Song of the Highlands: The Cambels (The Medieval Highlanders) (57 page)

Morgunn’s hands fisted under his arms, his
wrath grew until he shook with it. Without knowing he was going to
do it, he swung to his side and, with a ferocious snarl, hurled one
of the chairs against the door of the chamber. For a breath of time
he stood staring at his work, sucking in deep lungfuls of air.
Until, and again, as if from some great distance, came her voice
again.

“Our relationship has changed, it had to, do
you not see? Because of all that happened—to both of us—o’er the
years. But it does not mean we can not build a new, a different
life together from the ashes of our past.”

Everything within him balked and he was
about to say so, when a knock came on the door. A low rumble of
frustration exploded from his throat, but he stormed over to the
portal and opened it a crack. When he saw ‘twas his daughter on the
other side, he forced an blithe smile to his lips and said, “Aye,
daughter? What brings you to your mother and my nuptial chamber at
this late hour?”

His daughter’s brows were furrowed with
worry, and her eyes moved past him, and he knew she was straining
to see within. “I heard a crash. Is aught amiss?”

Morgunn put on his best grin and said, “Nay.
‘Tis just a bit of.... Well, let us just say, ‘tis of no care of
yours, shall we?” and he moved his eyebrows in a way that let her
know ‘twas the result of the more amorous pursuits he and Gwynlyan
were engaged in. He opened the door a bit more, allowing her to see
Gwynlyan in bed with the sheet covering her, so it seemed as if she
were naked beneath, and said to Gwynlyan, “Is that not right, my
love?”

Gwynlyan gave him a shy smile and
nodded.

The ploy worked, for his daughter’s cheeks
went up in flames and she said in a rush, “Well, I bid you a good
night then,” and swung around and headed on swift feet back in the
direction of her own bedchamber door.

When she was well away, well out of earshot,
Morgunn quietly shut the door and moved back to the hearthfire.
This time he sat down on the remaining chair, sat forward with his
head down, and twined his fingers together.

“Tell me how many others, tell me their
names, tell me what they did to you, tell me what you did to them,
tell me if you enjoyed it, tell me if they enjoyed it. Tell
me.”

* * *

Gwynlyan’s lungs seized as terror gripped
her. The desperate need for air finally forced her to suck in a
breath, but she could no longer face him and she could no longer
remain as a lamb to the slaughter, lying there helpless and weak in
the bed he’d abandoned her in. She rose to her feet and walked to
the washstand. She knew, she could feel, the wall of impatience
behind her, yet she refused to answer immediately, nor would she
answer the specific questions at all, not until she’d soothed her
heated cheeks, washed the dried tears from her face, cooled her
swollen eyes.

When she at last turned to face him, he’d
stood up and had walked back to brood at the hearth once more. But
he’d evidently sensed her eyes on him, for he turned and looked at
her, waiting for her to speak, and breaking her heart with the pain
she saw reflected there.

“I am not able to tell you of those times.
Mayhap, if our marriage lasts, someday I will be able to, but not
now. I cannot bear to think of it myself, much less share it with
you.”

“I have to know.”

She turned to the side, and rubbed her hand
across the corner of the washstand, focusing her attention there as
she said, “Then I am truly sorry for you, for it is something I am
unable to give.”

She heard him take a step forward and
rumble, “Gwynl—”

Her heart quivered in her breast,
threatening to crack in two as she let go the glimmer of a dream
she’d had that they might just make it. Understanding now the only
possible thing that could work for them, she said, “I know ‘tis of
utter import that we two seem happily bound in marriage, but I also
know that you feel betrayed by me. A thing that is, in your
estimation, worse than any other sin between man and wife. So, here
is my proposal: We live apart.” Her voice cracked on the last
word.

“Nay!” he bellowed, taking two steps toward
her, but stopped short again, and she knew ‘twas because he could
not stand to be too close to her now. “I’ll nn—”

She swung her gaze to his and lifted her
chin to show that she would not let him coerce her into changing
her mind. “Aye, we shall. I shall live at one of the smaller manor
houses you’ll be gaining from Donnach’s estate now that we’ve wed,
and you shall stay where e’er your business takes you, and you
shall keep a leman, and I shall remain chaste, and you shall have
no worries of me, and I shall not pine for you or begrudge the
enjoyment you receive from your lover, and to all eyes, when e’er
we must be seen together, we will display to them the view of a
blissfully wed couple. The perfect pairing.”

* * *

Morgunn didn’t know what scared and angered
him more, the unrevealed, and numerous, carnal encounters his wife
had had with an unnumbered variety of men, or the fact that she
could so easily toss him away, like so much refuse, with no more
than a blink of an eye.

“I love you Gwynlyan. Do you still love me?”
The words slipped out, had been less than a thought, but had
somehow made their way into the space between them, and he felt
them settle there, bare and unarmed. Would she flay them, or would
she nurture and hold them close?

Her answer was not in words, but in her
eyes. They filled with tears as she gazed at him with a longing
he’d thought ne’er to see from her again. He took a step toward
him, and she took two toward him. Her chin quivered, her throat
worked. And ‘twas only then that he realized his own eyes, his own
chin, his own throat was reacting the same.

When they were no more than five paces from
the other, she stopped. “I do love you, Morgunn. I ne’er stopped. I
thought, when first I saw you again all those moons ago at the burn
that aye, mayhap the love I’d felt for you had gone. Gone with my
innocence, gone with my youth. But then you kissed me, you held me
close, and the love, the connection to you all came clear once
more, there where I’d left it buried, deep in my heart.”

Morgunn’s own heart swelled and he smiled
for the first time in what felt like ages, but was no more than an
hour, surely. He took another step forward, reaching out his arms
to her, but she stopped him with a raised hand, saying, “I cannot
now tell you all that you asked about that time, but I will give
you one last thing, one thing at least that I can, a thing that is
a proof, a small proof, that even with all that I was forced into,
I did not willingly forsake you.”

She took him by surprise when she lifted her
chemise o’er her head in a single sweep and dropped it to the floor
beside her feet. His heart recoiled, not at the horror of the
sight, but at the brutal, instinctive and gut deep recognition of
the pain she’d suffered. These were not stripes from a crop, as the
dark moonlit night had seemed to reveal, but pale red and white
scarring from burns.

He went to her and settled a gentle hand on
her waist, sliding it o’er the top of her hip, where the scarring
showed most. Then he turned her and she willingly went, and he
stared (he could not help but to do so) at the largest damage there
on the curve of her back. “If he were not dead already, I’d torture
him first, then kill him slowly and painfully,” he said at
last.

“I thought you were dead,” she said so
softly, he barely heard. “I thought: My husband is dead, and so is
my soul. My daughter is safe in a nunnery, and of no further worry
to Donnach. What matter it if I do this thing? If it kill me, fine;
if it make me so hideous that Alaric no longer use me, allow his
comrades to use me, that is fine as well.

Morgunn’s stomach lurched. His breathing
turned erratic. Beads of sweat dripped from his brow. “You—” the
word came out more as a
whoosh
of air, so he tried again.
“You did this to yourself?”

She didn’t answer directly, simply continued
on as if the confession might free her from what e’er ethereal
prison had her still in its bonds. “It worked. For after that, he
left me alone. Sent no healer, just let me lie there in my misery.
I wanted to die, but it did not come to pass. When later, my body
had healed itself enough for me to dress, I found I was left to
myself most days and only when Alaric was in one of his rages did I
see him again to receive his beatings, but ‘twas better than the
other, and I found I could bear it well enough, for I was ne’er
again made to pleasure any man in my bed.”

Again the tears clogged Morgunn’s throat,
made it ache, again the frustrated anger, the absolute violent need
to harm, maim, destroy, kill the man responsible for this traveled
through him.

She turned and looked at him, saying, “Aye.
And I know what you are thinking, but don’t. Think of this instead:
If Alaric had done what Donnach had wanted, I’d be dead now.
Instead, he took me, prisoned me, and
aye
, used me in ways I
sometimes thought I would not be able to bear. But I did. I did
bear them, and now here we are. Together—again.” Her hands gripped
his arms, her nails dug into his flesh. “And we’ve won, Morgunn!
Donnach is dead, Alaric is dead, the king, and the Cambel clan have
given o’er to you the land and the power Donnach wielded. Let us
only think on that, and from this moment forward, begin anew.”

“Aye, begin anew,” he said, and because he
could no longer keep from doing so, he leaned down and settled his
mouth on hers, trying with that kiss to show how deeply, how
eternally, he loved her.

After a moment—a very splendid moment—she
pushed him away and, looking him directly in his eyes, said, “We
cannot go back. We ne’er can. That man and woman, the man and woman
we were before, we are no longer them. We are who we are now, and I
believe, if we are to make this work between us, build another
strong, tho’ different, bond between us, we must agree to that
before all else.” She paused, but only briefly, before saying with
more force, “Can you accept me for who I am now, what I’ve done?”
Her head turned so that she no longer looked directly at him. “For,
if you cannot, say it now, and we will go on as I suggested
before.” Her gaze lifted to his again, and there was a definite
spark of purpose there as she said, “And ‘twill work, ‘twill work
for us just fine. You shall see.”

“Never,” he said, “I’ll ne’er be satisfied
to have you only in name,” and swept her up in his embrace and took
her to their marriage bed once more to prove just that. “You are
mine. For e’ermore. For always, and a day. I will have no others,
for you are my perfection. My only true mate.”

Her smile faltered and she looked away.
“Perfection. Nay, you go too far—the scars—”

”—Are beautiful. Are the scars received in a
deadly battle. You are my warrior princess. You fought for
yourself, and you fought for our love. Again, I say: They are
beautiful.
You
, my love, my dearest, dearest love, are
beautiful
.” He tossed his shirt to the floor and climbed on
top of her, pulling her arms o’er her head, so she could not
escape, murmuring near her ear, “Now, now I will do to you all the
things I have been dreaming of doing to you all these moons since
first I saw you again.” He lifted his head and grinned down at her.
“And this time, if you tell me I’m fucking you properly, I promise
not to stop, all right?”

* * *

Gwynlyan’s heart raced with both dread and
anticipation. “All right,” she said, closing her eyes. She was
determined not to cringe from any touch Morgunn bestowed, but the
effort made her muscles taut to the point that she knew he knew her
fear. Yet, clearly, he was bent on seduction, for he said not a
word, simply dropped his head down to run his tongue along the
column of her throat until cold thrills ran up the length of her
raised arms, rippled ‘round her nipples, and shot down to the core
of her, leaving it in tingling, throbbing need.

Next she felt his large, calloused hand
capture her breast and mold it in his palm, before the
long-remembered, long-yearned for feel of his hot humid mouth took
possession there as well. As he began to suckle and tug, stretching
taut the strings of her desire until neither her will, nor her
body, were her own any longer, she opened for him like the petals
of a wild rose blossom, and he greedily took all that she offered,
trailing his other hand o’er first one thigh then the other, before
he pressed the heel of it o’er her mons and began tracing the outer
lips of her cleft with his blunt fingers, prying them open, teasing
her there with light strokes, using the moist proof of her desire
for him to ready her even further.

He swirled the pad of his finger o’er her
clitoris and her thighs quivered. White spots of light bounced
beneath her lids. A ragged groan escaped her throat. Still, she
would not open her eyes, for she could not bear to see him
ministering so lovingly to her grotesque form. For long moments
more he continued to work on her, stringing her tight as a bow, one
moment, then swiftly retreating, until his touch was so light, her
body strained toward it. It made her skin mist with the exertion he
put it through. Then, when his mouth left her breast to rise up and
nibble upon her ear, before leaving her ear to tickle and twirl his
tongue about her navel, her eyes flew open and a gasp of surprised
desire ushered up from her throat, for she knew too well where next
he’d land. She arched beneath him and he pressed his palms to her
hips, forcing them back to the bed.

He touched his tongue to his fingers, damp
with the dew of her arousal. “Your desire for me tastes as sweet as
I’ve dreamed ‘twould all these lost years,” he rumbled, and the
vibration of his breath and voice tickled her belly, making it
quiver. “Let us see if I can make you come completely apart, love,
for ‘tis truth, I’ll not stop until I do.”