Chapter 5
She dreamt about it that night, of course.
Emma woke up in a cold sweat somewhere in the dead hour before dawn and stared up at the spider-webbed ceiling above her head.
Her box room wasn’t much. It was an irregularly shaped room tacked onto the main circle of the Healer’s Chambers, full of books and bottled herbs and jars of preserved things that even Delphine couldn’t identify.
There were no windows, so her only source of light was the leftover silvery moonlight that filtered into the main chamber or a candle.
Of course, Emma had left the lantern in the forest earlier that night, and she cursed herself for her stupidity. Delphine would certainly notice, they had only one good working lantern. Emma knew that she ought to rise early and look for it in the forest but couldn’t bring herself to do so.
What if Gregor was back guarding the doorway?
She shivered at the thought.
She lay in her narrow cot, sweaty blankets twisted around her, and waited for the feeling of dread to wear off. She could still feel his hands crawling all over her, his grubby fingers plucking at the strings of her bodice. She’d found smudgy marks on the linen once she had gotten back to her room.
There’d been no Laird MacPherson in her dreams, barreling through the forest to save her.
Emma’s heart clenched at what would have happened if he hadn’t been there.
And then he’d hit Gregor and just kept hitting him.
Part of her wanted so badly to watch him keep going, to keep hitting and hitting until Gregor was a mass of pulp, but of course, that wouldn’t do.
Outside, the sun was rising, turning the light coming underneath her door from silver to gold. She was up and dressed before the cockerels outside began to squawk and crow, heralding the beginning of the day.
Of course, Delphine was up before her.
“Good of ye to drag yourself out of yer pit,” Delphine remarked archly. She stood at the stone table they reserved for food and drink, pouring two cups of tea. Two steaming bowls of porridge stood ready.
Despite her ordeal last night, Emma was surprised to realize she was hungry.
“I would have done that, Delphine,” she said. “And as to me rising late, it’s barely dawn.”
“I’m just joking with ye, lassie.” Delphine chuckled. “I’m an old woman, and sleep eludes me these days. Ye enjoy yer sleep while ye can, and I’ll rise early. By the way, I’ve told ye to be more careful with those lanterns. Ye left one outside the door last night.”
Emma flinched, glancing in the direction that Delphine pointed. Sure enough, the lantern from last night stood there. There was even a smear of soil on one side, where it had rolled over after she had dropped it.
Her stomach heaved, and suddenly, the porridge stopped looking delicious and started looking like vomit.
“I… I left it outside, ye say?” Emma managed.
“Aye, I found this morning. I hope ye did not go out last night. I’ve told ye that it can be dangerous to leave the Keep after nightfall. Even inside the Keep can be dangerous, for all Laird MacPherson’s efforts.”
Laird MacPherson. Thomas. He must have returned the lantern. Gregor would obviously not have done it.
Emma glanced up and found Delphine’s eyes on her. The old woman’s white eyebrows were drawn together in a frown.
“Is everything all right, lassie? Ye are white as a sheet.”
Emma opened her mouth, the whole explanation lingering on the tip of her tongue, ready to be blurted out. She closed her mouth again.
It would be too much to burden Delphine with something like this, especially when she’d worked so hard to keep Emma safe.
It’ll just upset her.
Instead, Emma smiled.
“I’m quite all right, Delphine. Are we going out to see our patients this morning?”
“Not with all that rain last night. Can ye run down to the laundry and see if our linens are done? I think it’s time to change the bedsheets.”
Emma brightened. That would be a perfect opportunity to see Riley.
“Of course.”
The laundries were Emma’s least favorite part of the Keep, after the chaos and heat of the kitchens, of course.
She took a narrow corridor that bypassed the kitchens, and the shouts of the cooks and maids were muffled.
The heat was still there, radiating through the walls from the two colossal fireplaces that were needed to heat up the endless parade of meat served on the feasting table.
The laundries weren’t quite as chaotic as the kitchens, but Emma still thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t have to work there.
Keep MacPherson, like any other building its size, provided a constant torrent of clothes to be washed. Shirts, linens, gowns, petticoats, shifts, troublesome plaids and tartans, and so on. The list went on and on, and a whole army of women—the laundresses—were recruited to deal with that.
The laundry was a vast, rectangular room leading straight out onto the courtyard. It was full of copper tubs of hot water, where women worked diligently with soap and washboards. In the corner, several women worked the huge mangle, wringing bucketfuls of water out of the clean laundry.
Emma caught a glimpse of clean, white sheets flapping in the wind outside in the courtyard. The first wash of the day. The air was full of the sounds of scrubbing and a low level of chatter.
And steam, of course.
The steam hung in the air like a pall, dampening everything it touched.
The women all wore thick aprons to protect their clothes from the worst of the damp and stood on slatted wooden boxes at their washing tubs to get out of the ankle-deep water.
The laundresses all looked more or less the same: determined-looking women with brawny arms and strong shoulders, red faces, and hair plastered to their faces and necks with dampness and sweat.
The chief laundress met Emma at the door, eyeing her with dislike and pursing her lips.
Emma was not one of the regular servants, that much had been made clear. For some of the more traditional women, a healer was nothing more than a witch, and a drunken midwife was quite sufficient to deliver children.
“Yes?” the laundress said crisply. “What can I help ye with, Madam?”
“I’m here for the Healer’s things. Our linens.”
The laundress sighed. “They’re drying outside. I’ll have them brought up when it’s done.”
She turned to walk away, and Emma felt a flare of panic. She had to talk to someone about what had happened, and if not Riley, then who?
“Wait.”
The woman turned around, raising an eyebrow.
“I’d like to talk to Riley McGuire,” Emma said as confidently as she could. “Please.”
The laundress rolled her eyes. “Fine, but only for a few minutes, ye hear?”
“That’s all I need,” Emma said, fighting back a grin.
“Good Lord,” Riley uttered, her eyes nearly popping out of her head. “Emma, that’s terrible. You could have been… you might have—”
“I know.” Emma interrupted hastily. “I know. I just… I just wanted to talk to someone about it.”
Riley digested this information. The two women had chosen a low wall running around the laundry’s section of the courtyard and sat side by side, their feet swinging above the faded, flattened cobbles.
They had been friends since Emma’s first arrival in the Keep, since they’d come at the same time, more or less.
Like Emma, Riley was something of an outcast, but this was not because she wasn’t one of the servants.
Riley even looked similar to most of the laundresses, with her strong arms, squat frame, brown eyes, and curly brown hair that poked out under her mob cap.
No, Riley was English.
She and her brother had left their home in Newcastle under something of a cloud, but she hadn’t been forthcoming about what that cloud might be or where her brother had gone now. Some of the servants seemed to find it an outrage that Riley, an English girl, had a Scottish name.
Nevertheless, she worked hard and was gradually winning over even the most anti-English of her peers. In fact, in many respects, she was doing better for herself than Emma.
“It was kind of Laird MacPherson to save you like that,” she commented after a few moments. “You must be grateful to him.”
Emma scowled. “He’s a wretch.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “He saved you from Gregor. I won’t go so far as to say that you owe him anything. Any decent person would have intervened. But a little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.”
“I dreamt about it last night, ye know.” Emma shuddered.
“When I worked at the McCade pub, I had plenty of men trying to unlace my bodice and put their hands up my skirt. They didn’t give a damn if I was a healer or not.
For them, women had one purpose and one alone, and I wasn’t fulfilling mine.
They truly thought that they had a right to take it from me.
But last night was the closest any man has ever come.
I truly thought… Oh, let’s not worry about what I thought.
I suppose I wasn’t thinking much at all besides how to get his awful, sweaty palm away from my face and how I could feel him touching me, under my skin, even. ”
Riley shuffled closer, sliding her arm around Emma’s shoulder. “Men are beasts,” she said, with feeling. “Have you told Delphine?”
Emma shook her head. “I don’t want to upset her. Besides, if I’d followed her advice, I wouldn’t have been in that situation, in the first place.”
“Yes, but you shouldn’t have to worry about following a strict set of rules so that you don’t get—”
“And it gets worse,” Emma interrupted. She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. “I’m worried that Laird MacPherson will use this as a way to get me out of the Keep.”
Riley’s eyes went round like two pools of dark honey.
“He wouldn’t do that! Not after he saved you!”
Emma groaned. “He tried it before, Riley.”
“What? You never told me that.”