Parris Afton Bonds (21 page)

"Look! See there, off above that peak. The golden eagle.” Jamie’s breath frosted the air. " Tis the biggest bird in the Highlands.”

Enya pulled up on her pony. Her gaze followed the direction in which Jamie pointed. Above the snow-capped summit the bird
’s wings were stretched wide, seeking a warm current of air in which to glide.

Warm air would be difficult to find today. Even so, she was willing to brave this newest onslaught of cold weather. With her work in the kitchen finished early and Ranald absent, she had pestered
Jamie to take her riding to escape the stale air of the castle.

Where was Ranald? Was his heart
’s devotion given over to some maiden in the village? A Highland lass whose hair color did not offend him?

Sometimes he called her to his chambers; a few times he came to hers; often he ignored her. He had not summoned her in weeks now.

When teaching Annie to read she had asked her subtle questions in regard to her laird, but Annie never mentioned any dalliance to her. That he occasionally called her to his chambers was a duly accepted fact—the right of the laird.

Come morning, she was still a kitchen maid, was she not?

Still, she often wondered if all of his time was truly spent in deer stalking, visiting local crofters and burghers, hawking, hunting, presiding at justice halls, and counseling with his reivers.

The one person she found herself turning to more often for solace was Jamie. He was well read, educated, and of a pleasant nature. And, it went without s
aying, a very handsome and charming man.

Sometimes she plied him with questions about Paris. Other times she listened wistfully as he told her anecdotes about luminaries he had discoursed with, men of influence like Voltaire and Franklin and Rousseau.

"The golden eagle is monogamous,” he was saying now. "He mates for life.”

"How perfectly fascinating. Can the same be said of the Highland laird?”

Jamie shot her a penetrating glance. "Are you inquiring about my cousin? If so, aye. Ranald mated for life."

Angu
ish struck like lightning. "Ranald is married?”

"No. The marriage never took place."

“What happened?"

His eyes shuddered over. "You had best ask Ranald about Ruthven."

Her enthusiasm in the ride went out of her. She rode on in silence for another league.

"
Speak your mind with me,” Jamie said at last. "I beseech you."

Ranald was ever on her mind. She admitted as much. "I know that Ranald has suffered under Simon Murdock
’s administration. And I can understand Ranald’s bitterness, but sometimes I feel that he . . .’’

She could not finish the thought. It would have been a betrayal of him. For all his fiendishness, he had never treated her brutally, as her intended had treated him and his family.

Jamie paused. They had dismounted and stood on the perimeter of a fallow field. Jamie put his hand on her shoulder. "I canna agree with what he is doing to you, Enya.”

Rustling in the shrubbery behind them spun them around, is if by complicity. Ranald stood there, the merlin riding his gloved arm. The lacings of his leggi
ngs were filled with shreds of leaves and bits of bark. His face was smudged with a two-day growth of beard. Wrinkles of weariness fanned his eyes and mouth. His unnatural calm clad his presence with a kind of total menace.

How much had he heard? Nothing a
bout his expression foretold the possible scope of his intentions. "My captive. Ye find her entertaining, Jamie?"

"Well, of course. She is a lady, for God
’s sake, Ranald.”

“
She is not to go out alone with you.”

“
You are afraid I shall seduce your cousin into eloping with me?” she asked, her tone scathing.

“
Neither is she to be left alone with Duncan," he persisted calmly.

Jamie
’s mouth flattened with a mixture of both disgust and disappointment. “You should know me better than that, Ranald."

“
I ken that flattered men can behave like fools.”

He looked at her. It was an impersonal appraisal that seemed to take no heed of her disheveled red hair or her becomingly flushed cheeks or the flame of resentment in her green eyes. "I want
ye to keep in mind that I am no fool." With that he strode on past the two.

Jamie glanced at her, shook his head warningly, then turned to follow Ranald.

When the weather wasn
’t inclement, which wasn’t often, Enya would sit on the castle ramparts after her chores in the kitchen were finished.

Often her thoughts turned to Brother Archibald
—or Arch, as she now called him. It was difficult to address him as Father just yet. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to do so. At least she had come to the point where the thought of him as her father was no longer so utterly strange.

This afternoon was cold, but the usually blustery wind was lying low. Sunlight had melted the most recent snow, and she pulled back the hood of her cloak.

Soaking up the crisp, fresh air, Thane lay stretched out at her side. The collie heard the noise first. His ears pricked up, then he leaped to all four paws. She turned to see Ranald approaching. Tail wagging, Thane trotted over to his master, clad in a deerskin coat and leather trousers against the elements.

She also rose. "Thane was keeping me company." She hoped her words sounded casual. Whenever around Ranald these days, she found herself getting absurdly shy. Like a nervous maiden, she was.

One of those rare smiles eased the hard line of his mouth. "I wanted him to keep me company.”

"Another raid?" Surely she could think of something better to say.

"Only on the trout.”

“
You’re going fishing?" The thought of escaping the castle confines tantalized her. Of all the castle’s inhabitants, she, alone, was forbidden to leave. Even old Elspeth and Mary Laurie were permitted to visit the village. "Please, may I also accompany you?”

He looked askance. "Ye fish?"

She smiled demurely. "A wee bit.”

His eyes took on a boyish gleam,
his face alight. “Ever fished for trout?”

She shook her head.

"Then come along. The best bait is the mayfly, but until the insects hatch again we’ll have to make do with minnows.”

She couldn
’t believe this wild, unsophisticated chieftain, the leader of a formidable band of reivers, could be so congenial.

Sunlight glinted in his tawny hair as he led her along a snowbanked road, then cut across crystal-frosted rye grass, and picked up a path leading to the burn. Thane trotted at their side, his tail wagging h
appily. Ever so often he would leave them to explore a hazel thicket or prickly gorse, then come romping back.

The burn
’s water rushed so rapidly that ice had no chance to form. Ranald halted beside a denuded, pale gray mountain ash. Here the river narrowed, slowed, and deepened. “There should be something in the riffle between the gravel bars and yon bed of watercress."

She watched him impale a minnow on the hook of his fishing pole, doubtlessly booty from a recent raid. He cast the line in a dark area tha
t marked deeper water and twitched it a few times. Within seconds, a juvenile trout took the bait. Ranald hauled in his catch, unhooked it, and held it under the belly until it swam off. "Not bad for a brown trout, but not large enough to be a gift fish."

"Cast in the farthest riffle," she suggested, "the one closest to the sheep pasture across the river.”

He flicked her a challenging look. “Ye do it."

Before she could reply he passed her the pole. She searched his face, ruddy with the cold day. His express
ion held a look of patient good humor. “This outing had been planned," she accused.

"Planned? More like ordered. The good hag Elspeth trapped me in a draughty passag
e and wouldna let me by until she had lectured me on your virtues. I ended up giving me promise to provide ye with the opportunity to stretch your legs—limbs," he finished lamely.

His magnanimous gesture, then, had been at Elspeth
’s prompting. In a dour mood, Enya accepted the fishing pole. Her cloak hampered her cast, but when she could control the line she dragged it crosswise, remembering how mayflies flutter upstream just before their wings are dry and are unable to lift off the surface.

The trout came
up out of a dark area in the farthest riffle and took the bait with an almost angry motion. She said a quick prayer to whoever was in charge of brown trout. Her excitement was contagious, and Thane began to yip.

“
That’s it!” Ranald encouraged. “Keep jiggling the line.”

The trout stopped once to try and bury itself in a patch of watercress before she tugged it ashore. Bright and clean-finned, it stared up at her with a dour eye.

“It shall make a marvelous meal,” Ranald said, kneeling to unhook it.

“
Let it go for another time," she suggested.

He spared it, and it slipped away to the center of the river. Then he turned on her an accusatory glance. “
Ye’ve fished a lot."

She laughed with pure delight.

He grinned up at her. “I didn’t realize you, also, have a dimple in one cheek.”

At the soft gleam in his eye, she sobered. What if she fell in love with him instead? On the way back to the castle, both she and he were silent. Did he ever think about the woman he had been going to marry? “
Tell me about Ruthven,” she blurted.

A muscle in his jaw flickered. “
Ye ha' been talking to Jamie."

She said nothing. By now they had reached the portcullis. He nodded to the posted guards and continued on. "What do ye want to know?”

In the bailey, she circumvented a squawking hen. "Why didn’t you marry her?”

His long strides lengthened even more. "She died."

"Oh.” She swallowed. "I’m sorry. Murdock’s doing, also?”

Ahead of her, he climbed the stairs two at a time. “
No.”

She hurried to catch up with him and followed him into his chambe
rs. "Do you think you could manage to be less monosyllabic?"

He peeled off his deerskin coat and went to stand before the slow-burning fire. His voice was low. “
Ruthven and I grew up in the village of Achnacarry, the Cameron ancestral home near Fort William. When I went off to the university we were pledged.

“
Later, Bonnie Prince Charles returned, and I joined the ranks. Not out of Jacobite zeal, but because of anti-Hanoverian feelings. With his defeat I became one of the holdouts. Me younger brother Robby and I joined Ian and other rebels. Always on the run, striking here or there at a lone patrol, and off again.

“
Whenever I thought it was safe I would slip into Achnacarry with Davy to see Ruthven and Mhorag, who was living with Ruthven’s parents. One night, as I lay in Ruthven’s arms, I found a Sassenach bayonet pointed at my throat. She had betrayed me.”

She swallowed. "You killed her?"

He rounded on her and grabbed her arms. "Do ye think so ill of me?” He shook her once, then released her. "Nae, Enya, I didn’t kill her. I wanted to, God knows. But the Redcoats bound me and Davy and shipped us to Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh.”

She gasped. The prison was known to be a hellhole, a museum of torture devices. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek a
gainst his broad chest. "Oh, God, Ranald!"

His voice, above her head, was harsh. “
I learned later that her father and brother had been arrested. To save them, she had sold me out. I canna blame her. Fear will drive people to betray their verra selves.”

“
How did she die?” she whispered against the soft chest hair curling above the lacings of his shirt.

He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her against him. "Mhorag said that the villagers gave Ruthven two sacks of silver: the proverbial thirty pieces. We
ighted them to her waist, they did, and threw her in the burn. She sank out of sight.”

She shuddered. Knowing Mhorag, the young woman probably prodded on the villagers.

Apparently, Ranald didn’t realize he was swaying back and forth with her in his arms. With an almost maternal instinct, she drew him down with her onto the braided rug, where she cradled and rocked and crooned to him. "Oh, my dearest, my darling, my love."

She was using her hands to heal, but what might have begun from maternal fee
lings gradually altered to something equally as powerful. That primal drive to procreate. In a frenetic drive, she disrobed him, tearing at the lacings of his shirt.

He caught her fire. Wildfire. His hands ripped away her own clothing, so that she, too, wa
s naked. Gone was her worry about being too large. His eyes told her she found favor with him.

Without conscious effort, as if in altered states, they turned to touching each other. Massaging, fondling, embracing into a perfect pulsation. Moving as one, fe
male and male in synchronization. Seeking that oneness with each other and gathering their life forces. They rolled, entwined, before the fire.

They were performing that dance of creation, that act of love that Ranald sought to deny as such.

Wherever he touched her, that part of her felt aglow with brilliant light. "Open your heart to me, Ranald,” she whispered feverishly between his wild kisses.

“
I canna.”.

"
’Tis easy." She kissed him in return. "Now. Tell me you love me.”

“
Words. They are unreliable,
mo cinaed
.” He moved up over her, into her, filling her. His hands wound through her hair with strokes that bespoke wonder.

Intermeshed with him, she felt as though she lost her own separate identity. Her emotions rapidly vibrated with ecstasy, then rapture a
nd lastly an unsustainable bliss. She felt that burst of exquisite sensations that overflowed her.

Breath rasping, heart pounding, she lay silent, locked as one with Ranald. Gradually she became aware that something in her was irrevocably changed.

Ranald’s weight grew pressing, but she didn’t stir beneath him, only continued to hold him. What an unusual man he was. Brave and bold, educated more than most, yet a visionary, and charmingly superstitious with his belief in clans of wee folk and fairy legends.

S
he would have sworn she felt on her cheek the dampness of tears not her own. " Tis over now,” she gentled. "Those nightmare years are over."

He lifted his head to stare down at her. His eyes, dark with another form of passion, glistened. “
Nae. Tis never over.” He took her hand. Forced it between his legs. “Feel me.”

Confused, she let him guide her fingers down the length of his hot, hard flesh to those still swollen twin sacs. "Touch me, there,”
he urged.

She did as she was told and felt the line of puckere
d flesh.

“
In prison the gaolers were going to castrate me. At Murdock’s orders. Ye see,
mo coinneach
, your congenial husband’s prizes of war are a collection of human testicles for such conversational pieces as coin purses and snuff pouches.”