Chapter Fifteen
Lowri was not impressed with Ireland. They came ashore later that day in a small boat.
Its prow lurched to a halt on a stony, deserted beach.
There was no shelter, nor were there any dwellings, and the wind was spitefully cold, folding Lowri’s skirts against her legs.
She could see nothing except sand dunes stretching for miles on one side and rugged black cliffs rising on the other.
Thunder rumbled overhead, and rain began to fall.
Cullen leapt out of the boat and reached out his hands to her.
‘Come, lass. I will carry you to save your skirts.’ The bite in his voice showed his anger had not abated.
Lowri fell into his arms. She didn’t want to touch him, but she let him lift her out of the boat and carry her out of the water. With a few grunts of goodbye, Rabham’s crew rowed away, and Cullen beckoned to her, his face grim. ‘Follow me,’ he shouted.
‘Where are we going?’
There was no reply. He just kept walking down the beach, looking intently up at the cliffs as if searching for something. Eventually, he stopped and looked out to sea. The other men had managed to row through the swell and were a shrinking dot amidst the waves.
Lowri looked around her. Her situation could not have been more miserable - alone in a strange land, exhausted and friendless.
Thunder cracked overhead, making her start, and the horizon lit up with forks of lightning.
Massive waves now inundated the beach, sending salt spray at them, stinging Lowri’s face, sucking back on the sand with a hiss.
Cullen came up to her and began rubbing her arms vigorously. She leapt back.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to warm you, lass. You are pale with cold.’
‘If you want me warm, why have you dragged me down this beach in the wind?’
‘I’ll not drag you further. There is a path alongside these cliffs to my home, a ways further along.’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘But I doubt we’ll make it home before this storm hits, so we must take shelter.’
Lowri shrugged. ‘Where?’
Cullen grabbed her hand and dragged her around a large rocky outcrop. ‘In here,’ he said.
Lowri’s throat closed as if a fist had been jammed down it. There was a jagged gash in the cliffside, nestled between the rocks. It looked black, cold and forbidding.
‘I’m not going in there.’
‘Aye, you are,’ said Cullen, dragging her closer. When she resisted, he said, ‘Just trust me.’
Lowri was pulled into the hole. The walls were slimy, stinking of sea rot, pressing in. ‘Please,’ she cried, but Cullen kept on dragging her into darkness. The ground sloped upwards as she felt her way along the rock wall, her fingers growing numb.
‘Bend over, the passage is low here,’ said Cullen, pressing her head down. ‘Almost there.’
Lowri’s vision blurred. Her heart hammered.
She wanted to claw her way out. She almost gave way to screaming panic, but then the darkness softened and she stumbled into a cave.
Rays of light shot in through several gaps in the rock overhead, just enough to give an eerie light to the place.
It was hushed save for the drip of water and the sea pounding outside.
Barrels, flagons and sacks lay haphazardly on the ground.
‘What is this place?’
‘We call it the Witch’s Cunny,’ said Cullen with a smirk in the half-darkness.
‘That’s a name I’ll not forget in a hurry.’
‘Best you do, lass. And you must never tell a soul about what you’ve seen here.’
‘Why not?’ she stuttered.
‘Best not to ask questions, you don’t want answered. I am trusting you with this.’
‘Don’t fool yourself that there is any trust between us, Cullen,’ she said.
He grabbed her by the arms and shook her fiercely. ‘I mean it, lass. For your own good, tell no one.’
Lowri shook him off. ‘What is all this?’
‘Salt, silk, whisky in the barrels. And tea and tobacco over there, too.’
‘Stolen?’
‘Imported.’
‘That’s a very fine line you are skirting, Cullen. So, you are a smuggler, nought but a criminal.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘You should feel right at home, being one yourself.’
‘Reiving a bit here and there is quite different, and I never judged others as you have judged me.’
He shrugged. ‘I did judge you, so maybe I am a hypocrite. And maybe we are not so different, you and I, except that I deal with far more dangerous folk than you, folk that make my father look like a saint.’
His words gave Lowri a rush of dread. She was alone in this awful place, and Cullen could do what he liked with her. And if his accomplices were more dangerous than Griffin, what did that say about him?
‘So what are we doing in this den of thieves?’
Cullen let the insult go. ‘Making ourselves comfortable. We will be here until the storm passes. And the tide is about to wash in, so we cannot leave until it goes out.’
‘You mean to say we are trapped.’
‘Aye.’ He wriggled out of his jacket and handed it to her. ‘Don’t be a fool and refuse it. You can hardly speak for your teeth chattering.’
Lowri snatched the jacket out of Cullen’s hand and put it on.
Let him freeze to death if he wanted. After that, there was no more talking, and a long time passed in heavy silence punctuated by cracks of thunder.
Lowri sat on a crate and simmered inside.
As the jacket warmed against her skin, it gave off a Cullen smell – earthy, a faint whiff of old whisky, horses and the sea.
Her mind rushed back to the bed at Graywell, her body swelling with need, that hot slick coupling of flesh sliding on flesh.
How could she be so close to a person, joining her body to Cullen one minute, and wanting to rip his throat out the next?
Lowri struggled to hold back tears. She was no closer to getting freedom for Donnan and Rory, and to do that, she would have to lie with Cullen again to get a bairn.
Oh, it would be awful. How could she even do that with such an angry man?
Then, in the silence, Cullen’s words dropped into her head. ‘Just take him in hand, and he will do anything you ask.’
Lowri wasn’t quite sure what he meant by ‘take him in hand,’ but when she lay with Cullen, he had been nicer to her, and she had felt that they were coming to a softening of hostilities.
Aye, perhaps that was the way. She could be softer with Cullen to get what she wanted and escape his clutches.
If that meant climbing into his bed and pretending she wanted him, so be it.
But would she really be pretending?
‘I think the storm has blown through. Let’s go,’ said Cullen into the silence.
He held out a hand for her, and Lowri clenched her teeth and took it.
They emerged from the cave to find the sea had crept back and the skies were washed out, clouds shredded by the storm, sweeping across it.
Cullen let go of her hand, and they walked until the cliffs levelled out.
A rough path upwards took them from rock to sand dunes dotted with sea grass, and beyond, green rolling hills.
They walked along high hedgerows for what seemed like a mile or two, until Lowri spotted the thatch of a house in the distance.
‘Is that where we are going?’ said Lowri, praying it was, for she was about to drop.
‘Aye, that is my home,’ said Cullen with a hint of pride.
‘Is it a comfortable prison?
‘I don’t want it to be a prison, lass,’ he said bitterly.
‘I thought we had an agreement, but if you don’t want to lie with me, I’ll not force you, and no bairn will come.
You will have to free those lads another way.
Do what you like, get your brother to come and fetch you, send him to war with my father, sacrifice those lads to be free.
But until you decide, you must bide here with me. ’
‘If you were kind, I could do it – lie with you, I mean,’ said Lowri.
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘If I was kind! How much kinder do you want me to be? Do you think I want to have a woman suffer me? Do you think I want to lie with someone who finds me disgusting, who runs from my touch? And trust me, lass, most women don’t.
’ He kicked the toe of his boot into the ground, head down.
‘We are wed. This is where you find yourself. Get used to it.’
He walked quickly onwards, and Lowri cried, ‘I didn’t find you disgusting.’
Cullen stopped, fists clenched.
Lowri caught up with him and grabbed his arm. His eyes blazed at her. ‘I pushed you away because…well, because I didn’t hate it and…’ She could not meet his eye. ‘I suppose I hated myself for doing it. There, I have said it aloud. I am a traitor to my clan, my friends and myself.’
She thought he would soften, that his pride would be placated. Instead, he said, ‘I don’t trust a word that comes out of your mouth, Lowri Strachan, and I’m no fool, so don’t take me for one. Now hurry, it is too cold to stand here arguing.’
Lowri tore off his jacket and hurled it at his feet. ‘If you are cold, take your damned jacket back.’
Cullen picked it up and put it on. It hurt that it made him look more handsome. Then he carried on walking ahead.
She was a fool to rile him. Damn her temper. Lowri hurried after him. ‘Would it help if I said I was sorry?’ she cried.
‘No, and if you want me to lie with you again, lass, you are going to have to beg me.’