‘In truth, Maren, you stirred my heart like no other lass has. I yearned for you many a long night. There is a wildness about you that calls to the same wildness in me - ferocity, cunning, a need for mastery. There is something spectacular about you.’
‘If I am so spectacular, I wonder why you would fake a death to escape me?’
‘Not from you, lass, your father. He would have done for me in the end. The old dog does not give way to the young pup without a fight.’
‘And why should he?’
‘Because I was better than him, lass. I have twice his cunning and ruthlessness. If I had my way, the Cullans and the Ross Clans would have felt pain, aye. But, instead, he was too slow and soft, surrounded himself with weaklings who piss themselves like bairns at the thought of taking on a brigade of redcoats or a handful of soft landowners and their lackeys. I have no such qualms. Nor have you, for it seems you’ve had quite the adventure since my sad passing, haven’t you? First, a sea captain’s whore and now, warming the bed of a laird’s son.’ He tugged on her grey skirt. ‘Look at all this finery you are running about in.’
‘How do you know about….?’ Maren stopped short of saying Lawson’s name. ‘Have you been watching me all this time, Drayton?’
‘Oh, aye. I set Sawney Coll to following you.’
‘Sawney?’ she hissed. The thought of Sawney Coll, with his red hair, scarred face and hungry expression, made her flesh crawl.
‘Aye, he always had quite the thing for you, remember. But the oaf out-lived his usefulness. And he made a pretty corpse, didn’t he? Set those arrogant lairds to fluttering in fear, what with his hand gone and his tongue, too. I thought that was a nice touch.’ Drayton smirked to himself, no doubt remembering his knife sliding into flesh. ‘Don’t pretend you mourn Sawney. You never liked him. The pathetic fool was forever mooning over you, so he jumped to the task of watching your every move.’
‘How long was he watching me?’
‘Since I departed on our wedding night. So I know all your dirty little secrets, my love.’
Drayton’s words bruised like stones hurled against her soft flesh, and suddenly it all made sense - that dark shadow she had always felt reaching for her, the fear that assailed her on dark nights. Drayton’s eyes had been on her all along.
‘I was heartened to hear you would not take another husband once I was laid to rest,’ he continued. ‘There must have been some feeling for me in your hard heart to suffer banishment rather than a new man of your father’s choosing.’
Drayton’s voice was wistful, almost pained, but Maren was not falling for it.
‘You let me think you were dead. You are unspeakable.’
Drayton ran his fingers down her back. ‘You know, Sawney returned to that farm up at Hawich from time to time to keep his eye on you.’
‘Hawich?’ she gasped.
‘Aye. It was a kind of torture when he sent word that you were there, lovely as ever and thriving, and yet so alone and at my mercy, if only you’d known it. I could not come to see you, of course. I had to lay low. By all the saints, I wanted you with a vengeance until he told me he saw you lie down in the long grass with the farmer’s son, a callow lad who was not my equal.’ Drayton leant in close. Maren could taste his whisky breath on the cold morning air. ‘Tell me, did you like his clumsy advances, his rough hands slipping down your bodice, the sticky feel of his seed between your legs.’
Drayton’s eyes had hardened to black as if his sudden anger had sucked all the warmth out of them.
‘I did not shame myself, Drayton. I never laid with him.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Glad to hear it, for he was beneath you. Did you suffer his adoration so that you could keep a roof over your head, Maren?’
Anger was bile in her throat, thudding in her breast, and it could not be contained. ‘No, I welcomed it. Dylan was kind and gentle, and I needed that, for I got scant affection from the likes of you or my father.’
‘Aye, that lad was all gentleness and hesitation. But he didn’t know how to fight, did he?’
A thump of unease tightened her heart.
‘You should not have encouraged that fool,’ said Drayton quietly.
‘Why not? I was alone and free.’
Drayton thumped his palm into his chest so hard it must have hurt, and then he bellowed, ‘Because you were my wife. Mine. Not his to touch and taste, to savour.’ The storm of feeling blew through as quickly as it came. ‘No matter now. That green fool has long since got what he deserved.’
All the breath seemed to leave Maren’s body at once. She could scarcely grasp the words. ‘What do you mean? What did you do?’
‘I did nothing. Not like you, you adulterous bitch. Took you scarcely a year to put me out of your mind and cleave to another.’
‘You were dead, Drayton. I saw a body with its face bashed in, clad in your clothes. I saw a corpse, which is what you wanted me to see. Now answer me. What did you do to Dylan?’
