CHAPTER 10 #7
A trio of candles was flickering beside the bed, veiling the chamber in hazy gold.
No hint of sickness fouled the air, but instead the fragrance of heather and pine was drifting through the windows and mingling with the faint tangy scent of soap.
David lay curled upon the bed, breathing deeply, his red hair flickering against the white of his pillow.
Alex took a tentative step closer, not wanting to waken the lad.
The boy sleepily rubbed his eye, then left his hand loosely fisted beside his face.
It bore scant resemblance to the tiny palm Flora had once pressed into his, but it remained the diminutive, soft hand of a child.
If Alex reached out and held it, he would still wonder how it could ever grow to be as large and rough as his own.
Somehow he found comfort in that.
He turned and indicated to Gwendolyn that he was ready to leave.
“Where is Ned?” she asked, searching for him in the corridor.
“I dismissed him for the evening.”
She looked at him curiously.
“He was tired.”
She made no comment. Together they proceeded in silence down the hallway.
When he stood before the corridor to her chamber, Alex hesitated.
He had not entered this room since the night Flora died.
Behind this door were a thousand agonizing memories from which he longed to escape.
His heart began to pound and tighten in his chest, making it difficult to breathe. Open it, he commanded silently. Now.
His arms stayed leaden at his sides.
He was a coward, he realized bleakly. Only a coward could be so terrified of an empty chamber.
Scores of other men had lost their wives, or even several wives, and they didn’t end up babbling endlessly to themselves or becoming afraid to enter a chamber in their own bloody castle.
He wanted to leave, to retreat to a dark corner and drown himself in drink until his mind was cloudy and his fear trifling.
Then, perhaps, he might try to breech this portal again.
But he could not permit Gwendolyn to enter the room alone, lest some menace awaited her inside.
He contemplated telling her to wait while he fetched someone else to escort her across the threshold.
Open it, goddammit. It is just a chamber.
Summoning his nerve, he roughly jerked up the latch and entered the oppressive blackness.
He inhaled a cautious breath, searching the air for some trace of the misery he knew lingered here.
The sun-washed scent of heather and grass filled his nostrils, the same as they had in David’s chamber.
But he was not fooled by the superficial fragrance.
Flora’s misery had seeped into these walls, and the chamber would reek of suffering and death until the very stones of the castle disintegrated.
He would be dead long before that hour came.
Gwendolyn entered and began to light the candles in the chamber.
Little by little the darkness faded, until finally the chamber was suffused with honeyed light.
The furniture was different, Alex realized numbly.
Of course it would be. He had ordered everything removed after Flora’s death, and stored deep within the bowels of the castle.
Except for her bed. That cursed prison he had ordered burned, in a feeble attempt to exorcise the memory of her lying trapped within it.
Unfortunately, the memory remained.
He turned his gaze to the simple construction of polished oak that now graced the center of the room.
A neatly arranged plaid of red and blue was spread over it, and something pale lay upon the pillow.
Curious, he moved closer. A heavy, smooth bone, more than two hand spans in length, lay nestled upon the soft wool.
“What is this?” he asked, picking it up. “A charm for one of your spells?”
Gwendolyn approached him slowly, staring at the bone. She reached out and took it from him, then ran her fingers lightly over the dry surface. “It is a bone from the leg of a horse,” she said quietly. “It is used as a talisman against evil.”
Alex frowned. “Are you using this to cure my son?”
She shook her head. “Someone has left it here hoping it will drive me away.” She turned the bone over, studying it. “It is said that horses are related to the Celtic goddess Epona, and therefore have special powers—”
“How can you be so placid about this?” he demanded, his voice rigid with fury. “Someone came into your chamber and left this here to frighten you!”
“What would you have me do, MacDunn?” Gwendolyn challenged, her feigned composure cracking.
“All my life people have been leaving objects like this for me. From the time I was a little girl, my own clan would place them on the doorstep of my father’s cottage, or toss them through a window, or tie them to a stick and hurl them at me as I walked.
Once when I was eleven a boy threw a rough piece of iron at me, which struck me in the head.
” She lifted back the thick curtain of her hair, showing him the jagged white scar that marred the edge of her hairline.
“I ran home screaming to my father,” Gwendolyn continued, “with blood pouring down my face and into my gown. I told him I hated everyone in the world except for him, and wished they all would die. And do you know what he did?”
Alex shook his head. He sure as hell knew what he would have done. He would have found the little bastard who struck her and thrashed him until he couldn’t sit for a month.
“My father bathed and bandaged my wound, and then he sat and put his arms around me. And as I wept and raged, he told me it was far better to love my enemies than to hate them, and that eventually they would grow ashamed of their cruelties and stop.”
“But they never did,” Alex surmised quietly.
A bitter laugh escaped her throat. “One might think eventually they would at least realize their talismans had no power over me, because I never left. But that didn’t stop them from constantly trying to expel me, with their holy relics and their pious prayers and their bags of stinking herbs, rowan branches, bones, scraps of iron, and red wool.
” She turned abruptly and hurled the bone with all her might into the hearth.
It clattered loudly against the grate before sinking into the cold ashes.
Fighting the tears welling in her eyes, Gwendolyn laid her hands against the cool stone of the mantel and bit down hard against her trembling lip.
“I hate this, MacDunn,” she confessed brokenly. “I hate all of it, and I hate being alone to face it. But I have grown so accustomed to the fear and ostracism of others, I don’t know what it is to be without it.” Her voice disintegrated into a ragged whisper as she finished, “I never will.”
Her despondency surged over him. Overwhelmed by a need to comfort her, he laid his hands on her small shoulders and turned her around to face him.
She did not push him away, but instead stared up at him with wide, pain-filled eyes, like a wounded deer who cannot understand why it has been made to suffer.
He wanted to ease her torment, to banish all trace of the loneliness and cruelties she had been forced to endure, and make her see that there was at least one person on this earth who neither feared nor despised her.
She was a witch, yes, but he had only seen her use her magic to try to help his son.
How could that make her evil? The MacSweens had convicted her of murdering her father, but Alex had long ago known that was a lie.
Gwendolyn had loved her father, and his death had left her completely abandoned in a world that was determined to destroy her.
If Alex hadn’t stolen her for the sake of his dying son, the MacSweens would have succeeded.
And David would be dead tonight instead of sleeping peacefully with his little hand curled beside his freckled cheek.
“Gwendolyn,” he whispered, raising his hand to trace the contour of her jaw, “you are not alone.”
She shook her head. “I am, MacDunn. I always will be.”
“No,” he murmured, lowering his lips until they hovered barely a breath from hers. “Not as long as I live.”
With that solemn pledge he crushed his lips to hers, wrapping his arms around her and hauling her hard against him.
He kissed her deeply, ravenously, wanting to lose himself to the pleasure of holding her and kissing her and touching her.
Gwendolyn’s mouth was soft and dark and wine-sweet, like ripe, sun-warmed fruit, and she smelled of summer meadows and sunlight, a scent that had driven him mad since that first time he had held her.
She did not fight him as she had before, not even a little, but instead she whimpered and wrapped her arms around him, seeking the comfort of his hard body against hers.
Alex complied by pressing himself against her, feeling her soft form set fire to every inch of his flesh, until his loins were throbbing and his knees were weak.
He took her hand and guided it beneath his plaid, then pressed it firmly against the hardness of his thigh.
She froze for a moment, her soft palm fixed against him, uncertain.
And then she tentatively began to explore him, her fingers drifting up and down, flitting with agonizing curiosity across his burning skin.
Up, then down, then up a little more, until finally he thought he would go mad from the need to have her take hold of him.
He plunged his tongue deep into her mouth and sank his hand into the depths of her black gown, capturing the forbidden lushness of her breast. Releasing his mouth from hers, he pulled down the silver-embroidered fabric covering her shoulder with his teeth, causing her bodice to crumple to her waist. Then he lowered his head and closed his lips around the sweet peak of her breast, suckling the dark berry of her nipple until it was taut against his teasing tongue.