Lachlan’s men had convened for a meeting. They had been issued an invitation to visit the Laird of Clan Darrach and he felt it only right to consult his men. Though he would decide how to proceed as he saw fit.
That was the easy part of the meeting. They would be gone at least three nights, between travel and the acceptance of hospitality. Some would remain behind to protect the people, but Lachlan and a select group would go.
He had been back for over a month now, and he felt it was time to get a sense for the way things had progressed.
Penny was the biggest surprise. Lachlan saw her strengths easily, but when he introduced her as a topic among his men he was surprised to see they saw them as well. That they gave full credit for her planning of the party, which had brought the clans together and felt like the start of a new era. That they saw her caring for the people in the village, building relationships and community.
Of course, not everyone was accepting of the Sassenach bride, but he felt that more were than were not.
Tensions remained, however, most disturbingly within the men who acted as warriors for the clan. The biggest opposition came from his cousin, Callum, and the men who served under him. But he was blood and Lachlan felt a particular loyalty to him out of that connection.
Callum was from Lachlan’s mother’s line. And he owed loyalty to that. To the MacKenzies.
‘The feast was excessive,’ Callum said. ‘There is concern that, while you shared this time, your English wife will beckon you to behaviour more like that of the English aristocracy. Such unrestrained displays of craven wealth are not welcome here.’
‘It was a gift,’ Lachlan said, protective of his wife and of the celebration she had planned.
‘Aye, and the people loved it.’ Lachlan was surprised when Paden, one who was loyal to Callum, spoke out against him. ‘Though there is unrest still regarding your wife.’
Rage ignited in Lachlan’s gut. ‘And many of the people love her. She has gone out daily into the village to share food. To offer aid. She is the one who brings back the needs of the people to me. I have no interest. Were it not for her, they would find their bellies much less full.’
‘You must be firmer,’ Callum said. ‘What we need is a Laird with a fist of iron. We have no need for parties.’
‘Yet it seemed as if the people did need a party.’
‘This is not a London ballroom,’ Callum said. ‘This is Scotland. Clan MacKenzie is proud. We are warriors.’
‘You need not speak to me of war,’ Lachlan said. ‘I know war. It was my world for nearly ten years. All of life cannot be a war. I fought tirelessly. And it was that fighting that gave me what I needed to return here. To restore our people and our land. I know war. Not the petty skirmishes that happen here, but devastation on muddy battlefields. Young men filled with lead. Their bodies destroyed by cannon fire. I have no desire to be at war for all of my lifetime. And perhaps the people of the clan deserve better.’
‘Austerity with survival is better than luxury for a time, only to have it end in death,’ Callum said.
‘Where is death?’ Lachlan asked. ‘There is no enemy at the gate.’
‘But there could be an enemy at the gate, any day. At any moment. And we must be prepared.’
‘There is a difference between being prepared and living under siege when it is not necessary.’
‘You would be better off divorcing your wife. Sending her back to England. Picking a Scottish girl from the village,’ Paden said.
‘I have married Penelope.’ He thought of last night, of the brilliant fire that had burned between them. It had been like that ever since the night she had come to him a fortnight before.
The distance and coolness that had existed between them in those first weeks since their return to Scotland had melted away. Whatever reason she had for keeping her body back from him, she had banished it. She came to him joyfully. Freely.
And he received everything she gave. And took more.
There was disquiet, in the back of his mind, a concern that perhaps he was allowing himself to become far too consumed with her. It didn’t help that one of these trusted warriors seemed to agree. But there was something far too English and foreign about her. He was in danger of being infected by it.
‘I could’ve stayed in England. I have great wealth there. A thriving shipping company. But I’m Scottish. I am the clan. And I came here as quickly as I could because this is what kept me going when there was nothing else. Knowing that my responsibility lay here. An English wife should not concern the people. If I wanted to be English, I would’ve stayed there.’
‘That’s enough,’ Graham said. ‘Your wife is your wife. It is done. There is no reason to pretend it could be otherwise. Any mutterings from the people... They will be silent once they see the prosperity that’s to come.’
‘They had better.’
‘A threat against your own people to protect a Sassenach?’ Callum asked.
‘To protect my wife.’
He had vowed that the day he’d taken her from England. He had always known that, physically, he would defend her. He was a man who did not tolerate the mistreatment of the vulnerable. And to him, women and children were vulnerable.
But that had been a vow in keeping with his sense of honour.
This wasn’t about the vulnerable or the weak. This was about Penny.
She was good, better than he deserved. Better, he thought, than these men deserved and that was certain.
And as he stormed out of the great hall, he realised it was true. Protecting Penny had become important, for she had become more than a pawn. She had become more than he had ever intended.
She was his queen.
She was, like the rest of his clan, his.
And that meant he would protect her. With all that he was.
The weather was truly vile. Rain poured down, creating boggy soup out of the mud all around the castle. Penny felt as though she was going to go insane from being cooped up as she was. But when she had suggested going out, Isla had clucked her tongue and made proclamations about all the ways in which Penny might catch her death.
There was little movement outside. Those in the village who could hunkered down to escape the storm. Lachlan and most of his men had gone to a neighbouring clan and they weren’t expected back before morning.
She could only hope that he was safe. It was such a strange thing, to worry about the man. He had survived years of war. Violence she couldn’t fathom. And she was concerned about rain being his undoing.
But her worries were shoved aside when Rona came racing into Penny’s bedchamber.
‘There is a girl here,’ she said. ‘She said that you told her to come to you if she had a need to.’
‘Yes,’ Penny said, standing before she could even think of what she might be doing. She didn’t need to know who it was. She didn’t need to be told. She already knew.
The girl whose name she didn’t even know.
And there she was, standing in the core door, looking wild eyed and frightened. ‘It’s too soon,’ the girl said.
And to Penny, she truly looked like a child in that moment. Pale and frightened. Not a woman ready to give birth.
‘How soon?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘I don’t know enough about such things. But my mother... She’s had twelve children, and I have some idea of... It’s too soon.’
‘We need a midwife,’ Penny said.
‘I’ll fetch one,’ Isla said. She turned to the girl. ‘Do you want your mother?’
‘She said she wouldn’t help me,’ the girl said, hysteria colouring her voice. ‘She said I had to leave. She said my father would kill me and it was better if I died out in the rain than to force him to sin in such a way.’
‘I’ll have his head,’ Penny said. ‘I won’t need Lachlan to do it. I’ll take his sword and I’ll have his head myself.’
Perhaps that was the influence of her brawny, Scottish husband, but she felt terribly bloodthirsty in this moment. She wanted to lay steel into all the men who had harmed this girl and into the woman who protected a man above her child.
What a deadly weapon, this thing that took place between men and women. What a horrendous way it could be twisted.
Penny was again stunned by all she had been protected from.
The girl doubled over, writhing as a pain racked her small body.
‘You must come to my bed,’ Penny said. ‘We will make you comfortable until the midwife comes. I promise you will be cared for. And so will the babe.’
The girl braced herself on the wall. ‘I feel as though I might die.’
‘You won’t die,’ Penny said.
She vowed it. It wasn’t fair. This girl going through such a terrifying thing. And Penny’s husband didn’t want children.
He had only made a mistake that first night they’d come back together. Every night since he had spent himself on the sheets. Penny would love a child and yet that wasn’t to be.
This girl... This girl’s body and life was being torn away from her because she was with child.
It was wrong. It wasn’t fair. Not to either of them.
Most especially not to the girl.
‘Perhaps you’ll give me your name now,’ Penny said, helping the girl into the bed.
‘Mary,’ she said. She closed her eyes, a tear running down her cheek.
All the anger and bravado that had been with her the other times Penny had met her was gone.
Penny sat with the girl, as her pains became greater, closer together. She stepped out into the corridor with Rona as the hours advanced. ‘How early do you suppose she is?’
Rona shook her head. ‘I don’t have bairns of my own. I don’t know. I can’t tell by looking at the girl.’
‘I’m worried for them both.’
Rona looked at Penny, her expression softer than Penny had ever seen it. Things were never easy with the prickly housekeeper, but she seemed united with Penny, in this at least.
‘It would probably be a gift to the girl if the bairn died,’ Rona said, looking regretful as she spoke the words.
But Penny had a feeling the woman was right. For where would this girl go back to, with a baby in her arms? How would she be able to face her family? Her father?
It was such a terrifying thing.
But Penny wanted the baby to live.
Penny wanted life for them both.
Watching another human being experience such physical distress made Penny’s stomach churn.
By the time the midwife arrived, the girl was in extreme pain, gripping the bedclothes and thrashing back and forth.
Her hands gripped the sheets so tightly that Penny feared she might harm herself.
‘Is there anything that can be done?’ Penny asked the midwife.
‘It’s just the way of things. And she’s a bairn herself,’ the woman said, disdain in her tone. ‘She’s not prepared.’
‘No,’ Penny agreed. ‘She’s not.’
‘The man who did this to her should be thrashed.’
‘He should be killed,’ Penny said. ‘If The MacKenzie had any idea where he was his life would be forfeit.’
She knew that. In her blood.
For Lachlan was not an abuser of women. Far from it.
‘Ah, lass,’ the midwife said, shaking her head sadly. ‘Men don’t often see this as a terrible crime unless it happens to their own wife or daughter. Even then.’
‘He would,’ Penny said, conviction burning in her chest.
‘A welcome difference to the previous Laird, then,’ the woman said, her mouth in a grim line.
‘So I’ve heard.’
The hours went by in a slow, tense fashion, until the girl’s pain seemed to be utterly unbearable.
‘It’s time, lass,’ the midwife said. ‘Time to push.’
The girl was wild-eyed and it was clear she didn’t understand, but then nature seemed to take over and she grunted, her eyes wild.
Penny grabbed hold of her face and looked at her. ‘You’re not alone,’ she said. ‘We will not let harm come to you.’
Calling from a strength inside herself that left Penny in awe, Mary pushed with all her might.
And then she continued like that, without making any progress for what seemed like hours.
Penny was exhausted, she could not imagine how the girl felt.
‘Is it always like this?’ she whispered to the midwife.
‘There is sometimes more trouble than others,’ the woman said. ‘This babe doesn’t want to come. I’m going to have to try to help.’
Penny didn’t quite understand, but she soon learned. The midwife positioned her hand in such a fashion that she tried to ease Mary’s pushing as the girl bore down with all her might.
‘I can feel the baby’s head,’ the woman said.
Penny could offer no help there, but she could hold Mary. As her own mother should have done. Could be there for her. Could show compassion.
Could offer something other than blame and scorn.
‘Good lass,’ the midwife said.
Another push and Penny could see the baby’s head.
Then it was suddenly over. The babe out in the world and Mary sagging with exhaustion.
There was no cry and a deep sadness expanded in Penny’s chest.
It had taken so long. And it was early.
Penny wanted to weep for the injustice of it, but she couldn’t.
Instead, she simply sat holding on to Mary’s hand.
And then there was a sound. A whimper, more than a cry, but it soon grew, thin and tenuous, filling the room.
She looked at the baby and saw that, though it was dusky, it was moving.
‘There we are,’ the midwife said. ‘There we are.’
‘Does it live?’ Mary asked.
‘Yes,’ the midwife said.
Mary let her head fall back against the pillow, a tear tracking down her cheek.
‘I’m glad,’ she said.
‘Please hold the babe,’ the midwife said to Penny.
Penny took the babe, wrapped it in her shawl. The midwife began to give care to Mary. She finished with the rest of the delivery, worry etched in her face.
‘What can I do?’ Penny asked.
‘Nothing,’ the woman said. ‘She’s bleeding. There are herbs I can give to try to slow it. But... Sometimes...’
‘No,’ Penny said. ‘I won’t let her die. She’s been given nothing. No help at all. No kindness. She cannot die without ever...’
‘These herbs should cause contractions in her womb. It helps slow the bleeding.’
The midwife made tea on the fireplace in the room and Penny did her best to guide Mary in drinking it.
The bleeding lasted through the night. By the time it was slowed, Penny knew her bed could not be saved. But as long as Mary could be, it didn’t matter.
She heard a voice out in the corridor. Her husband’s.
He’d returned.
Penny’s body was stiff from being held in unnatural positions for too long and her eyes were gritty.
She stood, making sure the babe was secured in his little nest upon the bed. And then she went to the door.
‘The village girl, Mary McLaren. She’s had her baby.’
Lachlan looked as though he was gazing at the horror of battle. Penny looked down at herself and realised that she bore the marks of the particularly difficult medical event.
‘I’m not hurt,’ Penny said. ‘It’s not... I don’t know if she will survive. Mary or the babe.’ Emotion caught hold of her chest and it heaved on a dry sob. ‘No one has slept and it’s been so many hours...the girl doesn’t deserve this.’
She felt herself sway and then suddenly found herself being lifted up off of the ground, held close to her Highlander’s chest.
He began to walk back towards his bedchamber, where he closed the door behind him. Then he stripped her of her dress, all her bloody garments going to the floor. She shivered. But she found that she was not embarrassed, because she was far too focused on the exhaustion of her body.
He called for a tub to be brought in and for hot water, and wrapped her in a blanket to conceal her modesty as the staff went about doing his bidding.
‘But Mary...’
‘She will be seen to,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. You look as if you’re about to fall over dead.’
She felt as if she were. But she also felt guilty for abandoning the girl in such an uncertain moment.
‘You will not be able to help if you cannot see straight,’ he said.
When the bath and water were produced, Isla offered to stay, but Lachlan sent her away. ‘I will care for my wife,’ he said.
He picked her up and deposited her naked body into the tub of warm water.
His hands were gentle as they skimmed over her skin and an ache of loneliness opened up inside her.
Sadness.
For she had adored this man’s hands. When they gave her pleasure, she could find power in it. Could find a way to make a balance so that she wasn’t left trembling and wrecked. But today had compromised her defences in a way that frightened her. She was small and reduced. She had never felt so much fear, not even when she’d discovered she’d been sold to Lachlan in the first place.
Now he was touching her and his hands were tender, rather than arousing, though they still created sparks over her skin. He was large and she was tempted to lean against his strength.
‘I just want to help,’ she said.
‘You may not be able to,’ he said, but there was no cruelty in his voice.
‘The baby is so small.’
‘I’ve seen what happens with small bairns. It is just the way of things.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Penny said. ‘That all they should know is suffering.’
‘Lass,’ he said, his voice tender, scraping against raw places inside her. ‘The world is harsh and cruel. It doesn’t care if bairns get a chance to live. Or if girls get a chance at happiness.’
She knew he meant that. Down to his soul. Down to his very bones.
‘I don’t want to believe it,’ she said.
She felt emotion rising up inside her. Emotion that reminded her of the day her mother had died. But there was...there was hope still. For Mary and the babe lived. And while they lived there could still be hope. Hope.
She closed her eyes and let Lachlan’s rough hands smooth away some of the pain inside her. Let the warm water soothe the ache that had taken over her muscles, for it had been a day that was long and painful, and it was not over.
She cared for the both of them and couldn’t simply stop because she was exhausted.
She didn’t like it, for there was no place to put emotions like this. There was no way to stop them and Lachlan being kind was only making it worse.
But she was too tired to fight it. She could only surrender to the warm water, surrender to his hands. Surrender to this. To them.
‘You are a soft thing,’ he said, his voice rolling over her, even more soothing than the water. ‘I forget that you haven’t seen quite so many hard things of the world.’
‘My mother died,’ she said softly. ‘I know about death.’
‘You’re supposed to bury your parents,’ he said, his voice rough.
She did not normally press him. Their conversations stayed carefully around the edges of the deep, sad things that had hurt him in the past.
But she wanted to press now.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Didn’t your mother’s death hurt you?’
‘The manner of it, aye.’
‘I was five. I was five when she died. It felt a lot like this. Confusing. Unfair. And I felt helpless. I didn’t know what to do. And there was nothing to do. It was such a stark and horrible thing. I couldn’t fix it. She was gone. I just wanted to save her and it was too late.’
She thought of every little animal, of every plan she had spearheaded since. All the way down to this. To trying so hard to save Mary and the baby.
It was the lack of hope she had never been able to accept. That she might never be able to do something to fix the situation. That she truly was helpless. That she truly was a pawn.
And had she been fighting against that from the moment Lachlan had stood in the great hall of her father’s house? Hadn’t she been trying to find a way to be active, to fix, to repair, to do something about this yawning void inside her? The one that she had contained inside a shiny jewellery box. But that could not be.
It could not be. And she had tried. She had tried so hard. But she was failing by inches. For her heart was bruised and battered and she knew that she must never cry.
But Lachlan hadn’t locked her in a room by herself. He had drawn her a bath. He was here. And he was holding her.
What would he do if she wept?
And why did she want to see? She had found answers to her loneliness over the years. Had made friends by following people around and chattering at them. But this was something different. This desire to sit here and share silence. To allow his hands to create emotions, to soothe and to arouse. And why was it that the man who had brought her the jewellery box, that symbol of her own survival, why was it he who challenged that very way of living?
Why did he make her wish there was more?
This.
This tenderness.
Being held while her heart was sore...
It was as if she had been waiting for this all of her life.
And she hadn’t known that. Hadn’t wanted to know. For with the comfort came vulnerability. And with that vulnerability came fear.
How could she trust this part of herself to a warrior? To the barbarian who had bought her for revenge?
But this didn’t feel like revenge.
It felt like nothing ever had and she wanted to bask in it. In him.
All while her soul trembled with fear over what might become of Mary and her child.
‘When my mother died,’ she said, speaking slowly, ‘I wept. I cried from the very depths of my soul. Each sob was painful, because they came from somewhere so impossibly deep. My father hated the sound of my grief. He said not to cry because she was in heaven and if I did that I was a heathen with no hope. But I missed my mother. I missed her. And I couldn’t stop crying. In his anger he took me to my room and he locked the door. Locked me inside. I couldn’t come out until I learned how to lock away every last one of my tears. I know about death. It still isn’t fair.’
Her throat went thick, her eyes filling with tears. Shameful tears. Tears that she was supposed to be able to keep inside. But she was so tired. She was so afraid. And weary with the lack of justice in the world.
She wasn’t alone.
She could talk and someone was here to listen. And maybe...maybe she could cry. Just maybe.
A tear slipped down her cheek and she shuddered. Shivered.
‘Lachlan,’ she whispered. ‘Kiss me.’
Because anything was better than feeling this. Anything was better than surrendering to this. And she found herself being lifted out of the water by her strong, wonderful Highlander, and he held her against his chest as he kissed her and kissed her. As he took her deeper into the carnal, sensual world that he had created inside her. One that existed apart from that place where she locked her feelings away.
Because this was theirs. She wasn’t alone here.
But it wasn’t about power, not this time.
Not about skill.
This was about being in that room with someone else. Crying and having a person there who would listen.
He laid her out on the bed, looking down at her as if she was a sumptuous feast.
And she shuddered. Shivered.
He slowly divested himself of his clothes, revealing his beautiful body to her. She would never tire of him.
There was something in the moment that felt like a surrender. There was something in the look on his face, in the tender paths his hands had just traced over her body, that made her feel safe in the surrender.
It didn’t make her feel weak.
Rather, it made her feel brave. Strong.
She could surrender. She could choose to surrender, she didn’t have to hide. She didn’t have to push her feelings down deep. She didn’t have to lock them away.
Because she was not a child.
And she had not been put in a wooden box with her mother that day. No matter that the room had felt like a coffin, it wasn’t. Because she was alive, no part of her dead. Yet she had let part of herself be buried because of fear. A need to protect herself. A need to make sure she was never alone with her pain the way she had been that day.
But she wasn’t alone here. She was with Lachlan. And so she wept as he trailed kisses over her naked skin. As his head moved down between her thighs and made a feast of her, creating a helpless, swirling sensation inside her that she didn’t turn away from. No. She embraced it. Embraced him. Let his tongue and mouth push her higher, further, than she had ever imagined she could go.
It was like flying.
You helped me save the bird.
That injured bird. The injured bird with the crippled wing who had been grounded, his injuries preventing him from soaring high. But he had been restored.
And now, so was she.
Like a bird who had found flight once again.
It was magic.
They were magic.
He licked her until she shattered and in the pieces of herself she found beauty. Brilliant, sparkling glory in that shattering.
And when he thrust into her body, she gasped. It wasn’t an invasion this time, though, and it wasn’t a power play. It was a joining. A coming together in answer to the hollowness inside her.
And all it had taken was for her protection to be down. For her walls to have cracked and crumbled.
Then she could feel it. Could feel him.
Each glorious inch of him reaching places inside her that transcended reason.
And where those walls had once stood he rebuilt something different.
The woman she might have been.
Not just a woman who had escaped from her father, not just a woman who had learned how to survive.
But a woman untouched.
A woman who didn’t have to fear laughter or tears.
A woman who had gone so far past the concept of innocence and ruin.
A woman who feared no pleasure or pain as long as her warrior was with her.
And it wasn’t only his strength, but the strength he had found in her.
All through showing care. For it was the softness in his battle-battered hands that had created this.
The tenderness in his touch, in his voice, that had allowed her to open up.
When it was over, he lay with her, tracing shapes over her bare skin.
‘If I had known that your father locked you in your room that way... I would’ve killed him before I took you.’
‘No one needs to die,’ she said softly. ‘I survived.’
‘A person can survive many things,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean they should have to.’
‘Neglect can’t kill you,’ she said softly.
‘No, lass. It can. I know you’ve heard how my father used his fists on his mistresses. About how he killed one. It’s true. He did. He never raised a fist against my mother. He never did, because she was the Laird’s daughter. But his neglect, his transgressions against the clan, they contributed to her despair. That despair caused her death.’
‘I had to live,’ she said softly.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. But something in me always believed... When I took care of the animals that I found, I believe that I was making enough of a difference. I know that it was a small thing, a silly thing, but it felt as though it mattered. It made me feel as though I mattered. And when you would walk with me, when I spoke to you, I felt real.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I grieved when you left. As though you were dead. I didn’t cry. I haven’t cried since I was five years old. Not until today.’
He pulled her into his arms, held her against his chest. And she listened to the ragged beat of his heart beneath her ear. ‘I will tell you this,’ he said. ‘You were the only person who spoke to me like an equal for those years. And perhaps that’s the real reason I came for you. You felt as though you might be mine.’
She said nothing to that. Exhaustion began to take hold and she found her eyes fluttering closed.
But the last thought on her mind was that he felt an awful lot like he might be hers.
Sealed with tenderness, kisses and tears.
She had dreamed of a different life. In a stately, civilised manner home with a man who put propriety above all else.
Lachlan rarely seemed to have a concept of propriety.
But he had a fierce, deep sense of protecting what was his.
And right then, she was very glad to be counted as his.