But I will make her want to wear it,he silently affirmed, determined to win the bout.
Just then, Laoghaire peered up at the sky, her attention drawn to a large flock of starlings moving in graceful, perfect formation as they swooped and turned en masse, first one way, then the other, creating iridescent patterns against the sky.
“How I envy them their freedom,” Laoghaire murmured, while her gaze continued to track the birds’ winged flight.
Worried that the conversation had again veered onto dangerous ground, Galen said, “Those birds are far from free.” Raising his arm, he pointed to the flock, which suddenly dipped to one side in a flawlessly executed arabesque. “As you can see, there is not a rebel among them.” Strongly tempted to add that there was a lesson for her in that, Galen kept the thought to himself, suspecting the addendum would only serve to antagonize her.
While they rode down the hillside—Castle Airlie to the rear of them and the Grampian Mountains dominating the horizon in front of them—Galen’s attention was drawn to the way in which the sunlight caused the coppery strands of Laoghaire’s braided hair to shimmer brightly.The lady of the flames,he thought, her red woolen kirtle adding to the illusion. With her back ramrod straight, Laoghaire certainly made for a regal sight. And a highly provocative one as well, for each time the breeze swept past, the woolen fabric was plastered against her long legs.
All too easily, Galen could envision those shapely limbs wrapped around his haunches as Laoghaire, caught in passion’s undertow, clung fiercely to him.
By the blood of Christ! I will do whatever is necessary to bring that tantalizing image to fruition.
Suddenly worried that his carnal lusts had gotten the better of him—his manroot now in a woefully swollen state—Galen took several deep, steadying breaths. Since he still had to wait two more nights before he could couple with his wife, his current objective was to court Laoghaire so as to tame her. Yesterday he overwhelmed her with his pent-up desires and with a disastrous result. Today he was determined to attain a better outcome.
“As you can see, the eastern fields are being sown with oats,” he remarked, gesturing toward a group of villeins who were busily engaged in casting seed onto newly furrowed ground.
“To be harvested in the summer?” Laoghaire inquired, her gaze focused on the field in question.
“Yea, and with a second crop to be planted in the spring.” Galen chortled softly before adding, “As lord of this demesne, it is my duty to ensure that there are oatcakes aplenty for my Highland bride.” He’d been informed that during his recent absence, Laoghaire had each day insisted on breaking her morning fast with oatcakes slathered in honey rather than the more traditional bread and cheese.
“I hope that ye intend to plant barley as well, for I prefer to take my oatcakes with a tankard of ale,” Laoghaire retorted, her lips quivering with mirth.
At seeing that animated spark on his lady wife’s face, Galen drew in a quick breath, staggered by the transformation. Since her arrival at Castle Airlie, Laoghaire had shown only three emotions: disdain, anger, and the sadness that he’d glimpsed on her face last night when he caught sight of her on the battlements. And while those three emotions served to widen the chasm between them, her unexpected vivaciousness had the opposite effect.
The breach is narrowing, he realized, delighted with the progress he’d made thus far.Forsooth, playing the lovesick swain is not nearly as difficult as I had imagined.
“There is something that I do not understand,” Laoghaire said in a conversational tone of voice. “How is it that an English knight came to be a Scottish nobleman?”
The unexpected question hung between them for several moments, Galen taken aback by his wife’s inquiry. Granted, she had on several occasions questioned his loyalty to Robert the Bruce, and made more than a few scathing remarks regarding his Norman heritage. But beyond that, Laoghaire had shown no interest in the details of his life. Galen didn’t know whether he was pleased or displeased with her sudden interest.
“While it is true that I was born in Hampshire, I was not originally destined to become a knight,” he told her in an impassive tone of voice, the chronicle of his life a dark one, indeed. “Because I was the younger son, I was meant to take the cowl.”
“You! A priest!” Laoghaire sputtered in wide-eyed astonishment. “I can more easily imagine yer destrier walking upright than I can envision ye draped in an alb and chasuble.”
“Then, it should not surprise you to know that even though I was sent to the monastery as an oblate when I was ten years of age, my tenure there did not last more than six months.” And given the calamitous events that took place within the confines of those godforsaken stone walls, it proved to be five months too many.
Unaware that she was churning murky waters, Laoghaire grinned cheekily and said, “Kicked ye out, did they?”
“Something like that,” he murmured, acutely aware that the passage of years had done little to diminish the pain of those torturous six months, his childhood marred by devastating events over which he had no control. “Regardless of whether an offense had been committed, the prior believed that sin must be beaten out of a child. And because of that, I was routinely flogged.”
The revelation caused Laoghaire to gasp softly. “But ye were only a wee lad. ’Twas a dearth of Christian love in that place, I think.”
“Yea, that is the right of it,” he readily agreed, having never before spoken to anyone of that wretched period of his life.
Even now, after all this time, I am still haunted by what transpired within those stone walls.
His mount, sensing his bleak mood, pulled at the bit, and Galen tightened his grip on the reins.
Having confessed enough of the sordid tale, he said, “Since I was not suited to the priesthood, I was fostered to my maternal uncle, Louis de Charnay, who was a count in Normandy. I spent most of my youth in Lisieux, first as a page, and then a squire.”
“But why were ye sent so far from yer home?”
“I had little choice in the matter,” Galen answered with a shrug. “And besides, my older brother, Hector, was one of my uncle’s knights, so I was not without a close kinsman.”
What he didn’t mention was that the near proximity to his much-admired brother was a form of salvation, Sir Hector de Ogilvyle chevalier parfait.The perfect knight. Indeed, when Galen first arrived in Lisieux, he had withdrawn so completely within himself after the months of continual beatings he’d been forced to endure at St. Sulpice that he could barely speak or look a person in the eye. Had it not been for Hector’s fierce brotherly protection, Galen might never have survived the emotional trauma that he’d been made to suffer at the monastery.
“Is that how it is done in England, to send one’s sons across the waters to France?” Laoghaire asked.
