“For what?” asked Clementine.
“Well,” continued Agnes, with the undivided attention of all, “Kade Mackenzie attended a gathering at the Buchanan manor—this was half a year or so ago. Lottie told me all about it last time she visited their keep.”
We all knew that our cousin Lottie, in fact, had been issued not only an invitation to the Buchanan manor, but also a proposal by a lower-ranking nobleman of the Buchanan clan. My father, predictably, had denied the match outright.
“Claire’s cousin invited him to her private chambers—whyI’ll never know. She allowed him...well, whatever he wanted. Claire’s cousin said he didunspeakablethings. It took her several days to recover.”
“What do you mean ‘unspeakable’?” asked Maisie.
Agnes continued in hushed tones. “Apparently, she was completely overcome.”
“In what way?” It was my own hesitant question that lingered in the confined space.
Agnes took a moment to answer. “She said it was the most intense experience of her life.”
I couldn’t help asking it:“Intense?”
Agnes nodded. “She spent the whole night in a state of terrified ecstasy, according to Lottie. Those are the words she used, too, I remember it clearly—‘terrified ecstasy.’ She didn’t know what he was going to do from one moment to the next, but in the end, she begged him to do it all over again the very next night.”
This was met with momentary silence.
“She begged him to do itagain?” Ann asked, as though she was unsure if she’d heard it correctly.
“Aye,” said Agnes. “But he wouldn’t. She was so eager she even asked him to propose to her. But he refused, and he made his leave the next day.”
More silence, as we absorbed this disquieting information.
“What did hedoto her?” asked Maisie, wildly intrigued as we all were. Me, perhaps most of all, as the carriage continued on its way, swallowing distance and divides, taking me ever closer to my fate.
“Claire’s cousin wouldn’t tell Lottie everything,” Agnes said, “but she did say this—he bound her to the bed.”
“Boundher?” I asked, my voice doing nothing to disguise my distress. “Why?”
“To constrain her. She was entirely at his mercy.”
“Good Lord,” whispered Ann.
“So he’s as domineering in the bedchambers as he is in the sparring ring,” said Maisie. “I guessed as much.”
Ann, who was sitting to my right, gave me a sudden hug, holding my head against her shoulder. “Stella, ’tis worse than we feared. He’s as cruel as the worst rumors indicate. Wecannotlet you go through with this. Between the seven of us, we might overpower the driver and Father’s officer. Or you could pretend to be ill. We could ask to stop at the next tavern and escape somehow. I’ll come with you. I’ll stay with you. You can’t marry Kade Mackenzie. He soundsutterlyhorrific. Marriage to such a beast is too much to ask of you, alliance or no alliance.”
“Agnes,” said Maisie, interrupting Ann’s fevered monologue, “are you sure Lottie said she asked him toproposeto her? Even after he constrained her like that?”
Ann allowed me to sit up a little, but her arms remained strung loosely around me as we both waited for Agnes’s answer.
“Aye,” Agnes said. “Even though she was terrified of him, she said his lovemaking was akin to a spiritual experience. And then he left and wouldn’t return and she ended up marrying a Buchanan soldier. But now she’s thoroughly unhappy. Her new husband doesn’t satisfy her. Claire’s cousin—and you must never breathe a word of this toanyone—she even sent a letter to Kade, asking him to return to their keep for a visit, husband or no husband. But he never replied.”
I wasn’t sure how to take this mixed bag of information.A spiritual experience?What did that even mean?Was it that bad? Or thatgood?Clearly it must have been good if she had wanted him to stay and marry her, and still she wrote to him despite being wed to another. Yet it didn’t make sense.
She was entirely at his mercy.
I felt as though I might pass out. Extricating myself gently from Ann’s grasp, I pulled the heavy cloth curtain back from the window of the carriage, letting a current of fresh air waft around me, breathing the coolness deeply into my lungs.
“Stella,” said Agnes, placing her hand over mine, patting lightly. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I thought, if it was me, I’d want to know what to expect. So I could prepare myself as best I could.”
“’Tis fine, Agnes,” I said, not feeling at all fine. About any of it.
“Well, it’s not exactly bad news, then, is it?” said Clementine. “If she wanted him to do...whatever it was hedid,and the very next night, then surely it was—”
