Ruthless (30 page)

"Go, else they'll come looking." She nodded
at him to hurry.

He gave her one last glance then couldn't
resist winding a silky curl around his finger. Quickly, he caressed
her breast then ran toward the keep.

"Ho, Feradoch! Has tragedy stuck Clibrick?"
His mind raced from one thought to another. Had his father died?
Had someone slaughtered his family? Or were they safe but under
siege?

Magnus' long strides took him across to where
his foster brother was still pulling his leather bag off his
saddle.

A look of triumph flashed through Feradoch's
blue eyes and near turned them darker. It disappeared behind a
somber mask.

"Nay. All are safe. But I relay an urgent
missive from Chief Angus."

He grabbed the leather bag and held it tight
to his chest as if he expected Magnus to wrest it from him.

"Come, boy!" Chief Olaf called. "Have ye
caused trouble at Clibrick and they sent ye packing?"

Feradoch bristled. His lips lifted in a feral
snarl. It was like his father to expect the worst from him.

"Chief Angus loves me as his son. He grieved
to see me leave."

"Then get yourself in here and let's hear
this news he sends."

Olaf led the way into the keep. Being near
time for the noon meal, he shoved people out of the way in the
great hall. If they didn't move fast enough, a swift kick to their
shins hurried them on.

As Olaf and Magnus took their seats, Feradoch
stood, his shoulders back, a look of triumph lighting his face.

"It seems Magnus' father has called an end to
our long arrangement," he said as he pulled a rolled parchment out
of his bag.

When Olaf reached for it, Feradoch stepped
out of his reach. He stiffened and his nostrils flared as he stared
at the entranceway. Magnus' gaze followed where his foster brother
looked. Muriele came into the room, her hips swaying with her
long-legged walk. From her soft-eyed look, flushed face and rosy
lips, all but a novice at love sport could tell she had been
thoroughly tumbled.

Feradoch fists flexed. He started reading the
missive, not taking his eyes from Muriele. Magnus scowled. How
could he know what the message said unless he had opened it earlier
and learned it by heart?

Magnus, return in haste to Clibrick. I
have contracted a betrothal with Nell, daughter to our neighbor
Blanding. The ceremony will take place immediately upon your
return.

Her father is in ill health and wishes to
assure himself of the nuptials afore he dies. Nell is his only
heir, so you will have all once he is gone. I think the choice a
favorable one, for you seemed smitten with her when you were a
lad.

Angus, Chief of the Morgans.

Feradoch's face gleamed with
satisfaction.

"The missive is addressed to me! By what
right had ye to open it?"

Magnus grabbed the parchment and glanced
quickly through it. He held fast to his building rage, keeping
himself from throttling Feradoch for overstepping his rights.

His foster brother's face smoothed to a
sympathetic smile.

"I feared you would not tell the lady Muriele
the truth of it."

"Ye think I would leave without telling her
why?"

"Nay. I feared you would force her to
Clibrick."

Magnus stared at him in disbelief.

"If she traveled with you, she would believe
you did so because you intended to make her your bride," Feradoch
continued. "She is a lady by rights and should not be your leman at
Clibrick."

He shrugged away from Magnus and withdrew
another message from his bag intended for Chief Olaf. He had not
broken the seal to this one.

Olaf opened it and frowned. "It mentions no
wedding only that he wishes an end to our arrangement. He asks I
send you to him with much haste."

Magnus tried to make sense of it all. When
last at Clibrick, his father had made no hint he contemplated a
betrothal for him. It was unusual, too, for he would know Magnus
would resent having his bride chosen without his say.

Nell wasn't at all suitable as his wife. Why,
the girl was afeared of her own shadow! He shuddered to think of a
bride who cringed whenever he entered the marriage bed.

He wanted sons! He'd learned if a woman was
frightened, she couldn't conceive.

"Sweyn, see the men are ready to leave at
dawn in two days."

The fidgeting boy on his left reminded him.
"And see Gille is properly outfitted for a long ride."

He looked around the hall, searching for
Muriele. She stood near the doorway as still as a frozen waterfall
in the dead of winter. Until his gaze collided with hers.

At first, Muriel appeared stricken. As he
watched, her expression changed to accusation then snarling
hatred.

She was gone in a swirling blur of color.

Muriel slammed the door to Grunda's hut, her
face drawn and white. Her body seethed with hatred. She reached
inside the fake pocket in her kirtle, and with a flash, her dagger
streaked through the air and embedded in the far wall with a thud.
Magnus had returned it to her only two days before. How she wished
she had buried it in his cruel heart.

"I take it ye are upset with Ruthless?"

"I hate him!"

Grunda cocked her head. Her gnarled fingers
gripped Muriele's chin and she turned her rigid face first to the
right then to the left, studying her. Her dark brown eyes softened
with sympathy.

"Hm. This morn, hearing yer pleas for Magnus
to take ye, I likened yer feelings to be more on the tender
side."

"Ye were spying on us?" Muriele was
dumbfounded her old friend would do such a thing!

"Nay." Grunda released her chin and gave her
a soft pat on her shoulders. "I had an uneasy feeling that soon I
would be in need of a powerful sedative. I was making an elixir
with mandrake to have on hand."

"It doesn't explain how ye heard us." Muriel
huffed.

"'Tis quiet here. Though my hands were busy,
my ears were free to hear a great deal said around the castle. Now.
How can ye wish to put a knife through Magnus' heart when ye were
filled with lust for him this morn?"

"That was afore Feradoch returned to announce
Magnus must make haste to return to Clibrick and be wed."

"Then ye also hate the proposed bride?"

"Nay. She has no say in who she marries."

"Her father then?"

"He is near death." She shook of her head.
"He only wishes to see her safely wed."

"Ah! So ye think Magnus knew aforehand and
kept it from ye?"

"Aye! The lying bastard."

Muriele talked as she paced so quickly anyone
watching her would think the floor burnt her feet. She stopped for
a step and snorted. Loud.

"I mean no more to him than any whore who
followed his camp."

"He does not look at ye like he would a
whore. His eyes follow ye wherever ye go. In my visions, I have not
seen him married to another."

"Ye must have seen false then. By the sound
of his father's summons, all that remains to seal the marriage is
his rutting presence.

"He leaves to make a favorable alliance while
I am forever ruined. I regret I didn't kill him before he climbed
between my legs!"

"Tsk! Ye'd have missed learning bed sport at
the hands of a master."

"What good is it to me? Except to increase my
value as a whore!"

"Stop calling yerself a whore. Ye are a lady
of breeding."

"Ha! A
lady
of breeding with no
holdings or honors. What man of like breeding would wed a woman
with naught to offer? One he knows was a plaything of the most
dreaded man in Scotland. I am naught but tainted flesh."

"Come. Sit with me." Grunda beckoned her to
the table. "I have food enough for the both of us. There's no need
for ye to see him until yer temper cools. I dinna think Chief Angus
would take kindly to having his son returned across his horse."

Mutton stew simmered in a pot, and from the
growls coming from Muriele's gut, she knew the lass had not eaten
since dawn and now night was falling. She soothed her young friend
with words and food—and with a sleeping draught in her ale.

Come morning, Muriele would be in a more
peaceful frame of mind. Grunda still believed Muriele was fated to
be Magnus' mate for life. Something had gone amiss. It would take
time to discover what it was and set it to rights.

Shortly before dawn, a fist banging on
Grunda's door awakened them. When she swung the door wide, the
Alewife's drunken husband stood there weeping and blubbering. All
they could gather from his jumbled words was his wife was trying to
birth the bairn and there was so much blood he was afeard she was
going to die.

Both women gathered herbs and potions they
thought needful, a bundle of clean cloths, a thin blade and a heavy
blanket. He led them out the postern gate, for he had told the
guard his plight.

When they arrived at the village hut, they
feared they had not the skills to save either the woman or the babe
who refused to be born. They worked all day, using every trick
Grunda had learned and those Muriele had acquired through her
mother's midwifery. In near constant pain, the woman screamed her
heart out. The bairn's head bulged at the opening then retreated.
It refused to venture into the light of day.

Late into the next evening, they were sure
the alewife had not long to live. Grunda gave her a small portion
of the sedative made from mandrake to ease her.

"Grunda, the bairn is overlarge and tearing
her flesh. Mother once delivered one such as this by cutting the
skin at the bottom of the birth path to aid the head and shoulders
to pass through."

"Do what ye must. The bairn is too feeble to
fight any longer and the Alewife is beyond feeling. We will lose
both if we dinna get the bairn out."

Muriele put the thin blade in a small pot of
boiling water. Neither Grunda nor Muriele had any idea whether it
was day or night. Focusing on helping the suffering mother took all
their attention. Truly, they must have been there a long time.
Grunda's hands trembled and she had difficulty rising from the
stool beside the pallet.

Muriele wasn't too pleased with her own
hands. They were not steady and she was plagued with unease. As
when Baldor refused Magnus' final terms, the heavy feeling of
pending disaster surrounded her.

She splashed cold water on her face and let
it trickle down her neck while she scrubbed her hands again.
Wrapping a clean cloth around her right hand, she plucked the knife
hilt from the side of the pan and held the blade upward until it
cooled. She only hoped the woman stayed unconscious until she could
make her cut.

Taking a deep, calming breath, she knelt at
the foot of the pallet. Grunda and the woman's sister bent the
Alewife's legs and drew them up to her waist and outward. They were
in luck, for the bairn had withdrawn enough Muriele, with careful
precision, used the blade's tip to open a small line at the base.
She placed her hands around the outline of the bulging head and was
gratified to feel the tension giving way.

"When ye feel her muscles harden for another
push, place yer hands alongside the bairn and urge him downward.
Once his head is clear, the birthing will near be over." She took a
deep breath and let it out quickly.

Just then, the woman moaned and her eyes
opened wide with pain.

"Push!"

When she called out the word four more times,
the bairn was free. She left it to Grunda to clear the boy's mouth
for its first feeble squalls while she attended to the rest of the
birthing. When Muriele and the Alewife's sister had the woman
bathed and on a fresh pallet, Grunda had cleansed and swaddled the
boy. She put him to his mother's breast to nurse while her husband
watched over her.

Muriele tottered on her feet, too tired to
make the trip back to the castle. She wrapped herself in a blanket
and curled up on the earthen floor. When she closed her eyes, she
had wits enough to realize it was late night and more than a day
had gone by.

Her last thoughts were how much time had
passed since Feradoch delivered his hateful news?

It was near morn when Magnus stumbled up the
stairway and entered his bedchamber. He and Feradoch had exchanged
heated words about him breaking the seal to Magnus' missive and
reading it aloud.

It wasn't like his father to do such a
momentous thing in Magnus' life without consulting him. But then,
he had not asked his feelings when he fostered him to Olaf, either.
Magnus didn't object to the betrothal as such, but he would have
preferred a bride with more heart.

"Muriele?"

He hadn't meant to shout, but her name echoed
around the room. He stumbled toward the shadow of the bed. He'd
never noticed the floor being so uneven before. He near fell when
he crashed his left shin against the corner of the heavy chair.

"Shite!"

Had Muriele moved the chair so she'd hear him
enter?

"Why did ye let the fire die? I canna
see."

He tottered when he reached the bed and bent
to feel for her.

He chuckled as he fell forward, landing
across soft woman's flesh.

"Sorry. Didna mean to crush ye."

Soft hands tugged at his arms, helping to
pull him further onto the bed. He sighed, happy for the help. He
must have dozed for a moment, for the next thing he knew, he was
sprawled on his back with Muriele straddling him.

He fumbled with her breasts and frowned. They
were flatter than last eve. And they seemed misplaced on her chest.
Had he squashed them further apart when his weight fell on her? He
tweaked her nipples then rolled them between his thumb and
forefinger. He scowled. He was such a clumsy oaf for having injured
her. Her nipples seemed swollen to twice their size.