Chapter 10
Glenna stood watching the spot where Montrose disappeared into the woods.
Above the thick crowns of the trees, dark clouds hovered over her.
In the distance, they crawled over the low hills.
The air grew thick, and misty, and suddenly cold.
Rain slipped through the leaves and pelted her still flushed face.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then fixed her clothing and stalked over to pick up her hat, slapping it against her trouse to shake off the water.
She crammed it on her head and moved toward the horses, both Skye and the black, abandoned and standing some distance away, completely forgotten in all that had just happened.
What had just happened? She wiped the rain from her face.
Something wonderful, she thought when she still had been light-headed and dreamy.
Until Montrose made her feel as if she should be ashamed. What she felt was not wonderful. Apparently, it was something terrible.
Surely their touches were not a sin…a thought she chewed over for a moment, before it struck her that some sins felt good, like cursing loudly.
To discover she was not who she thought she was: a young woman who could never feel a man in her heart, or joy between her legs like men did, was a huge revelation to her.
Truthfully, when she had opened her eyes and looked up at him, it was all she could not to throw her arms around his neck and say, “Thank you!”
Lyall Robertson, the Baron Montrose, of all men had made her feel like a woman, and then crushingly apologized for his mistake.
Sadly her shoulders dropped, her heart sinking down to her toes. Try as she might she would never forget what she felt, her whole body and mind flying to the heavens, floating with the stars....
Tears choked her throat and stung her eyes, and she wiped them with her sleeve and told herself not to cry. He could not see her like this, though he had hurt her deeply, making her feel unclean and stupid for loving what they had done.
Her mind ran over things, searching for answers, and as she turned to walk back, she decided she might have a clue as to what he was doing in the woods, considering the size of the knot in his hose when he had stalked away…
she did have two brothers. One quick look when he returned and she would know.
Once, when Elgin was ten and three, and she was still a brat, she had followed him down the stables, intending to pester him into letting her ride as she usually did, and instead, his furtive movements and secretive manner made her quickly duck into the next stall and quietly hide.
But the sounds he was making were curious and odd and made her peek over at him.
He sat in a corner holding himself, his hand moving till his seed was gone and he had grown small and lay limp and soft.
She wondered at what she had seen him do, and the memory of it had haunted her.
For days she watched him curiously, some days thinking he could grow horns—because of something Alastair once said when he thought she wasn’t within earshot.
El seemed unchanged…no different…no horns.
She understood what had happened--they did breed horses—but she had not understood why.
Finally, she could keep quiet no more, and in the middle of supper one night she plainly asked her brothers about what she had seen. Elgin stood so quickly he almost knocked the table over, sputtering at her, his face as red as the sunset, and then Alastair became angry—not at her, but at Elgin.
The two of them fought, almost to blows before, finally, frustrated, Alastair had sat down, running a hand through his long red hair, and he had gently told her how a man’s body worked, using their horses and breeding as examples.
When she asked him about what he had said once--that men could grow horns--he had laughed and explained it was not true, but merely an old tale.
Then he explained to her the way he had always done about life and death and heaven and hell, about people and animals---he told her through stories—told her all he could about the sin of Onan, of a man growing horns, and the old Saxon prophesies of men going blind.
Until today, she had still not been able to completely piece together what she had seen in the stables with what Alastair had tried to explain to her about men and their bodies. She was not a man, and had no woman in their home to ask about her body. Women had fluxes. Men did not.
Naturally she assumed women’s bodies were as different from men as their nether parts, and that women could never have the same reactions—that Alastair was talking about something only men could do and feel.
For most of her life there had been only Al, El and her, and they often thought in different ways, saw dilemmas from different sides of the paddock fence. She was convinced even more by her reaction to Montrose, that she did not understand men.
All the more reason for her to escape.
Her frustration and confusion did not leave her easily, nor did the sudden feelings of her heart.
She gathered the loose reins of both their horses and tied the animals closer, under the same shelter of the trees where they could still munch on the grass and easily drink from a small brook.
The rain had cooled them down, so Montrose could no longer bluster and be angry with her about ‘riding the horses into the ground.’
Despite the rain, she walked back out into the open, her gaze searching the eastern horizon.
But with the mist and low clouds, she could see little that would enable her to get her bearings, and she cursed herself for not learning more of the lay of the land when she and her brothers had plundered across the mainland.
Of course she knew well the long list of names of villages to avoid in Ross-shire and could recite them like a song: “Applecross, Dingwall, Suddy, Cromarty, Plockton, Garve, Kyle, Avoch, Knockbain, and Wester.” She needed to stay as far away from them as she should have stayed from the Steering market fair.
Fergus lay at her feet, his nose resting on his paws, eyes closed.
He was snoring. Lyall came striding out of the depths of the forest with his arms full of wood, which he dropped on the ground in front of her, knelt down, and built a small, warm fire.
She watched him, laughing inside. No knot in his hose.
He glanced up at her from the fire. “What is so humorous?”
She turned away from him and muttered, “Nothing.”
He pulled some food from his pack and handed it to her. “Eat something. We will rest the horses.“ He glanced at Fergus. “And your hound. Perhaps the storm will pass.”
She laughed. “The storm that keeps following us? “
He seemed to smile to himself. “Aye.” Sitting back he ate some fish and cheese.
She took one of the turnips and bit into it, chewing thoughtfully. She studied the horizon, where the clouds were almost black. She gestured with her turnip. “Looks as if the storm will not wane.”
“Then we will have a long, cold ride ahead of us.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Beauly Priory.”
Her heart raced at the name. Beauly? Was not that near Dingwall? Would she be safe?
Her mind flashed with the image of a cruel sheriff wearing a deep green wool cloak pinned together with golden leaf brooches, a strap in his hand as he whipped a small frail boy bloody.
Beauly Priory was most likely not in the center of any village, since the abbeys and monasteries were towns unto themselves.
She decided not to press the issue. If she asked too many questions, he would have questions of his own.
So she ate and kept quiet, occasionally watching him.
When it was time to depart, she unrolled the long woolen cloak from her pack and pinned it over the tunic with two leaf brooches she had stolen from a sheriff to distract him from beating a young peasant lad to death.
Montrose was already in the saddle. His look was impatient and thoughtful, as if his mind were leagues away. She repacked her bag precisely, putting each of her few items back in its place.
“I’d like to leave before winter.”
She glared him. “Would you have me shove my belongings in every which way and then have to take three times as long to find what I’m searching for?”
“Mount your horse, Glenna,” he said tiredly.
They rode all day in the rain, finding only a little shelter through woods and forests, and the longer they rode the colder it became, and the muddier.
When they could, they rode over grass covered hills at a faster pace to avoid the mud.
To the north stood tall granite crags, like massive gray guards of a gateway to another world.
To the south, gloomy green woods cloaked in clouds, some trees so massive and old they had sheltered Picts and Norse raiders.
Streams rushed over rocks looking more like rivers than they must have merely a few days before.
Once again the storms brought an end to summer.
Autumn was clearly there now and raining down upon her.
She was wet from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and despite the weather, the whole time she could think of nothing but what happened between them, of his touches, his taste and his mouth on hers… and his apology afterwards.
His continued silence annoyed her, especially after the saddle had pounded her so much even her backside was numb. Might as well annoy him. “I do not understand you, Montrose,” she said finally.
“I do not understand myself,” he replied, seeming to connect to what she was talking about without explanation.
“I am supposed to be ashamed over what passed between us?”
“The Devil’s teeth woman! Can you not merely ride in silence?”
“I can ride without ever speaking, my lord. I choose not to do so solely because you want to avoid my questions. I’m disappointed, Montrose. I did not think you were a coward.”
“I will not rise to your bait.”