Chapter Eight #2
A heartbeat later something much larger raced out of the shadows only to disappear into them once more as it ran after the mouse.
Annys heard a strangled high-pitched sound escape her and she leapt up on Harcourt.
He caught her to him with one strong arm, still holding the torch in his other hand.
It took a moment for Annys to calm down enough to begin to feel embarrassed by her fear.
“What was that?” she asked, trying to look around without losing her grip on Harcourt. “A rat?”
“Ah, poor Roban to be so cruelly insulted. Nay, t’was no rat. I cannae see that far down into the shadows but I suspicion there is no mouse now, either.”
Attempting to pretend she had not just climbed the man like a tree in her blind panic, Annys eased her stranglehold on him and put her feet back on the ground. “That was Roban?”
“Aye, it was chasing the mouse.”
“But, how did he get down here?”
“How does the cursed beast keep getting into the keep, into your bedchamber, and solar?”
“Mon’s getting heavy,” said Gybbon. “Can we discuss the cat’s skills later?”
“Oh, Gybbon, I am so sorry.” Annys took one cautious step toward the cell, looking everywhere for any sign of a rat.
“Give me the keys, sweetling,” Harcourt said, and gently pried them from her clenched hand. “Ye can walk behind me. I will protect ye from the wee mousie if that cat hasnae killed it yet.”
Annoyance at his teasing did a lot to banish her fear, as did walking with him between her and anything lurking in the shadows. “The wee mousie doesnae bother me. ’Tis rats I cannae abide. They bite and they gather in the dark like some army so that they can hunt their prey with nay fear.”
“So, ’tis rat armies ye fear. Weel, that does sound frightening. Just where did ye come by the knowledge that rats wander in the dark gathered up in little rat armies?”
Annys softly cursed as they stopped before one of the three cells and she pointed to the key he needed to use to unlock the door.
Harcourt stuck the torch he held into another sconce set in the wall next to the door, unlocked it, and helped Gybbon get their unconscious prisoner settled on the narrow bed.
They were quick and efficient but, in the short time that the men left her side, her panic began to rise again.
Having avoided coming down into the bowels of the keep for any reason, she had forgotten how deep and strong her fear of rats was.
Harcourt handed her back the keys and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the stairs. “Now, tell me why ye fear rats so much ye tried to sit on my shoulder just to get away from one.”
It was a humiliating story but Annys decided he deserved some explanation for how she had just behaved.
“I got locked into a wee, dirty cell in the cellars at my parents’ holding when I was but a child.
My father had a prisoner brought up from them and he was so filthy, a bit bloody, and shaking.
He answered all my father’s questions and begged the mon to please nay put him back down there.
He was babbling and crying and I couldnae hear what troubled him about the cellars.
I was hiding in the room, having tucked myself behind a chest in the corner.
I wasnae supposed to be in that room and I was verra afraid of being caught there.
My father assured the mon that he wouldnae have to go back into the cell.
The mon thanked him but then my father informed him that he wasnae going back there because he was being taken out to be hanged. I thought that was rather cruel.”
Gybbon grunted. “Aye. Cold. What had the mon done?” he asked as they paused at the bottom of the stairs leading up out of the cellars.
“He had stolen a bag of food scraps meant for my father’s pigs,” she answered quietly, shamed by her father’s harsh treatment of a man who had just wanted to feed his family.
A low whistle of shock escaped Gybbon but Harcourt asked, “So ye decided to go see why that mon had hated that cell so verra much.”
“Aye.” She shook her head at the memory of her foolishness. “Foolish but I had to see what would frighten a grown mon so verra badly. I think, too, I was ready to do anything to avoid watching that hanging.”
“Your father would make ye watch a hanging?”
She shrugged. “He said we should see what happens to those who break the law. But, I didnae want to see it so I went exploring in the cellars. The door to the cell the mon had been locked up in was open and the cell already mucked out. I think I must have bumped whate’er was holding the door open because it shut behind me when I stepped inside.
I couldnae get it open again, screamed myself voiceless, and then had to wait for someone to come looking for me.
Thought I would be searched for when Father saw that I wasnae at the hanging. ”
“How long did ye have to sit there?”
“Three days,” she whispered.
Both Harcourt and Gybbon stared at her in shock but it was Harcourt who finally growled out the question, “They left ye in there for three days? Didnae they look for ye at all?” He winced, realizing that was not a kind or well-thought-out question.
“After no one had seen me for two days, aye, they started a search for me. My brothers just wouldnae stop asking where I had gone. They were nay the most loving of brothers and we are nay truly close, but for that alone I will ne’er turn my back on them.
They pestered and pestered until my parents finally decided it was a little odd that no one had seen me for so long. ”
“And it was there that ye found the rats.”
She shuddered. “There were so many of them and I think they didnae get much to eat. I had to sit on the cot with the slops bucket and a stick broken off the bed to fend them off whene’er they came round.
I still came out of there covered in bites.
So, aye, it appears I ne’er have gotten over a verra big fear of rats. And they do have little armies.”
“I have no words. Weel, aye, I do,” Harcourt said as he took her by the arm and escorted her up the stairs, “but they are a lot of foul ones I would like to spit at your parents.”
Annys smiled at him as they emerged back in the ledger room. “I suspect I have already used most of them.” She shrugged. “They are what they are, what they have always been.”
Seeing that Gybbon had left the room, Harcourt took her into his arms and kissed her.
He had begun the kiss with sympathy in his heart but it soon fled beneath the onslaught of an aching need.
Harcourt slowly turned and pressed her against the wall as the kiss deepened.
He trembled when she stroked her hands up and down his back and desperately wanted to feel them against his skin.
Fighting to keep some control over himself, he eased his hand up from her waist and over her breast. The weight of it in his hand, the press of her nipple against his palm, made his mouth water with a need to taste her flesh.
For a moment she pressed eagerly into his caress, but then that tension he dreaded began to return to her body.
Knowing it was the last thing he wanted to do but that it was the wisest thing to do, he ended the kiss, put his hand back at her waist, and stepped back a little.