The MacNaughton Bride (12 page)

He slammed the door behind
him, leaving
Aislinn
to sit in a heap in the middle
of the bed and wonder just exactly what it was that he thought she’d done, and
why in Heaven’s name someone would put blood into a chicken bladder.

It was several boring hours
later when Jenny finally arrived, opening the door slowly and looking carefully
behind her and up and down the hall before she disappeared into the room.
 
She flew to her charge, having seen
both the bloody sheet, and her Lord’s behavior of this morning.
 
He was charging around the place like a
bear with a thorn in his paw – nothing he saw and nothing he did was
right, and anyone else’s efforts were beyond consideration.

Jenny had been spending
time below stairs, chatting with the other servants, who were a little in awe
of her inclusion in the marriage ceremony.
 
Jenny had explained to them that the
MacNaughton’s
brother had insisted, and that their Lady was like a daughter to her, having
lost her own mother at birth.
 

The servants were all baffled
by Lord
MacNaughton’s
behavior.
 
From what she could glean from them,
this was an aberration.
 
He wasn’t
an easy man to work for by any means – he demanded a lot from his people,
but it wasn’t anything more than he was willing to do himself.
 
He expected their best effort from
everyone, himself included.
 
People
were clamoring to come work for him, and those who did were well cared for
– he made sure those who wanted them had good houses and wages, and he
encouraged his servants to marry and have families, and he made it easier to do
so than he might have.

No one could come up with a
reasonable explanation for why he would be in such a bad mood – he’d just
married a gorgeous woman who came to him an innocent and seemed to be
interested in joining her husband’s family and observing the clan’s
traditions.
 
What more could he ask
for?

The general consensus was
that one could never tell with the gentry, but that didn’t really set well with
most of the staff.
 
They felt they
knew this man better.
 
He wasn’t given
to fits of temper that weren’t attributable to something – thieves, bad
weather, sickness, something.

Jenny was growing more and
more alarmed the more she heard from everyone else.
 
Something had gone badly wrong.
 
Finally, she was able to sneak away from them and go to her
Lady’s room.

Aislinn
was just sitting in the middle of the bed, biting her lip, deep in
thought.
 

“Milady, did something
happen between you and Lord
MacNaughton
?”

Aislinn
didn’t have any interest in answering that question.
 
Instead, she asked, “Jenny, why would there be a bladder
full of blood on my headboard?”

It was Jenny’s turn to bite
her lip.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
That was my fault.
 
I wanted to let you know about it and
explain how to use it, but I didn’t – I couldn’t.
 
It – it – “

“You left it?
 
Why?” the word shot back at Jenny
accusatorily.
 
“Explain everything
to me.
 
All of it,”
Aislinn
demanded.

Her face flaming the entire
time, and completely unable to meet the other woman’s eye, Jenny got the story
out in fits and starts – but enough that
Aislinn
had a good idea why
Kell
had reacted like that.
 
Of course, it would have been nice if
he’d given her a chance to explain as much as she could and not just jump to
conclusions, but the evidence against her was quite damning.

Better armed and informed
about what had happened and what would happen between herself and her husband
– if he ever spoke to her again –
Aislinn
felt sure she could explain the situation to
Kell
calmly and quietly, so that he would understand that she hadn’t known what
Jenny had done, and that she had no idea what it was for even after he
discovered it.

The only way to prove her
virginity to him seemed to be to let him do what Jenny had very reluctantly
described the bare bones of as what transpired between a married man and his
wife.
 
Personally,
Aislinn
couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do
something that disgusting, but she would go along with it to clear her name and
restore her husband’s faith in her, she supposed.
 
Although she wasn’t very happy that he was so quick to jump
to conclusions about her with only that small amount of proof.
 
As Jenny had described, he could easily
have done an examination of her person – however humiliating it would be
to her, she was sure he wouldn’t have hesitated if he’d thought of it –
to determine her innocence.
 

But instead he decided to
believe that she would participate in some sort of a conspiracy to dupe him
into accepting her as his wife, even though she was – according to his
conclusions – a soiled woman.
 
Well,
Aislinn
thought, he didn’t know her very
well, but he would.
 
And he should
have given her the benefit of the doubt – should have sat down with her
and discussed what had happened and heard her side of the story rather than
jumping to incorrect conclusions and making her a veritable prisoner in this
room.

If she couldn’t get out of
the house without and escort, then she was going to have to rely on Jenny and
Arthur to take care of
Adelle
and explain to her that
Aislinn
was all right, just in
dutch
with her new husband already because of a misunderstanding.

It was almost a week before
she was able to get out of that bedroom, and if it hadn’t been for Jenny and
the servants who brought her meals,
Aislinn
would
have gone stark raving crazy.
 
As
it was, Jenny spent as much time as she dared with her – apparently their
new master had decided that since
Aislinn
wasn’t
going anywhere, that Jenny needed other tasks to occupy her time, so she had
been consigned to the kitchen a lot of the time, but she had been able to steal
some books from
himself’s
library, on the sly.
 
Aislinn
had
never been so happy to see books in her life, and she loved them more than most
people.

Although his library was
apparently very well stocked with all sorts of classic literature,
Aislinn
was slowly becoming of a mind that the rest of the
household in general needed some work.
 
Having spent innumerable hours in that bedroom, she noticed early on
that there was quite a bit of dusty on every flat surface, and that the rugs
badly needed beating.
 
The room
became stuffy and smelly very quickly . . . and that wasn’t saying anything
about the quality of the food – or rather the distinct lack thereof.

She had had some of it at
the reception, but it had all tasted like so much sludge to her, anyway at that
point.
 
The food wasn’t the high
point of the day, as far as she was concerned.
 
It wasn’t any part of that day.
 
But now, eating it three meals a day, she realized very
quickly that it wasn’t up to snuff.
 
Especially not for something from the kitchen of a Highland
Chieftan
and a man with a British title to his name.
 
His food should have been impeccable.

After two days of eating
that slop,
Aislinn
declined to ingest one more ounce
of that horrid fair.
 
Jenny was
nowhere to be found when she decided that, and wasn’t the one who brought her
her
evening tray.
 
Instead, it was a small, mousy woman she’d seen before –
Sile
.
 
She
scurried in, obviously nervous, and set the tray down on
Aislinn’s
bedside table, turning immediately to go.

“
Sile
?”
 

The woman jumped when
Aislinn
said her name, even though she deliberately used
her softest tone possible.
 
“Yes,
Ma’am?”
 
Aislinn
could see her shake as she turned back towards her.

Aislinn’s
gaze settled on a dirty bandage that decorated the small woman’s forearm.
 
Gliding forward,
Aislinn
exclaimed, “Oh, you’ve hurt yourself!
 
What happened?” as she reached out to the girl, who shrank back
immediately.

Sighing,
Aislinn
sat down on the bed, ignoring the offensive stench
that wafted to her nose from the tray to her side.
 
“
Sile
, I’d like to help you.
 
Please come here so that I can look at
your arm.”

It didn’t take the
frightened girl very long to decide to that obeying her was probably better
than the consequences of not, but she moved forward very reluctantly, until she
was barely within
Aislinn’s
reach.
 
Aislinn
patted her lap.
 
“Put your arm
right here, please.”

But
Sile
snatched her arm back instead.
 
“I
couldna
do that, Ma’am.”

“And why not?”

“I’d be getting your pretty
dress all dirty . . . “

Aislinn
snuffed.
 
“No need to worry about
that,
Sile
.
 
It’s been much dirtier, believe me.”
 
She deliberately caught the girl’s eye, and smiled broadly,
holding out her hand.

Sile
again approached her like she was going to certain death, but eventually
Aislinn
was able to position that pathetically thin arm on
her lap.
 
When she began to untie
the dirty rags that were covering the wound,
Sile
began to wail, as if in anticipation of terrible pain, although
Aislinn
was going as slowly and being as careful as she
could.
 
The closer she got to the
burn, the worse the pain, because the rags were sticking to the seeping skin,
and removing them was tugging and tearing the flesh.

“
Shhahhh
,
shahhh
,
shahhhhhh
,”
Aislinn
soothed wordlessly, automatically the way Jenny
used to soothe her many hurts when she was a rambunctious little girl.
 
What was revealed was an oval burn,
about two inches wide and four inches long – not too deep, but wicked
looking and extremely painful.
 
The
initial blister had burst, leaving raw, tortured skin that had just been tugged
and ripped.
 
It was bleeding and
seeping fluid.

Aislinn
looked over at her dinner – some sort of unrecognizable meat and a runny,
tasteless gravy, as well as over boiled potatoes.
 
“
Sile
, go down to the kitchen and
bring me two good handfuls of the potato scraps – the skins that were
peeled off them.
 
Nothing else,
just the skins.
 
Oh, and a hot cup
of water.”
 
She looked at the tea
cup on the tray and new it was lukewarm at best.

Sile
looked at
Aislinn
like she’d just commanded her to
scale Everest.
 
“But, Ma’am . . .”

Aislinn
stood and said again, firmly, “Potato skins and a cup of hot water.
 
Go now and come right back.”

Sile
left quickly, mainly because she was glad to get away from the Lady
MacNaughton
.
 
She was terrified, but she knew she must do as she was told.
 
So she skulked about as carefully as
she could, but not one was much bothering the kitchen scraps at this point
– eventually they’d be fed to the animals, but they were still in a pile
outside.
 
The cup of water was harder,
but she managed to get it once the cook left to use the necessary.

When she returned, Lady
MacNaughton
was sitting on the side of the bed again,
rummaging in some sort of valise, pulling out various small jars of
things.
 
She took the cup from
Sile
and poured some sort of powder and chunks of something
into the steaming water, stirring it around a little with the spoon, then
presenting it to
Sile
.
 
“Drink it slowly.
 
It will ease your pain.”