Sighing heavily, Alec strode to the door to shout for servants to come at once…two wide-eyed women scrambling up the steps and rushing down the hall toward him.
“You, stay here with me—while you see that hot water is brought for a bath, and be quick about it!”
As the younger of the two maidservants spun on her heel to oblige him, the other woman followed Alec into the room and gasped at the sight of Rowen curled into a ball on the floor.
This time he tamped down any pity, but he couldn’t have her lying there in her own vomit.
With one deft movement, he pulled her away from the stinking bucket and unfastened the leather belt around her waist, Rowen still so woozy from the effects of the ale that she didn’t do more than groan in protest.
“Help me get this tunic off her,” he said tersely to the serving woman, who together with Alec got Rowen to half-sit so they could tug the soiled garment up over her head. That left her slumping naked back to the floor while the mess was hastily cleaned up around her and the bucket removed out to the hall.
Rowen’s lithe body pale as milk in the firelight, Alec covered her with the blanket handed to him by the maidservant and then went to the fireplace to throw more logs onto the grate to further warm the room.
“I’ll go help with the water,” murmured the older woman, but already voices carried from the hall, along with hastening footsteps.
Alec had barely hauled a wooden tub from an opposite corner to set before the fireplace when the door was pushed wide and four maidservants entered, carrying steaming buckets, followed by Gaira, who cried out to see the wretched state of her mistress.
A few moments more and the tub was half-filled and Rowen’s limp form lowered into the water by Alec, though he stepped aside so the women could begin their work.
“Wash her hair, too, and when you’re done, see that she’s settled into bed…gently,” was his last utterance before leaving Rowen to their ministrations, his bride in a dazed stupor with her head lolled back onto the rim.
His last sight of her made his breath catch in his throat as soapy water streamed over her pert breasts and rose-tinged nipples…Alec closing the door behind him with a low curse to stride back down the hall.
* * *
“Come and sit with me, son.”
Nodding at Donald, Alec pulled off his heavy cloak wet with icy rain and laid it near the fire blazing in the central hearth that warmed the great hall.
Not a huge room like the one he’d known since childhood at his father’s fortress, but Donald was a Mackay chieftain after all…and Alec only a laird. It was enough, though, with a broad raftered ceiling, iron wall sconces that held torches already extinguished for the night, and faded tapestries hanging from the stone walls that helped to hold back the cold always infiltrating such places.
An elderly cousin had owned the castle before him, but he had died without heirs so it had been granted back to King Robert—and now to Alec. He pulled a high-backed carved chair closer to his father’s and sat as heavily as the wet cloak had felt upon him, a cup of ale pressed into his chilled fingers.
“Drink, Alec, and ease yourself for a while. All is well outside?”
“Aye.” Alec took a long draught, but all that came to mind while doing so was Rowen draining her third cup several hours ago, followed by her slurred speech and hiccoughs and becoming sick. A sigh escaped him and he set aside the ale, no ease for him there after all. His father sighed, too, and shook his head.
“Och, not much of a wedding night for you,” Donald echoed Alec’s earlier observation, the great hall empty around them.
Most of the servants had retired for the evening, as had his father’s men, while other Mackay clansmen and the few wives who had come to witness the wedding had left the castle to journey homeward. Alec’s warriors who weren’t on guard along the ramparts had retired as well to their barracks at the far end of the bailey, some thirty-odd men altogether.
A small force, aye, but his responsibility now just as was his Sutherland bride, Alec staring at the sputtering logs in the soot-blackened hearth.
Two weeks ago he had sat with Roger Douglas in front of such a hearth fire and drank ale with a laird he deeply respected…and now he was no longer a captain of the guard, but laird of his own castle and surrounding lands granted to him by King Robert.
His life changed as if overnight and with a new wife who hated him, Alec grabbing the cup to toss the ale into the hissing flames as his father shifted in the chair beside him.
“If you ask me, you’d do well tae break her in just as Hamish bade you and save yourself more trouble,” Donald seemed to say more to himself than Alec. “Och, but what do I know? Your mother didna like me much, either, but she bore me five sons with you, the youngest, and all the while her tongue as sharp as a knife blade, God rest her. What more can a man ask for?”
Alec didn’t answer, but he winced, his father’s words cutting him to the quick.
What more can a man ask for?Aye, bairns one day, both lads and lasses if God willed it, but what of a wife who would smile at the sight of him and welcome him into her bed at night with a warm embrace, a willing body, and loving whispers?
He had dallied enough with women to appreciate the pleasure they brought him…but he had always hoped for more from marriage.
Aye, certainly more affection than his parents had displayed toward each other—but even then, Alec had seen a spark in his mother’s eyes when she looked at his father, that belied her prickly words.
Alec glimpsed a longing in Donald’s eyes, too, as he stared into the fire, for a woman he had laid to rest less than a year ago. He looked much older than his forty-five years, his shoulder-length hair once thick and blond like Alec’s now faded to an ashen color and his face etched with lines.
