Читать книгу Heat Of The Knight - Jackie Ivie - Страница 10

Monteith wanted Lisle. Her? Barefoot, hoydenish, poverty-stricken, wild, red-haired, hot-tempered Mistress MacHugh? And not for just one night, either, or even a week—which she might be able to live through and then try to forget. He wanted her for life, at his side, as his wife. His wife?

Her steps halted, knowing she had only deep-rooted mulishness to blame that she’d had to find out what his offer was in person. His wife? she repeated in her thoughts yet again. No. Not that. Any portion of MacHugh land was better than that. Anything.

The shock was what had gotten her from the steps of his keep and across his drawbridge without having to ask one soul the way, or wait for anyone to open a door or lower a bridge. Anger got her all the way to the castle gate, more than half a league distance, and then it became rage, which had her stomping along the fence-lined roadway outside his property. Then the emotion turned to stubbornness, making it easy to ignore the blisters on her heels that were breaking open, the way the sun seemed to beat down on her, making sweat rivulet down her back, and how even the growth beside the road tried to reach out for her, catch and imprison her.

Despair dogged every step and every breath as the sun set behind her, sending her own shadow farther and farther along the road, and frightening her more than any deserted farmhouse along the way could. It should have taken nearly the night to reach the MacHugh property, rather than arriving just as the moon was sliding from behind the clouds, stirring wind and whispers and ghosts to accompany her.

It was exhaustion that owned the final leg of her walk, making every step on the well-worn path seem endless and futile. There was more written. She’d been too shocked to absorb it, but tinges of it flew into her mind then, when all she had to look at was the moonlit path in front of her, stirring over with the first vestiges of night mist.

There was a lot written after the word marriage…something about inheritances and land, supplying coin and dowries to her MacHugh stepdaughters, a payment of gold to the other MacHughs…children. There was something written about trusts set up for children; riches beyond her dreams. Children. He’d written the word children….

Their children.

Her feet stopped, and her body had no choice but to obey as the emotion resembling liquid fire touched through her belly and up through her breasts again at the memory. Children? Oh, dear God, she couldn’t! No one could make her. She’d rather starve! She’d rather walk the streets in rags than give one instant of thought to the shiver way down deep that had started the moment she read the words, and that no one would ever get her to admit to.

It had to become anger again, and that gave impetus to her feet and legs, turning her long strides into a semijog that put a stitch in her side and made her lungs burn worse than her thighs.

Then the resignation came, completely and totally. She knew she had no choice. He knew she had no choice. That was why no one had lifted a finger to stop her flight from the Monteith estate. He knew she was going to have to do it.

There was light coming from the lower MacHugh castle windows. Lisle stopped and looked at the place that had been home for a year now. That was ending. It had ended the moment she’d awakened this morning. She just hadn’t known it. Lisle dragged her feet the remaining steps to the door and opened it, looking at change only the devil’s gold could make, and knowing that the MacHughs hadn’t even waited for her to agree before accepting Laird Monteith’s terms.

“Angus?” she croaked from a throat dry enough to soak up a sporran full of liquid. “Mattie?”

“Look, lass! We’re in the parlor. Just look!”

They hadn’t used the parlor since before the Yule, because it was too large to keep warm in, and without any furnishings it was too vivid a reminder of what they were facing. That wasn’t the case anymore.

Lisle stood, swaying until she had to lean against a doorjamb to disguise it, at the three aunts snuggled into new woolen blankets and rocking in identical chairs, while the other members of the MacHugh family lounged about on what appeared to be some of the same furniture they’d bartered away before things got so dire.

“The butcher still had my chair. Can you believe it?” Angus rose from the chair that had embraced him like a lover, and approached her, arms outstretched. Then he turned and used his arms to encompass the entire room.

“And look at the settee, and the tables, and even the mirror! He still had them as well. Isn’t it grand?”

“Aye,” she replied, through the same dry throat.

“We’ve you to thank, too, lass. Now, thank Lisle Dugall, all. She’s gone and saved the MacHugh clan. That she has.”

Lisle’s eyebrows rose a bit, but it was too much effort to move them much farther, and she let them fall back down. She didn’t have the energy to lift her own brows?

“Dugall?” she asked, with the croak of voice she had left.

“The missives he sent today came with gold, lass. Lots of it. He’s offered thirty thousand for your hand. We couldn’t turn it down. Think of it! Thirty thousand!”

“You opened…them?” she asked.

“We couldn’t allow you to take us to the brink of disaster again, now, could we?” It was the eldest, Angela, asking it in a snide tone.

“And me…to my deathbed,” Fanny added, between bouts of coughing.

“Weren’t they addressed to me?” Lisle asked.

“Well…that there is the rub, lass.”

Lisle tried to find a backbone stiff enough to hold her straighter, but her own spine was giving up on her now. If it hadn’t been for the solidness of the wooden doorjamb she was clinging to, she’d probably be collapsed on the bare floor at their feet.

“What’s the rub, Angus?” she asked.

“Thirty thousand gold pieces is a powerful amount of gold, Lisle,” he said softly, and she noticed he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Aye,” she intoned.

“We could na’ turn such a thing away. You ken how it is.”

“Aye,” she replied again.

They’d been afraid they had to sell their pride. It hadn’t happened. They were selling her. The worst part was, if they had waited, they’d have known she would have gone without a fuss. She had to. There was no other choice.

His children? she thought again and shuddered, the motion making her own body tremble against the wooden support.

“And it isn’t as if we canna’ look ourselves in the eye anymore, either.”

“Your meaning?” she asked with a very careful, controlled voice that sounded like the same rasp as the other words, but had heartbreak attached to it. She was only grateful they didn’t hear it.

Angus cleared his throat. “I thought long and hard about this, lass. I did. Truly.”

“I like you better when you’re straightforward, Angus,” Lisle answered, although all the words didn’t make it to sound, and the last were said in a whisper. She knew he heard them since he flinched.

“The offers were addressed to Mistress Lisle MacHugh. That much is truth.”

“And?” she asked, when all he did was stay silent, and act like he was waiting for her to think it through.

“There was nae wedding consummation with a MacHugh.”

They weren’t just selling her, they were disowning her first? Lisle found her backbone, and thanked God silently and swiftly for bringing the emotion to a halt, just like what had happened last night. She couldn’t feel a thing, not even one blister.

“You canna’ claim me enough to sell me, Angus, and then disown me once you have the gold.”

“You were na’ bed by a MacHugh, therefore you aren’t truly a MacHugh. You’re a Dugall. Still.”

“That wasn’t bothersome to you when I still had my dowry,” she answered.

“Well, it’s gone, and with it went hope. Until now. We want our futures back. That’s all we want,” Angela said, and this time she was aggressive.

“You should probably give the gold back, then,” Lisle replied, and her voice had sound to it after all.

Angus flinched. Not one of them would meet her eyes, and she looked at each one in turn. “I believe I’m going to bed now, Clan MacHugh. I’ll thank you to save further words until I’ve rested. It’s been a powerful long day, you see. Good eve to you all.”

Lisle turned, and had almost reached the steps leading to the chieftain’s bed chamber, before the emotion turned into sobs that tormented her own chest with the strength of them.

She knew why they were doing it. She could even forgive them for it. If she were a MacHugh faced with what they had been, for as long as they had been, she’d have done it, too.

Lisle woke late, took several breaths, and then remembered. She tried to sit up, and groaned at the motion before her body betrayed her and dumped her back onto the mattress, making it sway a bit.

“About time you woke.”

It was Angela. She was sitting on a padded chair that looked new, and knitting with what appeared to be bleached, freshly carded wool. She didn’t look up as Lisle turned her head to face her. Angela had always been the most outspoken of them. That came with maturity, and losing a motherly hand at a very young age…twice. With Lisle’s upcoming desertion, it was now three times.

“What time is it?” Lisle asked.

“Late,” Angela replied to her knitting.

Lisle’s lips thinned and she rolled her head back to look at the ceiling above her. Angela was probably getting ready to assert her authority as matriarch of the clan, if she hadn’t done so already. From the way she was clicking her needles and the way she’d spoken, she had probably already done it, and Angus presented no challenge. That man had the life sucked out of him over a year ago, at the battle he couldn’t forget. He wasn’t up to challenging over authority.

“Do you wish me to leave now, or do I get a respite?” Lisle asked.

“Now would be best,” Angela replied.

Lisle sighed softly. It was time to prove that she knew what love was. She knew it, very well. There was a part of her that wanted to demand the gold back, turn her back on the lot of them, march right back to the Dugall clan stronghold, and make what was left of them take her in. With thirty thousand in gold, she’d be most welcome, until they found out why she had it, that is.

She sent a silent prayer for strength and courage, and for unlimited guile to hide all of it. That way, not one of them would know what it was costing her, because that’s what love was.

Lisle knew very well what love was, because she’d spent six years praying about it and asking about it, and then she’d spent the last year showing it, with every part of her trousseau she parted with, and every drop of sweat she’d shed over every bit of labor to try and keep this family from ruin. She was actually grateful that she had the chance to finish, and do it so completely.

“Is there a bucket of water for my use?” she asked, grateful God was granting her prayer as her voice didn’t even have a suspicion of the warble she’d expected it to have.

“Over yonder. It was warmed hours earlier. It is nae more, though.”

“I shouldn’t have slept so long,” Lisle replied.

“Nae, you shouldn’t have.”

Her body really did have the strength. She was willing it there, and it worked, since moving her own legs toward the side so she could stand did show a bit of an ache, but it was small compared to the one in her heart. That pain was growing heavier with every beat of it.

“Will you grant me privacy?”

“Will you be needing it?” Angela replied, not once looking up.

“I think it would be best. I’ve nae idea how long I’ll be, and I’ve a very long walk ahead of me at the end of it.” And I’ve bruising, and torn palms from slivers, broken blisters on my heels, and such, and I need to keep it all hidden, she finished in her thoughts.

“There’s a black, unmarked carriage at the end of the drive. Just outside our property. Waiting.”

“There is?” Lisle’s voice cracked, despite the control she was exercising to keep it at bay.

Angela didn’t seem to notice. Lisle watched as she nodded, her head bobbing along with the way her needles moved. “Been there all day. None of us had the inclination to ask what it’s there for.”

Lisle sighed. “You dinna’ need to. It’s him.”

“That’s what we suspicioned. Must you dawdle so?”

Angela wasn’t going to like looking at herself very much when she was older. Lisle looked at the lines of concentration stretching across her forehead, and how she was squinting slightly, bringing creases to both sides of her eyes. The girl was prematurely aging. Lisle only hoped it wasn’t partly due to her failure at nurturing, protecting, and being a mother to her.

Her shoulders set, making her wince slightly. It was ridiculous. She’d walked before. She’d lived with sliver-filled palms for days now. She’d never had the weight of censure and banishment accompanying it before, though. Well and good, then. She couldn’t change her future. All she could do was make certain those she loved didn’t know what she was paying in order to save them.

The Black Monteith had also promised a dowry to the stepdaughters. He needn’t know they didn’t consider themselves that anymore. He could hear the truth of it, along with everyone else. He could hear it from their own lips, which everyone would—as long as it was later, after he paid. He was going to pay a dowry, and put it in trust for every one of them. She’d make certain of it. She still held out hope for the other girls, but sensed that Angela, for one, was going to need her dowry.

She shrugged, moved to the edge of the mattress, put her feet on the floor, sun-warmed by the uncurtained window, and grimaced slightly at how much she ached, before forcing her legs to support her.

They may have warmed the bucket of water, but it was hours earlier. It was tepid now. Lisle shivered as she touched her fingertips to it, and then told herself she was being ridiculous. Just yestermorn, before she found out what her future was, she’d bathed by swimming in the loch, luxuriating in the smell and touch of lavender soap, and kicking through water that was ice cold. She hadn’t a hint of a shiver then.

“I wish you’d leave me to this,” Lisle said, pulling the tie undone at the neckline of the one nightgown she’d claimed and owned and worn and washed, until the satin was so threadbare it no longer shone.

“You’ll need help with the donning of it,” Angela replied to her knitting.

Lisle’s heart sank, and her eyes flew to where her wedding dress had hung after they’d bartered the armoire away. They were wedding her off now? Without any more time to assimilate?

“’Tis your own fault, too.”

“It is?” Lisle asked.

“Yours were the fingers applying all the seed pearl buttons and beading, weren’t they?”

“Aye,” she replied.

“There’s nae way to fasten it about oneself without an assist.”

Lisle didn’t think through how Angela’s hands on her back, while she fastened the dress, were going to feel. She closed her eyes and sent another prayer heavenward, this time asking for the blessing of numbness. The MacHughs were right. She wasn’t going to go to Monteith unwed, and she wasn’t going to be allowed to stay from it. She might as well get it over with. The carriage wasn’t going to leave without her, the MacHughs weren’t going to go back to being the MacHughs she knew, and the man she was going to have to wed wasn’t going to disappear if she stalled. It was only going to loom larger, and the MacHughs would be the ones paying. They’d start hating what they were doing, they wouldn’t have anyone to turn that emotion onto except her, and if she wasn’t available, they might turn it on themselves.

Lisle wasn’t going to allow that. She was going to dress in her wedding finery, and she was going to act like she wanted to do it. She hoped God was listening to that part of her plan, too.

She pulled the nightgown off her and bent to wring out the cloth they’d given her in order to sponge off. She wasn’t going to worry over her hair. It had been in a bun since yesterday, and beneath that, it was in two braids. That should be sufficient once she had it undone and combed through.

She wrapped the dry cloth about her before walking to the gown, lifting the satin skirt and finding the chemise, real stockings of silk, and petticoats that she’d kept hidden beneath the long, seed-pearl embroidered skirt and train. She heard Angela’s reaction as the needles stopped their incessant clicking noise, and a smile appeared on Lisle’s lips.

Lisle slid the chemise over her head, sliding her hands along the satin-feel of it, and frowning a bit at how it clung to her breasts, but fell from everywhere else. She’d sewn it exactly to her own proportions, but a year of toil had slimmed her. There was no explanation for the increase in her bosom, however. It was enough that the gossamer weave of tatted lace at the center of the bodice was stretched wide, holding her in place, and creating a valley of shadow where she’d never noticed it before.

She wasn’t going to be able to wear the stockings if she couldn’t stop the broken blisters from weeping. She went over to the white linen sheet, pulled a corner from the bottom of the mattress, where it wouldn’t easily be seen, and ripped at the sewing that wasn’t ever supposed to come undone. She had to resort to picking at it before the hem gave, but she had her strips of linen. She didn’t look up to see what reaction Angela had, and she couldn’t hear if there was one over the sound of ripping material. The linens had come from her hope chest, they belonged to her, and if she wanted to use strips of them for bandaging, it was for her to decide, not any of them.

She sat to wrap her heels, tying little bows above her ankles, before she could pull the stockings on. She only winced once as she connected with the bruise on her right buttock from falling on it the other night, when she’d helped rescue the MacHugh war chest. The memory of that time warmed her, calming her incessant shivering for a few moments. That box had a place of honor in the center of the family, and they all had to admit that without her, it would have been lost.

The stockings were sheer to the point she could spot flesh beneath them. They were also too large, and weren’t going to stay up without garters. That was also odd, but she didn’t bother with the reason. Her legs looked more slender than before. It wasn’t surprising. Everyone looked like they were slowly starving, and getting thinner was the first sign of it. Well, that was changing, and it was Lisle that was making it happen.

The shivering restarted. She stood and went to fetch the light blue garters that she’d sewn into the petticoat, so they’d not get lost. She tied them both on, ignoring Angela’s watchful eye, since there wasn’t one click of any knitting needle happening, and then she stood to put the petticoat on.

If Angela thought the dress overworked and laborious, she wasn’t going to have a description for the petticoat. Lisle had used every bit of skill to embroider small blue butterflies all over the garment, using the stitches to add thickness by quilting a layer of stiffened lace to the underside of it. The extravagance was even more stunning nearly four years after she’d designed and started creating it, and especially after the time they’d just gone through.

“That’s absolutely beautiful,” Angela said, showing that despite her best intentions, she was female, and had a feminine appreciation for such things.

Lisle smiled across at her. “My thanks. I designed it myself.”

“You did?”

“Aye. And if you like I’ll help design one when you—” Lisle’s voice stopped as a pained, shuttered expression shut down her stepdaughter’s animation of a moment before. “Forgive me,” she said, after clearing her throat. “I wasn’t thinking. You won’t want anything to do with me once this is over. I understand. I do. Please let everyone know. Will you do that for me?”

Angela looked across at her, and for a moment, Lisle could have sworn she saw the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes, before she blinked them into nonexistence again. That was a good sign. This wasn’t killing off every bit of her capacity for love. Lisle didn’t want that to happen. Someday, the girl facing her was going to wed some upstanding, righteous Scotsman, if there was still one of marriageable age alive, and she was going to bring future MacHughs into being, and the last thing Lisle wanted was to know Angela wasn’t a loving mother because of something her second, and final, stepmother might have or have not done.

She buttoned the petticoat into place, although it didn’t fit on her waist like it used to, and would probably rotate about, and then she reached for the gown.

Angela was there before she was, reverently taking the dress from the wooden hook it had been hanging from, and sliding her fingers over the creasing that hanging in such a position for so long had made in the shoulders, in order to take the worst of it out. Lisle watched her and then lifted her eyes to meet Angela’s. There were definitely tears in the depths, and it took the most severe effort of Lisle’s life to suck the answering moisture in her own eyes back in. It was better to be numb and nonemotional, and listen to Angela trying to be assertive. The smile she gave was shaky, as was the girl’s answering one.

“Let’s get this over with. Fair?” Lisle asked.

The girl nodded, and lifted the dress to get it over Lisle’s head. It was a good thing they hadn’t undone her bun and brushed out her hair yet, for the dress would have ruined every bit of it with how it clung to and scratched everything it touched. Lisle lifted her lip into a slight smile as she remembered that part of it. Such embroidery and seed pearl enhancement came with a price. Inner threads that itched and caught on strands of hair and on the lace centerpiece of the chemise, regardless of the satin she’d lined the inside with.

Then she was standing, facing the window as the sun moved into a position heralding dusk. She’d slept the entire day away? It didn’t seem possible, but it was just as well. She didn’t want the others trying to be hard-shelled and stiff-backed, and she didn’t dare put her numbness through much more testing.

Angela’s fingers gained competence as she started at the waistline, sliding the hundreds of little loops Lisle had sewn onto the pearls that would hold them, until she ended at the top of Lisle’s neck. Then her fingers were unwrapping the bun and unbraiding the hair. Lisle let her. The girl was taller, making it simpler, and she guessed this was Angela’s way of asking apology for her curtness earlier.

Lisle knew her hair was going to be like a wave-rippled section of the loch, and wasn’t surprised to find it was so, even to where the ends grazed her hip. There wasn’t a veil. They’d used it up as bandaging when Angus had first reached home…after Culloden. That was all right.

“You look beautiful, Lisle.” The girl breathed the words. “It’s a shame…” Her voice dribbled off.

“That it’s to be wasted on Monteith as my groom?” Lisle supplied.

The girl nodded.

“I had a good look the other day. It’s not too onerous. He’s a right comely man, if one gets past what…he is.”

“That’s na’ going to be easy. He’s immense. I’ve heard tales. He’s evil. He’s frightening.”

Lisle frowned. “I ken as much,” she whispered.

“I doona’ envy you,” Angela said softly.

“I’ll just have to keep my mind on his handsomeness, and not on what it hides.” She took a deep breath. “He does have that, you know.”

“I know. I saw him.”

“Yes.” There were those shivers again. The ones she’d die before admitting to. Lisle frowned. They didn’t stop. They got stronger. She gulped. “He’s tall, he’s manly, and he’s gorgeous. Why, if this was taking place under other circumstances…” She almost got it out before her voice failed, and she just let it trail off. To do anything else would crack her composure open. That, she wasn’t going to allow. She was not going to let anyone know what Monteith was doing to her. That would be the worst indignity of a whole heap of the same ever since she’d met him.

Angela put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed slightly. Then it was gone, as she stepped back and tilted her head to one side, as if surveying their handiwork, and not like she’d just put almost more weight atop her stepmother’s shoulders than she could support and still go through with it.

“Doona’ move. I’ve got an idea,” Angela said.

“For what?” Lisle asked.

“A circlet about your head. We can fashion one from the creeping azalea that Mary brought back from the cliffs just this morn, although I’ve told her over and over not to go there. I’ll be right back.”

Lisle looked levelly across at Angela and nodded solemnly. She didn’t trust her voice.