Chapter 4

Brodwyn felt bored. Normally, lying abed well into the day was a treat, time to think, time to plan, but not today. For three nights she had slept alone, dread thoughts buzzing in her mind, irritating her, chasing away sleep. What if Henry La Mont didn’t return?

Och, she didnae love him, knew better than that. Nae, for the first time since she left Dun Bhuird she felt almost secure, aware when she was well off. It had been a long climb out of the Irish chieftain’s bed and into Henry’s. Each swap had taken a leap of faith—faith in herself, in the Brodwyn Comlyn she had become and in her ability to keep a man happy in bed as well as to dodge the angry words thrown at her when she moved into another more worthy, more powerful man’s bed. A close observer might say she had ridden her way back to the Scottish borders, but not on a horse.

Aye, she had taken her fate into her own hands. If there was any rejecting to be done, it was done by her. Never again would she suffer the angst and humiliation she had let herself in for when first Jamie then her cousin Olaf, Jarl of Caithness, rejected her.

Jamie Ruthven’s rejection had hurt the most. Fool that she was, she had actually imagined herself in love with him, but after her treachery, supporting Harald’s grab for power, she realised she had only her own ambitions to blame. Call her a fool not to have recognised her cousin Harald’s madness. She had heard of men with Viking blood going berserk, on a killing spree, but Harald had been worse. He had killed in cold blood, calculated acts of slaughter that had the whole of Dun Bhuird stronghold fearful for what would come next.

Never in a thousand years would she have imagined he would attempt to burn alive her cousin Kathryn, whom they had abducted along with her maid—sweet wee Lhilidh. That’s when Rob had killed Harald with one thrust of the sword he’d lifted frae the ground—the blade lost frae Gavyn Farquhar’s hand by a twist of Harald’s sword.

Worst had been her humiliation when Jamie rejected her pleas.

And her punishment—sold to the Irish—had stymied her for a while in ways a lesser soul might have given in to and become less than life had intended. The moment she was over her seasickness and her feet touched Irish soil, she had moved past the shock of Jamie’s rejection and begun making plans for her future, her survival.

Her experience didn’t include hunting horns, but she had run for her life and sneaked aboard a cargo boat filled high, and hidden amongst bales of linen and other less pleasant smelling baskets until they sailed into London, a pleasant surprise since she’d hadn’t had the least notion where the vessel was heading. That was where she had fallen in with Richard, her first Norman protector, a kindly knight.

Richard had taken her to Winchester where Henry had won her in a duel fought to first blood frae Richard—so flattering. For the first time, though, she had been sad to move on, nae matter if she had planned this eventual outcome. Richard had been more than twice her age yet still virile for all that. Brodwyn smiled as she walked along the gallery to the solar. Richard hadn’t needed any of her sly tricks to find satisfaction. Coupling with him had been an amusing romp—the bright side of a coin forged with iron and gold—Richard being gold, malleable, and Henry the iron fist that took what it wanted with all the vaunted ambition that had ruled Harald, the one difference being that Henry wasn’t crazy.

Opposite the solar door, she peeped over the half-wall edging the gallery. The great hall was empty of fighting men. Only servants went about their business there, some scuttling around as if expecting Henry and his would-be knights to burst into the great hall any moment now, howling demands for food, wine and ale. Certainly the sounds of horns close by had awoken her, and she wondered which poor soul was fleeing for his life.

Pulling her warm cloak around her, she opened the door to the solar with the intention of irritating the dark-haired Melinda as a way of passing the time.

Melinda broke away from her melancholy thoughts and raised her eyes as Brodwyn entered the solar. The woman was hard to ignore, her red hair like a flame whether in sun or candlelight. No wonder Melinda felt drab in comparison to the woman her father had brought into their home, supposedly to be a companion to his daughter—a falsehood that might have made her laugh out loud if she’d remembered how. There was little humour in the dull world she inhabited.

Gritting her teeth, she determined that Becky would help her find these gypsies she had told her about who could read the future in the lines crossing her palm.

Stepping away from the wall, she let out a slow breath to ease the sorrow that crept up on her often and often these days—a self-torment justified by remembering the love she had deliberately chased until its excitement was overtaken by motherhood.

An experience she had no wish to ever put herself through again. It seemed getting with child was simple, while birthing it was much more unpleasant than making love would suggest. If only he would stay out of her dreams, let her forget. But then, she thought, what if this was all she would have of Rob, of any man. Some nights she woke in a sweat, her body wracked, convulsed with the sensual pleasure he had brought to her in the night, as if he were back at Wolfsdale sharing his big bed with her. Then she would come to her senses, aware that none of it was real, just a remnant of passions past and wishful thinking.

Brodwyn swayed across to the corner where Becky sat rubbing Ralf’s back. Brodwyn wiggled her fingers at the bairn, drawing a smile. Melinda raised a startled brow as a moment’s irony swept away the veil protecting her frae Ralf’s natural charm. Lowering her eyelids, she listened as her bairn’s laughter enchanted Brodwyn and tried to harden her own heart against him. Everything except being born came easily for her second son. Would she still feel so resentful if she lost him? Was she was being unfair?

Ralf’s chortles floated across the solar; Melinda’s heart squeezed as Brodwyn did what his mother never attempted and amused him. That would mean admitting she no longer felt as cold toward her younger son, or mayhap it was jealousy that Brodwyn walked with ease down a road Melinda feared to tread. Aye, her heart had lost some of its ire toward Ralf, but she could never forget how her body felt as if it would be torn asunder. Naught could make up for his resemblance to his father, especially when he let out a deep-throated laugh at Brodwyn’s antics and she could see Rob doing the same in this very solar. Aye, young or old, it appeared to matter little to her father’s leman. Be it Henry La Mont or any other man in her vicinity, she lured them with the appeal and sensuality she exuded.

Where her father had found Brodwyn, he never mentioned, and Melinda never put herself to the trouble of asking, pretending to believe her father’s tale that he brought the woman to Wolfsdale to be a companion for Melinda—her chaperone in other words; it mattered little that the horse, as they were wont to say, had already bolted. Yet he was not worried enough to insist that Brodwyn sleep in his disobedient daughter’s chamber. Nay, that task was left to Becky and the bairns, as if her father believed her protestations that she had learned her lesson. That was as may be. Her father, however, wasn’t taking any chances and refused to believe she had no desire to tangle with another man, no matter if he was presented to her dressed in cloth of gold like some angel from on high. It was if he could not help but be delighted to have a male heir at last—a lad, two, to carry on the La Mont name—yet was still was unable to trust her completely. If she had anything to thank God for on this damp autumn afternoon, it was the lack of nunneries in her future. That threat had been withheld long enough to feel normal, the way she had before Rob entered her life. No, it was the bairns, her sons, who reminded her how she’d suffered for a few moments of madness.

Brodwyn hovered over Ralf as the bairn was having his back rubbed and made a disgusted face at Becky when she achieved a result. “I swear that bairn’s going to end up big as a mountain. Every time I come in here, he’s chewing on yer tit.”

She pinched Becky’s plump arm. Well used to Brodwyn’s callousness, the lass ignored her even when she chivvied at her. “Feel that fat, would ye? There would be less of it on ye and the bairn wouldn’t snuffle at ye like a wee pig if ye taught him to walk and ran around after the lad instead of sitting there holding him.”

Annoyed, Melinda’s chin lifted. She gave Brodwyn a narrow-eyed stare. The woman did not notice, but Melinda surprised herself by the sharp flash of pain she felt on her son’s behalf. Almost like a mother.

Becky sniffed. “He likes it.”

“Ye shouldn’t let him think he’s always going to get all his own way,” Brodwyn quipped, turning a indifferent shoulder on Becky, nodding as if she knew precisely of what she spoke, though earlier she had admitted to Melinda that she had never had a child of her own. “Start as ye mean to go on or later they will pay ye no heed.”

A remark aimed at her father, of that Melinda had nae doubt though she knew little of Brodwyn’s life before her father brought his leman to the Wolfsdale manor house and expected her to remain unaware of the noises emanating from the Master chamber. The mundane didn’t bother Henry La Mont; he simply ignored its presence.

Her father would be happy this noontide, decided Melinda. She imagined that somewhere not too far from Wolfsdale a battle had raged and that he had been in the thick of it—high in the saddle, armour gleaming as he slashed with his sword bathed in red. Unlike Brodwyn, she didn’t understand men. Never thought to. Never wished to.

They were good for naught but filling women with their seed—a pleasure that hid the atrocious hurt the lass would have to endure when the resulting babe wanted out.