Chapter 15
Cold but clear. The ground Lex sat on under the old rowan tree was glazed over with a thin coat of ice that would only grow thicker as winter settled in on the Highlands. The skies above boasted no rain clouds but neither could any patches of blue be seen through the thin veil of white mist that seemed to reside over Scotland most of the year. As perfect a winter day as there was to be had, cold but clear.
It was exactly like the day he had last been up to the hunting shed. He remembered how numb his toes had been after hunting all day with his father with no shoes on his feet. His father said it was the only way a true Highlander traveled about in any weather. Wearing foot or leg coverings under your plaid was a sign of weakness to your enemies, and never could Lex or his brother Ronald show any sign of weakness. No one in their family could.
Lex snorted out a chuckle at the ridiculous thought. If only his father could see him now, Angus MacLachlan's only surviving blood-heir, sitting under the great rowan tree they always hung their game from to bleed, wearing black leather boots stitched by a cobbler and laced-up leggings all the way to his waist. Surely if he were still alive it would be Lex's lack of a plaid that would bring his father's hand down across his face. Without even realizing it, Lex clutched his fingers around the exposed roots of the rowan tree, bracing himself as if the blow was about to come.
"You no longer control me," he said, as he looked down and stretched his fingers out completely straight in defiance of his father's memory. He let them slowly relax again when he saw the notches in the tree roots that he and Ronald had made so many years ago. Each one represented a victory. A victory over their father for bringing down a bigger buck than him in a hunt.
Lex slid his index finger over the grooves and let it dip down into each one of the rough valleys. There were four marks for Ronald and only two marks for himself. It was not an easy task to best their father in anything, and the consequences of doing so had left bruises that lasted for weeks. Their father did not know about the tally they kept, and nobody knew about the victories now, except Lex.
"Why are you here?" he asked himself out loud. This was his past, a past he had literally worked his hands bloody to forget. What a fool he was to listen to a MacEwen and think the ghost stories she told him were not lies. "So why am I here, MacEwen? Did you need some time alone to set up your next trap or lace my food with herbs?" He picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could. He watched it sail through the air quite some distance before it disappeared into the top of a towering pine. He heard a rustle of branches and the snapping of sticks. His rock was too small and too far off to make those kinds of noises. Someone was nearby.
With the lithe movements that had kept him alive in the thick of battles, he rose from his squatting position at the base of the huge rowan and rolled behind its trunk to shield against any MacEwen arrows. Lex watched from his hiding place as his attackers emerged from the woods and headed toward the old hunting shed.
"Well, well, well, MacEwen," he whispered under his breath with a smile. "You did have an ulterior motive to get me up here after all." He relaxed his stance as he watched Mira and Rory practically dance their way, hand in hand, through the crooked door of the decaying stone hut. So Sandra had wanted him to see these two together, her own subtle way of telling him to stay far away from Mira. How simple her ploys were to figure out, he thought. Little did she know that his biggest problem of restraint had only to do with her. "If Mira is what is worrying you, MacEwen, then Mira it is who will get my attentions." He laughed to himself at her innocent charm. It really was quite refreshing to have a little minx so attracted to him she was willing to do anything to keep him, even if she swore to the opposite.
Lex turned back toward the trail through the woods that had brought him there. A quiet walk in the solitude of the forest pines was exactly what he needed to clear his mind of old memories. But only one step away from the rowan tree and the past he thought was behind him blocked his path once again.
A gutted deer hung down in front of him with blood already pooled up on the frozen ground beneath it as if it had been hanging there for several hours. But it could not have. He had not seen it there when he arrived.
He looked down at the puddle of blood. Another large drop splashed down and splattered red dots onto the notched roots where he had been sitting. It definitely had not been there before. He rubbed the balls of his palms into his eyes with a harsh pressure to erase the image from his memory. Visions of that day and the blood were coming to him so frequently now that it was as if he were constantly reliving that one day whenever he thought of his father or brother.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the frozen ground again. It was still there. Red spots of blood splashing out from the dripping carcass. "Damn you, MacEwen," he swore out loud. Then he heard the laughing voices of Rory and Mira, and the creak of the old wooden hinged door, and he knew he was still in the present. When he turned toward the moss-covered hunting shed, he saw not Rory and Mira leaving the dwelling after their tryst, but his brother, Ronald, and a beautiful fair-haired girl in a MacEwen plaid…going in.
He did not believe his eyes. This could not be. Nothing was as it seemed around him. It all had to be a trick of some sort. He stumbled forward, tripping over the roots of the rowan as he rushed toward the shed. "Who goes there?" he yelled out at the backs of the couple as they ducked through the low wood-framed doorway.
There was no response. He reached the door and pulled it open so hard the top hinge finally broke loose and sent the door crashing against the stones of the hut.
"We were but seeking warmth from the cold is all," he heard Rory say as he stood up to block Lex's view of Mira's exposed breasts.
It was not the sight of a young couple dallying before they were wed that made Lex's eyes narrow down in suspicion. It was the second couple who had entered after Rory and Mira, the ones who were still engaged in their caressing of bare skin even though Lex had entered.
"Who sent you up here? Was it Sandra or her louse of a father?" Lex asked the preoccupied couple. Still they continued their frolicking as if controlled solely by their desire to couple.
With a shaking Mira hiding protectively behind him then dashing out the door, Rory answered, "No one sent us. We came here to be alone, out from under yurr watchful eyes, eyes that should be on yurr wife instead of Mira." Rory threw his chest out as if daring Lex to deny it.
Lex did not bother to respond to Rory's blatant challenge. He just pushed Rory to the door of the small hut to get to the impostor he was really speaking to. "I said who sent you?" he repeated in a more threatening tone.
Still no answer, no acknowledgement at all that they knew someone was even there watching them strip off each other’s plaids. That was when Lex saw the scar on the man's left shoulder. He had put that scar there when they had snuck off with the MacLachlan ceremonial claymore. Ronald had gotten the scar and Lex had gotten the bruises from his father's punishment.
It had to be a dream. Lex stumbled back out of the hut, shaking his head and pressing his eyes. But if it was a dream, what was Rory doing in it? What was happening to him?
"Get ye home to the castle right now and I will not tell yurr father of this," Lex heard the gruff voice of a man say.
He uncovered his eyes and looked up just as the MacEwen girl was running off into the woods, pulling her clothes on as she went, and the MacEwen chief himself, Sandra's father, was standing in the doorway with his sword drawn.
"No!" Lex cried out as he dove to tackle the man before he attacked Ronald. But his body only made contact with the cold packed-dirt floor. The MacEwen took up the whole doorway, but somehow Lex had completely missed him.
"I warned you to stay away from my niece, MacLachlan," the chief said to Ronald, who was still naked from his stomach up but had managed to wrap his tartan around his waist and tuck it tight.
"I will not," Ronald answered defiantly. "I love her and she loves me."
"No," Lex said from the doorway. "No MacEwen lass is worth your life." Neither of the other two men even looked at him. It was as if he was not there, as if they could not see him. Then the surroundings struck Lex as familiar, too familiar. The small room was exactly as it had been that day. A fire was burning in the corner even though Lex had seen no smoke coming from the hut. Fresh pine branches were laid neatly on the dirt floor where Ronald had been lying with the girl. He was reliving it again, but this time he was not behind the tree where he had hidden all those years ago. He was right in the middle of it, and there was still nothing he could do.
Metal scraped against metal as Ronald drew his dagger and threw the old dented sheath to the ground.
"Stop this," Lex said as he placed a hand out to both of their chests to hold them apart. They advanced anyway, right through him.
Stunned by the eerie sorcery that surrounded him, Lex backed away from the clash of weapons. From the door he watched them battle, the MacEwen at the advantage with his claymore, Ronald with the advantage of youth.
"Give up, old man," Ronald hissed into the MacEwen's ear. "No MacLachlan blood will yurr sword drink today."
"You have the right of it...son," the MacEwen answered him as he let his sword fall to the ground and raised his hands to Ronald as if in defeat. Ronald held his dagger to the MacEwen's belly and did not relax his position at all. "I cannot let ya marry my niece, Ronald, because yurr blood is the same as mine. You are a MacEwen, son. My son."
Lex took in a deep breath but still felt quite dizzy, as if he were losing air through a hole in his chest. From his perch behind the tree he had heard none of this before. Was his mind playing tricks on him now? Or was this the work of the little MacEwen Charm's poisons?
Unable to sort out any of the thoughts running through his head after hearing the MacEwen's words, Lex again backed away from the hut as if distance would bring him back to the present. He dropped to the ground and felt the hard roots of the rowan bruise his tailbone. The pain was a welcome diversion from the nightmare he was stuck in. If he could just make it stop, he thought. He gripped his hands behind his head. If the deer's blood would just dry up and go away. He opened his eyes. The blood was still there. "Damn you to eternal hell, MacEwen," he cursed Sandra and her herbs for making him relive this day, but his loud oath in no way could overshadow the gut-wrenching howl that cut through the stone walls of the shed. He had heard it so many times since that day, always ringing through his head as he entered the edge of sleep. It was hard to believe, but this time he felt even more pain in his brother's scream than before. Had he really shut so much of it out over the years? Was there something he could have done? Should have done?
He was on his feet, determined to make his presence known this time. Determined, that is, until he saw his father exiting the hut. Lex's fingers gripped the bark of the rowan. A hot flash of fear went through his body. No man had made him feel that kind of fear since childhood. Even in death and dreams his father ruled his every action, his every emotion.
Lex just stood there frozen by the tree, exactly as he had sixteen years ago. He watched his father go down the trail into the woods, then he turned with the eyes of a fearful boy to the door. No one else came out.
The scene was the same. The deer swinging in front of him, bleeding on the ground. The open shed door calling for him to finally come forward. He had already seen and heard more this time than he had the first time he lived through this. Maybe something else had changed. Maybe his brother was still alive or could be saved. His adult strides brought him to the door faster than his fearful youth had. What he saw when his eyes adjusted to the dim firelight again was far more than he could have ever dreamed on his own, and far less than his hopes had led him to reach for.
***
Sandra flopped down on the bed with a huff of frustration, then just as quickly stood back up and smoothed out the wrinkles on the blanket her short sit had left. It was already well past the morning meal and still Lex had not returned to their room. If he was any kind of gentleman he would come looking for her when she did not show up for her meals, and when he did she would set him straight about what they had and had not agreed upon about their hand-fast, and that most certainly would include not disgracing her by leaving their chamber in the middle of the night.
A vision of last night flashed through her head again and she was back on the bed. Why had she reacted to him the way she had? Yes, she had felt desire for him when he kissed her, but what a fool she had been to admit it to him. She pounded her fist into the soft brown blanket she sat on but did not get any satisfaction. She had to stop being so truthful with him, especially if she wanted to hold on to any of the hard-earned respect of his clan. It would be difficult not to speak her mind freely, but she would do it. No more stories of Iain and Derrdra that he did not believe anyway, and she would give him no more excuses to accuse her of seducing him. If he could control his desire, then so could she. It was only a matter of weeks. She could manage it...if only he was not so handsome, so large…so male.
"No!" she scolded herself when her thoughts started to drift in the wrong direction again, away from Mangus. But it was no use. She fell back on the bed and closed her eyes, remembering the way he had felt on top of her, imagining how it would feel when he nuzzled his kisses behind her ears and pressed his weight down all around her.
She opened her eyes and looked around the empty room. "Where are you, Lex?" she asked aloud with more regret than frustration in her voice now. He had to return sometime. How far could he get without his cloak and boots?
Rolling over on her side she glanced over to where he had thrown his boots by the side of the hearth last night as he undressed. She sat straight up. The boots were gone.
A look to the four corners of the room revealed nothing. A quick flip of her head upside down found no boots under the bed either. But she knew he had not taken them with him last night.
He had returned. And she had missed him.
Another quick scan of the room and she saw for the first time that morning a small wooden dish sitting on her dressing table. On it were two oat cakes and three pieces of what looked like dried fruit, but fruit she had never seen before. It had to be from him.
She walked over to the table and inspected the meal more carefully. The oat cakes were cold and rubbery and had soaked up most of the honey that had been drizzled over them. Damn, she thought. He had been here some time ago while she was still asleep. She had missed her chance to catch him alone and put forth her demands. But looking at the simple offering of food, she had a sudden change of heart. She smiled as she picked up the foreign orange dried fruits that were about the size of a large coin. They were specialties from England no doubt, and he had spared a few for her pleasure. What a sweet thought.
She picked up the small dish and cradled it in the palm of her left hand as if it were a precious gift. One nibble of the fancy fruits revealed that it was indeed. They were sugar dried and a delightful change from the plain fare she was used to in the Highlands.
"Oh, Lex," she said with a sigh as she walked out of the room and headed down to the main hall to find him and thank him. "Why could you not be the MacLachlan I was to marry?" Even as she descended the stairs with that sweet dream on her mind and his sweet treat on her tongue, she knew it was a foolish wish. He would never be happy here after having such riches and luxuries in England.
"What has ya so down, Missy Sandra?" came Corkie's booming voice. From anyone else it would have seemed a reprimand, but Sandra knew from the slightly soft edge of her tone that it was as concerned as Corkie could be.
"I am not down," Sandra said with a shake of her head. She wondered what would have made her ask such a thing.
"That is not what those pouting lips of yours are saying." Corkie's hands were on her cinched-in waist and she held a stance that said she would hear no denials. Sandra said nothing, just stared at the sweet little fruit gift in her hand. "Now do not ya be lettin' his wandering with women get ya all puffy-eyed. If there be anythin' I know and know well, it is men. They have to dive in ta every pond before they are sure the first one they liked was the warmest. He will not find any warmth on that hunting shack floor, I tell ya."
Sandra furrowed her brows together and snapped out of her hazy daydreaming. "What did you say?" she asked, unsure of the meaning of anything Corkie really said but knowing it always had something to do with the act of consummation.
Corkie held her dirty washing rag to her mouth with a wide-eyed expression of guilt. "I thought ya knew."
"Knew what?" Sandra said with tight lips as she took two steps closer to Corkie.
The woman did not answer, and actually looked fearful for the first time since Sandra had met her. She was frantically looking around the hall for a distraction, anything that would save her from having to answer to Sandra's inquisition. "Kiss, come on over here and help out Auntie Corkie." She found her shield in the small girl who was playing alone by the fire pit.
Little Kiss ran over like a playful puppy, eager for any attention someone might give her. "Can you show me how to color my face like yours?" Kiss asked with a bright smile and twinkling eyes. It was obvious that she enjoyed spending time with Corkie, a woman so different than any in the Highlands. Hopefully Kiss would not learn too much from her before Corkie returned to England with Lex.
"We will do it later if it is fine by your mother," Corkie assured the girl with a pat to her head using the same dirty rag she had held to her mouth.
"But when will she be back from the hunting shed? I want to play with you now."
Corkie's eyes grew large as she stared at Sandra. Without her expressive help, Sandra would probably not have pieced the two separate parts together. But now she did. Two parts fitted together into one at the hunting shed.
Little Kiss flinched at the loud crack of the wooden plate hitting the stone floor. The sweet fruits bounced in different directions, one even making it into the fire that was Sandra's original target.
"He will be sampling no other waters while he is hand-fasted to me," she hissed under her breath as she headed for the manor doors.
"Listen here, missy, it be too chilled for ya to go out in this cold weather," Corkie pleaded in a last attempt to correct her slip of the tongue and save her precious Lexxie.
Sandra flipped the trailing end of her plaid around her shoulders as she yanked open the huge doors. "I was born in this weather and have lived my whole life in it. All I need is my plaid...and this." She lifted the edge of her calf-length skirt and drew out the small jeweled dagger she kept strapped there for cutting threads at her loom. The blade was not sharp, not meant for cutting flesh. But it would cause enough pain to teach a lesson.
"You are bloomin' mad, girl!" Corkie yelled, but the thick wood of the rowan doors muffled out her last complaints as Sandra marched off across the frozen meadow toward the woods, the hunting woods, where there was a hunting shed in need of cleaning.
Just barely up the wooded hill she slammed headlong into Rory, who was coming down the path in as much of a hurry as she was going up. Neither of them had been watching where they were going, and now they both held their hands to the lumps on their heads.
"What ya be doin' up here, Sandra?" Rory asked as he shook his dazed head and squinted his eyes. "Are ya hurt?"
Sandra pushed both her palms against the ache on her forehead and regained her footing on the uphill path. "I will be fine...once I find Mira." She pushed past him with renewed determination when she mentioned the cheater’s name.
"You will not find her in the hunting hut. She already left," Rory said with a shaking voice.
Sandra turned and looked him in the eyes, two huge, guilty-looking eyes. "Why are you protecting her?" she asked, infuriated that even Rory was trying to hide this from her.
"It is none of her doin'," he pleaded. "If Lex just would have listened to me he would know where her feelin's truly are."
"They just better not be anywhere near his when I find them. While I am hand-fasted to him, he will not disgrace my name and get away with it." With a heavy stomp of her foot, she started back up the trail. The knife she had sheathed for the trip was again gripped tightly in her hand. The shed was near and she was more than ready to poke her dull blade into the first bare skin she saw.
When she emerged from the woods the first thing she saw was the shabby old rock shelter with its door hanging askew on its last remaining leather hinge. "A perfect place for mating...for animals," she said, trying to prepare herself mentally for what she knew lay inside, and with whom he was mating.
All sorts of pictures ran through her mind, including those of her intimate times spent with Lex. How could he? she screamed inside her head. An ache grew in her throat and quickly traveled past her emotional barricades straight to her eyes. Now that she stood near the front of the door she did not know if she could actually confront the two in that state.
A deep groan came from the hut, almost painful sounding, but Sandra had heard many a groan like that in the middle of a dark night in the castle and she knew the men had not been in any pain. "You were a fool to ever let him touch you that way," she said, disgusted with herself for believing there was anything honorable and good about him. Like he could actually be the MacLachlan she would spend her life loving.
She swiped the tears from her eyes with the edge of her tartan and headed for the dark doorway with her dagger held at her side, pointing straight out of her fist. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust once she cleared the doorway, but in the interim she heard no gasps of surprise, nor groans of pleasure, but she did hear a sniffle.
"I know you are here and what you are doing, so it is no use trying to hide in the dark," she said, opening her eyes as wide as possible and straining to see any movement. The shed was small, and when her eyes did make something out in the adjusting light she saw only one figure. A lone figure, slumped on his knees with his face buried in his hands. "So she told you she loves Rory," she stated as calmly as she could through her anger. He had never shown any emotions like this for her. What a fool she was, she berated herself for the hundredth time for letting him into her heart.
"Get out of here," he growled at her without even looking up. It appeared that he wanted to be alone with his broken heart. Ha, like she would give him even that kindness now.
"You might have forced your way on her, but you cannot command me around so easily." She was feeling quite bold with her small dagger in her hand until he stood up from his kneeling position and overshadowed her even in the dark hut.
"Why must you ceaselessly torment me?" he yelled down at her with an ugly sneer. "And who are you babbling on about now?"
"Mira," she answered in almost a whisper. She had thought it was going to come out much louder and stronger, but her voice cracked under his fierce glare.
"She is not here. She ran out of here when I found her in a compromising state with Rory. Now will you leave me in peace?"
"Rory?"
"Aye, Rory. Do I have to remind you who he is as well?"
"They were here together? She was not with you?" Her dagger fell from her hand with a thump on the dirt before he even answered. She knew the answer. At least her heart had always believed it so.
"Why would she be with me? She fancies Rory as if...oh I see now," he said as he picked up her blade. "You were coming to claim what was yours from another woman's clutches."
He was smiling now, his smug smile, and it made her furious all over again. "I have come to claim my honor is all, the honor you continue to spit on without regard."
"When you stand up to your side of the bargain, then you may speak to me of honor. As I see it, I am the one whose requests have been dishonored."
"Ha!" she scoffed, nearly left speechless by his ridiculous claim. "You leave our room in the middle of the night, and none too quietly either, and then prance up here in the light of day with..." She stopped when she realized he was no longer guilty of that last offense.
His one arched brow said he knew it as well. "I will share our chamber gladly when you cease with your tricks and potions. I know you have great pressures on you as the MacEwen Charm, but none of your ghost tales or...this," he flung his hand in a gesture toward nothing in the room in general, "none of what happened here today changes anything."
She took a step back from him. With every word he seemed to grow angrier and what he was saying was not making sense. "Whatever happened here was none of my doing." She darted a quick look behind her for the door. He looked as if he were about to let loose twenty years of pent-up anger and frustration, at what she did not know, but right now she was the only one within his reach.
He took only one step toward her and the safe distance she had just made was negated. "You, MacEwen, are responsible for all that has happened to me." He grabbed her shoulders with a powerful and painful grip. "Because of you and your clan my brother is dead, my mother is dead, and my father is dead. And I am sure if you all have your way, I will follow in their path as well."
Her head was shaking in denial of his words even before he lifted her off the ground. "I do not know what you are talking about."
"About the ghosts who seem to know so much," he said as he brought her face right up to his. "The ghost of my father just taunting me to try to kill him again, and the ghost of my brother, lying here on the floor with his blood spilling out because his heart was cut in half by your father's sword." His eyes were crazy with anger. His lips were twitching as they released his venomous words on her. She could only shake her head. "Why, MacEwen? Huh? Why me? Could not you work your charm on another MacLachlan fool? Did you have to draw me back up to this despicable country and drag me through these bloody memories again?"
"I am sorry," she said in a small voice. She did not know what she was apologizing for exactly, but he had made her feel solely responsible for his agony, an agony that was so clear in his eyes when he pierced her with them that it hurt in her own chest.
"Sorry will not bring them back and it will not change what has already begun between us. Just leave me be."
He put her down suddenly, and more gently than he had snatched her up. It was as if her sorry had actually made a difference. He walked past her out the door without another glance. She watched him make his way to the huge old rowan tree that was like a sentinel standing guard over the shed. He dropped to the ground on his knees and again she was struck by his ache-filled groan. Animal-like and deep, it sounded as if it came from a place within him that not even he wanted to venture, a place that was obviously his personal hell.
Her legs were still quivering with fear from her near brush with being squeezed and shaken to death, but fool that she was with a soft heart, she could not stop herself from following in his path. She had to help in some way if she could. He was hurting and she knew only one way to react.
"Leave me be," he snapped out at her again between clenched teeth. He only turned halfway toward her before he turned away, but it was enough for her to see his face. There were tears already in his eyes. She heard them in his thinly disguised voice. Her own tears welled up instinctively, possibly in hopes of washing away some of the hurt she knew he would never let his own tears do.
"I will not leave you, Lex. Not like this." Against his shrug and twist to get out of her reach, she managed to wrap both her arms around his wide shoulders from behind him where he knelt facing the tree. When he did not fight that, she gently pulled herself in closer until her chin rested on the top of his hair. She cradled him in snugly and felt his whole body release back into her.
The weight of his head fell against her left arm as he turned into her and let out a sob that tore through her like lightning splitting wide a mighty oak that had weathered many storms, but none such as this. Never before had her whole body ached with the hurt of another. It was as if his pain were hers. His loss, her loss. His torment, her nightmare.
In her arms she held the most tender part of a man, but a part so rarely seen. He had surrendered to her, and even though she did not understand his pain, she could soothe it. It was her gift in life, after all.
With short, gentle strokes, her hand caressed the side of his face. Her lips tenderly kissed the other side of his brow. "You do not have to be alone anymore, Lex."
He accepted her offer by clasping his large hands over hers and wrapping himself deeper into her comfort. His pain was still deep, shaking his whole body as he surrendered into her care. "I knew it was you that first night," he said. "I should have left then. Now it is too late."