“Forgive me if my shoulder injury made me rough with you. After so long a ride…” He sighed heavily again, and reached up to encircle her waist before she could dodge him, though this time she was lifted so gently from the saddle that she blinked in surprise. He seemed about to say something more until a man as rotund as any Magdalene had seen came huffing toward them followed by a pair of stout maidservants dressed in plain woolen tunics.
“Welcome home, Laird…welcome home! As soon as word came of your imminent arrival, I made sure everything was in readiness for your bride…uh, your wife…ah, Lady MacLachlan. A hot bath, supper, a warm fire—”
“Take her, then, but watch yourself, Tam. She kicks.”
“Kicks, Laird?”
“Aye. Guard your male jewels.”
Tam’s light blue eyes widened at the same instant he clasped himself, which almost made Magdalene laugh aloud until she saw the two older maidservants coming toward her. Both women appeared quite stern as they each took an arm and began to steer her bodily toward an arched entranceway, their grip as strong as any man’s.
That reality nearly felled her, and Magdalene decided—for now—to go along with them willingly. It wasn’t Gabriel staring after her that made her choose not to resist, aye, she could feel his gaze boring into her back, but the expectant faces of two little girls who came running toward her.
“Are you our new mother?” piped up the younger child, no more than four, Magdalene judged, with the pudginess of a toddler still lingering.
“Oh, aye, Rhona, it’s her!” enthused the other girl, mayhap six with the same dark curls as her sister and sparkling blue eyes. “Welcome, Mama—may we call you Mama?”
Magdalene didn’t know what to do, or what to say, and she couldn’t have paused to answer them if she’d wanted to for the maidservants guiding her right past the girls.
“Keira, we’ll talk of it later,” came Gabriel’s weary voice behind Magdalene. “She needs time tae herself tae eat and rest. Come and give me a hug, aye, Rhona, too.”
With delighted squeals, the two girls raced toward Gabriel, Magdalene twisting around to see him drop to one knee and envelop them in a warm embrace.
Gabriel had two daughters? He had never said a word about it to her during the journey, or that he must have been married before and then widowed, but then again, he’d barely uttered anything to her at all other than terse commands. And why would he have cause to share such details with a mad wife anyway?
“Come, child, no dawdling,” said one of the women with a brusque, no-nonsense manner that filled Magdalene with dread, while the other clucked her tongue in full agreement.
Her captors, clearly. Her jailers. Was she being led to the top of one of those four towers, where they would lock her up and throw away the key? Was there no mercy left in heaven to have prevented such a fate to befall her?
“Oh, Seoras, why?” Magdalene said plaintively under her breath, the sound of the two girls laughing gaily like a mocking echo behind her. Why?
Chapter 6
Gabriel stared into the massive fireplace stacked with logs, but he felt little warmth from the crackling flames.
He felt cold inside, cold and disgusted with himself.
How could he have treated Magdalene so roughly that she had cringed at the prospect of his touch like a frightened mouse? He had been suffering such discomfort from a healing shoulder wound after nearly four days spent in the saddle that he’d lost sight of his own strength in his dealings with her.
A shoulder wound not earned in battle, but on the training field with his own men after the proxy marriage that had bound him for life to Magdalene. He had roared for his captains to join him with only one thought on his mind: To exhaust himself with swordplay until he couldn’t think any more about the accursed bargain he’d been forced to strike with Seoras to save his own people.
Aye, he had grown exhausted…and careless, not dodging in time when Cameron had lunged at him and pierced his shoulder, but thankfully not to the bone. Yet it pained him all the same, especially when he was overtired—and by God, he’d never known such weariness as he felt now with his new bride under his roof.
Watching those stocky maidservants haul Magdalene away had cut him as much to the quick—yet what else was he to do?
He had anticipated their service might be necessary to help keep her from harming herself and mayhap others, not from any ill intent on her part but because she was so wild! The past two days since they had left the convent had proved to him that she would need constant supervision, his poor, wretched lunatic wife.
Gabriel muttered an oath and took a draught of ale while the healer, a scrawny fellow with a thin beaked nose, finished applying a soothing liniment to his right shoulder.
“Well, Laird, your wound is healed, so it must be the muscle underneath that still plagues you.”
“Truly, Clovis? Tell me something I didna already know or else we’re done here. How long do you judge before the rest will heal? A week? Mayhap longer?”
Gabriel had spoken with sharp impatience, but Clovis only shrugged his narrow shoulders as if not daunted at all.
“Aye, a week…if you take care not tae use that arm overmuch. And no training.”
“No training?” Incredulous, Gabriel scowled at the man, but again, Clovis merely shrugged.
“If you train with your men…then two weeks. The choice is yours, Laird. Will there be aught else?”
Gabriel shook his head and took another draught before setting the tankard on the floor, and then stood with a low groan to slip a clean tunic over his head.
Meanwhile the healer made short work of packing up his bandages and bottles of remedies into a reed basket and then hastened away.
That left Gabriel alone in the great hall, which suited his darkening mood. He wound his breacan like a mantle around his shoulders, grimacing at the twinge of pain, and then retook his seat in one of the carved chairs arranged before the fireplace.
The men that had accompanied him to the convent near Dumbarton had retired to their quarters for much needed rest after a quick meal of rabbit stew, his four trusted captains to their private chambers on the keep’s second floor while the rest to a bunkhouse. Not a one would have wanted to be around him right now anyway, and he didn’t blame them.
He wasn’t a man normally plagued by sullen emotion, but in this instance, he would indulge himself.
And why not? Hadn’t it been enough to inherit a castle woefully in need of repair? Tenants and servants close to starving? Two nieces who’d lost both parents at such a tender age? And now a wife more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen but with no more sense about her than a willful child?
Sputtering embers drew Gabriel’s gaze once more to the fire, and he wondered how much trouble Magdalene had given her two attendants.
Tam’s spinster sisters, actually, Donella and Euna, his steward’s entire family a portly lot. Donella was the eldest of the three, with wispy brown hair and a dark mole on her chin, while Euna looked much like her younger brother with pale blue eyes and a round moon face—all of them having served the MacLachlans devotedly for years.
Tam had assured him that the women would handle his wife with a firm but caring hand, and surely they would do no worse than Gabriel. The desperate look in Magdalene’s eyes when he had reached up to lift her from the saddle haunted him still, which made him drain the last of the ale from his tankard.
He wasn’t a man who found solace in drink, either, though he wished at that moment that the serving maid hadn’t carried away the pitcher. How else was he to amuse himself while Tam and some of his helpers had gone to clean out the storage room across from the spacious bedchamber now occupied by his bride?
Gabriel had given her the best accommodations in the castle—his own room—as demanded by her position, while he would lay his head tonight on a wooden cot.
Of course he hadn’t considered for a moment that he and Magdalene would share a bed, and there were
a few rooms left unoccupied in the keep that would have undoubtedly been more comfortable. Yet he didn’t want to be far from her side in case he might be needed, especially during these first days in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar faces.
He was no heartless bastard not to recognize how hard this transition would be for her after being coddled and indulged by a host of nuns. He had seen the tears glistening in Sister Agnes’s eyes upon their departure from the convent, the woman doing her best to lift her chin bravely while Gabriel had carried away her precious charge.
Love, aye, the Reverend Mother clearly loved Magdalene like cherished kin. How still and quiet the convent must be without her running amuck among them—Gabriel chuckling in spite of himself, his dark mood starting to lift.
He had to admit it, Magdalene had enlivened his life as well in ways he would never have expected. How could he have even conjured in a dream what he’d seen her do in the past few days?
Jumping naked into a fountain.
Knocking him flat on his arse.
Riding a great beast of a stallion with unparalleled skill.
Running headlong into a dark forest.
Staring at him with those incredible emerald eyes—no, glaring at him was more accurate, and in such a keen manner that left him wondering if mayhap his bride wasn’t quite as mad as Seoras had claimed her to be…
“Laird, forgive me, I was hoping tae find the healer. Tam said Clovis might be here—”
“Why the healer, woman? What is amiss?” Gabriel had risen so abruptly from the chair and cast off his breacan that Donella stepped back in alarm.
“Nothing too serious, Laird, I swear it! Your wife is bruised, is all, around her rib cage, and she has some cuts on her feet. Did she not have slippers?”
“She lost them in the woods,” Gabriel said tightly, already striding past Tam’s sister. “I could find no other pair in her things. By God, the man was here only moments ago. Clovis!”
His roar echoing around the great hall, Gabriel heard a startled gasp from Donella, who struggled to keep up with him.
“Find Clovis at once!” he ordered, shooting her a glance over his shoulder that made her face blanch white.
“Y-yes, Laird. I will find him.”
Gabriel didn’t waste a second look but headed for the north tower, his gut churning.
Bruises? Cuts? No wonder she had cringed. No wonder she had cried out that he had hurt her, disgust at himself nearly choking Gabriel again.
If Magdalene had any clarity of thought at all—and he was beginning to believe that she might have more than he’d ever imagined—what must she think of him?
A brute, no doubt, a sudden thought chilling him as he lunged up the stone steps.
Debora, Magdalene’s sister, had been wed to such a man. Brutal. Cruel. Sadistic.
Gabriel had never seen a blacker pall as the one that settled over the MacDougall household the fateful day word came of Debora’s death.
Now that he thought of it, he had never heard Magdalene’s bright laughter again after that day, either, though he had left the fortress with Seoras only a week or so later. How devastated she must have been by her sister’s death—all of them! Her father. Her mother.
Everyone except Seoras, who had commandeered his men, Gabriel among them, and gone off to fight for Red Comyn and King Edward.
No sorrow there, no grief. Only a callous, coldhearted disdain for his suffering family.
Mayhap with what lucidness Magdalene still possessed, she likened Gabriel to her brother. No wonder she had fought him tooth and nail and tried to escape from him at every turn…
“Fool!” Gabriel berated himself, pushing open the door with such fury at himself that it slammed against the stone wall.
Euna spun with a shriek from the bed, a massive four poster with a purple brocade canopy that his spendthrift brother, Malcolm, had paid much coin to have imported from France.
And there hunched in the middle, her knees pulled up to her chest, her face as white as the nightgown she wore, sat Magdalene.
Her eyes widened just to see him again, tears coursing down her cheeks that struck him to the core.
He had sworn he would never hurt her—and yet look at her now! His blustery entrance only making matters worse. Did it surprise him then, when Magdalene let out a shrill, plaintive wail that made the hair prickle at the back of his neck?
“Donella told me that my wife has bruises—”
“Aye, Laird, when we undressed her for a bath,” Euna cut in, backing away as if not quite certain what Gabriel intended to do. “My sister and I thought the healer might have a poultice for her ribs, and her poor feet.”
Gabriel drew in a great ragged breath, telling himself that the first thing he needed to do was calm himself. As he drew closer to the bed, Magdalene scooted backward until she could go no further, her back pressed against the carved headboard and her eyes grown all the wider.
“Magdalene, I’m not here tae hurt you,” he murmured, doing his best to keep his voice calm, steady. “I came tae see what I can do tae help you.”
“No…not consummate. Not consummate,” she whispered, frantically glancing to the left and right as if looking for a way to escape.
“Easy, Maggie…please, let me help you.”
Magdalene could scarcely breathe for choking sobs that weren’t feigned in that moment at all—Gabriel had startled her so, bursting so wildly into the room.
Surely he hadn’t come here to claim his marital rights as her husband—God in heaven, no, please help her!
She had felt like a sacrificial lamb to be stripped of her clothing and plunked into a copper tub filled with hot water, her hair washed, her skin scrubbed, though not roughly, much to her relief. The two women, whose names she’d learned were Euna and Donella, had clucked their tongues with disapproval upon seeing her ugly bruises—aye, Magdalene had known from the pain that they were there!
Oh, and how her feet had stung from the sudsy water scented with lavender, making her cry out. Every time they had stopped to rest the horses after her escape attempt, she had been made to walk barefoot into the trees, Gabriel showing no concern at all in spite of his fine words not to hurt her!
She didn’t believe him for a moment, so distraught by the drastic turn her life had taken, the long journey, her bruises, her stinging feet, that she wept inconsolably while Gabriel stared at her as if he didn’t know what to do.
She could back away from him no farther, her back pressed painfully against the headboard. Euna, wringing her hands, stood to one side of the bed while Donella entered the room suddenly with a strange-looking man in tow and ran to the other side.
“Shall we grab her arms for you, Laird? Draw her closer?”
“By God, no, leave her be!”
Gabriel’s emphatic command made Magdalene weep all the harder as she glanced desperately from one face to another. The women had frozen in place, though she was certain through her tear-blurred eyes that Gabriel had moved a little closer.
“Clovis, make a poultice for her feet. Euna, Donella, you said she has bruises around her ribs—”
“Nothing I can do for her there, Laird,” interjected the healer calmly as he went to a side table and drew out bandages and assorted earthen jars from the basket slung over his arm. “Time will heal the bruises, though I can examine her—”
“No!” Magdalene blurted, pulling her sore feet further beneath her nightgown. She would fight them all if anyone tried to strip her for the healer! Hadn’t she suffered enough not to be poked and prodded by that man who looked more a scrawny bird?
“Tomorrow, mayhap,” came Gabriel’s voice in a gentle tone much like he had used with his daughters. Magdalene stared at him in surprise and hiccoughed, her sobs quieting almost in spite of herself. Before she could blink, he sat down on the bed with surprising agility for so strapping a man and reached out to draw one of her feet toward him…his touch just as gentle.
“Clovis?”
“Almost ready, Laird,” the healer said quietly, stirring some strange-smelling contents in a small wooden bowl.
Mint and sage. Magdalene felt dizzy from crying and she couldn’t decipher the rest of the varied scents as the healer handed the bowl containing what looked like a thick paste to Gabriel.
To her amazement, she saw such dismay on his face as he surveyed her foot—the cuts on the sole and her stubbed toes swollen from nearly tripping over a fallen tree limb—that she fell altogether quiet as Gabriel smoothed the paste upon her skin.
At once she felt a soothing warmth, but what struck her the most was the sensation of his fingers lightly massaging her while his handsome features were knit in concentration as he focused upon his task.
A task that she would never have thought in a thousand years a fearsome Scots warrior like Gabriel MacLachlan would do for anyone…least of all her, after everything she’d done to defy him.
“A bandage, Clovis.”
Gabriel had barely uttered the request and the healer obliged him, Magdalene watching with more amazement as Gabriel deftly wrapped her foot.
“Does that feel better, Maggie?”
His voice so husky and stirring, she nodded, strangely mesmerized by the unexpected act of him ministering to her needs.
Within moments, her other foot was wrapped and Gabriel rose from the bed.
“I hope you can find it within your heart tae forgive me, wife. I had no cause tae treat you so callously and I’ll make it up tae you, I promise. Rest now.”
She stared up at him, astonished, the words slipping out before she could stop them. “You’re leaving?”
He nodded, sighing. “Aye…but I’ll be close by if you need me.”
With that, he gestured for everyone to clear the room, Euna and Donella snuffing out several candles on their way out so that only one burned in a wall sconce.
Gabriel was the last one to leave, casting a glance at the bed with an expression she could not fathom and then closing the door behind him—though he left it open just a crack.
Wonder seeping through her like a calming potion, Magdalene stared from her bandaged feet to the door and back again…and then around the sumptuous room with its own fireplace where a warming fire banished any chill.
My Highland Warrior (Warriors of the Highlands Book 1) Page 5