would be such a shame for it to be spoiled.” He seethed with enthusiasm. “Have you ever seen an eyeball pierced? It weeps tears of blood, like one of those miraculous Madonnas the pilgrims flock to visit. Only no pilgrim will deign to visit you; unless, of course, they have use for a one-eyed whore.”

  “Please, no!” She howled. “I will do whatever pleases you, just don’t hurt me.”

  “Whore!” he screamed.

  He clutched his other hand around his penis and began to rub it vigorously. His mouth opened in a slack leer. He plunged the dagger into the wood by her face and clutched a hank of her golden hair.

  “Would you suck me, whore?” he urged, his voice quivering.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Anything! Just stop this now.”

  He released his cock and smeared her face with more pre-cum.

  “Oh, I haven’t even begun yet.”

  He snatched the dagger from the cross and darted around the structure to stand behind her. She felt him lift the hem of her gown, and he rent it to the nape of her neck. He feverishly slit the cloth until it fell to the floor, then he cut and ripped away her undergarments.

  He stood back and drank in her nakedness. The dagger dropped to the floor with the dull ring of a fractured bell.

  “Oh, yes.” He hissed.

  He stepped closer to her and ran his hands over her shoulders and down her flanks to her slim hips. His cock daubed a wet trail over the back of her thigh as he reached around her and clasped a breast in each hand. He rested his cheek between her shoulder blades, and he squeezed and rolled her nipples between his fingers.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.” He breathed, the dampness of his breath condensing in the hollow of her long back.

  He withdrew one of his hands and began rubbing himself again as he kneaded her breast and slobbered licks and kisses over her back. He reached up his mouth and raked the base of her neck with his teeth. His breath came hot and hoarse against her skin.

  She could not move, she was stretched too tautly on the cross. Her whole body strained away from the defilement of his touch, but it was hopeless; she had no choice but to submit to it. Her features twisted in anguish; she inwardly howled her tears.

  All at once his touch was gone. He suddenly reappeared before her, and he grabbed her face once more.

  “You like that, don’t you, whore? I would wager that, if I felt your cunt, I would find it dripping wet.”

  “No, please…” she pleaded.

  The tip of the dagger was suddenly at her cheekbone again.

  “’No, please, Master,” he insisted. “You call me ‘Master’. That is what I am, after all; your Master. Now,” he added, “I’m going to ask you again: you like that, don’t you, whore?”

  Her head slumped forward in utter humiliation.

  “Yes, Master,” she mumbled.

  “Louder,” he commanded. “I didn’t hear that. Yes… what?”

  “Yes.” She sobbed loudly. “I like that, Master.”

  He stepped back and smiled.

  “That’s better. I knew you did. I could tell, you know?”

  He turned to the rack on the wall and replaced the knife. He then took down a hazel switch.

 
Margaret did not care anymore. She wished she were dead. She felt as if something within her had broken, her spirit perhaps. She felt like filth, the salty tang of Moult’s pre-cum in her nostrils, the chill of his saliva on her back.

  He stood behind her once more. The air sizzled as the switch cut through it. Margaret yelped with pain as it stung her buttock. Moult’s breathing became ragged again, and she imagined he was jerking his cock again. The switch fell across her shoulders, leaving a searing cold line across her back. She wondered if he had drawn blood. Again and again, the switch fell, on her back, her buttocks, and her thighs. Her yelps became squeals, her squeals became whimpers…

  Then the whipping suddenly stopped. She heard a groan behind her, then felt the head of his penis being laid against the small of her back, his fist moving frantically along its length. Then, with a strangled gasp, he came, and she felt his warm semen squirt over the hollow of her back and drip down her buttocks and thighs.

  He moved away again, and his breathing gradually slowed and quietened. After a while, she heard the rustle of clothing as he dressed. He came and knelt between her thighs and unlocked the shackles from her ankles, before bringing back the ladder and unlacing the leather manacles.

  Margaret slid to the floor.

  “You will find another gown over by the door,” came Moult’s voice.

  Margaret looked up and saw him standing over her, once more the calm insolent gentleman. His features were cool and composed, as if nothing unusual had transpired.

  He looked down along his nose at her, disdainfully.

  “Put something on, woman,” he reproached. “Have you no shame?”

  Chapter Thirty

  “He is a brute, m’lady!”

  Lizzie dabbed gently at the welts on Margaret’s shoulders and back with a wetted cloth. The skin was not broken, but the switch-marks rose in angry-looking rose-pink stripes. Similar stripes lay across her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. Margaret winced as the cool fabric touched her damaged skin

  “We should send out for some moss,” Lizzie suggested, “to dress the wounds with.”

  Margaret shook her head and dismissed the fuss that Lizzie was making with a wave of her hand.

  “The harm is not great,” she said. “The marks will soon fade of their own accord; they are not that sore.”

  Lizzie drew across the table the pot of oak-balm with which Margaret had treated her torn sex when she had first come to her.

  “Then let me at least put some salve onto the worst of the marks,” she insisted. “It will draw some of the heat from them and make them less fiery. It will also help them heal.”

  Margaret conceded this comfort. Lizzie dipped her fingertips into the balm and began to smooth it lightly over her shoulder blades and down the long flat muscles of her back. The balm soothed the sting of the welts, and Margaret felt the muscles of her shoulders and back relaxed under Lizzie’s tender ministrations.

  “Stand up,” Lizzie said, and she spread the salve over Margaret’s buttocks and thighs with slow, gentle strokes of her palms.

  “That is enough,” Margaret said, stepping away from Lizzie.

  She gathered up her linens and drew them over her head and along her long tapering legs. She slid her hands under her hair and the nape of her neck and flicked it free of her chemise. Lizzie put the stopper in the clay pot and stood up from the stool on which she had been sitting, wiping her hands on the damp cloth.

  “It’s the humiliation,” she said quietly, behind Margaret’s back as Margaret stood at the table. “The skin heals, but the shame never does. It festers deep inside you. You feel as if you’re nocht but dung, and after a while – after they have been visiting their filth on you again and again, making you do things that turn your stomach – you have a hard time believing that you’re not just the sharn they scrape from their boots. But we’re not, m’lady, are we? We’re worth more than that.”

  Margaret turned and drew her into an embrace. She nestled her chin on the top of Lizzie’s head and gazed at the window, behind which her mother lay in her own piss and filth.

  “Aye,” she murmured. “And we must cling to that. Whatever they do with us, we must never lose heart. We must always have faith in our own worth. If you remain strong, Lizzie, they can never take that away from you.”

  Lizzie clung to her, burying her face in the crook of Margaret’s shoulder, as if she would never let her go.

  “But what shall we do, m’lady?”

  “We survive,” Margaret replied, remembering her father. “We twist and wriggle and bend with the wind and weather the storm. For the storm will pass, Lizzie. I have friends and family who will not rest until we are free. The tide is turning in this war, and all the Moults who oppress and misuse us will soon be no more. My betrothed and my kin will rescue us, Lizzie; of that I’m sure. We just need to remain strong and alive until that day comes.”

  Lizzie clutched herself closer to Margaret’s breast.

  “I’m fear’t, m’lady.”

  Margaret inclined her face and kissed the top of Lizzie’s head.

  “I’m fear’t too, Lizzie, my dear. But we maun be brave. You can’t be brave without feeling fear’t.”

  The stood in silence for a while.

  “Do you really think they’ll come, m’lady, your kinfolk?”

  Margaret set her jaw in determination, and her arms tightened around her charge.

  “I know they are coming, Lizzie, I know they are coming.”

  Two evenings later, Moult returned and led Margaret back down to his playroom. There she found a young brown-haired girl stripped and trussed and suspended by a chain over the Judas chair. Her creamy flesh spilled from the ropes that bound her, her ample breasts scraped with rope-burns. Her eyes were wide with horror.

  “Since you will not consent to having your pet play with us,” he explained, “I have brought this cottar’s wench for our delight and delectation. My men picked her up from one of the ferm touns hereabouts, I can’t remember which one.” He spun her slowly around in the chain from which she dangled. “She is quite pretty, this one. And clean. They laundered her in the Tweed before they brought her up here. I’ve had some dirty, ugly bitches to play with over the years, let me tell you.”

  Margaret refused to look up at the captive girl, though her stomach lurched when her eyes fell instead on the bloodstained floorboards on which the chair stood.

  “You know how this works?” Moult enquired.

  Margaret did not know, but she could imagine.

  “As you can see, the wench has been suspended by a chain above this high stool. The stool has a tall wooden pyramid instead of a seat. The wench’s wrists have been bound to her ankles.” He reached out and lifted Margaret’s chin so that she looked at the girl. “See how she hangs, squatting over the pyramid? The other end of the chain is wound around this ratchet. By turning the handle, I can raise and lower her onto the tip of the pyramid. I can even drop her onto the pyramid by freeing the ratchet. Ingenious, don’t you think?”

  Margaret swallowed back the bile that had risen in her throat.

  “Now,” Moult continued, “here is the game. You will pleasure me. I will raise and lower this cunt according to how well you are pleasuring me. If you displeasure me, I will release the ratchet and drop the cunt onto the pyramid. Those are the rules. Do you understand them?” He smiled a thin, cruel smile. “They are very simple.”

  “I will not play your game.” Margaret hissed.

  “As you wish.”

  He pushed back the lever that held the ratchet in place. With a scream, the girl dropped towards the pyramid. Immediately, he pulled the lever back to re-engage the ratchet, and the girl jerked to a halt, the tip of the pyramid inches from her sex.

  Moult worked the ratchet, and the girl slowly rose towards the ceiling.

  “Now, go behind that screen and undress.”

  Reluctantly, with tears of alarm and fear filling her eyes, Margaret obeyed. When she step
ped back naked from behind the screen, she found Moult also naked, with the leather hood strapped to his head. Once again, his eyes gleamed evilly from the eye-slits and his long thin cock stood erect from his scrawny hips. The girl twirled slowly around, about a foot above the sharp apex of the pyramid.

  “Pleasure me,” he commanded.

  Margaret was at a loss.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  The ratchet clicked down two notches.

  “Pleasure me,” he repeated, in exactly the same tone of voice.