And Then He Loved Me: Novella (Highlander Heroes Book 0) Read online

  And Then He Loved Me

  A Highlander Novella, Volume 1

  Rebecca Ruger

  Published by Rebecca Ruger, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ASIN: B07WPSC44G

  And Then He Loved Me

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2019 Rebecca Ruger

  Written by Rebecca Ruger

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and may graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.

  Rebecca Ruger

  [email protected]

  www.rebeccaruger.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Disclaimer

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  The End

  About the Author

  For my sister, Michele Brouder

  Chapter 1

  January 1307

  Northern Scotland

  ISLA GORDON STOOD IN the great hall of Wolvesley, the keep of the second Earl Cameron, waiting to be called before the lord, on charges of lying down with a man when she was not yet married. And never likely to be as her distrust of men grew by measured degrees with each interaction. Indeed, ‘twas her own da that had raised the hue and cry, charging her with so grievous a sin. Costly, too, if she could not convince the chief of the lie and was levied a fine.

  She’d lived in Friock all her life and had always heard the chief Cameron to be a fair man. Perhaps she’d glimpsed him over the years, coming and going through town, though he’d been gone near a decade to either war against the vile English or down to the capitol on Scotland’s business. He’d come home almost a year ago and Isla imagined him now aged in years more than her dastardly father but could not yet see the great man for the crush within the hall on this manorial court day.

  Giving a shove of her shoulder to separate herself from people standing much too close, she tried to peer around all these unwashed and unkempt villeins and crofters and peasants. Isla hadn’t any idea how many people might fit into this large room of the lord’s keep before filling it but thought it near to full now. The timbered ceiling was hung with two large iron chandeliers, one at each end of the room, each holding a dozen or more thick pillared candles, though these precious implements were not wasted now in the middle of the day. The open door to the bailey and the ten arrow-slit windows on each long wall provided scant amounts of sunshine, where dust and motes danced in straight lines above their heads while the hall, as a whole, was only one muted shade of gray.

  When she could hear, Isla listened to the cases before her.

  “John, son of Robert, you are indicted for withholding from the chief plow work of half an acre. What is your answer to this?”

  “I beg forgiveness and mercy, chief—”

  “He is not yer chief, he is the chief’s son, and acting on his sire’s behalf,” corrected the bailiff in a monotone voice.

  “Pardon, my... sir,” said John, son of Robert, “my wife was abed with the birthing, which labored on for days. All are well, and in receipt of blessings now. I can see t’ the plowing posthaste.”

  Isla heard the response only as a low murmur, until the bailiff did announce, “You are pardoned then, John, son of Robert, with the exception that you have fourteen days to see the plow work finished.”

  The man spewed some gratuitous appreciation, his voice carrying over the din until the bailiff called out the next name.

  “Walter de Warenne, it is applied by one Matilda de Warenne that said contract to keep your mother in good stead, and filled with oat and ale, and a sum annually of three kirtles, two pairs shoes, and one cloak, in exchange for house and land, has been neglected.”

  “’Tis a lie, and chief, you ken—”

  “’Tis not your chief he is,” the bailiff corrected again.

  “Aye, sir, but you ken my mam makes this claim every year, but here she is, best dressed villain in Friock—accepting her due from me annually at Michaelmas, and then selling her oat and ale for more frocks so that I must still sustain her daily, which makes the debt twice as much!”

  Isla distinctly heard a very smooth and low voice ask, “Is this true, mistress?”

  The woman’s response was lost on Isla, nothing more than wails and whimpers. Isla had finally found a spot within the throng to spy the table where sat the lord’s son. First she saw the bailiff. He was Alastair and she knew him well enough from the town, a bald man of smooth and pale skin that lent credibility to fewer years than he did own, whose manner was calm and predictable. Isla shifted to consider the one next to him, the chief’s son. He’d been fostered out to some greater lord in his youth so that Isla could claim no knowledge of him, by sight or other means. She had to stand on her toes and tip her head to the left to find him.

  Her lips parted when she found him. Immediately, she thought his voice well-suited to him, dark and mysterious. He sat with his elbows on the chief’s table, his large hand wrapped around a metal cup, tapping the vessel softly and regularly upon the table top, as if he were bored with the proceedings, or wished to be elsewhere. He did not even deign to look up at the persons accused in his court. He sat so much larger than the small frame of Alastair, the green and blue and red of his tartan stretching over the tunic of his very broad shoulder before disappearing beneath the table. His hair was short and dark, though mayhap not as dark as this gray hall did portray; he wore the stubble of several days unshaved. That was all she discerned of the chief’s son just now, being still at a distance of half a room and afforded such sparse lighting.

  He said something, maybe passed sentence, Isla did not know, heard only the timbre and not the words. The very quality of his voice put her in mind of running her hands in a grand and affectionate caress over rarely touched velvet.

  Isla startled when her name was called. She pushed through the warm bodies to present herself at the fore, within five feet of the table and the chief’s son.

  “Isla Gordon, you are indicted with the crime of lying down with a man who is not yer own husband.”

  And now the very large man lifted his gaze, settling upon Isla a contemplative frown. For the life of her, she could not look away from his eyes, so remarkably blue, so glacial.

  “It is the court’s understanding,” the bailiff continued, “that you have no husband, and this crime, then, would be of the premarital ilk.”

  Isla somehow refrained from rolling her eyes.

  “That should not be the court’s understanding,” she said, meeting the eyes of the man.

  One brow lifted. The chief’s son spoke, “You have a husband, then?”

  “I have no husband. And I’ve had no relations. ‘Tis a lie.”

  “Aye, lass, near every soul who stands where you do professes to be innocent.” This, from the bailiff, though kindly said, while the chief’s son continued to c
hew her up with his eyes.

  Isla clenched her teeth and raised her chin. “I do not lie.” She stared back at him.

  “So, you claim to be innocent of relations with a man, married or otherwise?” His voice was courteous yet patronizing. He gave her more consideration and attention that he had any other accused person today. His dark gaze spared her not at all but raked every inch of her.

  Isla neither blinked nor flushed at his overlong and rude perusal but raised her brow, silently asking if he’d looked his fill. He was a beast, as were they all.

  “I’ve said as much.” Truly, she’d never met a man she liked. Not one.

  Nicol, the smithy’s son, ever donned an expression of wonder, his face forever scrunched, his teeth always showing, that he seemed ever to be in some state of confusion, and so was judged and called an idiot. Alice Gordon, of no relation to Isla, was a woman of middling years, and having borne seven children, was plagued by a fairly rotund shape so that she was called lazy and a glutton. Margery Ternway sang with the voice of an angel and possessed the mind of a curious monk, but because she was blind and hobbled around rather awkwardly, she was seen only as lame and clumsy.

  Isla’s curse was her exotic look, strange hazel eyes that tilted upward at the corners and not quite pale skin that showed none of God’s perfect imperfections. Simply because her features were arranged in such a way as to be pleasing, it seemed, she often suffered lengthy examinations by many, mostly men, and she was judged immoral because they could not look away.

  She invited none of this, indeed, covered herself sedately from head to toe in drab brown. Every day. Her hair was not kept as other unmarried woman, loose and swirling down her back in a siren’s silent call, but knotted tightly and wrapped in linen, unseen and unimpeachable. Yet it did not matter. Her own father, whose very miserable existence these days was dependent upon Isla, charged her with this depravity. And why? So that she might never find a husband to escape him? So that she spent the rest of his days jumping when he railed and feeding when he whined and laboring more dutifully when he carped?

  “Isla Gordon,” the man said, testing her name. “What defense have you to show your innocence?”

  “Is it not the duty of the court to prove I am not?”

  “You call you own sire a liar?” Asked Alastair. “’Twas he who raised the hue and cry.”

  “I do.” Her voice was even. She knew every eye and ear in the room was focused on her right now. Some probably harrumphed, having expected such salaciousness from her.

  JAMES CAMERON MIGHT well be struck about the head with club or mace or sword and likely he would still not be able to remove his eyes from the creature before him. Jesu, but he had never met a soul with eyes like hers. Tilted to such a degree that they fairly spat an invitation at him, and of some color between green and brown, those eyes stared at him with so much pride as to be a tangible thing between them.

  Lying down with a man, indeed. He didn’t care for the criminalization of sex, unless it involved force, but he was foresworn by the church and his own father to uphold their decrees.

  He took note of her hands, fisted at her sides, not wringing together at her waist.

  “Who is it that I am said to have lain with?” These, like her very first words this day, washed over him—and presumably many a man—much as warm spring water over the mossy stones of the loch, silky and smooth.

  James turned his head to Alastair, as he reviewed the recorded claim against her, where should be the name.

  “It says not, but then it need not,” Alastair told her. He turned to the chief’s son for verdict.

  “Your mercy shall be three pence, Isla Gordon,” James decided. “And the hope of this court that the crime is not repeated.”

  “You cannot judge without evidence,” Isla said hotly.

  Even when her frown was great, the eyes stay tilted up and out at those corners. James was mesmerized.

  “I said you canna judge without evidence,” she persisted, her hands slapped onto her slender hips. “Guilty—and fined—based on what?”

  In a level tone, James answered, “Based on the fact that to plead your case, you’d need to wait the sheriff’s court, that comes once a quarter. And you’d be charged a fee by the court simply to hear the case, and then a fine when found guilty. Would be much more than the paltry three pence offered to you now.”

  “Offered to me?” She sounded incredulous. “As if a boon?” She swept low into a scornful curtsy, the gracefulness of her movements only highlighting her contempt. “Your mercy is boundless, kind lord. To offer such noble benefit for a crime not committed. A man among men, to be sure.” Her derision could not be mistaken.

  Several gasps filled the air of the hall.

  Alastair, beside him, was near apoplectic at this disrespect. James waved him down when the bailiff began to rise—to insist upon incarceration in addition to the fine for her insolence, James was sure

  “The fine is six pence now, Isla Gordon. Have you a response to that?”

  She met his cool stare, no reaction at all upon her exquisite features. While he watched, she withdrew a drawstring pouch from her belt. She did not count out coins to the steward, who waited with ledger and his own coin purse ready but tossed the bag onto the floor before the table.

  She said not a word but then, the curl of her plump and beguiling lips required none and she turned and pushed her way out of the hall.

  Isla Gordon. He said her name again in his mind, his eyes tracking her escape, as did many. Indeed, the entire hall was silent until she’d completely disappeared from view.

  One of the still-waiting accused picked up the bag of coins, bounced it in his hands to test the weight of it, and set it upon the table before James, giving an oily smile with his deed.

  Chapter 2

  Isla sat in the middle of their small cottage, near the kettle hung over a low burning fire. She glared at her father, sleeping in the cot in the far corner, while she wove twigs and straw into a patch of sorts that needed to be added to the thatched roof, where the wind had taken a section away yesterday.

  So tightly pursed were her lips, they quivered with her anger. Six pence! It’d be another three months before that would be replaced, and there would be no extra fabric, no coat for Gavin, though he so desperately needed one. The boy grew too quickly and played too roughly. She would mend her father’s old coat once again, the same one Gavin had been wearing for more than a year, which had thrice now been tailored to his size and more often repaired of tears and rips.

  Her anger growing, she glared again at her father, gray and wretched upon the cot. Even before he’d taken ill more than a year ago, he’d been a despicable man, unhappy, scornful. As his illness progressed, he only became more surly, more unbearable. Isla had all she could do to refrain from railing at him. She was doing the best she could, she hadn’t any more hours in her day to do more, or better.

  She set the newly woven piece aside and stirred the contents of the kettle. Pottage, such as it was, being only onions and a few pieces of turnips, the carrots and beans having been finished more than a month ago. If they were lucky, Gavin will have caught a rabbit or squirrel, and that might be added to the stew. Last night, they’d had a feast of fresh fish as her brother had finally had success at the near frozen loch.

  Her father stirred, groaning, coughing. Reflexively, Isla dipped a ladle into the pottage and filled a wooden cup. She approached her father. He’d turned over and was trying to sit up. Isla put her hand across his back and lifted his thin frame. He coughed and spewed and finally hocked out a stringy mucus mass, streaked with blood, into his ever-present linen kerchief. That had started a few days ago, the blood. It wouldn’t be long now; he barely ate, seemed to have strength only to berate her, and apparently to lay false claims against her. As he hadn’t left this bed in more than a month, she guessed he’d sent Gavin to bring someone from Wolvesley to take his statement.

  She pressed the cup against his lips. H
e swatted at it, sent it flying away from the bed. The cup spanked against the wall of the cottage, the broth staining the packed earth floor.

  “Git ‘way, you daft girl,” he railed and coughed yet more.

  It was tempting, to walk away, let him drop back roughly onto the bed. She did not though, just laid him back gently while she clenched her teeth.

  Isla picked up the cup and fetched the scratcher, a bristle brush she used to scratch out stains in the dirt. Not because the stain was an eyesore, but so it did not add to the already ghastly odors of the one room house. Smoke and piss and fish, that’s all she ever smelled.

  Edward Gordon mumbled something incoherent upon the bed while Isla loosened the spots of pottage from the floor. She ignored him, found the small garden trowel and scooped up all the mud he’d made and tossed it outside.

  “I said,” her father called, his voice gruff, “did you get a rabbit?”

  “I did not,” she answered levelly.

  “Ye never were no good at—’

  “Are you happy now, father?” She could contain it no more. “I’ve been to the court, charged with your imaginary crimes—and paid six pence! Six pence! And now I have nothing!”

  She watched his ashen, wrinkly face, the gray eyes so shrunken and deep. No sign of remorse. He coughed more. Isla refused to lift him again. Tears threatened. She clamped her teeth ferociously to stop them from falling. Damn him.

  “What you need it for anyway?”

  “What do I need it for? When you die, where shall I go? What will I do, you miserable lout? They’ll no let me keep the croft! I’ll be forced—”

  A thin, paper-skinned arm sliced through the air. “Ye spread yer legs and find you a keeper, is all.”

  “My God, you can no be this awful! Why?” She stopped herself, pressed her hands over her eyes, rubbed her eyebrows which seemed to be perpetually drawn down when in his presence. It was pointless, had proven fruitless before. There was no reason for him to be so despicable; he just was, always had been.