I dropped my shawl on the closest chair and retreated to the screen to undress. The simple work gowns I wore now were easy to get out of on my own. I required no help from Ian or anyone else. Compared to my first few days of travel in England, when I had needed assistance with nearly everything, I had grown quite independent— in many ways.
And lonely. Collin and I had needed each other. Without him I felt bereft, a stranger in a land that, while somewhat familiar, was also not what I had known.
A knock sounded at my door, and Bridget entered with two other women carrying buckets. They poured more water into the tub and left, Bridget promising to lock the door and that she would return to wash my hair.
When the door had closed again I crossed the room quickly and stuck a toe in the tub, testing the temperature. Deliciously warm. I climbed in eagerly and sank into the depths, letting the warm water lap beneath my chin as I closed my eyes. The scent of lavender wafted around me, and I silently thanked Bridget for her thoughtfulness and Eithne for her hard work. I should have liked to help her again, if only Ian would allow me to visit her.
“I see it is an afternoon for indulgences.”
My eyes flew open, and I jerked upright, then at once sank lower as Ian looked over at me. He leaned casually against the door he’d just closed, the key dangling from a ribbon in his left hand.
“Please leave.” My shaky command sounded anything but authoritative.
“You should have barred the door,” he scolded lightly, then fixed it himself. “What if I’d been Brann?”
I ignored his question as he’d ignored my request. “Bridget is to return in a minute to wash my hair.”
“She’s been called away to more pressing matters. I assured her I would assist you.” Ian hefted a bucket from the floor behind him. “Your rinse water, milady.”
“I don’t need your help. Please leave,” I said again, my voice firmer, more desperate. Beneath my pounding heart, full-fledged panic erupted.
“Why should I leave?” Ian drawled, walking farther from the door instead of out it. “This is my room as well.”
“Because a gentleman gives a lady privacy.” I drew my knees up to my chest in an attempt at covering myself.
“But I’m not a gentleman.” Ian crossed the room— on the far side, away from my bath. “We both know that. I’m the devil. Wasn’t that what you told Collin?”
My lips parted in surprise. I frowned at this revelation of confidence breached. What else had Collin told him?
Ian laughed. “Collin shared your opinion of me that morning at the inn, after you’d insulted me— something about not believing I could read, if I recall correctly.”
He did remember. And he was the devil. No more so than at this moment, toying with me as a cat might play with a mouse before pouncing.
“Why can you read?” I asked, grasping for anything to prolong this conversation, to distract him from me. “Collin said you’d been treated poorly by the Munros. It does not seem likely they hired a tutor for you.”
“I was fourteen when I was taken by them,” Ian said, not acknowledging his father’s part in the process. “I was the son of a laird and had been educated as such. I was literate in far more than book learning— schooled in everything from how to govern a clan, to fighting, to the keeping of accounts.” He leaned forward and put out one of the two lamps. “There may even have been a lesson or two along the way regarding the washing of a woman’s hair.”
“You are worse than the devil,” I muttered, hugging my knees to my chest and keeping as low as possible in the water.
“Undeniably.” Ian made his way around the bed to the second lamp. “I believe you’d another name assigned me as well. What else was it that Collin said...” Ian tapped a finger against his lips contemplatively. “Ah yes, I remember. You thought me a pirate the first time we met.” Ian snarled, and twisted his face such that his eye patch moved up and down. “And you know a pirate would definitely not leave if there was a beautiful woman bathing in his bedchamber.”
I turned away from him with a huff, attempting to mask the fear shivering up my back.
The room darkened as the second lamp went out. I tried to think through a defense and— as had been the case at the river— came up with none. If Ian wished to finish what he’d started there—
“Let me help you.”
I flinched at his voice, so close behind me.
“No.” I sat in total darkness, my heartbeat frantic as I tried to remember where the towel was and if I’d be able to get to it or the door before he reached me. “You promised Alistair you wouldn’t touch me unless I wished it.”
“What do you think I am trying to do?” There was a definite smirk in his voice.
“Frightening a woman is not the way—”
“You’re frightened?” The teasing was gone.
“How can I not be after you tried to drown me once already?”
Ian swore softly. “I’m sorry. I did not think that you might suppose— didn’t think about the water. I mean you no harm today or any other.”
I couldn’t believe him, not with the horror of Niall’s death so recently added to my own experience. It wasn’t only that Ian had killed him so brutally but in the days following, still brimming with fury, he had insisted Niall’s body be displayed in the courtyard as a lesson to any who might think to cross him. I was crossing him now, refusing his advances.
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” Ian continued. “Though I cannot blame you. I’ve no excuse for my actions at the river. I, too, was a wicked man and deserve all the suffering that has come my way since.”
“What about Niall?” I sniffed and realized I was crying, helplessness and dread spilling from my eyes in a most cowardly manner. “The way you killed him—”
“I’ve no regrets there,” Ian said. “Only perhaps that you were witness. Niall delighted in hurting women. When he set his sights on you— well, perhaps I went a little mad. After what he’d already done to my brother, I could not let him hurt anyone else— especially you.”
“Was Niall responsible for Collin’s death?” This wasn’t how I’d imagined our conversation to go, yet here we were. Keeping him talking might be my only defense.
“Not directly,” Ian said. “But were it not for him, I cannot help but think my brother would be with us today.”
Niall was wicked. We are safer with him gone. I believed that perhaps a bit more now. Collin had killed to protect me too. I had felt only relief that morning at the cave when he’d stabbed Malcom. Were Ian’s actions really so different?
“Enough talk of the past,” Ian said. “I cannot undo what has been done, but I give you my word that it will not be repeated, or added upon. I promised that I would keep you safe, and so I will. And I will do my best not to frighten you along the way. Here— use this.”
Something landed on the water in front of me.
“Cover yourself with the towel while I wash your hair,” Ian said.
“You still insist when I’ve told you I would not prefer it.” I grabbed the sodden fabric and did my best to drape it over me.
“Aye.” He stood directly behind me now. “Just as you insisted on walking outside alone today when I had told you I did not prefer that.”
“Punishment. That’s what this is about?” After tucking the towel around me, I twisted around in the tub to look at him.
Ian shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it that. But as you were given to dangerous indulgence this afternoon, so am I. For my endangerment, I choose washing your hair.” He placed his hands on my bare shoulders and turned me from him.
“I hardly see how that is dangerous to you.”
“I don’t suppose you would.” He raised the bucket over my head. “Lean forward.”
Water began cascading over me. Left with no choice, I complied, but attempted once more to dissuade him. “You are not my husband,” I spluttered. “We have an agreement, and it does not extend to things of a personal
nature.”
“Let’s discuss that agreement, shall we?” Ian placed his hands on my head, and I resisted the urge to lean away from his touch. Better his hands on my head than anywhere else.
“I have agreed to protect you from Brann. I’ve promised to keep my clansmen here under control, promised that no more Campbells will be driven from their homes. I have, in fact, been busy rebuilding many of those homes and working tirelessly to ensure that all have what they need to survive the coming winter. In return you have promised me... Hmmm. I can’t seem to recall. What is it I am getting in exchange for my services?”
“The MacDonalds are benefitting from this arrangement too,” I reminded him.
“Little good that does me personally.” His fingers began massaging my head.
“You are free to leave at any time.” Goodness. “I would not hold you in breach of our contract.” This feels divine.
“Is that what you truly wish?” Ian’s hands stilled. “Should I leave you to your own defenses against Brann?”
That I required Ian’s protection had already been proven. Had Brann been the one sharing my chamber these past weeks instead of Ian, I’d no doubt my situation would be very different. For all of Ian’s talk of being a pirate, he hadn’t truly acted as one. He’d left me mostly alone— until now.
Did I want him to leave? What would happen if he did? A repeat of my time spent belowstairs was too much of a possibility. I didn’t necessarily want Ian here, certainly did not want him so close to me at this moment, but I had been safer with him around.
“You are taking a very long time to answer,” he said.
“No,” I whispered, reluctant to share the conclusion I’d come to. “I do not wish you to leave. Neither do I wish to be intimate with you. My feelings for Collin—”
“—are abundantly clear,” he muttered beneath his breath. “I will keep to my word not to touch you as a husband might. But I will wash your hair, taking my pleasure as you took yours outside.” His hands began moving again, working their way from the top of my head to the back of my neck, then lifting strands of hair, working the soap into their lengths.
I closed my eyes and pursed my lips, not trusting them to contain a blissful moan. What sorcery is this? His hands worked their magic, mesmerizing me much as Collin’s had the night he’d braided my hair. After a few minutes I ceased worrying about Ian taking his pleasure and worried that I was taking mine. His touch was surprisingly tender, and I felt myself relaxing, responding to his gentle ministrations, savoring the contact with another person— and hating myself because I did.
Collin. I strained to hold onto him and our past in my mind. I grasped at images that passed by fleetingly, only to be replaced every time by Ian, with the dark fuzz of his newly-grown hair and his pirate patch.
Pirate devil. Devil pirate. That’s what he was. A murderer. A thief, coming to Campbell land as he had and taking over. But as with my attempts to keep an image of Collin in my mind, the image of Ian as vile would not hold.
A pirate would not have comforted a frightened woman as Ian had comforted Mhairi the night he’d killed Niall. The devil did not whittle toys or fashion shoes for children by firelight each night. A pirate would not stop to join in their games during the day. He’d not give up his chair for an old woman to sit in. Yet Ian had done all those things and more since coming here. But that still couldn’t change who he really was at his core. What he’s done and once tried to do— to me.
What he was doing to me right now. He’d as much as declared his intent to make me willing, and here I was falling victim. I couldn’t see that this was danger for him, but a very real threat to me. I sank lower in the tub, scarcely remembering to keep hold of the towel as well as to hold in a sigh of delight as Ian massaged the top of my head once more.
This is wrong. I must not dishonor Collin. I pressed the towel tighter across my torso and legs as I simultaneously prayed Ian would stop and wished he wouldn’t. This wasn’t the Ian I knew, or that I had known. If I continued seeing this other side of him, the side so like his twin, I feared I’d go mad. I would desire his company, and where would that lead me?
Chapter Thirty-three
“He still refuses to see me?” I craned my neck, trying, to no avail, to see over the heads of the two MacDonald guards stationed outside my door.
“Aye,” Gordon said apologetically. “We’re not to let you set so much as a toe from your room.”
“Not unless we’re wanting the same fate as your last guard,” Bryce, the other one, added.
“And you don’t want that for us, do you?” Gordon asked, not unkindly.
“No. Of course not.” I stepped back inside the room and closed the door softly behind me. The reminder of what had happened to Earnan six days earlier still weighed heavily. For his carelessness in letting me slip outside the gates alone, he had been given fifteen lashes— one for every three minutes of the forty-five I had been outside the walls unchaperoned.
Afterward he had been made to stand out in the rainy courtyard for as many hours. I had watched all this from my window, having discovered the night before— shortly after Ian had left me to finish my bath alone— that I was not permitted to leave my room. Earnan had not deserved such punishment, not when it was I who had disobeyed. Not when he had once saved my life and had only served me well since.
I’d written a note expressing my regret and apology and given it to Gordon, then asked him to give it to his sister, hoping she would see it safely to Earnan’s hands. Since the night of Niall’s death, and our shared trauma, Mhairi and I had become friendlier to one another.
Staying in my room had been bad enough but was made that much worse by the lack of human contact the past week. Aside from the few, brief conversations with the guards posted at my door, I had not seen or talked with anyone since Ian had washed my hair. I felt certain I was soon to go mad from it.
Could loneliness and boredom drive a person insane?
I crossed the room and returned to my post at the window seat, where I might at least look to the courtyard below and see that other people still existed. In particular, one other person— Ian. He’d driven me mad in an entirely different way the night of my birthday, then left me troubled and simmering and wanting his company— of all things.
That evening— after I had been denied the privilege of going down to dinner and had mistakenly guessed this meant Ian would be joining me and we would dine together in our room— I had dreamed once more that he brought me a child. I’d noticed, this time, that I didn’t seem upset by this, only a bit confused perhaps when he handed me the baby. When I awoke from the dream, I wasn’t as panicked as I had been previously. Being handfast with him, what other choice did I have for a family of my own? Would bearing Ian’s child not be better than a life alone, with no child? No husband?
Before I’d had time to explore these newly-developing feelings he had crushed them. The fragile trust he’d earned by keeping his promise, even to the point of washing my hair without touching any other part of me, had vanished with the first crack of the whip against Earnan’s back. The desire for Ian’s company had doused as quickly as it had flared to life, replaced by a boiling fury.
I couldn’t wait to see him. The words I would speak, the anger I’d convey— How dare he punish Earnan because I’d visited Mary. How dare he lock me in my room overnight.
How dare he leave me here alone for days, with nothing to do and no company and no control over anything to do with my life. How I hated Ian MacDonald, and I could not wait to tell him.
If he believed all this time alone would cool my temper, he was sorely wrong. It was fortunate for Ian that I didn’t have a pistol at my disposal. Because I would have shot him again, and this time I would have had better aim.
Dusk settled outside the castle, quickly shrouding the east-facing room in darkness. I did not bother to light the candles. There was nothing I required light for, and I feared using them, doubtful Ian would grant me more.
A faint sliver of a moon appeared in the sky, and I recalled Father’s words, wondering, sorrowfully, where he was and if that same moon still shone for him. An ache for home and family, all that was familiar, swelled within me, and I found myself crying once again, tears of frustration, loneliness, and despair. Was I to spend the rest of my life shut up like this? Did anyone outside my door even care?
Do I care? I tracked the moon’s slow progress and contemplated this. Three months ago it hadn’t mattered to me whether I lived or died. Collin’s loss had seemed too great to overcome. There was no going back to the plans we’d had and the promises made to one another and my grandfather. There would be no one to replace Collin, not even his brother. I had to forge a new life without him and had been doing so blindly, stumbling along, focused solely on getting through one day at a time. That had been working fairly well until the afternoon of my walk and Ian’s untimely visit.
The numb had almost left me then, had been in jeopardy of being replaced with feelings of a more hopeful and tender nature— a sure way to have my heart crushed again. Perhaps Ian had done a good turn in leaving me alone these many days. But I could not continue doing nothing. Therein did lie the path to madness.
If only I had a canvas. I still had the charcoal, paints, and brushes Finlay had saved for me. What if, after so many months without painting, I had forgotten how? The thought sent a fleeting panic, followed almost immediately by sheer determination. I left the seat and went to light the candles.
Once the room was illuminated I began a thorough search. I had plenty of walls to choose from, most of the artwork having previously been taken down, after Ian’s initial wreckage, but the stone was too rough and dark to paint on directly.
A half hour later I had spread a sheet on the floor and knelt over it, charcoal in hand as I sketched the limbs of a tree, the rowan from my dream. Perhaps if I painted it exactly as I’d seen, it might give me some clue to the purpose of its repeated appearance.
A Promise for Tomorrow Page 24