by Ruby Duvall
“I’ll do my duty and house that girl for a short while but then she’s gone,” he vowed, lowering his fist. They began walking again.
“I should warn ye of one thing though,” Kenneth eventually said as they came close to his home.
“And what’s that?” Iain sighed. A headache had taken root in the back of his skull.
“Do ye remember the stories yer uncle used to tell us?”
“Aye and I am ashamed that I was once foolish enough to believe them.”
“But Iain, every great story contains a seed of truth. I remember a story about a fairy that ruined the life of a mortal man with just a kiss.” Iain rubbed the back of his aching head.
“And yer point?”
“Just be careful, Iain. The fae, or whatever name they’re known by, are cunning creatures,” his brother-in-law said, not elaborating. They arrived at his house then and Kenneth said he would check on the farmhands once Beth was put to bed. The redhead then entered his home and Iain turned to walk back toward his own house.
From Kenneth’s front door, he saw Emma and Aili at the river. Emma was scrubbing her face and wearing Gwen’s second-best dress—her best one had been the one she was burned in. Emma’s pink hair was hidden under a plain piece of linen. Inappropriate but necessary, he supposed. By the time he arrived, she was looking at something in her hand.
Seeing her in his sister’s dress, he couldn’t help the anger churning in his gut. Gwen had been a brave and clever woman but the lass who now wore it seemed to be nothing but a mad beggar.
“Does the dress fit well?” he asked, not bothering to hide his vexation. The girl jumped with surprise, stood and then turned around.
Though a wee bit of her pink hair showed under her kertch, she looked normal. The glittery powder on her skin was gone, revealing a generous sprinkling of lovely freckles on her forehead, nose and cheeks. Had they been there before? The dark lining around her eyes was also gone and though her lips were still flushed from scrubbing, the dark red stain on her mouth had vanished. She rather looked like she had just been thoroughly kissed.
He was stunned by the transformation. His mind tried to reconcile the first image he had of her with the one now presented to him but couldn’t believe that both were the same young woman.
“Let me see ye now, dear,” Aili said, grabbing Emma’s arm again to pull her face in close. Iain realized as he broke eye contact with her that he had been staring at her slack-jawed. “Good, good. Ye’re turning into a lovely lass,” she crooned. Emma stood straight once the old woman released her.
“Ye keep that bit of soap. Iain here will help ye draw a bath later,” Aili said with a nod. Iain shot an angry look at her, annoyed that she had volunteered him for such a laborious chore. “I’ll be returning to my wee house then. Those bastard neighbors of mine may ransack it if I’m gone too long. Just need to fetch my basket,” she said. Without any comment to Iain at all, she turned and waddled toward his house, smacking her cane into the ground as she went.
“I’m sorry about all of this,” Emma said. “I promise to be a good guest and I’ll work hard. You won’t regret it.”
Iain couldn’t help it when he answered, “I already do.”
Chapter Four
His acidic answer smarted and she fought the tightness in her chest with deep breaths. Blinking away the sting in her eyes, she told herself that she had to be stronger than this.
Iain was a shrewd, suspicious man but she had to deal with him. If she wanted answers to the riddle in her locket and some semblance of a life, she had to prove to him that she wasn’t the one-woman circus she certainly seemed to be.
“Soap and hot water will make my hair fade faster. I can prepare it myself if you just show me how,” she responded, straightening her spine. “A bath wouldn’t hurt you either.” Striding past him, she made to follow Aili and make sure the woman had a proper send-off. The old woman had been the only adult to genuinely welcome her. She heard him splutter and then the sounds of him walking quickly to catch up. She forced herself not to jump when he appeared at her side and kept pace.
“I wash myself every day,” he said.
“By ‘wash’, do you mean using cold water on your face and hands in the morning, or do you mean using hot water and soap on your entire body?” she asked, looking askance at him.
“Drawing a bath takes too long. I dinna have the time for such a luxury.”
“With me around, you’ll have a bath every day,” she said. Iain’s eyebrows slanted. “I insist,” she emphasized, leveling her eyes at him. “Just help me this one time.” Emma wasn’t completely ignorant of how a medieval bath was prepared. Hauling endless buckets of water sounded tiring indeed.
However, she also didn’t want to catch the bubonic plague.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Ye didna mention yer family name earlier,” he then said. Emma grimaced, realizing she couldn’t tell him her last name. She had always known that it was a Scottish name but her family had never really been involved in their Scottish ancestry. Now she wished they had.
“My father was Jason and my mother was Danielle.” She didn’t like using past tense when referring to her parents, especially when it was more correct to say “will be” but she couldn’t lead him to believe that she had somewhere to which she could return. It was the best answer she could give him. They neared the house again.
“No brothers or sisters? Do ye have any family name at all?” he persisted.
Choosing to ignore his second question, she answered the first. “My older brother passed away several years ago.” Iain stopped walking altogether but she continued into the house, having spotted Aili inside.
The elderly woman stood in the center of the room, her eyes vacant and the hem of her skirt much too close to the fire. Her cane lay on the ground and her basket still sat on one end of the table’s nearest bench. Emma darted forward to pull the old woman away from the hearth.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, lightly shaking the woman’s shoulders. She heard Iain enter the house behind her. “Aili?” Emma had already taken a close look at the old woman twice—both times involuntarily—and had seen the unmistakable fog of cataracts clouding the lenses of her eyes. That and a high degree of myopia had made her legally blind. In a few years, she would probably be completely blind.
Sagging with age, Aili was missing many of her teeth and a small mole sat above her left eye. Her hair was mostly gray but Emma couldn’t see much of it from under the kertch. However, she could see the younger, more beautiful Aili underneath, one who had lived a long, full life. A very hard life.
A few seconds later, the old woman snapped out of whatever trance she had been in. She looked confused.
“What? What…was I coming here for?” Her hands fidgeted about her head, as if looking for a button that would restore her memory. “Did we already eat?”
“You came to get your basket.” Emma guided her to the bench. “See?”
“Well, of course I did,” she nervously chuckled. “I must have been daydreaming.”
“I daydream a lot myself.” She watched as Aili took out a freshly laundered tunic and set it on the table. Next came what looked like a doublet of sorts and then finally a pair of pants, though they weren’t exactly pants as she knew them.
Aili gestured vaguely toward the clothes as she picked up her basket and tucked it against her hip. “Thank ye for the meal, Iain. Clean clothing, as promised. I mean to come again tomorrow to help Emma learn a few things.” Iain’s deeply slanted eyebrows broadcasted his instant annoyance to hear that she would be back so soon. “God knows that she would have an easier time living here if she didna have to eat yer cooking,” the old woman clucked.
Emma handed Aili her cane and looked at Iain with worry. He didn’t say anything but his frown eased when he glanced at her. Aili then headed to the door and Emma saw her out.
“Thank you again, Aili. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she called, waving at the woman’s back.
Though Emma barely caught it, the elderly woman mumbled to herself, “That went well, dinna ye think?” Tilting her head in confusion, Emma stopped waving and dropped her hand. She felt more than heard it this time when Iain followed her outside.
“She’s…strange,” she commented.
“Not as strange as ye,” he responded. A whining sound drew her attention to the dog from earlier. Restlessly, the dog sat but then immediately stood again, his tail gently wagging. “His name is Puck. His two sisters are in that paddock over there.” The dog wagged his tail faster upon hearing his name. She was tempted to smile.
“I have work to do, so I’ll show ye how to draw a bath,” Iain said. He turned and reentered the house. Emma followed, watching as he walked to the overturned wooden tub on the right side of the house. The tub was large enough for one person to sit quite comfortably inside it but it looked like she would have to wash out the inside.
After Iain turned it over, he walked to the hearth, removed the empty soup pot and set it on the table. He then walked to the wall behind the table and lifted a couple of buckets from their hooks. Returning to her, he wordlessly held out the buckets. Emma took them off his hands. As he walked to the cabinet in the back, he said, “Fill both and bring them back. While the water is heating up, fill the empty one.” He pulled out another pot, this one larger, and set it on the hearth. “When yer bath is finished, dump the water outside the house using the buckets.” He then opened one of the trunks and pulled out a long length of rough-looking cloth. Haphazardly folding it, he tossed it into her arms as he walked outside. She turned to look at him and he briefly turned back.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on the house. Dinna forget that.” Without another word, he walked off in the direction of the barn.
Emma stood there for a moment, wondering again how she had gotten herself into this mess. More importantly, why had this happened to her? Was Iain really the stag from the locket’s poem, or was she wasting her time trying to be nice to someone so bad tempered?
He was willing to house and feed her though. That was more than she could have hoped for and therefore, his kindness wasn’t a requirement.
Glancing down at the towel and empty buckets in her hands and then looking around the house, she took a deep breath and made a mental list of things she needed to get done.
—
Iain admitted to himself as he walked back toward the house several hours later that a hot bath did indeed sound good. The temperature was dropping as the sun approached the horizon and the chill was starting to penetrate. He had also been collecting manure all day to take to the village for the crop farmers to use on the second plowing of their fallow fields. It would buy him some extra grain during the August harvest.
He sighed aloud, though, to think of the mess Emma had no doubt made. She had probably spilled great amounts of water everywhere and had created a couple of inches of mud that wouldn’t completely dry for a couple of days. He also expected a great deal of complaining about the weight of the buckets and how did he honestly expect her to draw a bath every day all by herself?
A rotten day. He was certain he would get no rest that night. During the few hours he would spend abed, he would worry about a blade across his throat and with MacGregors to worry about, he would be up keeping watch with Kenneth and his farmhands. He felt certain that the MacGregors would try to carry away his few cattle and several of his sheep.
Perhaps worst of all was that Aili would be back tomorrow. His headache grew worse just thinking about the old crone. Slowly approaching the front door of his house, Iain peeked inside.
With one hand on her skirt to keep it back as she leaned over the fire pit, Emma held her other hand over the pot hanging above the flames. Her mysterious, expensive-looking ornament dangled from her neck, glinting in the firelight. Emma wasn’t wearing her kertch. Her long hair looked heavier—probably still damp. The light was considerably darker, so he couldn’t tell if her hair had faded but he allowed himself a few seconds to admire her delicate profile.
Kenneth had guessed correctly when he spoke of an attraction to Emma. Indeed, she was a very strong temptation. From the first second he had set eyes upon her, he knew that her skin was as smooth as butter, had even touched it when he had held her hands and stroked the powder from her face. He didn’t want to contemplate what he would give to stroke her cheek once more.
She had a graceful neck and a light way of walking. Her breasts weren’t large but he had never cared for a heavy bosom, such as what Rossalyn often pressed against him. Pert flesh, enough to fill his hands, was exactly what Emma had. He could only imagine how soft the rest of her was.
If she were a normal woman, he would have done everything in his power to have her. However, she wasn’t normal—far from it—and his brother-in-law’s mention of the deceitful fairy in his uncle’s story seemed to haunt him, reminding him that she wasn’t to be trusted.
Silently stepping into the house, he looked around and was glad to see that the ground was still dry. Both the large ring she had been carrying and her fairy wings were gone, though to where he didn’t know. Already burned? The tub to his right was steaming with hot water and he was surprised to see that she had placed several flat rocks in a ring around the edge of the tub. One of his stools was placed nearby, on top of which sat his clean clothing. The small bar of soap Aili had given her lay on a rock within arm’s reach of the tub.
“What are those for?” he asked, pointing at the rocks. Emma gasped and leaped back, pressing her hands to her heart.
“You scared me,” she sighed, dropping her hands. She then looked to where he pointed. “I thought it might be a little cleaner to stand on the rocks and dry off instead of standing on the ground.” He raised one eyebrow. “I can put the rocks back though, if you don’t like it,” she amended.
“I dinna care,” he said with a shrug. Behind her, the table was nearly bare. Her strange bag sat on one end but only the water jug and the dishes with leftover bread and cheese remained. “Where are the other dishes?” he asked cantankerously, nodding toward the table.
“I washed them and put them in the cabinets,” she explained with a grimace. “Should I not do that again?”
“Oh.” The fire in his anger died away but he refused to feel any remorse. She was taking too many liberties with his possessions—his family’s possessions, which now were all he had of them. He rubbed the back of his head again as his headache grew even worse. “Just ask me next time.”
“Does your head hurt?” she asked. Iain gritted his teeth, wishing that the stress she represented would just disappear.
“Aye. What of it?” he replied with exasperation. She gave him a wry look and walked to the table without a word. He watched with increasing wariness as she dug through the contents of her sack. After a few seconds of searching, she pulled out a tiny box. The lid flipped open and she plucked out something small and white. After closing the box and dropping it back into her satchel, she picked up the water jug and walked back to him.
He resisted the urge to back away, worried somehow that she would be close enough to smell the day’s work on him. She seemed to always smell clean and sweet.
“Swallow this with some water.” She held up the small white chunk. “Don’t chew it, just swallow.”
“What is it?” he asked with one eyebrow high on his forehead.
“It’s not poison, if that’s what you’re worried about. This is medicine. It’ll stop your headache.”
“Do ye think me an utter fool?”
“Would you like me to take another one to prove that it’s safe?” she offered. “I just want to help you. I want to start repaying you somehow.” Iain could think of a far more pleasurable way to pay him but he really would be a fool then.
He reluctantly took the jug from her but when he held out his hand for the medicine, he saw that his palms were covered with dirt and sweat.
“Open your mouth,” she said, raising her hand. After a s
econd’s hesitation, he did. “Wider.” Waiting for her to drop the medicine into his mouth, he clenched his hands around the water jug, feeling like a silly child. Her fingers brushed his lips as she laid the pill on his tongue and all he could think about was closing his lips around the tips of her fingers.
“Now take a drink.” Bringing the jug to his lips, he took one big gulp and felt the medicine wash down his throat. He then handed the jug back to her waiting hands. She fidgeted with the handle.
“So um, your bath is ready. This last bit of water should be enough.” She waved her hand toward the pot suspended over the fire. The peat he had tossed in at midday was now nearly spent and he was grateful for the excuse to walk away from her. Crossing the room to the pile of dried peat in the corner, he pulled one brick off the top and set it atop the flames in the fire pit. Emma still stood in the same place, silently looking at him.
“Will ye watch me undress as well?” he asked. “I dinna mind but I imagine ye’d feel uneasy.”
Her eyes widened and she offered an apology. “I’ll just go outside for a while and…find something to do. How much time do you need?” She walked around the opposite side of the fire to the table, picked up her bag and set down the jug.
“A few minutes,” he guessed. She nodded, looped her bag over her head and shoulder and then disappeared through the door. He walked to the steaming tub of water and grudgingly admitted that perhaps she wasn’t the bad omen he had believed her to be. As he unwound and removed his shoes, he tried to understand what strange and rare circumstances had brought such a creature to his door and moreover, what reason she would have to hide her story.
After tugging his tunic over his head and tossing it aside, he stepped into the tub, sighing aloud. His father had said that bathing was unnecessary but Iain had always wondered at that. Something inside him loosened whenever he had the luxury of a hot bath. The only thing more relieving was found with a woman.