Longing

by Mary Balogh

  “No,” he said harshly, “there is something that will hurt more than that, Siân. The whips will hurt more.”

  “Tell them,” she said. “Please?”

  He gazed at her in silence for a long while. “I will see what I can do, cariad,” he said. “But I cannot promise anything. Fair warning has been given. You have been provided with a way out. Punishment will follow if you do not take it.”

  She smiled at him. “Not if you speak up for me,” she said. “Thank you, Owen.”

  His face blurred before her eyes suddenly as all her deep affection for him welled up in her and reminded her that she did not love him, that she was deceiving him by not breaking off their engagement, that she had lain with another man up on the mountain and loved that other man.

  Owen!

  If only she loved him. If only.

  His kiss was gentle and rather brief.

  “I’ll walk you home,” he said. “Unless you want that cup of tea.”

  She shook her head.

  He kissed her rather more fiercely in the wind and the rain outside her grandfather’s house a few minutes later.

  “Siân,” he said against her lips, “save yourself. Stay away from bloody Craille and his brat tomorrow. I want to protect you but can’t. I feel like an impotent man. Only you can save yourself.”

  She pressed her lips to his. “I must do what I must do,” she said. “But you are going to help me, Owen. I know you are. You are very wonderful.”

  Too wonderful to be deceived, she thought as she lay awake upstairs in her uncle’s bed later. She should have been more open with him. She should have told him that she could not marry him. She should have removed from his shoulders the burden of feeling responsible for protecting her. But she had given in to cowardice. How could she tell him now? It was altogether the wrong time. She would wait until after . . .

  But her stomach lurched and she felt physically sick as her mind pulled to a halt. She would not even think of before and after. Or of the event that separated the two. She burrowed farther beneath the bedclothes.

  * * *

  He had not slept at all, though he was lying in his bed. Three nights had passed. It was probably the night they would return if the poor men they had warned had not done what they had been instructed to do. He waited, all his muscles taut, for the first sign that at least one of their potential victims had proved stubborn.

  Siân’s young brother-in-law, as like as not.

  And yet wakefulness and tautness of muscles did not after all prepare him for an expected horror, he found when the first unearthly howling and bellowing began. It was worse for being expected. He felt his blood run cold. He felt his breath catch in his throat.

  Poor bloody fool, whoever he was that had defied them. Or whoever they were. He would not like to hear that sound and know they were coming for him, Alex thought. He closed his eyes and tried to lie still. He listened intently for a sound from Verity’s room and prayed that tonight she would sleep through it.

  There was a long wait for the second bout of wailing and bellowing. A silence filled with tension and horror. The whole of Cwmbran waited as he did, he guessed. The Scotch Cattle, whoever they were, were marvelously clever not to work in silence and secrecy. They were clever to prey upon the imagination of a whole townful of people. The first howl had heralded their arrival. The second was an indication that they had their first victim and were dragging him up the mountain. The third would mean that they had finished with him—poor beggar—and were setting out for their next victim. And so on.

  How many victims?

  But before he heard them for the third time, Alex was on his feet and pacing his darkened bedroom, his fists tight at his sides, his teeth clamped together. He regretted his promise to Siân more than he regretted any promise he had ever made. He felt utterly helpless and impotent, confined to the castle, while an unknown number of his people were being chastised out there on the hills.

  Why had he promised?

  Why had she made him promise?

  He wondered if she had stayed in her bed this time or if she had gone up the mountain again with her brother-in-law, as she had done the last time. Perhaps she was out there now, he thought, staring out the window into damp and gloomy darkness, while he was safe in here.

  Damn you, Siân. He pounded the edge of his fists against the windowsill. Damn you.

  He wondered if anyone ever became accustomed to the sound and could sleep through it or at least lie through it feeling nothing but indifference. His stomach churned sickeningly when finally the Scotch Cattle howled for a third time. Some poor fool’s punishment was over. Iestyn Jones’s, perhaps? Had he been first tonight? And how many more were there? Why were they being punished? For refusing to join the march on Newport?

  Alex sighed with frustration. Tomorrow he would make it clear to Siân that his promise applied to this night only. He was not going to allow this to happen again. Even if it meant bringing in special constables or soldiers, he was going to put an end to such terrorism.

  He stood at the window for longer than an hour, hardly aware of the fact that the air was cold, even with the window closed. But there was no further sound.

  Only one victim?

  The thought was somehow chilling. Only one? What was the crime that only one man out of the whole town was guilty of it?

  He would find out tomorrow, he vowed. By God, he would find out.

  She was not sleeping, of course, though she was lying on her uncle’s bed upstairs. Neither was she undressed. She was wearing her oldest dress and shift. She was staring up into darkness. Her grandparents and Emrys were doing likewise, she guessed, though they had all gone to bed at the usual time and in the usual manner.

  It was almost a relief, Siân thought, setting an uncontrollably shaking hand over her mouth, when the howling began. Almost a relief. It was beginning. Her hand, though icy cold, gradually stilled and she felt strangely calm. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She sat very still, her hands in her lap, and waited. She listened to her grandfather going downstairs and saw light around the edge of her door. They had lit the lamp.

  She wished, in her strange state of calm as she waited, that they did not howl up in the hills to warn of their approach. It took time for them to come down. Perhaps not very long. Perhaps ten minutes, perhaps fifteen. It seemed more like ten or fifteen hours. She wished they had just come to the house and howled and thrown open the door and come for her.

  The waiting was the cruel part. Her heart was beginning to feel as if it were lodged in both her throat and her ears.

  One, two, three, she counted slowly, closing her eyes. One, two, three in, one, two, three out. She counted more slowly for the outward breaths and opened her mouth. In through her nose, out through her mouth. She gripped the edge of the bed tightly.

  Would they go away if she promised never again to go back to Glanrhyd Castle? If she begged and wept and groveled? Would they? Was it too late?

  One, two, three in through the nose. One, two, three out through the mouth.

  And then she gripped harder and doubled up until her forehead touched her knees as the howling began again and the door downstairs crashed inward. She lost control of her breathing.

  She would beg. She would beg and beg. She would promise anything. Anything they asked. She would do anything. Anything they wanted.

  One, two, three; one, two, three.

  Somehow she got to her feet.

  Grandad and Emrys both had their shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, she saw as she came quietly down the stairs. Gran had the broom. There were four Scotch Cattle in the kitchen, all hooded. There were more beyond the open doorway. Grandad was swearing the air blue.

  “I believe,” Siân said, her voice distinct and amazingly steady, “that you have come for me.”

  “That we hav
e, Siân Jones,” someone said in a gruff, hoarse whisper.

  “I am ready,” she said, lifting her chin.

  But her family had other ideas. Siân stood quietly and watched, feeling curiously detached, as first her grandfather and then Emrys were overwhelmed and tied to chairs with lengths of rope that must have been brought for the purpose. Gran’s broom was snapped over someone’s knee.

  “You do not need to drag me,” Siân said, when hands finally clamped on her arms and two of the Scotch Cattle hurried her toward the door. “I will come with you.” They should have gagged Grandad, that curious detached part of her mind thought. No one hearing him now would have guessed that he was a God-fearing man. It would take Gran a while to free him and Emrys from their knots.

  But they dragged her anyway, their strides longer than her own so that she had to run to keep up to them and even so stumbled frequently on the darkened slopes. There were no moon and stars tonight. It was not actually raining but the air was cold and damp and the grass and heather underfoot were soaked and slippery. They rushed her upward in silence. She did not count them. Her mind was not lucid enough. But they all seemed like giants to her and there were many of them.

  Please, dear God, she prayed. Please, dear God. A thought had struck her—strangely, for the first time. She did not know of any other woman who had been the victim of Scotch Cattle. What if part of her punishment was to be raped? It had never struck her before—before being alone on the mountain with perhaps ten large, strong men, all with their identities quite firmly concealed.

  Oh, please, dear God, she prayed. Please, dear God.

  She did not know where they were. Her mind was incapable of registering direction or the normally familiar landmarks. She only knew that they moved steadily upward before stopping finally. Her arms were released and she found herself standing alone, staring down at the four stakes already driven into the ground and very visible even in the darkness.

  She raised her chin though she did not lift her eyes.

  “Siân Jones,” the same hoarse voice as had spoken in her grandfather’s kitchen said, “you have been accused of informing against your own people to the owner of Cwmbran and putting them all in danger. You have failed to comply with the demand that you end your employment. You have therefore been sentenced to twenty lashes with the whip.”

  Twenty. Oh, dear God. Her knees almost buckled. But now that the moment had come, she had found some inner strength, some inner stubbornness. She stood very still, looking down at one of the stakes.

  Someone stepped up behind her—she did not turn her head. He did not open the buttons of her dress. He tore it open so that she felt it going from neck to hips. Then with a loud rending sound her shift was torn in two. She felt cold, damp air and the clawing of panic against bare skin.

  And then she was facedown on the cold, wet, hard ground, her arms and legs being forced in four different directions and tied to the stakes. Four men worked simultaneously—and silently—and then she felt the hands of one of them pull the torn edges of her dress and shift back and down over her shoulders so that she was fully exposed from shoulders to hips.

  Her back prickled. She pressed the side of her face against the ground and gripped the stakes with her hands. Whoever had tied her left wrist had tied too tightly, she thought irrelevantly. The blood could not flow freely. She would have pins and needles in her hand when she was released. There was something almost hysterically funny in the thought.

  “She is a woman,” another voice whispered. “She cannot take twenty. Ten will be enough.”

  “She is a woman who has betrayed us all,” the first voice said. “She is lucky not to have twenty-five.”

  “Ten,” the other voice whispered.

  “Twenty,” the first man said. “And let me see neither of you spare the whip.”

  “Fifteen,” a third voice said aloud. “Split the difference and give her fifteen. Full force. The whips are damp. Fifteen with damp whips will feel as bad as twenty-five.”

  “Fifteen, then,” the first man whispered grudgingly. “Be thankful that you have a champion here, Siân Jones.”

  But Siân was beyond thought. Let them just begin, she thought. Let them give her thirty strokes if they would just begin.

  And then she was aware of a whistling sound and a thud and almost belatedly, it seemed, felt a needle-sharp pain that was too intense to be absorbed for a moment. Only the shock of it told her that one of her lashes had been delivered. A shock that felt as if it had stopped her heart and had certainly stopped her breathing. A knowledge that she had been hurt before her brain could fully register pain.

  And then the second. The pain screeching loudly at her.

  “Stop a moment.”

  She did not hear the voice. Her brain and her body grappled with a pain more intense than she had ever experienced or ever imagined—even during the past three days. And part of her waited for the third lash. For the unbearable one that would surely kill her.

  “Open your mouth,” someone was whispering, someone who was kneeling on the grass beside her head.

  Mindlessly she did as she was told and a thick wedge of some rag was shoved between her teeth.

  “Bite down on this,” the voice said, slipping for a moment from its unidentifiable whispering.

  But she neither saw him nor heard him. She only cursed inwardly at the delay.

  Thirteen more lashes. She did not count. She did not think. She became raw pain. If she thought at all it was with amazement that one could endure such pain without passing out or without dying. And with surprise that it did not become dulled after the first few strokes but became more intense with each successive lash, as the whips whistled against welts already raw and bleeding.

  She did not know it was over. She did not feel her wrists and ankles being cut free.

  She did not hear the final howls and bellows and wails of the men who surrounded her spread-eagled body.

  She was unaware that they had gone away.

  She did not hear her grandfather’s voice, Or Emrys’s. Or Huw’s or Iestyn’s. She did not hear Iestyn crying or feel him stroking back her hair or kissing her cheek or telling her how proud he was of her.

  And yet she did not lose consciousness.

  Alexander, she thought.

  Alexander, Alexander. Where are you?

  Why have you not come?

  20

  ALEX had not summoned Josiah Barnes. Doubtless Barnes would know. Everyone must know by now who the sole victim of the Scotch Cattle had been last night—except the Marquess of Craille. But he would not ask Barnes. He would find out from Siân.

  She had known in advance and on the strength of her knowledge had extracted that promise from him not to leave the castle last night. He wondered if her fears had been realized. Perhaps not. Perhaps the victim had been someone else—perhaps her young brother-in-law had decided after all to toe the line.

  He would invite her to luncheon, he thought. Or rather, he would command her to come to report on Verity’s progress. She would hardly refuse a command. He was going to send Miss Haines up to the nursery with the invitation, but he decided to go himself. He would be able to see from her face if it had been her brother-in-law.

  The nursery was very quiet. As he opened the door, he half expected to see the room empty. Perhaps they had gone for a morning walk since the weather was decent for the first time in several days. It would be wet underfoot in the hills, though.

  But they were seated together at the table close to the windows, Verity bent over a sheet of paper, concentrating on some task she had been set, Siân sitting beside her, very straight-backed.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Don’t let me interrupt you. Carry on.”

  Verity smiled sunnily at him. “I am doing penmanship, Papa,” she said. “Look. All my letters are the same size.”

 
“A miraculous improvement,” he said, coming up behind her and looking over her shoulder. “And very neat and nicely shaped letters, too. I hope Mrs. Jones is pleased with you.”

  “Yes,” Siân said. “She is trying hard.”

  He looked fully at her for the first time. There was not a vestige of color in her face, unless one counted the dark shadows beneath her eyes. Even her lips were bloodless. There were some cuts on her lower lip, as if she had bitten it. Her face was totally without expression. Although she looked at him when she spoke, he noticed that only her eyes moved. She held her head high and stiff.

  She looked more like a marble statue than a woman.

  God, had they killed the boy? Or hurt him badly? He wished more than ever that he had refused to promise what she had asked. He might have been able to stop it. He might have saved her this suffering.

  “Carry on,” he said again, patting his daughter’s shoulder.

  She bent over her paper once more. He was rather surprised that Siân did not reprimand her on her posture. She usually did in that gentle, positive way she had that always made censure sound like praise and that always had the desired result. Today Verity was allowed to hunch over her work. He said nothing himself.

  He strolled to the other side of the table so that he could watch Siân without being observed himself. He would tell her soon that she was to take luncheon with him. He would get the truth out of her then. And he would kiss color back into her face and relaxation back into her body. She was sitting perfectly still and silent. He had the impression that she was paying no attention at all to what Verity was doing, even though her eyes were directed at the paper.

  At first he thought it was a thread poking up from the neckline of her dress. He even caught himself about to step forward to tuck it back under. But such an intimate gesture would not be at all the thing. He wondered idly why anyone would use red thread in order to sew a blue dress.

  And then he frowned and did take a step forward so that he was standing just a few feet behind her chair. Yes, he had not been mistaken. It was a scratch, a bloodline. Though more than the type of scratch one might give oneself carelessly with a pin. It was more like a—welt.