Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) (5 page)

Thankfully there was no time to pursue the strange and new thoughts that surfaced at that moment. Time would bring answers; time would bring solutions.

“Get dressed, James,” Tierney said eventually, “and get Maggie.”

The slow cortege, as it wound out of Binkiebrae the next day, over the hill to the burial ground, had a simple dignity that relieved the occasion of being just another pathetic moment—there was so little to show for a lifetime of living and loving, working and striving. But the friends walking behind the coffin spoke of the goodness of the man whose mortal remains rested so lightly on the strong shoulders of Binkiebrae’s stalwart males. “A guid mon,” they said, and the words were a fitting eulogy.

With Malcolm laid to rest beside his wife, the mourners returned briefly to the Caulder home. Maggie and others had cleared the place of any signs of death and sickness and provided food. Soon everyone said their farewells, and life, for the good people of Binkiebrae, went on in its familiar, unchanging fashion.

Closing the door behind the last departing guest, Tierney turned to the room where she had been born and lived all of her eighteen years, and knew it to be a different place. It was James’s. And Phrenia’s. James, whatever his thoughts, moved restlessly about the room.

Watching him and understanding, Tierney released him. “Go on, James, to Phrenia. I don’t mind. It’s something I’ll hae to get used to . . . the empty hoose.”

Though he gave his sister an apologetic look, James was obviously relieved and took her up on her suggestion. He was not accustomed to lingering around the house in the daytime, and it was not fitting to go about work or business of any kind on this day. But time spent with Phrenia—that was allowable. James made his way gladly to the home of her parents, where the young couple—guardedly, lest they seem too precipitate—planned for the happy day, now in sight, when they would marry and set up housekeeping, and life would go on as it should.

With evening coming on, the house almost unbearably empty around her, Tierney lit a lamp and pulled the kettle into position
to begin its boil for another cup of tea. The room seemed to echo silence. . . .

The stillness was broken by an outside sound, something Tierney couldn’t identify, something, someone, touching, scraping the door. Tilting her head, listening, she heard it again.

“What—” she murmured, finding the sound foreign, strange.

Once again the peculiar scrabbling came from the threshold. Tierney set aside the teapot, stepped to the door, reached for the latch, turned it—

With a crash the door slammed inward. Startled, Tierney stepped back, and just in time to avoid being struck by the figure that had been crouched there and that now tumbled into the room.

Out of the bundle of clothes, torn and askew, came a sound like the mew of an injured animal. Horrified, Tierney watched as the figure slowly stirred, raised itself slightly, and fell back to the floor.

“Annie?
Annie!
”

A
nnie!

It was indeed Annie. Battered and soiled, with her dark hair escaped from its confines, spreading like an ominous cloud about her head and shoulders, she crouched at the doorway. No sound escaped the prostrate figure, but when Tierney knelt and attempted to lift her, the face that was raised to hers was runneled with tears.

Tierney wasted no more time on speech. Getting her arm around Annie, she lifted her until she could slip her arm firmly around her waist. Then, Annie doing a sort of hop on one foot, they progressed enough so that Tierney could shut the door.

The room closed around them, quiet and shadowed; the fire flickered invitingly against the evening’s chill, and the lamp shed its steady, cheering glow over all. Annie, as though come into a haven, gave a long, shuddering sigh, and sank onto the settle before the fireplace. Not knowing whether to tend to whatever injury there might be or simply to offer comfort, Tierney knelt at her friend’s knee.

“Annie. Can ye talk, lass?”

Anne’s head drooped. “Aye,” she whispered. “Though I dinna wish to.”

“Even now!”

“I canna imagine where ’twill end, once ’tis said.”

“’Twill end here, Annie, if that’s what ye wish.”

“It must, Tierney.” Fresh tears ran, silent and unchecked, from Anne’s puffed eyes.

“Lean back, Annie. Get yer breath. I’ll be back in a second.”

Annie obeyed, as one deathly weary, deathly ill. Tierney searched out the cloths used during her father’s illness that were washed and carefully stored away for any future need (nothing went to waste in the crofts and shanties of Binkiebrae). A little hot water from the kettle, a little cold water from the pail, and Tierney applied the warm and comforting application to Anne’s face, dabbing away the soil and tears, exposing bruises and a cut not noticed before.

Anne was shivering, and Tierney put a shawl around her shoulders. While Anne’s breathing slowed and her tears dried, Tierney tended the fire, emptied the basin and put away the wet cloth, filled the teapot that was ready and waiting, and, finally, filled two cups with the fragrant brew.

Anne came up out of the settle’s corner to an upright position, to take the cup and eventually try a cautious sip. Soon a bit of pink was returning to her white cheeks, the result being that the bruises rising there stood out, stark and ugly.

Tierney, watching over the rim of her own cup, was horrified at the marks of abuse. Someone—Annie’s father? one of her brothers?—had wielded a cruel hand against her. How could they! Annie, gentle and easygoing, spending her young womanhood taking care of those same males . . . had they, in careless disregard and with cruel intent, turned on her? If so, it wasn’t the first time. Tierney recalled, darkly, the other time Annie had hidden a face that had been, to a lesser extent, similarly battered.

Paul Fraser was known to be a rough man; his sons, cheerful, laughing young men, were quick-tempered and undisciplined. Anne’s mother, a woman of virtue and grace, had been the gentling influence in that home. With her gone, was Annie at risk? Tierney grew cold thinking about it and again stirred the fire to greater efficiency.

When Anne handed Tierney her cup, straightened her clothes, put a hand to her hair and drew a steadying breath, Tierney could wait no longer.

“Was it your da?” she asked quietly but pointedly.

“Na, na.”

“Pauly? Sam?”

“Nae, not me brothers.”

Tierney was confused. No other possibility came to mind. Was Anne physically impaired so that she stumbled, fell, went unconscious perhaps? It was a wild solution but one Tierney grasped at; it would be preferable to a revelation that pinpointed another human being as the reason for such barbarism. But it was a vain and futile hope.

“Then who . . . or what, Annie? For heaven’s sake—what has happened to ye?”

Annie seemed to be gazing blindly into the fire. After a long moment, she said quietly, “Lucian.”

“Lucian MacDermott,” Tierney whispered. And suddenly it made great sense.

Lucian, the scion of the MacDermott clan, spoiled, known for his cruelty to man and beast even as a child, was home again. Sent off to Edinburgh to receive his education and home only occasionally over the past half-dozen years, Lucian, as a young man, had already earned an unsavory reputation, and tales of his arrogance and thoughtless unconcern abounded. If he were cruel abroad, how much more so on MacDermott land where he felt himself to be a young king.

Tierney well knew the power and authority held by landowners; for centuries her people had known the harsh treatment
of the titled and wealthy, and the subservience expected of them as servant to master, lackey to overlord, subject to ruler.

What had Anne done to bring on herself such dire retribution? Or—and Tierney went still momentarily, thinking of the possibility—what had she
not done?

“Aye,” Anne was repeating, starting off another round of trembling so that she pulled the shawl closer about her. “Lucian.”

With Lucian home and several guests with him, the MacDermott house was understaffed; Anne, as usual, was called into service. It had not been in the great house, however, that she had again encountered Lucian, the first time in several years; always before she had been busy elsewhere when he came home, briefly, at holidays.

She had been crossing the yard, a basket on her arm, her bonnet flung back and her dark hair smoky in the late-day sun, when Lucian and two other young men had come from the house, intent on reaching the stables, and dressed for riding.

“Well, would you look at that!” Coming face-to-face with the lovely young woman, Lucian had stopped, thumbs in vest pockets, with his young companions alongside of him, uncertain.

The three quite successfully blocked her path. Anne found herself flushing; Lucian’s stare was bold. The eyes of the two strangers were fixed on her rather blankly.

“Don’t tell me. Let me guess—it’s Fanny.” Lucian put a finger below Anne’s chin and tipped her face up.

Anne stood quietly under the scrutiny, waiting for the awkward moment to pass so that she could move on.

“Fanny—all grown up. And everything.” With the “everything,” Lucian’s eyes swept brazenly over Anne’s sweet figure. “Fanny. Am I right? Eh? Eh?”

He was demanding an answer. Feeling that to do so might settle the embarrassing confrontation, Anne said, with dignity, “I’m Anne.”

“Annie Fanny! But not a mannie. Agreed, men?” Again Lucian’s eyes swept Anne’s body, and his laugh was rude and loud, spraying spittle into the face that had first flushed pink and was now paling before their very eyes.

One young man joined the laughter, braying rather like an ass in the process; the other put a hand on Lucian’s arm and said quietly, “Let’s go. Leave her be, and let’s go.”

“You yearn for horse flesh when there’s female flesh around? And such flesh!”

Unused to rudeness, a stranger to lasciviousness, totally unaccustomed to such a blatantly disgraceful reference to the human form, her own in particular, was Anne’s undoing. Eyes glittering with suppressed fury, “I thought ye might have grown up, Lucian,” she said bitingly. “It seems ye’re nothin’ but a bairn still.”

It was then Lucian MacDermott, unprincipled youth as he had been an unprincipled child, belittled in front of his friends and furious because of it, drew back his arm and backhanded Anne across her face.

The basket flew from Anne’s arm; as she staggered momentarily, her hand went to her cheek, already scarlet and hinting at the bruise that would swell there and the discoloration that would result.

“Enough!” The two young men, shocked, drew Lucian back. Shrugging them off he would have returned to the attack except that someone, calling from the stables, demanded to know what was keeping them.

Turning reluctantly away, Lucian, his eyes hard, flung back over his shoulder, “Just who you think you are, I can’t imagine! Frasers have ever been available to the MacDermotts, no matter what the need. And my needs are not met—yet!

“And clean up that mess, wench,” he shrieked, his tossed head indicating the dozen or so eggs that had flown from the basket and were lying smashed on the ground.

Anne, deaf to everything but the roaring in her ears, was fumbling for the basket. Ignoring its broken contents, she stumbled homeward. Here, she bathed her cheek and eye and groaned at the sight, knowing it could not be disguised. As in most emergencies, her thoughts went automatically to a soothing cup of tea. Waiting for its medicinal purposes to bring a degree of calm to her spirit, which was as bruised as her countenance, she shrank from the thought of explaining to her father and brothers.

There was no hiding the injury. Her father, a most careless parent, noticed as soon as he came in the door. It seemed that he inquired about its cause almost reluctantly.

“It was Lucian,” Anne, ever truthful, admitted, and recounted briefly the meeting with the young men and its outcome.

“What in heaven’s name did ye do to cause him to act so?”

“Nothin’, Da, nothin’ at all!”

Paul Fraser’s face grew red. “You got in the lad’s way. Don’t be a fool, girl. Stay out of that’n’s way—”