Chapter 4
Chapter Four
After Elspeth finished the last of her daily duties as head chambermaid at Dun Talamh, she went to the infirmary to see if the clan’s healer and his assistant had done the same.
Every other vassal she passed nodded to her with the usual deference, but once they thought she wouldn’t notice also gave her swift, furtive looks.
Since the night of the binding ceremony, everyone seemed confused as to how to treat her.
A few older vassals disapproved of her so much they sniffed as they passed, or drew aside their arms or skirts as if fearing any contact with her would sully them.
To those vassals the outsider had become the outcast.
As the only dark-skinned child of slaves among the household, Elspeth was used to being regarded as peculiar.
Except for her, everyone at the stronghold had fair skin.
Compared to the other female vassals serving the clan, she appeared like a shadow of a woman.
She kept her tightly curled black hair shorn close to her scalp, as that proved the most comfortable for her, which likewise set her apart from all the other females with long hair.
Yet for once her differences in appearance were not the cause of the ongoing bafflement surrounding her.
In front of the clan and the household on the night of the ceremony, she had openly challenged a tradition that had never even been questioned before now.
I came tonight to declare that I’ve given my heart to the two mortal men whom I truly love. I wish to take them both as my husbands.
Life had been a little easier when Elspeth had taken only McKeran clansmen as her lovers.
Her dark looks didn’t appeal to the male vassals of the household, but over the centuries the McKeran men had generously welcomed her attention.
In return they had been kind and affectionate with her, bringing her much pleasure while dispelling her loneliness.
The clan could not marry mortals, however, and due to the lack of females they did not participate in the binding ceremony every year that created new couples among their vassals.
No man had ever given her his heart except Kelso, her former lover, who had the tragic fate of dying at the hands of the MacBren halfway through each year.
Although Elspeth had appreciated his fervent desire for her, and enjoyed sharing his bed, she’d come to realize that she’d made a terrible mistake by choosing him.
He would forever be murdered, vanish, and then reappear as the events loop reset without any memory of his life in the months before his death.
She also suspected that if they ever escaped the spell trap and returned to their time, her former lover would remain dead for good.
Loving Kelso would be as tragic as falling in love with a ghost.
At first what Elspeth had most longed for was a husband she could call her own, and had for some time silently admired Hunter Ulf from a distance.
An outsider like her, he was one of the handsomest mortals at Dun Talamh.
Like the McKeran men he took many lovers, but never married any of the females who desired to be his wife.
She hadn’t known he had longed just as much to marry her, too, until Benedict Miller had gotten caught in the spell trap.
The arrival of the healer changed everything.
Ulf and Ben had quickly become friends, causing some of the jealous maids to spread gossip about them sharing everything, even their lovers.
It wasn’t true, but when Elspeth had overheard that snide remark, it had made her entire being light up with desire.
Although the notion seemed utterly scandalous, she wished desperately to be the woman that the hunter and the healer shared between them.
Every night she would burn with such imaginings, even as she knew she could never bring herself to offer such an outlandish scheme to the two men.
It had been in an enchanted dream that Elspeth discovered both men desired her just as much.
When she had recovered from the attack that had caused the revelation, she had asked Ben and Ulf if they would wed her together, and they had agreed.
If only they hadn’t been taken from me before the binding ceremony.
Once every year the clan held a ritual during which their vassals could take a new husband or wife.
The final choice was always left to the females, but the males had to accept them before they were considered wed.
For those who weren’t chosen, the clan held a lottery which made random, unplanned matches.
After that the new couples would remain married for another year, while everyone who had not been chosen or engaged in the lottery lived alone, or took clansmen for lovers.
As for those married, they could choose to stay together or wed another when the time for the binding ceremony arrived again.
Why didnae I wait for them to arrive before I spoke of our scheme?
Most of the other female vassals had at first been shocked by her inventive choice of declaring she would marry two men instead of one.
One of the maids had even challenged her claim as going against their customs, but Farlan McKeran and the laird had sided with Elspeth.
In the end all agreed that the three of them could wed.
Yet an attack on the clan had interrupted the ceremony, and prevented Ben and Ulf from accepting her as their wife before the other vassals and the clan.
Almost every woman at Dun Talamh now talked about taking two lovers, and some had already begun choosing more than one clansman lover.
Yet because they were mortal, since that night Elspeth and her husbands’ fate remained unresolved.
She stopped outside the threshold of the infirmary, listening for a moment before she silently eased the door open and slipped inside.
Ulf and Ben stood over a worktable, both studying a map one of them had drawn with a piece of charcoal on some flattened wood bits Ben rendered into a strange parchment he called paper.
With the hunter’s pale fair coloring and the healer’s bright orange-red hair, they seemed so different from her, and yet fit when they were together as if meant to be part of this strange love they all desired.
They both looked worried until they noticed her, which was when the hunter swiftly rolled up the map while Ben walked over to greet her.
They’re keeping secrets from me again.
“Fair evening, my loves.” She knew they wouldn’t want her to ask what they were doing, so she had to pretend she didn’t care. “Do you need more time to attend to your work?”
Ulf went to stow the scroll on a shelf, and then came up behind her, putting his arms around her and drawing her back.
“With our lady here?” He kissed the side of her neck, and gently squeezed her waist with his hands. “All may wait for another century.”
Ben smiled as he shifted to embrace her from the front. “He’s so over-the-top.”
As the healer gave her a slow, deeply passionate kiss Elspeth sighed with pleasure into his mouth.
This three-sided love had more complications than simply gaining acceptance among the other mortal vassals.
While she loved both of her men dearly, she still had fears about their first time together as wife and husbands.
They had already confessed that they had wanted such for years, and the passion they shared seemed pure and right.
In her heart she had no doubts that they loved her as fiercely as she did them.
Yet she wasn’t sure how to share herself with two men instead of one, or what she might do to please them equally.
Then, too, she wished to commit to them as any wife would, and have the acknowledgement and blessing of everyone for their marriage before they began sharing the same bed chamber.
Only they were not married yet.
Even while she had the laird’s approval, if they ignored being wed during a proper binding ceremony, the only time when mortals were permitted to marry, some of the other vassals would name her a hoor.
That might prompt some of the less kindly male vassals to cause trouble for her, in hopes that she would be so free with her body.
Such was the lot of a female mortal in an eternal trap no one could escape.
“Shall we go for our walk?” Ulf asked, stroking her arms.
They had been so patient with her that she wanted to weep. Yet she could not compromise on what she desired and they deserved. “Aye, ’twould be lovely.”
After banking the fire and turning down the lamps, the men escorted her from the infirmary to the inner bailey, where the night had cloaked everything in shadowy velvet.
Flowers cast a sweet veil over the cool air that would shrivel them before dawn, when the enchantment that imprisoned them would bring them back to full, blooming glory.
The berry bushes and brambles, stripped by the gardeners who filled baskets with them for the clan’s cook, would also grow colorful and heavily laden with fruit when the sun rose.
The sameness of the curse that held them here often aggravated others, particularly Ben, who always desired to return to his world.
Indeed, he did much in his attempts to do so, to the point of harming himself.
Elspeth didn’t want to return to her time, as it probably would separate her from her men, her friends, and everyone else at Dun Talamh. But that was something they had yet to discuss.