Chapter Twenty #2
I was concerned by the weariness in him, but when I felt his forehead, he didn’t seem overly warm. “Come with me, warrior. I’ll help you bathe.”
We walked down a slight embankment, where a path descended to a small pebbly beach. We could hear the conversation of the nearby camp, but we were far enough removed by distance and the cover of near darkness to have some semblance of privacy.
I set the candle away from the water, propping it up with a number of stones.
“Sit here,” I said, indicating a larger stone. “I’ll help you remove your boots.” He did, and I knelt at his feet to help him. “You may as well swim, to wash all the dirt off yourself. It will help you heal faster and make the wounds easier to treat.”
When he stood, I unfastened his trews and pulled them down his legs so he could step out of them. And when I looked up at him and began to rise, I could see that he wasn’t quite as weary as I had feared. “Seeing you on your knees before me is a stirring sight indeed,” he said. “Swim with me.”
“Warrior,” I scolded him. “We need to attend to your injuries.”
And there was more to his manner than warring fatigue and arousal.
He seemed angry with me. Despite this discovery and before I made a point of getting to the bottom of it, I acknowledged a triumphant happiness at this: I was getting better at reading the finer details of his emotions.
I was learning him. I just want to learn you.
Admittedly, his terse movements, body language and the scowl on his face may not have been the most difficult of sentiments to decipher, but still, there was satisfaction in gauging the degree of his passions—and most of all, in knowing that maybe, just maybe, I could spend the rest of my days reading him and doing everything in my power to smooth his temper and cultivate his every happiness.
“I’ll swim with you,” I said, “if you tell me what you’re thinking. What have I done to anger you?” I might have guessed that he would be angry at me for leaving Kinloch in the first place, for putting myself in danger, for putting us all in danger.
He was undressing me, and in his exhausted, bloodied, fractious state, his hands lost all their gentleness, peeling my clothing from my body in a rough demand.
Wilkie pulled me into the water with him.
The water was cold, yet not bitterly so, after the effects of recent unseasonably warm autumn days.
Wilkie gasped as the water stung his abraded skin, and he dunked under the surface, staying submerged for several seconds.
It was another thing I knew about him, and I could see it now: he was at ease in the water. He liked to swim.
When he reappeared, he looked somewhat refreshed, but still that hint of animosity lurked in his eyes.
I went to him and turned his back to me.
Very, very carefully, I began to wash him with the specially made medicinal soap Ismay had created the recipe for; I had often helped her make the batches.
I washed Wilkie’s hair, letting the soapy water cleanse his wounds, and I gently scrubbed him free of dirt, sweat and blood.
His poor, perfect body, scarred and cut, yet so beautifully made, with long, graceful bones and hard, sculpted muscles that flowed smoothly to the taut flatness of his stomach.
He was uncommonly quiet. At first I wondered if he was feeling a natural remorse for killing a man, even one as vile as Ogilvie. Maybe that was part of his agitation. This silence, though, felt more as though it was aimed at me.
“Tell me,” I whispered.
His silence drew on, until I let the soap glide to his stomach, where I knew he was ticklish.
He squirmed, and it was enough to open the floodgates of his ire.
“Never leave me, I once said to you,” he began, his voice low and laced with outrage.
“And what was your response to that, Roses? What did you promise me?”
I remembered the conversation well, as I did every word he had ever spoken to me. “I said, ‘I’ll stay with you and soothe you, each day and each night.’”
“Yet what happens,” he said coldly, “as soon as the first ripple of a doubt arises? You run! Straight into the hands of Ogilvie’s henchmen!”
“You know why I had to leave. I was interfering with your duty to your clan. I didn’t want to put you in that position. Your brother gave you an order, and I didn’t want to compromise your—”
“Grant me one favor, will you?” he interrupted.
“In the future, let me worry about my duty and my clan. And my brother. If you hadn’t deserted me so quickly, you would have learned—not minutes later—that there was an alternative to the situation that presented a better outcome for everyone involved. ”
I couldn’t argue with that statement, except it did occur to me that there was one person involved who was most probably not at all pleased with the new outcome: Maisie Morrison.
But I didn’t mention her now. I also, fleetingly, wondered about Stella Morrison.
How did she feel about her newly announced and sudden betrothal to Kade?
“And that’s not all!” he said, enraged, and I suspected the whiskey’s effects were making themselves known, as his words had a thrusting yet slurred edge to them, escalating as he spoke.
“You neglect—after everything!—to mention to me that you bear a secret inked mark! Which just so happens to be the seal of King William’s for his mistress.
The very same mistress that happens to have born him his one and only child.
The same child he has been searching for for over fifteen years.
The child that is to be gifted with the grandest estate in all of Scotland! ”
“I—”
“Did it slip your mind? Did you just happen to forget that you were the heir to vast royal wealth, which incidentally would have offered us a much less angst-ridden and less life-threatening route to our betrothal—which is something I thought you wanted?”
He was breathing heavily, his body hot to the touch in the cool water.
I felt a tear slide down to my jaw at his angry words and also my regret. Of course I wished that I had told him and shown him. I wished that I had trusted him.
“Why, Roses? Enlighten me, please. Because I know not what could have been going through your mind to hide all these secrets from me. And to walk out on us when I was still in the middle of negotiations.”
It was true I knew very little about negotiations, of any kind.
I’d never had need to negotiate much of anything, with anyone.
I was told what to do, and I did it. That was my life.
But now, I could begin to understand that families discussed things in this way.
They argued and compromised. And, sometimes, they were able to come up with solutions, together.
I didn’t have much previous experience with any of these things, but I could see that now, with Wilkie, I would have need to learn to do better, as his wife.
If he would still have me.
I knew I had cleaned his wounds well. I turned him to me. “I have another memory of my early life, warrior.” I wiped the hot tears from my cheeks.
His anger calmed somewhat at the sight of my tears, but he had not forgiven me, I could see it in his eyes. He waited for me to continue.
“It was just after I was adopted by my parents,” I began, and my voice sounded shaky and mournful.
“I was ill and my mother had consulted one of the old women of the clan... She was more of a seer than a healer. She was very old, very frail, with wrinkled skin and watery eyes. This old woman was called into our small house. She was searching my body for signs of illness. She came across the mark. She pulled her hands away as though stung by it, like it burned her fingertips. She made a strange noise. And then, she began...shrieking.” More tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t wipe them away.
I knew more were coming. It was such a frightening, horrible memory and one that I had never told anyone.
Until now. Just to speak of it upset me greatly.
My voice was barely above a whisper, but I forced the words out.
“She was screaming at me, and pointing. She was horrified. A witch, she called me. ’Tis a witch’s mark, she said.
She said I would be beaten and flayed and burned at the stake if anyone was to learn of it.
She said I should be burned. And my parents kept it hidden thereafter, bribing the old woman with wheat and barley, buying her silence.
Some days we went hungry, just so we could keep her in rations.
My parents made sure I had food, but there were days when they had to go without. ”
“Clearly this hag was mad,” Wilkie said abruptly.
His words had a strange effect on me. I felt relief, aye, and sadness, that my family had been wronged in this way.
My parents’ devotion to me had never wavered, not once, despite my brand.
They had protected me and sacrificed much to keep me safe and alive.
I missed them desperately in that moment, and I wished I could see them again, to show them the truth of it, to thank them and tell them I was sorry.
Wilkie’s voice softened as I sobbed, completely undone. He held me closer, taking me in his arms and cradling my head against his chest. “You need not worry about the ravings of a senile old crow any longer, lass. ’Tis over now.”
“I was going to tell you,” I cried. “I hid it from you because I was afraid you would be repulsed by me, like the old woman was. I wanted so much to be with you, and I knew that once you saw it you might burn me or cast me away—”