Chapter 9
In the weeks that followed, Sheena was often to remember that last intimate talk with Niall.
Aberdeen, nearly fifty miles from home, was like a foreign land.
It was crowded and filthy, and you couldn’t walk through the town without fear of having someone’s chamber pot or garbage dumped on your head.
But it was a thriving market center, and exciting, with a crowded harbor and every kind of craftsman working in the town.
Sheena spent her first days exploring, but soon gave that up.
Oh, the sights were grand—the abbeys, the university, all the shops—but there were too many Highlanders.
They were easy enough to spot, their legs bare between plaid and boots.
Lowlanders wore tights or combinations of hose and puffed breeches. Lowlander peasants wore trousers.
If the intimidating Highlanders were not enough to make her shun the town, there was a continual stream of beggars accosting her on every corner. Aberdeen was overrun with poor people, poor seeking work or professional beggars.
Every morning Sheena left her aunt’s austere rooms at the nunnery and walked to the poorhouse, a stone building in a terrible state of ruin.
Given over as a house of charity, it was a few blocks from the nunnery.
The house had been intended as a resting place for weary travelers, where they could get a hot meal and a clean bed for a night or two while looking for work.
But it had deteriorated into a slum for beggars and vagrants.
A small house, it contained only ten beds.
The rule of one or two nights’ stay only still applied, and there were always new faces at the door.
Sheena’s aunt was not obliged to go there every day, but she never failed.
A priest lived there, seeing to the distribution of meals, but he was too old for all the work the place required.
Those who slept there were asked to wash their bedding and clean their eating utensils for the next guest, but the rule was never obeyed, and only the nuns’ daily care kept the place from becoming a pesthole.
When Sheena saw how tired her Aunt Erminia was, she insisted on helping. Her aunt’s day usually consisted of spending the morning at the poorhouse washing and cleaning, then working at the hospital for several hours, then returning to the poorhouse before going home.
Sheena was appalled. All that work, and Aunt Erminia was nearing fifty! There was no reason she couldn’t help at the poorhouse and make her aunt’s day that much shorter.
It worked out well. Sheena was young and energetic and could do the work in half the time it took Aunt Erminia.
The poorhouse was empty by the time she got there every day, so no one bothered her.
She and her aunt were able to spend afternoons in the quiet of the nunnery, talking or sewing together.
If Sheena missed her home and the activities she was accustomed to, she didn’t show it yet.
She did achingly miss her brother, however.
There was no one young and lively at the nunnery, and she felt so alone.
After a month, Sheena had not heard from home, from Niall or her father.
She had repaired the jerkins and plaids of the poor, learned countless new stitches from her aunt, and refurbished and mended her own wardrobe…
and was deathly sick of sewing. She wanted to ride, hunt, and swim before the first snows.
She needed adventure, or at least some mischief, and, oh, how she missed Niall!
For the first time, Niall would be raiding. Autumn was the traditional time for lifting, as the stealing of livestock was termed. Whatever the Fergussons lifted that year would be kept, not sold, for they had lost too much to the MacKinnions to be able to sell any.
The morning in late September when Sheena pulled her cart of bedding along to the river was dismally gloomy.
Not just the usual Scottish gloom, either, but a full mass of dark clouds that signaled a storm.
She worried about her wash. She was in the habit of hanging the bedding by the river to dry in the brisk breeze, rather than at the parish yard, where surrounding buildings blocked the wind.
If it rained, the wash would have to be hung inside the poorhouse, and it would take all day to dry.
That had happened before, so Sheena had been there in the late afternoon when the poorhouse started to fill. She didn’t want to be there again, to see the thin, sunken faces, the ragged, filthy clothes. She hoped it wouldn’t rain.
She hurried, rubbing her hands raw before she was finished. Her poor hands. How white and smooth they’d once been. Now they were red and sore and cracked.
“Need some help, lassie?”
Sheena gasped and turned around quickly. She had not heard the young man on his horse approach, for the wind was whipping hard. It flapped his plaid around him and played havoc with her green skirt.
He was a Highlander, his plaid very close to her own colors. He was young, too, about her age. There was something about his face that put her at ease. True, it was a very handsome face, but that wasn’t the reason. There was just something about him.
“’Tis kind of you to offer.” Sheena grinned, amused. “But I canna imagine a Highland warrior doing the poorhouse wash.”
“You’re a beggar?” He was shocked, and the surprise in his voice made her laugh outright. “Of course I am. Do you think I’d be washing this bedding unless I had to?”
“But…you dinna look like a beggar.”
“Well, I’m new at this. I mean, I have only recently fallen on hard times.”
“You’ve no family?”
“Och, but you’re full of questions, and you’re wasting my time, you are.” Her voice was stern, but her eyes twinkled.
It had been so long since she had spoken to anyone near her age, and a handsome man at that. How she wanted him to stay. But, of course, he wouldn’t.
“’Twill rain soon, and I’ll have a wet wash,” she sighed.
She bent to wring out the last sheet and hang it with the rest on the trees by the river’s edge. When she turned around again, he was right behind her, having left his horse. He was much taller than she was, and she had to look up to see his face.
“You’re so pretty—a rare beauty,” he said, wonder in his voice. “I saw you passing the cattle yard.”
“And decided to follow me?”
“Aye.”
“Is that a habit of yours then, following girls?” Sheena bantered.
But he remained serious. “Can I kiss you, lass?”
The sudden request shocked her. “I’ll box your ears,” she replied tartly.
He laughed, relaxing a little. “You’re a saucy wench. ’Tis plain to see you’ve no man to answer to.”
“And you’re much too bold for my liking,” she returned, uneasy now. His eyes were devouring her, no longer simply appreciative.
She tried to move past him, but he put out his arms to stop her. “You’ll no’ be running off when I’ve only just found you. You may be a vision, but I won’t let you dissolve.”
His arms were stretched wide, and Sheena suspected he would grab her if she dared move. She didn’t like this one bit. He was young, but he was big. And a Highlander, too.
“What is it you want then?” She glared at him.
“You’re much too bonny to be begging for your keep. I’d like to be your man and take care of you.”
By then, Sheena was completely unnerved. But wasn’t it just like a Highlander to be insanely impulsive?
“You’ve no’ much sense, lad,” she scoffed. “You’re barely more than a boy yourself, so how can you take care of me?”
He scowled, and Sheena had a glimpse of the man he would be one day, fierce and temperamental. She shouldn’t have laughed, she realized too late. Highlanders didn’t take lightly to being ridiculed, and this one was very proud.
“I shouldna have asked you, lass,” he said stiffly, but she felt no less on guard.
“I’m glad you understand that.”
“Nay. I should have done what my brother would do.”
Sheena felt her heart constrict at the ominous tone.
“He’d have taken you…and so shall I.”
His hand gripped her arm, and Sheena screamed. She was lifted in his arms, screaming. Neither her screaming nor her struggles bothered him at all. There was even a glint of amusement in his eyes.
The Highlander wasted no time. She was thrown atop his horse, and he was behind her in an instant, his arms circling her so she couldn’t move.
His arms bound her firmly in front of him as the horse charged into the shallow river, crossing to the south side.
Sheena’s boots and long skirt were soaked, but she wasn’t thinking of anything except how distraught her aunt would be.
What would she make of Sheena’s disappearance?
She would send word home, of course. Poor Niall.
Would he think she had run away? And her father?
He had denied her his protection, and this had happened because of his decision.
He would be so upset! She could find nothing soothing in that thought, however.
“Where are you taking me?” Sheena shouted over the wind.
“To my home.”
“For how long?”
“Why, forever.”
Absurd! The Highlander couldn’t just keep her like a stray dog. Was he insane? Keep her forever? Nonsense! It was just boasting. She would find her way back to Aberdeen, or her family would find her. The Highlander couldn’t get away with this. He couldn’t.