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

by Fiona Faris

  She stepped up to him and took his cock in her hand and began to rub it slowly, tentatively. He ran his free hand over her long golden hair and down over her cheek and jaw.

  The ratchet clicked down another notch.

  “Faster.”

  Margaret rubbed his cock faster, increasing the length of her stroke. His hand fell to her breast. His fingers plied her flesh, while his palm roughly kneaded her rose-pink nipple. His lips drew into a thin line, and he mewled like a cat.

  He wound back the ratchet three slow clicks, and the girl rose a few inches.

  Moult’s hand left her breast and clamped itself on her throat. He rose onto the tips of his toes and brought his mouth close to her ear, nuzzling her hair aside. His breath was hot and moist on her cheek.

  “You’re a fucking whore,” he told her. “Did you once pleasure your stable boys like this when you were the daughter of Neidpath? Did they form a line around the courtyard to wait their turn? I hear your little sister went much further for them, that she gave them her arse in the stalls? Isn’t that right?”

  “No!” Margaret denied.

  The ratchet clicked down, three, six, a dozen notches. The girl screamed as the tip of the pyramid buried itself in her sex. Blood trickled down the pyramid’s sides.

  “She was a virgin, I believe,” Moult informed Margaret, his mouth still close to her ear. “Now, tell me; I want to hear you say it. ‘I’m a fucking whore. My sister…’ use her name ‘… is a fucking whore. We let the filthy stable boys use us as their fuck-pigs’. Say it!”

  “I’m a fucking whore—”

  “Louder! Make the rafters ring. I want your shit-covered mother to hear you in her cage. I want your dead father to hear you, where his crow-picked bones still hang on the gibbets. I want the stones of your happy home to echo your words forever. And don’t stop pleasuring me or the bitch here slowly dies.”

  “I’m a fucking whore,” Margaret screamed, rubbing Moult’s cock furiously. “My sister, Joan, is a fucking whore. We let the filthy stable boys use us as their fuck-pigs.”

  The ratchet clicked back up again, lifting the sobbing girl from her violation.

  Moult swept Margaret’s hand away with his free arm.

  “I grow bored,” he said imperiously. “Think of some other way of pleasuring me.”

  Margaret stepped back, sweeping her long hair away from her tear-drenched face, a desperate look of uncertainty in her eyes.

  The ratchet clicked, and the girl jerked down a few inches.

  The girl let out a scream and Margaret fell to her knees.

  She grabbed hold of his cock again. It was only inches from her face. She slid back the foreskin to reveal its glistening head. Fighting back her nausea, Margaret wrapped her lips around it and began to suck.

  “Use your tongue, you stupid bitch.” Moult spat.

  She swirled her tongue around the glands and Moult moaned.

  “That’s better.” He gasped. “That is much better.”

  He began to thrust back into her mouth. She held tight to the shaft to prevent it from going in too far. She was worried it would touch the back of her throat and make her vomit. She worked at his cock harder, sucking its head against the inside of her cheek, lapping at it with her tongue, pumping the shaft with her long slender fingers. She had to bring this nightmare to an end as quickly as possible. The revulsion she felt was intense; it took all of her willpower to stop herself from jumping up and running to the door. The only thing that held her back was the thought of what would happen to the poor girl suspended above the Judas chair if she did.

  She felt his member swell in her mouth and his breath starting to catch. He buried his free and in her hair. He was about to come, she realized; he was about to come in her mouth. The very idea of it made the bile rise in her throat. Pulling herself free of his grip, she rose from her haunches and cupped her breasts around the length of his cock. She squeezed them together and rubbed them up and down feverishly, watching the head appear and disappear quickly between her cleavage. He gave a roar, and his warm seed spurted over her throat and neck. She kept rubbing, while Moult’s whole body jerked and spasmed, until his ejaculations abated, and his cock rolled flaccid between her breasts.

  Moult stepped away from the ratchet mechanism on unsteady legs and sat on a crossbeam of the device next to the Judas chair. His breaths came quickly, in shallow gasps, and he held his temples between thumb and forefinger until his dizziness subsided.

  Margaret collapsed onto her haunches again and fell prone on her thighs. Her body was racked with deep heart-rending sobs.

  Once he had recovered, Moult stood up and turned away from her.

  “You may get dressed,” he told her in a small distant voice.

  Margaret heard a quiver in that voice, but whether it was a quiver of shame at himself or disgust at her, she could not tell. Slowly and painfully she staggered to her feet and made her way behind the screen where she had taken off her gown and linens.

  When she returned, Moult was also dressed. He had moved the Judas chair and was lowering the girl to the floor.

  “What will become of the girl?” Margaret asked with trepidation.

  Moult let out a long sigh of regret.

  “I will have her returned to her farm,” he said, then a thought occurred to him. “Unless, of course, you want her to play with. She’s a fine strapping lass, not like the skinny little runt you’ve taken as a pet.”

  Margaret shuddered.

  “Take the poor lass home,” she replied.

  “I could show you—”

  Margaret raised her voice: “Take her home, I say.”

  Moult shrugged and continued to unwind the ratchet.

  “As you wish.”

  Once the girl was lying on her side, still trussed like a chicken, Moult took a candle from one of the sconces and escorted Margaret back to the solar. Not a single word passed between them.

  When the door closed, and the bar rattled into the hasps on the stair side, Margaret dropped in a dead faint on the solar floor.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The next morning, Margaret awoke with a start.

  Memories of the previous evening came flooding back, and she began to tremble uncontrollably. She had fainted, she recollected, but how had she found her way into bed?

  “Lizzie!” she cried.

  Lizzie slipped into the bedchamber.

  “M’lady,” she announced herself. “You were sleeping that soundly I didna like to wake you. You’ve had a terrible shock.

  Margaret suddenly realized that she was weeping. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she could not stop them. Her teeth were chattering as if she were cold, but her limbs and forehead burned. She threw back the bedcovers. She looked down at herself in amazement when she found that she was wearing her nightgown.

  “I managed to get you to bed, m’lady,” Lizzie explained. “Thankfully, you fell on a rug, and I managed to drag you through on it. I stripped and bathed you with a wet flannel and got you into your nightgown.” She frowned. “You’ve put in an awful night of it, tossing and turning and crying out in your sleep. I feared, at times, you were going to tumble out of bed and hurt yourself.”

  Margaret recalled some of the bad dreams that had disturbed her sleep: her mother transformed into a crow, fluttering on the floor, both her wings broken; Gilbert, trussed and dangling from a chain, screaming as he was forced to watch helplessly as Moult speared her again and again with his pyramid-shaped cock; her father’s head on a spike, weeping tears of blood, and wailing over and over again, “I’m sorry, Margaret, I’m sorry pet.”

  She scrambled to rise from the bed, but Lizzie placed her hands on her shoulders and stayed her.

  “Bide where you are, m’lady. You have a fever. Your exhausted, you need to rest.”

  “But…”

  “Wheesht, m’lady. I’ll bring you some meat to break your fast.”

  Margaret’s stomach lurched at the mere thought of foo
d.

  “No,” she protested, gripping Lizzie’s upper arms and almost unbalancing the slight girl. “Maybe some water to slake my thirst. But I could not keep any food down.”

  She persisted in trying to rise until Lizzie yielded with a sigh of exasperation.

  “Alright, m’lady; you can sit in a chair in the solar,” she conceded. “But you must sit quietly and not fash yourself.”

  She helped Margaret to her feet and draped a shawl over her shoulders. She led her through to the main apartment and eased her down into one of the armchairs by the fire.

  Margaret tugged the shawl from her shoulders and threw it from her petulantly. Her pale skin was flushed, and a thin sheen of perspiration lay on her brow and along her upper lip.

  “Why am I so hot?” she complained.

  Lizzie poured some water from the jug into a wooden cogie and brought it to Margaret.

  “Here,” she said, taking Margaret’s hands and placing the cogie in them. “Don’t drink it too fast or it will come straight back up again. Just take wee sips.”

  Margaret swallowed a mouthful and retched.

  “Wee sips,” Lizzie reminded her, dabbing Margaret’s lips and chin with a linen square.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Margaret confessed, a note of panic in her voice. “It is too hard. It is much too hard.”

  Lizzie gazed at her with a mixture of sympathy and fear. Margaret had become her hope, a light that had appeared at the end of what, until only a few days before, had seemed to be the endless dark tunnel of her miserable life. She did not want that light to go out.

  “You told me last night that we maun stay strong, m’lady, that we maun stay strong and brave.”

  Margaret covered her face with her hands. Tears sprang through her fingers.

  “I don’t think I am strong enough.” The note of panic was rising, her words coming faster.

  Lizzie crouched down beside her and put her arms around Margaret’s shoulders. Margaret was reluctant to burden the young lass with her grief and weakness but relented and laid her head on her shoulder.

  “You must be strong enough,” Lizzie insisted. “You must do what you have to, to survive until your kin comes to save you.” She gazed into the fire. “I’m amazed by what a body can survive. I’ve often thought I would never survive the misuse I was being put through, not without goin’ gyte. But I have.”

  Margaret raised her head and sniffed back her tears.

  “Aye, you have that, Lizzie,” she agreed, patting the hand that lay on her shoulder. “You have an invincible soul. When I think of what you’ve had to put up with in your life… So far, I’ve only had to put up with humiliation, deep and cruel humiliation. You’ve had to suffer much worse.” She looked up at the child. “I’m so glad I have you here with me, Lizzie. I don’t think I could survive without you.”

  “Of course you would, m’lady,” Lizzie assured her, standing up and walking over to the water-jug to replenish the cogie. “You’re made of sterner stuff than that bully Moult. You’re the better o’ him, just as I’m the better o’ a’ the men that hae ever ta’en me.”

  Margaret stood. She still swayed unsteadily, but she felt stronger than she did before.

  “My mother,” she said. “I must check on my mother.

  She moved towards the window.

  “I flung her some meat earlier, when I broke my fast,” Lizzie informed her.

  “And how did she seem then?” Margaret asked, unlatching the window.

  “No much changed,” Lizzie admitted, biting her lip for Margaret’s sake. “She’s moved, but no’ far. And it rained again through the night, so she got another drookin’.”

  Margaret pushed the window ajar and looked out. The crows had grown bolder. They had left the battlements and were now perching on the roof of the cage itself.

  “Get away with you!” Margaret cried, waving her fists at them.

  It would not be long until they plucked up the courage to slip between the bars to peck out her mother’s eyes.

  “Mother! Mother!” Margaret cried, trying to rouse her.

  But Lady Maria did not respond. She sat slumped in the corner like a poor rag doll that had been rescued from the Tweed, her gown saturated with rainwater and clinging to her stick-thin legs and torso, her hair plastered to her face and shoulders. The eyes still held the light of life but stared out on nothingness.

  “Do not give up, Mother,” Margaret pleaded. “Joan and Patrick will be here soon. You must hold on.” She looked at the bread and other scraps that littered the floor of the cage. “Please, eat something, Mother. A few mouthfuls at least, to keep your strength up. They will be here soon. They must come soon.”

  Margaret spoke as much to bolster her own faith as to restore that of her mother.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  At Harden, Auld Wat, Patrick, and Joan watched from their mounts as Auld Wat’s men tumbled from the door to the keep and swung up onto their fast, eager ponies, as they pranced and snorted under the restraint of the stable lads.

  The men were dressed not for a raid but for war. Some wore back and breastplates they had stripped from the corpses of vanquished soldiers, but most preferred a lighter, less cumbersome jack of plate: two or three layers of quilted cloth with small overlapping iron plates stitched between the layers of cloth. Some wore those jacks over vests of mail, but most wore them over plain shirts. They all had scarves wrapped several times around their necks, for protection against getting their throats cut. They all also wore thigh-high thick leather riding boots, adorned with spurs, and steel bonnets with hinged cheek plates and a flared rim to protect their necks.

  Once mounted, the stable lads handed them up their weapons: short lances and basket-hilted broadswords mainly, though Auld Wat himself wore a rapier and parrying dagger in his belt, and one of two of the men bore ‘latches’ – the small light crossbows that the reivers preferred to the bow. Instead of a lance, Joan carried a Jeddart staff she had acquired during the ill-lucked raid on the Kers: a slim four-foot blade of steel, which provided her with a long slashing edge, with a spike at the bottom for piercing.

  It was evening, and the glow of the gloaming was settling over intricate windings of the Ettrick Forest as the troop sallied forth, with Auld Wat in the lead. The plan was to travel through the night and pitch up in a ‘lurking place’ near to the Eastgate of Peebles, where they would refresh themselves and their horses. When the Eastgate was opened for the market at dawn, they would rush the gallows and bring Mary to safety, then ride on Neidpath to free Margaret and Lady Maria. If they could cut Sir Walter Moult’s throat in all the commotion, then so much the better, but they wanted to be in and away before any serious opposition could be mounted. Sir Walter would keep for another day.

  Auld Wat had a reputation as a skillful captain. As sure-footed as any wild goat, without star or compass in the overcast night, he led his men across the wild deserts of the fells and through the crooked turnings and deep precipices of the thickly wooded glens in the thickest darkness and the frequent mists that arose over the rivers and bogs. The men followed him confidently, putting their complete trust in him. By the early hours, they had forded the Tweed at Kailzie and bivouacked in the forest at Glentress.

  As the men dozed around a small campfire following a spartan meal, Patrick and Joan climbed to the top of Janet’s Brae and the earthen ramparts of an old fort and stared out into the darkness to where Peebles lay below.

  “Do you think my mother and sister will be unharmed?” Joan asked in a small voice.

  Patrick could not see her in the darkness, but he could sense her apprehension. He chose his words carefully.

  “I suspect the sheriff, Moult, will have taken them to bargain with, in the event of his master’s defeat,” he reckoned. “He will know that the war is not going well for the new king, Edward, and will be seeking insurance. Should the English withdraw, he might barter them for a safe passage south. He must have paid
the Kers a pretty price to take them; I cannot see him doing so just to have them killed. It would have been easier, and a lot less expensive, to just have had them murdered at Dryhope.”

  “I hope you are right,” Joan replied after a moment’s contemplation. “And Mary?”

  “Mary is to be made an entertainment of at tomorrow’s market. That is why we strike as soon as the gate opens. She will be in the stocks so that the people can torment her before the hangman does his work. We will seize her from the gallows, ride through the burgh and out by the Bridgegate, and on to Neidpath before the sheriff has time to pull up his braies.”