by Karen Ranney
It was grating on his nerves.
Alisdair told himself that he had been as polite as possible, but she continued to be perverse. She fled from a room if he entered it, refused to speak to him when he was being civil, stared at him when she thought he was unaware. If he had to spend the rest of the term of his grandmother's idiotic scheme coupled with such an antagonist, he would cheerfully strangle her. Let the English hang him for that.
If Malcolm had to bind him to an Englishwoman, he should have at least noted whether she grew pale around a man, if her breathing accelerated and was faint at the same time, if she looked as though she would rather die than be caressed. It was the least the old matchmaker could do. But, no, Malcolm had forgotten those little details, and Alisdair was tied to a cold spinster, no matter how many times she’d been wed.
Thank God this unholy bond would last only a little while. It was a thought he should have remembered. Instead, that flat expression on Judith’s face goaded him to thoughts best left unvoiced. Or, was it the fact that her hair seemed to shine even in the gloom of an approaching storm. Her lips seemed too full for fretfulness, and her soft, pillowy breasts gave the lie to her coldness, coaxed his palms to curl.
"Do you not think the lad bonny, Judith?"
His voice was too smooth, too honeyed, as soft as velvet, as dark as a moonlit moor. The wind tossed his hair from his face, the darkening sky was a perfect backdrop for the tanned expanse of his bare torso. He was an avenging god of storm and dark anger.
Judith took one step back, so slight that he should not have noticed. Yet, he did, and the sway of her skirts as she did so. He noted, too, that the pulse beat at her neck accelerated, as if he had touched her with more than his mind.
She was silent still, yet the air swirled with heaviness, as if her thoughts added weight to it.
"I thought all women grew soft and maternal at the sight of a babe. Are the English so different then? Is it that Douglas is only a Scot? Do you English consider him only half-human?"
When she did not speak, he grabbed her arm and pulled her closer. Perhaps she should have pulled away then. If she had distanced herself from him, she would not have felt the warmth of the hand which lay upon her arm. Skin against skin. Too intimate.
He forced her chin up so that he could see her eyes, staring into her face with studied intent before he abruptly released her. There was no expression at all in those azure eyes and the total absence of emotion disturbed him. It was as if part of his English wife had disappeared somehow, as if she'd retreated from his words, from his very presence, from his punishing grip upon her forearm.
Something made him want to banish that calm, nothing-look on her face. Any emotion was preferable to that flat look in her eyes.
"Or is it that you have no maternal leanings yourself, Judith? Twice married and no bairn. Yet you, Judith," he continued, his thin edged smile infinitely cruel, "have the hips of a born breeder. You could spit babes into the world without a gasp."
She didn't bother to respond. His words did not surprise her; she was immune to ridicule. Her father had not ceased commenting upon her appearance since she was a child. Peter's mother had read her a litany of her faults from daybreak to dusk, and Anthony had not abstained in his scathing remarks about her looks, her abilities, her many liabilities. The MacLeod's words paled in comparison to those she’d received in the past.
The thunder rolled, a drum beat of punctuation to her silence.
"Yet, it's true ice is not a fertile ground," he said brutally. "Were you never warm and willing, then? Only cold like now? If so, I can see why no man's seed found purchase in your pristine English womb."
Her pallor was replaced by blotches of red, the flat look in her eyes gone, supplanted by a look so fierce he almost recoiled from it. Yet she did not speak, and as he stared, she changed again, cloaking her rage in something he could not describe. There was no hushed comfort in her silence, nothing restful. It bubbled like an underground stream. There was concealment in her speechlessness, a hint of something clandestine, as if she were afraid to reveal the substance of herself.
She did the one thing designed to infuriate him.
Judith turned and walked away
He had had enough.
She felt the jolt at her knees and would have fallen if he hadn't scooped her up and thrown her over his shoulder. She screamed, which only fueled the laughter of those who’d followed her through the village despite the oncoming storm. Judith beat on his bare back, but all he did was hook his free arm around her legs and drop her by the ankles, until the long mass of her hair uncoiled and touched the ground.
The eternal Highland rain began to fall, full, fat drops accompanying the symphony of thunder. It was, Alisdair thought, a curious diorama they enacted, complete with nature’s cooperation.
Her nose was at the level of his knees.Judith was beyond humiliation. Her skirt was sliding down and, in a moment, her legs would be bared to the shuffling mass of people who relentlessly followed them despite the MacLeod's quick and determined strides. She ceased pounding on his back, replacing that futile gesture with one far more practical.
She bit him.
He dropped her with a shout.
She landed on her back, momentarily winded. She stared up at the furious face of the MacLeod and realized that modesty was going to demand a price. She crept up on her hands and knees, brushed her hair back from her face with one wet hand, never shifting her gaze from him. She watched him warily as he rubbed that portion of his anatomy which had been the softest and most accessible to her teeth. When he came after her, she was prepared. She leapt to her feet, looked to the left, but darted to the right.
They raced towards the castle and Judith knew that she was going to pay for her impulsive gesture but not, she vowed, in view of a hundred people. She gathered the skirts of her new dress in her fists and, without a thought to the modesty she had protected only moments earlier, lifted the folds of material above her pistoning knees and sprinted for her life.
The storm was full upon them now, but Judith didn’t notice the pelting rain, her only thought was to escape the retribution she would receive at the MacLeod’s hands. The path she’d taken only moments earlier became as slippery as a stream bed, but still she ran.
If he caught her, he was going to kill her, Alisdair decided. One less English woman was not going to be a loss to the world. Especially, this one. But, damn, the woman could run. The rain was icy upon his bare chest, but he was immune to such petty discomfort.
Alisdair caught her just inside the bronze doors. He swept her up in his arms despite her struggles. The crowd cheered as he disappeared from sight with his sodden English wife momentarily tamed. Well, if nothing else, Alisdair thought, she had been an entertaining diversion.
He swayed against the stone steps that led to the living quarters. She had not stopped fighting him, but he lacked the energy to throw her over his shoulder again. He’d been working in the fields since dawn while she, no doubt, had been saving her strength for their encounter. He scowled at her, a gesture that would have given a sane person a reason to cease their shouts and blows. No, his English wife was as stubborn as she was athletic.
"Shut up, woman!" he finally shouted, and the sound bounced off the stone walls and seemed to echo down the long corridors.
"Let me go!" she yelled in response. She had nothing to lose; she knew what punishment awaited her in the room atop the stairs. If she could only delay it, she would forestall the pain, also.
Alisdair wondered exactly who Judith was, that she could hate as deeply as a Scot, and tremble with fear at the same moment. For all she wished to hide herself, he’d read those emotions well enough.
Rain had plastered her hair down, sheened her face. Her lashes were long, spiky, her lips were full and wet. Alisdair wanted to tell her that a mouth could be used to better pursuits, a voice to softer demands. Instead, he only stopped and stared at her, wondering why the rhythm of her heart would be so
audible to him, why his own breath, raspy and winded, would echo hers so exactly.
The staircase had no railing, no banister. Those were frivolous notions for manor houses and estates. This staircase had been built with defense in mind, steep downward sloping steps that were difficult to mount if one were tired, or sick, or like Sophie, aged and frail.
At this moment, Alisdair felt all four.
Despite the trembling in his arms, he held his temporary English wife out over the sheer drop.
"Now?" he hissed.
She felt the tremors in his arms, and held onto his bare chest. He grimaced at the discomfort of her nails digging into his skin.
"Now?" he repeated.
"No," she said softly, defeated.
"Are you sure? It would be no trouble at all." He could feel his own heart pounding so loudly that surely she could hear it. He was tempted to throw her over, anyway.
She shook her head, frantically, and he stepped back and wearily leaned against the wall. He lowered her legs and allowed her to stand, but kept a firm hold on her upper arm. He pulled her inside Ian’s room, and swung her around as if she weighed no more than a feather. Her skirts slapped around her, wet, muddy. The beautiful blue sprigged dress - the prettiest dress she’d ever worn - was ruined.
Alisdair stood, hands on hips, and watched his newest burden as she scrambled up on the sagging mattress. She remained on her knees, her eyes flashing fire. Such temper was still a welcome change from the vacuity they displayed so often.
He smiled, a particularly infuriating grin which prodded her to words more prudently left unsaid. Yet, if she was going to be punished, then let it be for something, not simply the innocence of self.
"Is it that you wish me to fawn over your bastard, MacLeod? Your prowess as a male applauded and saluted? Very well, I applaud and salute you. You have fathered a child. Congratulations."
"I am not Douglas's father."
"And I am the King of England, MacLeod. Believe either if you will, they are both lies."
"Do you call me a liar then?" His scowl was too fierce. Her heart beat strongly, urging her to caution.
"No," she said, scooting away from him.
"I am sick unto death of you slithering away from me,” he ground out between thinned lips, his voice low and intense. “I am not a monster, nor am I a lovesick fool. You have nothing to fear from me.” Because he was irritated and not a little confused by the emotion he’d felt in the stairwell, he frowned fiercely at her, determined not to allow compassion to soften his words, or lead him into dangerous thoughts.
“If your husbands craved you with carnal lust, then it's because they had not seen another woman in months!" His conscience cringed at his cruelty, his manhood relished the open battle at last. "You are not Helen of Troy, nor are you an ethereal vision of loveliness. You are in a word, my English wife, a scrawny, sour tongued hag!"
He left the room in a whirl of motion and rage, leaving Judith staring after him.
Her eyes felt as though they had been dusted with pepper, tiny pinpricks of hurt.
It was only the rain in her eyes.
CHAPTER 9
"Was it very bad, Alisdair?" Sophie asked. Her soft voice conveyed compassion, her worried eyes concern for his obvious fatigue.
Judith watched the MacLeod warily. They had not spoken since his outburst a few days earlier. She had managed to avoid him since then, wanting nothing to do with the MacLeod, or his precious Tynan. She cared less than nothing for either of them.
Nor did she care about the errand which had kept him abroad all night. No doubt looting and pillaging. His eyes were shadowed and sunken, their edges looked red. His beard was full blown; he looked a marauder in truth.
Judith dished him up a bowl of porridge, which he ate standing up. He did not look at her, but concentrated on his meal as if he had not eaten for days. For some reason, the Scots did not refer to their meal of boiled oats as an "it", as in a leg of lamb or a haunch of beef. Instead, porridge was a "they" and best consumed standing up. It was one of those oddities of the Scots that Judith simply accepted. Explanations were better left for someone who was interested.
He gave the empty bowl to Judith, and without a word, went into the pantry where he poured himself a stiff measure of her father's brandy. He swallowed it without seeming to breathe.
Only then did he speak, his voice gravelly without sleep. He rubbed his eyes fiercely as if to further open them.
"It was bad," he said simply. “The babe never drew breath.”
Sophie looked at him sadly. She wished she could have spared him his memories, but that was beyond her province. His recollections of Anne would cease in time, but not if he were forced to relive them, again and again, as he had last night.
Judith looked at them curiously. Their cryptic conversation spurred an interest she pretended not to feel.
"And Janet?" Sophie asked.
There was only silence for a moment, as he leaned against the door frame and shut his eyes tightly. The light was too bright. The long, sleepless night had been filled with activity and not a little praying as he had attempted to save at least one life. All for naught.
"She really had no chance from the beginning," he said, somberly. "Too little nourishment, too much work, too much grief."
Sophie stood, her demeanor that of someone who has witnessed enough sadness in the world. No one said a word as she shuffled to her room and gently closed the door behind her.
She did not like this land, Judith thought, as she bent to scrub the table. It sucked dry the energy of its people; it demanded too high a toll. Granted, it was no different in England, young women still died in childbirth. Yet Scotland seemed harsher somehow, as if life had been stripped of all of its beauty and only the bare essentials remained. There was no softness here, no frailty. The soft did not survive, the frail fell beneath the burden of day to day living. It was wild, untamed, mocking its recent conquest by the English, stark and as desolate as Tynan itself.
Judith knew every foot of the castle so well she could have drawn its plan by memory. Most of the rooms were now shut off; in certain spots not even the wooden doors had been replaced, leaving gaping black holes which exposed the degree of ruin the fire had caused. The dining-hall was intact, but so gloomy and dim she could understand why the inhabitants of Tynan used the kitchen for their meals. In addition to her room and Sophie's niche beside the kitchen, one room in the retainers' hall had been cleaned, and the lord's room, in which the wheel staircase, the only access to the battlements, was located. The castle was a labyrinth of rooms hidden beyond rooms. It took long moments to finally find her way around the second floor, and she climbed the sloping steps to the third floor only once. She did not venture inside the MacLeod's room. It was enough to simply stand at the doorway, and scan the immense dimensions of the room with wide eyes. Here, too, the windows overlooked the sea, but there were no panes of precious glass in their large rectangular openings. A massive bed, only one poster remaining, dominated one entire wall. Without much effort, she could envision the MacLeod there, his long legs stretched full length, his body occupying more than half its broad width. There was, however, still room for a wife. She had left the room quickly. It was not as easy to banish the chamber's occupant from her mind.
Alisdair opened his eyes to study his English wife.
He told himself that it was not his conscience which bothered him as much as his sense of fairness, a different thing entirely. Every crofter in his clan was welcome to come to him with a complaint, and would be listened to because his word had merit. Every child was protected by every adult, because life was valued and cherished here. Every woman in his village could expect to be treated with honor, both by their husbands and by all other men who lived in the glen inhabited by the MacLeods. The old were cosseted and excused. The imperfect were protected. Those who did wrong were chastised and corrected, not shamed.
He was too aware that he had not acted with fairness, but with a
brutal cruelty which bothered him. He had tried to wound her with words, and from the look on her face now, he had succeeded beyond his expectations.
Although leadership came more easily to him than apologies, Alisdair forced himself to face her and utter words he'd never thought to voice to an English subject.
"Forgive me," he said, his voice flat, exhausted, "for saying what I did." Two fingers pressed against his eyelids as if to minimize their sting so he did not see the sudden surprised look she directed at him. "You did not deserve my crudeness."
It was bewilderment which kept her mute, but he only noted her silence with irritation, an emotion not easily banished in her presence.
"Granmere means a great deal to me," he said, another statement which caught her off guard. She stopped wiping the table, and straightened, watching him warily. He remained slumped against the door, head bent back as if he studied the ceiling with infinite patience. His soft tone was strangely somber, intensified by the silence in the room. Judith could hear the rustling of something suspiciously mouse-like, the MacLeod's breathing, the pounding beat of her heart. "I would not have her hurt,” he said, “for all that she means well."
His face was set into stern lines, an uncompromising look, which gave little or nothing away. As if he buried his emotions so deep that none could find them. It prompted an unwilling feeling of empathy.
"I would not hurt her, MacLeod." It was easier, somehow, to concentrate her attention on the rag held tightly in one hand than to meet his gaze. It did not mean, however, that she was unaware of him. If anything, the room seemed to shrink, or he grow larger. Or was it because there were only inches between them?
He reached out and casually stroked a lock of her hair where it had come loose from the bun she habitually wore. The tips of his fingers brushed against the side of her neck, and a shiver of sensation followed their passage to her shoulder. Slowly, too slowly, dangerously too slow, she moved away, and his hand dropped.
She faced him then, arms wrapped around her middle as if to protect herself. It was a telling gesture and one he noted with less detachment than he would have wished. He did not want to notice anything about this particular woman.
