He was a man who could easily snare a woman in his web, and it angered her to know how quickly and easily she had surrendered to him, and how his provocative words stirred her so deeply that she trembled when she thought of them. Let me give ye the pleasure ye’ve dreamed of….
She thought of those words often in the following days. In her chamber one dreary, rainy afternoon, Mared recalled the entire experience with a delicious shiver as she studied the phial Donalda had given her.
The very same morning of that blistering kiss, she’d climbed up to the tiny little vale deep in the hills to the little thatched hut surrounded by pink moss campion and white butterworts, in a desperate effort to avoid a betrothal that loomed ever closer like a silent, invading army.
The thatched hut had looked the same as it had when Mared was a child, when she and her brothers would sneak up to spy on the old woman, playing a child’s guessing game at where the stool carved from a fallen tree had come from, or what the several wooden buckets stacked outside her door might have held. Liam had told her the smaller ones were for mushrooms, and the larger ones for the newts and toads and fairies that Donalda caught in the woods at night. “She’s the henwife,” he’d whisper to Mared, attempting to scare her with the lore from a child’s tale of horror.
But as Mared had grown up, she’d learned that Donalda was merely an old widow whose husband had died and left her penniless. Donalda was quick witted, and something of a seer, for she always knew when someone had come into her little vale. And indeed, that morning, she’d come out of the tiny cottage before Mared had entered the clearing, wiping her crooked hands on her soiled apron. “Aye, lass, I knew ye’d come,” she said, squinting at Mared, and beckoned her inside.
The little one-room cottage was dark; the only light came from a low fire, over which a kettle hung. Two cats lounged amid bottles and bowls scattered atop a long wooden table. The only other furniture in the room was a single wooden chair and a mattress on the floor near the hearth.
Donalda went to the kettle and lifted the lid; the smell of peat filled the room. She replaced the kettle lid, wiped her hands on her apron, then moved to a shelf high on the wall.
The old woman went up on her tiptoes, and with her hand, she felt around the high shelf until her fingers closed around something. She lowered her hand, turned toward Mared, and opened her palm to show her a small phial.
“Keep it close to yer heart,” she said, gesturing for Mared to open her hand. She put the phial in it and closed Mared’s fingers over it. “And as the eve of yer betrothal draws nigh, drink this by the light of the full moon.”
“What is it?” Mared had asked uncertainly.
Donalda’s eyes had glittered, and she had leaned close to Mared and said, “It will open the eyes to the truth,” she’d said enigmatically.
“The Douglas, ye mean?”
“I mean whoever must see the truth.”
Now Mared stared at the little phial and wondered what potion could open anyone’s eyes to the truth about her when she could hardly see it herself.
All right, then, there was one small, niggling truth that she’d never admit—never!—But he was right. She had lain awake many sleepless nights, her body aching. She had not known the touch of a man, as he so indelicately put it, not like his touch. She knew chaste kisses, holding hands. But not a man’s hand on her body, not the sort of touch that made her ache and cause her to toss and turn with dreams filled of earthy, bawdy images of Payton Douglas.
And occasionally, the dark-haired son of the smithy in Aberfoyle.
Now a few days had passed since Mared had seen Payton up in the hills. Days in which she had, at times, felt fevered and terribly restless. Nothing would ease her.
A letter from Beitris only made it worse. She dutifully reported that the laird Douglas had paid a gentlemanly call to her, and that her mother found him quite agreeable, and her father said he was a gentleman and a scholar.
Mared crumpled Beitris’s letter and threw it into the sad little fire in her chamber. It was just like a man, was it not, to kiss one woman like Payton had kissed her—a soul-searing, deeply passionate kiss—then wander off and call on another woman and present himself to her parents?
She slapped her palm against her vanity and angrily reminded herself she had succeeded. Her plan had worked. She would not marry Payton Douglas, for he would offer for Beitris, and her life would be quite untangled as a result.
And it would untangle right into one long nothing unless they found the beastie.
Aye, hers was a bleak existence by some measure, but a far better one than marriage to a Douglas, she reminded herself. At least she was free to do as she pleased at Talla Dileas, even if the old castle was falling down around them. Even if they were in danger of losing their land forever. But when she went to Edinburgh, she’d be treated with respect and courtesy. She’d meet men who were just as handsome as Payton but with a last name that did not strike such resentment in the heart of a Lockhart.