Blaze Historicals Bundle II

by Jacquie D'Alessandro

  She raised her head from his shoulder. How swift she was to seize upon even the tiniest kernel of hope. “What mean you?”

  He hesitated. “I leave for Portree at first light.”

  Portree was a pleasant enough place, with a harbor fringed by cliffs and the city itself boasting more shops and taverns and people than Alys once would have been able to stretch her mind to imagine. She’d been first married there. And yet the name brought back shameful memories of strolling along the docks in her bold yellow gown, slipping inside rubbish-strewn alleyways, saying things she didn’t mean and welcoming embraces she didn’t want.

  Mouth dry as dust, she asked, “Why do you go there?”

  He released a heavy breath. “I swore to myself I would neither give you false hope nor make you false promises, and so I will say no more until such time as I may have glad tidings to report.”

  Sadness settled over her. Even though she’d known this must be goodbye, she hadn’t expected them to have to part so soon.

  He tipped up her chin. “I will return in two days’ time. In the meantime, bide you here.”

  She sighed and wrapped her hand about his wrist. “Alexander is eager for us to resume our journey. I do not think I can persuade him to wait out the Christmas holy days.”

  He sat up, bringing her with him. His expression was somber, but still he didn’t seem as distressed as she would have thought. “Plead illness if you must, only promise me you’ll await my return. Whilst you are here, Ewan and Brianna can protect you.”

  She nodded. “I will do my best.”

  The happy moment spoiled, they rose to right their clothes. By mutual consent, Callum would be the first of them to venture forth first. She followed him to the closed door.

  He touched her cheek. “Faith, my lady, the look upon your face slashes at my heart. I would see a smile bloom on these rosebud lips before I leave you. The gift of your smile, Alys. Can you not grant me such a small Yuletide boon before we part?” He traced her mouth, gliding his thumb along the curve of her lower lip.

  She tilted her head and pressed her lips to his hurt hand. “Were I yours, I would do little else but smile.”

  Minded of Brianna’s counsel to him the day before, he said, “Just as the sky always appears darkest before dawn and the danger at its most dire before the rescue, so do troubles such as ours appear at their most hopeless just before the solution is hit upon. But hope we must.” He brushed his mouth over hers. “I will see you in the great hall below. Wait some time before coming down so that we do not seem to enter together.”

  She nodded, a lump in her throat. “I will.”

  She fell back from the door so that he might open it. Before he did, he turned back to her. “This leave-taking is our goodbye, my dearling, but not our farewell.” He stepped out into the torch-lit hallway.

  Watching him go, she managed a watery smile. Not farewell, not yet anyway. She’d girded herself to bid him goodbye and yet again that goodbye had been postponed. Was Fate toying with them or might Milread’s gods be smiling on them at last? Until he returned she would keep her promise and hold on to what hope she might.

  CALLUM OPENED THE DOOR and peered out. Torches had been lit. It must be later than he’d considered. He stepped out onto the landing. Quietly and quickly he drew the door closed behind him. For himself, he couldn’t care for the consequences, but for Alys he cared greatly. Church law granted a man almost complete dominion over his wife. An unfaithful wife was considered as good as damned, fleshly mortification her only means to salvation. He hadn’t forgotten Alexander’s veiled comment about the adulteress he’d supposedly seen stoned. The penalty for whoring in many parishes was harsh indeed, if not death then facial branding. Callum could not be certain it would be in his power to save her. That she might be called to suffer for their love sent fear firing through him.

  He slipped down the stone stairs as softly as he might, willing his boots to soundlessness and wincing at the ringing they struck. Raucous noise from the great hall greeted him from below, signaling that the Christmastide feasting was underway. With luck, Alys was not yet missed.

  Light lapped at the curved stone walls. He found himself facing a tapestry depicting the MacLeod clan crest, a brace of bull’s horns and motto, “Hold Fast.” Other than the time he’d seen the seal on Brianna’s letter informing him she’d abducted Ewan, he’d never given much thought to the words. Even then, he had not. He did now. For the next few days at least, he resolved to adopt that motto as his own.

  He would hold fast to courage.

  He would hold fast to hope.

  And come what may, he would hold fast to Alys.

  SEATED BESIDE ALYS at the head table in the great hall, Alex watched the byplay between The Fraser and Alys. The man had been in the castle but a few hours and yet Alex would swear he’d already found the time and means to rut with his bride. Alys had been late coming down to sup. She’d slipped into the vacant place beside him, and Alex hadn’t missed the flush to her skin or the fear in her eyes. She all but reeked of sex.

  He was annoyed but not really jealous. Now that the smallpox had stolen his virility, she was nothing more to him than a means to put his cherished plan into play. It was the boy, Alasdair, who was everything to him. The English lord who’d sired Alex, the same lord in whose army he’d served, was old now with no legitimate offspring. Unfortunately bastardy was a stain that could not be easily wiped away and everyone knew Alex to be the son of the cook. Two years ago, the lord and Alex had struck a bargain. Alex would bring him his firstborn son, and the lord would pass off the lad as his legitimate heir. In that way, Alex would claim his “inheritance,” albeit on behalf of his child.

  It was a perfect plan or so it should have been.

  Alex had thought of Alys back in Portree, but the trip north was arduous. Despite his promise, he hadn’t been at all certain when or if he would see her again. Nor did it matter. He was young, he was handsome, and there were English women aplenty on whom he might beget another babe.

  A few days back in England, he’d fallen ill of the smallpox. His good looks were forever fouled but his body recovered its strength, or so it seemed. Only he couldn’t keep a cockstand. The first few times he’d failed, he’d told himself his impotence must be a temporary state. He was weak still. He’d tried too soon. He was putting himself under excessive pressure. Given time, he would recover his virility. He hadn’t. And suddenly the child he’d left behind in Alys’s belly took on a sudden, priceless significance.

  From the table’s head, Brianna broke in upon his musing. “Master Field, will you take a cup of this most excellent mulled wine? It is Milread’s special Yuletide concoction. She is verra proud of it and rightly so.” She held up the chalice.

  He shrugged, annoyed at the interruption. On the morrow he would leave this accursed keep if he had to drag Alys out by her hair. “I have wine yet in my cup.”

  Ewan frowned. “But ’tis a seasonal wine. We only make it for the Christmas holy day.” Leaning in, he whispered confidentially, “For God’s sake, man, drink it down. You know how emotional women can be, breeding ones especially.” He lifted the cup to his own lips, swallowed and swiped his hand across his mouth.

  Alex chuckled to himself. So the Fraser’s twin was henpecked. Were Brianna MacLeod his woman, she’d dance a far different tune.

  Still, before he and Alys set out again, he’d hopes of trading in his tired nag for one of Brianna’s excellent Highland horses. There was no harm in courting some Christmas goodwill.

  “Verra well, I’ll try it.”

  Ewan passed him the cup. For the first time since he’d arrived with Alys, the lady laird smiled at him.

  “You have never tasted wine quite like this, I assure you,” she boasted, her green-eyed gaze fixing on his face.

  Wondering what all the fuss was for, Alex took it. Berries floated atop a sea of rich ruby. He took a swallow, finding the taste passably pleasant if oversweet. He started to pass
the remains to Alys, but Ewan caught his wrist.

  “’Tis a man’s drink. Women are nay permitted to partake. It gives them all manner of unnatural notions, if you ken my meaning.” He punctuated the explanation with a wink.

  Alex did. A man’s drink, he liked the sound of that. He set the rim between his lips and tossed the remainder back.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, Ewan left the great hall where the Christmastide merrymaking was still underway and headed for the solar he shared with Brianna. Grateful that their plan to dose Field had gone off so smoothly, he stepped inside their chamber. Brie lay propped up in their bed, their cherished copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales resting open on her mounded belly. Judging by the faraway look in her straightaway gaze, she had not turned a page in some time.

  He crossed the room to the bed. He knew his lady well. Hers was not a happy face.

  “Faith, you had me frightened when you seemed to take a sip from that cup.”

  Coming to stand beside her, he reached down to stroke her lovely loosened hair back from her forehead, most definitely furrowed in a frown. “Sleight of hand is but one of my many talents. The purgative never so much as touched my lips.”

  She let out a relieved breath. “I thought as much and yet still…”

  “I comprehend you completely.” He laid a stroking hand on her belly, thinking this mutual loving was at times a bramble-riddled road. “When your cramping commenced, you fair near took ten years off my life. If aught were to befall you…”

  She cut him off with a look. “You worry yourself unduly, my love. Women have been birthing babies since Eve.” She glanced down at her stomach and covered his hand with her own. “God be willing, this wee one is but the first of many to come. Milread says I have the hips for breeding.”

  Despite his worry, he smiled. “Aye, lovely hips you have as well as the skill of using them.”

  The baby making was the easy part. It was the waiting and worrying afterward that was fair near killing him. Ever since she’d told him she was pregnant, he’d been equal parts delighted and terrified. When her pains had started so far from her time and with Milread still away, he’d come closer than he ever had to madness. My God, if he were ever to lose her…

  The latter brought his thoughts back to his brother. Poor Callum. Ewan had never expected to be in the position of feeling sorry for his sibling, but he most assuredly did. From his own experience, he knew that to be separated from the love of one’s life was a weighty burden to bear.

  Mindful of his abundant good fortune, he took his seat beside his wife on the bed, the great four-poster to which less than a year ago he’d found himself chained, a hostage bound to please her and seed her with a son. How very long ago that tumultuous time seemed.

  Brianna sighed. “I am thinking of Callum and Alys. I cannot help it. If ever a maid deserved happiness, it is Alys. And your brother, if I had not seen him with mine own eyes, I would not have believed it. When he arrived, he seemed almost a broken man.”

  “Aye, I thought so, too.”

  “I only hope the journey to Portree brings good news.” Her frown deepened. “Oh, Ewan, what if I am sending him off on a fool’s errand?”

  “You have given them hope and thanks to Milread’s special Yuletide wine, you have bought Callum the time he needs. You can do nay more.”

  The corners of her beautiful mouth turned up ever so slightly. “Given how ill I felt after gorging myself on those gooseberry tarts, I can almost feel sorry for Master Field—almost but not quite.”

  “Milread assured me there was enough purgative in that cup to keep him within arm’s reach of the chamber pot for the next few days.” He smoothed back the red-gold hair from her brow again, determined to soothe. “The hour grows late. ’Tis time for you, my verra pregnant lady wife, to lie down to sleep.”

  She pulled a face. “All I do these days is sleep and for once I’m not the tiniest bit tired.” She fastened her green gaze upon his face and laid her hand on the inside of his thigh. “I can think of other ways for you to divert me.”

  Such bittersweet torture would make a saint of him surely. Feeling himself thickening, he gently moved her hand away. “Brie, we canna. The baby.”

  She smiled up at him, putting him in mind of a marmalade-colored cat coveting a dish of rich cream. “Oh, but we can. Milread assures me that coupling, provided ’tis done gently, is good for pregnancy pains.”

  Ewan hesitated. He reached for her hand and put it back only lower. “I wouldna wish to act against a midwife’s counsel.”

  Her clever hand commenced stroking. “I thought as much.”

  Gently, very gently he moved to straddle her. With a sigh, Brianna slid down on her back beneath him. Her flame-colored tresses poured over the pillows. Bracing a hand on either side of her, he leaned down to brush his lips across hers.

  Pulling back, he looked deeply into her beautiful, beloved face. “I love you, Brianna of the MacLeods. And I am bound to you, my lady, bound not only to please but also to love and honor you for the rest of our days. Only now the chain leads not from these bedposts but from the chambers of my heart.”

  SITTING ON THE STOOL brushing out her hair, Alys watched Alex walk toward her in the mirror. He hadn’t approached her sexually since that first night, for which she was profoundly grateful. Other than when he rose in the mornings to relieve himself, she never saw him naked. She heartily hoped to keep it that way.

  Drawing up behind her, he settled his hands upon her shoulders, a habit of his she was coming to hate. “You were late coming down to sup. Your erstwhile bridegroom looked as though he must be missing you. Once you finally deigned to join us, he couldn’t take his eyes from you.”

  She swept her hair to the side and kept on brushing, hoping to hide how her hands shook. “You imagine things.”

  “Do I?” His fingers curled about her shoulders like cuffs. “Where were you?”

  Even though she’d anticipated the question, fear settled into the pit of her stomach. “I had a task to do for Brianna. She does not get about so well these days.”

  His breath beat down upon the back of her neck. “She has a household of servants, does she not? Could she not send one of them?”

  She wetted her dry lips. “It was of a…personal nature.”

  “She will have to learn to do without you soon enough.”

  She stalled in midstroke. “What do you mean?”

  Shrugging, he stepped back. “I weary of this place. The same feast-day fare, the same dull mummers and Ewan departing the company in the early hours to make haste to his big-bellied sow of a wife… It grows tedious. I would be on our way. We will leave in the morning after we break our fast.”

  Heart pounding, she set the brush down and turned to face him. “Brianna has asked me to stay on for the birth. ’Tis only another six weeks. By then it will be spring and the traveling made easier.”

  He scowled. “I cannot lollygag about like some lackey waiting for the bitch to whelp.”

  Alys resisted the urge to use the brush’s chased silver backing to beat him about the head. “Brianna is my verra dear friend. Beyond that, we are indebted to her.”

  “How so?” His patchy eyebrows rose to meet the scars on his scalp line.

  She set the brush down and pivoted on the bench toward him. She’d told him the tale twice now and still he couldn’t bother to remember. He really was the very worst of fathers. “Were it not for her, Alasdair would be in the hands of the burgher’s widow, lost to me—to us.”

  “Right, that.” Crouching, he braced a hand on either side of the dressing table, trapping her between his arms. He leaned down, shoving his face close to hers, so close she could smell the wine on his breath. “Tell me, wife. Does this desire of yours to dally have aught to do with a certain lovestruck laird’s arrival, hmm?”

  Feeling like a beast caught in a hunter’s snare, she pressed her lips together and steeled herself not to show her fear.

  “It will be good for you to
get away from here. Those nights when we met in your father’s barn, you could scarcely wait until I bolted the door to open your legs for me.” He slid one hand down the front of her, settling it atop her sex. “I still remember how sweet you ran when we rutted. Such zeal must have served you well on the docks of Portree.”

  Alys froze. The only thing she was sensible of was her heart, which felt as though it might break through her chest at any time. “What did you say?”

  He hesitated, some of the color draining from his scarred face. “Aye, I know of your past. You made quite a name for yourself amongst the sailors.”

  He hooked his hands under her arms and hauled her to her feet. His penis brushed her belly. She steeled herself for him to hurt her, but he felt flaccid as a jellied eel.

  Her shock must have shown on her face for he dug hard fingers into her arms. “What was your price, Alys? How many ducats for the act? Did you cost cheap or dear?”

  “Given that you deserted me and your unborn child and then let me think you dead, I wonder that you care.” She hadn’t owned how angry she was ere now.

  “Nay matter. We will leave Scotland and the scene of your shame soon enough.”

  Minded of her promise to Callum, she dug in her heels. “I willna. ’Tis Christmas, the first Christmas our son is old enough to ken. Alasdair will have his holy day among those who love him.”

  His face contorted. “You are my wife. You will do as I say!” He hauled back his arm and hit her.

  The open-handed blow sent her sprawling. The bench broke what otherwise would have been a bad fall. She lifted her swimming head to look at him. The mottled skin and twisted lip were nothing to her now. It was his twisted soul and evil eyes she couldn’t abide.

  Pressing a hand to her stinging cheek, she didn’t flinch. She didn’t flee. Instead she stepped forward, putting herself close up to that furious, fouled face. “Strike me you may, but bully me you willna.”

  He dropped his hand and drew back. Heart pounding, she stepped past him and walked over to the urn of washing water. Leaning down, she splashed cool water on her cheek. Given the sting, there would be swelling and possibly a bruise on the morrow. It was fortunate Callum would be gone. Were he to see her so, she might well find herself a widow after all.