A Promise of Love (10 page)

Alisdair stood, hands on hips, and watched his newest burden as she scrambled up on the sagging mattress. She remained on her knees, her eyes flashing fire. Such temper was still a welcome change from the vacuity they displayed so often.

He smiled, a particularly infuriating grin which prodded her to words more prudently left unsaid. Yet, if she was going to be punished, then let it be for something, not simply the innocence of self.

"Is it that you wish me to fawn over your bastard, MacLeod? Your prowess as a male applauded and saluted? Very well, I applaud and salute you. You have fathered a child. Congratulations."

"I am not Douglas's father."

"And I am the King of England, MacLeod. Believe either if you will, they are both lies."

"Do you call me a liar then?" His scowl was too fierce. Her heart beat strongly, urging her to caution.

"No," she said, scooting away from him.

"I am sick unto death of you slithering away from me,” he ground out between thinned lips, his voice low and intense. “I am not a monster, nor am I a lovesick fool. You have nothing to fear from me.” Because he was irritated and not a little confused by the emotion he’d felt in the stairwell, he frowned fiercely at her, determined not to allow compassion to soften his words, or lead him into dangerous thoughts.

“If your husbands craved you with carnal lust, then it's because they had not seen another woman in months!" His conscience cringed at his cruelty, his manhood relished the open battle at last. "You are not Helen of Troy, nor are you an ethereal vision of loveliness. You are in a word, my English wife, a scrawny, sour tongued hag!"

He left the room in a whirl of motion and rage, leaving Judith staring after him.

Her eyes felt as though they had been dusted with pepper, tiny pinpricks of hurt.

It was only the rain in her eyes.

CHAPTER 9

"Was it very bad, Alisdair?" Sophie asked. Her soft voice conveyed compassion, her worried eyes concern for his obvious fatigue.

Judith watched the MacLeod warily. They had not spoken since his outburst a few days earlier. She had managed to avoid him since then, wanting nothing to do with the MacLeod, or his precious Tynan. She cared less than nothing for either of them.

Nor did she care about the errand which had kept him abroad all night. No doubt looting and pillaging. His eyes were shadowed and sunken, their edges looked red. His beard was full blown; he looked a marauder in truth.

Judith dished him up a bowl of porridge, which he ate standing up. He did not look at her, but concentrated on his meal as if he had not eaten for days. For some reason, the Scots did not refer to their meal of boiled oats as an "it", as in a leg of lamb or a haunch of beef. Instead, porridge was a "they" and best consumed standing up. It was one of those oddities of the Scots that Judith simply accepted. Explanations were better left for someone who was interested.

He gave the empty bowl to Judith, and without a word, went into the pantry where he poured himself a stiff measure of her father's brandy. He swallowed it without seeming to breathe.

Only then did he speak, his voice gravelly without sleep. He rubbed his eyes fiercely as if to further open them.

"It was bad," he said simply. “The babe never drew breath.”

Sophie looked at him sadly. She wished she could have spared him his memories, but that was beyond her province. His recollections of Anne would cease in time, but not if he were forced to relive them, again and again, as he had last night.

Judith looked at them curiously. Their cryptic conversation spurred an interest she pretended not to feel.

"And Janet?" Sophie asked.

There was only silence for a moment, as he leaned against the door frame and shut his eyes tightly. The light was too bright. The long, sleepless night had been filled with activity and not a little praying as he had attempted to save at least one life. All for naught.

"She really had no chance from the beginning," he said, somberly. "Too little nourishment, too much work, too much grief."

Sophie stood, her demeanor that of someone who has witnessed enough sadness in the world. No one said a word as she shuffled to her room and gently closed the door behind her.

She did not like this land, Judith thought, as she bent to scrub the table. It sucked dry the energy of its people; it demanded too high a toll. Granted, it was no different in England, young women still died in childbirth. Yet Scotland seemed harsher somehow, as if life had been stripped of all of its beauty and only the bare essentials remained. There was no softness here, no frailty. The soft did not survive, the frail fell beneath the burden of day to day living. It was wild, untamed, mocking its recent conquest by the English, stark and as desolate as Tynan itself.

Judith knew every foot of the castle so well she could have drawn its plan by memory. Most of the rooms were now shut off; in certain spots not even the wooden doors had been replaced, leaving gaping black holes which exposed the degree of ruin the fire had caused. The dining-hall was intact, but so gloomy and dim she could understand why the inhabitants of Tynan used the kitchen for their meals. In addition to her room and Sophie's niche beside the kitchen, one room in the retainers' hall had been cleaned, and the lord's room, in which the wheel staircase, the only access to the battlements, was located. The castle was a labyrinth of rooms hidden beyond rooms. It took long moments to finally find her way around the second floor, and she climbed the sloping steps to the third floor only once. She did not venture inside the MacLeod's room. It was enough to simply stand at the doorway, and scan the immense dimensions of the room with wide eyes. Here, too, the windows overlooked the sea, but there were no panes of precious glass in their large rectangular openings. A massive bed, only one poster remaining, dominated one entire wall. Without much effort, she could envision the MacLeod there, his long legs stretched full length, his body occupying more than half its broad width. There was, however, still room for a wife. She had left the room quickly. It was not as easy to banish the chamber's occupant from her mind.

Alisdair opened his eyes to study his English wife.

He told himself that it was not his conscience which bothered him as much as his sense of fairness, a different thing entirely. Every crofter in his clan was welcome to come to him with a complaint, and would be listened to because his word had merit. Every child was protected by every adult, because life was valued and cherished here. Every woman in his village could expect to be treated with honor, both by their husbands and by all other men who lived in the glen inhabited by the MacLeods. The old were cosseted and excused. The imperfect were protected. Those who did wrong were chastised and corrected, not shamed.

He was too aware that he had not acted with fairness, but with a brutal cruelty which bothered him. He had tried to wound her with words, and from the look on her face now, he had succeeded beyond his expectations.

Although leadership came more easily to him than apologies, Alisdair forced himself to face her and utter words he'd never thought to voice to an English subject.

"Forgive me," he said, his voice flat, exhausted, "for saying what I did." Two fingers pressed against his eyelids as if to minimize their sting so he did not see the sudden surprised look she directed at him. "You did not deserve my crudeness."

It was bewilderment which kept her mute, but he only noted her silence with irritation, an emotion not easily banished in her presence.

"Granmere means a great deal to me," he said, another statement which caught her off guard. She stopped wiping the table, and straightened, watching him warily. He remained slumped against the door, head bent back as if he studied the ceiling with infinite patience. His soft tone was strangely somber, intensified by the silence in the room. Judith could hear the rustling of something suspiciously mouse-like, the MacLeod's breathing, the pounding beat of her heart. "I would not have her hurt,” he said, “for all that she means well."

His face was set into stern lines, an uncompromising look, which gave little or nothing away. As if he buried his emotions so deep that none could find them. It prompted an unwilling feeling of empathy.

"I would not hurt her, MacLeod." It was easier, somehow, to concentrate her attention on the rag held tightly in one hand than to meet his gaze. It did not mean, however, that she was unaware of him. If anything, the room seemed to shrink, or he grow larger. Or was it because there were only inches between them?

He reached out and casually stroked a lock of her hair where it had come loose from the bun she habitually wore. The tips of his fingers brushed against the side of her neck, and a shiver of sensation followed their passage to her shoulder. Slowly, too slowly, dangerously too slow, she moved away, and his hand dropped.

She faced him then, arms wrapped around her middle as if to protect herself. It was a telling gesture and one he noted with less detachment than he would have wished. He did not want to notice anything about this particular woman.

"Shall we call a truce?" he asked her, a small smile playing around his lips. "Rest assured, Judith, you have nothing to fear from me. I prefer a celibate bed to one occupied by a frosty English statue."

“I'm well aware that men have needs, does your truce include those?"

He laughed, the mocking sound of it echoed through the room, prickling her skin. "What did your poor husbands do, to earn your enmity? Did they not give you enough of an allowance? Pay you no heed? Question your expenditures? If so, then you have not improved your lot. We are farmers here, without access to funds that are not reserved for grain or seed."

Judith looked at him as if he had sprouted two heads. Would that had been all Anthony had demanded.

She clenched her teeth. "Let us say that I am not a marital prize. To put it into words a farmer could understand, label me as stupid as a sheep, as stubborn as a goat, as hysterical as a chicken."

"You do not, perhaps, have the loyalty of a favored horse, the placid disposition of a cow, or the intelligence of a pig?" He was grinning, his fatigue forgotten, his grief muted by this sudden, fascinating side of his silent wife. Judith wished she had the courage to wipe that idiotic smirk from his face.

"No."

"Then it does not bode well for the next few weeks, then, does it?"

They stood for long moments staring at each other, and his sense of irony surfaced from the burden of day-to-day living, from the grief he felt for Janet and her babe, for Anne. Indeed, for the ruin of his life.

"Shall we call it peace, then," he asked, "if for no other reason than for Granmere's sake?"

“And your conditions, MacLeod?”

“A smile, from time to time, perhaps? A word spoken without rancor, the cessation of your eternal silence. If I should enter a room, you will not disappear from it. Your chastity, my companionship?”

After a long moment, she nodded.

"I would have your word, woman."

"My word?" she questioned shortly. "Would you take the word of your horse? Perhaps you could make your pig swear. Or your cow.” Her eyes widened at her own words, two fingers pressed against her lips as if to test their ownership. His grin grew broader in scope. So, his English wife had a temper, too, when nudged from her silence.

"If you do not value your own word, woman,” he said softly, “then it truly lacks worth."

"Is a Scotswoman's promise more valuable?" Her tone left little doubt of her thoughts.

"You are woefully ignorant of our world, woman. You have evidently not been in a Scotswoman's presence, or else you would not speak so stupidly of what you do not know. She is the helpmate of her husband, works beside him, shares his life. Has been known to take up weapons beside him, and yes, to die with him, if need be."

"I would not mind dying with you, MacLeod," she said bluntly, her scowl a study in irritation. "It's living with you I balk at."

His bark of surprised laughter followed her from the room.

CHAPTER 10

Bennett Henderson stepped carefully around the puddle of vomit. Young Hartley was not up to drinking all night. The youngest of his group, the boy naturally gravitated to Bennett, had even taken to emulating his own taste in liquor and its quantity. The fact that Hartley was not quite up to the challenge was amusing, as was the puppy-like adoration.

What Bennett really wanted was a companion of the soul, someone who would understand his deepest desires and most forbidden aspirations. Someone who would encourage his most terrible of wants.

Anthony had done that.

Sweet Anthony, two years his junior; Anthony would have done anything for him. The times they’d had, the debaucheries they’d practiced, it was almost too much, the memories. They summoned up a longing he could not dismiss.

The last two years hadn’t been the same without him. Not only had he lost his brother, but his best friend, his gambling companion, and more. How many times had they shared a woman between them? How many times had they shared a look of such utter understanding across the body of a spent and sweat dampened female body.