by Aileen Adams
“Can ye ride a horse?”
She looked up at him. For an instant, he felt startled dismay as her eyes focused on his, almost as if she could really see him. He noticed the gold flecks in her irises, a flash of color rising in her cheeks. Her unseeing gaze disturbed him in some way that he couldn’t quite define.
“Of course, I can ride a horse, Alasdair. I’m blind, but I’m not a simpleton.”
He found himself grinning and gave her a short nod of approval. Once more, he realized she couldn’t see it. “Very well. We will ride my horse to the new house. Have ye ever been there?”
She nodded. “A few times, but it was a long time ago.”
Still holding her hand, he stopped beside his horse and gave the gelding a calming stroke on its muzzle. The horse was solid and trustworthy, battle-trained, and he had carried Alasdair from the battlefield to back home, intelligent enough to quickly respond to Alasdair’s touch on the reins though sometimes merely the pressure of his knees or a murmur or two by his master. He stood sixteen hands at the withers, with massive hooves. He’d never ridden double on this horse, not sure he would tolerate it, but as long as Beitris remained calm, he felt confident that the horse would tolerate the extra weight and without fear.
“This is my horse,” Alasdair explained, releasing her hand. “I found him on the battlefield, and he brought me home.” He gently grasped Beitris’s wrist and placed it on the horse’s withers.
She immediately stroked the gelding, the muscles under her hand shivering, and when she began to scratch, just under the long mane, the gelding lowered its head, eyes half closed, swishing its tail and giving one single stomp of his hoof as she smiled, her fingers caressing higher under the mane to finally scratch behind his ears. Alasdair frowned, torn between amazement and irritation. This was a warhorse. A battle horse, and yet he acted now like a family pet.
“What’s his name?” she asked softly.
“Name? He doesn’t have a name. At least not that I know of,” he said.
“What color is he?”
Color? Did she even know colors? Could she discern between brown and green? Could she discern the difference between the color of the sky and a wild yellow daisy? As if reading his thoughts, she spoke again.
“I can see shadows, Alasdair, shapes, sometimes people, if they’re close enough. I can see some color, if it’s very, very close to my eyes.”
He turned to her, facing her directly. “Can ye see me?” She met his question with wide eyes, pupils fixed.
“Just yer shape, a blacker shape against gray… the outline of yer body.” An eyebrow lifted. “Ye said yer hair was dark brown, Alasdair. I know that black is darker than brown. I would like to imagine it in my mind, as I will the color of yer horse.”
He frowned. “What difference does it make? Ye can’t see it.” He regretted the words and the way they were spoken the moment he saw the startled expression pass over her features. Though he felt regret that he had said the words, he didn’t apologize. He wasn’t going to coddle this woman. He was not her keeper, nor her companion. He was her husband. He grunted. “I’m going to mount the horse, and then I’ll reach down and lift ye up. Ye will sit sidesaddle in front of me. Dinna move around and the horse should not throw us both to the ground.”
She said nothing, merely stared up at him for several seconds, another flash of fear, a wince really, crossing her features.
He quickly mounted the horse, settling himself in the saddle. “Give me yer hand.”
She lifted her hand, but it was the wrong one, facing the wrong direction as she had inadvertently turned back toward the church. He shook his head, told himself to be patient, and leaned down. He grasped her shoulders, turned her properly, and then in one quick swoop, he grabbed her under her arms and lifted her onto his lap.
A small squeal escaped her as he hefted her upward, and as she settled herself into the groove of his lap, her face scarlet. Charming, really.
He glanced once more at Elspeth, still standing in front of the church, arms still crossed over her chest. With one arm wrapped around Beitris’s waist, holding her in position, he reached down with his other hand for the reins. He made a sound, and the horse moved forward. He didn’t give Elspeth another glance.
They rode away from the church, Alasdair more than aware of Beitris’s slight figure leaning against him. Her left hand rested on his left wrist, her right hand having groped for and clutched a handful of the horse’s mane. He tried to ignore her softness, the way her back bounced gently against his with every step of his massive steed, tried to ignore the scent of lavender in her hair, the creaminess of her skin.
Though she tried to put on a brave front, he felt her nervousness and the tenseness in her muscles as they rode. To be quite honest with himself, he felt a bit anxious as well. He supposed he should tell her that he had no intention of bedding her tonight. Though he certainly had the right, he reminded himself that he was fine with giving her time, giving himself time, giving them both time to get to know one another a little more. It wasn’t just that. It was his hesitance to get her with child. A blind mother? Selfish as it might be, he was finding it difficult enough to adapt to his new role as a husband to a blind woman, a blind wife. But a blind mother? No. He couldn’t do that.
They rode quietly, each with their own thoughts, the steady clop of the horse’s hooves the only sound that broke the silence of the afternoon. The woods along the trail offered shade when growing close to the path they followed. Low rolling grass-covered hills were dotted with clusters of lavender and heather. Beitris remained still the entire ride, as if hesitant to move, to shift her body weight in any way. He smiled. So, she took things literally. Good thing for him to know.
Eventually, they reached the stone house overlooking the lake. A gentle, cool afternoon breeze ruffled through his hair and also blew several strands of Beitris’s hair toward his chin. He brushed them away, smoothing it down her shoulders. She tensed beneath his touch. He pulled on the gelding’s reins, and the horse stood on a slight rise overlooking the valley and the lake beyond, its surface glistening with the sun’s rays.
“What are ye afraid of?” he asked, his voice low. “I want to know.”
She stiffened in his arms.
“What do ye mean?” she asked, head tilting at a slight angle, chin pointed toward him.
In just the past couple of hours, he had noticed that she did that when she heard something off in the distance, or when someone spoke to her. As if that tilt of the head, just slightly, enabled her to… to what?
“It’s a simple question, lass. What are ye afraid of? Are ye afraid of me?”
She frowned, turned slightly more toward him, once again those eyes locked on his face. “Should I be?”
The horse shifted impatiently beneath his feet, rocking her back against him. “I suppose some would say that I am not an easy man…”
“Ye used to be a troublemaker. Are ye still?”
He gazed down at her, a wry grin twisting his lips, impressed that she dared to speak to him this way, her new husband, her being blind and defenseless. But as he stared at her, he thought that perhaps she wasn’t just defenseless as he assumed.
“I dinna go around terrorizing people, if that’s what ye mean.”
To his surprise, she laughed softly and then turned her face toward the breeze coming up off of the lake. “Unless I have reason to fear ye, Alasdair, I shall not. Am I afraid to be out of my father’s house? Not really, though it will take me a little time to understand the floor plan of our new home. However, once I know my way around, ye can believe that I can cook, I can clean, I can tend the garden with no help from ye.”
She spoke with surety and confidence. He wasn’t quite sure he believed it, but he was willing to be patient. “Very well then. Ye wander around to yer heart’s content. The edge of the lake is perhaps fifty steps from the side of the house. Ye can measure it for yerself later. Can ye swim?”
She shook her head.<
br />
“Well, then I shall teach ye. There are no steep ravines, no gullies for ye to fall into, but the woods push closer to the house along the back. Along the side and front here, the ground is relatively flat, not quite unlike a meadow, so ye can explore without worrying about falling off a cliff.”
She said nothing as he touched his heels to the horse and they rode into the yard. He dismounted and reached up, settled his hands around her incredibly small waist, and lifted her down. Her hands rested on his forearms, her head barely reaching his chest, and for the first time, he tried to understand the sudden change in her life from her perspective. Now at the mercy of a husband of whom she knew little. He could beat her, treat her badly, starve her, and who would know? Of course, he wouldn’t, but she didn’t know that. Despite her appearance of bravado, she had to be scared. He himself felt uncertain, and he had all his senses about him. He was a man, a soldier. He could see danger coming, he could hear it.
She was vulnerable, and it was his duty to protect her.
“I will take ye inside the house. Ye explore a bit, and when yer ready, come outside. I can take ye for a walk around the grounds. Would ye like that?”
She nodded.
Without another word, he reached for her hand, wrapped it around his forearm, and then guided her toward the front door, describing the landscape, the stone structure as if seeing it for himself the first time. He took his eyesight for granted, though he should not. The scar on his face, the injury that barely missed his eye, could very well have taken his sight from him too.
They stood in front of the stone structure for several moments as he described what it looked like, and then he closed his eyes. To live in total darkness must be awful. He opened his eyes a few seconds later. How could she bear it? How could she live like this? It was also then that he understood her inner strength, something that he couldn’t see or touch or feel. He knew that Elspeth didn’t trust him and that she didn’t like him. Probably because she believed that he wouldn’t give Beitris a chance before he judged her. And he had. He had wondered what good a blind wife would be to him.
Yes, the lass was blind. She couldn’t see his ugliness, but he also knew that ugliness also resided deep inside him. His anger and his sense of betrayal and the unfairness of life.
And yet, standing next to him, chin lifted and shoulders straight despite her obvious fear of the unknown, Beitris faced that darkness within herself and outside in her environment. He also knew at that moment that if she could brave such uncertainties, then he would try to do so as well.
10
Beitris walked carefully beside Alasdair, trying to ignore the feel of his heat, the muscled forearm beneath her fingertips, focusing on not tripping or stumbling. Their ride here had been nerve-racking as she tried to keep her balance sitting sidesaddle in front of him, avoiding leaning into him or even bumping into him if possible. No doubt he made her nervous, but she was determined to be brave.
Her stomach roiled, and her head pounded with uncertainty, but she did her best to still the trembling in her limbs. She couldn’t let him see her fear, or he might feed off of it. That or grow impatient with her very quickly. While she felt relieved that he had acquiesced to her desire to have Elspeth continue as her companion, to live under the same roof, she also knew that she would do well not to test his patience or his generosity.
Generosity? While she was grateful for his favor in allowing Elspeth to come live with them, she also knew that nothing was without a price. She had heard much talk about Alasdair over the years, and while he had not yet shown his true character, she knew it would only be a matter of time. The belligerence, the arrogance, perhaps even the cruelty. In a small village such as hers, gossip and rumor were a normal part of life. She knew better than to believe all of it, but with so many people telling the same stories, wouldn’t they have been based in truth?
Even though she couldna see him, she felt Alasdair looming over her. While his size and reputed ferocity should make her feel safe, she felt quite the opposite. She was at his mercy. Wives had no rights, no freedoms. She recalled that except for rare occasions, her mother had almost always silently acquiesced to the wishes and demands of her husband, Beitris’s father. Thoughts of her father prompted a frown. She still couldn’t believe that he had betrothed her, given her away in marriage to Alasdair Macintyre, not to such a man with such a fearsome reputation. Was he that eager to get rid of her? So eager that he had given Alasdair the dowry that his own wife, her mother, had brought into the marriage?
She told herself to stop thinking this way. Alasdair was likely as stunned as she, to come home from war, wounded and scarred, only to find his father dying, to learn that he had been betrothed to a blind woman. She shouldn’t be feeling sorry for herself. She should do what she could to prove to Alasdair that she was of value, that she wouldna be an added burden to him. She couldn’t remember much of the history of this place, as she had only been inside a couple of times. Beside her, Alasdair paused.
“Yer standing in front of the threshold,” he informed her.
She nodded and extended her right arm outward to feel the sturdy support of the doorway, heard the dull squeak of the door on rusty hinges as Alasdair opened the latch and gently pushed the door open. She turned her head to face the large block of shadow beside her, then let go of his arm, feeling for the other side of the threshold with exploring fingers. She stepped inside and, as she remembered, felt thick planking beneath her feet. She tried not to shuffle her walking slippers across the floorboards as she stepped farther inside. It smelled musty and damp, not totally unexpected, as it had been uninhabited for over a decade.
She heard Alasdair enter the main room behind her. Her nose tickled, and she sneezed. She felt her cheeks flush again with embarrassment. The place needed a good cleaning. Swinging her arms in front of her, she turned to her left, exploring, getting an idea of the size of the room. She remembered that there had been a table over in this corner of the room, but there was nothing there now. She paused in the corner and then turned toward Alasdair’s footsteps, exploring the other side of the room.
“There’s not a table here anymore is there?” She heard him pause, the rustle of fabric as he turned toward her.
“Nay, the room is empty.”
She nodded, made her way closer to the wall, and then felt along rough stones, feeling the chinking between them, some of it crumbling beneath her fingers. Alasdair would have to do something about that. She made her way farther into the corner, where a stone fireplace jutted out from the wall at an angle. She crouched, felt the opening, remembered the iron rod from which a cooking pot would hang, then felt along the length of the hearth, her fingers sinking into ashes. Another sneeze, and as she rose, she brushed her hands together, and stopped herself just before she wiped them on her wedding dress.
Her wedding dress.
A flush of heat surged through her body. She was a married woman now. She pushed the thought away and continued her exploration, feeling the stones, the thick and rough timbers along relatively equal distances along the wall, trying to picture it in her mind’s eye. Soon, feeling Alasdair’s eyes on her, she reacquainted herself with the large main room, and then found the short hallway.
She sensed him hovering in the doorway to the hallway. “I believe some of the chinking throughout the house will need repairs,” she said, then caught herself. This was not her father she spoke to; this was her new husband. Perhaps he wouldn’t appreciate being told what to do. She froze, half expecting him to come into the room and scold her, maybe even slap her for her insolence. He did neither.
“Aye, the place does need a little bit of work. How long has this land belonged to yer father?”
She continued her exploration, and then moved back toward the doorway. She found an open window, lacking any covering. “It was my mother’s dowry to my father,” she answered, feeling her way along the wall. “It hasn’t been lived in for a long time, since I was a little girl. A fr
iend of my father lived here for a while, but he went away.”
Alasdair offered a grunt. Not very talkative.
Her exploring hands suddenly touched fabric, and she realized she was in the doorway again, touching Alasdair’s solid frame, hands splayed now on his impossibly broad chest. She quickly snatched her hands back to her side as Alasdair took a step back, away from the doorway to the hall. A surge of frustration rose within her along with yet another flush of heat in her cheeks. She wished she could quit doing that. She turned down the hallway, arms sweeping, fingers touching, her gaze taking in the shadows, the deeper shadows, the dim visages of light dispersing those shadows from somewhere. She found an open doorway on the left that led into a bedroom, prompting another flush of her cheeks. That room, like the main room, was empty. She felt a draft coming from a corner of the wall and tilted her head. “Is there a small fireplace in here?”
“Aye,” he replied.
She quickly explored the empty room and then moved back into the hallway, feeling along the walls, both of which she felt with her arms out to her sides, until she found the second doorway she remembered. Another room, slightly smaller than the one she had just left. It would make a suitable nursery—
Nay, she couldn’t think about that. She refused to think about it. The thought of lying with Alasdair filled her with a sense of dread. She pushed the idea out of her mind and focused on her task of memorizing the floor plan and the general size of the rooms. After exploring that room, she entered the hallway again and heard Alasdair off to her right at the end of the hallway. She frowned. Was there another room? She didn’t recall. She stepped in that direction, then noted his footsteps as he backed away, clearing the way for her. Her hands found an open space, framed in wood. A window. That’s right, there was a window at the end of the short hallway. It also lacked a covering.
She frowned then looked upward, knowing that she couldn’t see it, but wondering nevertheless. “Is the roof in good condition?”