A Promise of Love

by Karen Ranney

  He had called her scrawny. She had only been thin.

  He had called her a hag. She had only been tired.

  He had called her sharp tongued. She had only been frightened.

  He wondered what he would have done, in a similar situation, if he had been uprooted from his home and forced to travel across a country, be tricked into marriage and expected to merge into an alien culture overnight?

  His thoughts stopped suddenly, as he realized with shock that their circumstances were not as different as they appeared on the surface. He, too, had been forced to march across a country. His own. Alisdair had been expected to join in the uprising along with his father and his brother, despite the fact that he had argued vehemently against its lunacy. He had been tricked into this selfsame marriage and the English expected him to be assimilated into their culture with nary a ripple on the surface of his heritage.

  And his response? Anger.

  The fact that it emerged from him in the guise of determination did not discount its source. He was still angry at his slain father and brother, at his own country for turning its back on survival. He was angry that Malcolm had tricked him into this marriage and his honor insisted he continue with it. He was angry because he was expected to become all things English without a heed to the soul inside him that was blatantly Scot.

  His anger had forced him to challenge his world. It was his way of coping with the changes in his life, to the presence of grief and loss. This new world the English had foisted upon him would be altered by his determination. He would not crumble beneath its demands.

  He looked at his wife with new eyes.

  Judith had fought for her survival by protecting herself in the only way she knew how. She surrounded herself with a mantle of silence, restraint. Even now, standing naked in front of him, she did not move to cover herself. She had retreated into detachment where pain or humiliation could not affect her. It was as much camouflage as whistling in the dark.

  It was her only way of living through the horror she had experienced.

  He turned her so that she faced him. The cut on her lip still oozed blood. He hadn’t noticed it until now. He touched it gently with one finger, thinking it should be washed. Still, she did not raise her eyes even after he’d gone to the ewer and dampened a cloth, ministering to the cut with the gentlest touch.

  He spread his arms around her and she flinched even though the embrace was light and tender. She stood straight in his arms, until he pulled her head down, into the curve between his shoulder and his neck.

  Such tenderness was unknown to her. Such compassion suspect.

  "I will not beat you, Judith," Alisdair said softly, as if he heard her unvoiced thoughts. "I never touched a woman except in pleasure and passion. My wife had nothing to fear from me."

  "I did not know you had been married before, MacLeod."

  "There seems to be much we do not know of each other. Have you any more secrets to reveal?" he asked, in the first attempt at humor since the scene on the moors.

  "I stand before you naked, MacLeod. Surely if there were any more secrets to divulge, you would see them readily." Her eyes glittered in the faint light from the window. She did not speak of other, darker secrets, whose knowledge was emblazoned on her soul. Those she would share with no one but God.

  He moved to the bed and pulled the sheet from it. With infinite tenderness, Alisdair placed it around her, and held her, covered, in his arms.

  It came as a shock to him, after he had descended the stairs, tucked her in like a child and left Ian's room, that Judith's presence as his wife could be a benefit. He had worked hard to acquire legitimacy for them all, and his conditional pardon was a noose around his neck. However, his English wife could garner them all another measure of freedom.

  He wondered if Granmere had already figured that out.

  She probably had.

  CHAPTER 16

  "I'll go," Judith said, when Granmere insisted they needed milk from the milch cow and eggs. Although she had no wish to savor the clan's displeasure, it was the only way to escape Malcolm.

  Every communal meal had become a misery. Malcolm watched her constantly, as though she were the embodiment of all things evil and English. He rarely spoke, simply glaring at her over his plate as if he viewed the revelation of her past as a direct insult to him and to his choice of her as wife to his laird.

  Judith could understand his anger, but she could do nothing about it, nor alter its cause. The old Scot evidently felt she was as guilty of the atrocities committed by Cumberland's troops as if she had performed them herself. What Malcolm did not know was that she had despised Anthony from the first, with a hatred and a loathing that only grew with time.

  Her marriage to Anthony Henderson had been arranged by Squire Cuthbertson, barely six months after she'd returned home following Peter's death. His regiment had been successful in putting down the food riots in Yorkshire, where her father had no qualms about selling his produce above market prices. Judith had wondered, then, if she were being given as a prize to the soldier who had so helped her father. Otherwise, it was unlikely that a man without property or prospects would have been an adequate candidate for a son-in-law. Perhaps though, like her banishment to Scotland, her father simply hadn't cared about her bridegroom, as long as she was gone from his house.

  She met her new husband on the day of their wedding and although her sisters had commented on his good looks, and military bearing, she had only seen the contempt in his eyes for the daughter of a tradesman. A contempt that carried over to her wedding night and resulted in nothing less than his feral savagery. She had been married before, but Peter's absent-minded, apologetic coupling had not prepared her for Anthony's cruelty. Nothing would have. She had emerged from the small room at the inn the next day with a dawning horror in her eyes. Nor had her lot improved from that day on.

  The worst memories were from those long months when Anthony’s regiment had been billeted in London. His dislike of his new assignment had been translated into daily abuse. There were great blocks of time unset in her mind about those days, as if they had happened to another, or she had lived them from a distance.

  When she was a child, Judith had rolled up a paper into a cylinder and peered through one end. The view seemed distorted, as though it were far away. Her life with Anthony seemed the same. Remote, as though someone else had lived it, and she were trespassing into their mind and their memories.

  Nature had provided for her survival by cushioning those days in a dense fog, accessible only in bleak nightmares.

  The revelations of her past had destroyed the camaraderie Judith was beginning to establish with the women of the clan. She was not treated badly, she was simply ignored, in such a finite way that she felt invisible. When one of the village women would call on Sophie, her eyes would simply slide though Judith, as if she were not standing there, a welcoming smile on her face. If a chore took her from the confines of Tynan, it was to meet a silence so profound it seemed she could hear the whisper of the wind upon the moor grasses. All activity in the weaving shed had ceased, as if her presence there soiled the very wool they carded and spun. Stupid women. They were as foolish as they were stubborn, Judith thought. Their actions would not hurt her, but only themselves.

  Judith had thought she'd grown accustomed to feeling unwelcome, but the glacial treatment by the MacLeod women taught her that she was still capable of being hurt, after all.

  Only Meggie continued with her unconditional friendship. Meggie's gentle smile was as welcome as her knowledge of farm animals, as she took Judith to the communal barnyard.

  Judith relied on her friend's help to retrieve the eggs that Granmere requested. She’d been in such a hurry to withdraw her hand from their angry, pecking beaks that she’d pulled out the sitting stones, instead.

  “They’re placed there to give the hens the idea of what to do,” Meggie said, chuckling as she replaced the stones.

  "It was so much easier simply t
o go to the meat seller's stall in London and point," Judith admitted, smiling wryly. “I’m a poor farmer’s daughter.”

  “Not so,” Alisdair said, smiling, “I remember a lass with a penchant for shaving my sheep.”

  “Shearing,” she corrected, although she knew he teased.

  Alisdair smiled at Meggie, thanked her and escorted his wife back to Tynan.

  "Are you well?" he asked, noting her sudden flush with interest.

  "Well enough, I suppose," she answered shortly.

  "I have not seen you much in the last few days," he said, smiling at the fact that her eyes looked everywhere but at him. "Have you been avoiding me?" She never left her room until he was in the fields, refusing to sup with him at night, creeping around his castle for days, as if to spare herself his presence. It was rare she ventured from Tynan's walls, and when his patience had finally been rewarded and he’d seen her, he’d left the other men, claiming the need to stretch his legs a bit. He chose to ignore their disbelieving stares.

  "Yes," she answered honestly. "I have been an unwelcome addition to your clan, MacLeod. I'd thought to spare you and your people my presence." She did not tell him that she had spent the last few days alternating between faint hope and more confusion than she wished. He had had ample reason to punish her, yet had not. He had, instead, comforted her, holding her against his chest in the most tender of touches, like a parent would soothe a child.

  "I regret that my countrymen are as stubborn as they are," he said, smiling. Judith wished his teeth were rotted, his skin mottled, or his hair falling out. Anything to make him appear less attractive and daunting in his good looks. They came to a rise in the hill, MacLeod holding the basket with the eggs as nonchalantly as a lady’s parcels on the streets of London. She concentrated on the path, the dust swirling over her scuffed boots.

  "It is to be expected," she admitted, finally. "They would no doubt receive the same treatment in England. But I would have thought that Malcolm would understand."

  "Is he giving you trouble?"

  She finally looked directly at him. He wanted to tell her that the shade of her eyes reminded him of the mists over the mountains just before sunset, deep and rich and mysterious. Instead he only smiled at her, thinking that he could restrain himself a little while longer.

  "Malcolm thinks I am no better than Black Donald’s mistress, MacLeod.”

  He laughed. "Aye, that sounds like Malcolm. He's an old bear of a man, a true Scot. Born to the land, tied to it for life, whether that life be long or short. He and a few others like him will find a way to keep the battle raging until he dies."

  "What would you consider yourself, then, MacLeod, if not a true Scot?"

  "Oh, I am one, at that. But I have had the blessings of seeing the world, Judith. I know our paltry problems here are of no concern to others. If they were, the Pope would have long since recognized the claims of the Bonnie Prince and his father. What Malcolm and others like him would have us do is don our kilts and march proudly from glen to glen, summoning the clans until blood washed Scotland clean."

  "You speak as one who hates war, MacLeod."

  "I see no shame in admitting it. No, our industry is better used by preparing for the future, than for mourning the past."

  "Do you truly think your future lies with England? It seems a strange view for a Scot to take."

  "A practical approach, however. Did I not state that I was a practical person, also? Trade with England is our only hope." He would have preferred another country’s coin, but was prevented not only by geography but by English ships which lay in wait off the coast of Scotland for just such enterprising commerce.

  Alisdair did not tell her there were times he could not quite forget Culloden and the loss of friends and family, memories which galled at the thought of trade with England. Memories, however, had become an impediment to the future. Just as Judith’s recollections kept her awake at night, nearly screaming.

  "No wonder you sought to buy sheep from my father. He is a great believer in free enterprise,” she said wryly. “Everything is a commodity to him. Even his daughters are only goods to be sold on the matrimonial market."

  "He is not the first father to want to profit from marriage, Judith," he reminded her gently. "How would you have it, if it were not so?"

  "I would be free, MacLeod. Free to do what I would, when I would, as I would." She did not mean for her words to sound bitter, but he thought he understood the reason for such a tone.

  "Freedom. Do any of us have it?" He looked around the path they were taking, to the broad moors that slipped down to the sea. "I am not free," he said in explanation. "I have duties and obligations that will not cease even when I lie in my bed at night.”

  "Because you are a man, you could never understand.” The look she gave him was new and fascinating. He wondered if she knew her eyes flashed as if lighting lit their depths.

  "I am a man with a brain.” His grin was challenging. “Explain it to me. Any idea which makes you crinkle your nose with such disdain can surely be spoken.”

  She thought for a moment, trying to find the words. "Men are capable of living their lives like islands, MacLeod. They are not dependent upon anyone in order to survive. A man is either a noble, a soldier, or he has a trade. He can decide whether he wishes to live in Yorkshire or Kent, whether he marries or does not. He can make the choice to have a child, ten children, or none. But none of these things are possible for women. Our occupation is wife, harlot, or spinster, all dependent upon a man’s convenience. We've no option to refuse our husband's mating, no way to prevent the seventh child or the seventeenth. Men are islands. Women are captive birds. Freedom? Some of us have it more than others, MacLeod."

  He had never heard her speak so many words at one time. It was with delicacy that he disagreed, hoping that by doing so, he didn’t push her back into the shell she’d worn so comfortably since coming to Tynan. This new and voluble Judith was a singular pleasure.

  "Yet, you said it yourself. A man is dependent upon no one. If he succeeds, it is because of his own work. If he fails, then that, too, is laid at his door. A woman has no such burdens. She is taken care of and cared for. It seems a fair trade."

  "I wonder how many women would trade their husbands for their freedom, MacLeod and being taken care of for the ability to care for themselves," she said, and it was suddenly not a simple question she asked, nor so much a rhetorical one.

  "Aye, that's true enough, I suppose," he said, thinking of her tortured back and the deep darkness of her troubled eyes. "Yet, you did not trade this husband for freedom, Judith. One word would have made you a guest of Colonel Harrison’s, safely under the protection of the regiment. Why did you not speak that word?" His look was amber directness, allowing for no lies nor reservations.

  How could she tell him that he offered less danger than Bennett?

  “Perhaps I had no ability to care for myself.” It was not a complete answer, yet he did not question it. The key to Judith was perseverance, Alisdair thought. She divulged snippets of information about herself a bit at a time and only then when they were pulled from her.

  “And your brother-in-law? Would he not have cared for you?” It was a question posed in a reasonable voice, one which made her wonder if he’d been privy to her unspoken thoughts.

  "I dislike him.”

  The best course was understatement. Those who embellish are quickly branded as liars. She would not tell him about Bennett, or that other part of her life. Those secrets would be better left unsaid, and unthought. To do otherwise would be to condemn herself to purgatory on earth. It was enough that she was destined for hell itself.

  Such prevarication would have worked, had he not been watching her when he'd asked the question. A blankness appeared in her eyes as if she'd simply walked into a room and shut the door behind her. It was the same response she'd had when she’d waited for him to punish her. There was a mystery here, and he would pursue it. Thanks to the English, he had th
e rest of his life to solve this puzzle.

  Alisdair stood aside for her to precede him up the stairs, through the bronze door. They walked quietly into the kitchen, where he placed the basket containing the eggs on the large, scarred oak table. Smiling at his grandmother, Alisdair reached for his wife.

  Judith brushed his hands aside, but he would not be denied. He effortlessly lifted her into his arms, one arm beneath her legs, the other encircling her shoulders. It was not unlike, she thought, the way he might carry a lamb, gently, but with stubborn intent.

  "It is daylight, MacLeod." It was neither a command nor a request. Instead, it was said with a sense of fatality. Hadn’t she been waiting for this moment ever since he’d rescued her from Bennett? It was the price she had to pay for solidifying their marriage.

  "So it is," he said, as if just noticing the sun rising high in the stairwell window.

  "I have chores to do."

  "So you have. Obeying your husband." His lips quirked.

  "What instructions would you have me heed?" Her voice was low and serious. He gently pried her fingers from his shirt front, and his chest hairs, well aware of the fear that filled her face and made her eyes wide and as deep as the sea.

  "At this moment? To cease struggling.”

  She turned her cheek away from the warmth of his chest, choosing, instead, to stare at the moving ceiling.

  The sunlight streamed in through the windows of the lord's room, and it was the first place she went when he finally released her. She breathed in the salt air that blew in from the sea.

  "Do you never get cold in the winter, MacLeod?" she asked, anxious to enliven the heavy silence. She wanted to postpone what would happen between them. She had begun to feel a softness for him, a respect she’d not had for any man. The feeling was so precious that she wanted to hoard it a little longer, keep it safe before it was shattered, forever destroyed.

  "I have never spent a winter in this room," he said, calmly.

  She turned to look at him, a small frown upon her face. He would give half his sheep to see her smile, to keep her standing there, with the sunlight touching her hair the way it was right now.