Chapter 9 #2
“You’ve been eavesdropping,” she said, and wagged a finger to shame him. “That’s not very nice, you know. What would Tair say if I told him you were listening at our bedroom door?”
“’Tis the laird’s bed chamber, no’ yours, and I dinnae care if you tell him. ’Tis wrong to torment a man who desires you.” The chieftain walked up to loom over her. “Fack the laird and give him the relief he needs.”
For a moment Lucy wanted to kick him where it would hurt the most. Was this all she was worth to Tair? Relief?
“I’m not going to do that.” Lucy was sick of being afraid of the chieftain, especially now that he had talked to her as if she were no more important than a blow-up doll. “May I go now, or do you want to talk more about my personal, private business, which is absolutely none of yours?”
He looked for a moment as if he wanted to snap her neck. “Our lord suffers. So, I reckon, do you. Refraining serves no purpose but to prolong such for you both.”
She suddenly understood why he had grabbed her and marched her in here. “Your brother said almost the same thing to me the other night. Did Sgathan tell you to scare me into having sex with Tair?”
He looked away and his lips thinned. “Seneschal doesnae command me.”
“So you did talk about it with him.” Lucy should have been angry, but something about all these men being so worried about her and Tair seemed bizarrely touching.
That made her decide to level with him. “He’s not sleeping with any of the other women here, or those he used to visit on the other side of the ridges.
Yes, I know about them, too. The girls around here love to gossip. ”
Dorchad rubbed his eyes. “He’s no’ sought another wench since you arrived, Mistress.”
“He’s fallen for me, hasn’t he?” When he didn’t react she knew he’d suspected the same. “I’ll guess that Tair’s never been in love, which is why he hasn’t worked it out yet. If I give him everything he wants, I’ll own that man’s heart. ”
“Such as ’tis,” the chieftain muttered.
“Such as it is,” she agreed. “For reasons that are too complicated to explain I can’t go back to my time.
However, I’m not crazy about living in a time when women only make it to about thirty-two.
So, when we find the cluet, I will see if it will take me away from here.
Maybe I’ll go to another time, or another place in my time.
It will have to be a safe place for me. But make no mistake, Chieftain. I am leaving your world.”
Dorchad studied her face as if this were the first time he’d seen it. “Why should you wish to part from Tair? You’ve already given your heart to my brother. There shall be no other for you, Mistress.”
“Just to review, I’m not your concern. That includes what I do, where I go, and who goes with me.” Lucy smiled as she watched that sink in. “Think for a change, will you?”
“He wouldnae turn his back on us.” Even as he said that Dorchad didn’t sound convinced.
“I don’t know what he’ll do. Love makes people crazy.” She looked him in the eye. “Now, this is the last time I’ll talk to you about Tair. And just so we’re clear, if you ever drag me into a room like this to browbeat me again, I’ll find a way to make you wish you were never born.”
He grinned, transforming his demonic features with pure masculine beauty. “I expect you would.” He unbolted the door and strolled out.
Lucy kept her cool as she went over to close the door, and then her wobbly knees gave out and down she went.
The sob that tore out of her throat was nearly followed by another, but she pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes and breathed deeply until the need to dissolve into hysterics passed.
Even that evil sodding wanker could see she was falling in love with the laird.
What was she going to do now? Tair would probably keep her chained to his bed permanently if she gave him what he wanted—in a time when women barely lived past thirty, and died horrible deaths from disease, lack of proper medical care and giving birth too often.
She had never wanted to have children...
Why weren’t there any children at Gealladh, for that matter?
Once Lucy composed herself she went back upstairs to the room she shared with the laird.
She didn’t think Dorchad would say anything to Tair, but it was time to settle this.
She needed to know all the clan’s secrets before she became Tair’s lover again.
Once he trusted her, she could do the same with him—and toss those wretched chains out the window slit, too.
She stopped outside the door to their bedchamber, which was slightly ajar, and put her hand on the latch. The sound of two voices from inside made her hesitate.
“They should arrive by the new moon,” Cath was saying. “’Tis a place in the forest where such caravans often stop. They keep the slaves in cages on carts, and then make the males unload their stores and the females prepare food before they cage them again for the night.”
“We’ll attack as soon as the sun sets,” Tair said. “A cart shall be too slow. Tell our men to ride leading an extra mount.”
“These slaves, they’re mortal, and likely weak from being beaten and starved into submission,” the war master said. “They shallnae have the strength to ride alone. Those that dinnae ken how to ride shall baulk and spook the nags. Their terror may cause them to fight us, as the women sometimes do.”
Tair grunted. “Double the men as well as the mounts, and saddle for two. Each shall carry a slave with them.”
“We’ll take the lot to the croft by the fruit orchards,” Cath said. “They’ve a barn we can hide them in and have them cared for until they’re well enough to travel home.”
“’Tis better to rally the villagers we trust to aid us in sending them home,” the laird said .
Lucy nearly stalked inside to demand why they were stealing slaves from slavers when all the things that didn’t make sense suddenly did.
If they weren’t going to steal the slaves, were they rescuing them?
“What of your bed slave?” Cath asked. “Shall we lock her back in the dungeons on the night of the raid?”
“No need.” The sound of a chain rattling made Lucy want to kick the door in and club both of them over the head with something hard and heavy.
Instead, she turned on her heel and strode off in the direction of the stairs to the watch tower.
L ochran smelled the laird’s woman the moment she crossed the threshold to his tower room, and set aside the piece of wood he was carving.
“Go and fetch some calming brew and food,” he told Ninian, who opened the door and nodded to Lucy before he left.
“I need to talk to someone who doesn’t want to use me to make Tair happy,” she said as she came in and sat down in one of the chairs by the hearth. “Would you be willing, Night Watch? ”
He had been hearing the undertones of desire in her voice and the laird’s since her arrival at Gealladh.
He also suspected she knew most of what happened was staged to make her believe the clan were dangerous brutes who cared only for their own petty desires.
Dorchad would have throttled him for not doing the same, but the fact that she had come to him weighed even more on his conscience, such as it was.
“I do wish you both happy,” Lochran told her as he made his way over and sat in the chair across from hers. “If ’tisnae together, then apart. ’Tis what troubles you, the prospect of leaving the laird?”
“No, this began before I came here,” Lucy said. “I’ve already been victimized by a man who just wanted to use me for what I could do for him. I can’t go through that again.”
She told him of her former lover, and how he had kept pursuing her even after she rejected him.
Lochran heard the fear underlying the bluntness of her tone as she spoke of the terrible choice she had been forced to make to save her client as well as her own life.
What startled him was how she believed everything she had been shown before making her choice.
Someone had deceived Lucy Brooke into believing they could show her the future .
“I don’t know if I can return home to my time,” she admitted. “Justin may still be waiting for me. I could end up getting my client and myself murdered. So I have to find the cluet and see if it will help me. It seemed to like me. As for Tair, if we fall in love...” She stopped and shook her head.
“You reckon the laird shall stop you if you attempt to leave our world,” Lochran guessed. “Or he shall go with you to yours.”
“Dorchad couldn’t figure that out, but you have in one go.” She sighed. “I think if I do what everyone wants, and give in to Tair, it will make things go from bad to worse. I really don’t know what he’ll do.” The door opened, and she said, “Your guy is here with some refreshments.”
After Ninian set a table between them and piled mugs of brew, and plates of fruit, cheese and bread on it, he bowed and left again, closing the door behind him.
“Eat and drink whilst I ponder your dilemma,” he chided. “I confess, I admire you for choosing to protect the laird by denying him his pleasures. ’Tisnae the usual fine lady’s ploy.”
Lucy sipped her drink. “I’m not really a lady, but thank you. Also, I’m rather sick of being called a wench.”
“You’re clean and well-spoken. You think of others before yourself.
’Tis the mark of a particular sort of female, and no’ a wench.
” She was miserable, he suspected, and unable to find a path to the future she had already decided on that would not wound the laird.
“I cannae predict what our lord shall do if you make to leave us. I ken what I would.”
“You know how possessive he is. If he loves me, he’ll try to stop me.
Or he’ll follow me, and leave the clan behind.
I know how close you are, and how much you need Tair to keep everyone in line.
” The words rushed out of her as if wrenched from a wound.
“I don’t know what to do anymore, Night Watch. ”
There were other matters weighing on her, and Lochran sensed she had become overwhelmed with them as well as trying to save Tair and herself.
The fact that she had come to him to ask his counsel demonstrated her noble, selfless character, and even if she didn’t realize it, her loving attachment to his brother.
“Go and speak direct to the laird,” Lochran finally said. “Tell him all you’ve said to me, and what you yet conceal in your heart. Ask him to help you forge your path from here. I vow he shall.”
“Or he’ll toss me back in the dungeons for good.” She leaned both elbows on the table, and he heard the soft rasp of her rubbing her hands against her sleeves. “It’s all or nothing, right? If I stay, if I go.”
He reached across the table and took hold of her slender hand. “We all agree the cluet brought you here to fulfill a wish. What if ’twas Tair who made it?”
Lucy went still, and then laughed softly and squeezed his fingers. “That never occurred to me. Thanks, Night Watch.”
Lochran smiled until she left. He then reached for her mug and drank down the rest of her brew, which had grown as cold as the back of his neck. Senga had called the spot his dread patch, a thing he’d inherited from Rune. She warned him that any chill he sensed there meant danger was coming.
“Come and clear this away,” he called out to his steward before he walked out to stand at the battlements.
Even blind as he was during the daylight hours, Lochran enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face.
It reminded him of the long days he’d spent as a lad working alongside his lady màthair Senga in the doocot, where she had taught him everything he’d need to someday take over as the keeper of the birds.
The familiar, rather dusty scent of the doves and their nesting boxes would blend with the freshening herbs Senga strewed each morn.
Here the air smelled different, more of the loch, the gardens and the forest. When he walked through the passages during the day he could tell which clansmen stood guard and which MacRune passed by him simply by their body odor.
The vassals all smelled of their labors, sweat and warmth, but he’d learned to tell each one by subtler nuances.
Even in her unwashed state Garia ever smelled of her lover, Halley, who spent every night with her in his arms.
Lucy Brooke smelled of flowers and greenery, as if she always carried a nosegay in her hands. That was part of what had drawn Tair to her, but not all. She possessed the same strength of will as the laird, and the boldness to forge her own path even here.
“I pity you, my lord,” Lochran murmured as he lifted his face to enjoy the warmth of a sun he could never look upon, else he truly go blind. “And envy you, too.”