Chapter Twenty #2
Wilfred raised his sword point and touched her beneath the chin. Lucy felt the prick of the blade against her throat.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Wilfred said. “Nor of your laird.” He raised his head, listening. “Here he comes.”
There was the scrape of hooves on stone in the road, one horseman, alone. Lucy turned her head sharply and felt the sword bite deeper. A trickle of blood ran down her neck.
“Methven!” Wilfred had raised his voice. “I am so glad you got my message. I have your woman.”
“No—” Lucy began, but Wilfred moved the sword over her breast, to rest against her heart.
Robert walked forward into the circle of the firelight. He was alone. Immediately four of Wilfred’s clansmen surrounded him.
“Ah, Methven,” Wilfred said courteously. “Throw down your sword, there’s a good fellow.” When Robert did not immediately comply, he pressed a little harder against Lucy’s breast. Lucy bit her lip hard between her teeth to smother her gasp.
Robert threw down the sword. His gaze never left Lucy’s face.
“Good,” Wilfred said. He shifted, the sword moving over Lucy’s breast like a caress.
“There is something you should know, Methven,” he said.
“Your lovely wife has been betraying you.” His sword flicked Lucy’s bodice, tearing a gaping rent in it and leaving a long scratch on the white skin of her breast. Lucy caught her breath at the sting.
“Betrayal,” Wilfred repeated, smiling a little as he admired his handiwork. “It is so ugly, is it not?”
Lucy’s heart was starting to race. She felt sick nausea rise in her throat. She knew Wilfred was reveling in this. When she had bested him by the loch he had been humiliated. This was his revenge.
“I fear,” Wilfred said silkily, “that you will get no heirs from your wife’s body.
” Again the sword flicked. There was another tear in the gown now, crossing the first, so that Lucy’s bodice fell farther apart and the slivers of material floated to the ground like falling leaves.
Looking down, she saw another cut from his sword on her breast. The pain followed a second later.
It was sharp and the blood showed red in the firelight.
Wilfred smiled. He gave another flick of the wrist and now her bodice was in tatters, shredded, the gleaming skin of her breasts exposed in the firelight.
Robert made an instinctive movement and immediately Wilfred’s men pressed closer to hold him back.
Lucy raised a hand to cover herself, but Wilfred raised the point of his sword to her throat again.
“Keep still, coz,” Wilfred said.
Someone laughed. Lucy saw a pulse beat in Robert’s jaw. His muscles were locked with tension. And still he did not speak.
Wilfred’s attention had come back to her. “Speaking of betrayals, cousin Lucy,” he said softly, “your maid will do anything for a handful of gold. She was the one who sold your secrets to me.”
Lucy felt the nausea rise in her throat.
She thought of Sheena standing in the bedchamber at the Auld Haa with the pot of pennyroyal in her hand.
She felt dizzy with shock and disbelief.
Wilfred raised his voice. “Your deceitful wife, Methven, visited the wisewoman to purchase a brew to ensure that she never conceived a child. All the time you were plowing her—” the sword skipped down between Lucy’s breasts to point lewdly to the junction of her thighs “—she was ensuring that she would not fall pregnant. Whilst you waited for the good news of an heir, she knew it would never be. She has betrayed you as surely as if she handed your estates to me.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Lucy found her voice. It was raw from the smoke, pleading. “It was never like that! Robert, I swear—”
Robert ignored her words. He was looking only at Wilfred.
“Let her go, Cardross,” he said.
Wilfred laughed. “Lady Lucy comes with me,” he said.
“I’ve waited a long time for my sport with her.
When I’ve done I’m sure my men will want their share too.
” He had taken Lucy’s arm now, his fingers biting into the flesh above the elbow.
One of his men had come forward to her other side.
Lucy reached back a little farther and felt the end of the torch slide into her grasp.
The flames scorched her palm, but she gritted her teeth against the pain.
“Come along, coz,” Wilfred said. “You won’t be so dainty with me by the time I have finished with you.
” As he jerked Lucy forward, Robert let out a roar.
He spun around on the closest of Wilfred’s clansmen, knocking him off balance, leaping aside as the other three men piled in on him.
He grabbed the fallen man’s sword and turned to face his assailants, laying one of them out with the flat of his sword and making short work of a second.
In the same moment Lucy brought her arm around in an arc, bringing the flaming torch swinging in to Wilfred’s body.
Wilfred screamed as the fire caught at his lacy sleeves and burned.
He let go of her and ran. She heard the splash as he leaped into Golden Water.
Lucy swung the torch back toward the other man who had been standing foolishly gaping at her, mouth open in shock.
He backed off with a yelp and ran, Robert hastening him on his way with a wicked slashing of his blade.
Some of the Methven men were coming running now, encircling the pond where Wilfred still splashed and swore, two of them running up to engage Wilfred’s remaining clansmen.
Lucy dropped the torch back into the fire.
She was shaking so much she could barely stand.
Robert had reached her side in two strides.
For a brief moment his hands rested on her shoulders as he surveyed Wilfred’s handiwork, the slashed bodice, the angry-looking crisscross of cuts on her breast. His expression was flat with murderous fury.
“If you had not set fire to him,” Robert said, “I would have killed him myself for what he did to you.”
“It’s only a scratch,” Lucy said. Her teeth were chattering. “It was for show, to humiliate and frighten me.”
Robert’s hands fell to his side. “You must get back to the house and have it tended,” he said.
For a long moment he looked at her, but there was no gentleness or warmth in his gaze. Then he said, very quietly. “I know what Cardross said was true. I saw it in your eyes.”
He turned and walked back to where his horse was tethered. Lucy ran after him. Her heart was cracking.
“Robert, wait!” she called. “Please let me explain—”
Robert half turned toward her. He made a sharp gesture and she stopped.
“Was it true?” he said. “About the tincture?”
“Yes,” Lucy said, “But—”
“And when did you procure it?” His voice was cold, but beneath the anger Lucy could feel pain. She could see it in his eyes too, the searing hurt of betrayal.
“When, Lucy?” His voice was very steady.
“On the morning of our wedding,” Lucy said. Her voice was thin, shaking. “But I didn’t take it! Please believe me! I never took it!”
Robert shook his head. He looked weary, heart sore. “I thought you trusted me,” he said. “I told you that you could. Yet it seems you never believed me.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Lucy said. “Yes, I trusted you, but—”
She stopped. That one small, betraying word was all it needed because it showed just how little faith she had placed in his word.
“You know how it was for me,” she whispered. “I was terrified. I needed to feel safe.”
“You were safe,” Robert said. “You were always safe with me. The pity of it is that you never trusted me.” His voice changed and she knew it was the end.
He would accept no justification, no further explanation.
Maybe in time he would be prepared to listen, but the lovely, bright and infinitely precious future they had only just started to build lay smashed in pieces at her feet.
Lucy was stubborn and determined, but she could not find the words; her throat felt raw and tears smarted in her eyes.
“You must be cold,” Robert said. “You have done much for Golden Isle tonight and I am grateful.” His chilling politeness felt like another blow. “I will take you back to the Auld Haa and then I must get to the village to help my men.”
“Of course,” Lucy said stiffly. Her heart cracked a little more. “Do not trouble to take me back—”
“I insist.”
He held out a hand to help her mount before him. She could not help a tiny wince of pain as her burned hand touched his. He turned it over so that the palm was cradled in his.
“You’re burned,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” Lucy said. “No more than a few blisters.”
Robert let her go and she missed the warmth of his touch so badly it pained her more than the burns. They rode in silence down the track and he left her at the gate of the Auld Haa without another word.