by TC Calligari
“Let’s not lie, Elaine.” Teirnan interrupted.
“Well I wasn’t sorry.” She wailed. “Not before, but I am now. I swear I am now!”
“Just tell her what you told me and leave out the rest.” He sounded both angry and resigned, as if he just wanted to get to the end.
Deirdre watched him with narrowed eyes, trying to anticipate his purpose.
“My Lady,” Elaine began again. “I’m sure a woman of your status doesn’t remember a lass like me, just a maid, and…”
“I remember you.” Deirdre kept all emotion from her voice.
“Yes, well, he said you would.” Elaine’s eyes shifted to Teirnan for an instant and then away, as if she feared him greatly. Deirdre supposed that as her laird he had the ability to make her life miserable, should he choose.
“Well, you see… the summer you visited I was working as a scullery maid. I’m off helping a midwife a few days away now, seeing as Lady Skye said she wanted me off of the estate after… well after that summer.”
Deirdre’s appreciation for her friend grew. Skye had always been observant but never had she pressed Deirdre for details of her sudden departure that summer. Deirdre had assumed that no one else, but she and Teirnan, had known the true story. Apparently, Skye had a singular skill at keeping secrets.
“So, anyways, M’lady, that summer was my first of marriageable age and my father was pressing me to get married… one less mouth to feed, you know.” Elaine shifted uncomfortably. “Well I had this terrible longing for Master Teirnan, laird Teirnan, I mean. There aren’t that many young women here at the estate and I figured that I had a fair chance of catching his eye, until you came to visit.”
Deirdre sighed. She had no desire to hear the story of Elaine’s seduction of Teirnan.
“The thing is, that Mast… laird Teirnan never returned my attentions, not for lack of trying on my part. He was not interested in me before your visit, and once you were around no lass had any chance of catching his eye.”
Deirdre stared hard at Elaine. Could this be true? She longed to see Teirnan but he stood out of sight, watching the women from afar.
“My father wanted me to marry the butcher’s son, a mean, brutish lad who had no interest in a scullery wife. I would have done anything to get out of that arrangement, you see? Anything!” Elaine’s eyes pleaded for Deirdre to understand, to not hold her actions against her. “I followed Teirnan one afternoon and I saw your meeting at the cave. I know it was wrong, but I waited there the next day. I hoped that I would meet with him and I could make him love me like he loved you.”
Deirdre was having trouble breathing. How did she know that Teirnan had not forced Elaine to tell this lie?
“Instead, you showed up. I figured that I had a better chance of getting you to leave Teirnan in anger than convincing him to choose me over you. So, I lied.” She admitted. “I wanted him for myself so I drove you away.”
Deirdre raised a shaking hand to her mouth. She was hesitant to believe, and yet, her heart told her it was true. However, she reminded herself, there was still much left unexplained.
“No.” Deirdre shook her head. She saw Teirnan tense in her peripheral vision; clearly he had wanted her to believe. “No.” she repeated. She turned towards Teirnan and directed her statement to him. “You were happy to see me go, you said so. And even these following years there has been nothing but hate between us.”
Teirnan looked at her with tentative eyes.
“Tell her the rest, Elaine.” Never did his gaze waver from Deirdre’s.
When she turned away, back toward the tale-weaver, his look was like a physical touch that burned along her skin.
“Yes, there’s more.” Elaine blew her nose in preparation to continue. “I knew that laird Teirnan would chase after you, begging for an explanation, so I needed to ensure that he had no desire to follow you back to the castle.”
Deirdre’s heart thudded in her chest. She felt the strange urge to vomit, as if everything inside of her were being wrung out and twisted.
“I convinced my brother to do me a service. I had to do his chores for a month, but he agreed to help.” She added the side note as if the month’s chores were penance enough for her plotting. “He is about laird Teirnan’s age, you see. So, when all the lads go out to run as bears they usually do some talking afterward at the town fire. Well, Ian might have said some things to your husband that maybe weren’t the most honest of tales, but they put a fire in his heart against you once and for all.”
“What tales?” Deirdre’s words were a whisper even to her own ears.
“Lady, please…” Elaine begged.
“Tell her.” Teirnan instructed.
Elaine sighed, visibly defeated.
“Ian might have said that you had lain with him a time or two, and maybe that you joked about fooling another lover into thinking you cared.” Her words came out in a rush of admission.
Deirdre could not believe her ears. She stared, open-mouthed at the scullery maid.
“Ian made to joke about the other man, and so laird Teirnan took it as meaning himself, obviously, and the deed was done. You left the next day and I never thought twice about it except that Teirnan still never laid eyes on me. When he demanded that I tell the truth, I was proud. Then he told me you’d married but hated him anyways. It was then that I knew I’d done wrong. I truly am sorry, Lady and…”
“That’s enough, Elaine.” Teirnan interrupted again, “You may leave us.”
Elaine fumbled to stand and gathered her sodden skirts around her. With a wobbling curtsy and quite a few more sobs, she left the room.
Deirdre stared at her hands. Her mind raced over and over Elaine’s words.
Had these past years been wasted, as Teirnan had said that day in the cave? Had they lost happy years, a happy marriage to the lies of a bitter maid and her falsehoods?
Teirnan came to crouch in front of her. His hands closed over her own, hiding the tremors that caused them to shake. Still, she could not look at him. All her hate, all that time… for nothing?
He had never been unfaithful? Hated her for the same? When the truth was that their love had been real, and lasting, the entire time.
Finally, she laid her hands upon his cheeks.
“I don’t know who this Ian is.” She felt the need to ensure that Teirnan, who had been battling the same anger as she, know with absolute certainty that she had only ever belonged to him. “It has only ever been you.”
Teirnan made a sound that was half laugh half sob. “I didn’t know Elaine. Only you.”
She dropped her forehead against his and felt a tear fall from her cheek to his. “What a pair we make.”
“Deirdre,” He set her away from him so that he could look at her with absolute sincerity, “You said that you could have been happy with me, before all of the lies. I know that we haven’t started off on the best foot but, we are married already, and I can only hope that you’d be willing to try to love me again.” When she began to speak, he hushed her and continued. “I need you to know that I’ve always loved you. Even in my anger I loved you. I had to force myself to remember what Ian had said, to remind myself that you had thought us laughable, in order to maintain my anger and even then, I often failed. For me, it could only ever be you. You have my mark.” He laughed. “You have my heart.”
He wiped away the tears that were now falling in a continuous stream from Deirdre’s eyes.
“I’m sorry that we’ve lost all of this time together, and especially that we did not enjoy our wedding and marriage as we should have, but we can only move forward from this point on. Please tell me if you can remember? If you might be able to try to love me again?”
Deirdre shook her head and watched all the hope drain from his face as she tried to get the words past her tightened throat.
“No, Teirnan.” She cupped his face once more. “I don’t need to try to love you, or to remember, because I already do. I don’t think I ever stopped eit
her, no matter how hard I tried. And now, now that we know the truth, I can’t help but love you all the more, for being exactly the man I had always thought you to be.”
With that she pressed her lips to his and allowed her kiss to translate all of the love that was so difficult to express. He kissed her back with a ferocity that left her laughing.
“Teirnan, slow down.” She giggled. “We have our entire lives ahead of us.”
“Aye,” he admitted, “but I should have had at least two sons by now and what’s a laird without his heirs?”
“Oh.” She feigned a serious tone. “That’s very true. I suppose we’ll have to work on that.”
She shrieked and laughed when in one swift motion he lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the bed.
“We much time to make up for, and I intend to start right away.” He laughed as he landed alongside her on the mattress. “Deirdre Laramie, I love you.”
Deirdre pretended to contemplate her answer but was too happy to come up with anything witty and so she settled for the obvious, “And I love you, my laird.” Her whispers and giggles were muffled by the pleasant sound of their lovemaking—their first time, as husband and wife, in their marriage bed.
THE END
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Preview of Crossing the Line: Four Sultry Tales of Submission
Heat
Everything was too hot. Erica had been in Mexico City for six months working as an English language teacher and she had had no time to cool down. The sweltering heat, the oppressive smog and the overall grayness of one of the biggest cities on earth weighed upon her. But she had been too busy to unwind. Between the divorce, the new job and trying to implement a change in the immersion class at the college, Erica hadn’t even explored the museum or the zocalo.
And it was so hot. It was as if a great slab weighed her down, partially melting her, partially keeping her below the boiling point, without any way of release. Every night she would finally get home after the interminably long day and subway ride, have enough energy to eat and crawl into bed. Several times Erica had tried to release the burgeoning need growing within her, to alleviate the stress with a bit of sexual pleasure (and that was the only part of her marriage that she missed) but the few times she’d tried she had fallen asleep with her hands between her legs, unsated, with the greater deprivation of sleep winning. The need and heat built in her every day, making her agitated, short tempered, and she could little afford that with a new job in a foreign city. But there was no time for her gratification. Not until the course was in place and that would be another six months of ironing out the kinks.
Erica sighed, pulling back her blonde hair as she waited for the subway train to arrive. She was dressed as coolly as she could be and still be professional: a mid-thigh length white skirt with a short white jacket over a modest V-neck blouse. She knew she stood out in the city, with her white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Although fluent in Spanish, it had taken her a week to realize the hissing was the Mexican form of wolf-whistles. And the calls of muy buenita were not hard to figure out. Yet there’d been no time to explore the Latin lover mythos to see if there was any truth to it.
The train arrived; the same time, the same station, the same, every day. She could almost sleep on it except for having to be vigilant. As the doors sighed open Erica walked on, clutching her briefcase close, to keep it safe from the ubiquitous thieves that every train in every city had. Her free hand reached toward the handhold as the doors shushed closed. Barely able to hang on in the crush of bodies that surrounded her, Erica divorced herself from the crowd and thought of lesson plans, almost as she had divorced herself from her marriage when George had stayed later and later at work until he didn’t come home.
She always boarded the train at its fullest, with no place to sit, and had a long stand to the end of the line. It was easy to fall into daydreaming and mulling problems. Erica was so involved in thinking through a verb form issue that she almost didn’t notice the hand that gently yet firmly gripped her right thigh. As if coming out of a dream, she felt the pressure first. She tried to move away but there was no place to move to, with bodies pressing in on her. She stared at the back of a man and could shift neither left nor right. Instead she shifted her hips but all that did was let the hand slide over and toward the inner curve of her thigh. Erica was surprised at the shiver that ran over her skin. Her one hand gripped the handhold, the other, her briefcase and she could do nothing to stop a random stranger from touching her. The heat within built, but melted a bit too, as her body responded beyond her ability to control.
The train jerked as it came into a platform and the hand slid a little higher, pushing up Erica’s skirt. She closed her eyes, trying to resist, yet feeling the moisture gather between her legs. It had been so long since anyone had touched her. To be so desperate for a random stranger’s touch shamed her and her cheeks flushed. Yet her body responded in its own way.
In two more stops Erica would be getting off the train. She started now to push back through the crowd, trying to turn about. The hand gave her a squeeze between the legs that brought a small gasp to her lips and she turned. Looking up into the faces of the men around her, she could not tell who had touched her. They were staring off into nothing, reading papers, talking to others or listening to music. Not one man looked guilty. No one glanced her way. There were at least four men standing near her. It could have been anyone but would she want to know the identity of the mystery man? What would she do? Accuse him and have everyone stare at her?
By the time her stop arrived, her fluttering heart had slowed and she exited the train, giving a small sway to her hips; a tease, in case the stranger watched her…
End of Preview of Crossing the Line: Four Sultry Tales of Submission
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About the Author
T.C. Calligari, like many writers, is a masochist. She practices a form of submission every time she sends her work to publishers.
Some of her published works can be found within the pages of Naughty or Nice, The Mammoth Book of New Erotica Vol. 8, Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra, Don Juan and Men: Tales of Lust and Seduction and the Harlequin anthology Alison's Wonderland. Under another guise she publishes speculative fiction and poetry, and once in awhile picks up the whip to edit other people's works.
Check out her full catalogue here.