The Chieftain's Curse

by Frances Housden

  Aye he wanted her, perhaps as much as she loved him. But would it be enough?

  Would he accept that she had thought herself barren, had been assured she would never bear another child. Who would put themselves through all she had suffered for naught?

  All her worries lost their power in that dark place of the soul where the twain met, came together in ecstasy and need, one for the other. Cleaved together as one, soared as one, and fell together into the light of a million torches, replete.

  When his shudders finally set him free of the heights and let him sink back to earth with the mortals, Euan eased his weight off Morag onto his arms.

  He wound her black braid around his fist, sniffed it. “Violets,” he recalled, gently tugging till her face turned away to the side, away from him. He kissed behind the shallow cup of her ear, softly, sweetly, begging forgiveness for sins of the flesh. “I’m sorry, Morag, I acted like a boor and have no notion what got into me.”

  Like the brave lass she was, Morag turned it into a jest. “Well, I know fine what got into me.”

  With that small quip, it came to Euan what had driven him to act like an animal. He didn’t deserve Morag, and he knew the truth of it: she was too good for him.

  As for what had gotten into him, it was fear—fear of losing Morag, as he had the others.

  For wasn’t she more precious to him than any woman or child on this earth?

  Later that evening, slowly wending their way up the spiral staircase, Morag caught hold Euan’s hand, swinging it between them as they might had they still been young lovers.

  The rush of their last ascent was weighed down by the meal the cooks had served in the Great Hall. “That was a meal to compare with any they served at Dun Edin castle.”

  She smiled up at him. “What? Did you find the fatted calf excelled plover’s eggs and lark’s tongues?”

  He chuckled, seemingly more at ease than upon their last trip to his apartments. “No such thing, I was at Dun Edin, not London. Queen Margaret believes in the benefits of fasting.”

  “Aha, I thought you were looking mightily trim earlier tonight.” She teased, happy as long as they stayed away frae the subject she was avoiding. But for how long?

  She pulled the leather tie from the end of her braid. In her nightly ritual, she dragged her fingers through the thick black strands, loosening them. She shook her head and they fell about her shoulders. “Come to bed, Euan.”

  The McArthur lifted some of the black strands; let them slide in and around his fingers and compared it to, “Black rain. When it pours down your back across your pale skin, I want to dive in and drown in it.”

  “What is this, then? Have you been taking lessons in courtly love from a minstrel?” She smiled, “Or perhaps a lady, for surely flattery’s not required in a contract with one’s leman.”

  His hand tightened on her hair as he lied, “We have no contract, Morag, naught in writing. All that keeps you with me is your own will.”

  If only that were so.

  It had all appeared so simple. Use what means she had to bring Rob to Cragenlaw. Once there, Euan would surely keep him safe from Doughall, when the truth was told. She never doubted that. Since then, complication had piled upon complication, not the least being that she had fallen in love with him again.

  She had known naught of the curse, his wives, his sons and, should she tell him about Rob now, he would surely ask her why.

  What could she say that wouldn’t sound childish?

  “Because, you left me.” Left her to the ignominy of facing her father and brother alone. Left her to raise her fatherless son as best she could.

  Naïve, she had thought to use Rob as a bargaining tool in the game she had designed while running from her brother and the Moor. Now the crone was dead and Morag carried Euan’s child within her, and she had no notion at all, what to do about either.

  No notion at all.

  Euan wakened early, Morag in his arms and wondered what had gotten into Morag last night? Apart from him, as she might say.

  One instant he had been smoothing his fingers through her hair and the next, he’d had a she-cat in his arms. They met in a sexual encounter as wild as any he had experienced, leaving him with little time to draw breath.

  Not that he could conjure up any complaints, but now he was awake, more than his curiosity was aroused.

  He slid the covers off her shoulders, and lower, to admire the curve of her waist and the round swell of her hip as he lay behind her. She felt so good under his palms. As good as it felt to thrust his rod inside her, but with a difference. At this moment his mind was engaged, which wasn’t the case when he’d spilled his seed inside her, yet he felt content.

  If this was to be his future, he felt content.

  But for now his cock had needs of its own. He turned Morag to face him, and still she slept. His hands went on a journey, an exploration. Her breasts felt fuller than he remembered as he lifted their weight in his palms. In the daylight, the areola around her puckered nipples were dark red. Euan bent to taste them, to suckle, hard.

  Awakening, Morag pushed at his head, her movement short, sharp, demanding. “No, Euan, no. That hurts.”

  His wild cat of the night before was feeling peevish, and he rolled away, shoulders flat against the wolfskins. She showed him a shoulder, but the slight turn wasn’t enough to hide her breasts from his gaze. He sat up and watched without speaking as she felt among the covers, pulling them higher over her waist, then she looked over the edge of the bed. Obviously in search of the shift he noticed protruding from under her buttocks.

  “Lift up, lass; you’re lying atop your shift. I’ll pull it out for you,” he said, and motioned for her to lift her hip.

  He felt her hesitate, her stillness almost a living breathing thing in the bed beside them. Morag glanced over her shoulder, the fear in her eyes so sharp it could have sliced his face open.

  His natural defences ripped a growl from his throat and a demand for justice, “What is wrong, lass? What have I done?”

  He could fathom no reason for her strange behaviour, but she seemed beyond explaining as she edged away from him, taking the covers with her. He pulled them from her hand.

  Her intention seemed aimed at hiding her body from him. Euan leapt from the bed and pulled Morag to her feet, holding her in front of him by the shoulders, looking for some mark that would show someone had hurt her, but saw naught that should trouble her. Certainly, as he’d noticed earlier, she had added a little weight while he’d been gone, mostly her breasts and a thickening at her waist.

  Her breasts drew his gaze again, the darkness of her nipples… “God’s blood, I’m a fool! That’s what you were hiding. You’re with child.”

  His last words were filled with the sinking feeling in his gut, anger following hard on its heels. “Whose is it?” He shredded the demand with clenched teeth.

  With a quick twist of her shoulders she slipped from his slackened grip and snatched up her shift. “Whose child could it be but yours?”

  He could see the truth in her eyes, but was it the same truth he’d clung to when she’d told him she was barren?

  Morag struggled into her shift, pulling it over her head with swift precise movements. Fear had left her expression and been replaced by defiance. She titled her chin at him. “Well? Have you naught to say?”

  “Only one thing, and it makes me heartsick, Morag. God have mercy on my soul, for I’ve surely killed you.”

  Chapter 23

  Not for the first time since he’d returned from the south, Euan rode out in the dead of night to visit the graves of his family. Overhead, shades of clouds scudded across the darkness, shields between sea and sky, with only a scattering of pale moonbeams linking the heavens to the earth.

  A flicker of light dipped and surged in the depth of the trees—flames for sure—broke up the dense black of the trees. The tang of woodsmoke wafted toward him, leaving no doubt in his mind that the rogues who had attacked Morag, I
seabal and the lads, still hid among the trees. They were too dense between the ears to realise their presence was known to him. They were waiting, as was he—waiting for the truth of the feeling that crouched down low in his gut, and in the back of his head, Euan could hear the Bear softly growling.

  However, in the dead of night, it was Morag’s face that drowned out his thoughts, though he hadn’t touched her since the day she admitted she carried his baby in her belly—the day had he discovered that there was no gainsaying the curse, no way to keep his seed from killing her.

  On the evening of his last nightly vigil up where the stone cairns rode high on the cliffs, he’d wondered aloud if it might have been better had he died in his first battle. His father had still been young enough to remarry to secure the McArthur line. Instead, Euan had been given a second chance at life, only to be cursed, and now his issue paid the price for the pity shown him by a daughter of his enemy.

  He wondered if his father and mother, three wives, three sons, looked down the ribbons of moonlight to observe him … wondered what they would think of him. But he had no answer, no quietening of his mind.

  If his weeks away had taught him anything, it was that he couldn’t envisage a life without Morag being part of it, but he had no confidence that the bond he shared with her would have a different ending from all the others, a cold place to sleep under the sod.

  The sound of crying halted Morag as she made a passage between the barrels in the brewery. Was someone hiding among them? She listened, intent on fixing the direction of the sobs echoing in her ears, to no avail. The crying continued.

  She quickened her pace, the heartfelt weeping falling away behind her as she at last reached the door. Then she thought of the Green Lady, of how she was said to haunt the brewery, and remembered the day she had imagined the lady looking down at her from the tree after they buried Astrid’s baby’s afterbirth.

  Outside, October was well into its blustery stride, blowing the dying leaves off the trees then chasing them all round the bailey. She wondered if the approach of winter that had troubled the Lady. Way back in the nooks and crannies of her mind, there lurked a notion, one Morag had avoided acknowledging, that it might be her own death, the future of Morag of Wolfsdale, not Roslyn, who had saddened the Lady.

  Naught had changed for Morag since the morning after Euan returned, except the knowing that the curse still existed, was inevitable, inescapable and something to face with dread.

  Her life had formed a pattern and locked her inside. She sat beside Euan at the high table, shared his bed at night, yet he no longer touched her. Their only communications had become orders given and taken.

  Deep inside, her heart hurt and, gradually, the hope she had nourished died. The birds that had once fluttered inside her at the thought of merely seeing Euan had all flown away as if realising it was now winter in her world.

  In some ways, she wished she could join them, but she had a son almost grown and another in her belly, both with the same blood, the same father. The tragedy was that no matter which way she turned, a wall blocked her passage. Euan had a son she felt unable to tell him about, and a baby in her belly he hated her for.

  She was tired of sitting in the solar turning a stitch when she’d rather be riding a palfrey with the wind in her face. Euan forbade it. For days, the farthest she had walked outside the Keep was to Astrid’s tree in the bailey. On the odd fine day, Nhaimeth would join her, but she wasn’t good company. Although she made the attempt, she found it impossible to summon a laugh. A glimmer of a smile was as much as she could bear. Surely this was no kind of manner in which to play out the rest of her life?

  Morag rested under the tree. Full green when she arrived at Cragenlaw, it now was bereft, bare of leaves. Even so, she would have been content to be left alone.

  “So there ye are,” sung out auld Mhairi as she rounded the corner of the Keep. Morag never knew how to take the woman, to judge whether the auld besom was for her, or against her.

  In some ways the hierarchy of Euan’s household was contrary to the life she had known in her father’s hall at Wolfsdale. The woman laid claim to a status that few would tolerate from a nursemaid outside the walls of Cragenlaw.

  She watched Mhairi shuffle toward her as if every limb ached, which wouldn’t surprise Morag. Winter would soon be on the rampage. Then, all the fires in the castle would be roaring in the hearths, in an attempt to keep the place warm.

  “Come sit here.” Morag shuffled across the wooden bench to make room for her. “What brings you outside in this awful wind in search of me, when you ought to be sitting by the fire?”

  “I’m nae that bad that I can’t manage a wee walk round the bailey.” She eased her auld bones down onto the bench with a sigh and, once settled, reached out to pat Morag’s knee. “Truth to tell, I came to warn ye.”

  “Warn me? Of what?” she asked, bewildered. “The only one I’ve had a chance to insult is Euan, and I have my doubts he would even notice.”

  “Aye well, he might be sulking but you’re never far frae his sight. I see him watching ye. And now, what has he done now, but brought a midwife to bide at the Keep.”

  As if it wasn’t enough that most of the women avoided her because she slept in the McArthur’s bed, now, because of the baby she carried, they would act as if she didn’t exist. It would be her father’s hall all over again. “What was he thinking about? Now, the whole castle will know.”

  “Aye, well, yon things have a way of letting others ken their presence,” she persisted, waiting for Morag to confirm her condition.

  “Euan is already certain this baby will kill me. With the midwife living in the castle, everyone else will be of the same mind. It’s no way to live, never mind die.”

  “Will ye listen tae yersel’? Seems to me, you’re both as bad as one another. Now get off this bench and dae something to make it a braw happy ending, instead of sitting around waiting for death to take you,” Mhairi advised.

  She was right. Unlike Euan, Morag had never imagined having the baby would kill her. Having Rob had been difficult because of his size. She’d thought it over and decided she had been hardly more than a baby herself, her body had matured since then, her legs grown longer, her hips widened. She would take auld Mhairi’s advice starting this minute. First she had to send the midwife away.

  If Euan would let her? All said and done, the man was the McArthur, the Chieftain.

  God help him, she had tried to send the midwife home. Didn’t Morag realise he was trying to protect her—her and his son? He couldn’t imagine the baby being anything other than a boy. Some men were meant to sire sons; it was in their blood, and time hadn’t proved otherwise.

  If he hadn’t seen the midwife walking across the bailey with her bundle in her arms, she would have been gone and, from what he could see, hadn’t been likely to return for a while, since Morag had done a fine job of insulting the woman.

  Morag hadn’t shown her face at the high table to eat, and he’d thought, fine, let her stew awhile. He’d dawdled after the meal, listened to the harpist, drunk a few drams of uisge beathadh, watched Nhaimeth caper, and thrown dice with Graeme and some of the men.

  If he hadn’t been so taken up with thinking of all the ways he could take her body, he might have realised on entering the solar that day he returned that she was with child. Considering how she’d festooned every door and window with bright coloured plaids—nesting.

  He should have been aware, for hadn’t he been through the same thing three times already?

  He’d thought to find her sleeping, but he’d been wrong. A fire burned in the hearth, and Morag knelt before it adding wood to the flames. She looked up from her knees, a position more submissive than her words sounded. “Here you are at last, McArthur. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Her hair tumbled over her back and shoulders, a place for the firelight to play, the way his fingers yearned to wander. “And did ye have something in particular to say that has kept you fr
om my bed?”

  With a toss of her head, she sent all that beautiful hair spinning across her shoulder. Her eyes flashed as she told him, “A bed you haven’t made much use of lately. I would hate to think you’re already mourning me, and my life not even over. If you’re so convinced this baby you’ve planted in my belly will kill me, the least you can do is make sure I make the best of the few months left to me.”

  Morag rose to her feet, the plaid she had chosen for warmth spilled from one shoulder to pool on the floor about her feet as if she were ready to paddle across it to him on her slender bare feet.

  He’d managed to pretend he could abstain from the wealth of pleasure her body held, until he had walked into his bedchamber and found her waiting. Her shift was so thin it hid little from the naked eye, revealing more in the dancing firelight than she had any notion of—or had she planned this? “And what do you suggest, bonnie lass?”

  “That you come over here to the fire and let me show you.”

  She met him halfway, eager, and reaching around his back pulled his plaid from beneath his wide leather belt.

  Unlike Morag’s, his eagerness couldn’t be hidden under a flutter of lowered eyelids and shadowy feathered lashes. His erection rose to meet her advances, lifting the front of the kilted worsted, and him not one whit embarrassed to let it show. “I worry about hurting you or the baby.” And more, he still couldn’t rid from his mind that by spilling his seed inside Morag, he had murdered her.

  “Is that why you brought the midwife to stay at the castle,” Morag questioned as she forced a loop of leather to grow in front of his belt buckle. “For I sent her away,” she finished as the belt swung free, but Euan was more interested in the flare of nostrils that hinted at determination to have her own way. Where had she come from, he wondered, not for the first time, as he gazed at her fine aristocratic nose and cheekbones, nothing common about the lass.