by Raina Wilde
***
The hills of the MacLennan land rolled with gentle slopes clad with green and gold; fine trees and long, soft grass.
It is beautiful, thought Isabeal, as she rode through it beside her new husband. Two days after their arrival in his lands, and they were out riding together, alone for the first time.
“And that was where I used to play with my brothers, as a child.” Callum rode beside her, his arm outstretched as he pointed. He was eager to share the land with her, to reminisce as he pointed out some favourite haunt, some long-remembered knoll or hill or tree. His manner was attentive and gentle as he rode beside her, matching his pace to hers.
“Did you come here often?” Isabeal asked. She could not help but be drawn into his enthusiasm.
“Yes.” His face clouded, then, the mouth twisted. “All the time. Any time we could.”
Isabeal wondered about that, at the temporary cloud across those handsome features. But it was just as suddenly gone, and he was bright again.
“And here is the oak tree, where we loved to climb. I went too far once; couldn't get back down.” He chuckled at the memory, shaking his head. “James, my brother, fetched the groom, to come and fetch me down.”
Isabeal felt herself laugh at that, a delicious laugh that rose up like song. The picture of him stuck up the tree, and fetched down on the groom's shoulders, was rather funny.
Beside her, Callum smiled. The earnest grin warmed his deep brown eyes, transforming his princely face into something of true beauty, as if he was glowing.
Isabeal turned to look at him, and their eyes met. He smiled, and she felt the warmth reach deep into her, sparking longing and a tenderness she had never imagined. She smiled back and he beamed. They rode in silence for a while, each lost in the profoundness of the moment.
In the silence, her mind was working. I am starting not to hate him. I need to hate him. I need to win this battle with my father.
They stopped. She did not noticed, so lost in thought.
“Isabeal...I...”
Callum turned to her, his eyes looking deep into hers. His hand moved to rest on her knee. Their faces were so close. He bent to kiss her. Their lips met. Nothing Isabeal had ever tasted was as sweet as that. She felt her body yield to his, and her muscles turn to water, each fibre of her yearning only to melt into him, take his body into her arms and feel his touch.
No!
She was always a consummate rider. She moved her knees on Raven, and then they were swerving away from him, bolting into the trees.
She heard hoof beats, and his voice behind her.
“Isabeal...no! Wait! Please! I didn't mean it...”
She lifted her hand to her ears, moved her knees, asking Raven for a full gallop. A little longer, and they had lost him. She rode into a clearing and stopped, leaning down to thank Raven with a pat, and to catch her own breath as well. They waited there for over an hour, in the shade of a clearing. She heard him, calling her.
“Isabeal! Isabeal. Please. Answer me.”
He sounded worried. Panicked. He had no idea where she was. The earnest concern in his voice almost melted her resolve. She had no idea he cared about her.
He was supposed to despise me, she thought, in wonderment and almost resentment. He should despise me. Why does he have to care for me so? And why do I care so for him?
Isabeal felt hot tears, then, trickle down her cheeks like scalding rain. They washed down, uncontrollably, running down her face and under her chin. She leaned forward, her face in Raven's mane, the comforting scent of horse the only friendly thing in this rich and alien land.
It was not fair! Not fair to do this to us. To set me on a path of hate, with no choice but to follow it, or admit defeat.
“I love him, Raven.” Isabeal talked to the horse, her close companion since childhood. “I love him.” Raven huffed, as she cropped grass. “What should I do?”
The rain started shortly after that, slow swathes of it, washing down like tears, chilling her. She decided to return to the house.
I love him. The thought echoed in her head as she stabled Raven, called the groom, and found her way into the house. She crossed the hall and went straight to their chambers.
“Isabeal!”
His smile, huge and relieved, warmed her heart and drove out all her doubts.
“Callum.”
They embraced, then, in the hallway, with no one to see them. His body beside hers felt right, and good, and warm.
“Isabeal, you're soaked! You'll get sick.” His voice melted with concern, as his hand traced her wet golden hair.
“I am.” Her voice shook a little, but her gaze was steady. “I will need undressing.”
Callum's eyes looked deep into hers, level and warm and almost disbelieving.
“I...?”
“Yes.”
They crossed, then, the short and too-long distance to their chamber. It smelled of lavender and roses, of firelight and warmth and freshness. His hands stroked her hair, as it dried in the sweet warmth of the room. His fingers, uncertain, found the clasp of her dress and fumbled with it, trembling and working it down to her shoulders.
Her eyes met his, and they kissed. His lips parted on hers, and his tongue pressed gently at her mouth, entering it and tasting it softly. His body, hard and lean and muscled from the practice-yard and riding, pressed against her softness.
He leaned forward, and she leaned back, and they collapsed together laughingly onto the bed. His knee came between hers, and she gasped, then, their bodies pressed together in slow delight, rocking forward and back, forward and back, each delighting in the feel and closeness of the other.
Then his hands found the neck of her dress and worked it slowly down, as he kissed her throat, her collarbone, and her chest. His mouth followed the line of the cloth, and his lips slowly found a nipple. She gasped, and arched back, pressing the soft flesh up towards his mouth. He leaned to take it, eagerly, and then they were writhing together on the bed. Her dress slipped down, and he sat back, hands hot and fast and muscled, undressing himself with urgency.
Then his body was on hers, hot skin on cool, and his mouth was on her mouth, and his legs around and then between her thighs. His hands were on her shoulder, cupping it gently, and he was inside her. His lips said her name, over and over, as he thrust and thrust and thrust.
“Isabeal…”
She cried out, once, as the pain rose above the pleasure for a moment, but then it was thrusting and rising and building and cresting and she was washed away on a tide, a crest, an ocean of desire so wide she thought her heart might burst. She cried out as he did, and then they were both lost.
As the sweet waves of pleasure left them, sated, on the shore, they kissed and fell asleep in one another’s arms.
***
That morning, Isabeal woke in her husband's arms. She smiled and stretched and kissed him. They rose late that morning, and if any of the household noted it, none said a word.
Isabeal and her husband had been living together at the Small House, a building on his father's estate, originally a hunting lodge but recently converted into a small manor, about half a day's ride from the castle from which his father ruled. That morning, he suggested that they take a ride to somewhere he wanted to show her. He was cagey about telling her the destination, despite all her best attempts to coax the answer from him.
“Is it close?” Her voice had a teasing depth to it.
“No.”
“Is it far, then?”
“No, not so far.”
“Callum!” She wailed in feigned exasperation, as they dressed in their riding cloaks. “It can't be near and far, and old and new and...”
Callum only smiled, a sweet warmth curving his lips.
After half an hour they were riding out across the hills. Isabeal even coaxed him to race, their horses pounding over the hard grassy earth. They came tie, laughing and panting, their voices light in the fresh spring air.
By mid-aft
ernoon, with the shadows already deepening with sunset, they arrived.
“This is it.”
In a small valley, warm with the late afternoon sun, a house reposed, surrounded by a thick stand of trees, their leaves new green and dappled with the shade.
Callum and Isabeal sat their horses for a while, looking down into the valley.
“Shall we go down?” He seemed suddenly diffident, as if what was down there was something for which he needed her special approval.
Isabeal nodded, and they proceeded down. The house was different to the Small House in that it was set in a wide garden, flowerbeds laid out and neatly tended, filled with fragrant flowers at this time of the season. Isabeal smiled. There was lavender, pansies, daisies and far back, roses awaiting the summer.
“Callum! It's...it's beautiful.”
Callum smiled, a gentle smile that lit his features.
“It's yours. And mine.”
As her face broke into an enormous grin, he demurred. “Or it will be...when my father passes.” There was a bitterness there, again. The same bitterness as the day he told her of his childhood. Isabeal did not want to pry. He would tell her, she was sure, in time.
They went inside. The house was brightly lit and furnished with the latest furniture, imported from France and carved in pale wood. Callum showed her around, shyly proud.
In the long gallery, a sunlit room that took up all of one floor, they played hide-and-seek like children, their laughs echoing along the wooden panels and through the lead-paned windows. And then they found themselves on the threshold of the main bedroom. Callum was suddenly diffident again. “Shall we go in?”
“Yes.”
They crossed the threshold together, into a room decorated with white gauze curtains and scented with pale lavender. Isabeal whirled round in the centre of the room, a smile of delight on her face. Callum waited behind her, delighted to see it. Then she sat on the bed, smiling.
He sat beside her, his hand on hers, stroking the skin gently. Then his lips found hers. A warm, gentle kiss, and then she was pressed back softly onto the bed and gently undressed.
This time, Isabeal's hands were bolder, and she found herself undressing him as well, gently, both longing for the pleasures they had experienced the night before. Both palely naked in the bed, Isabeal's full form wound around his muscled one, and they turned to each other and smiled.
“My wife.” Callum grinned down at her, shaking his head in disbelief.
Isabeal grinned up, mischievously. “My husband.”
They kissed again, and his hands were gentle on her body. His mouth found her nipple and sucked gently, and he kissed his way down her body to the soft roundness of her belly. Looking up at her, with a question in his eyes, he kissed lower. Isabeal gasped, but parted her thighs for him. Her cry as he licked her there filled the small room, flowing out of the window to mingle with the scented air in the garden.
As she felt the wonder and longing of that crescendo inside her, he lifted himself and filled her. The sweet pain-in-pleasure made her cry out and ache for him, wrapping her legs around his body. He cried out as he thrusted and thrusted, spending himself in shuddering pleasure, and then she cried out again, the joy of passion suffusing her.
Lying in each other's arms, hours afterwards, he stroked her lazily.
“I've always wondered who I could share this with. Now I have met her.” He smiled down into her eyes, the warm expression making him look ten years younger, about fifteen. They sat together, their arms around each other, nude bodies pale in the evening light.
“This place, you mean?”
“Mmm.”
“What makes it mean so much to you?” Isabeal asked, voice low.
“I think it's because it was my uncle's. Uncle James.” Callum said hesitantly. “He left it to me, you see, when he died. We were close. And he understood my father.” Callum's voice was tight, then. Not like his usual easy speech.
“And..?” Isabeal asked, stroking his muscled arm.
“I loved my uncle. With all my heart. He was there to talk to. When my father was in one of his rages. Uncle James was a safe place.” Callum's head was bowed. This was the secret that he held inside himself.
“Your father was unpredictable?” Isabeal asked. An unpredictable father was something she understood well.
“Yes.” Long eyelashes covered Callum's brown eyes, closed in hurt, or shame, or pain. “He beat us...all of us. Not himself, but on his orders. To make us strong. To make us obey him. He never said a kind word. Not in twenty-five years.”
Isabeal nodded. Her eyes, too, were closed.
“And worse...he...He killed her.” Callum's voice was choked.
Isabeal's eyes opened wide. “Who, love? Who did he kill?” Her voice was low, soothing.
“My mother.”
What? Isabeal could barely believe that. “You mean..?”
“I mean as I say. Oh, they said she died in childbirth; blamed my little brother Jamie for it. No wonder he's so warlike now.” He grinned, a pale copy of his earlier warmth. “But I know he meant it. For her land.”
“Oh?”
“She was of the McNott clan. A cousin to your father. She had a rich dowry, withheld from my father's grasp until her death. For her own income. I think her parents didn't trust my father. They underestimated him, there. Should have seen it would just make him kill her.”
His voice was casual, almost, as if he discussed the slaughter of sheep in winter. But Isabeal could see the pain that crossed his face. He hated his father, that was clear.
“No. Callum? How could he do such a thing?”
“You don't know him. He is perfectly capable of that.”
“His own wife? Your mother? Oh, Callum.” Isabeal turned, then, and kissed him on the cheek. They held each other for a long time, both silent as tears ran down their cheeks.
“I have...always hated him.” Callum was sobbing, then, unashamedly. Isabeal held him. She too had always hated her father. “I knew. I heard the servants talking. Saying he had killed her. That her lawyer suspected it.”
A cold thought struck Isabeal and she looked up at Callum, horrified. “And my father?” she asked, “He didn't know, did he?”
Suddenly, his interest in the MacLennan land made sense. If he believed Callum's father had killed his cousin to inherit that land, no wonder he felt he was entitled to it. And if he knew, and chose to bargain with his daughter's life, instead of bringing it to the attention of the law, then that meant he had as good as assisted in her death.
“Your father?” Callum asked, gaze clouded. “Why..?” And then he saw it. “You mean...perhaps they planned it together?”
“Well, that way, he would get the land from his cousin, and your father would get...would get my dowry.” Isabeal said, her voice hoarse on the last sentence. Her father had not only given her to Callum, but with her went a parcel of land on his Northern borders and a small keep, well-placed to fortify the north most corner of the MacLennan territories. She had been there on the day he signed the agreement. The day she promised herself to Callum. What had those two men been planning?
“Isabeal?” Callum asked, looking down at her, brown eyes wide and loving.
“Callum.” Isabeal replied firmly.
“What can we do?”
“You mentioned a lawyer?” Isabeal asked, quick mind at work. “Would he still be able to tell us something?”
“I...” Callum's expression clouded a moment. “I think so. He did some work for James, my brother, last year. We could ask him for the address.”
“Let's do that.”
Callum smiled down at her a moment, his eyes tender. “My remarkable woman.”
Isabeal looked up at him from the corner of her eye. “Remarkable, indeed! I'm a hungry woman.”
He looked at her, eyes wide, then burst out laughing. “Let's go and see if the kitchen staff are still around.”
They climbed out of bed and dressed slowly, eager to expl
ore the house and sample the cooking. They walked to the dining room hand in hand, both feeling lighter than they had for years. Absolved from the burdens of the past. Ready to write a new future.
***
“And...and that's all I can remember.”
The lawyer, John Price, was older than Isabeal had expected, and sat in his chair in a small office a day's ride away, relating his memories.
“So. Let me see if I have this right.” Callum's voice was brisk, alert. “My mother died, after no illness, in very suspicious circumstances. The next day, my father asked you to read the will to him, privately. And you did?” His voice rose on that, incredulous.
“Yes.” The lawyer's voice was slow. “Yes, I did.” He looked at them, two earnest young people, blazing with the truth. “I don't think you know how...persuasive a Laird can be. Especially when he owns you, more or less.”
They looked at each other, said nothing. They knew, in their own way, how that felt.
“And..?” Callum pressed.
“And...I knew it was strange. Anyone would wonder. When I heard how much he was to inherit, I wondered a great deal. Doctor wondered, too. Said there were...”
“What?” Callum's voice was low, almost violent. The lawyer blinked, unperturbed.
“There were bruises on her neck. Couldn't have got there any way but by suffocation.”
“What?” Callum's voice was explosive. Isabeal felt her hand touch his arm, gently. He sat down again.
“The doctor. Brian Dougal. He examined her. Said he thought there was no way her death was natural. Couldn't prove it, though. Next day he disappeared.”
Callum looked weary, older by at least five years since they sat down. He shook his head. “My father...”
Isabeal held his hand.
“That's all I can tell you, I'm afraid.” The lawyer looked up at them, blinkingly. “Oh. Yes, I forgot that. There was a letter. After her death. From your father,” here he pointed at Callum, “to yours.”
They looked at him, jaws dropped in disbelief, eyes wide.
“I took it myself. Delivered it to your father's chief servant.”
Isabeal and Callum turned to look at each other. Callum nodded.