Chapter Thirteen #2
Lisle’s eyes widened without her allowing them to do it, and the raindrops that slid into them didn’t obliterate where he sat, taking a bite of his cheese block this time, although it didn’t looked like he was enjoying the taste or texture of it, either.
“Or, you could try finding someone on Dugall property that would take you in…and keep you hidden from their landlord, who just happens to be me. That should prove an interesting endeavor. There might even be a poor crofter or two willing to risk his livelihood to shelter the last laird’s daughter.
I doona’ know the success of that, since they would lose their livelihood if they thwart me.
Trust me. I doona’ have a reputation of compassion toward those who deceive me. ”
She was reeling in place, and watched as black edged its way all about her vision. It made Blizzom feel like he was swaying, rather than standing placidly at rest. Lisle gripped the saddle pommel with hands that were afraid of the alternative.
“Or you could try and find the Dugall clan in their exile. If you knew which part of the West Indies that England had sold them to.”
“S-sold?” she stammered. At least, that’s what she thought her lips moved enough to say.
“Sold. Into slavery. Every last one. The ones that survived the journey, that is.”
Lisle’s grip slipped, and then she forced the black at the edge of her consciousness away.
She didn’t know how she did it, but she was not going to faint.
She refused. Not in front of him and not over anything he said or did.
Such a reaction was for women who possessed emotions and things like hearts, and if it killed her, she was going to make hers cease tormenting her with its presence.
“What…do you want?” The shell of a woman still sitting on the horse asked it, and that had to be her.
Monteith raised both eyebrows, putting that crease into place in his forehead again. “You,” he replied easily. “In my bed. Willingly. Lovingly and caressingly.”
She was so thankful she hadn’t taken a mouthful of food as her stomach revolted on his words, gagging her with bile that choked and burned.
Lisle swallowed it back down, watched him through a sheen of moisture that she couldn’t blame on the rain, and then blinked the tears into existence down her cheeks, so her eyes could fill with more.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because you have assigned me a part, and I have no choice but to play it.”
“What?”
“And there are things too large to grasp, and too fragile to put to the test. I’m playing a part.
One of many, I assure you. I have been for years.
I’m very good at it. That is the talent for which my partner went into business with me.
He could na’ tell a lie. I can. I can live one.
I am very well paid for it. Doona’ you listen to anything when you hear it? ”
“Why do you still use the brogue?” Lisle could hit herself later for allowing the emotion to stain her voice. She could only hope he didn’t hear it for what it was. It was a forlorn hope.
He sighed heavily. “I am still a Highlander.”
“Only by birth. Na’ by choice.”
“Such a language is mine to use. Doona’ take that from me…too.”
His voice had cracked slightly on the last word. Lisle couldn’t believe she’d heard such a thing, and upon searching his face, she knew she hadn’t heard it. “I did nae such thing. I wouldn’t.”
“Every Scot does. You included.”
“But—back there, you spoke of barbarism, and inbreeding, and…and filth.” She didn’t have his reserve. She knew it as her voice broke, and broke hard. It sounded like a sob, even to the shell of a woman she was pretending to be.
“I did,” he agreed easily. “What of it?”
“Why do you use the brogue…if you detest it so?”
“You are still not listening to what you hear. We’ll work on it.”
“I doona’ wish to work on anything with you.”
“Isn’t that too bad,” he answered, and took a bite of what looked to be a sausage. This time when he chewed, it was absently, as if the taste might be enjoyable, but his mind was elsewhere. There wasn’t a hint of discomfort as he swallowed and took another healthy bite.
Lisle told herself not to continue watching him, but nothing was working.
“Do you have an auld pair of shoes you like wearing?” he asked after the fourth or fifth bite. Lisle had stopped counting. The woman she was pretending to be was still watching every movement he made, however.
“My shoes are auld,” she replied, “and I have but one pair.”
He smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. “Bad example. Better one—do you have a book you liked reading, even when it became threadbare and worn? Perhaps at school they allowed you something?”
Lisle blinked the instant tears down her cheeks, and licked at them when they reached her mouth, the salty flavor joining the rainwater taste of it. She shook her head and had to wait while he swallowed yet another mouthful of his sausage.
“How about that MacHugh wrapped bundle of pipes? You treasure that?”
Lisle’s body decided it did have a heart, and it was huge and full of hurt and pumping it into every portion of her body that she hadn’t been successful at numbing.
“Are you threatening…I mean, negotiating…over them, too?” she asked evenly, making every effort at her disposal to do it without one sign that her heart was breaking with each and every word.
He smiled again, and there was nothing warm about this one at all. “If need be, I’ll use anything at my disposal. Anything.”
“Anything?” she asked in such a careful tone, the word croaked.
“You. Pipes. Love. Passion…anything. Trust me.”
Lisle sucked in on his words, afraid she’d heard them wrong, and then knew she hadn’t when she continued watching him watch her.
“Good. You’re finally listening,” he said.
“What do you want…for the pipes?” Her being dropped into shards about Blizzom’s hooves, laying bare everything she couldn’t hide.
She wasn’t in control of anything in her voice, and the words too clearly showed how much Angus’s bagpipes meant to her.
There wasn’t any way to hide the moisture slipping from her eyes in a nonstop torment of blur and clear, blur and clear, and then start again.
There wasn’t much reason to hide anything.
She wasn’t like him. She didn’t think she ever wanted to be.
She knew for certain she’d sold her soul to the devil. Lisle didn’t guess that he knew the pipes were hidden beneath her bed. She knew he knew. It was in the eyes that were still watching her. He took another bite of his cheese as he considered it. Then, he swallowed.
“If I gave you new pipes, would you want them?”
Lisle shook her head. She didn’t trust her voice.
“Na’ even if they were the best? The very best?”
She shook her head again.
“Na’ even if I gave you enough bagpipes to supply every piper in every glen, and got you permission to play them?”
Lisle pulled in a shuddering breath at the line of his questioning. He wasn’t threatening her with the pipes. She instinctively knew what he was saying. The relief felt like a cool water wash running over hot coals, and the effect like so much steam dispersing over it, too.
“I doona’ know,” she finally replied.
“Would you consider it?”
She nodded.
“What more do you need?”
“To give up Angus’s pipes?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Never to see you again,” she replied.
A look of such agony crossed his face, Lisle almost felt it.
The instant she blinked, it was gone, and all that was left was a shine of obsidian where his eyes were watching her.
She sharpened her eyes on him, and the only sign he’d been affected by anything she said was two spots of color high on his cheeks, but that could be an illusion of the light.
He took another bite of his cheese then, using a tearing motion of his teeth, and even to Lisle’s eyes it looked like it was choking him. He had to turn aside, and she waited patiently until he finished his swallow and turned back to her.
“I doona’ wish the pipes,” he finally said, softly. “You can keep them.”
“I know,” she replied.
“You said that to hurt me?” he asked.
“Did it?”
“I’m afraid to answer that, I think,” he replied.
“Good. Maybe now you can see what you do, too.”
There were some prices that were too high to pay.
Langston had heard this, in one of the dark corners of one of the opium dens he’d frequented, a long time ago, in another lifetime, and when he was playing the part of another soulless addict with open ears.
He hadn’t known what the words meant, but had stored it away for future reference.
Now he knew what the old, underhand dealing, ex-pirate he’d been keeping company with had been saying.
The price for this was high, almost too high.
He knew it when the pain he’d put in those transparent, sky-blue eyes had ferreted out and sought every bit of him that could feel hurt, and knew it was him who was doing it to her.
That price was high. Then she’d said the words that left him feeling like he was cut open and bleeding.
He’d rather have taken a deathblow at Culloden than continue doing what he still had to do.
She was too volatile. She was too passionate.
She was too full of life and emotion and joy and pain. She was too transparent.
The last was most intriguing, especially to one so used to darkness and hiding and lying.
Having passion and abandon and the freedom of showing it was intoxicating to the point he almost forgot time and space and reason in the glory of kissing her and knowing she kissed him back willingly.
So much so, that one of his own archers had to remind him of it with a perfectly aimed arrow.
It would never do. She was too open, too honest…
too easily read. She was alive with each and every emotion, and they were so easily seen on her, it was frightening to one who stayed hidden.
Why, if the Lady of Monteith was happy, it wouldn’t be possible to keep it hidden.
Langston knew it, and cursed himself for the knowledge, and the stamina and strength and all the other words of description he’d just used for her.
He had to have all of that. It was the only way.
If she was happy, it wouldn’t stay hidden.
Everyone would want to know why. It would be questioned.
Everything would be looked at closer—including her husband…
especially her husband. It would be Captain Barton and his rangers that would do the looking, too, and a Highland laird with what he had in mind was stripped of all his lands and titles, and then his head.
There was too much at stake. Too many relying on what he was doing…
too much to lose. He couldn’t chance it. Ever.
There was definitely a price to pay, and it was Langston who had to pay it, and keep paying it.
That was the only way he could get the English to trust him enough to sell him back Highland properties.
It was the only way he could get good wages back into Highland hands, get food and comfort into the bellies of their bairns.
It was the only way he could get the Sassenach to look at, but not see, what he was actually doing, and why.
It was also the only way he could get Butcher Willie under his control, so he could use him.
It was just like he’d told Lisle. He’d do anything.
Even if it meant slicing open his heart for the beautiful, passionate, Celtic goddess he’d married, so she could seek her revenge on it.
He’d do it. He’d do anything. Still. Again.
As many times as it took to get Scotland back.
“So,” he said brightly, after pulling in another dry, tasteless bite of cheese and managing to swallow it by force of will. “Do we have a bargain or na’?”
“To what?” she asked.
“You already said you heard me,” he said softly. Then, he took another bite of his cheese using a rough tearing motion of his teeth.
“You’ve said a lot.”
He smiled wryly. “True,” he replied.
“What is it we’ve bargained for this time?”
“You. Still.”
She gasped. Her eyes went a darker blue that struck straight to the heart of him, making him flinch inside.
“Still?” She whispered the word.
“Oh, aye. I find you very passionate. Very. I want that. I wanted it the first moment I saw you. I want it now. That’s why I bargained for you and would accept only you.
That’s why I wed with you. Your passion.
I want it. Still. Like in the woods, yonder, only with even more abandon.
That is what I am negotiating, Lisle Monteith. Right here and right now.”
“Now?” she asked, and he had to lean forward to hear it.
“Aye,” he said.
She reached for the top button of her dress, but it wasn’t slipping easily from its hole. The rain had made it slick, and it didn’t look like her fingers were working.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Complying,” she replied.
Langston caught the sound of self-hate before he vocalized it. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.