by Arnette Lamb
That was just what she had done.
Like footprints in the snow, the hoof marks led him unerringly to the docks at South Shields. Standing on a hill, he gazed at the port the Romans had discovered over fifteen hundred years ago. No visible signs of their presence remained, but an industrious explorer could dig beneath the mounds of earth and uncover the tools and remnants of a civilization of builders and engineers.
Wishing he were on such an expedition, Malcolm guided his mount down the hill. He found the horses in a field near the orphanage. Then he went to the quay.
“Have you a blackamoor among your passengers?” he asked captain after captain.
“Nay, my lord” was the response of the day.
A glance at the passenger list gave him an idea. “This widow. Is she veiled?”
“Aye, sir. All proper like, she is. Grieving, I’m sure, poor lady. Ain’t said but two words to me, and odd those were.”
Malcolm was already studying the next ship. “Oh?”
“I asked her if she’d like her meals sent to her cabin. She said, ‘Betcha that.’ My money says she’s Welsh. They’ve got a strange speech about them.”
Applauding himself and Elanna’s slip of the tongue, Malcolm fetched his bride and deposited her on the steps of Kildalton.
“The gates are locked, Alpin, and I’ve put extra guards on the grounds. You cannot get away.”
She gave him a fake smile. “Watch me.”
Her next ruse was even more clever, and his second trip to Tynemouth proved amusing in the extreme. If, that is, he ignored the fact that his wife had deserted him again.
“Tell me about this masked leper and the sister of charity,” he asked the first mate on a barkentine destined for Calais.
“They come in a cart, my lord. Ain’t heard a peep out of the poor wretch or the nun with ’im.”
A nun in Scotland? Improbable. “She was wearing a habit?”
“Peculiar, it was, now that you mention it. Looked more like a monk’s robe to me. Bonny thing she is, though. ’Magine a sister ’o mercy with eyes like fancy purple stones.”
Ten minutes later when he led her off the ship, Malcolm thought her fancy eyes were shooting daggers. “You cannot get away, Alpin. Give it up.”
Two days later when he fetched her back a second time from Whitley Bay, humor fled.
“You put Elanna in a coffin?”
“I’d rather see you in one,” she spat.
“We were speaking of Elanna.”
“It was her idea. She assured me she’d be fine. I was going to let her out as soon as we set sail.”
The last thread controlling Malcolm’s temper snapped. He scooped her up and marched not to her gray gelding but to his stallion. Unceremoniously he tossed her onto the saddle and mounted behind her.
“Let me go, you wretched toad!”
Ignoring her, he slapped a hand to her back and gave the horse his head, leaving Saladin and the others at the dock. In a frenzy, the Moor used his scimitar to pry the nails out of the coffin containing the woman he loved.
Alpin yelled, “If you don’t let me off this horse, you’ll be sorry.”
He was already sorry—sorry he’d fallen in love with her and disgusted with himself because he couldn’t let her go.
“Malcolm, for God’s sake, stop. I’m pregnant!”
Chapter 19
Malcolm’s mind became a dark cave with one word shaping the light at the opening: “pregnant.” He eased back on the reins and shook his head. Alpin, pregnant The horse stopped. His wife had conceived.
Hope blossomed in his soul and obliterated the darkness. He was going to be a father. At last.
Alpin had been a virgin, no mistaking that. His stepmother had been correct: he could sire children. Hallelujah! Alpin would give him a babe.
He dismounted and lifted her to the ground.
“You miserable cur.” She put her hands over her stomach in a protective gesture. “If I lose this babe, the sin be upon your head. Oh, God, why won’t you let me go?”
“Go where?”
“Back to Barbados, where I belong.”
Reality set in, and with it a coldness that chilled him to the bone. He understood the reason behind her escape. Suddenly he couldn’t stand still. “Who’s the lucky father?”
Stupefied, Alpin watched him pace. He had tossed her around like a sack of oats. Fear of a miscarriage had forced her to reveal her pregnancy. “What did you say?”
The ocean breeze tousled his hair. He squinted into the wind. “I asked you the name of the man I should congratulate.”
He appeared so calm she wanted to slap his stoic face. Over the snorting of his horse, she said, “What do you mean? You’re the father.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
Incensed, she marched up to him. “Well, it wasn’t an immaculate conception!”
He looked down, but didn’t seem to see her. “Obviously not. Who is he, Alpin? Rabby, or one of the other men on the night watch? Were you wallowing in the sheets rather than stripping them off the beds?”
The strength went out of her legs. She dropped to the ground and stared at his bare knees and the hem of his kilt. He had hurt her before with his false words of love, but this latest cruelty bruised her to her soul. “I know you’re angry because I left you again, but you cannot, out of lost pride, name me an adulteress.”
“I can and I will.”
Saladin, Alexander, and the others joined them, Elanna looking none the worse for her captivity.
Malcolm leaped into his saddle and sawed on the reins. The horse reared.
Alpin rushed to him. “Malcolm, wait!”
“Help her mount, Alexander,” he yelled over his shoulder. “And take your time getting home.”
He left a trail of dust for them to follow. Crushed by his cruel accusation and determined to get back on that ship, Alpin called out to Saladin. But the Moor couldn’t take his eyes or his attention off Elanna.
“How do you feel?” he asked her.
Elanna pouted. “Feel bad, very bad. Better I should ride with you.”
He glared at her. “Better I should beat you.”
In a blatantly seductive move, she ran her fingers over her Shoulder and her neck. “You would mark this skin, Muslim? You like this skin, remember? You say it tastes like ambrosia.”
His heated gaze followed the path of her hand. Then he tipped back his head and stared at a passing cloud. At length he said, “See them home, Alexander.”
Then he, too, raced down the well-traveled road.
Alpin stared with longing at the dock.
“Doona think about it, lass,” said Alexander. “The captain wilna take you aboard.”
By the time they reached Kildalton, Alpin had cursed, cried, and called Malcolm Kerr every vile name she could think of. She had also devised a new method of escape. She and Elanna would book passage in Tynemouth, then cross the river Tyne to the port of South Shields and book passage there, too. While her husband waited for her in the first city, she’d be taking ship in the next. The plan was so simple she berated herself for not thinking of it sooner. She would outsmart her sorry excuse for a husband.
He was waiting for her in their bedchamber. Standing before the bookcase, he barely spared her a glance, but the revulsion in his eyes made her want to weep again.
Marshaling her defenses, she put away her cloak and the saddle pouch, then washed her face in the basin. The room seemed lifeless, not at all the place where they’d loved and laughed and reminisced about the past. Had they truly lain naked in the wide bed and in the aftermath of loving discussed grain harvests and a future for the Fraser brothers?
Malcolm hated her now. Paradise legally belonged to her. She could at last tell him why she must return to Barbados.
“You might as well tell me the name of your lover.”
She yanked up a towel and tossed off any notion of unburdening her soul. “You might as well go to hell.”
“Oh,
come now, Alpin.” He drew a book from the perfectly straightened row and stared at the spine. His large hands dwarfed the tome. “I’ll find out sooner or later.”
“Very well.” When he looked up, his eyes all attention, she added, “I call him a sniveling cur.”
He gave her a flat, unamused smile. “Considering your creative disguises of late, I expected more originality from you. You mustn’t think harm him. Quite the contrary.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
Violence flared in his eyes. He threw the book across the room. “Because he can sire children and I cannot. Thanks to you!”
Baffled, Alpin watched the copy of Thomas Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England crash against the mantel and slide to the floor, taking an ancient Roman vase with it.
Alpin clutched the damp towel. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say. You cannot disavow this child just because its mother hates you.”
He stalked her then, his face stone-hard with rage, his eyes glittering with menace. “Despise me if you will, Alpin. Call me the cuckold I am.” He grasped her upper arms. “But tell me the bastard’s name.”
Alpin held her ground and ignored the fact that he could crush her bones with a flick of his wrist. She considered reasoning with him, but her pride wouldn’t allow it. “It’s you, you beef-witted pinhead, although you hardly deserve to be a father.”
Like butter in the sun, his rage melted. “Oh, hell.” He released her and plopped down in a chair. “I am not the father of your child, Alpin. You destroyed my seed. So do not expect me to give that bastard in your belly the Kerr name. If that was your intention.”
More confused than ever, Alpin searched his face for some sign of madness. “Destroyed your seed? What on earth are you talking about?”
“I’m referring to the deviltry you worked years ago with that jar of hornets. My parents kept the result quiet. Only Saladin knows.” His unguarded expression revealed a man at peace with failure. “I have never sired a child, even on proven breeders, and believe me, I’ve tried.”
Alpin didn’t know whether to laugh at him or sock him in the jaw. The riddle of why he’d interfered in her life was now solved. She saw through his meddling, understood the reason behind his love words and false affection.
It was all lies. It was all for revenge.
Their marriage had borne fruit, but she didn’t care if he believed her. “That’s why you talked Charles into giving you the plantation. That’s why you brought me here.”
“Your logic knows no bounds.”
The sheer evil of his plan hurt worse than his sarcastic denunciation. She had been shunned during her childhood by adults who couldn’t or wouldn’t see past her hoydenish ways. As a grown woman she had been despised outright by insensitive plantation owners who refused to give up their hold on a race of defenseless people.
Today those occasions paled, for no one had treated her so maliciously as Malcolm Kerr. The man she loved.
Her chest constricted and her tears flowed freely, but Alpin didn’t care if he saw her weep. He’d made his decision years ago and plotted his life accordingly. “Tell me this, Malcolm. When did you make your startling discovery?”
He glanced up, but looked away again. “Does it matter?”
How dare he be so blasé when he’d ruined her life and cast the fate of her friends to the wind. “Was it in your fifteenth year, when the milkmaid did not conceive?”
“I have never taken advantage of a servant.”
She let that lie pass. He didn’t care enough about her to remember that she was his housekeeper. “Did your parents take you to London where you found a willing shopgirl? Was she ripe for your affections?”
“Stop it, Alpin.”
“Or were you one and twenty and on your grand tour when you decided that a six-year-old girl had ruined your life?”
All of his interest seemed fixed on the drapes. “I hardly think a litany of my amorous adventures will prove anything.”
“No?” She thought of those women, probably bright-eyed and eager for the affection of so handsome and well fixed a man as Malcolm Kerr. Had he cared about any of them?
She cared, because she knew well the pain of being at the mercy of men. She knew better the pain of loving Malcolm Kerr. “How many hearts did you break to prove your theory?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Alpin. But you’re wrong. I have never mistreated women.”
“Until now.”
The signal horn blared. A visitor had arrived, probably Lady Miriam. Alpin’s bad luck was holding true.
He strummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “I’m sure you will not believe me, but I refused to make a dynastic marriage, knowing that no dynasty would follow.”
She laughed to keep from sobbing. “How noble of you to save your common deceptions for me.”
“I was angry.”
“You were eager, too. You wanted the handfast marriage because you thought nothing would come of it. What did you expect to do with me when I didn’t conceive? Had you decided to give me fifty pounds and send me on my way?”
When his gaze met hers, she saw regret and resignation. In a reasonable tone he said, “That night we slept in the study I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t let me. You were too eager to have me sign over Paradise Plantation to you. Will your lover join you there?”
“I was a virgin, damn you.”
“Aye, you were, I’ll grant you that. I even thanked you for the gift of your innocence. How long after that did you take a lover?”
He maintained that she’d been unfaithful. Through a fog of misery, she thought about the sponge that his last mistress had left behind. Rosina hadn’t wanted his child. Alpin might have felt sympathy for him if he hadn’t been so cruel to her.
Reaching into the wardrobe, she grabbed the bottle and threw it at his feet Glass shattered, and rose water perfumed the air. The sponge skidded to a halt at the edge of the carpet. “I cannot explain why your other women never conceived, but there’s the reason your Rosina didn’t. I’ve had no man but you. For pity’s sake, Malcolm, I’d never even been kissed before.”
Her piece said, her heart a shambles, Alpin collected her cloak and marched out of the room.
Malcolm heard her leave, but couldn’t take his eyes off the contraceptive device. Impossible, his pride said. Consider it, his mind countered.
There were no milkmaids in his past; he had not been the sort of son to dishonor a servant in his father’s house. There were no shopgirls; he had not been the kind of youth to take advantage of an innocent. He had always chosen experienced women, women who’d already borne children. He’d even gone so far as to scorn the notion of conception.
Experienced women. Women who had earned their keep pleasing him. Had he, by hedging his bet that they would not conceive, given them license to prevent it?
Like the broken bottle, a lifetime of conviction shattered. A vision of Alpin rose before him, tears streaming down her face, her lovely eyes filled with pain.
And the truth, for he believed her.
Damning himself, he got to his feet and kicked the sponge across the room. God, how he’d hurt her. He had flung accusations as if they were weapons. He’d been a fool, but no more. He’d go to her, make her listen. She still cared for him, of that he was certain.
Sweet Saint Ninian, she would blossom with their child. Joy tightened his chest and brought tears to his eyes. She would give him a bairn of his own, a bonny lass he could swing into the air and spoil to his heart’s content, or a laddie he could teach and mold into a fine man. Whatever the sex, the child would be a product of the love he and Alpin had shared.
The love they would share again.
He would woo her. If it took the rest of his life, he’d win back her affection. Starting now.
His course set, his heart buoyed by love and hope for the future, he dashed from the room and ran down the stairs. Hearing voices in the lesser hall
, he followed the sound. In the doorway he stopped, stunned, at the sight of his handfast bride in laughing conversation with Saladin’s twin brother.
Saladin had been blessed with the features of their Moorish father, but Sir Salvador Cortez had inherited the straight black hair and olive skin of their Spanish mother. Even their choice of clothing reflected their differences. Salvador preferred modern dress; he wore a fashionable jacket and breeches of green velvet, a stark white shirt, and knee boots.
But the greatest contrast between the brothers Cortez was evidenced in their views of and practices toward the fairer sex. Where Saladin had taken a vow of chastity until marriage, Salvador practiced the popular art of seduction.
To Malcolm’s way of thinking, he was practicing his art now. Why else would he be holding both of Alpin’s hands and making her blush?
Possessiveness gripped Malcolm. He stepped into the room. “Am I interrupting something?”
Alpin’s breath caught, and she jumped back as if burned.
The ever-affable Sir Salvador turned smoothly toward Malcolm. “Only a happy reunion, my lord.” He bowed from the waist.
“If you’ll excuse me.” Her head down, Alpin took the longest route to the door.
Malcolm blocked her path. To Salvador he said, “Is the family with you?”
“No.” His dashing countenance vanished. “I’ve come with a message for Lady Miriam, but Alpin tells me she’s not here.”
Hope of a speedy reconciliation with Alpin faded, for if Salvador had come alone and looking for Malcolm’s stepmother, trouble was afoot.
“Wait for me in my study, Salvador.”
His brows raised in casual query, Salvador nodded and left the room.
Malcolm closed the door.
Alpin gave him her back. “I have nothing to say to you.”
Braced for the difficult task of earning her forgiveness, Malcolm said, “I know. But I have much to say to you.”
