Highland Sinner (32 page)

“Make her scream, Small.”

A grinning Small slowly ran his knife tip down the inside of one thigh and up the other. Morainn desperately wanted to scream for the pain was even worse than before, but her fury at him and his perverted mistress held it back. As soon as she dared open her mouth again, she cursed them both. It was not long before Morainn was silently praying as hard as she knew how for Tormand to find her before she ran out of curses or blood.

Tormand stood with the others and stared at the hovel the dog had led them to. He wanted to race inside, sword swinging, but a shred of common sense smothered the urge. He did not have any knowledge of the place he would be running into and could easily get himself killed. That would do no one any good. At least he knew Morainn was alive. They had all heard her curses long before they had seen the long deserted cottage.

“Do ye think her father was a sailor?” asked Harcourt, as a particularly vicious insult concerning Small’s father and his unnatural love of sheep echoed through the air.

It surprised him that he could do so, but Tormand briefly smiled. “’Tis possible. She does have a unique way with an insult.”

“I hadnae wanted to, but I had expected to hear screams of pain.”

“The pain is there.” Tormand could hear it, almost feel it. “But Morainn has worked herself up into a glorious fury. And, I think, she is determined not to give the bastards e’en a whisper of a plea for mercy.”

“Ah, weel, I can understand that but, if she doesnae give them what they want, they could kill her quickly instead of continuing to torment her.”

“Aye, they could, but e’en Morainn’s stubbornness cannae hold back the pain and fear for verra long, which is why we had best rescue her soon.” He looked at Simon. “How do we do this?”

Simon opened his mouth to reply when one of their horses gave a loud challenge to one of the horses grazing in front of the cottage. It came in a brief moment of silence and cut through the air like the blare of a horn. Tormand looked at Simon who nodded and they all started running toward the cottage. A huge man burst out of the cottage nearly carrying a small brown-haired woman. Tormand saw Bennett at his side and, with one sharp move of his hand, sent his brother to the cottage. Tormand then forced all thought of Morainn out of his mind and fixed his attention firmly on the two people trying to escape the justice they so richly deserved.

The big man was just reaching out to grasp the reins of his horse when Tormand hurled himself at the man

’s back. With an ear-piercing screech the woman stumbled back, deserting the man who had been trying to save her. Tormand got Small pinned to the ground and suddenly saw Simon leap over him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Simon knock the woman down. The glint of a knife told Tormand that he had been wrong to assume she had been deserting Small. That mistake had nearly earned him a knife buried
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in his back.

Small suddenly lunged up and threw Tormand off his back. Drawing his sword the man started toward Simon and the woman who was thrashing wildly in Simon’s grasp and screaming out curses. Tormand drew his sword, but the sound attracted Small’s attention and he abruptly turned back to Tormand, sword in hand. For a moment, Tormand actually wondered if he could win against this man who was so much bigger and stronger than he was. It did not take him long to see that even though Small had more height, more strength, a longer reach, and was surprisingly fast for such a large man, he did not have the skill with a sword that Tormand did. The man was also distracted by the screams of Ada MacLean and that cost him. One bad stumble, one fleeting glance toward Ada, and the man ended his life with Tormand’s sword buried in his chest.

After cleaning off his sword and sheathing it, Tormand moved to where Simon stood next to a securely bound Ada. The woman stared at Small’s body, her grief a scar upon her plain face. Then she turned to look at Tormand and the hatred in her expression was so fierce he almost took a step back. The madness afflicting the woman began to spill out in a litany of vile curses and gruesome threats that filled the silence until Tormand looked at Simon.

“Please, gag the bitch,” he said. “I must see how Morainn fares,” Tormand announced, as Simon hurried to silence Ada, and he strode toward the cottage.

Morainn stared at the door her two tormentors had suddenly, and swiftly, left through. A moment later Ada’s screams filled the air and Morainn’s relief was so great it almost deadened her pain. When Bennett strode in, however, all she could think of was where was Tormand? Then Bennett tossed a coarse blanket over her and she remembered that she was naked and staked out like some sacrifice to a pagan god. She felt herself blush as he cut the restraints on her wrists and ankles.

“My clothes,” she said, and hissed in a breath as pain swept over her when he helped her sit up.

“Walin?”

“The boy is fine,” replied Bennett, as he collected up her clothing and began to help her get dressed with an efficiency she had to admire. “I am nay sure I should put these on ye until your wounds are cleaned and dressed.”

“I will deal with my wounds when I get home.” She winced a little as he had to tear a few strips off her petticoat to use to tie the gown on her when it became clear that it had been cut off. “I cannae ride away from here naked.” Even though she had done little to help herself get dressed, she felt weak and was breathing hard. Then she heard the clash of swords. “Tormand?”

“Is one of the best swordsmen I have e’er kenned. Now, lean against me if ye must keep sitting up. Ye have more cuts on ye than I wished to count and many are still bleeding.”

Morainn did not argue. She fought the need to close her eyes and let unconsciousness ease her pain.

Despite Bennett’s assurances about Tormand’s skill with a sword, she needed to see him. When he finally walked into the cottage, handsome and whole, she almost wept. The look on his face told her that she was not looking very hale herself, however.

“’Tis all right,” she said, as he crouched beside her and took her away from Bennett, enfolding her gently in his own arms. “They are all shallow cuts.”

“Your gown is soaked in blood,” Tormand said. “We need to tend to these wounds.”

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“Nay here. Please, nay here.”

“She insisted on getting dressed,” said Bennett. “Said she could tend her wounds at home.”

“Aye,” Morainn said, clutching at Tormand’s arm with one shaky hand. “Nay here. I want to leave this place; I
need
to leave this place. Now.” She managed to spit out the last word before the blackness she had been holding back swept over her, taking her away from the pain.

Tormand quickly put his hand over her heart, felt its steady beat, and was able to push back the panic that had seized him when she had gone limp in his arms. She was alive. For now that was all that mattered.

“Caught tight, arenae ye?” murmured Bennett.

“Aye,” replied Tormand. “Like running salmon in a weel-cast net. But, first, I must get her healed and strong again.”

“And then?”

“Then I pray she doesnae decide to throw this fish back and walk away.”

Chapter 18

Pain was the first thing Morainn was aware of as she fought her way out of the clinging web of sleep.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and glanced around. Even as she realized she was in Tormand’s bedchamber, she recalled everything that had happened to her and fear swept over her. She also wondered why she had a sudden urge to weep like a lost child.

“Morainn?”

Tormand rose from his seat by the bed and moved closer to Morainn. Her hand was clenching the blanket so tightly he feared she would tear it, so he took her hand in his, lightly brushing his thumb over her whitened knuckles. For four long days he had watched over her, cared for her during a thankfully brief and mild bout of fever, and waited for her to come back to him. That she had woken up afraid hurt his heart.

“Ye are safe now, Morainn,” he assured her, as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Small is dead and they hanged Ada MacLean this morning.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, pushing the fear out along with the air. Once her fear was greatly eased, Morainn realized that her pain was not really that severe. That implied that she was already healing.

“How long?” she asked, wincing as she forced the words past her painfully dry throat.

“Four days,” he replied, as he moved quickly to get her some cider sweetened with honey to soothe her throat.

As he helped her drink, Tormand studied her carefully. The moment they had arrived at his home, he had placed her on his bed and stripped off her bloody clothes. That first sight of her bruised and slashed body had nearly brought him to his knees. He did not think he would ever be able to forget that sight, but seeing that she was looking better and the wounds she had suffered had not festered, lessened the power
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of it.

“Nora said she and her mother would come round later this morning and help ye bathe, mayhap e’en tend to your hair, if ye were awake and wanted it.” He set aside the empty tankard and grasped her hand again, needing to feel it return his grip as proof that she was recovering.

“I want,” she said. “I want it verra badly. I need to wash it all away. Did Ada confess everything then?”

“Continuously and loudly. She also had a collection of wee bows made from locks of hair, what we feel sure is hair from her victims. Small was both her lover and her servant.” He shook his head. “’Tis hard to believe that such a small, plain woman could have done such things. She was just so—” he hesitated as he tried to think of the right word.

“Ordinary. Verra, verra ordinary,” Morainn offered. “There was nothing about her that one would ever remember for verra long.”

He nodded. “I suspicion she will be remembered now, if only for all the vile curses she spat out at the crowd that had come to watch her hang.”

“Och, aye, they will remember who she was and what she did, but I doubt they will recall what she looked like e’en a week from now. I think the fact that she was always overlooked, always forgotten and ignored, fed a madness she was born with.” After a heavy moment of silence while they both thought that over, she asked, “Is Walin weel?”

“Aye, he is fine. I suspicion he will slip in to look at ye before too much longer. He has done so a lot while ye have been sleeping for so long. Simon has decided he was wrong to dismiss the lad’s feeling that there was a trap being set. It seems Walin had overheard Ide boasting of how she would soon be rid of ye and that could weel have made us more wary of leaving ye alone and all riding off to meet that mon.”

“Walin can be verra good at hearing things and kenning what is important.”

He nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “Walin tells me that Ada said he is my son.”

Morainn winced because a selfish part of her had wanted to keep that a secret, to keep Walin all to herself. “Did Ada nay tell ye anything about it while she was doing all that confessing?”

“A lot, although she was so crazed, I didnae ken what to believe. What I do ken is that he might be. A Margaret Macauley was my lover seven years ago and I did hear that she had been sent to a nunnery where she had died. No one had e’er told me that there was a child, however. Yet, there is a look to him, the look of my family.”

“Aye, there is.” Morainn told him everything Ada had said during the confrontation in the tower house.

Tormand cursed and dragged his hand through his hair. “She has been killing people for a verra long time, hasnae she?”

“Aye. I doubt we will e’er ken just how many she did kill. I think, in the beginning, she was careful to hide what she had done, to make the deaths look, weel, normal.”

“Weel, right now we need to talk about Walin and nay that madwoman,” Tormand said as he stood up.

“Unfortunately, I think Nora and her mother are here and there is nay time for it now. It would be best done when ye are stronger as weel.”

He had barely finished speaking when Nora and her mother stepped into the room. Morainn was glad of
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the reprieve. She feared he was about to tell her that he would be taking Walin away from her and knew she needed to be strong to argue that, to fight for at least a large share of Walin’s life.

By the time Nora and her mother had her cleaned up, the bed linen and her nightdress changed, and her hair washed and braided, Morainn doubted she had the strength left to fluff her own pillow. When they left her alone for a while to go and get her something to eat, Morainn simply rested, too tired to even think. She struggled to wake up fully when Nora returned with a tray filled with bread, cheese, fruit, and something that smelled like a well-seasoned broth.

“Did your mother go home?” she asked Nora, as her friend helped her sit up and began to feed her spoonfuls of the thick broth.

“Nay, she is in the kitchen making something for the men to eat and talking Sir Tormand into hiring her cousins Mary and Agnes to keep his house and cook for him. Mary and Agnes lost their wee cottage, ye ken, and have been living with their sons. They would be verra happy to have a room to themselves and a wee bit of coin to spend. They love their sons, but they dinnae love living with them and their growing families.”

“I think that, despite what Magda is probably saying, Sir Tormand is a good mon to work for,” Morainn said between mouthfuls of food.

“Aye, that is what my mother thinks as weel.” Nora handed Morainn a chunk of bread smothered in honey to nibble on. “I wept when I saw what those bastards had done to ye.”

“I am alive, Nora. Far too many others were nay as lucky as I was.”