by Border Lass
“Faith, I think she may be a witch,” he said with sincerity.
“She also predicted that we’d be happy,” Amalie said as another tear trickled down her cheek to her ear. She rubbed the ear. “That won’t come true now.”
“It won’t if you don’t learn to listen to your husband, my lass. I have made it as plain as I know how that I do not believe you encouraged any man to lie with you, so tell me what really happened.”
“One did so without encouragement,” she said with a catch in her voice.
Ruthlessly stifling rage that threatened to reduce him to a gibbering dafty or overwhelm him to the point of bellowing at her as he shook the name of the villain from her, he drew a long breath. Letting it out slowly, he eased far enough away from her to let him gently retie the strings of her shift.
“I knew it,” she said dolefully, as she moved to turn away.
“You said you wanted to talk, sweetheart, so we are going to talk,” he said, pulling her back to face him. “Now, I want a round tale, and we’re not going to do anything else until I get one. I don’t want you or me catching our death of cold before then, so under the covers with you unless you want to close those shutters and sit with me on that well-cushioned window seat under them.”
She had not expected him to demand an explanation, and the thought of providing the gruesome facts brought the incident rushing back to her as if it had happened two hours before instead of two years.
To think that just a short time ago, he made her feel safe!
Avoiding his gaze, she said, “Is it not enough to know I am no longer a maiden, sir? Must you force me to dredge up all the details?”
He had not let go of her arm after pulling her back, and he did not release it now, but his grip was gentle. He said, “I’m your husband, Amalie. I should know.”
“Why?”
He did not answer right away, and that surprised her as much as anything else he had done. She knew what Wat Scott would have said if Meg or she herself had ever asked him why he should know something. Wat asked a question and just waited silently until one gave him the answer. But if that person refused . . .
Meg had once told her that Wat believed it was his duty to know her secrets and her dreams, and her duty to confide them to him. As her husband, he said, he was responsible for her. Therefore he also insisted on being the one to decide how much she should tell him and, in return, how little he need tell her.
In truth, and despite such declarations, Meg dealt admirably with Wat, and he loved Meg. But Amalie had expected the same uncompromising attitude from Garth. That it was not forthcoming disconcerted her.
He remained silent now though, his hand still on her arm.
“You cannot tell me why you should know, can you?” she said.
“I can answer,” he said quietly. “It was a reasonable question. I was just trying to think how it must have been for you to be forced, as I’m sure you must have been. It cannot be easy to talk about something like that to anyone, let alone to a man you scarcely know, despite being married to him. Yet, if you cannot talk to me about the things most important to you, I cannot be a good husband. And I’m realizing, sweetheart, that I want more than anything to be a good husband to you.”
Her tears spilled over then in a veritable flood, and she cried as she had not cried since the day her world had changed from one in which she believed the only danger came from English invaders or Scottish ones, to the real world, where the greatest dangers came from the least expected people.
Both of his arms came around her then, and he held her close without saying a word, letting her tears spill across his bare skin without notice. Even when he shifted slightly to a more comfortable position, he still held her close and did not speak. One hand rubbed her gently between the shoulder blades, soothing her as if she were a weeping bairn.
She sobbed until she realized her nose was running all over him along with her tears. With an embarrassed gasp, she tried to stanch the flow and sit up.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said then. “Cry as much as you like.”
“I don’t want to cry anymore. I’m dribbling all over you!”
“I clean up easily.”
“Most men hate weeping women.”
“I can do without most of them myself.”
Her tears ceased altogether then. “What a thing to say!”
“Why? It is the truth.”
“Well, you need not always speak the truth so wholeheartedly, sir. Sometimes you might try for a little tact.”
“I’ve never really understood the difference between tact and a lie,” he said. “If you want me to tell you what you want to hear, just ask me what I think that might be. Like as not, I’ll get it wrong most of the time, not being equipped with the ability to read your mind—at least, not yet. But I’d be gey willing to try.”
She tried to glower at him but knew she had not succeeded when his twinkling gaze caught hers again. “That’s better,” he said. “Now, tell me.”
Her first instinct was to evade it again, but a stronger instinct warned that it would serve no purpose but to pit her will against his.
She knew who would win.
“I won’t tell you all the details,” she said. “I can’t do that without reliving the whole horrid thing, and I simply won’t. As it is, I still dream about it and wake up terrified and in a cold sweat.”
His lips twitched then in what she thought might be sympathy, but he only nodded and said, “Tell me what you can.”
The one thing she knew he would want her to tell him, she could not and would not. So she began with their ride to the old mill.
Garth had been watching her closely, but when she mentioned her dreams, she struck a respondent chord in him. After her warning that she would not tell him everything, he wondered how hard he dared press her.
Hearing that the bastard had taken her to a mill near Elishaw, he realized it had been someone she trusted. No wonder she had told him she trusted no man.
That she trusted him enough to tell him any of it touched him deeply. But what she would do when his resolve to know the villain’s name knocked up against her stubbornness—and doubtless her fears, as well—he could not tell.
He’d do well, he decided, to listen carefully and hope she continued to reveal more than she realized. Then, when he learned the bastard’s name, he’d kill him.
Chapter 18
Amalie lay quietly after telling Garth what had happened at the mill, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. She felt drained but still fearful. He had fallen silent again and, for once, had not expressed his thoughts or demanded more details.
He had listened.
His body had relaxed too, some time before—all of it.
He turned his head until his gaze captured hers. “I want to know his name.”
“I can’t tell you,” she said, meaning it. That much she would keep to herself.
“I am your husband, lass. In such a thing as this, I have the right to know.”
“Well, I won’t tell you. You may think you can force me—”
He winced, silencing her, then drew a deep breath and let it out before he said, “You need tell me only what you want me to know. But you should consider that I will meet all the men in your family, many of their friends, and most of the men who live or work at Elishaw. I’m going to wonder about every one of them.”
“I expect you will,” she admitted cautiously. “But I still won’t tell you.”
He kept that intense, steady gaze on her for a torturous time longer, but she met it until, with a nearly indiscernible nod, he sighed.
“What?” she demanded. “Why do you look like that?”
“Because your silence has persuaded me that the number of suspects is more limited than I had thought. I can rule out the servants, for example.”
With that discomfiting gaze still upon her, she could scarcely breathe.
“I think I can rule out friends of your
family as well.”
“How could you possibly?”
“Think, lass. You would be unlikely to protect a servant, let alone to go into a lonely mill with him. And although your father might have missed noticing one male friend or another hanging around you closely enough to ride to that mill alone with you, your mother would not. Moreover, had either of your brothers taken note of such a man, surely they would have pressed him to declare his intentions.”
She could think of nothing to say to that.
“I am also fairly sure, sweetheart, that your attacker was not Simon.”
“Mercy, you cannot know that. Do you pretend to read minds, like Sibylla?”
“Nay, but had Simon been the one to deflower you, he would surely know that you cannot prove yourself a maiden by examination. Yet he agreed to one.”
“But, don’t you see?” she protested. “Simon nearly smiled when he said that! Sithee, I think he changed his mind about my dowry when he inherited Elishaw, because Fife insisted that a portion of the estates be part of it. Simon is not a bad man, sir. I do not like him much, but in fairness, he is years older than I am and was mostly away from home. So I scarcely know him. I think he viewed me, not as a sister—Rosalie is the only one of us who stirs fondness in him—but as an asset he could use to increase his favor with Fife. Then, when our father died—”
“So Simon is the one!”
“No!” Amalie exclaimed, horrified that she had led him to accuse an innocent man. “I did think he must have told Sir Harald, and thereby led him to treat me with such detestable familiarity, but Simon cannot have done that. Neither Sir Harald nor Fife mentioned it, or seemed to know that their vile examination would do them no good. And surely, if one had known, the other would have as well.”
“So Simon did know you had been attacked.”
“Aye,” she said, remembering. “But he would not believe it was an attack. He believed it was my fault, that I was wanton and provoked it.”
“Then your attacker was Tom or your father,” Garth said flatly.
She could not answer. The easy speed with which he had reduced the field from a host of possibilities to two astonished her. Realizing she could not let him blame her father any more than she could let him blame Simon, she remembered that Wat Scott knew the truth and that Tammy and Sym knew things, too, and that she trusted all three to keep her dreadful secrets to themselves.
That thought made her look at him again. If she could trust the three of them, she had been wrong to declare all men untrustworthy. As it was, Sym had nearly . . .
His brow wrinkled thoughtfully as he returned her look. She realized that his mind had taken a track much like the one hers had followed when he said quietly, “That lad, Sym Elliot. He said he knew things about bir—”
“I do have more to tell you, sir, but pray do not ask me to explain all of it now,” she interjected quickly. “In return, I will tell you who it was.”
“No bargain, sweetheart. It was Tom, and clearly, there were consequences. Is there a child hidden away somewhere that I ought to know about?”
Tears sprang to her eyes again. “No, my lord, there is not.”
When she caught her lower lip between her teeth, doubtless to avoid saying more, or in hope of stemming her tears by biting down hard, Garth was just sorry to see the tears again. He was even sorrier she was trying to put distance between them by using the formal title. He believed her account, and he doubted that he needed to know more about the incident, although his curiosity still burned, as did his rage.
But he knew that he would be wise to dampen both.
He could not kill her brother, so he would just have to wait for nature to take its course. Such a scoundrel would surely come to an unhappy end. In the meantime, Garth could make Tom’s life miserable just by telling him he knew what he had done and warning him to keep well out of his way.
For the present, he said only, “I won’t press you any more tonight, sweetheart. And if I don’t get back in time to take you to Elishaw for Sir Iagan’s burial, perhaps it will be just as well. I doubt that I could meet either of your brothers without wanting to punish them for all they’ve put you through.”
She said nothing, but she did dab her eyes dry with a bit of the coverlet.
As if he had not noticed, and hoping that if he kept talking, he could ease the strain of her sorrows, he said matter-of-factly, “I must meet with Archie first. He will doubtless go at once to intercept Fife at Elishaw, but you cannot ride there with his horde of Douglases. That would cause a stir, even with me along. But after I talk with him, and one man he is bringing with him, I’ll come back to fetch you. Then we’ll go to Elishaw together if you still want to, even if it is too late for the burial.”
“I don’t know yet if I’ll want to,” she said. “What will you do about Tom?”
Realizing with distinct satisfaction that she could not imagine he would do nothing, he said with a slight smile, “I’ll let him know that I know; that’s all.”
She tilted her head, frowning, her gaze searching his. At last, she nodded. “If that is so,” she said, “I warrant we shall see little of him.”
“We won’t see him at all at Westruther,” he said. “Now, come here to me. This is, after all, still our wedding night, and things were going well for a time, so at least your experience has not put you off sex altogether. Or has it?”
He hesitated, realizing with a jolt that such an experience might well have turned her against coupling forever.
Her smile was still watery but nonetheless real. “I thought it had,” she admitted. “I thought I could not bear any man to touch me. But now I suspect I worried more that a husband would send me back to my father in disgrace than I did about what a husband might expect of me.”
“You have never objected to my touching you,” he said softly.
“I did once,” she retorted.
He smiled then. “You said I was as loathsome as Boyd, aye. You should pay a little penance for that gibe, I think, if you will not object to my touch now.”
“What sort of touch?” she asked suspiciously but without fear.
“This sort,” he said, drawing her into his arms again and holding her close. “Do you think we can recall where we were before our talk?”
In response, she snuggled against him.
Amalie snuggled close, savoring his strength and his warmth for a time until her thoughts drifted back to what he had said about where they had been before. They were not exactly as they had been, because her shift was between them now. She missed the feeling of his bare skin against hers.
As if his thoughts again followed the same track as hers, his hand moved to the side of her breast and, brushing the nipple, to the ties of her shift. His fingers dealt more swiftly with them this time, but when they were loose, his hand stilled.
“Art sure, Molly-lass?”
Smiling, she pressed herself harder against him and moved a hand to his chest, her fingers toying with the soft curly hair she found there. “I’m sure.”
His touch remained gentle at first as he stroked her, warming her all over, then it grew more teasing, still gentle but sure and playful. His lips played with hers, and then his tongue teased hers and she teased back, astonished and delighted that she could feel playful with him.
His hands moved over her body, slipping her shift up and off her. And then he began caressing her with his hands and his lips, and invited her to touch him.
She learned quickly, because his responses were open and his enjoyment clear. He seemed in no hurry, content to let her explore him as he found more ways to let her know how delighted he was with her.
After a time, she realized that he had begun to tease her senses more and more, to the point of torment. It was pleasant torment, but before long her hunger for him grew unbearable. His hands and lips moved lower then until one hand gently touched her between the legs and began to tease her there.
She gasped.
“If you want
me to stop, tell me,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you or do aught that you do not like.”
“Do as you please,” she said. “But for mercy’s sake, don’t stop now.”
She thought she heard him chuckle low in his throat. Then he took her hand and moved it to himself, silently urging her to take hold of him.
Without a qualm, she did, rubbing herself against him until he said, “Lass, I cannot hold out much longer. I want to be inside you.”
“I want you there, too,” she said, guiding him.
He was gentle until he could be gentle no longer, but she met every thrust. She had not known what an agreeable thing coupling could be.
When they lay back, sated at last, he said, “You are mine now, sweetheart, in every way. I would defy anyone to say otherwise.”
“Aye, sir, and you are mine,” she said. The deep satisfaction she felt at those words astonished her.
Webbed in chains and shackled to a damp stone wall in pitch darkness, as if in a dungeon so deep that light could not penetrate, he hung from his shackles. But he felt no pain even when he shook them, trying unsuccessfully to break free.
If there was a floor below or a ceiling above, he had no sense of either, only of the web. Then a tiny white dot appeared in the distance like a pinprick in the blackness. It began slowly to grow into a circle of light, and as it grew, shapes formed inside until he could discern blue sky, puffy white clouds, and Amalie.
She wore the claret-colored velvet cloak she’d worn when he first saw her, and she stood atop a high, sheer cliff. A breeze stirred her flowing hair and her skirts. As the circle grew, he saw that the cliff rose far above a river valley, perhaps the Dale of the Tweed, although he knew of no cliff so high in all the Borders.
She turned her head until she seemed to see him, and smiled. Her smile froze as the wind blew harder, then harder, until she was leaning tensely back against it.
It continued to strengthen even then until worry filled him, and fear. Then helpless terror enveloped him as the wind scooped her up and blew her off the cliff.