Blaze Historicals Bundle II

by Jacquie D'Alessandro

  After leaving a very pregnant Alys in Portree nearly two years ago, he’d struck out for England. He’d been in London less than a sennight when the smallpox symptoms struck. For five days he lay racked with fever, pains searing his head, back and body’s muscles. On the fifth day the sweating started and the blistering broke out. It was almost a relief. Black blood bubbled beneath the surface pustules. He might have been mistaken for a burning victim who’d survived the stake but barely. He hadn’t really expected to live. Once he realized he would, he was vain enough not to want those who’d known him before to see his disfigurement. He’d had the letter sent to Alys. He reasoned it wasn’t entirely a lie. The handsome man with whom she’d eloped and come north was dead indeed. As for her, a blind man could have marked her beauty. Pregnant or not, she’d have no difficulty finding another protector.

  He turned away from his reflection, seeking happier vistas. Taking in the well-appointed room, the windows paned with glass, not shuttered, the bed-hangings brocaded and richly embroidered, he admitted Alys had done better for herself than he had ever imagined. Some Highland lairds might still live among their cattle and sheep but not this one. Callum Fraser was a wealthy man. Earlier he’d observed that the great hall was paneled and freshly painted, the walls bedecked with costly tapestries, the carved wooden chairs and benches suggesting Italian artistry. The strap-work screen concealing the minstrel’s gallery alone must have cost a small fortune. Even for a holy day and a wedding, the fare was exceptionally fine. The bread served at even the lowest table where he’d earlier sat was finely milled grain.

  The chamber door opened, interrupting his thoughts. Alys entered, the child in her arms.

  “I thought you would want to meet your son.” She came toward him. “I named him Alasdair after you.”

  He stared down at the boy. Blond-haired, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked, his son was bonny as a babe could be. “He’s healthy?”

  Maternal pride shone from her cornflower-blue eyes. “Praise be to God he is. As you can see, he’s a good eater.”

  Even before the sickness, he’d never been good with children. Feeling like a fish out of water, he leaned closer. “Well, now, you’re a fine lad, aren’t you?” He stretched out a finger to test the creamy smoothness of that baby cheek, thinking that was how his skin had used to be.

  Alasdair lifted his head from his mother’s shoulder. He looked back at Alex. His blue eyes, the same shape as his mother’s, grew black and big. He rolled back his lips and screamed.

  Alex reared back, his right eye twitching. He’d thought himself inured to children’s taunts and terror but he’d been wrong. The rejection from his own flesh-and-blood burned like a pox blister.

  “Take him away! Take him from my sight.”

  Alys rubbed her hand along their son’s shuddering shoulders. Atop the din, she said, “He’s just a baby. He needs time. He’ll become accustomed—”

  “I said take him away!”

  The sickness had left his hearing overly sensitive. The babe’s bawling felt like needles piercing his ears. He covered them with his hands, the screaming carrying him back to that terrible time when the death cart came ’round, the black and blistered bodies heaped like cordwood, the lifeless limbs dangling off the side.

  Atop the tolling bell, the cart driver’s call rang out, “Bring out your dead. Bring out your dying…”

  And from behind every shuttered window and X-marked door came a cacophony of terrible, ceaseless weeping.

  MILREAD WRAPPED HERSELF in her cloak, took up her staff, and ventured out into the night. She passed through the portcullis without incident, gained the gatehouse, and padded down the packed-earth path toward the copse. Standing on its edge, she turned to look back at the castle. Built several centuries ago, the fortress was of standard design, two circular towers flanking a central keep. A lone figure stood on the crenellated parapet wall, aggrieved gaze staring out onto the black vastness, blind to all save his loss and pain.

  Callum Fraser.

  Milread clutched at her heart, which suddenly felt bruised to the point of bleeding. Even from a distance, she could feel his suffering seeping inside her like a great gray fog, penetrating her tissue and bone.

  Cursing Alexander Field, she saved some curses back for herself, as well. Her lady, Brianna had charged her with Alys’s care. She should have better protected her wean. Instead of spending Christmastide Eve scattering rose petals and bullying bridegrooms, she ought to have employed all her arts to come up with a talisman to lessen the rune cast’s portent of ill fortune. Runes had uses beyond divination. One who’d studied the ancient symbols as she had could use them to make magick both black and white. Alys’s husband’s deformity would draw pity from many, those who used only their two physical eyes for seeing, but beyond his fouled flesh his aura was putrid green and pitted with great gaping black holes. Tempted as she was to hurl a hex at him that would make the smallpox seem mild, she held back. Fate would take care of the Outlander in its own good time. Her present concern was Alys and the Fraser. To Freya, the Norse goddess of love, she offered up a silent prayer that it might not be too late.

  She continued on her way, keeping her Third Eye open and her ears pricked for the guiding whispers of the gods. Bypassing fallen trees and moss-covered branches, she continued her search. For her purpose, dead wood would never do. When she came to the spot, she stopped. The tree wasn’t the tallest or grandest or oldest by any means, and yet she knew with complete surety it was the one. The slender yew was scarcely more than a sapling and yet, like the Lady Alys, it showed great promise for future growth. The yew was also the Fraser clan badge, its symbol of protection.

  Concentrating on her purpose, she circled the tree nine times. When she’d completed the final circuit, she stopped, bowed and asked for its branch and blessing.

  “Hail to thee, O tree of yew!

  I crave the boon of your branch.

  So that it may aid me in my healing work,

  To mend that wound which otherwise would sever two lovers’ hearts.”

  Satisfied, she withdrew the small saw from her bag and hacked off one of the low-lying branches. Again, with the tree’s permission, she split it into nine like-sized pieces. Filling the sack she’d brought, she dragged her burden back to the castle and up the spiraling stairs, praying to the gods for strength and willing herself not to feel the weight.

  Back in her chamber, she lit a fire, pulled her chair up to it, and laid the nine pieces of severed limb upon her lap. She took out her short knife. For hours, she sat rocking and humming and whittling until she had nine rounded runes. By dawn’s break she held each piece up and made the vertical slashes for the sacred symbols upon which she’d meditated all the night.

  As she had the night before, she spread the white cloth, only instead of casting she laid out the nine runes in a neatly scripted line. She began with EIHWAZ and EOLH, both runes of protection, and much needed in the current case, for she didn’t trust Alexander Field any farther than she might throw him.

  KENAZ followed, bringing male strength, energy and power; this rune represented Callum.

  Next LAGAZ, the rune of female power and intuition, represented Alys.

  MANNAZ so that aid might arrive in good time and in whatever form needed.

  ING represented deliverance from the problem at hand.

  TIR AND SIGEL, both runes of victory, she set side by side.

  She ended with WUNJO for a happy outcome, lasting joy.

  Running her hands above the runes without touching them, feeling their energy flow through her, Milread bowed her heavy head and prayed.

  “O mighty Odin, King of the Gods,

  And Frigga, Mother of all that is good and holy,

  I pray you guide and protect the lass known as Alys and the lord known as Callum Fraser.

  Grant them your wisdom and the courage and might of Thor.

  By the powers of Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, so mote it be!”

  IT
WAS TO HAVE BEEN her wedding night.

  Wrapped in Callum’s silk-lined tartan, Alys stood at the bedchamber window, tracing senseless shapes on the frosted pane with a single cold-numbed finger. She’d undressed for bed a while ago, and still she couldn’t bring herself to go near it—or her husband.

  In the midst of her misery, the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her. Every day for the months after Alex had left her in Portree, she’d prayed to Saint Michael, the patron saint of soldiers, to bring him safely back to her. Even after the priest read the letter proclaiming him dead, a part of her had held on to the hope that there must be some mistake, that he lived still. Now all her heartfelt prayers had been answered, and what she wouldn’t give to see every one of them undone.

  As much as it pained her to think of leaving Scotland, Alex’s taking them to his homeland, to England, would likely prove to be a good thing. The nearness with which she’d come to surrendering to Callum’s plea to stay with him and damning both their souls by the willful commission of adultery terrified her. It would be far better for the both of them to make their break a clean one than to languish in proximity, physically close and yet hopelessly apart. In time his heart would heal. He would move forward with his life, marry and make a family. The thought of him holding another woman wrenched her, but above all she wanted him to be happy. She wanted him to be whole.

  “Come to bed, Alys,” Alex called to her. Propped upon the pillows and sipping his second cup of Callum’s wine, he regarded her with an inscrutable gaze.

  “I will come anon. I’m not yet sleepy.”

  “Neither am I.” His ironic tone wasn’t lost on her.

  She turned away from the window, cursing herself for an insensitive sot. “Oh, Alex, I’m—”

  “Sorry, I know. Pray don’t be. I know I’m much changed, and yet I’m still the same man you wed, the same man you said you loved.”

  “Are you?”

  His earlier outburst had unnerved her. For the first time since she’d put Alasdair to bed and returned to the room, she let herself look at him, truly look at him. It wasn’t only his face that was changed. There was a hardness to his eyes she didn’t remember from before. He might have been a stranger.

  “Where have you been all this time, Alex? I know you were ill,” she added, anticipating his excuse, “but two years… All this time you’ve let me think you dead. Why?”

  He yanked back the coverlet, swung his legs over the bedside and rose. “I was dead or the nearest thing to it.” He crossed the chamber toward her. His footfalls kept perfect pace with her pounding heart. “The physician didn’t expect me to live. I didn’t expect me to live. When I dictated that letter, I believed myself to be but hours from death. I wanted to write you whilst I was still in my right mind.”

  Unexpected rage welled up inside her. “You had it written as if you were dead already!”

  “My only aim was to spare you, Alys. Whatever wrong I committed was done for love of you. You must believe me.”

  She bowed her head. Really what did it matter now? “I want to believe you.”

  He reached her. She steeled herself to neither flinch nor look away. “And after?”

  “I was so ill and weak, I couldn’t be certain I’d live to rise from those stinking, fouled sheets. Once I did…” He spread his arms out from his sides. His twisted lip trembled. “The first thing I asked for, demanded, was a mirror. When I saw myself or rather what was left of me, I didn’t see how you could still want me. You’re so beautiful, Alys.” Eyes damp, he reached out and stroked a finger down the side of her face.

  Suffering his touch, she swallowed hard, guilt warring with what was likely a very unfair anger. Had he sent for her, the scars wouldn’t have mattered. She would have found a way to go to him, to be with him. But he hadn’t sent for her. And because of that she’d become a whore. He was right. Now she didn’t want him, not because of his scars but because she wanted, loved, another. She loved Callum of the raven hair and wicked blue eyes and steadfast heart. Callum who was always there for her no matter how unsuitable she might be. Callum who might have had his choice of any highborn Scots ladies and yet still had chosen her to be his bride.

  Callum who just that morning she’d pledged to love with the whole of her mind and body and heart for the rest of her days. And yet two years before she’d made a similar pledge to this man, to Alex. Was she truly so fickle?

  “Two years is a long time to live without hope.” The stony timbre of her voice surprised her. She scarcely recognized herself. How cold she sounded, how flat.

  He dropped his arm to his side. “He is handsome, your Scotsman.”

  Contrite, she reached for him. “Alex, it’s not about—”

  His pale, plaintive gaze fell on her face. “We can snuff the candles, keep the chamber dark. Mayhap in the dark, you won’t mind as much. We’ll make a game of it. You used to fancy games.” In the flickering light, his eyes glowed.

  She shook her head, feeling weary and old for all that she was not yet twenty. “Alex, I’m not a child.”

  “Close your eyes and pretend I am as I once was. Pretend we are as we once were, young and gay and making a bed of the sweet-smelling straw in your parents’ barn, you begging me to cease tickling you for fear that your giggling would wake them.”

  It wasn’t only Alex who’d changed. When they’d met, she’d been so very young and unschooled in the ways of men, her safe little life revolving around her Da’s dairy and market days in their village. And then one day the cow she was minding broke free. Knowing its worth, she’d run after the animal blindly. Without realizing it, she’d crossed into Outlander territory and run smack into an English foot patrol. In his domed helmet and chain mail and carrying a spear as tall as she, the soldier approaching her was a fearsome sight. But when he drew up before her, she saw that he was also winsome and young and smiling. He handed her back the roped cow, his warning softened by a kiss. Alys had never before been kissed on other than her cheek. Fuzzy-headed and warm in places she’d never before credited, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. His face was fair, his smile beguiling, his words honeyed. They started meeting in secret, he wooing her with head-turning compliments and grand tales of the adventures he’d had in his English lord’s service. It wasn’t long before the talking ceased and the touching commenced. And Alasdair was conceived.

  She hugged the plaid closer, pretending the comforting cloth was Callum’s arms. “We can’t go back.”

  She hadn’t meant to raise her voice but doing so made the pronouncement no less true. They couldn’t go back. Even if they could, she no longer wanted to.

  “We can. We will!” She couldn’t be sure but she thought he might have stamped his foot. The Alex she’d known and aye, loved, would never show such petulance. “Don’t you want to, Alys? Don’t you want me?”

  In truth, she didn’t. But though she loved Callum, she owed Alex her absolute loyalty. It was a terrible conundrum. Feeling as if she was a wishbone being pulled in twain, she shook her head in helplessness. “I pray you be patient with me. I need…time.”

  He exhaled heavily and nodded. “Very well, I will not force myself on you, not this night nor during our journey.” His eyes hardened. “But once we are in London, I will expect you to be a wife to me in every way.”

  “Of course.” She hugged Callum’s plaid about her, drawing bittersweet comfort from its clinging evergreen scent. “Thank you.”

  His terms were more than fair, generous even. As his wife, her body belonged to him. He was within his rights to claim her whenever he would and yet he was willingly granting her time to become accustomed to him.

  Wanting to be fair in return, she said, “Once we are in England, whatever means of employ you choose to pursue, I will work hard to be a help to you.” She forced herself to reach across and take his hand. Beyond a crater or two, it was unblemished.

  It would be hard for her, a Scot, to blend in, let alone belong, but she would do her ve
ry best to find her place, for her son’s sake as well as Alex’s. Growing up in the Borders, Alex wasn’t the only Outlander—English person—she’d encountered. She could mimic a passable English accent when she was called upon to do so. What had started out as a game to amuse her younger siblings had developed into a talent she would need to call upon for the very near future.

  And she would. Loving Callum was a fixed, unalterable state. She could no more change it than she could change the color of her eyes from blue to brown or her hair from pale gold to raven’s black. But for Alasdair’s sake, she was resolved to make this marriage work.

  He nodded. Beneath the scars, his taut features seemed to slacken. “What you lack in breeding, you more than make up for in beauty.”

  Even though he’d been gone from her life for years now, the backhanded compliment stung. Despite her low station, Callum had always shown her the utmost courtesy and respect. Her almost lord always had seemed so very proud to be with her. She hadn’t yet left his castle walls and already her heart ached with missing him.

  They ended the night by climbing into opposite sides of the bed. Alex drew the curtains closed around them and then fell asleep almost immediately. Lying awake beside him, Alys considered that mayhap the aftermath of the sickness had left him weak. Still it seemed strange to her that their reunion should have so little effect upon him. Her back turned to him, she spent hours listening to his snoring. Did Callum snore, she wondered? She would so dearly love to know. She’d lost her chance to discover that along with so many other precious domestic details.

  Sometime before dawn Alex awoke, the rope bed dipping slightly as he rose. Alys had yet to close her eyes. She squeezed them shut then, feigning sleep. The sounds of water splashing and rustling about the chamber told her he must be rising for the day. Taking no chances, she kept her head rooted to the pillow. She lay on her side, her back to him. A while later his footfalls faded, the door creaked open and then closed, signaling his departure.