Parris Afton Bonds (13 page)

"The man, this Ranald, is not one of the superstitious Scots’ Auld Folk.” Simon Murdock’s flint-colored eyes stared over his pyramided fingertips at the nervous, scarlet-coated staff officer standing at attention. "Anyone who can slide a dirk between Captain Fenwick’s ribs so deftly has to be human. I want him found and brought to me. Alive."

The lieutenant, his plumed hat tucked beneath his arm, saluted smartly. “
Aye, sir!"

After the officer left Simon adjusted his scarlet coat
’s turned-back cuffs and the small coil of gold braid on one epaulet before having his aid usher in the waiting couple.

His gaze traveled past his desk to the scribe, Archibald Alistair. He stood behind the woman
’s chair. Why was he here at Fort William with Lady Kathryn Afton?

Snowflakes still flecked those tendrils of pepper-and-salt hair that curled beyond the range o
f her mantle’s hood. Were she younger, he might seduce her. A pleasant
menage au trois
, her daughter, her, and himself.

However, before that delightful scenario could be played out, he had to find her daughter, his wife.

"I apologize for the chill of my office, madam. The Jacobites blew up portions of the fort, and Parliament did not see fit to include an office fireplace as part of the restoration.”

Good King George, fat King George, could not afford to build forts and pay the troops to garrison them. It c
ost the king £80,000 a year to fortify newly won lands, and he received but a fifth of that sum in taxes from the Scottish people.

Lady Afton waved a hand of dismissal. "I am impatient with your progress. Two months is long enough to, at least, locate the
renegade."

He didn't understand it himself. The man had not yet asked for a ransom.

He withdrew the wrinkled leather pouch from his waistcoat pocket. “We’ve set a reward on the reiver’s head, madam. Tis only a matter of time until someone betrays him for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver.”

And only a matter of time until he acquired another pouch made of a fool's testicle.

Chapter Eight

E
nya’s mouth compressed. The Highland "mist" filled her wooden clogs like bathtubs as she squished across the bailey toward the bakehouse. The mist was more like sleet.

Now she understood more fully how the Gaelic word
dreich
encompassed so many descriptions—dreary, dismal, drizzly, misty, gray.

The Reiver was back. From her window this morning she had wat
ched him, astride his shaggy, big war horse, and his men canter from beneath the twin gatehouses through the morning dark toward the stables. The booty this time was a wagon-load of English muskets with powder and ball. Enough to keep the raiders supplied through the winter.

She hoped anyone searching for her would not undertake the trek to the mountain village of Lochaber any later than the end of October. After that, it could well be spring before Buachaille Etive
’s retreating snows yielded their bodies.

October
’s end. All Hallow’s Eve. The height of supernatural activity. What demonic activity did the Reiver plan for her?

The long, covered wooden trencher she carried was crowded with loaves of bread dough. She spared her red and roughened hands a sympathe
tic look. At least her hands, and an occasional backache, were the worst she had yet suffered.

But the Reiver would be riding out less and less as the winter deepened. By All Saints
’ Day his attention would be directed at her, if not before.

“
M’lady?”

She turned at the sound of Annie
’s voice. The young Highland woman, hurrying to catch her, slackened her pace. Once Enya had reassured her she had no romantic interest in any of the Cameron men, especially Jamie, the young woman had accepted her and accorded her the courtesy due a noble lady.

A hoary mist frosted Annie
’s reddish brown hair. At Enya’s suggestion she had ceased using henna and allowed Enya to take a pair of scissors to the dead ends. A definite improvement. Regular baths in cold weather, no matter how heated the water, were not yet a consideration. "Aye, Annie?”

"Ranald
’s sister ... uhh ... requests your presence.”

She watched the young girl
’s breath steam the air while thinking rapidly. Unlike Annie, Mhorag would have nothing to do with her. Why summon her now? Unless she had seen Duncan talking to her in the greensward of the inner courtyard yesterday and believed Duncan and she were plotting to escape?

"Let me slide the bread into the oven first."

The brown eyes admonished her. "’Oo'd best ’urry, me lady."

"I shall.”

The bakehouse’s communal brick oven was used by the villagers also, but was not in service at the moment. Its flaring red coals scorched her cheeks. As scorched as the rye bread would be if she were not careful.

While she waited
her backside froze and her face and hands blistered. At last, the loaves were an acorn brown, and probably as hard. A harping Flora despaired of her culinary abilities. "God help the puir chief when he eats yer meals.”

Enya hurried back through the mist, d
umped the loaves in a kitchen basket, and sped up a turret stairwell to the fourth landing and Mhorag’s private chambers. Except for being more spacious with a few more odds and ends of furniture, the room was almost as bare as her own. Elspeth had reclaimed some war- or weather-damaged tapestries from the castle’s ruined wing for Enya’s chambers. A threadbare tartan carpet warmed the cold stone floor.

Mhorag paced its perimeter like a hungry cat awaiting kitchen scraps. She wore knee pants, green lisle sto
ckings, and a long-sleeve woolen shirt covered by a jerkin. Obviously, the young woman scorned feminine clothing. And scorned Enya herself.

At the sight of her, Mhorag whirled, fists planted on her hips. Her eyes were more full of arrows than a thistle of
nettles. "Well? Did I give ye permission to dally, mistress?”

"The bread, I
—”

Mhorag
’s palm smacked Enya’s cheek. “I don’t want excuses. I want obedience. Is that understood?”

Astonished, she put her fingertips to her smarting cheek. Never had she been str
uck. She turned a sulfurous gaze on Mhorag, so much smaller that Enya could have pummeled her to bread dough had she so chosen. "Touch me again, and I’ll—”

Mhorag
’s mouth curled in a tight smile. One finely delineated brow rose. "Ye'll what?”

Sudden compre
hension enlightened her. “This isn’t about my quality of service, is it? Tis about my quality as a woman.”

"Ye are daft.”

She struck at the young woman's most vulnerable spot. "You are afraid to be feminine. I make you uneasy, don’t I? Each time you see me you are reminded of your cowardice as a woman."

The blue eyes were agates. "Aye, 'tis about your quality. Ye have chosen for a husband a man who widowed me, then caused me to lose the bairn I was carrying. Once Simon Murdock filled me with his seed, his o
fficers took their turn.”

Treacherous sympathy filled her, but she retorted, “
Then strike out at him!”

Her smile was chillingly sunny. “
I do. Through ye. Now fetch a basin of water and a scrub brush. Ye may clean the privies. A task the castle’s former occupants overlooked."

“
What?”

“
Surely ye understand the King’s English?"

Enya
’s fingers curled. "I pledged my service to your brother, not you."

"Did ye now? Then let me tell ye that my brother
’s plans for ye are far more unpleasant than the task I have set for ye."

She clasped her hands in repose. "I
’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

Mhorag
’s head canted, and a
cafe-au-lait
lock tumbled over her shoulder. Her eyes glinted. "Besides, with the smell of the privy about ye, I doubt my brother will visit his attentions upon ye more than is absolutely necessary. So, in me fashion, I am helping ye, am I not?”

"Are you afraid I
’ll find favor with your brother? Take your place, since he’s all you have left?"

“
Clean the privy, mistress. Now.”

The medieval fortress that aspired to be a temporary manor was decidedly unprogressive in terms of its privies. Each private chamber included a privy set into an outer wall, built over a shaft fed also by latrines on other floors. Dirty water and other deposits were discharged through the gargoyles on the outside of the building.

Cleaning out privies was a most odoriferous experience for
Enya.

At the end of the day she forwent dinner and retreated to the privacy of her own small chamber and a bath drawn by a reluctant Elspeth. “
By me troth, bairn, but ye smell like a pigsty.”

"Pigs have it better than I.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. She slid down into the copper tub until the steaming water topped her shoulders. "The master and mistress I serve are worse than pigs. They behave like villeins of the vilest—’’

"Is that so?”
asked a male voice.

She recognized its smooth, trilling timbre. He
r lids snapped open; her head jerked around. Arms folded, Ranald stood in the doorway. A swath of cream-and-whisky hair fell across his wide forehead. Over a linsey-woolsey shirt, a leather tunic stretched the breadth of his chest. His knee-high boots of soft Spanish leather were splotched with mud.

Her mouth crimped with annoyance. "What is the source of your ire now?”

He crossed to the tub. Tall, his strapping body roped with muscle, he loomed over her. His eyes, this time the green of lichen, bore into her. "Ye, mistress. There was not enough bread to go around today. Ye forsook your duties."

She sat upright, then, seeing her breasts almost exposed, slid back into the steamy water. "Your sister dragged me from my duties. Had me clean
—"

He wrinkled his nos
e. "Don’t tell me. The stench in here is explanation enough."

She sprang to her feet. She was strong of limb and well formed and would not be shamed by this man. Physically, she was his complement, though the idea repelled her.

Elspeth gasped. "Enya!"

His
eyes followed the water trickling between her porcelain white breasts, dripping from the peaks of her suddenly cold-taut nipples and the reddish cluster of curls at the apex of her legs.

“
Aye, dunce," she taunted. “Stare."

She glimpsed the knotting of his
large hands; then it appeared he checked himself. He motioned with his head at Elspeth. “Bring me razor and strop, woman. I wish to shave.”

Elspeth darted a glance at Enya, who nodded. There was no reason for Elspeth to take the brunt of the man
’s anger. And angry he clearly was.

After the door closed behind a reluctant Elspeth, he reached for a threadbare linen towel the old woman had laid out and tossed it to her. "Dry yourself. I don
’t wish ye to die of pneumonia before ye bring sufficient Highland bairns into the world.”

"I'll jump from the battlements before I bear your seed.”

His massive shoulders shifted with a shrug. "It won’t be my seed, madam. Your red hair offends me.”

A curious statement. She searched his face for
the intent behind his words, but his expression was, as usual, stolid. Apparently emotion only overtook him when he played the pipes.

He began removing his tunic, then his shirt. Hair, darker than that of his head, whorled across his chest. He tossed the
white shirt over the open lid of a sailor’s chest that served as her armoire. “No, don’t get out of the tub,” he told her.

She hesitated, puzzled. “
Surely you don’t intend to get in here with me."

At that moment, a sharp rap on the door diverted his attent
ion. Elspeth stuck her long nose inside. He took the razor and strop she passed him. Enya saw the querulous look the old woman fired at him, followed by the more concerned one she spared for her charge.

Then he shut the door on Elspeth
’s huffy countenance and turned back to her. He held out his other hand. "The towel."

With an inquiring look, she passed it to him reluctantly. Her earlier anger had overridden her embarrassment. Now, mortified, she crossed her arms before her nudity and her less-than-svelte b
ody.

He flung the towel, along with the strop, on the chest. Dipping the razor in the water, he said, "Hold still, mistress. Or else I shall cut ye.”

Aghast, she watched as he knelt before her and laid the razor’s edge against that triangular patch of rust-colored curls. Her breath was a sibilant inhalation. "You can’t mean to shave me . . . there!"

"Like maple leaves in autumn,”
he murmured, anchoring a shovel-size palm against the lower portion of her flat belly. Wherever he touched her, a spasm rippled inside her. His other hand deftly wielded a path through the soft, short curls.

Her fingers arced, aching to dig into the ridge of muscles banding his shoulders, but the slightest move could jar the razor. Tears of humiliation sprang to her eyes. "I hope yo
u do your own barbering.”

“
Aye. Each morning I sacrifice meself to the ritual of bloodletting over the shaving basin."

"How comforting.”

At her tart tone, he grinned up at her. The smile took her completely by surprise. That defenseless instant made her weak also. “Careful," he warned, “me hand may slip on a stroke."

Still reeling from that singular smile, she braced a hand on his shoulder. The touch of his warm skin could have sizzled her fingers.

“Spread your legs.”

“
Please, no,” she whispered.

“
Would you rather another do it at me command? Nob, perhaps?”

The suggestion was enough to prompt her to move her legs apart, though only the breadth of the razor and no more. “
Why?” she demanded. "Whipping me would have been punishment enough."

He cocked a broad br
ow at her. “Do ye wish to be whipped?”

“
Of course not."

"This is not punishment. I told ye. Red hair is unlucky."

She nodded at the hand holding the razor. "Left-handed people bring bad luck."

He shrugged. "Red hair offends me."

Her stare was arrow-tipped. "You mean to shave my head, also?"

He shook his head, and his queue brushed against her fingers. "Nay. That you may cover beneath one of those big caps."

"A mobcap," she supplied with a saccharine smile.

"Aye." He finished with the last stroke. His finger
tips explored her now smooth pad of flesh, as if examining his expertise with the blade.

When those probing fingers lingered at the convergence of her soft folds of flesh, she trembled.

His voice took on a husky pitch. "Keep yourself shaven here, mistress. Or else I’ll have it done for ye. Do ye understand?”

"I understand that I shall never forgive you for this, Ranald.”

At her use of his given name, he flinched. Her fingers felt the flinch in his back muscles. He rose and strode to the door, where he paused and turned. The look he speared her with was merciless. “Do ye think I care?”