by Faris, Fiona
Elizabeth suddenly decided that she would not take a turn in the courtyard to clear her senses as she had first intended. She could not face the servants who would be working there, the blacksmith at his forge, the grooms and stableboys, the scullions and serving maids, and all their knowing looks. Did they snigger at her behind her back, she suddenly wondered? Did they nudge one another with their elbows as she passed and remark how well the dirty wee whore has scrubbed up into the parody of a lady? She rose and swirled the cloak about her shoulders, fastening it at her throat with a brooch set with a large amber cairngorm stone. She pulled the hood up over her head and headed further up the stairs and out onto the roof instead.
The sea breeze whipped at her cloak and gown. She clutched the hood more closely to her throat to stop it from being blown back. She narrowed her eyes against the bright sky and peered at the horizon through the gauzy veil of the sea haze. Out in the bay, she could see Mairi Cullen’s man’s open boat bobbing on the swell. She tried to imagine how such frail craft could stay afloat in a storm like the one she had been caught in a few days earlier and not be swamped by the crashing waves, but she could not. It seemed like a miracle that the fishermen could sit out such storms and come home safe, that more of them did not perish.
Elizabeth reflected that she too might have to weather storms like the one she had encountered in the undercroft at the hands of Sanderson, when her past would be cast up to her. Could she survive those? Or would the past swamp her and send her down to the ocean floor? How could she have even had the audacity to venture out of her pitiful little haven onto the vast expanse of her new life as a favorite of one of the most powerful women in the realm. It would, she feared, all end in disaster. She was, she felt, unworthy and unfitted to be anything other than the humble and misused servant that fate had ordained her to be.
She began to walk the circuit of the tower, running her hand along the breast of the parapet and counting the crenels as she passed. To the south, the rugged coastline straggled towards Aberdon, the nearest port, the surf nibbling away incessantly at the gray granite cliffs. To the west, the wild moorland stretched to the higher fells and the distant blue Grampian mountains beyond them. To the north, the wide crescent of Cruden Bay arced between its two headlands. To the east, heaved the swelling back of the unbroken sea.
Looking down into the bay, Elizabeth spied the figure of Duncan Comyn, the man who had pulled her from the sea, at the front of the fisherman’s cottage, helping the Cullen woman hang up nets to dry between tall poles that had been pushed into the sand, and her heart turned a somersault. She suddenly found it difficult to swallow, as if her heart had leaped too high and become wedged in her gullet. She found herself blushing, even though she was alone. He was little more than a speck moving against the boulders among which the cottage nestled, but it seemed to her the most handsome speck she had ever set eyes on.
She ducked behind the parapet adjacent to the crenel through which she had been watching him, as if suddenly shy of being seen, though she knew that, from such a distance, she would be nothing but a speck herself.
What was this strange power that he could exercise over her from afar? And why did it leave her so tremulous and bewildered?
Chapter Five
Cruden Bay
Clifftop Path
One week later
Elizabeth spied a clump of wild strawberries nestling beneath the flowering shrub on the edge of the woodland. There was a bluish tinge to the large green leaves, from which rose stems that were heavy with clusters of fruit.
Elizabeth dropped to her knees by the side of the path and began gathering the berries into the silk kerchief she pulled from the sleeve of her gown. The small soft fruits were plump and juicy, and soon her fingers were stained pink. Once she had stripped the clump, she took her plunder and sat on the grass with her back against the flaking silver trunk of a rowan tree. The rowan too was loaded with clusters of berries, but she knew that they could not be eaten raw but would have to be cooked to a syrup. She made a mental note to send a scullion up from the castle with a basket to gather them but determined to have the strawberries all to herself.
Picking the biggest and fattest fruit up by its hull, she locked her lips around it and bit into the flesh. She closed her eyes in delight as the sweet juice flooded her mouth. She sucked the soft flesh through her teeth then gathered the moisture from her lips with the tip of her tongue.
She looked back down the way she had come and saw the turrets of Slains Castle gleaming in the clear sunlight above the bay. The castle had been built on a thin rocky headland that projected out into the boundless German Sea. Its tower house and courtyard were severed from the mainland by a dry ditch, which cut across the width of the headland. The tower stood four stories tall, and the courtyard was surrounded by a high curtain wall. Smoke curled lazily from both the bakehouse and the brewhouse chimneys, while, in the outer ward on the mainland side of the ditch, protected by an earth rampart, the castle’s cattle grazed leisurely. Beyond the castle, the far headland at the other end of the bay was hazed in mist.
The late morning sun bathed her in its warmth. Behind her, she could hear the descending song of a chaffinch in the trees, and beyond the wood, on the rough moorland, the weeping call of a curlew. In the distance, from their roosts on the cliffs above the bay, the gulls constantly argued over the possession of ledge and crevice, while in the rookeries in the treetops the rooks and the ravens girned about nothing in particular and the world in general.
Elizabeth slipped off her mantle and loosened the laces of her tunic-gown to allow the air to cool her. She kicked off her shoes, and after a guilty look around, unhooked and rolled down her hose and kicked them off, too, to bury her toes in the lush, cool grass that thrived along the edge of the copse. She leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes. Her hands lay open in her lap; the remaining strawberries lay discarded on the kerchief by her thigh.
* * *
Ewan Sanderson ducked off the path and into the copse when he saw Elizabeth stop to pick the strawberries from the verge. He had seen her leave as she passed his lodging in the gatehouse and take the path up towards the moorland above the castle, and he had followed her. He did not know why. He had no reason in particular to follow her but had felt strangely compelled to do so, as a wasp might be drawn to the honeypot.
He worked his way carefully through the trees, as quietly as he would stalk a deer, until he was only yards from where she had sat down with her back to a rowan tree. He settled down into a nest of undergrowth. From where he crouched, he could see her almost in profile: the angular line of her jaw and pale skin of her cheek, the waves of her red ribboned hair, smoldering in the sunlight, cascading onto her shoulder, the smooth curve and gentle rise of her small bosom, and the line of her thigh beneath the saffron-colored fabric made tight by the weight of her hands in her lap.
He ran his tongue over his dry lips. He did not know what to do next. He had no plan beyond not being discovered. He had no idea what he was doing there, no definite intentions; he certainly meant her no harm. He only had a vague kind of hope that things would ‘turn out’, that something would happen that would lead to her falling into his lap, to her giving herself to him. He briefly considered reaching out and dragging her back into the copse, laying her down in the long grass and having his pleasure of her, but he was held back by the fear of it ‘turning out’ wrongly. She was well in with his master, the new earl, and should she complain to him, Sanderson would most certainly be looking for a new position and, most likely, would be doing so missing his ears – or worse.
So, he just watched.
* * *
The warmth caressed her breast and flanks through her loose tunic-gown, and behind her eyelids, Elizabeth began to doze. Silent images began to unfold in her imagination. She saw Duncan Comyn again in the gloom of the fisherman’s cottage, his naked flesh glimmering through the flames of the fire between them, the yellow light flickering over the
finely chiseled lines of his face, his strong jaw, the flex of the small muscles below his ear as his mouth moved in speech, the high arch of his cheekbones, his dark burning eyes. The warmth of the sun became the warmth of the hearth again, and she felt the rough brush of the woolen blanket against her nakedness, the thrill of the immodesty of her being naked beneath a blanket in the small, low, smoky room with a man and only a fishwife as a chaperone. She saw him rise and let the plaid that covered him fall. She saw him step through the flames, the gleam of his broad muscled chest in the firelight, his flaccid member and lower orbs rolling in the shadow between his legs. She felt him take her in his arms, while Mairi laughed, her own breasts bared, and her baby latched on to one of them.
After taking a surreptitious look around to make sure she would not be observed, Elizabeth pushed her hands into the side slits of her tunic and ran them over the firm flesh of her flat stomach. Her skin felt warm and a little damp from the heat of the sun through the fine wool of her robe. She slid her back further down the tree, drawing her legs up and slightly apart, making a tent of the skirts of her robes. She moved one hand up beneath her bodice to cup one naked breast and the other down to the folds of her vulva.
She ran her hand around the mound of her breast, pinching the hardening nipple gently between her thumb and forefinger. At the same time, she parted her labia with two fingers while laying her middle finger along the hood of her clitoris. It was a well-practiced act; she had often comforted herself in this way in the misery of her former life of abuse. But this time it was different. This time it was not a need for solace that moved her, but a longing, a hunger. She was not consoling herself for the touch of a man but was yearning for it.
In her imagination, Duncan Comyn’s mouth closed over her nipple and worked it tenderly with his lips. His fingers teased her clitoris to hardness and swirled around its head. She felt his weight descend on her; she felt the firm flesh of his back beneath her hands and of his loins between her thighs. She felt the hard length of his member slide into her, and the light behind her eyelids exploded into a kaleidoscope of colored shards.
She lay still for a moment, her fingers slowly stirring the embers of her climax, her thumb circling the areola around her nipple. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as her body sank into a deep chasm of satisfaction. She withdrew her hands from beneath her robes and pushed herself back up higher on the trunk of the rowan. Only then did she open her eyes and cast an apprehensive look up and down the path.
She gave a long sigh and began to refasten her clothes. She had set out intending to walk up onto the moor to fetch some heather root from which to carve a handle for a small dirk for Nicholas. She would have to hasten now, or she would be gone too long and who could tell what anarchy the household would fall into in her absence? She sprang lithely to her feet and smiled to herself as she gathered up the remaining strawberries that had so sweetly diverted her from her task.
She must contrive a way to see Duncan again, she decided, as she brushed some twigs from the back of her skirts. The decision both thrilled and daunted her as she set off up the brae.
* * *
Ewan Sanderson pushed his knuckles into his mouth and suppressed a groan as he spilled his seed into the grass. His thighs burned from the strain of kneeling, and he nearly toppled over as he came. He watched his sperm shoot in strong thick spurts from the eye of his shaft and drape itself in strings among the green stems at the edge of his nest. Once his ejaculations had subsided, he fell back on his heels, his heart hammering in his chest and his breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps.
He wiped his sticky hand on a dry patch of grass and quickly returned his spent appendage to the depths of his robes.
The filthy wee whore, he thought, as he sought to deflect the feelings of guilt and shame that assailed him. Pleasuring herself out there, in broad daylight, with never a care for who might be watching her… He made a sign at Elizabeth, to ward off the evil eye. And it was such a terrible waste, he reflected, looking at his semen dripping through the grass. If he did not have such consideration for the lass, he would see to it that her transgressions would be punished. Did the priest not warn them of the temptations of the flesh and instruct them that houghmagandie was a painful necessity placed on women for the getting of bairns by their masters, and certainly not something for them to take pleasure in.
And she had led him to commit a sin of the flesh into the bargain. How many others had she led astray when she let herself be used by all and sundry before the Countess took her on? He had heard the tales of how she used to bewitch the male servants at her former place, even when she was a child.
He glowered at her with a look smoldering with resentment as she rearranged her robes and gathered up her strawberries. He hissed hatefully between his teeth as she drew her hose up her slender legs and fastened them to the bands on the hems of her braies. His eyes lingered on the creamy flesh of her slim thighs and sought to catch a glimpse of her cunny.
Christ! But she is a temptress, right enough! He seethed as he felt himself stir again. He forced down his desire, and it bubbled up again as hatred.
Sanderson watched her as she continued up the track towards the edge of the moorland. He could not follow her there; the ground was too open, and she would surely spy him. But he could keep an eye on her doings from the other side of the copse. He waited until she was far up the track, then he stepped out from the trees and started back down the path, intending to skirt around the southern edge of the wood and reenter it on the far side. From there, he would have a clear unbroken view of her as she traversed the flat moorland.
He was determined that her sins would not go unnoticed.
He would find some way of using her indiscretion to break her to his will.
Chapter Six
Cruden Bay
Clifftop Path
Just as she crested the brae and the moorland opened, vast and empty before her, Elizabeth heard the tumble of some small stones behind her. She turned around, and there was Duncan Comyn, scrambling up over the edge of the cliff. Her heart gave a leap, and she let out a little cry at the surprise of it, his sudden and unexpected apparition.
He looked up, startled by her yelp, and gave her a lopsided grin as he stood and brushed the dust and grit from the knees of his breeks. He was wearing a pair of linen drawers, such as those the fishermen wore when they were in their boats, a wide-sleeved sark open at the neck and belted at the waist, and he was barefoot. The updraft from the cliff face buffeted his dark curly hair.
“Good morning to you, Elizabeth Bryce,” he hailed. “That climb was a wee bit stiffer than I thought it would be, but I am here now, safe and sound. Have you come up the path from Slains?”
Elizabeth colored. A rush of panic fluttered through her veins, and her tongue suddenly felt like a sodden clout in her mouth.
“Y-yes, Master Comyn. I am on an errand to the moor.”
Duncan’s grin broadened mischievously.
“Oh, aye? And do you think you’ll find your selkie clothes hidden up there,” he teased, a twinkle in his hazel eyes. “Maybe the feys have taken them through one of the doors to the otherworld. What would become of you then, I wonder?”
Elizabeth glanced around herself in a confusion of girlish excitement. She could not think of a response.
“Would you pursue them into the otherworld?” Duncan asked. “It could be a thousand years before you came back out again, yet it would seem to you like no longer than the twinkle of an eye. Or would you be content to live a lifespan among us mortals, without the prospect of ever being able to return to the seal folk?”
She cast around with a small gasp of amusement, but she could find nothing to say.
Duncan appraised her with a gentler smile.
“And what is your errand up on the moor?” he asked softly, letting her off the hook.
That was a question Elizabeth found she could answer.
“I have a mind to make the young master
, Nicholas, a dirk for his birthday and am wanting a heather root from which to fashion the handle.”
Duncan pursed his lips and nodded his approval.
“A propitious gift,” he observed. “The heather is a lucky plant. Such a dirk would bring him good fortune.”
“That is my hope,” Elizabeth said, with a shy smirk of pleasure at his endorsement.
“You are clearly fond of your young master,” Duncan went on.
Elizabeth said nothing. She just bobbed her head into her shoulders.
“You are his governess, perhaps, a cousin?”
She chuckled and cast her eyes heavenwards.
“Oh, no,” she exclaimed, “nothing like that.”
“Then what exactly is he to you and you to him?”
Elizabeth was growing uncomfortable with what was becoming, to her, something of an interrogation.