Chapter Fifteen
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, I began to make my way back to our private chambers.
The evening meal was being served in the hall, and I briefly looked for my husband there, but he was nowhere to be found.
I made my way to the back corridor—the only one that led to our separate wing.
This corridor was always dark and quiet, removed as it was from the central, busier areas of the manor.
I thought I might position some candles or some small torches to light the way, but I hadn’t yet got to it.
The passage was dim, and I ran my fingers along the cold stone wall.
I wondered why Kade had retired early. But then I remembered he’d had maybe an hour of sleep the previous night.
I neared a segment of the passage that veered to the right.
And as I turned the corner, I was shockingly confronted by the huge form of Aleck himself.
Before I could react to him, he curled his massive arm around me, hugging me to him and simultaneously covering my mouth with his hand.
It was a calculated, well-rehearsed move.
He’d been thinking of this technique, practicing it, making sure he wouldn’t miss.
He dragged me back the way I’d come, through a door and into a room, closing the door securely behind us.
Then he released his hold. Panic clutched in my throat and I thought of screaming for help, but I knew the sound would barely penetrate through the thick wooden door.
I recognized the place immediately as one of the rooms of the healing quarters.
The air was thick with the medicinal smells of herbal concoctions, alcohol and the earthy notes of freshly cut roots.
Relief washed through me when I saw Fee, one of the Morrison clan healers, standing next to a bed that had been laid with a clean sheet.
Her small form was eclipsed by the bulk of Aleck as he hauled me to the bed and ordered me to climb onto it.
“Why?” I asked defiantly. Fee’s presence gave me courage; he would hardly, after all, force himself upon me with Fee standing right beside us. Or would he?
“This healer will examine you,” Aleck said. “I have doubts now as to the validity of your marriage.”
My defiance was punctured by a spear of anxiety. “The evidence was given to my father after our wedding night,” I said.
“I saw that evidence, aye. And if it was, in fact, your virginal blood, then you have nothing to worry about. I suspect it was not, and so I mean to find out for certain whether your maidenhood is still unbroken. Healer,” he ordered, “do it now.”
Fee was one of the older healers, perhaps nearly sixty.
She was equally well-known for her expertise and her appalling bedside manner.
Perhaps overly jaded by many decades of witnessing illness and often death, she had little time for compassion beyond the pragmatic.
Aleck had chosen well. He knew, as I did, that Fee would have no compunction about telling the truth of the matter.
She placed her cool, bony hands on me and urged me to lie back onto the bed.
I shook off her hands. “There’s no reason to doubt that the marriage has been properly consummated,” I insisted, my voice sounding steadier than I felt. “My father was satisfied, and so should you be.”
“Yet I am not satisfied,” Aleck said. “You as much as admitted it, earlier, in the hall. And it makes perfect sense. I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at your husband in the past. With revulsion, at times, and most of all with fear.
I’m sure this has not escaped his notice.
And if the Mackenzies are half as honorable—supposedly—as their reputation seems to suggest, I’m guessing that he hasn’t forced himself upon you.
Which would mean that the marriage is not, in fact, legally bound. ”
“’Tis a ridiculous accusation,” I protested. “You’re wrong.”
He took no notice of my protest. “Which would also mean that if someone else was to wed you, then properly consummate the marriage, then it would be the second marriage that would be, in fact, the valid of the two. The first marriage would be instantly annulled.”
“Well, the first marriage has been consummated,” I lied, desperate. “Yours is a false assumption. You misinterpreted my words entirely, today in the hall. I was not implying that—”
“Do it now,” Aleck growled at the healer, undeterred. I was pulled onto the bed by his meaty hands, and my shoulders were held under his firm grasp. “If I don’t believe your verdict, I’ll examine her myself.”
Fee did as she was told. A shiver ran up my spine as her cold, knobby fingers raised the hem of my gown to find the soft skin of my thigh.
I closed my legs, but her grip was surprisingly strong and she quickly clasped my ankles into iron rings that had already been attached to the examining table to hold me in place.
“Lie still, dear,” she said, the pleasantry sounding unnatural in this closed, distressing space.
I struggled again, but I was too tightly held. I cried out, but the old woman’s fingers found their goal, sliding into me and prodding gently, searchingly. I closed my eyes against the nimble, snaking assault.
The examination was brief and the violating touch was removed. “Aye, she is still intact,” said the old healer, unshackling my ankles.
Aleck smiled, sinister intent sparking in his black eyes.
But then, as he took a single step forward, his eyes rolled back in his head and his heavy body fell to the floor with a painful-sounding thud.
Shocked, I looked at Fee, who smiled knowingly.
“I laced his drink, lassie,” she said, indicating an empty goblet that sat next to a bottle of whiskey, perched on a nearby shelf.
A large blue glass vial set next to it. “Now I suggest you go attend to the matter at hand at once.”
Wasting no time, I offered my deepest thanks to the healer Fee, whose parting words as she ushered me out the door were these: “The thug will sleep for a short time, I cannot say exactly. An hour. Maybe two. Did you happen to know, by the by, that my name at birth was Fiona Mackenzie? I married into this clan at the tender age of seventeen, but once a Mackenzie always a Mackenzie. Now go, and hurry to it. Tie the man up if you have to but for God’s sake, lass, get the job done. ”
Somewhat taken aback by her confession, and by the urgency in her voice, I rushed back to my chambers.
I noticed unusual noises coming from the grand hall, and from outside.
Clanging, shouting, the voices of men. But I had no time to stop and investigate.
I made it back to our bedchambers without seeing anyone.
I closed the door quietly behind me, taking a moment to catch my breath from my run.
My husband was deeply asleep in the large leather chair by the fire, one of his leather-bound books open across his chest. He wore his kilt, the sash loosely draped across his chest, with no shirt underneath.
His daily training garb was his leather trews and sparring tunic.
Generally, men wore their kilts for more formal occasions, and into battle.
Kade would wear his, I noticed, in our private chambers, when he was writing his notes and the letters to his family.
I’d suspected that he found it comforting, as though having his clan colors wrapped around him gave him the kind of comfort he often lacked in this new and largely inhospitable environment.
He was a quiet sleeper. His beauty to me was no longer confined to the times when he slept and when he laughed.
But now, as I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the severe lines of his face softened by the blue light of night, I was overcome by a longing that was immediate and dynamic, a flood of determination.
There was a job that needed doing, aye, and I found that I wanted to do it, and badly.
My heart still beat rapidly from my escape, and the blood of my body warmed me lushly, pooling, it seemed, in selective areas where the pulse lingered and played.
I knew it would take very little provocation for my husband to kill Aleck, and I guessed that if he learned of what had taken place below in the healing quarters, he would have no qualms about acting upon his hatred, possibly immediately.
But I had no need to tell him. The thug will sleep for a short time, I cannot say exactly.
An hour. Maybe two. I didn’t have a moment to lose.
Yet my husband might protest. He would protest. He was adamant that we would see out his month-long waiting period, to secure an invisible bond of trust he seemed utterly determined to uphold.
And I understood his motivations. He didn’t want to push me into doing something I didn’t wholly consent to.
I knew him well enough by now to know that forcing himself on a woman was an act my husband, despite his reputation for reckless violence, would never, ever resort to.
Even Aleck had noticed my fear. Fear that had transformed, over past weeks, to a smoldering lust. And, while I was no longer afraid of my husband, I could admit that I had occasional flashes of fear at what he might do to me.
At his basest, he was dangerous and unpredictable.
But now it was the thought of that lust-darkened glance that spurred me.
I could feel my own excitement as though it was painted onto my skin, coloring my intimate places.
Remembering his touch, his tongue, his lash.