Rowan's Lady (2 page)

It was those cursed eyes of his that left her with
such a sense of discomfit. 

She studied him more closely as he paced in front
of the tall window. He did not look pleased with her honest answer. He had
raised an eyebrow ever so slightly when she had given it.

After several long moments, Laird Blackthorn
stopped pacing and turned back to face her.

“Ye see, lass, therein lies the problem.”

There was no mistaking his disdain. It was quite
evident in the tightening of his jaw and the hard, icy glower he sent her way.
She was no longer worried over pleasing her husband this night. Instead, she
worried over
surviving
it. The room suddenly felt cold, mayhap from
those cold, dark eyes and the freezing tone of his voice.

“I do no’ want ye to get any notions of fallin’ in
love with me. Fer ’tis a certainty that I will
never
love ye.”

There was no mistaking his meaning. It stung like
an arrow through her heart.

Controlled anger, contempt and derision dripped
from his tongue. Arline knew instinctively that this was a man who said what he
meant and meant what he said.

Any hope that she may have had at someday forging
a bond with her new husband, one made of mutual admiration and respect, fell as
rapidly as a rock from a cliff, landing at her feet with a thud.
Why am I so
cursed when it comes to husbands?

“This marriage,” he told her as he turned away to
look out the window, “is but a farce.”

She forced herself to remain steady. Fear wrapped
itself around her like a cold, wet blanket, sending shivers down her spine.

 “Are ye aware of what was in the marriage
agreement?” he asked. “Of all it entails?”

Words were lodged in her throat. She cleared it
once, then again, and managed to utter a choked ‘aye’. She had not been given
the opportunity to read it with her own eyes. Her father had given her a brief
summation of its contents. But, knowing her father as she did, he had probably
left out some very important details.

“Tell me what ye ken.” His voice was low, steady,
commanding.

“I am to be your wife, in exchange for the troth
of three wagons of food and ten horses, as well as land.” Her mouth had
suddenly turned quite dry, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. What
she would not give for a tipple of whisky.

“And?” he asked.

That was all she knew. Dread thrummed in her
heart. Silently she damned her father to the devil. What on earth had the man
done to her now? “That is all that I ken of it, me laird.”

He came to stand before her, just a step away.

“After one year, one month and one day, if there
be no heir born or conceived, the marriage will be annulled.” He crossed his
arms over his broad chest and stood, glaring. “There will be no heir.”

The only way she could have concealed her surprise
was if she had been hiding under a blanket.

There was no mistaking his ire and no way to
misinterpret his words. There were no “ifs” in his explanation of the marriage
agreement. No wiggle room, no hope. Plain and simple. She’d gone from thinking
him quite a handsome fellow to knowing that behind those good looks lay a cold,
hard man.

He continued to glare with one eyebrow arched as
if he was waiting for her to say something. He shook his head and snorted at
her continued dumbfounded silence.

“There will be no heir,” he repeated.

It was a statement of fact. A point that would not
be argued further or open for any discussion at a future time.

“I’ll not bed ye,” he said bluntly, looking at her
as if he found the mere thought of sharing a bed with her repulsive.

 “I do not love ye Arline. And I never, ever
will.” He turned away from her again. “Do ye understand?”

Aye,
she thought to herself.
I
understand far more than ye ken.
She took a deep breath and muttered her
affirmation at his back.

“I think ye need to understand more fully what be
at stake here.” He took a deep breath. “Ye see, I
am
capable of lovin’ a
woman.”

Lady Arline’s stomach plunged to her toes.

“I simply will no’, under any circumstance love
ye. Me heart, ye see, belongs to another,” he tossed his remark over his
shoulder.

Her surprise was quickly replaced with a sense of
numbness. “If yer heart belongs to another, then why did ye agree to marry me?”

He turned around slowly, the derision he felt toward
her plainly written in the hard lines of his face. “Have ye met me father yet?”

Lady Arline shook her head. “Nay, I haven’t.”

“Ye be no’ missin’ much. He’s a whoreson if ever
there was one. He does no’ like the woman who
does
own me heart. I had
to marry
ye
in order to get the fool off me back.” Crossing his arms
over his broad chest, the lines of his face hardened further, deeper. “In a
year’s time, this marriage
will
be annulled. Make no mistake of that.”

Arline lifted her chin showing him that she did
not care. ’Twas in fact, the opposite of what she truly felt. She
did
care.

Not for him precisely, but for all that could have
been.

“So we will pretend then, m’laird, to be married
for the next year, only to satisfy the marriage agreement?” she asked him
through gritted teeth.

For the first time she saw him smile. The curve of
his lips did nothing to ease her fears or worry.

“Yer no’ nearly as daft as I’ve been told,” he
said. “I’m glad ye see it then, lass. One year, one month and one day and this
marriage
will
be annulled.”

Arline wondered what her father would think of
this and immediately decided that she did not care. In a year’s time she would
be of an age where she would no longer be forced to marry
any
man. Ever.

If Laird Blackthorn did not want her, then so be
it. She would play along with this farce in order to gain the freedom she had
been denied her entire life. She could travel the world, come and go as she
pleased and she’d never be forced to answer to anyone but her own heart.

Although the thought of freedom brought a tingling
sensation that spread throughout her body, her heart felt empty. Void. And she
felt severely
lacking.

It was enough to break a weaker woman’s heart. But
Lady Arline refused to be weak. There wasn’t a man in all this world worthy of
her heart, let alone one worthy of breaking it.

He turned to face her again. “I’ll no hear any
complainin’ from ye. Ye’ll do as I say, when I say it. Ye’ll stay in yer room
unless I give ye permission to leave,” he began listing his rules, ticking them
off one by one. “Do no’ ever question me or any decision I make fer ye’ll
suffer fer it, that I promise.”

He came to stand before her again. This time, he
lowered his face only inches from hers. It took every ounce of courage she had
to look him in the eye.

“Lady Arline, ye will heed me warnin’. Ye do as I
say, and ye may just get out of this marriage alive.”

He quit her chamber then, without so much as a by
your leave. His warning hung the air, long after he left, like damp, heavy fog.
Though a fire burned in the fireplace, the air still felt chilled, cold, filled
with his inescapable warning.

Now she knew the secret that lay hidden in his
dark eyes: sheer unadulterated hatred. And all of it reserved for her.

With her arms and hands still trembling, she
walked to her closet, found the trunk that held her writing materials, her
embroidery, and art supplies. On shaking knees, she rummaged through until she
found a piece of charcoal she used for sketching.

Quietly, she closed the lid and scooted across the
wood floor to the back of the closet. She drew a short line on the wall.
One
day down.
With a heavy sense of dread, she slid the trunk across the floor
to hide the mark that had begun her countdown to freedom.

Taking in steady breaths she hoped would calm her
nerves, she left the closet and climbed into her bed, drawing the covers up to
her chin. A hundred blankets would not be enough to quell the chill she felt.

Earlier, before speaking with her husband, she had
been worried over things that now seemed mundane by comparison. Less than an
hour ago, she had been nervously pacing her room, hopeful that she would be
able to please her husband and begin to build a future with him.

She cursed under her breath; angry with her heart
for allowing even a glimmer of hope for the life she so desperately wanted. A
husband who would care about her feelings, a husband she could admire and
respect. She wanted children. Lots of children. Arline longed for a home filled
with love, laughter, bairns …peace.

She would survive the next year. She would
not
let
Laird Blackthorn of Ayrshire win.

The cursed dreams were always the same, varying
only in intensity and their ability to completely unsettle Lady Arline’s
nerves. She hated these dreams filled with a faceless man on horseback who was
coming to rescue her, to whisk her away from Laird Blackthorn.

Though she could never see his face, something in
her heart told her he was a fine looking man. The dream would not allow her to
see him clearly. It was like trying to hold fog in the palm of your hand. You
mayhap could
feel
the damp, wet air, but you could not hold on to it.

The faceless hero of her dreams would soothe away
her fears with tender kisses and the touch of his gentle hands. He would mend
her, put her back to rights, and give her a life filled with love, laughter,
and hope.

That was how she felt in the deep, dark of night,
in those traitorous dreams.

During the day, however, when she had better
control of her faculties, she thought differently. She knew that in reality, no
such man existed.

Four and twenty years of age, her hopes of a happy
life had been repeatedly quashed, with the multiple failed marriages her father
had arranged. No longer did she yearn for that happy life, filled with a
husband’s love and too many bairns to count. Concluding that such dreams led to
nothing but heartache, she decided that once her marriage to Blackthorn was
annulled,
she
would be in charge of her own destiny. No longer would she
be subjected to her father’s consistently bad matchmaking choices. World travel
seemed to be the smartest way to keep her heart safe.

Once she was away from Blackthorn, she would
demand that her father hand over her funds -- money that was rightfully hers,
left to her by her first husband
--
money her father had been waiting to
get his fat greedy fingers on for years. With it, she would take her sisters,
Morralyn and Geraldine away. They would book safe passage and travel the world.
They would meet all sorts of new and interesting people and live out the rest
of their days in blissful solitude. Most importantly, she would live it without
the aid of a husband. She would protect her heart from any further
disappointment. She would do her best to keep her sisters from the miserable
existence that came with ill-suited husbands.

Arline had constructed an invisible shield around
her heart with a promise that soon she would be in charge of her own life and
future. She would allow no one access to it. Hopes, dreams, those things led to
nothing but heartache and regret. She would live the rest of her life without
any expectations. She would simply
live.

This night, as she dreamt again of the faceless
hero, somewhere in the recesses of the dream, was the sound of a child crying.
As the crying grew louder the foggy image of her faceless hero faded.

Half asleep, her thoughts muddled, lingering
somewhere between a sweet dream and reality, she pulled her blanket more
tightly around her chin and tried to fall back to sleep. In the daylight hours,
she would never admit to anyone, not even herself, that she
did
have a
strong desire for a tall, handsome husband who would woo her with a bright
smile and tender kisses. She fought to pull the image of the man back into the
forefront of her mind and to shoo the crying child away. But the stubborn child
continued to cry, the sound of it growing louder and sounding quite close.

The plaintive wail floated into her room again.
Shaking away the fog, she sat up in her bed and rubbed away the sleep with her
fingertips. She sat still and strained her ears to listen. Mayhap it was the
wind she heard and not a child’s cry.

An ominous sensation prickled across her skin as
the sound again floated in on the dark night air. The cries grew louder and
sounded as though they were coming from the fireplace.

Flinging her legs over the edge of her bed, she
tucked her bare feet into her slippers as she pulled her robe from the end of
her bed. Slipping her arms into the sleeves, she tip-toed across the floor to
stand beside the fireplace.

As the low embers burned and crackled, the sound
floated in once again.

She had not been dreaming. It
was
a child’s
cry that she heard. But whose? There were no children living inside the walls
of the keep. Anyone with children lived in little cottages scattered here and
there.

Whoever this child was or belonged to, he or she
was
not
at all happy. The wailing continued to float into her room,
along with the low grumbling of male voices.

Arline had lived in the keep for a little over a
year. She knew the sounds were coming from the grand gathering room just one
floor below her bedchamber. Night after night she had lain awake listening to
the raucous, drunken revelry that took place in that room. A room she was no
longer allowed to enter due to her husband’s severe dislike of her.

Instinct told her the child was terrified.
Curiosity grew and swelled along with the child’s cries. The men’s grumbling
grew worse, angrier.