Chapter 27
Death
had to be quite peaceful, didn’t it?
Madelyn scratched a mark on one of the rustier bars surrounding her. Twenty-five. Twenty-five days that she’d been sitting in her prison. Twenty-five days that she hadn’t been able to straighten her legs, hadn’t been able to sit fully upright, hadn’t had a decent meal.
Twenty-five days was probably a short stint considering how long she could be there.
They had caged nobles in medieval Scotland, hadn’t they?
She was certain she’d read something about one of Robert the Bruce’s relatives being caged in the courtyard of some castle.
She couldn’t, however, remember just how long that woman had been confined.
It could have been years, for all she knew.
At least she was inside and not out in the cold. That was a bonus. Then again, if she’d been outside in the courtyard, the rain might have given her pneumonia. That was sounding pretty damn good at the moment. She could have coughed herself to death.
Not pretty, but effective.
Unfortunately, who knew how long a woman could last inside a cold medieval hall, surviving on rats and disgustingly fouled water before she expired?
Too long, probably.
Well, at least she had herself intact.
Most of herself intact.
Maybe her index finger would heal eventually. She’d made the mistake, on Day Four, of trying to get the pins out of the bars of her cage. The Fergusson’s brother had caught her at it and broken her finger with the hilt of his sword.
She actually didn’t remember the rest of Day Four or Day Five. That happened, she supposed, when you were unconscious from pain.
She looked down at her finger. She’d tried to wrap it as best she could, but who knew what would be left of it when it healed properly?
It was, fortunately, on her bow hand. That wasn’t the best situation, of course, but it could have been worse.
She hadn’t suffered any compound fractures, any torture, any beatings.
Not like the man chained to the wall next to her.
This seemed to be Laird Fergusson’s favorite place to hold his prisoners.
He had a dungeon, but apparently there was no fun in just dumping his prisoners down there.
Not that he didn’t use it. He did, on your average, run-of-the-mill Scot who got in his way.
She’d watched that happen a time or two—and to a couple of his own people.
But it was the MacLeods he caught that were treated to the upstairs view.
Lucky her.
Unlucky the piper who was sitting next to her.
He was a good player. She knew that for two reasons. One, he’d been allowed—or forced, depending on your point of view—to play for the laird for several hours on the day of his capture. He’d played many of the songs she’d heard him play before.
Or was that after?
It was hard to know what to call it.
It was just the spookiest thing she’d ever been privy to. It was also the most miserable. She listened to him play, then watched as his fingers had been broken, one every other day, until he had no unbroken fingers left. Whether or not he’d play again was anyone’s guess.
Play in this lifetime, that is.
She knew he’d play again on an instrument that wasn’t of this world, and she knew this because Robert the piper was none other than the ghost who had serenaded her so often in 2003.
Looking at his hands, however, made her extraordinarily glad that the Fergusson didn’t know anything about her paltry skills with the violin.
Robert had been philosophical about it all.
It was what he got for being a MacLeod, he’d told her as he’d sat chained next to her with eight out of ten fingers broken.
That was during Week Two. She’d admitted to him that she really wasn’t a MacLeod, she was just in love with one.
And she’d been able to tell him that because he’d passed almost all of his time teaching her Gaelic.
She could thank her parents for her gift for languages, because it had taken her just three weeks to pick up an excellent grasp of the grammar and an enormous amount of vocabulary.
Who knew how fluent she’d be after several years of captivity?
She’d also learned the date: 1382. It seemed incredible, but so did the fact that she was a civilized woman trapped in a box.
So she’d gotten used to it. She’d gotten used to the ruin of her beautiful skirt. She’d also grown accustomed to the loss of Jane’s lovely jacket and the loss of her socks. She’d also gotten used to listening to what the men called her each day as they passed by her.
MacLeod whore.
Okay, so she hadn’t been called worse. At least she was just being called that, and she wasn’t becoming a Fergusson one. Thank heaven for small favors.
It had been, actually, quite an education.
Having nothing else to do, she’d spent all her time sucking up every nuance, every curse, every story she’d listened to.
If she thought she stood a snowball’s chance in hell of being rescued, she might not have bothered.
But she had no hope of rescue, not with a crippled piper next to her and a hall full of men who hated who they thought she was.
It was that potential Fergusson prostitute thing that kept her mouth shut about the truth of her identity. The piper, Robert, had agreed with her.
“You, they might release, but you wouldn’t enjoy it,” he’d said. “Me, they’ll just torture, then kill.”
“I thought pipers were revered.”
He’d laughed. “We’re on Fergusson land. The world as we know it ceases to exist at the border.”
She liked him very much. She wished she’d gotten to know him better as a ghost. Then again, maybe they would have a nice long time to chat while they were hanging out in chains.
She leaned back against the bars of her cage to contemplate life.
She tried to be positive. As long as she was in the cage, life could only head up from where she was.
Of course, she would probably never walk again.
She was fairly certain her legs were becoming fused in their bent state.
At least burying her would be easy. They wouldn’t have to break her legs to get her in a box, if they bothered to use a box.
It wasn’t as if she’d spent her entire tenure in Laird Fergusson’s cage thinking about death. That had been only the first few days.
During Day Six through Day Twelve, she had wanted to get home and completely annihilate every bad guy she could come across—this because she’d come to loathe Laird Fergusson with a passion.
She’d entertained fantasies of crushing evil-doers and the male members of her former law firm under her heel with equal abandon.
She’d wished for freedom and a sharp sword to slip between the Fergusson’s ribs.
It was during that same period that she’d begun to get in touch with her darker side.
Fantasies of inflicting all sorts of unusual and painful tortures on her enemies had given way to a more thorough reconsideration of her priorities. It was very easy to put one’s life into perspective when everything else was merely speculative.
Work? Who needed it? There were too many lawyers in the world as it was. Her piece of paper from Harvard would make a great wrapping for the pen and pencil set the firm had given her for acing the bar—highest score in firm history—when she donated the set to the local charitable organization.
Her wardrobe? She’d keep what Patrick had given her and make do with that until she had to buy things for summer, then she’d either beg Sunny for hand-me-downs or head to the local thrift store.
Sunny
. Oh, it was the thought of never seeing her sister again that really got to her. Her parents would be sad, but they’d get over it and get back to their crusade to keep Latin alive and well. Sunny, though, would grieve. It would probably throw her karma way off and kill all her houseplants.
And Patrick? Well, the jury was, as usual, still out on him.
Who knew what would have happened if she’d actually gotten on the plane with him that day?
Would he have changed his mind at the last minute?
Professed undying love right there at the terminal?
Begged her to stay and make his life complete?
Dyed his hair pink and put on a tutu to match?
All that speculation had faded sometime after Day Seventeen. It was then that she’d begun to think of other things. A home. A garden. Other things that grew with tender care, like children.
Children she would never have.
But that hadn’t stopped her from her fantasies.
Not only had she envisioned a home, she’d furnished it as well in tasteful Shaker style.
Every room in it she’d decorated from floor to ceiling.
Of course, at some point she’d realized that the house she was decorating did not resemble in the least Patrick MacLeod’s derelict hall.
That had bothered her.
She’d begun to wonder how Shaker style would look in a house that was supposed to resemble a castle.
She’d considered antiques at that point.
And once she’d thought about his little castle, and furnished it to her satisfaction, she’d turned her mind to his garden.
That had been easier to see to than his house, probably because she’d already had her hands in that dirt.
Roses, trailing vines of wisteria and honeysuckle, shrubberies and rhododendrons.
The list had gone on and she’d planted each one with great care.
She’d also done him up a very fine vegetable garden because during the winter, she supposed he didn’t eat what he hadn’t either stored or canned.
No sense in buying produce of uncertain origin when you could grow it at home and know just what kind of pesticides you’d used.
Sunny used beer for her slugs.
Madelyn wondered if they had slugs in Scotland.