Rowan's Lady (3 page)

Good sense dictated she should stay put, stay out
of her husband’s line of vision as well as his wrath. It cautioned her that
whatever was going on below stairs was none of her business. She had but two
weeks left to survive the farce called her marriage. Two weeks. Fourteen days.
Survive
fourteen more days and ye’ll be free.

But the child’s shrieks grew louder. The grumbles
were turning into shouts and bellowing. The angrier the child grew, the angrier
the men grew.

Something was very much wrong below stairs. As the
moments ticked by, caution and the desire to survive fell to the wayside.
Though Lady Arline had never been blessed with a child of her own, something
instinctively maternal kicked in. It tugged at her conscience, her heart,
urging her forward.

Before she realized it, she had left her room and
was quietly stepping down the stairs toward the grand gathering room.

Her heart nearly stopped at the scene before her.

A great commotion was taking place. Garrick and at
least ten of his men were standing in the middle of the gathering room. One of
them, whose name she didn’t know for they’d never been formally introduced,
stood near the fireplace holding a red-faced cherub of a child!

Long auburn ringlets tumbled over the child’s
shoulders. The poor thing wore nothing but a nightdress. No shoes, no robe, no
cloak. Lady Arline’s earlier assessment that the child sounded angry had been
correct. Her little face was red with fury, her hands balled into fists as she
wailed and screamed at her captor.

“Stop that screamin’!” Garrick shouted toward the
child. “I swear, I’ll beat ye senseless if ye do no’ stop!”

Arline knew it was not a threat, but a promise.
Her husband was nothing if not honest.

Without thinking, Arline flew down the last few
steps, raced into the gathering room and grabbed the child from the man’s arms.
He responded with mouth agape before his expression changed to one of relief.

Arline bounced the child in her arms as she
whispered soothing words into her ears.

“Wheesht, babe, wheesht,” Arline said as she
pressed the child close to her breast.

Some time had passed as Arline became oblivious to
the men surrounding her. She continued to offer soft, soothing words. It wasn’t
until the child began to calm that Arline became aware that all eyes in the
room were on her.

When her eyes fell to Laird Blackthorn, she knew
she had made a terrible mistake. He was beyond angry. He looked positively
livid.

It was no longer a matter of surviving the next
two weeks. It was now a matter of surviving what remained of the night.

“I’m sorry, me laird,” she whispered as she
continued to pat the child’s back. “She sounded so distressed. I wanted nothing
but to help calm her before she drove any of you to madness.”

As soon as the last words left her mouth, she
realized she may have not phrased them correctly. Her husband’s jaw worked back
and forth, and she could see the vein in his neck throb. Two weeks had turned
to two hours, but now, she wondered if it weren’t but a matter of moments she
had left to walk the earth alive.

The babe thrust her thumb into her mouth and
hiccuped. Arline felt the child begin to relax in her arms and decided that she
had made the right decision. Even if it meant angering her husband to the point
of murder, she could not allow an innocent child to be harmed.

When Laird Blackthorn next spoke, his words were
clipped and teeming with fury. “Give the child to Torren.
Now.
”

Every fiber of her being screamed for her to do as
her husband demanded. Her heart, however, begged to comfort and calm the bairn.
She hesitated a moment too long.

Laird Blackthorn was before her in three fast
strides. Without a word, he yanked the child from Arline’s arms and thrust her
into Torren’s. The child began to cry out again, her little arms outstretched
toward Arline.

“I warned ye before, do no’ defy me.
Ever.
”
Blackthorn spoke through gritted teeth as he grabbed Lady Arline’s by her
forearms.

She gasped with surprise the moment he took hold
of her arms. His fingers dug in to her flesh, squeezing tightly before giving
her a good shake before tossing her to the floor.

“I’m sorry, me laird!” Arline squeaked out. “I
meant only to comfort the babe.”

“I do no’ give a damn what ye meant to do. Ye go
back to yer room and ye stay there!” he ground out as he angrily threw her to
the floor.

The child cried louder, inconsolable, and afraid.
Her cries were too much for Arline’s heart to bear.

“Please, me laird,” Arline begged. “Let me help,
let me help ye with the bairn!”

Laird Blackthorn loomed over Arline. In one swift
motion, he bent at the waist and gave her a harsh, heavy slap to her face with
the back of his hand.

Arline fell backward as blood filled her mouth.
The shock of being hit overwhelmed her. She was stunned, too stunned to cry. No
one had ever hit her before. Not even her father, cruel as he was, had ever
laid an angry hand on her.

Blackthorn hauled her to her feet by her arms. “That
was the last time ye beg me fer anythin’, including yer life.”

As Garrick angrily shoved her away, two of his men
caught her, each grabbing an arm. With a quick nod from Blackthorn, the two men
dragged Arline away. As they hauled her up the stairs to her room, she didn’t
know which hurt worse; her broken and bleeding mouth, her arms where the men
grabbed her, or her heart as she listened to the wailing babe she was forced to
leave with her furious husband.

Arline had been unceremoniously and quite rudely
tossed into her room. As much as she wanted to cry out and curse the ground her
husband and his men walked on, she did not possess such boldness or bravery.
Instead, she poured cold water from a pitcher into her washbasin. Her hands
trembled so much that she had a difficult time holding the washcloth. After
several attempts, she took a few deep breaths and somehow managed to clean the
blood from her face.

A little more than a year had passed since she’d
arrived at Blackthorn Castle. Her hatred for her husband had grown with each
day that had gone by. But these last four months had been the worst of her
life. After the events that took place below stairs, Arline doubted a word had
been created yet that would describe the absolute and intense hatred she now
felt for Garrick Blackthorn.

 After washing her face she started to pace in
front of her fireplace. Tiny beads of sweat clung to her upper lip, her stomach
felt as hard as stone, her nerves a jumbled mess as she waited for her
husband’s punishment to be meted out. Without a doubt, she knew she had signed
her own death warrant the moment she took the babe into her arms. Garrick would
kill her for her transgression, for defying him in front of his men.

 While she knew her death was imminent, she worried
more over the babe than for her own wellbeing.

Garrick would not be swift in killing Arline. Nay,
he would make sure that she suffered first. Horrible. Painful. Brutal. Laird
Blackthorn had made that promise on more than one occasion over the past year.
There was nothing in their history together that would prove otherwise.

The image of the terrified little girl pulled and
twisted Arline’s stomach into knots. Such a beautiful little cherub with auburn
curls and big blue eyes, or she could have been had she not been crying and
frightened.

She knew not to whom the babe belonged and decided
it didn’t matter. Chances were the child had been taken from her parents to be
held for ransom. Garrick Blackthorn was just that kind of man. One who would
take a child from the loving bosom of its family for a bag of coins.

Prior to her father-in-law’s death four months
ago, Arline’s stay had been comfortable albeit boring. She had been allowed to
visit the chapel every morning and to take walks around the keep. At night, she
would sit next to her husband at the evening meal, pretending to enjoy herself
and married life.

Richard Blackthorn’s death had changed all of that.

Now, she was kept secluded in her room, with the
door oftentimes barred from the outside. She was no longer allowed her daily
visit to the chapel, nor could she walk freely about the keep. Her meals, if
one could call them that, were brought to her room. Her lady’s maid, Margaret,
had been reassigned to work elsewhere in the keep.

Arline was fully alone every hour of the day save
for when her meals were brought to her or when maids came with clean linens.
They rarely spoke to her save for a
yes m’lady
or
no m’lady.
Arline supposed they were as terrified of Garrick Blackthorn as she was.

To help stave off insanity from her solitude, she
read the books she had brought with her from Ireland. When she wasn’t reading,
she worked on her embroidery, her sewing or her painting, though she was far
better with her stitches than her brush strokes.

She wrote letters to her two sisters, Morralyn and
Geraldine. Letters that she could not send per Garrick’s decree that she have
no contact with anyone outside the keep.

It mattered not to Arline that her sisters were
the illegitimate castoffs of her father, she loved them all the same. Each had
a different mother but they all had one thing in common: a father who cared
very little for any of them.

Her mind wandered hither and yon as she paced and
chewed on her thumbnail. She could hear her father’s voice in the back of her
mind, chastising her for her own stupidity.
Ye couldn’t keep yer mouth shut,
lass. Ye just
had
to step in. Ye only had two weeks left!

A cold shiver fell over her skin as she thought of
her father. Arline didn’t believe it was his actual intention to be mean or
cruel. It was simply how he was. The man was blunt, to the point, and always
went straight to the heart of any matter. Arline supposed that if her mother
still lived, she would have had her to go to in times of trouble and doubt. As
it was, her mother had died when Arline was seven, left to be raised by a man
who made no qualms about how easier
his
life would have been had Arline
been born a lad instead of a lass.

Now here she was, consigned to her rooms and for
the briefest of moments she found herself wishing her father
was
here.
She didn’t necessarily miss the man, but she knew that her father would keep
her from being killed by her husband. Aye, she may have to agree to another
arranged marriage, but even that was better than death.

At the moment, she was more than tempted to
bargain with the devil himself in order to ensure the safety of the little girl
below stairs and to live through the next two weeks. What she needed was a
plan, a way out of this mess and a way to keep the child out of harm’s way.

Mayhap she should throw herself at her husband’s
mercy and beg. Begging wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if it meant she would have
the chance to live through the next sennight. And it would be worth it in the
end, if she knew she had saved the child.

Bribery was another option. Arline’s father had
been holding onto a substantial sum of coin for her. It was a large amount,
left to her by her first husband. She had hoped to use the funds to travel the
world, once this farce of a marriage was annulled.

Strictly speaking, she couldn’t actually get her
hands on the funds until she reached the age of five and twenty, just a few
months away. Under her current circumstances however, she felt certain her
father would part with it if it meant securing her life and future.

Arline was jostled out of her thoughts by a
commotion that was taking place in the hallway outside her chambers. Sounds of
heavy feet and grumbling, agitated men’s voices grew louder as they neared her
rooms.

Arline stopped pacing and pulled the heavy, iron
poker from its stand next to her fireplace and hid it behind her. She was
uncertain at the moment, just what made her decide she’d not go down without a
fight. Insanity perhaps, or the maternal instincts she’d not known she
possessed until less than an hour ago. Or it could be something all together
different. Whatever it was, it did not matter. She was determined to keep
breathing for at least a few moments more.

Arline nearly jumped from her skin when the bar on
her door was thrust upward. The scraping sound made her skin prickle with fear.
She could feel her blood rush from her face when five large, angry-looking men
hurried into her room without so much as a knock or polite request to enter.
Rude beasts, every last one of them.

Her husband led the pack of men into her room, but
left them near her door as his heavy feet pounded across the floor. Garrick
towered over her, his face red with anger, his blue eyes nearly black with
rage. He made no attempt to hide his displeasure, his anger. Arline’s head
began to swim with fear.

She tried to look him in the eye but could not.
The courage she had mustered only moments ago fell away the instant he stood
before her. Arline felt very much like a fool as she tightened her grip on the
iron she hid at her back.
Courage, ye foolish woman!
She cursed
silently.
Ye had it a moment ago. Do no’ let the bastard win.

“Ye will never,
ever
defy me again,”
Garrick seethed as he grabbed Arline’s forearms. “Do ye understand that?”

Garrick had grabbed her so suddenly and with such
force that she let loose her grasp on the iron. Thankfully, it did not tumble
to the floor but instead it fell toward her and rested against her bottom.

“Aye, m’laird,” she scratched out, nodding her
head rapidly.

“I will give ye no more chances,” he said as he
dug his fingers into her arms and shook her. “Do ye hear me words, woman?”

Her arms burned where he dug into them. Biting her
lip to keep from crying out -- which was no easy feat for it stung considerably
-- Arline nodded her head again and held her breath. He had given her a
reprieve. For what reason she could not at the moment understand nor did she
care. She would simply be thankful for it.