by The Captive
"Like maple leaves in autumn,” he murmured, anchoring a shovel-size palm against the lower portion of her flat belly. Wherever he touched her, a spasm rippled inside her. His other hand deftly wielded a path through the soft, short curls.
Her fingers arced, aching to dig into the ridge of muscles banding his shoulders, but the slightest move could jar the razor. Tears of humiliation sprang to her eyes. "I hope you do your own barbering.”
“Aye. Each morning I sacrifice meself to the ritual of bloodletting over the shaving basin."
"How comforting.”
At her tart tone, he grinned up at her. The smile took her completely by surprise. That defenseless instant made her weak also. “Careful," he warned, “me hand may slip on a stroke."
Still reeling from that singular smile, she braced a hand on his shoulder. The touch of his warm skin could have sizzled her fingers.
“Spread your legs.”
“Please, no,” she whispered.
“Would you rather another do it at me command? Nob, perhaps?”
The suggestion was enough to prompt her to move her legs apart, though only the breadth of the razor and no more. “Why?” she demanded. "Whipping me would have been punishment enough."
He cocked a broad brow at her. “Do ye wish to be whipped?”
“Of course not."
"This is not punishment. I told ye. Red hair is unlucky."
She nodded at the hand holding the razor. "Left-handed people bring bad luck."
He shrugged. "Red hair offends me."
Her stare was arrow-tipped. "You mean to shave my head, also?"
He shook his head, and his queue brushed against her fingers. "Nay. That you may cover beneath one of those big caps."
"A mobcap," she supplied with a saccharine smile.
"Aye." He finished with the last stroke. His fingertips explored her now smooth pad of flesh, as if examining his expertise with the blade.
When those probing fingers lingered at the convergence of her soft folds of flesh, she trembled.
His voice took on a husky pitch. "Keep yourself shaven here, mistress. Or else I’ll have it done for ye. Do ye understand?”
"I understand that I shall never forgive you for this, Ranald.”
At her use of his given name, he flinched. Her fingers felt the flinch in his back muscles. He rose and strode to the door, where he paused and turned. The look he speared her with was merciless. “Do ye think I care?”
Enya removed the tortoiseshell comb from her tresses and shook them out as she climbed the stairs to her room. Only a few minutes until she had to be back in the kitchen. The play she had been reading to Annie—The Conscious Lovers by Sir Richard Steele—had so absorbed her that she had forgotten the time. The play had dealt more with the plight of family than lovers.
She hadn’t realized how much she would miss her mother and father and her homeland. Mayhap, if she had been ensconced in the loving arms of a husband, the longing would not be so acute.
As it was, she was ensconced in servitude. And not a loving servitude. There was nothing loving about her situation. At least at home she had been unique, the lone daughter, the daughter of a baron. Even her features had been unique, if not beautiful. Now she was simply a serving maid, and a less than comely one, with what her mother kindly described as a generous figure.
Enya’s mood was less than convivial when she opened the door to her chambers and saw Mhorag. The young woman was in the act of spinning around. Against her body she held one of Enya’s formal gowns, a pink silk damask with a white satin quilted petticoat and cuffs and a low neckline of pink ribbon and silver lace. The ball gown’s lace hem swirled around her boots.
“You look much better as a woman,” Enya said, entering the room.
Mhorag’s guilty look instantly changed to one full of more arrows than a thistle of nettles. “I was just . . . just . . .”
"Trying my clothes." The gown’s hem now draped over the floor a good six inches.
The Highland woman’s eyes were stones of blue fire. "You were late starting dinner, and I came to find you—and I found—’’
“—found that it might be pleasant to dress as a woman, after all.”
She had struck at the young woman’s most vulnerable spot—her denied femininity—and had made an implacable enemy. Mhorag tossed the gown on the bed. "A tart’s gown!"
“What’s going on here?" Ranald stood in the doorway, an oilskin draped over his large frame as protection against the rain and snow.
"Tell the tart to get out! To go start dinner!”
“I might point out that this is her chamber.” His look was inscrutable.
“There ye go for a damned cowardly Italian, Ranald!"
She would have stomped past Enya, but Enya detained her with a hand on her arm. "Here.” She passed her the tortoiseshell comb. "That snarled mat of hair will look better pulled away from your face.”
Mhorag’s glare was a holly stake in Enya’s heart. Then she grabbed the comb and stalked from the room.
“Get to the kitchen,” Ranald said and followed his sister out.
Enya stared after him in real amazement. A real monster the man was.
The snowflakes pelted Mhorag’s face and clung to her lashes. Her spurred heels dug into the dappled mare’s steamy flanks. The cold wind, tearing at her furred hood and hair, almost revived her flagging spirits.
Behind her, Duncan strove to keep astride the shaggy Shetland. The Lowlander’s lanky legs barely cleared the bracken and Queen Anne’s lace. She hauled on her mount’s reins, and the horse swerved around. “Well, what keeps ye, knave?"
The Shetland trotted up alongside of her. "I told ye, mistress, I am not a horseman." His labored breath frosted the air. ‘"Tis sea legs I have."
"Ye bore me with your excuses. Come along." She applied her whip to her mount’s rump, and the horse spurted forward again. Beyond the next knoll was Lochaber. The villagers, as bored as she, were preparing festivities for All Saints’ Day, tomorrow.
Already, a score or so men, mostly ploughmen and harvesters, were curling. Playing on the small frozen loch at the base of the mill, they vied with each other to slide a granite stone over the ice as close as possible to the tee, the center of a marked target.
Before the village pub, she bounded from her horse. Tossing her reins to a startled lad of no more than fifteen, she said, "Watch my mount and there’s a pint of bitter awaiting ye inside afterward.”
The dour interior of the public house suited her mood perfectly. The pub was empty at this hour. There was the pungent burnt smell of very raw whiskey. She sauntered over to one of the barrel tables. In its center was a red candle in a brown whiskey bottle.
The host hurried to set a plate of crusty maslin bread, slabs of tangy hard cheese, and knobs of pickled onions. "A mug of cider,” she told the portly man.
Behind him, Duncan came straggling in. His ruddy cheeks, sea-blue eyes, and shock of wheat-hued hair were the only bright colors in the murky pub, if she discounted the tiny flames of fire licking the smoke-blackened fireplace across the room.
He pulled out one of the wooden chairs at her table. Before he could take a seat, she kicked the chair over. "I didn’t give ye permission to sit, lout.”
His mouth lost its usual merriment. "I’m a servant, not a serf."
Her lids half masked her eyes. "Ye are a captive. A captive granted a certain measure of freedom because ye took the Bond of Manrent. There is no recanting. There is only punishment for disobedience."
The host returned with her cider. Duncan’s lips hardened in self-imposed silence. She opened her man’s small purse and doled out six black pennies.
The host bobbed his thanks and left her and Duncan alone once more. Shivering, wet, and weary, Duncan eyed her steadily. "Ye annoy me, mistress.”
She laughed and began stripping off her riding gloves. "Do I now? Good!"
He stepped aside for the host to set the brimming mug of steaming cider be
fore her. "Why ‘good’? Have I harmed ye?"
"Ye are a man, aren’t ye? Right the chair. And remove your cap in me presence."
A vein ticked in his temple, but he did as she commanded. “Ye would punish me merely for being a man? When half the earth is filled with men?”
She wrapped her hands around the hot mug, warming them. "Ye are also slow of wit. Or else ye would know better than to question me.”
He leaned forward, bracing his weather-reddened hands on the cask-top table. As much for support, she suspected, as for a show of power. "Me thinks ye are afraid, mistress.”
She dipped her fingers in her trencher’s mushy pool of lard and spread it atop her bread. "I think you talk too much, Duncan of Ayrshire.”
"Me thinks you are afraid of caring too much about a man, afraid ye will lose him.”
“Ye are impertinent, too." One by one, she licked her sticky fingers.
“Right now, ye look like a satisfied cat. Except I don’t think ye are. Satisfied, that is."
She was beginning to regret taking the Bond of Maintenance in behalf of this annoying man. She had done so in retaliation against the Lowland woman. If Duncan was a part of her retinue, then let her lose something she valued!
“You test me patience, Duncan. Go to the kitchen and beg a morsel. But be quick about it."
She didn’t want to miss the opening ceremonies for the eve of All Saints’ Day. The fire feasts and dancing. Or, perhaps, it was merely that she didn’t wish to be out after dark.
It was said that Samhain, the Celtic lord of death, allowed the souls of the dead to return to their homes for this evening. This was a time when witches and warlocks roamed. And houses were shuttered.
On holy days, ghosts were freed. The holy, or hallowed, eve before All Saints’ Day marked the beginning of the season of cold, darkness, and decay. On the Halloween, the auld Druids had burned animals, crops, and even humans as sacrifices.
Mhorag swigged a draught of the hot cider. Because her brother was laird of a clan, he was the traditional symbol of Samhain. As Lord of Death, would Ranald order a human sacrifice tonight? Like Murdock’s wife?
Mayhap there was such a thing as the biblical "measure for measure.”
Chapter Nine
Cold air whispered through the castle chinks. The rustling draughts disturbed the tattered bed hangings, tapestries, and Enya.
The hour was late, shortly before dusk. All day she, Margaret, and Annie had cooked and baked for the coming pagan celebration.
Which was just as well. The taxing labor had taken her mind off the approaching encounter with Ranald. For weeks now, she had been mentally and emotionally preparing herself for the possibility that Ranald would indeed make good his threat.
She was trying to convince herself that for one of his men to get her with child was but a physical act; that the act would have had the same aftermath should Simon have bedded her first.
Only much, much more unpleasant.
When she entered her chambers Elspeth and Mary Laurie were busy with her bath—Elspeth adding rose and chrysanthemum petals, and Mary Laurie shaking the wrinkles from a mint-green court gown.
Silently, Enya blessed the two women. She knew they were there to make the coming evening easier for her, if that were possible. Prayers and miracles were more in order.
"The eve doesn't bode well," Elspeth grumbled as a salutation to Enya.
So much for moral support, she thought. She peeled off her blood-and-grease-splattered apron, kicked off her patents, and flopped into the deerhide-covered armchair. "Why is that?”
"Tis the Highlanders." Mary Laurie nodded toward the window slit. "Wild ones, they are.”
Obviously the farm girl wasn’t going to elaborate. Enya pushed herself from the chair and crossed to the window.
In the courtyard below, oak branches, which the Highlanders’ pagan ancestors had considered sacred, were mounded in blazing bonfires. Shadowy figures moved in the flames’ shifting light. Some added more wood to the conflagration. Others appeared to be dancing.
"The bonfires are to drive away witches and other evil spirits,” Mary Laurie said in a hushed voice. "Cyril the Salter told me so.”
Enya affected a shrug. "What can you expect from heathens?"
"Ye’re not looking, bairn,” Elspeth said. Her hooked nose twitched with disdain. "Look again. At those heathens. And listen."
Now Enya understood the apprehension of the two women. The revelers wore masks, stag’s heads, and wolf and bear skins. The Highlanders’ shouts and laughter sounded more like howling.
"So, 'tis come to this at last,” she muttered. She could only hope Duncan’s idea worked. By the end of the evening, she would know.
"I fear for yer life,” Mary Laurie said, coming up behind her.
Enya squeezed her hand, now no more reddened and chapped than her own. “If the chieftain had wanted to kill me, he would have already. Dead, I am worthless to him. Alive, I am bait for his prey, my husband."
The hot, scented water beckoned her body. But she had kept Ranald’s depilation of its red triangular thatch a secret from her maidservants. At the memory, mortification flushed her cheeks. "Now I want to be alone to ready myself."
The two exchanged looks, but her adamant expression nudged them toward the doorway. "I’ll summon you when I need you," she said.
The steam-clouded water did not completely conceal the expanse of newly revealed flesh where her thighs conjoined. Already downy red tufts were growing back. If she didn’t shave herself, she knew Ranald would. And this time he would probably do so in the presence of the entire population of Lochaber.
Furious, she held the razor he had left her up to the last light of the day. The time would come, she vowed, when she would use it on his throat.
The eerie wailing of the bagpipe transfixed Enya and the rest of the inhabitants of the great hall. Tonight it was darkened, with only the candlelight glittering eerily from lanterns that had been made from scooping out large turnips, or neeps.
Frenetic shadows danced across the castle’s weapon-adorned stone walls. The heat of the fireplace did not drive the chill of fear from her as she listened to the piper.
He wore a domino of black velvet and a white robe, as befit the Samhain, the Lord of Death. At the moment, he played for the hereditary laird of the Clan Cameron, Ian. His son Jamie stood at his side, ready to pass him his crutch.
Jamie had donned the furred mask of a lynx head in concession to the pagan activities. The lame man wore no mask, and his white robe was bisected by the Cameron tartan.
Enya would have sworn her head had never hurt so much. When would this horrendous night be over?
First, there had been the interminable procession of Lochaber families with their torches. In keeping with tradition, they had put out their hearth fires and had come to relight them from the Halloween’s bonfire in the outer bailey.
The last strains of the bagpipe died away. Ranald Kincairn put aside the instrument and returned to his Justice Chair.
The moment had come for a’souling, or begging.
The villagers, many of them costumed, formed a line before their appointed laird, who listened to their requests. The requests were simple, things like apples or nuts or pastries, called soulcakes.
Simple until Enya, who had slipped into the line, came to the forefront.
In addition to her half mask of green silk, she wore a mobcap with side lappets that completely concealed her hair—and her identity.
She dipped a curtsy. When she looked up into Ranald’s face the mouth below the domino was set in hard lines. Did he recognize her?
“My laird, my request is a modest one.”
"Aye?"
"To select a husband for myself."
In the mask’s slits, the turquoise eyes glittered. "And if he is unwilling?”
"Oh, he is willing enough. I merely seek your permission on this night a’souling.”
He braced his chin on one fist. "And wh
o is it ye wish to take for a husband?”
"Duncan of the Clan Afton."
From behind the chair, Mhorag stepped forward. She, also, wore a white robe. "I forbid it. The man belongs to me.”
Enya resorted to Duncan’s suggestion, made days earlier, in the event just such a thing should happen. "Then you gain two servants by the marriage, do you not?"
"I find your request unusual,” Ranald said, his brogue rolling and soft. Deceptively soft. “Seeing as how ye are already married.”
So he did recognize her. She peeled off her half mask. She had half expected him to know her if by nothing other than her extraordinary height. Then, too, there was her carriage and her speech.
Duncan might have anticipated Mhorag’s objection, but Enya had anticipated Ranald’s. “A technical point,” she said. “You see, I went through a formal ceremony with a proxy. Simon Murdock was not present and no ring was given. The exchanging of vows with my intended was never completed.”
“Then, as your laird, I will select your husband for ye.”
She was losing ground. "But 'tis the eve of All Souls’. The night to go a’souling. I beg the right to choose my own husband."
"Your begging goes unheeded. But not your marital status." Crevices creased at either side of his mouth. "You are herewith betrothed to Nob of Glenorchy of the Clan Cameron."
She gasped in real amazement. This she had not anticipated. She had not truly believed he would give her to Nob. Any of the men— stuttering Patric, wild-bearded Colin, paunchy Macdonald, one-eared Robert of Macintosh, even Jamie—but not Nob. A neat trap Ranald had sprung on her.
A murmur of surprise rustled among the onlookers. "Why, thank ye, me laird!" Nob cried out from somewhere amid the crowd.
Ranald nodded, then turned his attention back to her. "As your laird, I claim the right to bed ye first. Your betrothed will escort ye to my chambers."
So, she had lost. Despair sagged her shoulders. Then she was overtaken by the hysterical urge to bolt, to run and hide somewhere no one would ever find her.