Page 27 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

Next door, all was quiet. Of course it was. He’d abandoned his bride on her wedding night. Did he expect her to be giggling with her sister over tea or singing a jaunty tune? What would her voice even sound like if she did? He could hardly think how it sounded at all.

Jory Shaw had warned him her cousin was a quiet sort. What had she said? Take the time to listen, and she’ll have quite a lot to say?

In Si’s experience, inducement to speak merely required a worthy topic and an equally worthy conversant. How could he expect her to speak, when he himself had so little of note to say? As it was, he’d always expressed himself best on paper, like in his scientific journaling. He was a student who seldom raised his hand to comment in class yet could easily fill a dozen pages on whatever topic, so long as he could be alone.

Writing was just… easier. If the words tangled up, you could scratch them out and start again.

Would she find him utterly ridiculous if he wrote to her now? Would it matter if she did?

Taking up a quill and ink, he scribbled, Milady Ellen, I hope you don’t mind that I

He crumpled the page and tossed it into the unlit fireplace.

He was pathetic. The lass had left everyone and everything she’d ever known, and here he sat, attempting to explain away his frigidness with excuses and pretty lies.

Still, he had to do something.

Milady Ellen, he began again.

When it was written, he signed it, Your servant, Mac.

He couldn’t say why he’d done it, pretended to be some anonymous clansman, except that he’d always been a coward. The only thing better than hiding behind written words was hiding behind them anonymously.

Perhaps it was also wishful thinking, but he supposed she might be at least a little annoyed with Si MacKenzie in the morning. And she might appreciate words of support from a stranger, a member of her new, untested family.

He tipped hot wax upon the parchment, refraining from imbedding his signet in the seal, and then he tried to settle down into the armchair and get some sleep.

What an absolutely preposterous notion.

* * *

Ellen Elizabeth Brìghde Mackintosh MacKenzie had far too many conflicting emotions to keep contained inside one wee brain. The last thing in the world she wanted was to be bedded by a man twice her size, and yet—and yet. She couldn’t even put words to that and yet, only the image of a Luckenbooth brooch and brooding, golden-brown eyes, of fine lips on her pricked finger, a broad hand warm on the small of her back.

Every time he looked at her, there was something in Silas MacKenzie’s gaze, like he needed to consume every inch of her, and it set her whole body alight with anticipation.

It would hurt, she reminded herself, so much her mother had warned her not to cry. And yet there was something in his eye that made her desperate to know the pain. Now she was all alone, and she still wanted to cry, so she might as well have done the deed.

It was mere curiosity, she assured herself. Jory’s scientific nature had rubbed off on her after all these years, and she was intrigued by what the man looked like. Was there hair on his arms and his chest? As much as a wolf? And did the size of his foot reflect the size of anything else, as Maggie had wanted to know? And could it be not horrible as Jory had implied?

It was wrong to let her imagination bend in such a direction if she still intended to become a nun, for heaven’s sake. She took out a fresh shift, one she’d altered on the inside by adding short ribbons, and from her pocket she removed a handkerchief filled with stinging nettle.

She’d found it in the herb cellar off the kitchen when she went back down to check on Dorrie, hung up but not yet dried. Wearing gloves to keep it off her hands, Ellen tied the nettles inside her shift and then stepped into it.

Immediately her skin began to itch and burn and swell.

That would keep her mind where it ought to be, on Abbaye Notre-Dame-des-Chelles and off the tall MacKenzie with his sunbeam eyes.

He didn’t want her regardless.

She’d proven herself to be ridiculously weak and childish just like everyone thought. Oh to be sure, he’d taken Wee Ellen off her father’s hands for the sake of the alliance, saddling himself with a wife who could never be the lady of the castle, the nurse his father needed, or anything else to him.

Perhaps he’d already guessed her desire to leave, too. He had to know, because he saw her. He seemed to know what she needed even before she did. Would it be a relief for him to send her away, so he needn’t look after both her and his father, and the clan, as her mother had said? Was that why he didn’t touch her? Preserving her virtue so the abbey would take her off his hands? Would he make the arrangements before this unexpected clan Gathering so she needn’t face every MacKenzie in existence before abandoning them? And if not, how would she convince him that she wanted to go, when she could barely find the words to say it?

Plagued by uncertainty, and of course the nettles, she tossed fitfully all night long. That had been the purpose, to punish herself, both for whatever deficiency had caused Silas to take his leave, and for the illicit thoughts she couldn’t keep out of her mind, though somehow the nettles hadn’t helped in that arena. As the fevered hives spread over her skin, what little sleep she did manage was vexed by images of him—touching her—his fingers branding her as though they were made of fire.

At some point in the night, she stripped off the whole shift, not even disciplined enough to endure her penance. Burrowing down to find what little respite she could in the cool, clean bed linens, soft against her naked skin, settled her for an hour or two.

Cross and nauseated, she dressed quickly at dawn, burying the nettle shift inside her trunk. She sat reading her Bible when Silas tapped at the door for her to unwind the rope and allow him inside.