Chapter 3
Och aye...I chose very well.
His wife’s lips were plush and soft, warm against his mouth.
Her eyes, blue like the summer skies over Castle O’Douglas, bore into him and her long, dark hair flowed like a night’s rain over the round slope of her shoulders.
She was a beautiful creature, with delicate features and rosy, pouty lips, and a full figure that quickly stoked the fires of Archer’s passion.
God, how he wanted her.
“What are ye doin’?” the woman shrieked and, with surprising strength, pushed him back. Archer, taken by surprise by the sudden and strange denial, stumbled back a few steps, and that was enough for River’s small form to escape his grasp.
“I’m kissin’ me wife,” Archer said, frowning in confusion. “Och...are ye nae me wife?”
He looked around him, panicked. Could this be one of her maids? No, surely not. No maid, no matter how highly esteemed, wore such fine garments of deep blue and lace. Could it then be a relative? A cousin, perhaps, who had come to visit?
Christ...wouldnae that be difficult to explain?
“Aye, I am yer wife,” said the woman, but now she seemed more confused than ever.
“So ye’re River,” Archer said.
“Aye.”
“Then why are ye so surprised? Have I nae kissed ye before?”
The mere thought seemed ridiculous, not only because she was his wife, but also because she was irresistible. How could Archer have possibly kept himself away from her? How could anyone?
River didn’t respond. Her frown only deepened and Archer moved closer to her once more, but just as he was about to grab her, she slipped out of his grasp. He couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped him. If she was going to make this a game, he was more than happy to play along.
“Have I lost me mind?” River asked quietly, as if talking to herself. “What has gotten intae ye?”
“Is it so wrong to desire me own wife?” Archer teased.
“This is the isolation, isnae it?” River asked. “I’ve been locked up in here for so long that I finally went insane.”
“What are ye sayin’?” Archer asked, approaching her once more, only for River to step back again. He couldn’t make much sense of her words, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he had just found out how alluring his wife was. “I cannae believe I forgot someone like ye.”
“What?” said River, stopping short.
“What?” asked Archer, blinking in surprise.
“What do ye mean forgot?”
“Did they...did they nae tell ye?”
How could it be? River was his wife. Surely, she had to have been by his side while he recovered. Could it be that they thought her so fragile, so emotional that she couldn’t handle it and had refrained from telling her until he was well again?
But the woman standing before him didn’t seem so meek or fragile to Archer. If anything, she seemed filled with a fire that made him wonder what she was like in bed.
“Nae one has told me anythin’!” River cried.
“Och...well, I had a...an accident, I think,” said Archer. “I struggle to remember...well, many things.”
The blood drained from River’s face as Archer watched her stumble back just a little. She stared at him in horror, as if she was not seeing him, but someone else entirely.
But he was still the same man, he was certain of it. He just had to make sure she knew it, too.
“Daenae fash,” he said, his heartbeat picking up as he stared at her in the soft light of the morning.
His gaze was drawn to the pale skin of her neck, where he imagined brushing his lips and tongue, sinking his teeth into that tender flesh until she moaned his name.
“I can see why I married ye...I may nae remember it, but I can imagine ye beneath me, me lips all over yer body—”
He was getting hard just thinking about it.
River let out another shriek, this time without words. Archer laughed softly; he hadn’t expected his wife to be such a blushing flower. Surely, they had spent plenty of nights together in bed, but then again, these conversations were usually reserved for companies of men.
Do lasses talk about such things? Nay, probably nae.
“That is quite enough!” River said sternly, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him, red-faced and breathing heavily. “I’ve had...I’ve had a terrible mornin’! So if ye’d be so kind as to give me a few moments.”
“Of course,” said Archer. “Take all the time ye need.”
“I mean alone!”
Archer had hardly managed to open his mouth to retort that this was his castle and he would be in any room he pleased, and besides, River was his wife, when the door was flung open once more to reveal none other than the very man Archer had been trying to dodge.
“Ye’re very fast for yer old age,” Archer said.
“Me Laird!” cried Jenson, then leaned over and heaved as he tried to catch his breath. “I cannae...run after ye...with these cursed knees! So daenae...make me!”
“Ach! Jenson!” River said and rushed to the old man, looping an arm around his to guide him to a nearby chair. Jenson accepted the assistance with grace, throwing himself down on the chair with a hand over his chest. “Are ye alright?”
“Och aye, me lady,” said Jenson. “Our Laird will kill me with a heart attack afore he kills me with anythin’ else.”
The old man was still breathing hard, his gray hair a halo around his face as though the wind had swept it all back while he was running after Archer.
But Archer had been trying to evade him for days, slipping through Jenson’s fingers only to be stopped by the nausea or caught by a guard or even by the man himself.
He was the Laird of the castle and yet he was being treated like a prisoner, confined in his chambers out of everyone else’s fear that something might happen to him again.
He was not having it anymore.
“I willnae be a prisoner in me own castle,” said Archer, calmly yet firmly, to the old man. “I shall roam freely as I please.”
“I’m afraid, me Laird, that ye are too old to be actin’ like a bairn,” said Jenson, much to Archer’s chagrin. “And I should ken. I was here when ye were a bairn. Ye’re hurt...ye’re meant to be restin’.”
“I’m fine,” said Archer.
“What happened to him?” asked River at the same time.
Archer, disinterested in the conversation he had heard several times before, shifted his focus to the room. It felt only vaguely familiar, like a place he hadn’t visited in years, but that couldn’t be true. These were his wife’s chambers. He had to have visited them quite often.
They were fine rooms, though, the sitting room they were currently occupying and the antechamber with the bed behind it. At least he was providing for his wife, it seemed.
“The Laird had an…accident,” said Jenson rather cryptically, as if he didn’t want to reveal too much.
“We suspect he fell. And his memory has suffered. I have never seen anythin’ like it, me lady.
..he seems to remember how to do everythin’.
..well, he can read and write, he can wield a sword, he even has some earlier memories, but he has forgotten many things.
I daenae ken whether he will remember them or when. ”
River’s gasp echoed in the room and Archer turned to find her pale, her mouth hanging open ever so slightly. Drawing his attention away from the room, he walked back to her, placing a hand on her shoulder—heavy and insistent like a warning.
“This doesnae leave this room,” he said. “Very few people ken of this and now ye’re one of them. If anyone finds out, they can interpret it as weakness and then...ye can only imagine what such a thing would mean for the clan.”
River swallowed with an audible click. “Who did this?”
“We daenae ken,” said Jenson, and that seemed to drain more blood from her face, until she looked sickly, swaying ever so slightly under Archer’s hand.
How she must love me to be so concerned for me!
“Daenae fash,” said Archer, his lips stretching into a thin, cold smile. “I will find out who did this before long. And I will make sure to make him an example.”
Christ, I’m a dead woman!
It didn’t matter that River was innocent. It didn’t matter that she would never do such a thing, not even to a man who had little regard for her. All that mattered was that Keir suspected her and that Laird O’Douglas was determined to find out who had done it.
Would he not listen to his best friend and closest advisor? Would he not suspect her, too, even if evidence pointed away from her?
Was there even any evidence to be found?
That smile on the Laird’s face chilled her to the bone. She had seen it before, every time the man planned ten steps ahead of everyone else. It seemed that he hadn’t lost that part of him, the one that schemed and plotted and tried to catch everyone unawares.
“I’d like to be left alone with me wife, Jenson,” said Laird O’Douglas, and River’s blood ran cold.
What is he plannin’ to do with me? Does he already suspect me? Did Keir already plant a seed of doubt in his mind?
No, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t have kissed her if he suspected her.
Or would he? Would he try to blind me with affection only to accuse me and punish me for somethin’ I didnae do?
River caught herself shaking a little too late, and she knew that Laird O’Douglas had noticed it, too. She could only hope he would attribute it to the shock of a loving wife finding out her husband was injured. The Laird didn’t have to know anything else.
“Of course,” said Jenson. “But daenae tax yerself, me Laird. I implore ye to rest.”
“Aye, aye...go now,” said Laird O’Douglas, and with a final bow, Jenson left them.
The room suddenly seemed smaller to River, who had spent an entire year of her life locked up in there and knew it like the back of her palm. Laird O’Douglas was still close—too close. River could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck, the whisper of it on her sensitive skin.