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‘Aye, but it can also be kind, and there can also be love.’
Amber eyes held his and did not look away. Rory didn’t know how her mouth found his, but it did, and before he had time to think of the thousand reasons he should not take her to bed, he desperately wanted to. She clung to him, moaning his name softly as he kissed her neck, breathing in the warm scent of her skin.
‘If you are doing this because you are frightened and need my protection or out of a sense of obligation or if you are sad then…’
She put her hand to his lips. ‘I’m not.’
He smiled. ‘To hell with it. I don’t care. I just want you, Monnine.’ Rory folded her into his arms and kissed her with infinite tenderness. Her lips, a sweet soft cushion for his, red hair glowing in the light from the fire, thick and silky as his hands slid into it. Those amber eyes searched his for reassurance, and he was happy to give it, for it was now fully his intention to spend all night making love to her.
Rory was an enthusiastic lover of women and had made love to many of them, sometimes as a mutual sating of an appetite, sometimes with affection, some right on the brink of love, but he had never really known it. Something about Monnine, her kindness, her vulnerability, her fragile beauty stirred something in him, something fierce and possessive. For the first time in his life, he was conflicted and unsure how to proceed with a woman. Perhaps she would reject him, or he would frighten her or worse, would she bear his touch but feel it was an ordeal to be suffered?
So he slid his hands over Monnine’s body slowly, mouth meeting skin behind her ear, her neck, along her collarbone. She sighed and held him close. Emboldened, he loosed her stays, and she let him pull them away. Her shoulders were pale as milk, smooth under his hands as he pulled her shift downwards a little, but he did not expose her nakedness more than that. Then he picked her up and carried her over to the bed. He lay down next to her, not touching her.
‘Monnine, if you have misgivings and want to stop this, you can. Just say the word. We don’t have to go further, not tonight. We can just lie here and hold each other if you like.’
She bit her lip and gave him a shy smile and then took his hand and slid it inside her shift where it found her breast, full and round and firm. There was a light in her eyes where they looked upon him, and he knew in his heart that she cared for him. Rory struggled to cling on to his restraint as she breathed, ‘Do it, Rory. I want you too. I need you to. Do it quickly, make me forget everything and everyone. I don’t want to be frightened of life anymore.’
After that, Rory’s restraint went the same way as his reservations, and he lifted her skirts quickly. She wrapped her legs around him, and as he slid ever so slowly inside of her, he knew she was ready for him, for she rose up to meet him and gasped out his name.
‘Rory, I love you. I love you.’
For the rest of the night, Rory came to realise that Monnine was not a frigid or frightened or reluctant woman. Indeed she had a passion in her that was more than a match for his, and they woke to a new dawn with arms and legs and a future entwined.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Clutching her arms about her shoulders did little to stop the shivering, and Kenna was so sunk in despair she could hardly muster the strength to sit upright. The cell was small, with a curved ceiling and rocky floor, on which it was impossible to lie with any comfort. Days she had been here, she was not sure how many as she had been brought to this cell in the dead of night, after enduring an awful journey. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and thought of Conall. He had borne his imprisonment somehow, and so would she. Oh, but what if she never saw his face again, never ran her fingers through his black hair, never felt those strong arms come around her, never got to kiss him again, on his chest, just where his heart was?
Several horrible days of riding with the witch finder’s men, first on horseback and then in a wagon, had brought her to this hellhole. The wagon had been the worst of it, the first time she had truly acknowledged the depth of her predicament. They had reached a town of sorts, or so she thought, as she could see nothing through the hood. Mercifully they removed it when they shoved her into the wagon, and she landed heavily amongst several other women, blank stares on their tired faces. One was wearing a metal contraption around her head, which Kenna recognised as a scold’s bridle. She looked at Kenna in mute suffering, drool slithering from one side of her mouth where a part of the muzzle pushed inwards, making speech impossible. It wasn’t enough to drag this woman off to hell. They had to humiliate her too.
As Kenna stared at the woman in horror, one of the others said, ‘To stop her cursing them to hell.’
'What is your name?' Kenna asked.
‘Quiet,’ hissed the woman, ‘or you’ll be in it next. We are not allowed to speak, and even if you do, you will only condemn yourself further.’
With that, she had turned her head away, as did the others. They were clearly in fear for their lives, and at that moment, Kenna knew she was doomed.
She squeezed her eyes tight, trying not to think of what might have happened to those women. The drip, drip of water sounded over the occasional clanging of doors, the shouts of the jailors and moans of pain or screams for mercy as another unfortunate soul was dragged off for torture, trial, and slaughter. This was no quiet hole like Sgathach Dun’s dungeons. No, it was busy and bustling with the torment of hundreds of souls locked in, awaiting their fate. Edinburgh Castle was a charnel house, and she was going to die here.
Every time a footstep echoed along the corridor, she tensed. What if they came for her, to take her away and torture her until she confessed to being a witch? Would she be able to bear it, or would she tell them anything they wanted to hear, condemn herself to the stake or the noose just so that the pain would end? The waiting was the worst of it, wearing you down, and the hunger, she was sure she would say and do anything just for some bread.
Thin dawn light began to filter in through the tiny barred window high up in the wall. Kenna moved over so that it struck her face, and as it rose higher, the tiny bit of warmth it gave her helped the terror abate a little. She swayed a bit, her legs were weak with hunger, but still, she stood in its light, her mind wandering away from where she was.
Footsteps outside, the guard’s rough voice and a key scraping into the lock of the door brought Kenna awake. She could not remember laying down and falling asleep. She scooted into a corner as far from the door as possible, jaw clenched, hands in fists, pressing her back into the stone wall.
The door swung open, and he stood for a moment and then rushed in and grabbed hold of her. It clanged shut behind him.
‘Kenna, thank God, Kenna,’ he gasped, and for a moment, she thought she was in a dream. It couldn’t be him, could it?
‘Kenna, say something, talk to me for God’s sake.’
She pulled back from him and looked up into his face, his glorious handsome face. ‘Conall, oh Conall.’ And then she clung to him and sobbed and sobbed. ‘Have you come to take me out of here?’
‘No, I haven’t, and we don’t have long. I bribed the guards to get in here, but they will come back soon and make me go, so I have to say what I need to, and quickly.’
‘But I have to get out of here.’
‘I can’t just walk out with you, Kenna. There will be a trial, and we will free you, I promise. My father will speak for you, as will I. He has already sent word to the justices petitioning for your release.’
