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‘Perhaps Iwantedto be ruined.’
He gasped, raising his hand in a fist. ‘You bitch,’ he hissed, ‘if you ever say anything like that to me again, I will make you regret it.’
‘Hit me, for I know you want to, it will make you feel like a big man.’
‘Oh, I am so far from that, married and cuckolded all at once. How can I possibly feel like a big man?’ He lowered his fist and stepped back. ‘But no, I will not strike you, my love.’
‘Don’t call me that for I know you hate me.’
‘It suits me to pretend.’
‘You do it to wound me. Why do you have to be so hateful, Murray?’
‘What the hell did you expect, you lying little whore?’
He stalked off and, for some foolhardy reason, because her blood was up, Ilene could not keep her mouth shut.
‘Are you so perfect that you have never made a mistake? Have you not done something terrible in your life, something you regret?
‘Aye I have, it was marrying you,’ he snarled, rushing off back down the stairway.
She waited for a few moments, trying to stop her hands shaking, pressing her eyes tight shut to stop the tears, then she went to find him.
***
They rode back to the cottage in an awful, cold silence, until Ilene couldn’t stand the tension any longer.
‘Murray I need to know, are you going to tell my father one day?’
Silence.
‘Please Murray, have pity, I am sorry we quarrelled.’
He turned his horse and when he spoke, there was something defeated about his tone.
‘Oh, I will keep your secret Ilene, from your father, your mother and all who know you, I swear.’
‘You would do that for me, in spite of everything?’
‘Not for you,’ he snapped, ‘certainly not for you, and not even for your parents or your clan. I do it for the child. No one should carry the name of bastard through life, so when it comes, I will claim it as my own.’ He looked down at the reins in his hand and his face was stone. ‘I didn’t ask you before, because I could not bear to, but when is the bairn coming?’
‘I can’t be sure but by the time winter comes, I think’.
‘Well, whenever it comes, the child will never know that I am not its father. I will take that secret to the grave, you have my word. I will protect it, care for it, and no matter what bitterness there is between us, I will dig deep into my shrivelled heart and try to love it, as if it were my own. You have my word on this also.’
Ilene suddenly felt terribly sorry for him. ‘Thank you, Murray. I will repay the debt I promise, I will try to…’
‘But I swear, Ilene if you ever cross me again…’
‘I won’t, Murray.’
He spurred his horse forward as if he regretted the words. Ilene knew full well how much that promise cost him in pride and, if somewhere, still within Murray, was the boy she had known, then she also knew that now he had made that vow, he would never break it.
Chapter Eighteen
Murray wiped sweat from his brow as he tried to wrestle a large stone into place, working alongside the other men on repairing the wall. The crumbling outbuildings attached to Cuan Dubh were slowly being returned to their former glory. Duff was not the most industrious of men, apart from where it came to increasing his brood of grubby children, but he was good at coaxing the men of the village into lending a hand. Most of them obeyed the call to assist out of deference to Duncan Campbell’s authority. But Murray had quickly gained a reputation for being a hard man, and his intimidating presence and fierce demeanour only added to their feeling that he was someone it would be foolish to cross.
So, on this fine day, there were many willing pairs of hands at his command. In return, Murray had begun training the villagers to defend themselves against raiders from the sea or any marauding clans, who might venture across the wild terrain to try their hand at cattle stealing, or worse. By working together to repair the tower house, they were safeguarding their own security as well as his, as it would provide a defensible refuge, should an attack come.
