The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2) (5 page)

Anne hid her body behind the door to keep him from continuing his overt gawping. “You’ve come from my mother, then?”

“I have. We have come to… an understanding, you might say.”

A slick of fear spread over her. “An understanding?”

She stuck her head around the door and looked both directions down the hall. Not a soul. Either he’d dismissed the guards or sent them elsewhere. Perhaps he was no longer concerned that someone would try to kidnap her. Or that she would no longer try to escape. Or…

“About the wedding.” He hiccupped and for the first time, she could smell the rotten, drunk breath he belched from across the hall. The force of it sent him careening back against the opposite wall and Anne relaxed.

He was so drunk, he might pass out right in front of her.

“What about the wedding?” she asked. “I’m sure you know, it’s highly inappropriate for us to be talking like this without a chaperone in the middle of the night.”

The Sheriff barked a laugh and spread his arms. “There’s no one to see.”

Anne took a step backward, her heart thudding. “My sister is here, sleeping. I could wake her with one scream.”

“Ah, but you won’t, will you?”

“I will.”

“And when they come, who will they believe? The Sheriff of Berwick, or the daughter of a whore Countess who sold her daughter for the price of her new home?”

With each word, he seemed to come closer, until he’d crossed the hall, stepped into the doorway, and crossed every inch between them. Anne couldn’t move.

Her mother may have, indeed, given her away for a high-priced dowry, but she wasn’t his yet. They had only been promised.

“I don’t want to frighten you, girl.” The Sheriff swayed on his feet, his shadowed face ghoulish in the half-light of her bedroom.

Anne relaxed. “You didn’t frighten me. You just startled me.” She crossed her arms when she saw his eyes lower to her chest and fix there. “I should be getting back to sleep.”

“You want to know how much your mother sold you for, my girl? Do you want to know what you’re worth?”

She stiffened, forcing a sweet note into her voice. “I’m sure it was a fair price, my Lord.”

“It was a lark, in the end.” He leaned against the door as another hiccup took him into it. “Much less than I expected. I guess it’s been hard to find a husband for a girl with a mad sister. Even… even a pretty one.” Simon Alcock reached for her and caught her by the hair.

At first, he just smelled it, and Anne thought to indulge him until the guards returned, but it wasn’t long before he hiccupped again and dragged her hair with him when he swayed backwards. Only there was no door behind him and this time, when he stumbled back, he took Anne along with his momentum.

She crashed into him and he into the wall and he laughed like the drunk ox he was.

Anne tried to pull away from him, but his steadying grip on her shoulder turned rough. He turned her to fully face him and gripped both shoulders.

“
Well, now we’re here and I’m ready, I’m not sure that I want to wait for our wedding night for the bedding.”

Heat rose in her cheeks and she struggled against his powerful hands. He laughed.

“Well, at least you are the virgin your mother promised. I would hate to pay all this money after all this persuasion and get some harlot with a bastard in her belly.”

Anne tried to push him, but he pressed his weight against her ribcage and she wasn’t even sure she could get up the breath to scream. Her heartbeat clamored inside and she looked frantically for her guards. None came.

He lifted her chin with one fat finger. “That was why I waited so long, you know. Your mother was so keen to find you a husband, and with you having such a nice, ripe body, and being such a pretty thing, I was sure she was after a cuckold to say he’d fathered another man’s baby.”

Through gritted teeth, Anne mustered as much sweetness as she could. “And what changed your mind, my lord?”

His hand was suddenly on her breast, grasping roughly at her as though pain was his aim and not pleasure. “Your belly didn’t round, and then when you so nicely helped to capture the last of the renegades, I couldn’t resist.”

Anne wanted to scream, to push him away, to kick and claw at every inch of him, but what could she do? Who would help her? Her mother had basically sold her to him for his devices. Her guard was nowhere to be found and if she woke Elena, the evil man might turn his attentions on her as well.

That would never happen. Not as long as Anne lived. She’d be the sacrifice before she let anything happen to her sister.

He roughened his grip as she tried to struggle against him. “I wouldn’t have taken you if your mother hadn’t promised a virgin.” His stink enveloped her as he covered her whole body. “My last wife was unfaithful to me.”

Anne sucked in a breath. She’d heard stories of the Sheriff’s wife
who had fallen from the tower of her castle before he had been appointed to this position.

The rumor was that the fall hadn’t killed her.

“You will never be unfaithful to me.” The pig bent down on her and bit the skin of her neck. She squealed and tried to wriggle away, but he held her so forcefully against the wall. “Don’t scream, my girl.” He bit harder and her breath stuck in her throat. “You’ll learn to love the pain.”

When his face came back into view, he had a touch of red on his lips. Her blood. Oh Lord. He still had ahold of her arms, so she couldn’t move to find out if she was really bleeding, but the evidence seemed clear.

He licked his lips and then kissed her, the slimy slick of his mouth grinding into her and drawing more blood. A wave of sickness tore through her. She struggled, but he only laughed at her. “Your enthusiasm for me is endearing, lass.”

With a growl, he went for her neck again, and just as she felt his teeth tearing her skin again,
she also felt him pushing her shift up. He fumbled with his pants and Anne looked up and down the long hallway again, begging someone to come upon them.

“Let me just sample these goods. See what I’m getting for this fool’s ransom I’ve paid.”

Anne cast one last glance around and felt her whole world implode in fear. No one was coming for her. No one would care. Her mother wouldn’t stop the Sheriff from taking what was his, and if she tried to wake Elena, she risked her sister’s virtue as well as her own.

With pain throbbing in her neck and disgust in her throat, Anne closed her eyes and prayed for someone to save her.

Chapter Five

Anne couldn’t remember how she got back to her bed, but when she woke, sore and hollow, the next morning, the memories of the Sheriff assailed her anew. Tears soaked her cheeks as she recalled the dark moments of her first encounter with a man. Her whole body ached in agony.

Elena’s poking her shoulder nearly drove Anne to screeching cries, but her simple-minded sister giggled when Anne wouldn’t look at her. The thought that stabilized her erratic heartbeat was that at least her sweet sister remained untouched.

That was the only thing that had reverberated in her head as she’d allowed the Sheriff to have his way with her.
Save Elena.

And then, her thoughts had turned to the future. Is this what life would be like for her with Simon Alcock as a husband? Pain and fear? Shame? What if she told her mother what he’d done?

Elena’s fingers found her side and Anne gasped. What normally would have sent her laughing and tickling today made pain overtake her body and she started coughing to cover her sobs.

Anne could still taste the drunken tongue. She bit down on her own tongue until she tasted blood. That was preferable to the taste of the Sheriff.

He had only taken what was his right. That’s what he told her when he’d stumbled away in a drunk stupor after he’d finished. And she’d stayed, crouched in her own bloody clothes, against the wall until… what? She vaguely remembered crawling back into the bedroom after she’d spent her tears.

She held up her hands and realized she was still wearing the blood-soaked shift. Good heavens, how would she tell Elena about this? Elena, whose mind was so happy and who knew nothing of the trials of life. Elena, who knew less about men and women than even Anne had.

“Are you awake, my love?” Anne managed a raspy voice. The giggling and wriggling under the covers next to her told Anne that she was, although her sister was not answering.

“We’re going to play a little game, Elena. Hide and seek.”

Elena squealed. “Oh, I love games.”

“I know you do. Now you close your eyes and count, and I’m going to go and hide, and you’re going to count as high as you can and then come and find me.”

“I love this game.” Elena’s excited giggles were muffled by her head being under the covers and Anne made a little space between them as she slipped out of bed.

Elena began to count.

When Anne’s feet touched the ground, her body reminded her of how much she had struggled the previous night. Every muscle in her body had been working trying to keep the brute off her, and they all cried out in pain together.

But Anne had to bite her lip through it or risk Elena realizing the game was a ruse. She hurried across the room to her dressing table and slipped behind the screen.

She lifted the shift over her head and her neck cried out in pain. Naked and shivering, she felt the spot on her neck where the Sheriff had bitten her. It was hot to the touch and her fingers came away with crusts of red.

She hoped she hadn’t started the bleeding anew.
The pain dulled with each moment and as she found a clean shift among her clothes, she steeled herself against the memories. She had to be strong for Elena, and clean again.

Her hair would hide the neck wound, and she would have to solidify her grip on her emotions. It was his right, as her promised husband, to take her.

His roughness aside, she would have to learn how to be strong in this. She couldn’t simply cave each time she thought of it.

Each step she took in return to her bed was a step away from that bloody shift. She could make herself strong, just by will. Couldn’t she?

Elena’s counting slowed and Anne increased her pace back to the bed. Her mother may not care what happened to her daughters, but Elena would care, and Anne would save her from that worry.

Of course, her mother didn’t care. She’d never been particularly enamored with her children until the Baron de Cheyne was granted the hereditary title of Earl of Caithness
after Broccin’s father refused to send troops to the English crown. Suddenly, her children had value, even if that meant she quite literally saw them as piles of silver to add to her coffers.

Anne had never felt that equivocation so squarely as she did that moment. She had been bought and paid for. And used.

“You’re not hiding?” Elena poked her head out from under the covers and narrowed her eyes on her sister.

“You can go back to sleep if you wish.” Anne p
ulled at the neck of her shift and arranged her hair around the throbbing wound, and stood next to the bed.

Elena stretched. “I was looking forward to hide and seek.”

“I know you are, darling, but I’m cold.” Anne saw the fire hadn’t yet been lit, although if breakfast was on its way, it had to be after sunrise. She went to the window and pulled back the heavy drapes to reveal more light.

Elena wailed. “Don’t. Not yet.”

“You have to wake up sometime, dear.” Anne let the cloth fall back over the small window.

“Why?” Elena pulled the blankets around her slender neck and curled her legs under the cover. “It’s so warm and cozy here. Besides, I don’t want to spend another day on parade.”

Anne found herself smiling at the accurate description. They weren’t used to having such attention paid them, not as the daughters of a relatively poor baron from the very north of Scotland. They didn’t have the kind of extravagant home even that the Sheriff, an un-titled English sympathizer, had. And after the previous evening, each day waking to this new reality would solidify in her mind how far she was from the girl she had been at home.

The girl who was allowed to ride
her horse all day and read all night. The girl who went hunting with her father and made tapestries with her sisters. The girl who could dance on the green and who some days felt like she owned all of the land she could see. What a different place this was, and what a different life this would be. Her father’s face flashed in her memory and Anne pushed away her dark thoughts. “Do you miss home, lamb?”

“I miss not being on parade.”

Of course she did. The last several months had been the antithesis of their previous life. At home, Elena would sometimes hide for days, only seeing Anne or their nurse.

“I miss home.”

Elena chewed at the end of her blanket. “I miss Father and Dania and Victor and Brenna.”

“I miss them, as well.”

“Do you think Mother misses them?”

Anne scoffed and ran her hand along the bedpost, an absent rhythm thrumming inside. “I don’t think mother is aware of much outside her own will.”

“You are angry with her?”

A memory caught Anne’s senses in a whirl. She and her mother had been standing on a balcony in Glasgow, overlooking the renovations to
St. Mungo’s cathedral. And over the din of the men working, her mother had gotten a distant look in her eye and said the thing Anne had always dreaded she felt.

“Mother doesn’t even really see us as people.” Anne spoke even as the memory played out behind her eyes. “Which shouldn’t shock any of us, given her general absence in our lives.”

“But she does love us.” Elena’s voice was quiet, mouse-like. Almost as though she harbored some shred of a desire to protect Milene de Cheyne from her daughter’s wrath.

“She loves us, certainly.” Anne paused to let the memory end and shook her head. “But not the way most mothers love their children.”

“Meaning?”

Anne looked at the grey stone floor and traced one of the seams with her big toe. “You won’t believe me if I tell you. I mean, I hardly believe it, and I heard it from her own lips.”

Elena sat up fully and leaned in. “Tell me.”

With reluctance, Anne recounted the moment in Glasgow. “She was watching something in the middle distance, likely unaware of my presence there. She said,
‘If I would have known how lucrative it would be to have daughters, I would have kept breeding’.”

Elena’s face drew down in disappointment. Anne knew the feeling all too well. As if this husband game wasn’t enough of a sham, her mother had to add to the insult by admitting aloud that she would like to have more daughters to sell.

And the Baron de Renault hadn’t even bitten. Not like Simon Alcock apparently had. It must have been quite a sum of money he decided to settle on the Countess if Milene de Cheyne willingly surrendered her most valuable asset. Her oldest daughter.

“I can’t believe mother would say such things.” Elena snuggled back into her bedclothes.

“I would love to disbelieve her ability to feel such things as well, lamb. Unfortunately, I heard the words, and subsequent feelings spoken aloud.”

“I miss Nana Min.” Elena’s reference to their
nurse—the woman Anne considered more of a mother than Milene de Cheyne—brought bitter tears to Anne’s eyes.

She couldn’t admit to herself that
she missed Nana Min. Not after what had happened the previous night. If Nana Min had still been part of the de Cheyne household, none of this farce of a husband search would have been allowed. Anne would be safe and protected and still a maid in her home.

Her breath quickened of its own volition and she stopped breathing altogether. She held her breath and the memories with it.

“We all miss her,” was all Anne could finally manage after taking a quick breath.

Anne most of all, and now that she had so much at stake. Last night had been trying enough. What if he came again that night? And the night after? Or what if he came for Elena?

Anne found herself fisting her hands so tightly, she could feel her nails cutting into her skin. She couldn’t allow Elena to be treated like that. Now that Milene thought Anne was safely married off or matched, she’d turn her attention to Elena.

No. Anne couldn’t allow this. She had to find a way to keep that from happening. There just had to be a way.

A knock at the door broke both girls’ attention and one of the Sheriff’s house staff called out the words “break” and “fast” and Elena was out of bed in a flash.

“Get back in
to bed,” Anne ordered.

“But I’m hungry.”

“They’ll serve us in bed.” Anne slid under the blanket and gestured for Elena to do the same. “Our dressing gowns are somewhere in the clothes closet and we won’t be decent otherwise.” She pulled Elena’s covers back just in time for her sister to jump in and cover up.

“Why must we be decent?”

“There are men outside.” Anne threw the blankets over Anne’s body and said loudly, “You may enter.”

“Men?” Elena’s eyes rounded. When the door opened, Anne gestured to the two soldiers standing guard and Elena nodded. “Why are there soldiers at our door?”

“You were asleep last night. We had a small misunderstanding with one of the captives. But everything is fine.”

A woman entered carrying a tray and curtsied at the foot of the bed. “Shall I?” she asked.

“Please,” Anne gestured to the table across the room by the fireplace. “If you leave the tray, we’ll be at it in just moments.”

The girl dipped again and bustled over to the table, depositing dishes and uncovering cloches. “Will that be all, miss?”

Anne nodded. “Thank you.”

“I’ll get the dressing gowns.” Elena giggled and slipped from the bed before the girl could open the door again and was in the clothes closet before
she could be spotted.

When she returned, belted into her cover-up, she held out Anne’s morning gown and then skipped to the breakfast table.
Each moment Elena spent around their clothing made Anne worry that she would find the bloody shift wadded into a ball under Anne’s jewelry chest.

She would burn it as soon as the fire was high enough.

They had barely made a crack at their breakfast when there was another knock at the door.

“Enter,” Anne called
after a startled jump.

One of the guards opened the door fully, revealing that the other guard was gone.
He was spearless, and as he crested the doorway, he also removed his helmet. Anne recognized those earnest eyes she’d seen last night.

Wherever he’d been sent to, he was back again in the morning. Even his kind eyes couldn’t dampen the resentment she felt just seeing his face.

“Miss, forgive my boldness, but I must speak with you.” The man maintained his warm gaze.

She pulled the dressing gown around her. “Tell me why.”

He implored her with those kind eyes, but she found herself less moved than she had been the night before when she thought he might have been there to rescue her.

Anne finally
gestured to one of the other chairs at the table, but he shook his head.

“I cannot leave my post. My comrade has gone only for a moment to… forgive me… relieve himself, and I can’t be caught away from our guard if he returns.”

His sheepish smile did something to set her more at ease. She remembered him. How he stood out from the others. The least she could do was allow him to speak.

“In the essence of time, sir, I am quite ready to forgive any indecorous behavior.” Anne put her hand on Elena’s, who returned a startled look and tilted her head in question. “Stay here, dear. I must
chat with this man. Only for a moment, and I’ll be right at the door.”