Saved by the Highlander (6 page)

Alice gave him one final look, the defiance so emphatic in it that Niall almost said that he would come into Fergus’ house after her and bend her over the bed to show her what the strap felt like. But then she said very coldly, “Good night, Mr. MacAlpin. I thank you for saving my life.”

“Good night, my lady,” he said. “Fergus, would you come to my house for a bit?”

“Aye, Niall, with a good will.” He turned to Alice with a smile that had only the gentlest smidgen of mockery in it. “Behave yourself, my lady. My Fiona knows her way about the highland strap. I can attest that she’s taught many a lad and many a lass a lesson they won’t soon forget.”

Niall looked at Alice’s face and saw the same mingled fear and confusion he thought he had seen upon the road, as if she could not bear to think about the possibility, and yet she somehow also looked to the threat of correction as a kind of welcome, firm limit upon the changes through which her life now traveled. “I will endeavor to behave myself as I should, Mr. MacAlpin,” she said though, just as coldly as she had said good night to Niall. “I thank you.” She turned and followed Fiona up the path.

Chapter Seven

As Alice passed into the croft house, she felt she had done her best to maintain her dignity, and yet even so she also felt that she had somehow betrayed that same dignity. The thought that this kindly-looking highland woman might take a strap to Alice’s bare bottom made her heart beat so fast that she thought she could almost hear it in her ears.

Half a dozen times, as Fiona pointed out the few appurtenances of the cozy little house, Alice opened her mouth to ask the question burning inside her breast:
Would you really use the strap upon my bare bottom? I, the daughter of an earl?

Why did that question hold such a terrible fascination? Alice remembered what it had felt like to have the spanking from Niall, through her chemise, by the side of the road where the other highlanders could see what their chief did to her even if he had, somewhat gallantly Alice supposed, turned her away so that their view of the punishment was not clear. If he had wanted to, she thought, he could have had them come over to watch, so as to humiliate her further.

And he had done that strange and honorable thing in holding the plaid up for her to don her chemise. Niall MacAlpin had done that after he had seen what the outlaw leader had done, when he had pulled Alice to her feet, out of the dust, once they had already killed all the others, even Sir Frederick.

Niall MacAlpin had seen the way they had ripped Alice’s gown and her other silk chemise off her. He had seen the way they bound her, in order to do to her the same thing Lord Roderick had done to Joan the scullery maid in the park at Mowton.

Now, as Fiona showed Alice a clean bed with a mattress filled with wool, in the part of the croft house where it appeared Fergus and Fiona also slept, the memories began to come rushing back into her imagination, and the blood seemed to roar in her ears.

“I’m sure you wish simply to sleep, my lady,” Fiona was saying very kindly.

“They… the outlaws…” Alice began to blurt out.

She saw Fiona’s brow crease at the unexpected reply to her assertion about sleeping. Then the light of understanding came into her eyes. “Would you rather sit and talk a while, my lady?” she asked.

Alice nodded, but now that the words had begun to emerge, she seemed unable to stop them, now that she was alone with another woman—one who might, it seemed, be able to understand, and to answer Alice’s questions. “I was naked… I mean… th—the outlaws took my clothes off… and…”

“And Niall spanked you?!” Fiona said, outraged. “They were going to rape you, my lady, and my fool nephew spanked you?”

Alice suddenly felt the most unexpected mixture of emotion. “I… that is to say, he… I would rather not, I suppose, admit it, but…”

Fiona looked very puzzled indeed now. She reached out her hand and took Alice’s hand into it. The older woman’s skin felt rough, the way the skin upon the outlaw’s hand had felt. Niall had not touched Alice’s bare skin, she suddenly realized, with a twinge of regret that took her even more by surprise. What strange direction did her wits want to bring her?

Fiona led Alice to a rough wooden table with four stools around it, and sat her down upon one of the stools. “You’re used to tea and coffee, I warrant, my lady,” she said. “We have none of that foreign stuff up here in the highlands, but I have a drink that will warm you through and through, right enough.”

The brusque tone of her voice, as if her guest hadn’t spoken so strangely just a few moments before, seemed to recall Alice to herself a little. “Yes,” she said, “coffee—I like coffee very much. It comes from Arabia. I should like to go Arabia.”

The words made sense at least, even if Alice were having some trouble putting them together into coherent phrases and sentences. Fiona looked sharply at her, as if to see just how distracted the strange English girl had become. Then she nodded. “Is it hot there?” she asked, taking two pewter drinking cups from a shelf.

“I have heard that it is very hot in Arabia,” Alice said rather automatically and, she felt, with a slightly strained smile—a version of the social smile her governess had taught her, far away in Mowton.

Fiona did not reply, for she concentrated now on pouring a very small measure of a liquid that looked thick and amber-colored from a leather wineskin into each cup.

“What is that, Mistress MacAlpin?” Alice asked, suddenly curious.

“Whisky, my lady,” said Fiona with a little smile.

“Oh, but I must not drink that!” said Alice. “My father drinks whisky.”

Fiona laughed. “Mine did too, sweetling. I shall put a good deal of water in yours.”

“But…”

“Think it medicine, if you please, my lady. But it will do you very good, I’m thinking.” She poured the water from a kettle that hung above the hearth. Alice stared into the peat fire for a moment, thinking how cozy it made the croft house to have that central source of heat, if also very smoky, as the haze drifted upward to the chimney above.

Fiona handed the cup to Alice. “Just a little sip, my lady. Even in a nice warm drink like this, with plenty of water, whisky is a drink you must sip and savor.”

Alice did take a little sip, and then coughed. The flavor was…
well,
she thought,
it seems manly, if truth be told. Or is that simply because I know that it is a drink for men, where I grew up?
That thought brought to mind the distance between Alice and her home in the South, and though she had long since ceased to see Mowton as the magical realm of her girlhood, to which she longed to escape from town every spring, and begun to see it as the prison that kept her from the wide world where she would make her way after a brilliant marriage as the lady of an important peer, she felt tears well up. She took another sip to hide the tears and found that she enjoyed it greatly.

Fiona sat on the stool next to hers and sipped her own whisky. “I think, my lady,” said the highland woman, “that you were about to tell me something of what happened upon the road, when Niall took his hand to your backside.”

Alice felt herself blushing once again. She considered for a long moment, taking another little sip of the whisky in the meantime. Then she said, “I forgive him, I suppose, Mistress MacAlpin. I have seen that he is, in many ways, a gentleman, despite being in the most important senses, no gentleman at all.” She realized how great an insult she had just rendered, at least according to courtly standards, and she glanced at Fiona in alarm.

But Fiona was chuckling. “No, that’s true enough,” the woman said. “Though if the name of gentleman were not such venom in a highland ear, I might say that if by a gentleman you mean a man of honor, than our Niall is a much truer gentleman than the laird of Lormoran, saving your presence.”

Alice felt pique rising in her—the higher because the vision of Lord Roderick’s hips, pounding into the scullery maid’s backside in the shadows of Alice’s own park, swam before her eyes. “I have been taught,” she said, stiffening her back as she spoke, “to regard breeding as the source of a man’s honor.”

Fiona stopped laughing and gave her a sad smile. “I am sure you have, my lady. And yet you say you forgive Niall for showing his lack of that breeding?”

“I do. He acted as he thought he must.”
Yes,
she thought.
Yes, he did. And I was thinking, just before the outlaws attacked, about how vile a man my future husband is. And now Niall MacAlpin suspects… what? It could not be that…
Alice refused to let her mind wander further in the direction it seemed to be going. She said, “And he saved me from a vile assault that I can hardly contemplate without shuddering to my marrow.”

If Fiona heard in Alice’s voice the brittleness that Alice herself could hear there, or sensed that her strange guest, who had been ready to pour out her heart on the matter of that vile assault only a few minutes previously, now felt she must flee within the walls of her honor, high as her home’s ancient parapets, the highland woman did not show it in her face. She did say, though, “Your marrow, my lady?”

Suddenly all Alice’s assumed dignity seemed to vanish. She put her cup down on the table and covered her face with her hands, so that Fiona would not see the tears that seemed to spring from her eyes as if from a fountain. A huge sob racked her shoulders, and then another one.

Then, unexpectedly, she felt Fiona’s arms around her, and a warm hand pulling her cheek into a soft apron. Alice’s mother, from Alice’s earliest childhood, had maintained the most distant presence in her child’s life. None of her governesses had ever been of the affectionate kind. Alice thus had no memory of anyone ever holding her that way, and that made it worse—and better—to sob, nearly hysterically now, into Fiona’s plump bosom, her hands still over her face, but that face now leaning into the highland woman’s body.

“There, there,” Fiona said. “You are safe now.”

“H—he…” Alice sobbed.

“Shh…” Fiona said softly.

“N—no,” Alice protested. “I… I need to s—say it. I need to t—tell someone…”

“You may tell me, sweetling,” Fiona said. “But bide a few moments, until you are calmer.”

But Alice felt that if she waited, she would not be able to say what she knew she must say. “He took all my clothes off, and he t—tied me… they tied me… they…”

Fiona sighed and held her closer. “How did they tie you?” she asked softly.

“They… it was for… that thing that men do… that they do to girls. And they were saying things. About… about… me.”

“Look at that. Are you going to have the arse first, Archie?”

“Nah. The cunt looks tight enough to me. You can have the arse after I’m finished.”

Another voice: “Who gets the mouth?”

The leader, responding: “You go ahead, Jack. She looks like a biter.”

“Don’t mind, so long as you let me whip her if she bites my prick.”

It was the thing Lord Roderick had done to Joan, and now it was going to happen to Alice. These outlaws had their… pricks, for that was what they must be… in their hands.

“One thing,” the leader said with a chuckle, to his men, “makes a kilt the perfect thing to go raiding in, even though it be the clothing of a highland rat.” They all lifted their kilts, and they had their pricks in their hands.

And Alice felt scared, but the leader touched her there, between her legs, and a warmth arose that Alice knew she should not feel, and a wetness that should not flow.

“She’s wet,” he said with a horrid satisfaction. “She’s ready for fucking. Don’t worry, my lady. If you’re a good girl for us, we’ll keep you. No one will ever have to know that you’re alive and living as our little whore.”

Then the cry from the hill, and everything changing with terrible, terrible speed.

“There,” said Fiona. “Do you feel better, my lady?”

Alice realized that her sobs had calmed, as the memories had come back of Niall MacAlpin coming to the rescue. She nodded against Fiona’s bosom, and Fiona sat down again upon her stool. Alice uncovered her face and, still unable to look at her hostess, took a sip of the whisky, which had gone cold, but still tasted somehow of strength.

Finally she lifted her eyes to see Fiona looking at her with concern. Surprised by how calm she now seemed to feel, she said, “Mistress MacAlpin, I do not know very much of… matrimonial… relations. I know the question to be an indecent one, but I hope you will take pity on a poor Sassenach girl, and answer it.”

“What is the question, my dear?” Fiona asked quietly, still looking intently into Alice’s eyes.

“When… That is to say, if a man should… touch a girl… there…”

Fiona said gently, “May I try to guess your question, my lady?”

Alice nodded, relief flooding her mind. “I wish you would, Mistress MacAlpin.”

“Are you fretting yourself that you felt your cunny get wet, when the wrong man touched it?”

Alice compressed her lips into a very tight line, grateful for the strength she seemed to have gained from the whisky to push back the tears. She nodded.

“Do not fash yourself, my lady. Our flesh, both men and women, was made thus. The priest would tell you that it is because of original sin, I wager, but I have never thought him near as wise as my Fergus.”

“And what does Mr. MacAlpin say about it?” Alice asked, suddenly very curious.

Fiona smiled. “He says that woman is made for man, and man for woman, and pricks will get hard and cunnies will get wet, for thus has God decreed it.”

Alice could not help smiling back. It seemed a strange sort of wisdom, she supposed, but it lightened her mind.

“Are you ready to sleep, my lady?” Fiona asked.

“I think I am,” replied Alice.

Chapter Eight

Niall walked the hundred yards to Fergus’ door when the sun had risen high enough to shine down upon the loch. He had talked with his uncle late into the night, about what to do with Alice Lourcy and what to do about his suspicions concerning the attack that had left the earl’s daughter in the power of Clan Alpin of Kilmorin. Fergus, as he often did, had served admirably as sounding board, and now Niall, though the weariness had not completely left his bones, felt that he at least had a plan of how to handle Alice’s presence as his guest.