by Karen Ranney
"It's all right, sweet," he whispered. His arms rested on either side of her breasts, lifting them up so that her nipples peeked through the soapy water. She sank back against him, not protesting when he touched her ear with the tip of his tongue and breathed words that would have embarrassed her at another time.
This was not another time, this was now and she was without thought or reason or logic as his fingers spread her wide and entered her. She could do no more than feel as he stroked her with hands that were suddenly too knowing, too experienced.
Her head twisted away from him, her eyes were tightly shut, but she was more aware of him than she'd ever been before. The feel of his lips on her neck, his tongue dancing lightly against the line of her jaw, the sinewy muscles of his arms as they rested against her breasts, the long fingers that were sending darts of feeling spiraling through her body as an indefinable ache began somewhere deep and dark. He removed one hand from her slippery wetness and cupped her breast, gently pulling on an engorged nipple. He began to whisper to her, provocative words that echoed the feelings inside of her that were straining for something, something.
"Please," she said finally, when she could bear it no longer.
"Not yet.” He nuzzled her neck and stroked her breasts with gentle, teasing motions.
He returned his fingers to that that one spot that was so swollen and distended. He moved his body slightly, turning her chin so that he could reach her open lips. He kissed her then, tasting her passion as the feeling overwhelmed her, slowly licking her lips, their corners when she arched and shuddered. He slid his hands to her breasts, widening his fingers so that her nipples slid between them. He drew them out, slowly, his lips still fastened on hers, her hands clenching his wrists as if he were a lifeline.
Her head dropped weakly to the back of the tub and he smiled. She opened her eyes, and he saw the widened pupils, the lambent look, and his smile broadened.
"Is this the way the Scots bathe?" she asked, her smile lighting the midnight blue of her eyes.
He grinned as he lifted her from the tub. Nor did she desist when he gently dried her, then tucked her into one side of the bed and lowered himself to the other. She did not even mind the faint chuckle that she heard, as he hauled her close to him.
"You Scots have odd customs, MacLeod."
"You don't care for the practice?" One eyebrow winged heavenward and a knowing glint in his eyes made her turn her face into the pillow.
He laughed, that great barking laugh that filled the room. Extending one arm, he pulled her close.
"Would you like to hear the story of the Picts and heather ale?" he said, absently stroking her hair back from her face.
"Tell your story, MacLeod," she said, feeling as if every muscle in her body had gone limp. It could have been the hot bath, but she suspected it was due more to the MacLeod's ministrations.
She allowed him to cuddle her closer.
"Well," he began, "I've already told you that the Romans came to the Highlands, but they couldn't subdue the Picts. However, another tribe of people, probably another branch of the first Scots, decided to have a try. They had heard the story of the mystic heather ale, which had a rare and wonderful bouquet, a sweet and tangy taste, was far superior to the brew we know today. The secret was passed from the king of the Picts down to his first born son, which is how the secret was kept for so many years. The king of the Scots captured the king of the Picts and demanded to know the secret. The king said that he would tell him, but only if he killed his son first. For he meant that the secret would never be known, you see. There is a verse about it, too.
My son ye maun kill,
Before you I will tell
How we brew the yill
Frae the heather bell!"
Judith stirred, thinking that this was a strange bedtime story. Alisdair only nuzzled her closer, and continued.
"The king of the Scots complied, murdering the young man. When he returned to the king of the Picts, having killed his son, he demanded to know the secret again. The king of the Picts just looked at him calmly, replying that he could kill him now, because the secret would never be known:
And though ye may kill,
I winna you tell
How we brew the yill
Frae the heather bell!
And that's how the secret died, and why the ale we brew today is only a puny replica of the original. Did you like the story?"
"I think it mirrors Scotland well, MacLeod," Judith said wryly. "Blood-thirsty, stubborn and stupid."
"Ah, but Judith," he said softly, "we can also be loyal and brave. Cunning, and quick." He raised himself up, peering down into her face. "We value courage and reward honor.” He bent to kiss her lips, a soft and gentle kiss.
He held her in his arms until she slept. She did not dream of long shadows and torture, nor had she since the first time she’d slept beside him. He wondered if she realized that, or that she cuddled next to him in her sleep, all warm and soft and inviting.
Alisdair ached with wanting to be inside her, with wanting to cool his heat in her body, but still, it was not time. When he loved Judith, it would be when she was ready, not before. Such a vow, however, meant he would be in acute pain until such a miracle happened.
Alisdair wondered if he could last that long.
CHAPTER 25
"You'll do just fine, Meggie," Judith explained patiently for the fifth time. "Your greatest danger will be in falling asleep, not in being a bad shepherdess," she said, in an effort to reassure her. There were no natural predators around Tynan. Wild dogs did not seem to be a problem and the Highlands were too isolated for poachers.
Meggie reluctantly followed Judith up the path worn into the hillside by a hundred sheep over the past weeks. Her look was grim, as if she were walking to the gallows, rather than assuming her new chore.
The few young men who could have been spared to shepherd were needed at other occupations which required strength, like harvesting the huge nets strung at the entrance to the cove, or helping to build new dwellings. The elders of the clan, those old men who sat outside their cottages and commented on the comings and goings of everything and everyone, had balked at being sequestered on a hilltop with nothing but sheep as company. Therefore, the women took turns on the hills, ensuring that the sheep didn’t stray too far from MacLeod holdings.
"None of the new lambs will be born until next spring," Judith said, "and by that time, you'll be an old master with sheep. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were not Tynan's resident animal midwife by then."
To the left, Judith could see Tynan, perched like the sentinel it was, guarding the MacLeods. Perhaps it was not black and brooding now, but it was just as ugly, just as ruined as the day she first saw it. But nearly everything else had changed, hadn't it?
Meggie still wore that look of unrepentant unwillingness, but at least she was no longer chuckling about Judith’s encounter with Fiona, an episode which brought a blush to Judith's cheek even now.
One moment, the two women were walking up the track, the next, Judith had grabbed Meggie by the arm and was roughly jerking her down into the waist high moor grass. Meggie’s mouth was open to loudly protest Judith’s actions when she glanced past her friend’s suddenly stricken face.
At the top of the hill, set in bold relief, their tunics a crimson slash against a gray Highland sky, were six mounted British soldiers. All but one of them controlled his mount with ease. The sixth held a squirming lamb, who in its fright was causing him no end of grief, not to mention the caterwauling sounds it gave off to signal its mother.
Meggie glanced at Judith, who motioned for quiet, one finger to her lips, her eyes never straying from the mounted patrol. With her left hand, she pointed to her left , to a gouge carved into the earth as if a giant had scooped it free with a huge spoon. The embankment above it, only two feet wide and weed choked, was the only place to hide on the whole hillock. Any second now, the English soldiers would cease their torturing of the
hapless lamb and might chance to glance down the hill.
She and Meggie edged slowly to their left, cautious that movement alone would signal their presence. The sound of panicked bleating became more audible, but there was nothing they could do. The lamb would be slaughtered, if not the entire flock. Even in the best of times, however, two lone women were no match for six men. This was a scant three years after Culloden and those were English soldiers.
Bennett Henderson led them. His blonde hair was a beacon, drawing Judith’s attention to the thin, aquiline face, the cold blue eyes, the thin lips curled into a smile as he watched one of his men sever the lamb's tail with a flick of his wrist and a wickedly sharp dagger.
All the English had to do was move five feet in either direction, and they could easily spot the two women cowering below them. Tynan was a long way away, and no men worked these deserted hills where the sheep roamed freely. Their only chance was to remain silent and hope the English patrol passed them by, that the only cruelty they showed this day was for a hapless lamb.
They reached the relative safety of the embankment, the sight of the soldiers blocked from view by the same gorse choked earth that might save them. Judith shivered, crossed her arms around her stomach, pressing her back against the concave earth, almost as if she wished to press herself into it.
This was a nightmare, revisited and sun lit. In her dreams, she could never outlast him, never escape him. Judith could only pray reality did not mirror her dreams.
The sound of the lamb's distress was growing louder. So, too, the masculine laughter which punctuated it. Judith put her hands over her ears, and turned, pressing the side of her face into the earthen bank, absorbing the smell of it, the cleanness of it, the rightness of it. If she trembled, she held herself too tightly to feel it, pacing the moments by the feverish beat of her heart, by her shallow, open mouthed breaths. She willed herself to be anywhere but here, with Bennett no more than fifty feet away.
Meggie, beside her, was just as still, her own panic fueled by the stark terror on Judith's face.
There was silence now. The birds did not call, the waves ceased their rolling to shore, the gentle bleating of the sheep had ceased. It was as if everything were waiting. An eternity of time measured in long, breathless moments. For discovery or freedom?
It was to be discovery.
Judith saw the sleeve of his tunic first, just as she pushed Meggie from the gorse choked earth and downwards toward Tynan.
"Run, Meggie, run!" Her voice sounded raw, as if a scream were trapped against her throat.
Meggie, damn her, did not move, frozen into immobility by the sight of the five soldiers who surrounded her, their grins enlivened by anticipation. She slowly backed away from them, careful steps accompanied by wide eyed fear.
Judith wanted to scream at her, shout, beat her hands against the other woman's back. Anything to get her to move, to make her feet pound against the track, to force her to run for shelter, protection! But a hand gloved in leather was clamped cruelly against Judith’s mouth, an arm rigid in its strength was pulling her inexorably back against a male body she knew too well. Her struggles were futile, her kicking found nothing but air.
"Sweet Judith," Bennett Henderson said, his breath upon her cheek oddly fresh and smelling of mint. It should have been fetid and foul. "I have missed you. Dare I tell you how much?"
Judith closed her eyes against his words, against the sight of the men approaching Meggie. They laughed and taunted her with promises of what would happen next.
Please God. What a useless prayer. How many nights had she prayed that worthless prayer?
"Shall we watch, dearest Judith? Although it was Anthony's bent, was it not? More so than mine. He chose to watch, I chose to act. The perfect pair, with the perfect wife between us. Tell me, dearest," Bennett said, his hand inching down her bodice, cupping the softness he found there with the most gentle of touches, "have you missed our little soirees?"
The arm tightened against her throat as she pulled away, the red wool abraded her skin, her words of loathing muffled behind a leather gauntleted hand.
Meggie's screams lanced the air, sharp, shrill. Judith struggled again, but it was as if she were moving against air, there was nothing she could do to hurt her attacker. That was the most horrible part of it all. If she could have inflicted any pain, however small, it would have made her feel less powerless, less a victim. Her blows, however, were ineffectual, her struggles were as impotent as praying to God for relief.
Bennett turned her in the direction where Meggie now lay, her skirts around her waist, her legs held apart by two of the men. A third pumped rhythmically into her while scratching her breasts, freed from her ripped bodice. Another solder held her arms while she struggled, one other waited impatiently for his companion to finish. A section of her own petticoat had been ripped and thrust into her mouth, but it was not enough to totally silence Meggie’s frantic cries.
"You are next, sweet," Bennett said, pushing his arousal against her back. "I'm not a selfish man, I share what I have."
Hate was too small a word to hold all the feelings Bennett’s touch invoked. If emotions had colors, the rage she felt would be bloody black, the color of witch’s Sabbaths, unholy practice and congealed blood. Could it be possible to live with so much rage? And how impotent this feeling. How empty her hate. It could not save Meggie. It would not protect her.
It was, strangely, the sheep which saved Judith. The lamb's cries had alerted its mother, which had parted from the flock in search of her lost offspring. The flock, more than willing to follow anything at its head, had swung off from their determined trek across the moors. It was as if a giant sea of white undulated over the short grass.
"Get your mind back where it should be, laddie," Malcolm said with a none too gentle push. He had stood on the top of the ladder handing thatch up to the MacLeod for what seemed like hours, and now the man had his sights not turned on the nearly completed roof, but on the rise of land near Tynan. There was a frown of concentration on the MacLeod’s face.
"Malcolm," he said, the tone of his voice sharp and oddly urgent, "did we ever finish the fence near the southeast pasture?"
"I've only got two hands, lad," Malcolm said, grunting under the weight of the thatch, “it’s on my list of chores to do.” He dropped the thatch onto the ground below.
"Well," Alisdair said, moving across the front of the roof in preparation for descent, "unless we get there first, it looks like the sheep will harvest those fields before we get a chance."
The mere mention of danger to the food supply was a great motivator with Malcolm, who in turn rallied the rest of the building crew.
The English soldiers, brave and dauntless when accosting two women, chose not to confront thirty angry Highlanders armed with timbers and hammers.
They were too late, however, to save Meggie.
CHAPTER 26
"How is she, today, Alisdair?" Judith asked in a low tone, careful not to disturb the sleeping occupant of the bed. She looked down at the huddled form of her friend under the bedcovers and wanted to weep. Again.
Judith had spent the last two weeks here, in Ian's room converted for Meggie's use The stairs were too steep for Sophie to climb and Malcolm did not intrude. Here, she was not subjected to the contempt of the clan and Alisdair had become only physician, not husband.
Meggie was turned into herself, into a place so deep and so dark that Judith wondered if she would ever return from the journey.
"No better and no worse, I'm afraid," Alisdair answered quietly. He didn't know if Meggie would heal. Body, yes, but mind? How did he tell that to Judith? When Meggie slept, it was too deep, an abyss that ended in horrible nightmares, from which she surfaced with high pitched screams and flailing arms. She reminded him too much of Judith, of that void into which he could never reach, never help her heal. Awake, Meggie lay wide eyed in Ian's bed, staring up at the ceiling as if the Holy Writ were engraved there. She didn't speak, nor
did it appear that she heard his words or Judith's coaxing entreaties.
Alisdair’s intent gaze fixed upon his wife both with a physician's eye and a husband's concern. The incident in the glen had affected more than just Meggie. His fists clenched as he recalled the scene upon the hillside. His breath had nearly stopped when he had come over the rise and seen Meggie being raped and Judith entrapped in another soldier's arms. The English had mounted their horses with a speed he'd damned them for. Alisdair had nearly reached their leader when Bennett Henderson had spurred that stallion from hell and escaped his reach. He wanted to go after the mounted soldiers, despite the fact they were English and only English justice prevailed in the Highlands now. He wanted to kill the men who had dared touch his wife and raped one of his clanswomen. Yet, he was prevented by law from arming his people, prevented by the lack of horseflesh from chasing after the English patrol, prevented by his nationality from demanding justice. English justice did not extend to inhabitants of Scotland.
Alisdair remembered too well how he'd found his wife. Judith remained frozen against the embankment, her eyes fixed upon Meggie, who lay sprawled on the grass like a broken and discarded doll.
Judith had flinched when he gently laid a hand upon her arm.
"They've gone, Judith," he said, his face a study in worry. Long moments later, she stirred, stepping away from the indentation in the earth she had created in her terror. She would have willingly crawled into an open grave to avoid Bennett Henderson.
Alisdair extended an arm around her shoulders, hugged her tightly against him until her trembling eased a little. He carried her to a small clutch of stones not far from the hillock, while Meggie was covered and slowly borne to Tynan. There was a muttering of angry voices and Alisdair pulled his wife tighter into his arms so that she was concealed from prying eyes and vicious words.