The Blackhouse Bride (Bonnie Bride Series Book 4)

by Fiona Monroe

  #

  Angus wrestled with his conscience, all that night and half the next day while he hoed weeds from the rigs of neeps and kale. He had pledged to make her happy, she was not happy, and she refused to tell him why. She had been more distracted and strange this morning than ever, so he had to conclude that whatever had been in the letter she had received the day before, it had made her feel worse.

  He suspected that it was nothing more than mounting discontent with her new life, but if there was anything specific he could attempt to fix, he felt he had to know. If she would not tell him, then he would exercise his right as her husband and master to find it out for himself.

  He could, of course, simply order her to show him the letters. She had vowed to obey him. He did not, however, want to humiliate her by violating her privacy if it turned out that there was nothing specific in Lady Crieff's correspondence that would help him understand why she was so out of spirits.

  And really he doubted there would be. He had a depressing certainty that his original surmise was correct; her discontent had been triggered by receiving a poignant reminder of her old life, nothing more. He doubted, but he had to know for sure.

  Husband and master he might be, but he still felt like a low scoundrel as he lifted the lid of her trunk. He had come down from the rigs at midday to get a bite of roasted salmon and fresh-baked bannock and a mug of ale, which Bridie had laid out for him, keeping warm by the fire. Normally he would have taken this repast out of doors and eaten it in the still-pleasant autumnal air, but because today was Monday, he knew that Bridie would be down at the river laundering the linen. After eating as much as he could - his appetite, usually hearty, had deserted him - he lit a candle and ventured into the bedroom.

  The sight of the neatly arranged quilt and pillows in the leabaidh-dhuinte gave him a pang. Bridie had, as she always did every morning, straightened the sheets and blankets, tucked the patchwork quilt over the top, and nicely arranged the pillows. He had always just left the bedlinen in a heap, from one night to the next. Similarly, his clothes were neatly folded and put away in the chest he used as a wardrobe, instead of sitting around the rush-strewn floor in heaps. The whole dark, stuffy little room had been sweetened by that thing he had always been told his home needed, a woman's touch.

  He set the candle on the top of his own trunk and quickly surveyed the immediate contents of hers. There was the white gown she had worn on their wedding day, folded at the top. There was a very old-looking family Bible, in a leather binding worn smooth and crumbling at the edges. There was a little wooden doll with a smiling painted face and a tiny frock meticulously fashioned from a scrap of silk and trimmed with a fragment of lace. There was Volume One of Clarissa; he wondered what had happened to the other however-many volumes of that notoriously interminable tale, and whether Bridie was frustrated about not knowing the end of the story. Then, right at the bottom of the trunk, he found the letters with the Dunwoodie seal.

  He thought it was odd that she had jammed them down at the bottom, underneath books and clothes, since she had received them recently. It did look as if she was trying to hide them, or put them far out of sight. He groped around to make sure he had all the papers, a small handful, then set to examining them.

  There seemed to be three altogether, two conventionally folded and sealed letters with franks that had evidently come through the Royal Mail. The third looked like a mere note, not a formal letter at all. The first thing he noticed was that the handwriting on the direction of the two letters was different, although they both bore the same frank.

  He hesitated a moment longer before absolutely breaching the taboo, and unfolding the thicker of his wife's private correspondence.

  There were two pages, one written over crosswise. Despite consciousness of his own perfidy, Angus felt a surge of irritation as he brought the sheet as close to the candle as he dared in an attempt to make out the tangled copperplate. Why did women do this? How could they possibly have so much to say to each other, that they had to make their letters all but illegible?

  Having strained his eyes to interpret the patchwork, he was disappointed. Lady Crieff's first letter, the one which had sent Bridie into her downward spiral, seemed to him entirely innocuous. Despite its length, it contained almost nothing except an account of her ladyship's newborn child. Angus was at a loss to imagine how this could have upset Bridie in any way. It was tedious, but that was from his perspective; women liked to hear about babies.

  Only the final paragraph gave him pause. Lady Crieff expressed a hope that Bridie was happy in her new life, and went so far as to suggest that she would in due course have a child of her own. Had this caused Bridie to question her own circumstances and ask herself if she was content; and had she come to the conclusion that she was not, and become sunk in misery at the realisation that she had no prospect of escape?

  He put the first letter back in the trunk and was about to open the second, when the direction on the folded note struck him. My Dark Lady? What was that, a reference to the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets? It fit Bridie perfectly, and he did not much like that.

  With a sudden sense of coldness, he unfolded the note.

  #

  Bridie trudged back up from the river, cold and aching, staggering under the weight of sodden wool and linen. She still had to wring out the garments she had scrubbed clean in the shallow stony bank of the river, then lay them out on the heather slope above the house to dry in the weak September sun.

  Doing the laundry without any modern conveniences at all - and without the assistance of a servant, for Oighrig managed to be otherwise occupied on laundry-days - was gruelling work, and Bridie had no idea how it would even be possible in winter. Except for the all-too brief halcyon period at Dunwoodie, Bridie, as a good housekeeper, had always adhered to a strict Monday laundry schedule. The idea that her father might go without clean undergarments, or that she should not put fresh sheets on the beds every week, was abhorrent to her pride. Far less did she intend her husband to be neglected in that respect. Yet she could see that the other women, who seemed to wash their clothes and linen only occasionally, were bemused by her fastidiousness; and when she considered the practicalities of scrubbing wool in an icy river, and trying to dry great swathes of plaid in the snow, she foresaw with dismay that her standards were probably going to sink.

  Still, the weather continued fair for now, and she was sure she could have these sheets and trews and petticoats dry before sundown. She left the pile of laundry in a wicker basket by the door of the blackhouse, and went in to fetch a stool to sit on outside while she got on with the hand-numbing task of wringing excess water from the garments. She thought wistfully of the mangle and hot tub in the outhouse at home.

  To her astonishment, Angus was hunched by the peat fire.

  She had so little expected him to be indoors, in the middle of a fine day, when almost nobody fit and healthy would dream of lurking in their smoky huts, that she was struck by a shock of foreboding.

  "Are you - did you find your lunch?" she stammered.

  "I found these," he replied quietly, and held out his hands.

  Crushed in each fist was a ball of crumpled paper, and Bridie knew immediately what they were. The shock hit her like a physical blow beneath the breastbone, and she staggered back a few steps. Her understanding, and her guilt, must have been written plain in her face.

  Angus was glowering at her, his blue eyes fierce below black brows. "Who," he said in a low, dangerous voice, "is JGD?"

  "Lord - Lord John Dunwoodie. I've no idea what the G stands for. He's the Marquess of Crieff's younger brother."

  "And why is he writing you letters like these?"

  "He - he pursued me when I was in service with Lady Crieff - I refused him - I always refused him!"

  Angus unfurled one of the scrunched-up letters, scanned it with agonising slowness, then read, "'Remember the sweetness of our kisses, as I remember the delicious softness of your secret places.
'"

  The English words sounded dreadful, alien and not a little ludicrous, spoken aloud by Angus.

  "He - I - he kissed me but I never - I swear I always refused him! You know I was a maiden on our wedding night!"

  "All I know, Bridie, is that you kept these letters, and that you answered them."

  "I answered... one of them. I haven't replied to the second one."

  "This one? This letter that Mrs Farquhar handed to you yesterday at the manse, in front of everyone? The one that you told us all came from Lady Crieff?"

  She hung her head. "I'm sorry. I told him not to write again, I begged him never to write again. What could I do?"

  "What could you do? You could have burned the first letter. You could have brought it to me. Instead, you wrote to him - you wrote to him - "

  "Only to tell him not to write again!"

  He flung his arms in the air and turned from her.

  "Burn them now!" she cried. "Put them on the fire - give them to me and I'll do it!"

  "It makes no difference now, not to me. You can burn paper, but you can't burn knowledge. I'll always know my wife is - " He broke off, and made a noise in his throat which might have been a word she did not know, or might have been a growl of disgust.

  "Is - what?"

  He turned back around to look at her, and his face was filled with sadness rather than anger. "I thought you were chaste."

  "I thought you were!" she cried back, hurt beyond endurance.

  "You thought I was what?"

  "Chaste. I thought you were honest and Godly. Dr Menzies told me you were, and you seemed to be, but all the time you were - with Oighrig."

  "Oighrig? What has she got to do with this?"

  "Don't! Please, don't."

  To her own horror, Bridie felt herself collapse completely. All the weeks of silent torment, and the shock and guilt of this discovery, finally overcame her. She fell to her knees before the fire, her face in her hands, sobbing.

  From some way above her, she heard Angus's quiet and implacable voice. "Tell me what you meant to say about Oighrig, Bridie."

  "She told me. She told me."

  "She told you what?"

  "Why didn't you marry her? Why did you deflower her and lie with her and not marry her? Why did you bring me here at all?"

  There was a silence, a long silence, and Bridie battled to bring her breathing under control. She was dismayed with herself for having accused him, but it felt so unfair and she could not really condemn herself for having spoken out. She had been wrong, very wrong, both to have kept the letters from Lord John and to have entered into any correspondence with him. She ought to have shown Angus the first letter, and confessed everything to him. She might have done it, too, had she not learned the very same day that he was not the man she had thought him, and that their marriage was a sham.

  And it was not fair that he should look upon her with such disgust, merely for having written to another man, when he was actually committing adultery. The world looked upon men and women very differently, when committing an offence against chastity - a woman's whole life might be ruined, a man's never was - but in the eyes of the Lord, men and women were equal. Only God's judgement mattered, in the end.

  She thought that he was finding it difficult to muster a reply, and she uncovered her face and looked up.

  He had gone.

  Chapter NINETEEN

  He found Oighrig by the smoking-racks, sitting at the bench with some of the other women where they gutted and filleted the salmon in preparation for steeping them in brine and hanging them over the peat. Her bright red hair was tied up in her head to stop it falling into her face as she bent over a big fat silver fish, and she was laughing with abominable merriment at something one of the girls had said.

  The pounding in his ears obliterated all other senses. He could scarcely hear his own voice. "Oighrig!"

  She looked up, and the smile died on her lips. He saw a flash of fear, then a hard, defiant look came into her eyes.

  "Come with me," he said, deliberately quiet, trying to reign in his fury.

  "I'm busy," she said, tartly. "The fish won't gut themselves."

  In one swift lunge he grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her bodily across the bench. The sharp-bladed knife sprang from her hand and tumbled to the ground, the great slippery bodies of salmon scattered and slithered as he dragged her over the table and hauled her to his side. She let out a yelp of surprise and outrage, and a couple of the other girls squealed and jumped up as they tried to avoid the flying fish and intestines.

  "You bastard!" she shrieked. "You've covered my dress in fish guts!"

  "Oh, I'll do better than that, Oighrig Ruaidh." He marched her up the slope towards his house, dragging her with his hand still clamped around her wrist. She fought him, struggling and digging in her heels and protesting in language that no pure maiden ought to have had at her command. Heads peeped through doorways, the group of girls who had been preparing fish left the table and followed at a little distance, others paused their tasks and watched the spectacle.

  Before he could get her as far as his own house, Feargaidh am Fìdhlear emerged from his. The old man looked as if he might have been woken from a nap.

  At the appearance of her father, Oighrig suddenly stopped struggling.

  Angus breathed heavily.

  "Oighrig?" Fearghas quavered. "What's going on, Angus? What is it, child?"

  Angus had only lived in the township for eight years, so he did not know the whole story. But he had heard that Fearghas had already been well advanced in years when his prowess with the fiddle had charmed a young serving-girl from Lochlannan, at a New Year's ceilidh at the castle one winter twenty years ago. The girl had married him, had borne him a child and had died before New Year came again, and Fearghas had suddenly been left father to a motherless bairn at an age when most men were already grandparents. He doted on the girl, but he had no control over her. And it was consideration for Fearghas's feelings, and concern about his frail and elderly condition, which had caused Angus to keep quiet about his daughter's behaviour.

  Now he could keep quiet no longer, and nor did he want to. He shook Oighrig by the wrist and said, "Your daughter has been telling my wife lies, Fearghas. Disgraceful, filthy lies."

  "I haven't!" Oighrig squealed.

  "Well, we are going to settle this right now. Come with me."

  #

  Oighrig had ceased to struggle, and went with him sullenly but meekly enough. Fearghas followed them into the house, where they were shielded at least from the curious eyes of the onlooking villagers.

  Bridie was still where he had left her, kneeling on the floor, her face streaked with tears. She must have heard the commotion down by the smoking-racks. He could not bear to look at her.

  Angus let go of his grip on Oighrig's arm, and she shook it and shot him a defiant glare as if he had hurt her. He had probably held on too tightly in his anger, but he found it difficult to care.

  "All right," he said. "Oighrig. What exactly did you say to my wife?"

  She pursed her lips and was silent.

  "Answer the tacksman, child," said Fearghas.

  "He kissed me!" she shrieked, jabbing a finger at Angus. "He kissed me and he fondled me and he tried to defile me! I had to fight him off! At the Laird's wedding feast! And after! Many times after! He won't leave me alone!"

  "What is this?" Fearghas’s face darkened, and he stepped forward and took his daughter protectively in his arms. She buried her face against his shoulder.

  Angus found himself being menaced from below by five and a half feet of spare, elderly fury. It might have been comical, but the anguish and accusation in worthy old Fearghas’s eyes was anything but. This was exactly the scene he had feared, this was the overriding reason he had decided to marry Dr Menzies's protégée sight unseen; and now it proved that his wife was in thrall to some lordling, and Oighrig was making her accusations anyway.

  "I kissed her, that's
true enough," he said, forcing his voice to calmness. "It's more true to say that she kissed me, at the Laird's wedding feast last year, but I'll not deny that I liked it well enough for a minute or so. I am a man. But then she started to undress, and I told her, no more. I would not dishonour her, and I told her to think more of herself. I walked away."

  "He's lying!" Oighrig sobbed. "Father, he would have ravished me had I not escaped him and run back to the company."

  "And ever since, your daughter has tried to force herself upon me, has tried to get me to say that we are betrothed, has tried - I'm sorry - to seduce me."

  "No, no," Oighrig wailed against her father's shoulder. Old Fearghas’s arm was still around her protectively.

  "And now she has told these same lies to my wife, making her think me a monster and a philanderer."

  "No!"

  It was Bridie this time who had spoken. Because Angus had been trying not to look at her, he was not aware that she had got to her feet and joined him at his side.

  "She told me different lies," Bridie said, in a clear cool voice. "She told me that you had lain with her, for months, and did still, because you preferred her to me. She said - you had said things I will not repeat, about me. She said nothing at all about fighting you off."

  Oighrig broke from her father's arms and hurled herself at Bridie with a scream. "What do you know about anything, a ghalla Ghallda? You can hardly speak the Gaelic, you probably didn't understand a word I said!"

  She managed to pull Bridie's hair and gouge at her cheek before Angus could react to pull her off. He lifted the girl clean off her feet, though she kicked and yelled, and dumped her none too gently behind her father.

  Bridie was staring, pale-faced, her hand to her cheek. There was a trickle of blood under her fingers; Oighrig's nails had broken the skin.

  Oighrig then broke into noisy, wracking, abandoned tears, burying her face in her hands. It was clear now that her crying before had been strategic, if not outright faked. This was the spectacle of a defeated, guilty girl, cornered and scared.