Chapter 8
Flight
Alina woke to the unfamiliar feel of a soft,
warm bed. Stretching and yawning, she rose and went to the window
and opened the shutters. By the sun’s position, she’d slept until
noon, but then she hadn’t come to her room until before dawn after
spending the night pretending to take care of a colicky Ash, and
talking and riding with Roark.
She splashed cold water on her face and
shivered as it trickled down between her breasts, where the
familiar weight of her pearl hung. She dressed in her long tunic
and apron, brushed and plaited her hair into one long braid, and
crept down the stairs, keeping an eye out for the ladies of the
house. No doubt they’d scold her for missing breakfast, even though
she’d been tending to Ash all night, at least as far as they
knew.
The house was quiet as was the common room,
which was unusual, as the ladies normally sat sewing and gossiping
this time of day. She walked over to the closed door to Roger’s
private chambers and pressed her ear against it but heard no voices
from inside the room. There was nobody in the dining hall either,
which boded well for Alina’s chances of scrounging something to eat
in the kitchen. She started to push the door open and stopped at
the low, angry sound of a man’s voice.
“I told you not to lay with the laird’s son,
did I not?”
“Yes, Father,” Jenny’s tearful voice
answered.
“And this is what has come of it,” Craig
scolded. “Have you told Leif about the babe yet?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That he’d claim a boy bairn, but no
girl.”
“Ach,” Craig spat. “Just like his Uncle
Donald, he is. He’ll claim a son in case his wife-to-be does’na
bear him one.”
“What if the babe’s a girl?” Jenny cried.
“The laird’ll send me and the bairn packing for sure.”
“Dunna worry, daughter,” Peg soothed. “We
must hope and pray the babe’s a bonny boy with blond hair and blue
eyes like his father’s. He’ll claim it sure, then. If it’s a girl,
we have kin in the south who’ll help find you and the bairn a place
in some other laird’s keep.”
It was wrong of Alina to have listened, she
knew, but she’d be long gone before the drama of the baby’s birth
played out. She’d tell Roark before she left, knowing he’d do all
he could to help Jenny. Otherwise, it was none of her business. She
pushed the door open. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully,
pretending not to notice how Jenny quickly turned her tear-
streaked face away or how Peg’s cheeks were extra pink and Craig’s
frown etched deep in his forehead. “I know I woke too late for
breakfast, but was hoping I could grab some bread and cheese?”
“Of course, of course.” Peg swiped at her
cheeks and bustled about the kitchen, pulling a loaf of rye and a
wheel of cheese from the larder. “Help yourself.”
“Thank you, Peg.” Alina cut a slice of bread
and cheese each and headed for the door to the courtyard. “Where is
everybody?”
“Gare drove the laird and Donald and most of
the men to the docks this morning,” Peg told her. “The ladies rode
along with them, intending to do some shopping.”
“And Roark?”
“He rode off on that stallion of his early
this morn,” Craig said. “Didn’t say where he was going or why.”
Which meant he hadn’t slept at all.
“I’m off to the stables,” she said. When
Craig looked about to follow her, she waved him off. “Stay, rest,
relax. I swear I won’t try to leave.”
She reveled in walking across the yard to the
stables without being watched, and breathed a sigh of relief when
she found the stables empty of people, though the sight of Artur’s
empty stall made her heart do a little flip. She only had seven,
no, six more days of Roark’s company. Selfishly, she wanted as much
time with him as she could get.
Etain came up to her stall’s gate and
whinnied and Alina stroked the elegant mare’s forehead. “You’re
such a beauty, my faerie girl. I wish I could take you when I go
home.”
“You’re not going home, you Northern bitch,”
Leif said from the open doorway. “You’re not going anywhere, other
than on your back, knees up.”
He closed the door behind him, blocking her
way out, his intent as clear on his face as his words had been.
Alina glanced around, frantically searching for something,
anything, to use as a weapon. She grabbed a bucket of oats and
swung it at him as he closed in on her.
“This is going to be fun,” he said, jumping
back as she swung the bucket again.
Still swinging, Alina backed up to the
brooding stall, where she spied the mucking rake leaning against
the inside wall. Grabbing the bucket with both hands, she swung it
with all her might and heaved it at Leif’s head, throwing the pen’s
gate open as he ducked. Slamming the gate shut behind her, she
grabbed for the rake. Leif vaulted over the gate and landed on top
of her, crushing her to the ground with his weight as Ash and
Smokey bolted to the far corner of the pen, bleating and
whinnying.
“You can’t get away from me, Princess,” Leif
rasped as Alina clawed at the ground, trying desperately to gain
some traction. He sat on her back and grabbed her wrists, pinning
them to the ground. “You may as well give up and give in. Who
knows, you might even like it.” He flipped her over onto her back
and sat pelvis to pelvis on her, holding her wrists above her head
and grinning salaciously at her breasts as she squirmed beneath
him. “That a girl,” he said with a lecherous grin, his breath
reeking of beer. “Keep moving like that for me.”
Alina froze. She was hopelessly, helplessly
outweighed and outmuscled. She had to think, and think fast. She
wiggled a little beneath him and smiled as suggestively as possible
without spewing bile.
“That a girl,” he said roughly. “That’s how I
like it.” Holding her wrists with one hand, he groped her breast
with his other, mauling and pinching her flesh. He leaned down and
bit her on the shoulder and Alina bucked up against him. “Oh yeah,”
he groaned into her neck. “Do that again.”
Twisting her head toward his, Alina took hold
of his earlobe with her teeth and clamped down, hard.
“You bitch.” Leif jerked his head back,
leaving the tip of his lobe in Alina’s bloody mouth. “You fucking
whore.” He slapped her across the cheek, knocking the piece of his
ear from her mouth. Repositioning his hold of her wrists, he sat up
and thrust a knee into her belly, settling all his weight on
it.
Her vision hazy, Alina grunted and groaned
and fought for enough air to breathe, much less scream, as he
untied the stays to his breeches and freed his engorged cock. Alina
gasped for air and sanity as he lifted his knee from her belly and
straddled her, his cock waving in the air as he pulled her skirt up
her legs.
She screamed what little air she’d managed to
suck into her lungs out.
***
Roark jumped off Artur and hit the ground
running, throwing the stable door open and following the echo of
Alina’s scream to the brooding pen, the sight of Leif pinning her
down, shoving a knee between her exposed legs, sending him into a
murderous rage.
“Get off her, you son of a bitch,” Roark
roared as he jumped over the gate, grabbed Leif by the hair, and
yanked his head back. He slammed his fist into Leif’s nose,
growling with satisfaction at the crunch of cartilage beneath his
knuckles.
“Wha da fug,” Leif yelled as he pinched his
nostrils to stop the gush of blood.
“What the fuck?” Roark thundered back,
followed by his right fist into Leif’s jaw. “You’re trying to rape
her,” he raged, throwing his left fist into the other side of
Leif’s jaw. “Her,” he growled, throwing an uppercut to Leif’s chin,
his rage barely abating as Leif slumped back on his knees, his face
slack, his flaccid cock sagging against his thigh. “And you ask me
what the fuck?”
Grabbing the unconscious sack of shit by his
tunic, he dragged him off Alina, who lay shaking on the ground, her
eyes wild and unfocused. Slamming the back of Leif’s head on the
ground for good measure, Roark knelt beside her and scooped her
into his arms, holding her tight and whispering into her ear. “It’s
all right, Ali. You’re safe now. I have you. I have you, Ali
girl.”
She leaned back in his arms, her gaze slowly
focusing on his. “Roark?” she whispered hoarsely.
“Aye, my lady owl. I have you. Leif can’t
hurt you anymore.”
She turned her head and eyed the pulpy mass
of Leif’s face with a shudder, licked the blood on her lips, and
threw her arms around Roark’s neck. “Thank you,” she rasped as
another shudder racked her. “Thank you for being here, for
stopping…”
“Shhh.” Roark stroked her hair and held her
close. “It’s all right now. Everything’s all right.”
“No.” She rolled her forehead against his
shoulder. “No, it’s not.” She lifted her head and met his worried
gaze. “I have to leave here. Now.”
She dropped her arms from around him and
tried to stand, but only made it to her knees. Roark stood and
pulled her up with him. “You’re right,” he said, supporting her by
the elbows as she grasped his upper arms. “You do need to leave
here, now. We both do.”
“But—”
“I’m not letting you go alone.”
They gagged the still-unconscious Leif and
tied him to a gate post, leaving his breeches open and his cock
flagging. Bruised and bloody, his nose broken and the tip of his
ear missing, he’d have a lot of explaining to do. Roark would bet
coin on him lying about who attacked who, and why.
“I should slit his throat and be done with
the cur,” he said, giving Leif’s leg a kick.
“No,” Alina told him. “Helping me escape is
one thing. Killing Leif would be another altogether. They’d hang
you for his murder.”
She was right. Yet it didn’t mean Roark liked
letting the rapist bastard live. “What if I cut his stones
off?”
“He’d bleed out,” she said, “and they’d still
hang you for his murder.”
“How can you be so calm?” All he wanted to do
was take his rage out on Leif. To make him pay with his pound of
flesh.
Alina met and held his gaze, and Roark could
see the wildness still in her eyes. “I’ll fall into a weeping
puddle later,” she said. “Right now, time’s wasting.”
Alina saddled Etain as Roark rolled two