Chapter Fourteen
Under barked orders from Cullen, they took their awkward leave of Graywell.
Seamus sported a black eye from his fight with Cullen, but the cousins embraced in a bear hug as if the fight had not happened, which puzzled Lowri greatly.
Seamus said nothing to her, and Maeve was pale and downcast beside him, but Lowri was sure that was more to do with Cullen’s departure than hers.
Since his revelation of Maeve kissing him, she harboured resentment towards the lass, which skirted dangerously close to jealousy.
‘Safe journey,’ shouted Seamus.
‘‘Come and visit soon. Do not forget us,’ shouted Maeve as they trotted off. Lowri glanced back to see the two exchange a glance, and then Seamus walked inside, leaving his wife waving furiously.
Lowri’s mood turned leaden, dread churning her stomach. It seemed her union had descended into the same coldness as Maeve and Seamus, for Cullen said not one word to her for several miles of riding. When he did speak, the harshness in his voice made her spine stiffen.
‘The harbour is not much further.’
‘Harbour?’
‘Aye. We are to take a ship to Ireland.’
‘Ireland! I cannot go there.’
Cullen pulled his horse up and rounded on her.
‘It seems you have to do many things you don’t want to do since your little raid on my father’s herd.
Best you just grit your teeth and get on with it.
And if you don’t like it, any more than you like my bed or this marriage, then turn your horse and go home. I won’t stop you.’
‘You know I cannot. My friends.’
‘Aye, your friends will suffer more than you do. So stop arguing, point your horse in that direction and keep going,’ he snarled.
Lowri could only stare at his angry face.
She had mortally wounded Cullen’s pride and did not know how to make amends.
What could she say? ‘I want to hate you, but I cannot. I don’t want to lie with you, but it was glorious when I did, which makes me a whore who has betrayed her family, her clan, everything she stands for.
I hate the way you are looking at me now, with disgust, regret and rage. Wanting you makes me hate myself.’
How could she ever admit to any of that?
Cullen looked away from her and sighed. ‘We’d best get on, or we’ll miss the tide.’
‘What will happen to me in Ireland?’ she said.
He winced. ‘Never fear, nothing so bad as happened to you last night.’
There was no more talking after that piece of bitterness, just a tiring ride under skies which were mockingly sunny and cheerful.
They came to the crest of a hill, and below, stretched an ocean of grey-green water, sunlight sparkling off the swell.
A stone groyne blackened with mildew stretched out to sea and, tethered against it, was a ship, not huge, but dwarfing several boats rocking beside it in the swell.
Swathes of white campion flowers smothered the jagged shoreline, like frost, with a tangle of purple vetch sending tendrils up the stone walls and hedgerows of the little fishing village running down to the water’s edge.
It would all have been a stirring sight, had Lowri not been sunk in abject misery.
The light feeling inside when she had shared her body with Cullen the night before was well gone.
Now, there was only dread of what was to come.
Lowri followed Cullen down the path to the sea, her breath stolen by a buffeting wind coming over the sand and shingle. He stopped outside a smithy and, after some spirited haggling, told Lowri to get off her horse, for it had been sold.
So, they were at the point of no return.
They were really going to Ireland. Lowri wanted to run as fast as her legs could carry her, away from Cullen, from her mistakes.
But she could not. He took her arm and steered her along the groyne to the ship, which bore the name ‘Alainn’ on its weathered prow.
‘Rabham,’ shouted Cullen at an older man, running up the gangplank and clapping the man on the back.
Lowri could not hear what they were saying, but when Cullen began pointing at her, the old man laughed loudly and shook his head.
Her cheeks burned with shame, only slightly cooled by the stiff breeze which was causing the rigging to creak and the sails to billow.
Cullen strode back over to her and took her arm in a hard grip. ‘Come on. Rabham is sailing on the tide.’
‘Why is he laughing at me?’
‘He’s laughing at me, not you, for I told him I’m wed. Hurry now.’
As soon as she set foot on the boat, she was struck by the sway of the vessel.
Lowri had been on boats on rivers before, but never something like this.
The ship shifted under her, loose and rocking, just like her life, which had no real foundation anymore.
The vessel smelled of fish, overlaid with rot, like boiled cabbage.
Lots of shouted orders followed from Rabham, who seemed to be the captain. His crew were few, and a hard-looking bunch of men. They busied with their work but seemed to find Lowri fascinating. Their eyes on her were curious, covetous, and not altogether friendly.
The Alainn creaked her way out of the harbour, and the sails flapped and swelled.
Lowri stood clinging to the guard rail as the shoreline became a distant gash of green.
The chop was strong, and the ship rose and crashed down harder as they hit the open water, where there was nothing to stop the sweep of the wind.
Cullen stood well away, in conversation with Rabham. He was ignoring her, and his indifference hurt for reasons she could not fathom. Eventually, he deigned to come and speak to her.
‘Get below, lass. The crossing can be rough.’
Lowri eyed the dark stairwell leading below. It brought back memories of her confinement in the stinking darkness of the hole at Scarcross, so she shook her head. ‘I’ll not go down there. I will stay here in the open and the light.’
His face softened as if he understood her fear, or was she just imagining kindness where there was none?
‘The wind is in our favour, lass, but the crossing can still take a day, and we might be sailing into the night, and it will get colder. You’ll suffer out here.’
Lowri looked away, out to sea. ‘What does it matter to you if I do suffer?
His jaw worked. She was being unfair. His hands had been rough last night, and his manhood hard, but for a big man, he had held her gently, tenderly almost. Cullen had pulled sensations and feelings out of Lowri she did not know she possessed. Hatred for herself, for him, was a fist in her throat.
‘Have you been to sea before?’ his angry voice intruded like a rafter crashing from the ceiling.
‘No.’
‘Then why are you not seasick? Most folk throw their guts up the first time.’
‘Well, I am not most folk, and so I shall not be bringing up my breakfast,’ she said. ‘Though if you command me to, I suppose, I could try.’
‘Aye, grit your teeth and do it to appease me,’ he snarled.
The rhythmic motion of the ship all too clearly recalled that other sinful rhythm - of Cullen’s muscular hips sliding into her, in and out, circling, teasing. Better she was seasick – it would take her mind off lustful thoughts about wretched Cullen Macaulay.
‘Why must you be so angry?’ she said.
‘How can I not be? You let me have you, and I’d wager you liked it, and then you reject me for no good reason.’
‘Don’t pretend your feelings are hurt. You have none.’
Cullen stared out to sea in surly silence, so Lowri continued. ‘Perhaps I am as changeable as Maeve. Perhaps you cannot trust me. We are just like your cousin and his wife.’
‘At least Maeve wants to share his bed.’
‘Well, I don’t, so best you leave me be.’
‘I can’t.’ He grabbed her arm. ‘We have an arrangement to bring forth a Macaulay heir, remember. One you agreed to.’
She tried to shake him off.
‘I tried to be gentle with you. I tried to be kind. But you are too prideful to ever soften your heart to anyone. All you can do is bite the hand that feeds you, Lowri Strachan, and you are determined to take no joy from this world.’
‘I won’t be your slave, in bed or out of it. I am not like the other weak women you are used to.’
He turned on his heel and walked away, shouting, ‘No. I am beginning to realise that.’
As Cullen had warned, it got colder, and they did sail into dusk, eventually mooring offshore against an island of jagged rocks, barren, except for shrieking flocks of gulls. A strip of grey on the far horizon heralded what could be Ireland.
Lowri refused to go below, and Cullen eventually threw a blanket at her. ‘You may cling to your pride and stay up here and freeze, if you like. It’s not as if you can go anywhere.’
He disappeared into the ship’s bowels after that, and Lowri huddled into her blanket, with the sea wind stinging her face, until a fitful sleep claimed her.
***
A steely dawn brought the ship into land, fighting an offshore wind that forced the ship to veer back and forth to make any headway.
From its prow, Lowri could see a village spread out along the shoreline, ribbons of smoke rising from its chimneys.
The crew seemed to be in a state of controlled panic, shouting, trimming sails and heaving several little row boats over the side.
Cullen came beside her and handed her a hunk of bread.
‘What is that place?’ asked Lowri.
‘Larne. But we are not docking there. Rabham will set us down somewhere quieter.’
‘Why quieter?’ she asked.
‘So as not to be noticed, lass.’
‘Whose notice are you trying to avoid?’
‘You will find out soon enough. Now eat something. You are cold to the bone, and I can hear your stomach growling over the swell.’
Lowri chewed on the bread. It almost broke her teeth.
Cullen gripped the handrail, fingers digging in like claws. ‘I think, maybe, I should not have brought you with me to Ireland,’ he said.
‘Why?’
Cullen stared down at her. But she looked away so as not to see the wind ruffling his hair, the light reflecting off the water, which mirrored the grey of his eyes, and his sensual mouth, which had been all over her body.
He sighed and walked away without answering, and Lowri was left to wonder what fresh horrors awaited her on that grey shore.