AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I am not afraid of him or you.’
‘Then you are a fool, though you are a bonnie one, easy on the eye, now I am getting a good look at you. I thought you a plain little bird at first, and indeed, you are no cheerful wee robin or graceful swan. But there is something there. Aye, you have your mother’s looks - good length of bone, fair skin and bright eyes.’
‘You know nothing of my mother. Do not speak of her.’
Rufus sat forward with a grimace. ‘Oh, I know something. Ada was comely in her youth, and by God, did she set her cap at your father. She was determined to have him and look where it got her. She married for love, like a fool, where you have not.’
‘I should go,’ said Orla, keen to evade his barbs.
‘If you put your mind to it, you might hold him, you know. Wolfric is fickle, but you could salve his loneliness and worm your way into his heart.’
Loneliness? Whatever could he mean? ‘I have not observed that your son is short of company, Laird,’ said Orla.
He frowned. ‘Well, you’re not as clever as you look, then. ‘Tis not company he craves, ‘tis loyalty, affection and perhaps even love. But I see he will not get any from you, for you have a heart as icy as the grave. By God, you will not even own to your parents feeling the loss of a most beloved daughter to ingrates like us.’
‘They neither feel it nor was I ever particularly beloved by them, Laird.’
Rufus’ jaw worked. ‘Every child born should be beloved of its parents, and every loss of a bairn grieved deeply.’ His face changed, crumpling into momentary desolation, the mask of spite gone. He coughed and recovered soon enough. ‘What a pity they will not miss you. I did so want to revel in their discomfort.’
Orla stood abruptly. ‘I want to go now.’
‘Then go. I will not stop you. You are not mine to control, lass.’
His strange melancholy had affected her, so Orla turned back to Rufus. ‘I know of remedies that help ease the pain of gout. I can fetch them if you like.’
‘You are sure to poison me with them, witch, watching as they blacken my tongue and choke my throat. You would like that, eh?’
‘It would be a most happy outcome, and at least the pain would be gone - for both of us, Laird.’
She gave him a poisonous smile, and Rufus broke into cackling laughter.
‘And Laird, I know full well where your son has gone. Redcoats, was it not?’
His face became wary. ‘You keep your counsel on that, lass.’
‘How it must vex you to have Fort George squatting on your doorstep like an unwelcome house guest demanding entry. The soldiers frequently come onto your land, do they not, sniffing like bloodhounds for Jacobite sympathisers?’
Rufus smirked. ‘Do not pretend to know politics, lass. You’ve not the subtlety for it. As long as those English bastards do not interfere with my affairs, they may stay on that rock by the ocean and shiver as long as it pleases them. ‘Tis nought but a place for birds to shit and bones to freeze. Let England’s King George squabble with his rival cowering in France. The man is a weakling who can barely speak English, let alone rule England. What mind need I pay? And the Jacobites can spit their claims that the Old Pretender, James, is the rightful King of Scotland while they play at being rebels. It is all old men’s babble, and I mind it not.’
‘So now the redcoats are our friends?’
‘They are no more my friends than you Gordons are. Now begone, and search for your husband.’
***
Blackreach’s stables sat at the far corner of its encircling wall and turned out to be a bustling place, ringing with the clanging of a smithy’s hammer and the squeals of young lads chasing chickens with a stick. The lads stopped when they saw Orla coming and ran off. The smithy nodded a curt acknowledgement to her, but when she asked him where his master was, he mumbled that it was not his place to say and turned back to his hammering. It seemed she was despised by all at Blackreach for being a Gordon, not least of all her own husband.
The sore place between her legs was the only acknowledgement of the act they had shared the night before. An image seeped into Orla’s mind of the mattress heaving up and down and the two of them locked together in that strange dance. It brought a fire to her cheeks and an unwelcome pulse of longing to her belly, low down.
Orla shook it off. Wolfric had not come to see to her welfare this day, nor was he likely to. Perhaps he found that coupling as distasteful as she had and did not want to repeat the embarrassment. In time, she might be safe from his attention now that he had secured the land and her dowry. A heavy sadness settled on her heart, and Orla dismissed it as homesickness and chided herself for her weakness. It was pointless longing for her old life, for there was no going home, no going back to innocence and what she had been before.
Orla entered the humid gloom of the stables and stopped dead. There he was, the dark and steely object of her confusion, calmly grooming his ugly horse. Despicable brutes the pair of them. She tried to retreat before she was seen, but the horse whinnied and gave her away. Wolfric looked up and locked eyes with her, and the night’s shame flooded back.
The crushing weight of his hard body on hers, smooth, warm flesh pressing against her breasts, calloused hands that were gentle yet forceful.
‘What are you doing here, Orla?’ he said. ‘Are you looking for me or trying to sniff out where we hide the liquor?’
Orla gave him a filthy look.
