Chapter 10 #2
“What bait? I ask you one question and you are already angry at me? We are at war because you cannot answer a simple question.”
“And that is where you are mistaken. ‘Tis not a simple question.”
“To me it is,” she said quietly.
He slowed his mount and looked at her. She tried to hide her hurt by looking down at Fergus, who had wandered toward a large bush. “No!” she snapped her fingers. “Come.”
Montrose said nothing for long moments and she decided it was time to give up.
“Surely you understand you are not supposed to be so cursed pleased about what happened between us.” He sounded disgusted.
“No. I do not. But you can explain why.”
“Why? Why? You keep asking why.”
“And you become angrier. I am thinking I should keep asking until you answer me.”
He turned in the saddle. “It is not my duty to defile the king’s daughter!”
Her spine went rigid. “Oh, I see…” She said bitterly.
“ ‘Tis better to keep the daughter pure. Keep the royal virginity unsoiled, so it can be sold to the highest bidder or bartered to the first of my father’s enemies to offer him peace. Me? Unsoiled? “ She laughed without humor. “Why should it matter? I am destined to be a vessel for a man’s use and pleasure. In truth, I am, by birth, naught but a man’s whore.”
“Glenna…” he said with a dark warning.
“What? I am to be married off, sold as the royal prize, and that is supposed to make me happy? Pardon me, my lord, if I do not dance about and shout with glee.”
“You are a woman,” he said so simply. “You will give your husband children, sons and daughters. Is that not a woman’s desire, to be protected and cared for, to bring forth children from her body?”
There it was: a woman’s entire life purpose in a single male thought. She laughed again. “Aye, Montrose,” she said without hiding her contempt for situation. “I long so deeply in my heart to be a brood mare.”
“You want an argument and I will not be lured into a game of words.” He kicked the black faster up the next hill.
“I want an argument,” she said indignantly, then glared at his back and followed, wishing she could ride off toward those tall gray crags and off into a world where her surname was not Canmore and there were no men around to pretend to love her, to protect and to guard her, or to use her.
So they did not speak of it again, and between them there was only silence and pouring rain.
He rode and rode, onward for more leagues than she had ever ridden in such foul weather.
Poor Fergus was drenched, mud on the long shaggy hair of his belly and sucking at his paws.
He hung his head down and trudged gamely onward.
The rain grew into splattering sheets of water and she was getting colder. ..she couldn't get any wetter.
Soon riding was difficult: it began to seem as if night would never come, but she followed, silent still, slogging along through rivers of water, soft muck and mud, the weather getting worse as the day grew to a close.
When she thought she was going to give in and demand he stop, she looked to Fergus for courage, because her dog stayed the course, one paw in front of the other, not a whimper or a sound.
Rain sluiced off her hat and onto her hands. The reins were wet and she was becoming accustomed to the odor of wet horsehair every time she inhaled. She wondered at the man’s endurance, and questioned her own, and his sanity. She had been wet for over two full days.
How much longer would they go? She watched Fergus stay at her side, plodding through the thickening mud, and finally couldn't let him slog on. "Montrose," she said, intending to rein in and pull the large hound up in front of her.
Montrose stopped. “Beauly Priory is over that hill,” he said.
"I'm taking Fergus up with me."
He looked at her for a long, icy moment, then dismounted and picked up Fergus as if he weighed little and mounted with her wet dog in front of him.
The sky was dark and moonless and she could barely stop from shaking and could not respond her teeth were chattering so. She had almost fallen asleep in the saddle more times than she cared to count. Her hands were so cold she could not feel her fingers.
By the time they finally ‘rounded the last hill, rang for entrance, and rode through the gates of the priory, her head pounded and she could barely see in front of her. Her teeth chattered no matter how hard she locked her jaw together, and she doubted her feet were still at the ends of her legs.
The horses clattered into the stone courtyard, where rivulets of water ran like small rivers down towards the southern walls.
The thick oaken doors of the monastery opened almost immediately, sending warm yellow light spilling into the courtyard.
She caught herself in mid-gasp. The light meant warmth.
Two young oblates rushed out to take the horses, followed by an older monk dressed in the black robes of his order and carrying a brightly burning reed torch, the shaven circle of his tonsure shining from the flickering torchlight.
“Hallo!”Montrose said.
“Who is there?”
“Lyall Robertson,” he said. “The Baron Montrose requests shelter for the night!”
“Come! Come! I am Pater Bancho, the cellarer. Inside with you…the weather is foul.”
Montrose dismounted with Fergus, who looked better than she felt.
"Come," Pater Bancho repeated and waved them toward the open doors as one of the oblates took Skye’s reins and looked quizzically up at her with the sweet boyish features of an angel. He frowned, then cocked his head and stared at her.
Glenna smiled weakly, bent over to dismount and water poured off the wide brim of her hat and splattered onto his robes. Her hat slipped off; it fell forward before she could catch it and hit the ground. Her long braid tumbled out and hung down past her stirrup.
Montrose spun on his heel. With the light behind him she could not see his face, but she could only imagine the scowling look he wore and the vile curses that were going through his mind. Her disguise was lost.
The boy looked at her hair, then back to her face, apparently shocked at the realization she was a not a boy, and he gasped, “Milady?”
At that very moment, she did not give a fig. She slid down from the saddle, only to hit ground with a splash and have her knees start to give way. She reached out and gripped the saddle strap, and Montrose grabbed her by a fistful of her sodden clothes and kept her from hitting the ground.
Had she done so, surely she would have shamed herself and lain there broken and wet and burst into hysterical sobbing.
He leaned over and asked quietly, “Can you walk inside?”
“You may release my clothing, my lord,” she said stiffly and pulled her shoulder away, knowing she spoke with false pride.
She then ruined the entire effect of her words when she swayed and the warm golden light before her grew hazy and dark at the edges of her vision.
“Oh no…” She raised her hand to her spinning head
He muttered something she couldn’t quite comprehend and swept her up into his arms as if she were made of nothing but goose feathers.
“I am able to walk,” she said, though her arms linked around his neck then her body melted into his warmth. “I am,” she insisted weakly, unable to stop the words because some small part of her needed to resist him at every turn.
“I’m sure you are able to try to walk,” he said calmly. “And I will have to hold you up by the scruff of your clothing while you try so proudly to do so. Do you believe if you enter through that doorway in such a manner that your pride will stay unimpaired?”
Bugger! He made a good point, and she was too tired and cold to find the will or desire to argue with him over it.
As Montrose carried her inside, she was vaguely aware that the old monk was rushing alongside.
“Fergus!” she called out, worried about him and panicked he had been left behind. She hated that she sounded so pitiful.
“He is here. Do not fret. Come dog,” Montrose said his voice sounding strangely thick.
“What is this, my lord?” the monk asked. “Is she ill?”
“My wife is exhausted,” Montrose said. A half lie and a half truth. “We have traveled from Marram.”
“Across all of Ross-shire in a single day? “
Montrose was scowling.
“You made her ride this far? In the storm?” Pater Bancho’s tone said exactly what he thought…that Montrose was mad and cruel to attempt such a distance with a woman in tow.
Glenna cared not what either of them thought. She was sorely tired and her teeth would not stop chattering, although his big body was so close and warm. She wanted to crawl inside him.
The monk seemed to recover himself. “Quickly, my lord. Follow me…to the warming room.”
With a huge effort she cracked open her eyes, because it felt almost as if Montrose was running.
Images of the walls sped past her, iron candle pricks and flickering candles that seemed to cast dizzying shadows along the hall.
He was running…fancy that, following the old monk who then opened a wide, creaking oak door and stepped aside, and she felt a thankful blast of warm air.
She couldn’t hear the groan of relief that gave her weaknesses away.
“Here. Come in,” the old monk said. “There is the fire and more wood.
In the corner are pallets for travelers.
I will bring blankets and towels to dry yourselves before I go to the kitchen and fetch some food.
Water is in the barrel in the corner. The kettle to warm it is near the hearth.
‘Tis late here, my lord, well past Compline, and most have retired to their dorter and cells. I am on watch tonight.”
“I had not planned to arrive this late,” Montrose said in his deep voice, which sounded leagues away from her.