Bride of Dunloch (Highland Loyalties)

by Veronica Bale

  Robbie scrutinized her as she fell silent, chewing her lip in an attempt to fend of bitter tears.

  “D’ye ken why we Scots hate the English so much?” he said slowly.

  “I understand now,” she answered, nodding. “Your land has been stolen, and you are forced to pay taxes to a king and to lords that are not yours.”

  “I can see ye’ve been listening, but still ye dinna ken why, so I’ll tell ye. Yer king is a villain on his own, sure enough. But the English lords, and the English soldiers that have moved in on Scotland in his name, are the ones who fuel our hatred. They kidnap our people to demand ransom, and when we canna pay, they hang them. Dinna think I mean only men, for they hang innocent women and children as well. They invent crimes to justify hangings, too—for a number of reasons, none of which are just. The soldiers stir up trouble so that we’ll fight to protect ourselves, our women and children, and when we fight, we are breaking the peace and we are slaughtered.

  “And do ye ken,” Robbie continued, his voice growing low and pained, “why I thought ye’d been defiled? Why that were my first thought?”

  Jane shook her head. Her eyes were wide, and her stomach heaved sickly at what he was telling her.

  “I’ve seen it happen—to women and girls I’ve kent all my life. I’ve seen the pain that comes from being used rough; more than just bodily pain—I’ve seen it in their eyes. And I’ve seen the same pain in the eyes of the men that couldna do anything to protect them, nor to avenge them. We hate the English for what they do to us day after day. And we hate yer king for not only allowing it to happen, but for condoning it. Encouraging it.”

  “And you hate me because I’m English,” she surmised dejectedly.

  She felt Robbie’s hand grasp hers.

  “No,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I didna say that. How could I hate the woman that has saved my life? Ye kent I were the enemy—ye must have, wi’ me bloodied up and skulking around a pile of dead Scotsmen. And yet ye still helped me. But if this land is to be yer new home, Jane from Sussex, ye must know the way things are. Ye canna remain blind to it as ye were. For it will be around ye every day. Ye canna turn away from it, even if ye wanted to. Ye’re a brave lass; a brave and kind lass. Ye must ken what yer people are really like.”

  Robbie’s passion died away, and Jane was suddenly quite conscious of his hand grasping hers. The heat of his fingers tingled up her arm, and set her belly aflutter once again. She expected his shyness to return, but when she lifted her gaze to his, his green eyes held her intently.

  For a moment she felt as if a force was pulling her gaze to his and she could not look away. Her eyes dropped to his lips, and at that moment she had never before felt such an intense desire to be kissed. The desire flooded her, provoking a yearning to feel his lips pressed against hers. She had revolted at the experience of having Lord Reginald’s tongue twining with hers ... but if it were Robbie’s tongue, Robbie’s mouth ...

  Shocked at herself for the unexpected turn of her thoughts, she pulled her hand away from his.

  “The water is boiling,” she said, clearing her throat.

  A warm heat rose up her neck as she felt the force of his eyes still on her. She turned away, busying herself with tidying her already tidied items. Under the intensity of his gaze her movements grew clumsy, and she nearly burned her hand as she worked on the cooking pot.

  “I’ve brought you a few things to eat,” she added to break the tension.

  Avoiding his eyes, she passed Robbie the parcel of food.

  “I thank ye,” he said softly.

  “It’s nothing special; just some bannock and oatcakes—but I did manage to get some black crowdie to go on top.”

  “That’s no’ what I mean, Jane.”

  Her heartbeat quickened at the way he said her name—softly, as if he knew the effect he was having on her and sought to elevate it.

  “It’s nothing,” she said again, stuffing the sensation down into her gut to ignore it.

  “So ye’ve said.”

  When he’d eaten a small chunk of the cheat and drank the fresh thyme infusion, she changed his bandage. Never had she felt so awkward, her fingers so stiff and uncoordinated. His skin under her hands felt smooth, and a longing to trace the planes of his stomach blossomed inside her. She wanted so much to place her cheek against his broad chest and feel his powerful arms wrap around her ...

  And she fought every one of these absurd longings, for she was certain that he could hear, or at least sense her thoughts with mortifying clarity.

  Besides, such thoughts were wholly inappropriate. Not only was he a Scot, an enemy to the king and to her new home, but she was also a married woman, the wife of the wealthy and powerful Baron of Dunloch.

  But as true as these things were in her head, she knew she could not convince her heart of them.

  The next morning at breakfast, tired and uncomfortable from an intermittent sleep on the dirt floor of the hut, Jane watched the castle inhabitants. There were lords and ladies, kin and friends of D’Aubrey. There were guardsmen, and there were higher ranking soldiers from the garrison at Fort Invercleugh.

  And they were all English.

  Robbie’s words swirled around in her mind, the things he had told her painting a grisly picture to which she could not turn a blind eye even if she wished to.

  Bribery.

  Rape.

  Murder.

  He could be lying to gain her sympathy, and the sickening churning in her stomach wanted to believe that possibility. But she knew he was not; the pain in his eyes and in his voice was too raw, too real.

  He had chosen to follow his MacGillivray chief into battle against the English lord that took Dunloch from him and his people, and at first she’d thought it was for the sake of land. She’d never truly understood why land and castles and territory were so important before. But Robbie had thrown a new light onto what she understood and what she didn’t, and now she watched the English men and women before her, laughing and chatting as they broke their fast in the great hall of the MacGillivrays’ ancestral home, and felt truly wretched.

  The loss of their home to the English had been a last and final slap in the face. It had been the insult tacked to the end of a long list of grievous and unforgiveable injuries.

  She turned her eyes to Tearlach, who sat in a corner at a trestle table by himself, and regarded him with a new and heavy clarity. She understood the stoop in his shoulders, and the bitter disappointment that seemed stained on his face and in his soul.

  She locked eyes with Lady D’Aubrey, who’d seemed so wise from the moment Jane had met her. The baroness must have recognized the ill and bewildered look on her face, the lady’s nod seemed an acknowledgement of her dark thoughts.

  It dawned on Jane then, just how sheltered her life in Sussex had been, how truly naive she was. What else was happening in the world that she had never been permitted to know?

  Chapter 8

  Over the next several days a pattern developed in Jane’s life in which she took a sort of solace. Feigning alert and interest in the goings on at the castle, she would preside at the head table beside her husband over the morning meal. The moment Lord Reginald left to go about whatever duties occupied his day, she would sneak off to spend the rest of the morning and the afternoon caring for Robbie. Returning to the castle before evening set in, she would spend some time with Lady D’Aubrey before rejoining her husband at the head table to preside over the evening meal. And finally, after suffering the unpleasant chore of allowing Lord Reginald to slake his lust with her body, she was off again to watch over her fugitive Scot until just before dawn.

  Daily, Robbie improved. His festering wound began to heal thanks to her persistent administering of the poultices of honey, and his fever decreased steadily.

  “If I never taste that vile thyme water again, it will be too soon,” he declared when she informed him it was no longer necessary.

  In fact, much of her care was no longe
r necessary—or at least not such diligent care. But in the short time she’d known him, she’d grown to like Robbie very much; he had a wit and a natural charm that would make him likeable to just about anyone. He could have her laughing uncontrollably one minute, and in the next he could turn the power of his green eyes on her and send her stomach somersaulting dangerously.

  Perhaps she liked him a little too much. She tried not to think about where her growing feelings towards him came from, nor where they were going. For the time being she was needed by his side to bring him back to health—or so she was content to pretend. And Robbie, for his part, was content to pretend to need her.

  “You’ll ... er ... you’ll need your garments washed and mended,” she managed awkwardly one morning after she’d changed his salve and bandage.

  Robbie, propped up with Jane’s rolled up blanket behind his head, grinned devilishly at her, enjoying her prim discomfort.

  “I havena got anything else to wear,” he pointed out.

  Her cheeks flared pink. “Yes, I realize that. You shall have to stay with a blanket covering you. But your clothes are still crusted with blood and dirt, and your shirt and kilt are torn and shall need to be repaired.”

  “I am at yer mercy,” he answered, amused. “Take my feileadh, if ye will.”

  She helped him to sit, and aided him at his weak attempts to undress himself. If changing the bandage on the wound around his flank did odd things to her stomach, removing his kilt was another matter entirely. She tried not to look as she unbelted the fabric at his waist and stripped his legs of his hose—especially not at his manhood which, as she removed his garments, was utterly exposed. But as much as she tried, she could not shut her eyes to everything—a glimpse of strong, well muscled thigh, a sleek and etched slope of a calf, a wisp of smooth alabaster hip. Jane swallowed thickly, fighting to beat down the mad hammering of her heart ... and also to suppress a strange wave of something she’d never experienced before spreading low in her stomach—lower than her stomach ...

  “Ye move as though ye’ve never seen a man before,” she heard Robbie say, her eyes still riveted on the dirt floor as she collected his garments in a bundle. “But then again, married to a man so much older than ye, perhaps ye havena ... no’ really, no’ as a man should be.”

  There was a teasing note in his voice, but his words stung like nettles nonetheless.

  He could have no idea how deeply his words cut her. Would suffering Lord Reginald’s attentions truly be suffering if his waist was as trim and narrow as Robbie’s? Would she clench her fists and grit her teeth in her humiliation if it were a young and attractive body, and not an aging one like Lord Reginald’s, which claimed her each night? Would she feel a desire to wrap her arms around Lord Reginald’s shoulders and run her hands up his back if they were sleek and strong and smooth with youth?

  Her sister Amelia loved to partake in carnal activity. Her eyes would light up, or would grow heavy with the spell of remembering, every time she divulged in great detail the tastes and sounds and sensations of the act. And once, Jane had happened to see it for herself, quite by accident, when she’d happened upon her sister and a boy from the village at it in the cellar of her father’s home. Amelia’s face had been contorted in what looked like pain but was instead, Jane knew, a pleasure so exquisite that no words could express her satisfaction.

  She didn’t know then why such an act should be so unbearably wonderful. She did not understand it even now that she’d been subjected to that act herself. And as Robbie had pointed out ... she never would.

  “Behave yourself,” she managed, forcing a jesting tone she didn’t feel. Taking up her cake of soap and gathering his garments, she stood. “I’ll take these to the stream to wash them,” she added.

  Outside, she breathed deeply to collect her thoughts. But try as she might to control her mind, images cropped up over and over again—images of Robbie’s body atop hers, of her wrapping her legs around his waist as she’d heard Amelia tell of doing so many times, of pressing her face into the crook of his neck ...

  “Silly, silly girl,” she chided herself, scrubbing harder.

  To rid herself of such immodest thoughts, she imposed upon herself a stern countenance. Her effort was for naught—within seconds, the thoughts returned and a secretive smile played at her lips as she gave in and indulged helplessly in them. Well ... why should she not—what harm could it do?

  Once his clothes had been washed, she brought them back inside to dry in front of the hearth.

  “I am sorry if I offended ye,” Robbie said gently as she took a seat a short distance away from him.

  “You did not,” she answered, picking up the needlecase she’d brought and pulling his damp wrung shirt onto her lap. She measured out a length of thread, strung it, and then assessed the size of the tear in the fabric.

  “I’ve hurt ye, though,” he persisted.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I think it is.”

  Exasperated—more with herself than with him—she dropped his shirt into her lap and exhaled sharply.

  “Whether it is or not, I hardly think it’s appropriate to be discussing such a thing with you.”

  Robbie lowered his eyes to his naked form, covered from the waist down with the quilt she’d been sleeping on, and eyed her wryly.

  “Dinna ye think it’s also inappropriate for ye to be spending yer time wi’ a naked man that is no’ yer husband?”

  The pull of his lips in a grin softened Jane’s exasperation. “I suppose not.”

  “Tell me then. Why did my words hurt ye?”

  “Is it not obvious?” she evaded, returning to her mending.

  “Yes, but I want to hear ye say it all the same.”

  “Fine. Because what you said is true, and it hurts to hear.” She paused and then added, “Why is it so important to you that I admit such things aloud?”

  Robbie did not respond immediately. In the silence, she raised her eyes to his curiously. His green eyes held her with a gaze that was both compassionate and pitying. And ... and something else ...

  “Because I kent it in ye almost from the first moment I met ye—the way ye speak, the way ye move ... ye’re no’ happy. Ye dinna ken how easy it is to see in ye.”

  Jane shrugged, annoyed that he’d read her so easily. “I have no cause to complain. I knew my marriage was settled many years ago. A comfortable situation was all I could ever hope for in a match, given that I am plain and would never be sought for my beauty.”

  “Surely ye canna believe that,” Robbie insisted. “Jane, look at me.”

  Reluctantly, she raised her head to meet his eyes—her heart began flapping wildly in her breast when she met the intensity of his gaze.

  “I dinna ken who has put it in yer head that ye’re plain, but ye are no such thing. Truly,” he insisted when she shrugged dismissively. “Ye have a gae pretty and pleasing face. Thoughtful it is. Eyes as blue as the heavens. Had ye grown up at Dunloch, ye’d have had half the village lads mad wi’ want of ye. Including me ...”

  She swallowed thickly when Robbie trailed off.

  “Yes, well, speaking of growing up at Dunloch, how is it you came to know about this place?” she said, changing the topic of discussion.

  He grinned, not fooled for a moment by her diversion, but conceded. “I kent of it because it were me that built it.”

  “You?”

  “Aye, well—me and the lads. When we were young, we thought we were men and needed a place—a fort, ye ken—where we could go to get away from all the lasses and just be men.” Robbie chuckled. “Get away from the lasses, can ye imagine it? That changed wi’in a year or two, ye can be sure.”

  “Do you think you might all come back and rebuild it one day?” Jane said, smiling at the picture in her head.

  Her eyes widened at what she had just said—how could she have forgotten? She watched, regretful, as Robbie’s face fell, and his eyes grew serious.

  “Nay, I dinna think s
o, lass,” he answered mournfully. “They’re all dead. Diarmad were hanged a year ago by the English, and Aidan a year before that.”

  “Hanged?” Jane heard herself whisper, though she was not at all sure she had spoken. “For what?”

  “Stealing, they said. Though I kent full well they didna. Aidan got into a scrap wi’ Montrose’s forces at Invercleugh over a horse, and it were nobbut petty revenge. Diarmad had arranged to move his family away from Dunloch village after it were taken from us, but they said he were stealing Dunloch property—peasants to work the land, ye ken.”

  “No,” Jane gasped, her hand flying to her throat.

  “Aye,” Robbie insisted. And then pointedly, he added, “It were that D’Aubrey came up wi’ that solution. Many MacGillivrays remain in the village even now—if they dinna, if they leave, they’ll be hanged for some ridiculous charge as Diarmad was. And to stay they must swear their loyalty to the English king. So ye see, they didna have a choice, did they? The rest, they died in battle and now lay heaped atop one another rotting away at the bottom of that there valley.”

  Jane’s stomach turned sickeningly at Robbie was telling her. The baron—her husband—had partaken in the injustices done.

  “Ye ken,” Robbie continued, his voice growing thoughtful, “I spent some of the best days here in this hut. I liked it best when it were just me and Connall here. We all got along so well, us lads, but me and Connall ... we were close. Always were, ever since we were wee bairns. We always said we’d bring our boys here, show them the place where their fathers spent all their time before they discovered the lasses. But now ... now there will be no one to take Connall’s wee lad, or his babe that Margaret carries.”

  Jane watched as Robbie’s face crumpled against the anguish of his memories; her heart ached for him. He raised his arm and covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow, and his shoulders shook with repressed sobs.

  “Oh god, what have I done?” he moaned.

  Instinctively, she rushed to his side to soothe and comfort him. She stroked his hair, shushing him. And when he moved into her, burying his head in her lap and wrapping his arms around her waist in an almost childlike posture, she embraced him in return, bending her head low and rocking him slightly.