A Promise of Love

by Karen Ranney

  Fiona only shrugged and then looked meaningfully at Judith's apron covered stomach. "He'll ne're have another, though, will he? Ye wi' yer empty womb. Two husbands afore Alisdair an’ nothin’ to show for it."

  It was too much.

  Judith simply did what she had wanted to do for weeks. She retaliated. She picked up the chicken by its still attached neck and threw it at the other woman.

  Fiona shrieked as the chicken hit her, dripping blood and entrails over her best blouse. The noise was enough to rouse Sophie from her doze in the chair by the fire. His mother's scream was enough to send Douglas into a rousing wail.

  Judith lost what composure she had left. As Fiona continued screaming, Judith continued throwing. Whatever was at hand was hurled at the woman who had the nerve to flaunt her relationship and her child in front of Judith. Chopped onions followed the greens. The boiled oats and stale bread were next.

  At each successive hit, Judith grinned broadly. Fiona's face was flushed with ugly blotches of chicken blood, her hair was streaked with guts and boiled oats, the swelling bodice of her blouse was filled with chopped onions.

  Fiona went for her throat.

  Judith was ready for her.

  Douglas cried louder.

  Sophie started laughing, an odd cackling sound that sputtered and then stopped, as she gasped for breath.

  Alisdair froze in mid-step.

  He retrieved Douglas from the floor, set him on Sophie’s lap. Then he returned to the women, neither of whom he was disconcerted to note, had ceased in their efforts to throttle the other. Fiona was smaller, but heavier, while Judith's rage had given impetus to her strength.

  "Enough!" he shouted, but even that was not enough to part them. They had to be bodily separated. Malcolm, with a frown, managed to restrain his daughter while Alisdair hauled Judith up against him until she felt his full length against her body.

  "Ye should have let the English take her, lad," Fiona shouted, "she doesn't belong here a' Tynan. She's no for the likes of you."

  She smiled, a curve of full, carmined lips, and dropped her lashes, a coy imitation of a maiden's distress despite being restrained by her father’s arms. It would have been more effective if she’d not had a gizzard stuck in her hair.

  Alisdair, however would never have been enticed, despite how well she dressed for seduction. It was his own father who’d counseled his son - "Animals never foul their own watering hole". Advice he’d always heeded.

  "Since when do you know what's right for me, Fiona?"

  "Since ye were a lad, Alisdair," she said softly, her sultry voice evoking thoughts of warm flesh and cool nights, "I've known what you wanted." She had the right of it, he supposed. Once, when he was just a boy, he'd flushed whenever she came around, her plush beauty and plump curves fueling his adolescent fantasies. He'd longed for a sight of her, near panted when she'd artfully stretched, or accidentally showed a length of leg. He could not be around her without wondering if her breasts would fill his hands to overflowing, and how they'd taste.

  But that had been years ago, when he was a youth and starved for the touch of a woman, any woman.

  He had become more discriminating with age. Now he longed for wit as well as upthrust breasts, for intelligence which sparkled behind sultry blue-black eyes, for long legs and a challenging smile. He craved the sound of throaty laughter and an unflagging courage as laudable as any man's. He wanted affection with his sex, and a touch of spicy wit, and something else. He wanted loyalty, unquenchable passion, and love. He suspected that only one woman was capable of giving him those things.

  The look he gave Fiona was not as sharp as it should have been, nor as condemnatory as his wife would have preferred. She was not only his clanswoman, she was a companion of his youth. The look, however, carried with it such indifference that even Fiona noted it.

  "I'd never thought ta see the day, my laird," she said, her pride stung, "when you'd prefer an English bitch ta warm your bed. Tell me, do the English do it differently?" Her smile was mocking, the look in her eyes wicked, taunting.

  "Do not presume upon our kinship, Fiona," he said, his voice as somber as a gray day, no emotion in its depths. The very lack of it stilled her in the act of pulling away.

  "So, it's like that, is it?" she said, her look searching the depths of his amber eyes. Whatever she saw in them dissatisfied her.

  "It's like that," he agreed. From this day forward, things would not be the same between them and both of them knew it. He would no longer be able to accept her flirtation for the innocence it was not. She would not be able to be around him and remember he'd rejected her. Their bond of kinship had been traded for stronger emotions. Love, pride, desire, and anger.

  He wished it were not so.

  She pulled away from her father’s grip and straightened her blouse. "'Tis a pity, that," she said, not looking at him as both hands smoothed the material down over rounded breasts. "'Tis a shame she's not more comely."

  Her own beauty was never in doubt. She had been raised with the notion that she was the clan's reigning beauty the way a person born with brown eyes is conscious of that color. Her beauty simply was, like an appendage, or a name, or a talent. Even Ian had been no match for her wiles, nor had Douglas's father.

  Alisdair met Malcolm's eyes over the heads of the women. Malcolm nodded to an unspoken command and removed Fiona forcibly from the kitchen. He returned a moment later for Douglas, who had still not ceased his wailing.

  Only then, did the kitchen begin to resemble the oasis of peace and quiet it had always been. All except for the bloody chicken and a medley of vegetables strewn across the floor.

  Alisdair turned his wife in his arms.

  The flush was still on Judith’s face, damp tendrils of hair fell below the bodice of her dress.

  His eyes were flecked with gold, and a small, wry smile appeared on his face, as he continued to study her. Judith could see the day's stubble of his beard and despite her intention, one hand strayed to that bristly chin.

  "Fiona is a kinswoman," he said softly, the touch of her palm on his face fueling desires never quite dormant around her. He had only to smell her scent and he felt needy, hot blooded, stallion-ready.

  She pulled away from him, and turned her back, blinking away the sudden sting in her eyes. It was the onion, of course. Everyone knew they made you cry. It was not the sudden show of loyalty from Alisdair which prompted her tears.

  “Kinswoman or not," Judith said, “that woman has to go. It is my kitchen, MacLeod," she said, stooping to pick up the chicken, chunks of onions and greens from the floor. “I’ve a right to who comes in it.” Chicken blood was splattered over the stone and she washed out a rag to begin cleaning it.

  Alisdair had waited for the day when Judith felt secure enough with him to express her anger. He had expected it, anticipated it. Yet, he could not reconcile the stiff, silent woman he’d first met to the virago he’d seen when he walked into the kitchen.

  He grinned, the effort of restraining his laughter almost too much. He reached for her, but she evaded his touch.

  She didn’t like the twinkling light of merriment in his eyes. It was not funny. Fiona was a constant thorn in her flesh.

  “Come here, wife,” Alisdair said, his smile still in place, a different note in his voice. Not so much teasing as it was promising.

  Instead, Judith backed away slowly, toes of one foot placed carefully behind the heel of the other. It was a gentle gesture of escape that did not go unnoticed.

  "Come here, Judith," he said, still in that calm, reasonable tone. She distrusted it. Each time Alisdair adopted that unhurried, narrating tone of voice it meant he was about to do something bizarre or wicked.

  She did not mean to, but when he raised his hands to put them on her shoulders, she flinched. It was as if time itself stopped at her unbidden gesture. The very stillness of his stance made her look up, to see his eyes fixed steadily on hers.

  An eternity of speech passed betwee
n them in those long seconds, words unvoiced, yet spoken all the same. Trust me - his look said, I will not hurt you. I know - she answered, but there are times I forget. An admission that was as hard to reveal to him as it was to herself. She wanted to shut her eyes against his tense regard. Instead, she allowed him to see what she felt, exposing herself in a way she’d never done before.

  Alisdair wondered if she knew that her eyes always gave her away. He could measure her feelings by their expression. In their depths was uncertainty, wrapped in a cloak fashioned from bravado. He smiled, lifted her chin with the tip of one finger and bent to kiss her swiftly, hard, a kiss to brand.

  “Go upstairs, Judith. Wait for me.”

  She’d been given that command too many times in her married life. It had never induced sparks of anticipation before, only fear. A finger pressed to her lips halted her words, the message in his eyes as old as time and as solemn as church vows.

  "I will be obeyed, my stubborn wife." His eyes glittered as he gently kissed her.

  She tried to stifle a smile, but it burst forth anyway, a small slip of one, as if she were a child and at some solemn gathering and forbidden to grin.

  “This time, MacLeod.”

  Her grandson had a unique laugh, Sophie thought, as she lay her head back in her chair, thinking that this evening was too eventful for an old woman like her. Still, the sound of Alisdair’s laughter was a pleasant thing. Almost as lovely as Gerald’s.

  CHAPTER 24

  Alisdair hauled the old tub from the pantry, emptied it of the potatoes usually stored there, and began to scrub it mercilessly. The tub had been one of his mother’s extravagances. Why she had required a hipbath whose surface was etched in bronze, he had never known. Louise's peculiar and frivolous purchases had only one thing in common. They were exclusively for her enjoyment and comfort. The tapers especially scented with sandalwood, made to her order in Edinburgh, were to illuminate her suite of rooms. The wine sent in crates from France was for her troubled digestion and not shared with other members of the family. The soap milled in Germany from the finest ingredients was for her delicate skin, roughened and chapped by the Scottish seasons.

  She had not, although she had certainly tried, exceeded Tynan's coffers. That had been accomplished by the '45. Louise had simply removed what coin had remained, prior to her self-imposed exile to France. It was a good thing, Alisdair thought, that his mother had not chosen to remain. She could never have borne their hardships.

  Alisdair hefted the tub up the stairs, not an easy chore. Nor was lifting the buckets of heated water. The result, however, was worth any discomfort.

  Despite Judith’s protests, he lifted the soiled dress over her head, followed by her undergarments. She fussed the entire time. He ignored her.

  "Is it your aim to cook me, Alisdair?" she sputtered, as Alisdair helped her into the bath.

  She lifted one foot, then another and stepped from the water, all the while scowling at him.

  "Come, Judith, it's not that hot," he said mildly.

  "Is this penance of some sort, MacLeod?" He seemed preoccupied with every exposed inch of skin, so she reluctantly sat in the tub again, raising her knees to shield herself from his eyes. The heat of the water did feel good, but it did not mean that she chose to bathe in front of him. Just because he gloried in his nakedness was no reason for him to think she would likewise be as shameless.

  She began to wash her face with the scrap of linen he handed her and thus did not see him kneel behind her and take another cloth in his hand.

  His first touch upon her back was startling. His strokes were sure and firm, unlike the gentle touch of his lips the other night. No, these were strong kneading motions using the palms of his hands. She relaxed, reluctantly, under his ministrations.

  "Does your back hurt in damp weather?" he asked, noting that many of her muscles seemed knotted and twisted. She turned and looked directly into amber eyes only inches from her own.

  "Sometimes."

  "Did you have no treatment for it?"

  She stared at him as though he had lost his reason. The man who would have summoned aid would not have perpetrated this persecution in the first place.

  "No," she said, her voice clipped. She acted very English sometimes, he thought, as if she were drawing on a protective cloak of reserve. "I was expected to act as though nothing had occurred. Anything that would have indicated my discomfort would only have brought more down upon me."

  His eyes flickered with an expression she could not read. "Is it the norm in England, this treatment of wives?"

  "I do not know, MacLeod. I did not boast of it, you can be assured of that."

  "Your family? Were they not prepared to assist you?"

  "Again, I do not know. I never spoke of it."

  "So you have grown stoic," he said, soaping the linen square and then her back. He swept the length of her hair aside and continued his bathing of her neck and shoulders.

  She thought it a strange duty he had taken on, bathing his wife.

  Yet, there was nothing ordinary about the MacLeod.

  It was not the first time in her life a man had ever spoken softly to her and offered her consolation. Alisdair had comforted her when he had first seen her scars. It was not the first time a man had ever stroked her skin gently, tenderly, with no thought of exchange. Alisdair had done so, causing riotous feelings in her body. It was not the first time a man had ever wished to know of her life. Alisdair had evinced an endless curiosity from the first moment she’d seen him.

  It had always, and only, been Alisdair.

  Judith did not realize she had spoken about her scars without tears in her eyes, in a voice that, although it indicated past anguish, held none of the terror or active pain of a few weeks ago. He did, however. Nor did she realize that by turning the conversation to her past, he had adroitly banished her of embarrassment or shame about her nakedness.

  "Hardly stoic, MacLeod," she answered him finally, thinking of those days filled with passionate hatred for Anthony and his brother.

  "What would you call it, then, Judith?" he asked, "to not seek assistance, or protection?"

  "Where would I go? To my father? He would have sent me back. My mother? She was as much a pawn as myself. To my sisters? They would not wish me in their households."

  "So you said nothing, and became a martyr."

  "I haven't the temperament for martyrdom" she said, and he smiled, thinking her right.

  "Did you find it easy to kill, Alisdair?" she asked suddenly, her abrupt question stilling his hands upon the rounded curves of her shoulders. "You with the training to heal?" She turned her head to look at him. Her lovely blue eyes were troubled, but he had the strangest feeling that the emotion in their depths was something he did not wish to plumb.

  "No, Judith, I found it very difficult. It is harder, I think, to live with the memory of it.”

  A strange comment from a man who lived every day as though he squeezed each hour dry, who looked at the sky and noted the clouds, the expanse of horizon and nodded as if satisfied with God's handiwork. She’d seen him stopping to study the bloom of an isolated flower, bravely growing beside a pebble strewn path. She'd seen him do all these things and more, and it was not the behavior of someone who wished to forget the actions of his life.

  What had life been like for him during the past two years? She found, and not for the first time, that she very much wanted to know.

  The MacLeod had other ideas.

  He dropped the square of cloth, letting it float gently to the bottom of the tub as he took the soap between his large hands. He smoothed his slippery fingers over her shoulders, and down toward her breasts, only smiling at her futile gestures, at the hands that pulled against his wrists but were powerless to prevent his actions.

  "I think that being stoic is a fine emotion for some situations," he said, paying close attention to her nipples, tracing circles around their pink length with his soapy fingers, then cupping her breasts i
n his hands, feeling their fullness, their plump heaviness. "But I think, it loses its appeal in some circumstances."

  "What circumstances would those be?" she asked, in a tremulous voice, thinking that it was a strange man, indeed, who would insist on touching her in such an intimate way, but continued to converse as if they were taking tea in the drawing room.

  "Have you not noticed?" He bent close to her and she turned, noting the tender smile on his lips and the gleam in his eyes accentuated by some mischief there. His fingers were splayed across her skin, tracing the symmetry of waist to hip, from hip to thigh.

  Once more, she tried to dislodge his hands, but they were firmly planted and would not budge.

  "I am clean, MacLeod," she said between clenched teeth, trying to dismiss the sudden feeling of warmth where his fingers explored, then lingered.

  "Oh? So you wish me to move onto another spot?"

  He almost laughed at her quick nod. She glared at him when he did.

  Did the man have a thing for water, she wondered, trying to concentrate on something other than the placement of his hands. It was not easy, this detachment. Her face grew flushed, but it was simply the heat of her bath water, it was not his closeness and the intimate, stroking position of his hands. His mouth licked the outline of her ear, and then swooped to caress the heated scent of her neck.

  She closed her eyes.

  She certainly did not mean to lean back against him, allowing him to place small, sucking kisses against the side of her neck. Nor did she intend to lift suddenly weak hands to stoke his arms and feel the texture of his sun darkened skin against her palms.

  "You no longer need to be stoic, Judith," he said, a light rasp to his voice. "I'll never let you be hurt again."

  "Then cease, MacLeod," she said faintly, her voice not as strong as she would have wished, her tone not as forceful.

  "Do you truly wish me to?" he murmured, his lips sliding over her shoulder.

  She did not answer him, which was response enough.

  His fingers combed through the silken curls nestled between her thighs, his thumbs parted the folds of her submerged skin and delved even further. She was startled by his touch, would have raised up in the water, but he held her imprisoned by his mouth, by the gentle nip of his teeth at her neck.