Highlander's Forbidden Love: Only love can heal the scars of the past...

by Faris, Fiona

  Elizabeth straightened up and offered Dearbhorghil her hand. Dearbhorghil gripped it with her twisted hand and hauled herself upright, her knees and hips cracking as she rose.

  She shot Elizabeth a look of complicity.

  “You see what I mean? Dead done, so I am. It will be a mercy when the winter takes me. Now you wait here.”

  She left Elizabeth where she stood and crept away into the darkest recess of the cave. She returned moments later, clutching a small green phial with a cloth stopper.

  “There you are, dearie. Tip the contents into a goblet o’ wine, and your man will sleep the sleep o’ the just for a day.”

  Elizabeth took the phial and grasped it tightly in her fist.

  “Thank you, Dearbhorghil. What do I owe you for it?”

  Dearbhorghil waved her away.

  “Mind what I said last time you came to me: Be all you can be and make o’ that something worth being. That will be payment enough.”

  “Thank you, Dearbhorghil,” Elizabeth repeated and drew her into a warm embrace.

  “Och, lassie!” Dearbhorghil protested with a shrill gurgle. “Take care! You’ll spring my ribs.” She eyed Elizabeth craftily, before adding: “You’ll no’ need Maolmhuire to see ye safe this time, seein’ as you’ve brought a man of your own.”

  Elizabeth gasped.

  “How do you know that?”

  Dearbhorghil sniffed at her.

  “I can smell him on you. A handsome loun, by the scent o’ him.”

  * * *

  Back on the clifftop above St. Cyrus’ cove, Matthew helped Elizabeth up the last step of the ‘ladder’, his eyes widening and his heart racing at the sudden and unexpected sight of her naked thighs.

  “Did you get what you came for?” He swallowed as she unhitched the skirts of her gown and smoothed them down over her hips and legs.

  “That I did.” She grinned, holding up the small green phial for his inspection.

  He shielded his eyes from the sight of the slim glass bottle.

  “I do not need to know, just put it away in… in wherever you carry things.”

  Elizabeth made a show of slowly inserting the phial in the low neckline of her bodice.

  “It needs to be kept warm,” she explained, then burst out laughing as Matthew’s face was suffused with a violent blush.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, straightening her face with difficulty. “I shouldn’t be teasing you. You really are… sweet,” she added, snorting once again.

  “We should be getting back,” he said. “It is almost dine, and Lady Margaret will be wondering what has detained us. I do not think she thought we would be venturing so far.”

  Two hours later, they were crossing the earth rampart that guarded the castle’s outer ward.

  “I have enjoyed today,” Elizabeth told him. “You have been pleasant company. I trust it has not been too tedious for you. I’m sure you would rather be keeping the company of your fellow men.”

  “Not at all,” Matthew replied. “There was… I, em… There was something I was meaning to—”

  Elizabeth stopped, reached up on her tiptoes, and placed her fingers on Matthew’s lips.

  “Hush,” she murmured. “Please, don’t spoil it.”

  She withdrew her hand, turned, and walked away ahead of him.

  Matthew did not know what to make of her gesture or her words.

  Don’t spoil what? he wondered.

  He also did not see the mischievous little smirk on her face.

  It would not do her any harm to lead him on a bit, she reckoned.

  He might prove useful yet.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Slains Castle

  Sanderson’s Apartment

  It was well past midnight, but a candle still burned in Sanderson’s apartment in the gatehouse. Elizabeth knew that he was in the habit of rising for about an hour in the middle of the night, between his first and second sleeps. This was a common practice; the ‘watch hour’ was used to pray and reflect, and by spaefolk like Dearbhorghil Goudie to interpret dreams, which were more vivid at that hour than upon waking in the morning. It was also a favorite time for scholars and poets to write uninterrupted, whereas still others visited neighbors, engaged in houghmagandie, or committed petty crime. Elizabeth could only speculate on how Ewan Sanderson spent his watch; he seemed neither the devotional nor scholarly type.

  Thankfully, everyone else was still abed, apart from the sentinels who slouched at their watches on the castle’s four towers, as Elizabeth slipped around the edge of the courtyard towards the gatehouse. She was wrapped in a dark full-length cloak, which brushed the cobbles, and a deep hood that obscured her face in the depth of its shadows. No suspicion would be aroused in anyone who spied her; they would assume she was just another castle-woman hurrying to a latrine.

  Reaching the gatehouse, she passed into the arched entry, turned into a long narrow pend, and paused at the door to Sanderson’s apartment. She fumbled beneath her cloak to find the soft leather pouch on her belt, to reassure herself that the phial Dearbhorghil had given her was still there. Then she took a deep breath and rapped her knuckles on the door.

  There was a pregnant pause, a hush that seemed to settle over the already silent room beyond the heavy wooden door, with its broad iron straps and it heavy black lock. After a moment, there came a voice from the other side.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It is I, Lizzie, Lizzie Bryce.”

  The massive lock ground and clacked as the key was turned, and the door swung open a few inches to reveal Sanderson’s astonished expression.

  His surprise and puzzlement gave way to a lascivious grin.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” he said, drawing the door ajar. “Come away ben.”

  Elizabeth stepped down the two stairs into Sanderson’s domain. A single tallow candle burned in a clay dish that sat on the small table in the middle of the room. A low wooden platform with a straw mattress piled with blankets lay against one of the walls, while a banked-up fire smoldered mournfully in a small fireplace in another. The room was pervaded by a stale smell of damp and body odor. A half-full piss-pot sat by the foot of the bed, beside the kist.

  Sanderson drew two low stools over to the fireplace and began to coax air into the fire by easing the peats apart with an iron poker. Suddenly, the fire flared into weak flames, which bloomed and strengthened as they took hold. The sudden blaze made Elizabeth give a little jump.

  “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” Sanderson asked, an ingratiating smile on his lips and a calculating look in his eye. “I canna let you see the prisoner, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

  Elizabeth gave a little shiver and drew her cloak more closely about her throat.

  “I have no desire to see the prisoner,” she replied, meeting his eye. “It is you I have come to see.”

  She withdrew a flask of wine from beneath the folds of her cloak.

  “I have been played for a fool by that Comyn chiel,” she continued. “Whatever prospects I had of being accepted as a lady have now been dashed; even Lady Margaret seems to have given up on me, now that I have allowed myself to be so used by him.”

  Sanderson’s face beamed. Joy glittered in his eyes, and white spittle gathered at the corners of his toothless mouth.

  “So, you have come to ask me to take you in out of charity,” he concluded.

  Elizabeth ventured a nervous glance, as if afraid that he too might spurn her.

  “Will you still have me?” she asked timorously.

  Sanderson rubbed the gray bristle on his jaw.

  “Well… I don’t know, now. Should I take you on or no? You’ve said some hurtful things and treated me like I were dung sticking to your shoe. I’m not sure you want me enough. Maybe, if you were to show me how much you wanted me, how willing you were to have me, give me a wee taste of the pleasure you would bring me, I might be persuaded to take on your burden.”

  Elizabeth raised the
flask with an impish smile.

  “That’s why I have brought some of the Earl’s finest claret. I thought we might deepen our acquaintance.”

  He sniggered.

  “I should really report your pilfering to the Countess. She was none too pleased over the firkins of ale, and it was not even you who stole them.”

  Elizabeth smiled.

  “Aye, you caught me out there and no mistake.” She chuckled throatily. “I should have known I could not outwit you.”

  Sanderson rose and fetched two wooden cogies.

  “Imagine what the pair of us could do in league together,” Sanderson said, holding out the cogies for her to fill. “Between the two of us, we could feather a pretty nest.”

  Elizabeth poured a generous measure into each of the two cups.

  Elizabeth took one of the cogies from Sanderson’s hand and raised it in a toast.

  “Then let us drink to us and our future partnership.”

  She raised the cup to her lips but paused with a look of inquiry when Sanderson did not follow suit.

  “Let us not run ahead of ourselves,” he said, tipping back his head and peering along his nose at her with narrowed eyes and a mischievous smile, as if indicating that he had her measure and did not trust her a bit. “I have still to sample the goods first.”

  Elizabeth returned him a coy smile, twirling a ringlet of her glossy red hair around her finger.

  “Well, drink up, Ewan, and we shall get to it.”

  He drained his cup and licked his lips, his knee jerking with impatient excitement and his fingers twining and untwining like courting adders. Then a look of doubt crossed his brow.

  “Maybe… maybe I should relieve myself first,” he said, rising to head for the door.

  “Well, could you empty your piss-pot while you are at it? It’s… well, it’s souring the air.”

  He detoured to pick up the pot, then slipped out the door. Elizabeth heard the contents splash across the cobbles. She hurriedly dug beneath her cloak and pulled out the phial. Drawing the cloth stopper from the bottle, she poured the draught into Sanderson’s cogie.

  She moved to the door and peeked through. In the dim light cast from the doorway, she saw Sanderson tugging frantically on his member.

  “Come on, damn you!” he was muttering in desperation.

  “What’s keeping you, man?” she called out quietly. “Never mind that; I’ll soon get it hard for you.”

  He turned and grinned like a loun, a thin string of drool dripping from the corner of his mouth.

  He stumbled back through the door, pushing it shut behind him, and immediately propelled himself at Elizabeth. His hands swept the folds of her cloak aside and cupped themselves over the swell of her breasts. She staggered back under the force of his assault and crashed against the table. His lips were all over her throat and neck.

  “Take me in your mouth,” he said into her neck. “Take my manhood in your mouth. That will stiffen it.”

  “Patience.” She calmed him, pushing him off her neck with a giggle. “Patience, man. All in good time. Anticipation is the thing. Anticipation will get you as hard and as big as a bull amang the heifers. You will have my eyes rolling like a frightened heifer at the sight of you. You’ll be that big I won’t be able to get you in my mouth. I’ll just have to run my tongue around the head of it.”

  She slipped deftly from his grasp, and taking up the flask, refilled his cogie.

  “Here, have some more of the Earl’s good French wine. It will put fire in your balls. I shall get drunk on your seed.”

  He grasped the cup, almost snatching it from her hand, and drank it down in several noisy gulps.

  “There!” he said, letting out a belch. “Now, down on your knees before me.”

  “As you will, maister.” She bobbed.

  Slowly she dropped to her knees. He parted his robes and shoved down the front of his hose. A flaccid flap of flesh flopped out in front of her face. She reached out tentatively, and with her face contorted in a grimace of disgust, as if she were having to touch a long-dead fish, she lifted it in her fingertips.

  “Push the skin back and gi’e it a sook,” he ordered, then yawned. “Oh, dearie me,” he said with another yawn. “I’ve come over all—”

  He slumped to the floor.

  Jesu, Elizabeth thought. I hope Dearbhorghil hasn’t killed him.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Slains Castle

  Dungeon and Courtyard

  Elizabeth was somewhat reassured when Sanderson started snoring.

  She laid him on his side and began searching for the key to the dungeon. It was not hard to find; it was hanging on a nail by the door.

  She left Sanderson’s apartment, ran across the cobbled road to the other side of the portal, and felt her way along the dark pend opposite.

  The guardhouse was empty. Part of her was affronted by the guard being absent from his post; however, part of her was also relieved, since his dereliction of duty would make the next part of her plan easier.

  She stumbled down the steps to the dungeon door and wiggled the key into the lock. The lock was stiff, and it took all of the strength in her thin wrists to turn the mechanism. The door scraped against the flagstones as she pushed it inward. She was met by the appalling stench of human waste and misery.

  “Duncan! Duncan,” she whispered. “It is me, Elizabeth.”

  She heard a scuffle of straw and a low groan.

  “Elizabeth?” a voice croaked. “Is it really you?”

  “Yes, my love. Quickly now! We must fly before we are discovered. The guard is absent, but I don’t know when he might return. Are you able to move?”

  She heard more scurrying, then Duncan’s head and shoulders appeared over the threshold of the cell; he was pulling himself along on his elbows.

  “My legs… My legs have cramped. In the small space.” He gasped, as Elizabeth hooked her hands under his armpits and hauled him out onto the stairs.

  He lay in agony as the muscles in his legs spasmed. He felt as if his hamstrings and the tendons of his calves were about to snap. Elizabeth fell to massaging them vigorously and pushing his feet back to stretch some feeling back into them.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Just about,” he replied, elbowing himself to his feet with Elizabeth’s assistance.

  He stood for a few seconds, catching his breath and testing his legs with his weight.

  “The cramps are easing. I can feel the blood flowing back into my legs. Oh.” He chuckled. “It fizzes so!”

  Holding the wall, he began to squat, gingerly to begin with, then increasingly more quickly as the feeling came back into his limbs. His robes were torn and stained, and patches of soiled straw stuck to them in places.

  “Okay,” he said, moving relatively freely. “What now?”

  “We need to fetch horses from the stables. Hopefully, the grooms and stable lads will be abed. I will go alone. If I am seen, I may be able to get away with some excuse. There could be no excuse for you being there. Wait here. Stay in the pend. If I am detained, don’t wait for me. Make your own escape as best you can.”

  “Be careful, my love!”

  She turned and made her way back into the courtyard. Keeping again to the shadows, she skirted the edge of the open space until she reached the stables that leaned against the walls themselves. Holding her breath, she slipped under the eaves.

  She could just discern a row of stalls in the dim light. She moved to the nearest and peered in. The stable lads lay asleep in the straw, a row of disembodied heads like neeps in a field. There was no sign of any grooms.

  She tiptoed down to the opposite end of the stable, to the stalls farthest from the sleeping boys. She entered the first, cupping the horse’s jaw in her hand and breathing into its nostrils. Lifting down its bridle, she slipped and buckled it over the horse’s head and tied cloths over its hooves to muffle its footsteps. She then went to the horse in the neighboring stall and did the same.
She would have liked to have saddled the mounts too, but she did not think she could manage that without disturbing the slumbers of the stable lads.

  She led the horses out the far end of the stables and led them slowly and calmly around the edge of the courtyard, back towards the gatehouse. The beasts seemed to sense the need for quiet, for they neither snickered nor whinnied nor shook their bridles, but followed Elizabeth docilely, almost as if on tiptoe, their steps no louder than Elizabeth’s own heartbeat. She knew that there would be sentinels posted at every corner of the castle walls, but they would all be watching outward. It was imperative that no sound drew their attention into the courtyard behind them.