by Jackie Ivie
“But…her? A Highlander? Ugh. You can have any lass—willingly or no. I myself prefer them clean, even if they are unwilling. It makes the pleasure that much more…intense is a good word, eh, my friend?”
He nudged Langston, who smiled readily, and with an ease that looked more comfortable than any grin he’d ever given her. Lisle was the one sitting with the stone-faced expression.
“And just how is the MacHugh lass, if I may be so bold?”
“Filthy,” Langston replied. “Aren’t all the MacHughs?”
Captain Barton roared his approval of that comment. Lisle felt like she was turning into stone, although her heart wasn’t listening. It was filling her ears and her mind with a cadence of ache and pain and gut-choking sobs she repeatedly swallowed to shove back down to where they were coming from.
“You know…I had heard that. It’s part of the inbreeding and barbaric practices of the Highlanders.”
“Inbreeding?” Langston asked.
“You know. Brother to sister. Father to daughter, son to mother…and all the other barbaric customs that are, you know…too inhumane to speak of. We only hope some of our measures have made it safe for civilized folk to walk about up here without fear of being tainted.”
“I see…” Langston replied.
“So tell me, my friend. Is it true?”
“What?” Langston asked.
“That they’re all alike. Beneath the clothing, that is.”
Langston sucked in on his cheeks. Lisle didn’t find it made him look more handsome, more interesting, or anything other than detested. She didn’t know where her mind had been all day, she truly didn’t.
“I thought you had experience, Captain.”
“Not with one of her kind.”
“Her kind?” Langston asked.
“You know…a Highland wench, from the farthest reaches of this Celt wilderness. Is she…as they say…a passionate wench?”
“Passion?” Langston asked. The look he was giving her was nothing save uninterested and dispassionate to the point of boredom. “Oh…she is that, Captain. Very much so. Very.”
He was wounding her and he didn’t even have a weapon with which to do it. He’d also lost even a hint of a Scot’s brogue. Lisle was rocking in place, yet nothing was moving. She didn’t think through the why of it. She only prayed for the blessed numbness back…anything to dim the words that wouldn’t cease.
“Passionate, eh? I almost envy you. I do, although I’d have to post a guard at my back to make certain she hadn’t found a way to stick a dirk or two into me. She looks especially ready to do such a thing to you, Monteith. You’d best guard your back.”
“I’d rather leave it bare, actually.” Langston leaned toward the captain, and said the rest of it with a loud whisper that carried. “She rakes her fingernails down it.”
“Lucky man, Monteith. Very. I’m certain I envy you now.”
“Really?” Langston replied.
“Oh, yes. Except for one thing. I don’t like my enemies in my bed. Too many stings when there should be nothing but bliss.”
“I’ve always found it best to keep them close at hand, myself,” Langston replied.
“Good Lord, why?”
“Because the devil is easier to fight if you know where he is.”
“I never quite thought of that,” Captain Barton replied.
“In point of fact, my business partner, Solomon Hussmein, was once my fiercest enemy in Persia. He had all the contacts I wanted. I had all the guile he needed. It was bound to chafe.”
“You partnered with your enemy?”
“It’s a very lucrative partnership, Captain.”
“As I’ve proof of. Your ships are the envy of the royal fleet. You’d best hope King George doesn’t take a liking to them, my friend.”
“He only has to ask, and they will be put at his disposal, of course. As it goes without saying, for all of my holdings.”
The captain sighed, filling his chest with air, and making a tasty target if Lisle really did have a dirk and knew how to throw it.
“You have the luck of the devil, Monteith, and I already know you have his wealth. I envy you completely now. But satisfy my curiosity, if you will.”
“You have but to ask. You know I’ll comply, of course.”
“However did you manage to get this Hussmein fellow to agree to go into such a partnership?”
“Only after proving my worth, of course. And his.”
“How did you do that?” Captain Barton asked.
Lisle would have given anything not to have heard the answer. She didn’t even realize it until she heard it.
“I married his littlest sister, of course,” Monteith replied.
Chapter Thirteen
Lisle now knew there was such a thing as hell. It wasn’t buried deep in the bowels of the earth. It wasn’t the black underbelly of a mythical place called heaven. It wasn’t full of devils and fire and condemnation and smoke. It was in every raindrop that hit her with a stinging blow, every shallow breath she kept taking, despite wishing them done with, and it was in the burning sensation right in her breast.
It was the choking pressure of the green and gold ribbon tie at her chin, holding the Monteith cloak to her body, and making her accept it.
Lisle reached up and pulled on one end of her tie, making it a surreptitious movement. The cloak slid off her shoulders with the same stealthy motion, and came to rest on Blizzom’s flank before it fell off with the motion of his step, and landed somewhere on the rocky path they were following. She didn’t look back and Monteith didn’t notice it, only because he wasn’t noticing anything about her.
The rain had a chill to each drop now that her back and shoulders were uncovered. It stung like little needles, and Lisle tried to concentrate on that. Rain hadn’t had such an effect before. It usually felt fresh and vital. And cleansing.
He’d called her filthy. Her. His wife…or was she even that anymore? He’d said to trust nothing. He should have been more specific. He should have said to not trust him. The stab of what might be anger, but felt a lot more like hurt, raced through her, dismaying and disgusting her. She had no choice but to face why, too. The dismay and disgust belonged to her and she had to own every bit of it, because if she’d stayed with hating him, she wouldn’t care what he thought of her, what he was doing with her, or what he said about her.
A hoof slipped, sending a rock down the side of the pathway, where it continued its descent, gathering more of them as it fell, until the sound of so many rocks and boulders and chips of stone landing in the gully beneath them echoed back up to them, loud even in the rain.
Lisle listened for the end of the rock slide noise, watched the pathway in front of him as they descended the same one the Highland Regiment had been climbing, and did her best not to watch the man causing all of it.
He’d called her filthy, inbred, and barbaric. Her mind replayed his words, and the way he’d said them. The effect was a stiffening of her spine, and put a dryness to her eyes that negated the rainfall filling them, making the burn intensify more with each moment she prolonged blessing her own eyes with a blinking motion.
He’d called her filthy.
Lisle stared straight ahead and saw nothing. She knew the incline straightened out from the decreased slant of being atop Blizzom’s back. She heard the change in ground cover, but saw none of it. She knew he turned back then, meeting her eyes for the briefest of moments, and then he was turning forward again, and yet she saw none of that, either.
All she saw was hate, making her eyes burn with it, and it was colored with red—the color of hell. It made the wash of rain no longer feel clean and fresh, but more like it contained brimstone and smoke.
“Here. Eat.”
He had pulled Blizzom’s rein, or slowed Torment’s stride, to bring him level with her. Lisle heard his words and didn’t move her head. She ignored him, although from the corner of her vision, she knew what he was doing. The rain was
n’t slackening, but he must no longer care about the effects of it on his bread and meat and cheese, and other foodstuff that Widow MacIlvray had packed for them. He was fishing about in the basket tied to the side of his saddle, and then he was holding something out to her.
“I’m na’—” Lisle stopped the slurred word, and made herself consciously change it. “I mean, I’m not hungry,” she finished.
“I dinna’ ask if you were.”
Lisle closed her eyes, making them burn worse somehow, at his use of the Scot slang. She shuddered through a breath she’d die before she admitted to.
“Then, doona’—” She stopped again, and forced herself to ask it with perfect Sassenach dialect. “I mean, do not offer it.”
“Lisle—”
“Doona’ speak with me, Monteith! Na’ now. I mean…not now.”
“You have to eat. Here.”
“Why?”
“Because a body canna’ exist without sustenance.”
“A body can exist without such bounty. I ate this morn. I do not need more. I have just spent a year proving thus.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Eat your own meal, my lord. I repeat. I am na’—not hungry.”
“Neither am I,” he replied, although he was filling his mouth, chewing, and swallowing at the end of the words.
“Then why do you eat?”
“Because that’s the business I am in,” he replied.
Lisle tipped her head and looked at him, although her eyes burned worse, and her head started throbbing at the motion. He was filling his mouth again, chewing again, and it looked like he was forcing each swallow when he’d finished.
She went back to looking straight forward.
“My business requires force, power, strength, stamina, and health. Mine. Every day, more of it each day. I can’t afford to slacken and sicken. A body does na’ get to such a state by starving it.”
“I dinna’—did not ask,” she said finally.
“I know.”
She tried ignoring him again. It didn’t work. She knew he ate another bite before he spoke again.
“What happened to your cloak?” he asked.
“I determined that I nae—I mean…no longer need it.”
“Will you cease that?”
“What?” she asked.
“Forcing Sassenach words through your lips.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it is na’ you.”
“I would ask you what you feel is me, my lord, but as I have already listened to it, I doona’—I mean, do not feel the need to hear it again.”
“Lisle.”
“Doona’ say my name! Never again! You ken?”
“Why?”
“Because I was named for a Celt goddess, and you have just vilified everything I value in that. You are na’—I mean—not worthy of having the name on your lips or your tongue.”
He didn’t answer. He simply took another large, vicious-looking bite of his bread, chewed it, and then lifted his chin for the swallowing motion it required. From the corner of her eye, it looked like it scraped his throat as he swallowed. Lisle sneered slightly. She only hoped it scoured him all the way down into his belly.
He tore another bite off and watched her as he chewed it. Lisle wasn’t looking; she didn’t wish to. She knew he was looking because she felt his stare.
“You canna’ ignore me forever,” he said.
“I can do whatever I wish,” she replied.
He sighed heavily. “You see nothing, know nothing, and sit in judgment on the whole. I doona’ ken why I bother talking to you now.”
“If it’s any comfort, neither do I,” Lisle replied.
“If I explain, I tear it apart. If I stay silent, I am hated.”
“You doona’ have to stay silent to be hated, my lord. I hate you just fine with or without your words. Trust me.”
That got her a larger sigh. Lisle tightened her fingers on the pommel, and thanked God for making the rain as disguising as it was.
“I dinna’ mean any of that…none of that,” he said.
“I prefer brutal honesty, my lord. I always did.”
“I know. That’s why everything has to go as it is.”
“Canna’ you simply eat your meal and leave me be?”
“’Tis na’ palatable,” he replied.
“Then why do you still eat it?”
“I already told you. ’Tis the business I am in.”
Lisle turned to him, hoping the rain blurred him, and yet knowing it wouldn’t. He was still the most handsome man she’d ever seen. And now that she knew he’d do whatever it took to keep that physique as strong, muscled, and filled with as much stamina as he could, even eating an unpalatable meal, it was worse. He was also the most insidiously evil, beautiful man she’d ever seen.
“I doona’ care to hear anything further about what business you are in, my lord.”
“As my wife, you have to address me by my given name…at least, some of the time.”
“I am na’ your wife. I heard as much. I may be inbred and stupid, but I am not deaf. Never was.”
He swore, and tore another bite from his bread. The stone look was back on every bit of his features, but it was tempered by something new, something intent and tormented. Lisle watched him chew in silence, and wondered what it was. He swallowed, tensing his cheeks with the motion.
“If you refer to my first wife, Shera, let me assure you, she presents no impediment to our marriage. None.”
“Shera would probably na’…I mean not agree, monsieur.” Lisle said the last part of her words in perfect French, and watched him look at her. There wasn’t a bit of surprise on him anywhere to hear it.
“She’s na’ in a position to agree or disagree.”
“She has my sympathy.”
“She does na’ need it. She’s gone,” he replied.
“That must have been uncomfortable for you,” Lisle replied in her perfect French. She should have been surprised when he understood every word, but she wasn’t.
“I dinna’ ask for her hand.”
“As I have already heard. She was probably part of the business contract that you and your partner arranged. She has my sympathy…and my thanks.”
“Thanks?”
“For freeing me from you. Nae man can have two wives, Lord Monteith. Such a thing makes a man a bigamist. Even up here, in the barbaric Highlands, such a thing is still frowned upon. Always was.”
There was silence for a bit as he shoved the last of his bread roll into his mouth and ate it. Lisle watched him and forced herself to ignore the twinge deep within her as he pursed his lips once he’d finished.
“The MacHughs will find life uncomfortable without their gold.”
Lisle sucked in the shock, and hoped he didn’t see it. “Are you threatening me?” she asked.
“Oh, I never threaten,” came the reply. “’Tis too time-consuming for my taste. I like the word negotiation much, much better.”
Lisle’s eyes widened without her allowing them to do it, and the raindrops that slid into them didn’t obliterate where he sat, taking a bite of his cheese block this time, although it didn’t looked like he was enjoying the taste or texture of it, either.
“Or, you could try finding someone on Dugall property that would take you in…and keep you hidden from their landlord, who just happens to be me. That should prove an interesting endeavor. There might even be a poor crofter or two willing to risk his livelihood to shelter the last laird’s daughter. I doona’ know the success of that, since they would lose their livelihood if they thwart me. Trust me. I doona’ have a reputation of compassion toward those who deceive me.”
She was reeling in place, and watched as black edged its way all about her vision. It made Blizzom feel like he was swaying, rather than standing placidly at rest. Lisle gripped the saddle pommel with hands that were afraid of the alternative.
“Or you could try and find the Dugall clan in
their exile. If you knew which part of the West Indies that England had sold them to.”
“S-sold?” she stammered. At least, that’s what she thought her lips moved enough to say.
“Sold. Into slavery. Every last one. The ones that survived the journey, that is.”
Lisle’s grip slipped, and then she forced the black at the edge of her consciousness away. She didn’t know how she did it, but she was not going to faint. She refused. Not in front of him and not over anything he said or did. Such a reaction was for women who possessed emotions and things like hearts, and if it killed her, she was going to make hers cease tormenting her with its presence.
“What…do you want?” The shell of a woman still sitting on the horse asked it, and that had to be her.
Monteith raised both eyebrows, putting that crease into place in his forehead again. “You,” he replied easily. “In my bed. Willingly. Lovingly and caressingly.”
She was so thankful she hadn’t taken a mouthful of food as her stomach revolted on his words, gagging her with bile that choked and burned. Lisle swallowed it back down, watched him through a sheen of moisture that she couldn’t blame on the rain, and then blinked the tears into existence down her cheeks, so her eyes could fill with more.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because you have assigned me a part, and I have no choice but to play it.”
“What?”
“And there are things too large to grasp, and too fragile to put to the test. I’m playing a part. One of many, I assure you. I have been for years. I’m very good at it. That is the talent for which my partner went into business with me. He could na’ tell a lie. I can. I can live one. I am very well paid for it. Doona’ you listen to anything when you hear it?”
“Why do you still use the brogue?” Lisle could hit herself later for allowing the emotion to stain her voice. She could only hope he didn’t hear it for what it was. It was a forlorn hope.
He sighed heavily. “I am still a Highlander.”
“Only by birth. Na’ by choice.”
“Such a language is mine to use. Doona’ take that from me…too.”
His voice had cracked slightly on the last word. Lisle couldn’t believe she’d heard such a thing, and upon searching his face, she knew she hadn’t heard it. “I did nae such thing. I wouldn’t.”
