This MacCreadie lass looked like Brenna, but she was different – steel in her spine, bite in her words. She did not cower. She stood up to him and hid her fear, and it was that courage which trapped him now. He thought she would resist him - bite and spit and snarl - but kissing her had the sweetness and promise of spring in the midst of winter. She had not pushed him off in revulsion. Had she enjoyed it or merely endured? How could he ever truly know?
‘Men like you never hear the truth from women like me. It is too dangerous for us,’ she had said. Aye, and there was the rub. He could never trust in a woman’s feelings. It was the curse of his life. It was his loneliness and harshest despair, and it came from always wanting what he could not have.
***
Across the moors, with the wind howling under her chamber door, Rowenna curled into a ball under her blankets and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. But she could not blot out the memory of Jasper Glendenning’s kiss. Curse her folly for going into the alehouse and riding with him alone. His sudden, stolen kiss had left her shocked and breathless because danger lurked in every inch of that man. He had looked upon her in an entirely different way to Morgan, who was respectful and almost apologetic in his advances. Jasper’s hunger had burned in his deep blue eyes. That hot look had spawned fear married to excitement, along with a little pulse of lust. Rowenna put her hands over her eyes in shame.
‘What is wrong with you? A man looks at you twice, and you fill your head with carnal thoughts. Don’t be a fool!’ she hissed to the darkness.
But it did not matter that Jasper was a fiend because when his mouth had twisted to hers, he had rendered her beautiful and desired, if only for a moment. His lips were softer and gentler than she had imagined, yet still, she dreaded Jasper Glendenning as much as she was excited by him. Her mind raced frantically at the day’s unexpected turn, and sleep would not come.
Oh, she must not think about Jasper now. She must think of Cecily and the stranger she met on Crichton Moors. Could her sister have taken a lover in secret? Did she run away with him to a better life? Rowenna hoped that was true and that Cecily had found love. But if she had, that meant she was not coming back, and Rowenna found herself alone and at the mercy of fate and Jasper Glendenning’s steely eye, which had suddenly fixed on her like a spider on a fly.
All she had achieved by seeking him out for answers was to bring danger upon herself. She could feel its hot breath on her neck.
Chapter Six
Jasper returned home at noon to a frosty welcome from his family. He was immediately set upon by both his tiresome sisters.
‘Where have you been?’ said Maeve, the youngest. She did not wait for an answer. ‘You must help me with mother and her schemes. Why do I have to be married off at her command when you get to choose anyone you want?’
‘Because I am a man and a laird,’ he said, bleary from little sleep.
‘It is not fair.’
He yawned. ‘Nothing is in this life, sister.’
‘It’s alright for you,’ said Glenna to Maeve. ‘At least you have a suitor. Our worthless brother cannot be bothered to find me a fine man to marry.’
Jasper doubted any man, fine or not, would want to take his whining sister Glenna in marriage. Where Maeve was blonde, full-bosomed, rosy-cheeked and bonnie, Glenna was whip-thin, with ginger hair and a face as pale as milk. She took after her mother in both looks and a perpetually sour temperament. Nothing would ever please her sufficiently. He could give a king’s ransom in dowry and even the least fastidious would recoil at the prospect of Glenna as a wife.
‘Where have you been, brother?’ Glenna sniffed the air around him like a rat emerging from its burrow. ‘You reek of ale, slatterns and sin, brother.’
‘You are right. I have debauched thoroughly this past night, and I am very pleased with myself.’
‘You are disgusting.’
Jasper bowed low. ‘I try my best, dear sister.’
Maeve came up and tugged at his sleeve. ‘Please, Jasper. I don’t want to marry Carstairs, but mother insists. He is oafish and coarse and eats with his mouth open.’
‘Aye, but he is also wealthy and hopelessly smitten for reasons I cannot fathom.’
‘Why can I not choose a better man? I did not mind being married off when you suggested someone like Robert Strachan? What a great match that would have been.’
‘If he hadn’t got himself killed by that ghastly Bannerman fellow,’ said Glenna.
‘You two are fools,’ said Jasper. ‘You know nothing of Robert Strachan, either of you. He was a devil.’
‘I know Robert was the most handsome man for miles around. Everyone thought so.’
Jasper could not contain his irritation. ‘Then you must also know that Robert killed his own father. He poisoned the poor old bugger to get his hands on Fellscarp. Aye, him and his bitch of a sister put Hew Strachan in the ground just to further their ambition.’ Jasper suppressed a shudder at the thought of Elene Strachan – her face so radiant that it was like looking into the sun, her heart black as pitch, rotten with malice.
Glenna’s mouth hung open. ‘That cannot be true. Shame on you for slandering the dead, brother. Robert was dashing, charming and a finer man you could not meet. And as to his sister, I met her once, and Elene Strachan was courtesy itself and so very beautiful. You are just angry because you could not catch her in marriage. A woman as refined as Elene Strachan would never have had you, Jasper.’
‘Aye, thank God, because she would have poisoned me just to get her hands on Kransmuir.’
‘I never believed any of those stories about her or Robert,’ said Maeve.
