Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3)

by Ruth Glover

  Anne was shivering, and Tierney put a shawl around her shoulders. While Anne’s breathing slowed and her tears dried, Tierney tended the fire, emptied the basin and put away the wet cloth, filled the teapot that was ready and waiting, and, finally, filled two cups with the fragrant brew.

  Anne came up out of the settle’s corner to an upright position, to take the cup and eventually try a cautious sip. Soon a bit of pink was returning to her white cheeks, the result being that the bruises rising there stood out, stark and ugly.

  Tierney, watching over the rim of her own cup, was horrified at the marks of abuse. Someone—Annie’s father? one of her brothers?—had wielded a cruel hand against her. How could they! Annie, gentle and easygoing, spending her young womanhood taking care of those same males . . . had they, in careless disregard and with cruel intent, turned on her? If so, it wasn’t the first time. Tierney recalled, darkly, the other time Annie had hidden a face that had been, to a lesser extent, similarly battered.

  Paul Fraser was known to be a rough man; his sons, cheerful, laughing young men, were quick-tempered and undisciplined. Anne’s mother, a woman of virtue and grace, had been the gentling influence in that home. With her gone, was Annie at risk? Tierney grew cold thinking about it and again stirred the fire to greater efficiency.

  When Anne handed Tierney her cup, straightened her clothes, put a hand to her hair and drew a steadying breath, Tierney could wait no longer.

  “Was it your da?” she asked quietly but pointedly.

  “Na, na.”

  “Pauly? Sam?”

  “Nae, not me brothers.”

  Tierney was confused. No other possibility came to mind. Was Anne physically impaired so that she stumbled, fell, went unconscious perhaps? It was a wild solution but one Tierney grasped at; it would be preferable to a revelation that pinpointed another human being as the reason for such barbarism. But it was a vain and futile hope.

  “Then who . . . or what, Annie? For heaven’s sake—what has happened to ye?”

  Annie seemed to be gazing blindly into the fire. After a long moment, she said quietly, “Lucian.”

  “Lucian MacDermott,” Tierney whispered. And suddenly it made great sense.

  Lucian, the scion of the MacDermott clan, spoiled, known for his cruelty to man and beast even as a child, was home again. Sent off to Edinburgh to receive his education and home only occasionally over the past half-dozen years, Lucian, as a young man, had already earned an unsavory reputation, and tales of his arrogance and thoughtless unconcern abounded. If he were cruel abroad, how much more so on MacDermott land where he felt himself to be a young king.

  Tierney well knew the power and authority held by landowners; for centuries her people had known the harsh treatment of the titled and wealthy, and the subservience expected of them as servant to master, lackey to overlord, subject to ruler.

  What had Anne done to bring on herself such dire retribution? Or—and Tierney went still momentarily, thinking of the possibility—what had she not done?

  “Aye,” Anne was repeating, starting off another round of trembling so that she pulled the shawl closer about her. “Lucian.”

  With Lucian home and several guests with him, the MacDermott house was understaffed; Anne, as usual, was called into service. It had not been in the great house, however, that she had again encountered Lucian, the first time in several years; always before she had been busy elsewhere when he came home, briefly, at holidays.

  She had been crossing the yard, a basket on her arm, her bonnet flung back and her dark hair smoky in the late-day sun, when Lucian and two other young men had come from the house, intent on reaching the stables, and dressed for riding.

  “Well, would you look at that!” Coming face-to-face with the lovely young woman, Lucian had stopped, thumbs in vest pockets, with his young companions alongside of him, uncertain.

  The three quite successfully blocked her path. Anne found herself flushing; Lucian’s stare was bold. The eyes of the two strangers were fixed on her rather blankly.

  “Don’t tell me. Let me guess—it’s Fanny.” Lucian put a finger below Anne’s chin and tipped her face up.

  Anne stood quietly under the scrutiny, waiting for the awkward moment to pass so that she could move on.

  “Fanny—all grown up. And everything.” With the “everything,” Lucian’s eyes swept brazenly over Anne’s sweet figure. “Fanny. Am I right? Eh? Eh?”

  He was demanding an answer. Feeling that to do so might settle the embarrassing confrontation, Anne said, with dignity, “I’m Anne.”

  “Annie Fanny! But not a mannie. Agreed, men?” Again Lucian’s eyes swept Anne’s body, and his laugh was rude and loud, spraying spittle into the face that had first flushed pink and was now paling before their very eyes.

  One young man joined the laughter, braying rather like an ass in the process; the other put a hand on Lucian’s arm and said quietly, “Let’s go. Leave her be, and let’s go.”

  “You yearn for horse flesh when there’s female flesh around? And such flesh!”

  Unused to rudeness, a stranger to lasciviousness, totally unaccustomed to such a blatantly disgraceful reference to the human form, her own in particular, was Anne’s undoing. Eyes glittering with suppressed fury, “I thought ye might have grown up, Lucian,” she said bitingly. “It seems ye’re nothin’ but a bairn still.”

  It was then Lucian MacDermott, unprincipled youth as he had been an unprincipled child, belittled in front of his friends and furious because of it, drew back his arm and backhanded Anne across her face.

  The basket flew from Anne’s arm; as she staggered momentarily, her hand went to her cheek, already scarlet and hinting at the bruise that would swell there and the discoloration that would result.

  “Enough!” The two young men, shocked, drew Lucian back. Shrugging them off he would have returned to the attack except that someone, calling from the stables, demanded to know what was keeping them.

  Turning reluctantly away, Lucian, his eyes hard, flung back over his shoulder, “Just who you think you are, I can’t imagine! Frasers have ever been available to the MacDermotts, no matter what the need. And my needs are not met—yet!

  “And clean up that mess, wench,” he shrieked, his tossed head indicating the dozen or so eggs that had flown from the basket and were lying smashed on the ground.

  Anne, deaf to everything but the roaring in her ears, was fumbling for the basket. Ignoring its broken contents, she stumbled homeward. Here, she bathed her cheek and eye and groaned at the sight, knowing it could not be disguised. As in most emergencies, her thoughts went automatically to a soothing cup of tea. Waiting for its medicinal purposes to bring a degree of calm to her spirit, which was as bruised as her countenance, she shrank from the thought of explaining to her father and brothers.

  There was no hiding the injury. Her father, a most careless parent, noticed as soon as he came in the door. It seemed that he inquired about its cause almost reluctantly.

  “It was Lucian,” Anne, ever truthful, admitted, and recounted briefly the meeting with the young men and its outcome.

  “What in heaven’s name did ye do to cause him to act so?”

  “Nothin’, Da, nothin’ at all!”

  Paul Fraser’s face grew red. “You got in the lad’s way. Don’t be a fool, girl. Stay out of that’n’s way—”

  “He’s no lad, Da. He’s older’n I am . . . old enough to have some sense and to know better, I’d think.”

  “It makes perfect sense to him,” Paul said bitterly. “Dinna ye know, lass, that the laird has full say o’ all of his tenants? All o’ us is at his beck and call, and that goes for the young laird too.”

  “Even wives and sons and dauties, is that what ye’re sayin’?”

  “That’s the way it is. It’s always been that way, and it always will. Ye have nae right tae think things’ll be any different.”

  “Are you tellin’ me, Da, that he can get away wi’ . . . wi’ whatever it is he�
�s threatenin’, and naebody can say him nay—not e’en me own father?”

  “Not me, nor yer brothers. So leave them oot o’ it, ye hear? I dinna want them in any mair trouble than they have a’ready. Ye hear me, Anne?”

  Anne, more blinded by tears than when Lucian had so summarily struck her and more injured in ways that matter, put supper on the table and escaped to the loft. Here she stayed throughout the evening and night, never coming down to subject herself to her brothers and a further confession, from them, of helplessness in the face of Lucian’s abuse.

  Cook, the next day, gave Anne’s face a keen look and shook her head, muttering darkly, but apparently not surprised. Mrs. Case, the housekeeper, studied Anne’s face grimly and set her to cleaning silverware rather than servicing the rooms above stairs.

  “I can’t keep you downstairs forever,” she said almost crossly, as though angry at the need to face the problem. “You aren’t the first in the world, by any means, to have such a problem. It’s the price you pay for having a pretty face.” She spoke as if it were Anne’s problem, not Lucian’s. “If you’re lucky it’ll be a passing phase. These things never last; no young laird can think seriously of a serving girl or maid. Lucian knows that; he knows his place, all right. Just keep out of his way. And if you can’t—” Mrs. Case shrugged and left her sentence unfinished.

  Later in the day Anne was sent to Binkiebrae by Mrs. Case, almost coming face-to-face with Tierney. Having been adjured to say only that she had tripped and fallen and hurt herself, and knowing she could not lie to Tierney, Anne had hastened on her way, heart beating hard and sobs near the surface. Even so, Tierney suspected, Anne knew that.

  The second confrontation with Lucian took place in one of the upstairs bedrooms, not Lucian’s. Anne had been careful not to enter his room whenever he was in it. Laying a fire in one of the guest rooms, she heard the door open and close behind her. Turning her head she saw Lucian leaning against the door, a triumphant smile on his face.

  “Think you’re smart, don’t you, slipping around, avoiding me. Well, I knew you couldn’t do it forever. And here you are! And on your knees! Perfect, just perfect. Before you get up, Fanny, apologize for your rudeness the other day and I might, I just might, let you get away with it. In fact, I promise I will—if you ask me properly. Now what do you say, Fanny?”

  Anne never knew what prompted her; she would never understand where she got her courage. But her brain, icily calm, seemed to put words into her mouth, deliberate words, coldly spoken.

  “I told you me name is Anne.”

  The words seemed innocent enough, but they both knew she was insisting on her independence. No matter his anger, she stubbornly insisted on her right to be her own person.

  About to rise from her knees, she was startled when Lucian leaped across the room, bent, and savagely took her by the throat, pressing cruelly, while his face was thrust into hers.

  “Who cares what your name is, you stupid jade! It’s your position that counts, and you’ve got the proper one—on your knees! Don’t you know I have the right to treat you like the baggage you are?”

  Lucian’s hands, slim as a woman’s, had remarkable strength. In the awkward position of kneeling, Anne had no leverage, nothing in her favor for breaking free. Choking, pulling at his hands, the best she could do was scratch, which she did, raking great gouges into Lucian’s flesh. Finally, with a curse, he let go, throwing her sideways and down, so that she lay, gulping great gasps of air into her lungs, unable for the moment to so much as get to her feet.

  Where it all might have ended is a question, but there came a tap on the door that the young man had cannily locked behind him. Lucian’s mother, Mrs. MacDermott herself, called out in low but carrying tones, “Lucian, are you in there? Come out, dear. Your guests are waiting, and the carriage is ready. Lucian?”

  “Coming, Mother.” Lucian’s voice was sweetly obedient, and the smile had returned to his face. Just that sweetly, just that smilingly, he kicked the recumbent figure lying prone on the rug at his feet, stepped to the door, turned, looked down, and said gravely, “Good little girls have nice things happen to them. Keep that in mind, Fanny. Don’t forget it again; be a good girl, and you still may have nice things happen to you.”

  That Sunday, at kirk, Anne had spoken the enigmatic word that she knew would bring Tierney to see her: “Eggs,” she had whispered. She knew her friend would see through the small subterfuge and respond.

  But before that moment arrived, Pauly came into the house with a battered face.

  “Pauly!” Anne cried, appalled, reaching a hand toward her brother.

  “Leave me be!” Pauly half sobbed. “Ye’ve done enough a’ready!”

  “Me? What’ve I done?”

  “Don’t ye know that that scum, Lucian, can do whatever he wants, and we’ve no rights of our own? Jist know this—me and Da and Sam, we’re payin’ for yer almighty independence! Ye might as well give in and git it over and put behind ye, jist like generations of lasses have had to do. What makes ye think it’ll be any different for ye?”

  And Pauly, hurting and bitter, refused to allow his sister to minister to his bloody face, and lay down on a pallet near the fireplace, put his head in his arms, and would say no more.

  When Tierney came, any notion of sharing her problems was silenced. Though she needed desperately to talk, it occurred to Anne that the long arm of the MacDermotts reached into the heart of Binkiebrae. Would the Caulders inexplicably lose their house? Would James find his boat confiscated for some vague reason? Would Tierney herself come under the scrutiny and attention of the loose-living, free-thinking Lucian?

  “I canna talk aboot it,” she had said to Tierney, and she would not be persuaded.

  Perhaps, with discretion and care, she could avoid any further contact with Lucian. Perhaps, before long, he would return to Edinburgh and society life, and all of them on the crofts and in Binkiebrae could breathe easily again.

  It was not to be.

  Evening was coming on, tea over and chores done, when Anne left home to make her way toward a small house on the edge of Binkiebrae, this time with several newly hatched baby chicks in her basket, a gift for old Maggie.

  She was absorbed in checking on the chicks, running a finger lightly over their downy heads as she went, and so heard the approaching horse’s hooves too late. Caution, ordinarily, would have sent her scuttling for the brush at the side of the road in time to avoid a confrontation with Lucian, if it were indeed he.

  By the time she recognized him, pride kept her in the middle of the road, kept her moving, chin up, eyes straight ahead, mouth suddenly dry, heart beating hard.

  Lucian drew his horse to a halt. When he saw that Anne continued on her way, he flushed an angry red, yanked his horse around so that he came abreast of her, and pulled in front of her.

  “Hold on, Fanny. Haven’t we got some business to take care of?”

  Still Anne did not pause but routed herself around Lucian and his mount, walking steadily, silently, though the hand on the basket shook and the chicks set up a twitter.

  Once again, now cursing angrily, Lucian yanked the animal around and came alongside the doggedly proceeding Anne. Again he pulled in front of her; again she attempted to sidestep rider and horse. She never made it.

  Curses exploding from his twisted mouth, Lucian removed his foot from the stirrup, pulled it back, and with a powerful kick from his heavily booted foot sent Anne staggering, stumbling back, turning an ankle badly in the process. Before she could right herself Lucian sprang from the saddle and, for no reason at all except meanness, kicked the fallen basket so that it bounced and rolled, the chicks escaping to run peeping into the grass. With surprising strength for one with his girlish build, he gathered a handful of Anne’s clothing into his fist and pulled her startled, wide-eyed face to within inches of his own.

  “This is as far as you go, Miss Hoity-toity!”

  Anne was small, Anne was womanly, but Anne was a fighter. T
he pain of the ankle was forgotten as she battled the raging, cursing youth. Lucian’s purposes seemed clear; he kept his grip on Anne’s clothes and began dragging her toward the weeds and brush at the road’s edge. With one booted foot he tripped her feet, already unsteady, and toppled Anne to the dusty road. From there it was simpler to drag her, with her torn hands grasping at the roadside growth and her feet scrabbling to gain leverage. Lucian’s punches, Lucian’s kicks, Lucian’s questing hands—all found more than they could deal with in the raging, spitting, fighting scrap of humanity that was Anne Fraser. When Lucian’s feet became entangled in the undergrowth and he lost his balance, falling heavily on the thrashing, heaving body, he lost his advantage.

  With a strength she didn’t know she had, Anne pushed with both hands, drawing up her knees and shoving with them at Lucian until the tender anatomy was excruciatingly gouged. Lucian rolled, screaming, from her, to huddle in the fetal position, cradling himself in his own arms and sobbing.

  Anne made her escape, crawling into the brush and hiding until Lucian gained some measure of control, got to his feet, limped to the road, and headed down it in pursuit of the missing horse, still moaning, still cursing, threatening.

  Already near Binkiebrae, and not wanting to go in the same direction as Lucian, Anne determined to reach the Caulder home, and Tierney. Greatly hampered by the sprained ankle, her progress had been slow—a crawl much of the way, a limping walk at times. Soiled, clothing torn, battered and degraded—but intact, Anne reached the Caulder doorstep the victor.

  “But I can never go through it again,” she concluded, her eyes reflecting, in the firelight, the horror of her experience. “Whatever am I going to do, Tierney? Whaur can I go that I can escape the MacDermotts? How can I ever be safe again?”