He was just gone. The tall grass around her showed nothing. Shaking, Anice managed to sit up. She glanced around and gathered the torn fabric up and over her breasts. And then she saw the Kincaid, on one knee in the grass a few feet away, punching his fist over and over and over into the ground. No, not the ground. He was hitting the man, the one who’d attacked her, invisible to Anice now in that same tall grass. The Kincaid was probably killing him, Anice thought vaguely, hearing now the sickening sound of flesh slamming into flesh, and bones breaking.
She tried to stand but could not, her legs no more than pudding, and then saw that another horse came flying down the road. She recognized Torren just as he leaped off the steed while the animal still moved and tried to wrestle the Kincaid away from the man. The Kincaid roared fiercely and swung at Torren, who withstood this and tackled his chief into the grass, close to Anice. “You canna kill a man!” Torren shouted as yet two more riders came.
But Torren’s gaze found Anice then, as he knelt over his chief. He took in her bloodied lip and torn gown and bared legs and he went completely still, his jaw gaping. Fibh and Kinnon arrived, pushing off their steeds as Torren had, and came running as Gregor shoved the shocked Torren off him and came to Anice.
Chapter 11
Gregor slid on to his knees before her. “Anice.” He touched her hand. “Anice,” this, sharply. He could barely catch his breath, fear and rage and sadness nearly taking all of it. Her eyes were upon him now. She didn’t blink, just sat there shaking.
He turned at a commotion behind him. Torren now pummeled her attacker and Fibh and Kinnon were trying to stop him. Gregor turned back to Anice.
“I-I couldn’t scream,” she said.
“You did, lass. I heard you.” He was afraid to touch her, afraid to move her, but wanted nothing more than to wrench her into his arms. Gently, he moved the skirts of her gown to cover her thighs, wondering why she wore no hose or shoes. He rose to his feet, noting that her eyes didn’t move, only now stared at his legs in front of her. He pulled frantically at his plaid, unraveling the length of it, swearing when the damn thing caught in his belt. Finally, he freed the large piece and draped it over her shoulders, his gut writhing when she flinched. He went down again, on his haunches now, and held two parts of his plaid at her front. “Anice, I’m going to—Anice, look at me.” She did, seemingly pulled from a reverie. “I’m going to pick you up.”
She did not respond, in fact seemed to stare right through him, and Gregor scooped her up into his arms, walking past Fibh and Kinnon restraining Torren. He made note of Anice’s attacker, curled into a fetal position where Gregor had first tossed him, and where his captain had left him. “Bring that piece of shit back with you.”
He grabbed the pommel of the steed he’d commandeered—when he’d set out to search for Anice after it had been determined that she was not within the castle walls and hadn’t been seen since shortly before noon—and lifted himself and Anice up into the saddle, cradling her against him, her legs and bare and dirtied feet dangling off the left side.
Keeping the horse to a slow walk, despite his want to race back to the castle, Gregor knew now was not at all the time to consider any emotion he presently felt. Torren pulled up beside him and ducked his head, to try and get a good look at Anice. Gregor recognized that his captain’s present frown was actually so much greater than his normal one; this one more closely resembled Torren’s battle face.
Torren straightened again and attended the path. “It’s Hugh Duncan, you ken.”
He had not known that. He’d seen nothing at the moment he’d pulled the man off Anice, nothing save his fury, the raw need to kill. Not that knowing his identity would have stopped him from pounding the man to death; Torren was likely the only man alive who could have stopped him at that moment.
“Is he dead?” Gregor asked, the harshness tinged with disgust.
“Only wishing he were,” Torren said. Gregor recognized this particular speech pattern of Torren’s, barely controlled rage.
“He goes below,” Gregor ordered, referring to the cells below the ground under the southeast tower. “You should’ve let me kill him.”
“Aye.”
As they walked the horses so slowly, Fibh and Kinnon caught up. Gregor spared only a glance to see that his betrothed’s brother, Hugh, staggered and stumbled behind the horses, on foot, his hands tied together with a rope, Fibh holding the other end. Hugh’s face was nearly unrecognizable, drenched in so much blood and gore. His breeches, obviously unlaced to have committed the atrocity, were caught around his ankles, at his boots, so that he was forced to shimmy and run with tiny little steps, his long tunic hiding his privates, though Gregor still thought about cutting them off. He might yet. Hugh winced as Fibh yanked at the rope, and Gregor noticed that one of his front teeth was missing.
Gregor faced forward again. Anice hadn’t moved. He tipped his head and saw that her eyes remained open, but she hadn’t stirred or cried or even blinked, he was sure.
“I’ll no go through the hall,” he said, loud enough that Fibh and Kinnon could hear as well. “This stays between us. Fibh, you find Meg and get the brew with the sleeping draught.” He looked at Torren. “Tell me what to do for her,” he asked of his friend.
Torren nodded, his face a mask of wrath and sorrow, understanding more than most what Gregor experienced just now, years ago having lost his love to the madness that had come after a similar attack.
TORREN HELPED GREGOR get into the castle and up to his own chambers without being seen, and Gregor very gently laid Anice onto the wide bed, atop the furs while Torren lit a taper and set it into the holder atop the small cupboard. Gregor made sure as he laid her out that the plaid continued to cover that which her torn gown did not. She slept now, which came as no surprise to him, having often witnessed how incredible trauma wrought such extraordinary exhaustion.
“You canna leave her, no now,” Torren said.
“I’ll no leave her.”
“Ellie woke screaming, her mam said,” Torren recalled. “All the time. Just kept calling my name, as if I’d come and make everything right. But I was gone to Falkirk, and I never did come for her.”
“Ellie was too soft, too good for...what happened,” Gregor remembered her sunny smiles and her love of his friend. He recalled, too, Torren’s unimaginable grief. It had taken him years, cursed by periods when he hadn’t care if he lived or not, to rouse himself from his grief. Gregor had always thought it was his own father’s death, and his assuming the role of chief, naming Torren as his captain, that had saved him.
“As is she,” Torren said, nodding at the bed. “She’ll be wanting a bath, a good hot one.”
This panicked Gregor a bit. He frowned at Torren. “She’ll no be wanting me to help—”
“Figure it out,” Torren said darkly, letting him know that leaving her was not an option. “She hasn’t anyone but us, and that mostly means you.” He turned and left the room then.
When the door closed behind Torren, Gregor ran a hand through his hair and over his mouth and jaw. He removed his belt and sword and gave some fleeting thought to the fact that he’d not reached for his weapon when he’d come upon Anice being attacked. That primal state of fury he’d felt had insisted he kill the infidel with his bare hands, he supposed. He set his weapon down, propped against the headboard, close at hand, and sat down on the side of the bed.
Many hours later, as the candle he’d lit had burned down to nothingness, he lie next to her, breathing the same air she breathed, his face only inches from her. She had done the same for him, had stood vigil at his bedside, so to speak. At the time, she’d known him not at all, not as anyone save for the man who’d freed her from the stocks. At some point he slept and woke only when he felt her move a bit, though she did not wake completely. She curled up onto her side and whimpered softly which brought Gregor up against her, pulling her back against his chest, and fitting his legs along hers, wrapping his arm around her middle. He bre
athed, “Shh,” into her hair and she did, drifting off again and Gregor did as well.
He rose with the sun, carefully moving away from Anice and then the bed, hoping not to disturb her. Just for a moment, he watched her sleep, in the slim morning light sifted through the narrow window. The bastard must have hit her hard, swung at her right to left, as her right cheek and lip were swollen and discolored. Gregor itched to deal with Hugh Duncan, but knew he couldn’t even think about him now, having no desire for Anice to wake and find him engulfed in a towering rage. He set that to the back of his mind, knowing well that when the time came, the anger he’d need would come easily.
Anice moaned and her eyes fluttered open, the long sweep of her lashes blinking against her cheeks before they settled against her eyelids. Her sleepy gaze found him, and he knew exactly when all the details of the horrific attack came crashing into her. Her lip quivered and then she did the most remarkable thing. As Gregor sat on the bed and made to enfold her in his embrace, she started to sit up and at the same time reached her arms up to him. They closed around his neck just as his own arms folded around her. Her chin found a spot on his shoulder and she sobbed quietly. He rocked her and rubbed her back and soothed her with soft words, telling her that she was safe, and he was with her, and he would never again let harm come to her.
If heartbreak had a sound, he knew it would be this soft and low keening. She cried for many long minutes, and all that rage and violence and helplessness he’d felt when he’d come upon the attack equaled in magnitude the sorrow and anguish and guilt he felt just now.
Finally, she lowered her arms, or they fell away with the great weight of lingering fatigue so that she only held her folded arms at her chest and leaned her forehead into his. She sniffled and quieted but they stayed like that for many more minutes, with Gregor still making slow circles on her back with his hand. He kissed the top of her head before he thought better of it, but she did not pull away or stiffen in reaction. He felt her head turn to the side, toward the window.
“These are not the rooms I was—” She said, her voice husky and low.
“These are my chambers.”
“Does everyone know?”
He wasn’t quite sure who ‘everyone’ was, but told her, “Only Torren and Fibh and Kinnon. Anice, what were you doing? Where were you? We’d looked all over the castle and the bailey—”
Anice raised her head but didn’t look at Gregor, rather stared only at his chest. Gregor realized she held her hands at her own chest to keep the plaid in place to cover her tattered gown and partial nakedness. He was given just a glimpse of her collarbone, and thought he saw the discoloration of yet another bruise.
“I was in Stoney. I’d gone to the church.” She ducked her head. “I fell asleep staring at the window.”
“Is that where he found you?”
She shook her head. “I was walking back to Stonehaven, so afraid the gate would be locked. Then I heard a rider and thought maybe it was someone I knew or might recognize....”
She was about to cry again. “Ah, lass, dinna weep no more.” He kissed the top of her head again and held her close. He shouldn’t have made her recall any of it. “Kinnon’s been keeping water warm in the kitchens. I’ll bring up the tub and you can bathe right here.”
Her head shook against his chest. “You dinna want a bath, lass?’
“I do—I would, but please don’t leave me.”
Torn, Gregor acted on instinct, same as he would with a soldier suffering trauma after his first battle, when they shook and babbled while the horrors of what they had just encountered ran over and over through their minds.
He pulled away and held Anice firmly by her arms. “Lass, I will speak plainly with you, and it will be awkward, but it needs to be said. You’ll have the bath and wash away the assault as best you can.” He hesitated, supremely uncomfortable now but pressed on, “There will be blood...between your legs and—”
Her eyes focused on his. “Between my legs?”
Gregor cleared his throat and said, “Where the...brunt of the attack took place.”
She hadn’t any idea of what he spoke, he could see by the still blank look in her eyes.
“Anice, do you know what rape is?”
She nodded. “When a man forces himself on a woman. But Lady Eugenia said that if a woman really did not want to be raped, she could stop it.”
He’d had a feeling he should have stopped her as soon as he’d heard, Lady Eugenia said. With rather heroic effort, he kept his voice calm. “Every time you start a sentence with ‘Lady Eugenia said’, all the words that follow are so far from reality as to make my brain hurt. So please lass, just go ahead and throw out all the words she’d ever said that you’ve tucked away in your own brain. And now we’ll start again. Do you ken what it means when a man forces himself on a woman?” Jesu, but he wished there was someone better to have this conversation with her.
“I think so.”
He dug in. “Lass, I warned you it would be awkward and here it is: when a man rapes a woman, he puts his—Jesus—his private part into the woman’s private part.”
The face she made right then put him in mind of a person sucking all the juice out of a lemon, and Gregor knew that he’d arrived upon the scene in time to save her from rape, though sadly, not from the horrid prelude.
He relaxed only slightly, and clarified, “No man is ever allowed to touch you if you dinna want him to. Even a kiss, if you dinna want it, is an assault.”
“You kissed me,” she reminded him softly.
His heart dropped.
“But then,” she continued, “I didn’t know that I wanted it. Until you kissed me.”
While this made his heart soar, he kept himself focused. “But when I kissed you, if you hadn’t wanted me to, you’d have told me or let me know and I’d have stopped kissing you.”
“But I didn’t want you to stop.”
Gregor lowered his head and prayed for greater willpower, or maybe a wall to appear suddenly between them.
“His kiss was not like yours at all.”
“Was no a kiss, lass,” he said fiercely. “’Twas an assault, an attack, and no a kiss at all.”
She blinked rapidly but didn’t lower her eyes. “Is—is that man... dead?”
“He is no, and more’s the pity.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s no anywhere near ye. He never will be again. He’s locked up, and you’ll no be scared of him, Anice.” He calmed himself once more and stood from the bed. “I’ll fetch the bath for you and bring up the water. I’ll no be far, and I’ll no be long.”
He cast one more glance upon her, reluctant to leave her just now. She lifted her eyes finally to him then, and offered just the hint of a smile, trying to reassure him, while she appeared so tiny and forlorn upon his big bed.
TORREN CAME SOON AND set down the wooden tub in front of the fire, then stood before Anice, sitting up in the bed, with the Kincaid’s plaid still about her. Anice raised her eyes to the big man, trying to let him know that she was, or would be, all right. The darkness in his perpetually frowning gaze made her want to make light of it, to give him ease.
“Just so you know, Torren—and it speaks more to my character and that incorrigibleness in me and shouldn’t reflect so poorly on Jardine—but I am rather accustomed to assaults upon my person. And, too, there is a history of toppling over cliffs, but I seem to be strung quite durably that this will prove just one more near calamity that will be forgotten in no time at all.”
He looked as if he would speak, but he did not, just twisted his lips as if he cared not at all for her attempt to minimize what had happened, and he left the room, closing the door with a soft thud behind him.
ANICE DID NOT APPEAR again in the hall until much later that day. She tiptoed down the stairs, coming into the hall from behind the rarely-used family table. Clutching her fingers nervously around the fabric of the skirts of a non-descript brown kirtle, nearly as shapeless a
s the shredded saffron gown yet closer to her own size, she crept along the rush-strewn stone floor.
Kinnon sat near the door leading to the bailey and when he realized her presence, he nodded at her and stood, waiting for her, it seemed.
Anice walked toward him just as Lady Kincaid entered the room, Nathara Duncan at her side. Quickening her pace and lowering her head, Anice moved around the tables to reach Kinnon.
“Girl,” called Lady Kincaid just before Anice made her escape.
She froze, finding Kinnon’s gaze. He stared back, his eyes widened in alarm.
Swallowing hard, Anice turned and faced the Kincaid’s mother and his betrothed. She didn’t move but waited as they approached her. Lady Kincaid’s disdain at their first meeting was heightened today by Anice’s appearance.
“What have you done to yourself?” She lifted a bejeweled finger and swirled it around in front of Anice’s face.
Anice touched her swollen lip and knew her cheek was discolored as well. She glanced at Nathara Duncan, at her perfect unblemished skin and her long shiny hair while the woman stared at her with something akin to derisive disinterest.
“Well, girl?”
Kinnon stepped forward. “She fell, milady.”
Lady Kincaid’s frown turned to more of a grimace. “How very unfortunate.”
“I am fine, my lady,” Anice said, hoping only to be away from the pair.
“I refer to your appearance, not your well-being.”
Anice could not contain her own stupefied expression. The woman actually made Lady Eugenia seem quite benevolent.
“Apologies, my lady, for having offended you with my presence.”
Lady Kincaid ignored her and said to Nathara. “Apparently this chit had some hand in giving aid to your betrothed, my dear. And now he feels he must coddle her or—what is to be your purpose here, girl?” This last, directed again at Anice.
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