“It is quite your own fault for invading other people’s countries and then breaking into their houses,” she told the figure on the floor. It was the same voice she used to scold young Harry for his youthful transgressions.
She uncorked the little bottle of ointment that she made herself from an old recipe of her mother’s, using a mix of honey, rosemary, arnica and other herbs in differing quantities. Since the highlander’s shoulder-length hair was going to seriously hamper her efforts to apply this salve to his wound, she took up her scissors and hacked at the thickly waving locks until she was satisfied. Carefully, she pressed the sticky, scented mixture in and around the laceration. Finally, she placed a torn strip of cloth over the wound and bound another, longer strip, around his head. This she tied in place to hold the whole secure.
The cellar was chilly, and she covered the long, well-muscled figure with the blanket she had brought with her, tucking it neatly around and underneath him. A bitter smile touched her lips as she recalled her childhood in the border town of Bamburgh. Thank the Lord my father is not here to see me take such tender care of a hated Scotsman!
Mindful of the need to give him water, Martha dipped a cotton pad into the jug she had brought with her and wiped it around and inside the man’s lips. She couldn’t help noticing that his face was very handsome, with finely crafted features and a strong, square jaw. His mouth was particularly beautiful, carved as though modelled on a painting by a grand master, with a lower lip that was just slightly fuller than perfection demanded. Without pausing to consider what she was doing or why she was doing it, she allowed her thumb to trace the plump cushion of that lip. It felt like silk against her skin. Succumbing to another overwhelming impulse, she leaned over and pressed her lips to his.
“Better a wound in love from a friend than a kiss in hate from an enemy.” It was her father’s version of the Bible verse. The wound she had bestowed on him had not been one of love or of friendship. “And, oh, how I hate you, Scots bastard.” The words were a barely whispered breath into the warmth of that near-perfect mouth. The kiss of hate she gave now was for him, his kin and his countrymen. The men who had destroyed her family and left her own body scarred and grotesque. The men who had condemned her forever to her lonely spinsterhood.
Fraser waited until he heard the key grate in the lock before he opened his eyes again, although it was so dark he might just as well have kept them closed. Determinedly, he carried on with the task he had set himself before the Englishwoman interrupted him. It was a painful job, but he was slowly winning the battle against his restraints. The rope was loosening. The blanket with which she had covered him was a bonus. Next time the sly little bitch came sneaking down those stairs, she would get more than she bargained for. She’d not be kissing him again in a hurry. She’d be lucky if she was ever able to kiss anyone after he’d finished with her.
His mind sought a word bad enough to describe her. His mother’s word for evil treachery spurred him on. “Sleekit lips,” he muttered. He needed to shed his bonds so that he could free his hands and wipe the feel of her foul mouth away. He needed to remember that, soft and gentle though her lips had been as they briefly touched his, they were English lips.
Hate him, did she? Aye, that suited him just fine. She could not hate Fraser Lachlan more than he hated her. He had been raised on his hatred of the English, suckled it with his mother’s milk, learned it alongside his letters, hewn it in fire into the blade of his sword. It was the force that drove Fraser to be one of the first clansmen to swear allegiance to Charles Edward Stuart when the prince landed at Mallaig and declared his intention to retake the crown of England and Scotland for the true heirs. It was the burning emotion that kept him at the prince’s side as the man they called Bonnie Prince Charlie toured the length and breadth of Scotland, gathering supporters from among clan leaders who had followed his father thirty years earlier. It was the reason he was here now with a dent in his head and the crowning indignity of being at the mercy of a miserable, crab-apple-tempered excuse for a woman with no more meat on her than a butcher’s pencil.
His head throbbed unmercifully, but whatever she had done to him had eased the pain somewhat. And she had cut his hair. His face burned with the indignity of it. While she had him bound and helpless, she had toyed with him like a cat with a mouse. But she would pay. Oh, how she would pay.
The most important thing, of course, was to get Lord Jack away from this hellhole so that they could be on their way to the border. On their way back home. His mind, however, insisted on dwelling on the various ways in which he was going to wreak his revenge on the loathsome Englishwoman as well.
A grim smile fixed itself on his lips as he finally freed one hand from the rope that bound him.
Mr. Henry Delacourt was the wealthiest landowner in the area. His estate lay north of Derby, closer to the town of Matlock, and he was known locally as a kindly landlord and a charitable man. The fact that he was a capable and efficient farmer was entirely due to the fact that he employed Tom Drury to manage his extensive estate. Mr. Delacourt was an intellectual who found everyday life tiresome and distracting. Tom, who had been born on the Delacourt estate and started out as a farmhand, now occupied lodgings over the stable block. He had risen to his current position through hard work, honesty and a sound knowledge of the farmland and its surrounding area.
Mrs. Delacourt, a gentle, pretty lady, whose daughter Rosie greatly resembled her in looks, had died giving birth to Harry. Her husband had been genuinely bereft at her loss. He had also been distraught at the prospect of raising a newborn babe and a seven-year-old daughter on his own. A series of nurses for young Harry and governesses for Rosie had provided varying levels of satisfaction. It was his housekeeper, Mrs. Glover, who had set him thinking when, while watching ten-year-old Rosie play with her young brother, she had sighed fondly and said, “It’s family the young ’uns need around them, sir, and no mistake.”
Exerting himself, for once, to discover something about life beyond his own home and his ancient tomes, Mr. Delacourt had set about the task of finding a suitable family member to take on the duties of caring for his children. After sending and receiving a series of letters, he came to believe he might have found her in the form of his cousin’s daughter. Martha Wantage’s story had shocked and touched him. That such villains should still live in this day and age. Upon hearing that she had been taken in by a community of nuns who ran a refuge for the poor and needy near Bamburgh, he had wasted no time and set out for the border at once.
“She was not expected to live,” the kindly abbess who welcomed him into the convent of St. Justine had explained. “Even now, she is not strong. Although—” a wry smile touched her lips, “—I would not recommend you mention that fact to Martha herself.”
Mr. Delacourt had formed no very clear idea of what to expect, but the sorry creature who stepped into the room some minutes later had not once featured in his imaginings. Martha Wantage had been sixteen years old at that, their first meeting, but she was so small and waiflike that she was scarcely bigger than his daughter. Her light-brown hair was thin and lifeless, her pale skin stretched tight across her bones, giving her face a skeletal appearance and exaggerating the size of her upturned nose and generous mouth. She had a nervous air about her, and Mr. Delacourt, the gentlest of men, found her inability to make eye contact with him heartbreaking. Her curtsy was gauche, and her hand shook pitifully when he took it between his. Any thought he may have had that this sad excuse for a girl could take care of his children fled his mind in that instant. But, having found her, his conscience would not allow him to then abandon her.