The Chieftain's Curse

by Frances Housden

  Mortified, it was all she could do not to duck her head to hide her eyes as the tears flowed and the stuttering breaths she took almost robbed her of the confession she needed to make, “No, that’s a lie. I was never going to tell you … at least, not until Rob needed your protection from Doughall.”

  She glimpsed his anger now.

  “Christ’s wine!” He began to pace, turning to stare at her the moment the bedchamber entrance opened up in front of him. “So my true worth was as a shield against your self-centred brother? Why couldn’t you get a message to me years ago?”

  “This isn’t only about you! Messengers cost silver.” Her chest heaved, filling up with years of resentment, insults she’d tucked away for Rob’s sake. Now each and every one rose to the surface. “Rob is the only one who matters! Not you! Not me!”

  She could hear the anguish in her voice, and more, she wanted to weep again. Lady help her, she hadn’t felt so affected by the need to cry since before Rob was born. Her lips quivered, but she had to make him understand. “My life was as guid as over the day you sneaked out of yon cave and left me behind.”

  “I was in danger of being found. I didn’t want anyone to discover that you’d helped a Scot, so I left to keep you safe.” His voice rose, “I was the enemy,” he said it as if trying to justify leaving her to face her family alone.

  “Aye, my enemy as it turned out. For the same reason you say you chose to leave without me, I refused to tell Wolf Farquhar the name of the dullard who had fathered my child.”

  Euan looked down on her as if he had been the only one hurt by the past. Yet she noticed a hint of bewilderment in the way his eyes darkened, turning bright amber into dull earthy brown. His features were strong, hard as the granite that protected the castle. The base of Euan’s long nose flared. Aye, nobody liked to be put in the wrong. It was hard to take even for someone with as magnificent a body as his.

  Once more, she felt saddened. Between them, they had thrown away everything important, everything that should have kept them together, and she wanted him to regret it as much as she did. “My brother and father took to ignoring me, and in the end, I might as well have been dead.”

  Euan snorted, “I’m sorry, but nothing you’ve told me about him, will persuade me to believe your father had a pious bone in his body. Many a lass has a baby out of wedlock.”

  “My father had only one daughter. I was supposed to be a lady.” She wanted to snort at her own claim. The Abbot would have told it differently, always chastising her for unladylike behaviour.

  “How do you think I felt when the midwife announced that the hard birth and the struggle to push Rob out meant I would never have another baby? Barren, is the bald way she expressed it.”

  “She was wrong,” he stated, his manner equally bald.

  “Easily said, with hindsight,” argued Morag. “The news robbed me of any worth.”

  To anyone but you, she yelled silently.

  “No man wants a barren wife is what the Wolf told me. However, he wasn’t cruel enough to cast me out. He simply continued ignoring my existence.”

  Though he appeared intent, watched her lips as she spoke, Morag was filled with the notion her words didn’t touch him.

  He remained impregnable, breathing in, breathing out, nae sign of emotion. Morag felt sick inside, but she could hide the truth as well as he did. Not for nothing had her father been the Wolf of Farquhar. She wanted to move Euan’s heart as much as she wanted him to see his heir’s mother as a strong woman, worthy of that position.

  “Promise me you’ll never treat our daughter that way.”

  Startled, he said, “I promise, though she is probably a lad. To my knowledge sons are all I’ve ever sired.”

  With him still off guard, she let her plaid slide off her shoulders, loosening the hair he’d told her he loved to run through his fingers.

  With a swirl of her head she let it spin free. If this was to be a battle of wills, she’d best use every weapon in her armoury. If only she could decide what she was fighting for.

  Freedom or enslavement?

  What else could she say, what else could she do? Did he want her on her knees as he’d once threatened? To beg?

  She glanced up, praying to see some reaction.

  At last he broke, “Christ’s wine, Morag! How can you think I wouldn’t have come back and stolen you out from under your damned father’s nose? I swear, by all that’s holy, I was but sixteen, I thought you were better off without me. It was obvious your family were noble.”

  She thought of her erstwhile brother. “Not too noble to swing from your castle on a gibbet. And you are the McArthur.”

  At last, Euan gave into his yearning and brushed her hair back from her face. “You were so bonnie, and brave. I remember lying in the dark, and the first time I laid hands on you, ran them over yon lush youthful curves that I only knew by touch, as if I was blind. Even then, all I wanted was to bury myself inside you.” Frustrated, Euan ran his fingers through his hair. “Morag.” He murmured her name under his breath like a prayer that came from his soul as he remembered that first time. “You were like a fever in my blood.”

  “No,” she denied with a shake of her head, as if that would remove the doubts he could see on her face. “Surely it was that wound that caused the fever in your blood.”

  “You have no notion, lass, how braw you felt to me in the darkness. I didn’t need to see you to love you.”

  A sob burst from Morag’s lips as his words of love robbed the strength from her limbs. “When I returned to the cave and found you gone…” Her heart had shattered into as many pieces as there were stars in the sky. She shook her head, remembering that moment, wanting to deny it had ever happened. “All I could think was how you’d left me behind … and it hurt sooo, so much.”

  Tears flowing, she wiped them away with both knuckles and plaid, feeling terrible, yet free. The release of letting go all the resentment she had carried for years was overwhelming. Euan reached for her, hands gripping her shoulders as if he couldn’t let go, and she felt that if he released his hold on her, she would fall to the floor, exhausted from a surfeit of emotion. But she wasn’t done; she had to tell Euan everything.

  “Do you realise it was the Moor who forced my hand, sent me running to you?”

  He halted her words with a squeeze of his fingers. “It crushes me to think of you at the mercy of the Moor. There’s no need to suffer again by recalling your pain.” Euan brushed her lips with his, surprising her.

  She lifted her gaze, tried to decipher what she saw there, hoped she saw there. At Wolfsdale, love both spiritual and sexual, was something everyone was aware of but never brought into the open, as if shameful. Not so Euan.

  A sigh shuddered from between the lips he had kissed. She wanted to cling to him, strip herself bare to give him the pleasure he said she brought him. “You wanted the truth, please let me give you enough to decide whether I should stay or go.”

  He nodded, and so she began, “When people ignore you, pretend you’re invisible, secrets come to light, and the worst of them the Moor’s…” she began.

  Finished, she shivered, worn to the bone by the strain of confessing atop of everything else that had taken place today. Knowing Euan’s plaid covered his hauberk did naught to cancel out the need to rest her forehead against his chest. If it marked her, so what, she’d received worse scars by less.

  Euan’s voice grumbled through the chain-mail into her ears. “The Moor didn’t suffer enough. If only I’d known when I saw him in the bailey. The thought of him trying to have his way with Rob makes me shudder. If he’d laid hands on our son…”

  Euan shook his head as if to lose the foul image, sending hair lifting around his face to settle back onto his wide shoulders.

  He pressed her closer, and she helped him by clinging.

  “When I caught him with young Rob cornered, such feelings of anger engulfed me, came off me in hot waves. That’s when I threatened to tell the Wol
f. Within two days, my father died in a hunting accident.” She wanted to back away from the rest, but better to get it over, to confess and let Euan know the worst of her. “By doing that, I killed my father, and will always regret my part in his death. He was a hard man, but he was still my father. A day later, I took Rob and fled.”

  She laughed under her breath, but there was little humour to be found there. “How ironic that after all we went through, a pedlar should be my undoing.”

  His large hand caressed the skin at her nape, gently, lovingly? She started to breathe again, and it became easier when he said, “I won’t let you go, I can’t. This is where you belong, here with Rob and me. Your Gavyn’s a strong man; he will be fine without his wee sister by his side.” He wrapped her in his arms, held her with his mouth close to her ear. “The difference being, naught can make me happy without you by my side, in my bed, in my life. You won’t leave Cragenlaw, Morag. The choice is out of your hands.” Euan’s head dipped, he found her mouth, kissed her deeply, with vigour. Only when she was in his arms did her heart feel as if it had found its home.

  Euan waited for his blood to quieten after lifting his mouth from Morag’s. At last, everything in his mind became clear.

  “Now let me tell you my truth. I’ve been married to three women, yet only you have heard me say I love you.” He ran one of his large hands over her burgeoning belly. “And, lass or lad, I love the baby you’re carrying under your heart. I need you to stay with me, and with Rob, and our baby. We all need you … all love you.”

  “Ach Euan, how can I leave when it feels as if I’ve loved you all my life, even when I blamed you for the misery it became when you left me? For once and all, the tight knot lodged in my chest all these years has begun to unravel. I promise with everything that I am, that you’ll never hear me ask to leave our home again.”

  “One last truth, Morag of Cragenlaw, I will never wed you or ever ask that we become hand-fasted. And I will remain true to the promise never to marry you, because know this, I love you too much, and can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

  Before she could catch her breath, Euan swung her up into his arms and marched out of the solar, her head held against his shoulder and her mouth within easy reach of his. Their journey from one room to the other felt like the longest she had ever taken, a journey she never wanted to end, as long as Euan travelled with her.

  Chapter 30

  Since Candlemas, the log had lain undercover and now, at Yuletide, it was revealed. Eight men it took to carry it into the Great hall.

  Whether so many hands were needed for their strength or from the sheer joy of bringing the Yule log to the hearth made no matter to Euan. Rob and Jamie were but two of their number, but perhaps the loudest of them, egged on by Nhaimeth, who capered at their heels, the three of them giggling and laughing as if the last year had never been, the deaths and disasters had never taken place.

  The folks in the Great Hall, especially the lassies, seemed to have lost their fear of him—Morag’s doing. Sitting at the high table, he reached out beside him and grasped her hand, cupping it between both of his for a small moment in time.

  Time. How he wished it would stand still, capture these precious thoughts and feelings in one place so they might stay with him forever. “Hmmph,” he exhaled the self-deprecating sound through his nose. Few would thank him for wishing on them a lifetime of freezing chills and thick snow.

  For some, winter’s solstice could be a time of hardship, but for as long as Euan could remember, inside Cragenlaw it was a time of good cheer, a season when the fruits of summer’s harvest and hunts could be enjoyed at leisure.

  The Yule log was eased into the hearth atop the remains of last year’s log, and a host of pinecones that would crack and pop, startling the castle’s babies so they jumped and squealed, filling the hall with the sounds as well as smells of Christmas.

  Hidden by the table Euan rubbed the knuckles of the hand twined with Morag’s against her burgeoning belly, making her look up at him from under her long, dark lashes. A bright smile, yet it held a hint coyness. “In a year or two,” she said, with a quick glance at the flames that had begun to leap under the log, “there will be a few more babies running around yon hearth, all trying to coax sweetmeats from their fathers.”

  The picture drew a grin. “Aye,” he agreed. “As we thought, the midwife has plenty to keep her busy since the night of Graeme and Iseabal’s ceilidh. Next year looks to be more than fruitful, yet I find it hard to put aside my concerns for you and our baby.”

  “I’ve told you, Euan, it does no good looking for trouble. This baby is lively, but I’m no nearly as big as when I carried Rob.”

  “So you keep telling me, but I keep minding that you have but a few weeks to go.”

  Mindful of how sensitive women waiting to give birth could be, he swiftly lifted her hand to his lips to kiss. “Not that I want you any the less, just looking at you hardens my cock. In fact, I can barely wait for the celebrations to be o’er so I can take you to bed.”

  Morag rewarded him with a chime of laughter he wasn’t over confident only he could hear the lustiness ringing through the happy sound. “I’m that way minded myself,” she said. “Seems we both have something to look forward to this night.”

  Up in their bedchamber, Morag was soon aware that she and Euan were of like minds. She lay surrounded by the man she had always loved yet had learned to love all over again. His chest to her back, his cock sheathed inside her, he had developed a way of thrusting that gave them both the utmost satisfaction, a way to gradually swim towards a mounting climax without the need for the fast torrent of pleasure that had pulled them into each other’s embrace before the baby inside her grew so big.

  The anticipation, the knowing, tightened her skin around her bones until she gasped for air, gasped to break free. Euan wouldn’t let her go, his arms held her still while his fingers fondled her nipples, squeezing gently until she wanted to weep from the pleasure of it, but he wouldn’t let her go, let her fly.

  “Caw canny, lass, and bide a wee, bide a wee while yet and let me love you.” And love her he did, until the pleasure seeped from her pores with the sweat that Euan’s heat produced, even on a midwinter’s night with the snow on the rims of the narrow windows, until she thought she would surely die from the pleasure leaching from his hard cock inside the passage to her womb, until she let go of everything that held her to the earth, and flew.

  Morag’s cries of joy, her pleasure, acted on Euan the way sharp spurs forced a steed to leap forward. And leap Euan did, following Morag to that nameless place only she could take him. He bellowed her name, “Mo-ora-ag!” and found her waiting there.

  In the stillness of the afterglow, he hardly dared breathe, as if the taking of life-giving air might pull them apart. If it were up to Euan, they would pass the rest of the night with his rod firmly inside her; but the baby had other notions, kicking at his palms as Euan slowly swirled them around Morag’s belly.

  It was times like now that the baby became real to him, a part of both him and Morag, the way Rob was.

  He had long syne forgiven Morag for withholding the truth of his son from him, and she had reciprocated, accepted his stupid, immature reasons for leaving her. He’d been too young-headed to know what they had had between them—the love—could never be found with another. And now, he knew such grandeur was a very rare beast indeed and needed to be treasured. He felt Morag’s sigh shudder through her spine onto his ribs. “Are you fine lass, I didn’t hurt you?”

  “Not a whit, it’s the baby that’s feeling restless.”

  “He wants out—”

  “She.”

  “No matter which, I’ve been dreading the day. However, I realise I can’t force time to stand still. All that’s left me is to make sure you have every assistance when the birthing starts.” He chuckled, “You’ll soon get sick of me, for I’ve no intention of leaving your side until the baby is born.”

  “But you’l
l have business to conduct, folk to talk with… Euan,” she paused, “after all yon years of looking after myself, I don’t know that I can stand being cossetted.”

  He laughed and nuzzled the back of her neck. “Ach lass, I promise not to smother you, but you can’t blame me for being anxious. Now I’ve found you again, how can I bear to live without you?”

  Bound by the strength of Euan’s arms, there was no way she could turn to reach his mouth or kiss him as she wanted. Instead, she pressed tight with her fingertips into his muscled forearms, communicating the deep feelings she had for him by giving his shaft a squeeze where it was tucked inside her, saying, “Euan, I love you with all my heart, my soul, with all of me. I couldn’t exist without you either.”

  As she felt him harden again inside her, Morag knew she wasn’t going to have to do without him for the rest of that night.

  Yesterday, when Morag last braved the February cold to look from the solar into the bailey, snow lay undisturbed around what she thought of as Astrid’s tree. Thick and white, snow was a truth of winter in Scotland’s far north, one that hadn’t changed for weeks and weeks.

  The world outside lacked colour, the greys of sky and sea ran into one another like an extension of the granite battlements in subtler shades.

  Astrid’s tree itself was bare, stark black, a silhouette with no shadow, reaching out onto the glaring snow, a soulless place without colour.

  Then she saw the bird, a robin hopping along one of the branches, flaunting a blood-red breast, the one touch of life in an otherwise dead world. While she watched, the bird flew down to the snow, bouncing across its crisp shell-like surface on wee claws, leaving no mark to show its passage.

  In a flurry of wings, that single-most precursor of the coming change lifted into the air, up, up, up, as if it would fly straight to her.

  That was the moment her waters broke.

  And now, a day later, the midwife and Mhairi had cleaned her up and Morag lay in the huge bed with her baby in her arms.