Morganna (The Brocade Collection, Book 4) (9 page)

“God does na’ give gifts of
death.”

“I’ve na’ killed anyone...yet,” she replied.

“That’s just it. Yet. You’re a killing machine, without a bit of remorse.
It’s inhuman, and it’s frightening. It’s also turning you into a demigod everywhere we go. The lads hate you for it. The lasses swoon over you. I don’t
even know what to make of you.”

His voice was calling to every bit of her that was female, and Morgan
fought it before she was losing. She should have known she’d lose. “I feel
remorse,” she whispered.

He looked up at that. Morgan’s eyes were awash with tears and she
watched him stare. She didn’t dare blink. Something was passing between them
too, and her eyes widened when she felt it.

“You’ll
make your bed in here. With me. It’s not up for argument,
either.”

He was angrier than before, if the clipped tone of his words were any
indication.

“I refuse,” she answered.

“It’s not open for refusal. I canna’ keep you safe, and I will na’ wake to
find your throat slit.”

“I can protect myself,” she answered, blinking the tears into existence down her cheeks.

“No, you canna’. You sleep too deeply. And with too many dreams, if
your tossing is any indication.”

She raised her hands up and slashed them across her face,
to
wipe the moisture away. “I doona’,” she finally answered. Then, she lowered her arms.

“I’ve watched you.”

He watched me?
she wondered, catching a breath and holding it so tightly, that it burned.

“
When I canna’ sleep, I like to stare into a fire. You sleep close enough
to it, you should be burned. But you’re not, are you, Morgan, of no-clan and
no-name? You’re never burned. Only those about you are.”

“No one is ever about me,” she replied.

“That’s probably true. You would na’ let them. They’re burned, none-the-less. Trust me.”

Morgan frowned. He wasn’t making sense. “I canna’ sleep here, even if
you order it so.”

“You’ll n
a’ argue further, or I’ll tie you to my bed. Will your swooning
group of followers appreciate that, you think?”

“I have no followers,” Morgan protested.

“You give the word, there’s not a lass out there that wouldn’t follow you.
Anywhere. Anytime. Most of my lads, too. No followers, he says, like it’s not a
God-given fact.” He wasn’t looking at her, he was studying his fingernails. Then, he was lifting each hand to look at it as if it were his entire chore for the day. Morgan watched him. “Were I as gifted with an aim as you are, I’d have legions of followers, and all aiming for the heart of every Sassenach bastard on
the face of the earth. But, since I am na’....” He stopped and sighed, “I must
make do with the use of yours.”

“I still will na’ bed in here with you.”

“
Why do you argue, when I’ve said it’s not open for such? I’ll brook no
argument, and I’ll use brute strength to make it so. Don’t force it. Neither of us will enjoy it.”

“
But I sleep on the ground. In the open. I am used to that. A tent is too fine for the
likes of me.”

“There’s ground beneath the rugs. You can have the floor. I’d as lief
give you your freedom as gift you with my cot. What do you take me for, a complete fool?”

“Nay,” she replied. “You are my master, but a fool? Nay.”

“You’re mistaken, lad, now that I think on it.” He had ceased staring at
his hands and put every bit of that midnight-blue gaze on her. Morgan wasn’t
prepared for it, and probably showed it. “I’m the basest fool. I only hope I don’t
get worse burned. There’s a hell for what I desire and need right now. You
ken?”

Morgan squinted her eyes before lifting her shoulders. She hadn’t the
smallest notion what he was talking of. It probably showed. “May I leave now?
I’ve a hide to scrape, and a boar to prepare for your next fair.”

“Aye. Prepare it nice and sweet, and then weaken it to the point of no return. That’s what I like about you, Morgan lad. You truss up your victims and get them ready for slaughter, and they don’t even know it’s happening.”

“I don’t think I ken to you,” she said.

“Thank God,” he replied. “I’ve been thinking, too. About what you
said.”

Morgan waited. She’d said so much, it could be anything.

“I do have too many servants already, and no taste for correcting them and making them obey. We’ll ask for something different this time.”

“You canna’,” she replied.

“
Why na?”

“There is nothing that will guarantee you fealty like taking their offspring.
You said it yourself, and it’s true. I’ve watched. Everything you said is true.”

“What should I do, then?”

Morgan shrugged. “You’ve brothers and parents? Gift some servants to them. You’ll need to make certain of their loyalty a-fore that, though.”

“
My brothers are all loyal!”

Morgan shoved out the amusement on one huff of air.
“Make certain of
the servant’s loyalty, na’ your brothers’.”

“
We could use more cloth, though. And more flour.”

“Flowers? Whatever for?” Morgan asked, totally mystified.

“
Not flowers, flour. Wheat flour. What do you ken the bread we eat is
made from? Air?”

“Trade the boar for it, like last time.”

“You’ve an answer to everything, don’t you, Morgan lad?”

“Your problems are small, and therefore easily solved,” she answered.

He took a step toward her and sent those midnight-blue eyes boring into
her. Morgan was afraid to breathe.

“If
only that were true,” he whispered and took another step toward her.

Morgan began backing
up. Then, she was subconsciously holding the
finger-filled dirks out. He didn’t so much as glance that way. He didn’t move his
gaze from hers.

“You’ve a taste of the forbidden about you, and not one inkling of
it.”
He was whispering the words so softly, Morgan didn’t think she’d heard them
right. She didn’t think she was supposed to hear them, either.

Her eyes were wide, her breath stolen, and her back against a tent pole.
She was terrified. He snarled, and spun from her. He reached the other side of
his tent in two steps.

“You may go,” he said.

Morgan gulped, then began inching her way to the door flap. The man wasn’t making any sense. He was making every bit of her body sing with
something akin to the anticipation she felt whenever a challenge was made, and
starting a tremor not unlike the flush of victory when she hit her mark. He was
too immense for her.

“You know something else, Morgan lad?”

She stopped at the tent flap.

“
You have horrible dreams.”

CHAPTER NINE

What followed were four more of the worst days of Morgan’s life, and even worse nights. It was the same for anyone in Zander FitzHugh’s proximity
and it began the morning after she started staying in his tent.

Before the sun had thought of appearing
that day, Zander was awakening her, and
not by any previous method, either. He simply put the bulk of his foot beneath her ribcage and kicked her right out the door flap. Morgan rolled to her feet, dusting herself off and choking with the surprise and the temperature. Her
feile-breacan
was askew, too, and he snarled at her over it, before pointing down his arm at her.

“I’ll not listen to your snoring another moment. I’ll find the method for
tiring you out! Now, move!”

So saying, he’d shoved her to an open field, and put her through such a
rigorous series of exercises and movements that sweat was literally pouring off
both of them. He matched her push-up for push-up and when they reached
two-hundred, he had her on her feet doing squats and thrusts with either leg from a crouch position. When that didn’t suit him fully, he had them go from knees to feet, back to knees. Then, to feet again, jumping, falling, jumping, falling. Then he had her working with stones. Not small stones, either, large boulders that she
was required to lift over her head, hold and then swing. The first one he chose
was so heavy, when Morgan went to swing it, she went with it, making
Zander even more furious.

He didn’t slacken when she begged a moment to clear her innards. He
simply glared at her, waved his hand and gave her exactly to the count of ten to
do what needed doing in the bushes.

Then, he was tossing her in the small loch, since she refused to disrobe
for him, and while she was swimming with the burden of wet wool and full boots,
he was taking every stitch off before diving in himself. Morgan had been out of
the water before he broke the surface and wringing out her plaid, then her shirts,
and then her braid.

“You have a problem serving me, squire?” he’d snarled, when she ignored
him.

Morgan was on her feet and handing him his clothing, piece by piece, and
she was doing her absolute best to see none of him when the sky was lightening with yellowish-red light and he had a body made for running her eyes over.

He got angered over that, too, and told her to find a wench to stare at,
and Morgan flushed. Then, he was off at a fierce, bone-jarring pace back to camp. His temperament didn’t improve, though. He simply turned it on anyone in his way. He told Sheila to cease putting good oats through the torment of her
gruel, he flung one of Amelia’s biscuits to the ground, told her if they were going
to be the consistency of stones, they might as well be one, and called his lads
together for what turned into a marathon race.

Morgan had more than one cramp to her belly before they reached camp,
but she was only one of two to stay with him. The others had long ago ceased
the ability to keep pace, and were left to wander in as they might.

Zander put his midnight
-blue gaze about camp, told the wenches their
laziness wouldn’t be tolerated much longer, grabbed a huge slice of roasting boar meat and yelled for the lass, Heather, to service him in his tent.

Morgan’s eyes were as wide as anyone’s as Heather jumped to her feet
and followed him into the tent. She was out moments later, however, and she
wasn’t happy about it. No one said a word. Then, Zander tossed open the flap
and yelled for Morgan. He hadn’t lost a bit of stridency in his orator voice, either. The entire forest jumped at the sound of her name, not just Morgan.

He sneered at her, told her to cease being an irritant and get her backside
to sleep. Otherwise, she’d pay for it with the next day’s exercise. Morgan had
just closed her eyes when he had her suspended by her belt and was hauling her
out of the tent to dump her on a log in front of everyone.

“Eat something first
,” he growled, and stomped back into his enclosure.

He gave her exactly what time it took to put a dirk into the meat and start
carving before he was bellowing her name again. Morgan ripped off what she could,
and was shoving it into her mouth as she went back into the tent.

The second and third and fourth day had the same pattern to them, although as far as she could tell, he wasn’t even sleeping. He was cursing her, cursing the tent, cursing every lazy Sassenach on the face of Scotland
, and
drinking heavily. She tried putting her hands over her ears beneath her kilt, but that just seemed to make him angrier when he pulled her awake the second morn and saw her position.

She paid for it with another series of exercise, another brutal run, and
then she had to practice swordplay with him until it felt like her arms might fall
off, and all that was before the fourth night.

She’d barely been kicked out of his tent for the second time and was rubbing the sore spot on her left buttock, from where she’d landed, when he was
out again, bellowing for her to cease her lazing about and follow him. Morgan was on his heels and that made him angry, too. He turned, barked at her for
being his shadow, and then cursed her for being so slow to answer his demands.

He wanted Morgan, the horse, saddled, and he was going into the village.
He gave Martin less than the count of ten to get it finished, despite Morgan’s
assertion that it couldn’t be done.

“When I need your words, I’ll ask for them, Morgan. Time is up,
Martin.”

Morgan met Martin’s eye, and his look of empathy, and then she was tossed up onto Morgan, the horse, by a less-than-gentle hand. She bent forward
over the saddle with the momentum, and had barely lifted her head back up when Zander planted himself into the saddle in front of her.

“Ho
ld to the saddle or fall off, Morgan lad. We’re late as it is.”

Late for what
?
she wondered, and then she ceased thinking, as the horse
broke into a gallop, rapidly enough to fling her off. She wasn’t holding to the
saddle, either; she had both arms wrapped about Zander, with her hands linked together at
his belly. He had more muscles in his stomach that any other she’d ever seen,
and they felt even more rigid and strong beneath the skin of her forearms and
wrists. Morgan put her cheek against his back and tried to ignore how it felt.

He had her arms pried off as they approached the torch-
bedecked village, and he flung them from him as if they were filthy. Morgan hung her head then, but knew enough to cling to his saddle. He walked his horse behind the crofts and looped back to the end of a street. Then he took them down an offal-filled alleyway to a
dark, unwelcoming croft.

He was off the horse and pulling her with him by her collar, and
marching around to the door before Morgan had a chance to find the ground.
She ran alongside him in a tip-toe sort of fashion until they reached the stoop and
he let her down a fraction. Then, he lifted his fist, and she saw that it was white-knuckled and shaking. He sucked in a breath and knocked with a quiet,
soft touch.

“W
ho is it?”

The melodious voice belonged to a woman so closely resembling
Morgan’s kin, the hag, that she gasped. The woman had breasts that were ripe
and falling over the top of her dress to the point the pink part surrounding her
nipples was showing. She’d tied her belt high on her ribcage to get the effect,
too. She had black lines encircling her eyes, her straggly-looking hair brushed
into a cloud about her and the reddest lips Morgan had ever seen.

Morgan’s mouth fell open and she stared.

“I only serve one gent at a time, lover man,” she said, motioning to
Morgan.

Zander let go of her collar, and Morgan swayed at the shove he gave her
at the same time. She knew what he was doing there, now. He wasn’t going to
take a woman from his camp. He was going to take a woman that gave to any
man. He was going to service a harlot, or she was going to service him. Morgan didn’t know anything about it, except that the place where her shirt’s button
placket ended at her breast was one huge, ceaseless, pumping ball of hurt.

“You move, and I’ll hunt you down and cut every hair off your head,”
Zander leaned to whisper. “You ken me, lad?”

She nodded and sat.

The door closed beside her, releasing a heavy, perfumy sort of odor into
the air, and Morgan had to shut her eyes to staunch the instant film of tears. If Zander FitzHugh had a woman, what was it to her? He was a man, and he’d told her women were for the taking. She definitely wasn’t interested enough to care.
She didn’t want anything to do with him. He was her ticket to the FitzHugh
laird. That’s all he was. That’s all he would ever be.

The sound of laughter was followed by a woman’s murmur of awe. Morgan put her hands to her temples and held them there. The ball of ache in her
breast wasn’t easing, either. It was growing into a fire-like agony. She heard the
swish of what was probably clothing falling.

The whore should have built her croft better. That way Morgan wouldn’t have to sit on the front stoop and hear everything that was happening. She
should have made her walls of mud-brick, rather than straw and peat.

“Oooh, lover-man. That’s a sight many a woman would give her fortune
to see, let alone feel. I know just where....”

Morgan sucked in breath, shoved it out, sucked it back in, shoved it back
out, pounded her fists at her temples, and nothing was stopping the sobs. They
were tearing through her, climbing her spine to come over her head, and her eyes
were filling with the stupid tears, and all because the man she’d sworn to hate
was being serviced by another woman?

What sort of insanity was that?

“Try again, wench, and this time use your hands!”

Morgan’s hands moved from her temples to her mouth, and she sucked both hands full of fingers into her mouth to make certain no sound escaped. If she was sobbing her heart out on a whore’s front stoop, the least she could do was keep it to herself.

“’Tis hard to pump life into a lifeless thing like that, dearie.”

The whore’s laughter followed her words and Morgan would have given anything not to have to listen. She was very nearly ready to run as far and as fast away from this as she could, and to blazes with her hair, when Zander’s voice came again, this time surlier and angrier than she’d heard it all week.

“
Perhaps I like my wenches with a little less flesh and a little less
experience. Try again. This time use your mouth.”

Everything stopped for Morgan, and she knew shock was what was happening to her. She heard the sounds of slurping, gasping and then a
kissing-type of noise, and she didn’t even know what a kiss was supposed to sound like. Then she heard nothing for so long, she had to let the held-in breath
out. She was afraid to put meaning to anything. She was afraid of her emotions,
and she had every right to be. So far, she was exhibiting every bit of a jealous
woman’s reaction. She couldn’t believe it. Zander FitzHugh was a rutting, lusty
male, a man who ordered a woman to do something so horrid he had to find a
paid woman to do it for him. He wasn’t worth the time for Morganna
KilCreggar to cry over him, and she told herself she wasn’t crying.

She never cried
, leastways over a bit of dung like FitzHugh. She certainly wasn’t bemoaning Zander’s pleasure. He
was free to get it anywhere and with anyone he wished. Just as long as it wasn’t with
her.

She pulled her hands out of her mouth and wiped at the drool and
tear-mixture that had started to slide down her arms. She mopped at her face
with the end of her kilt, and then she tried to act like nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

“
Blast you, woman! Save your efforts. I have better things to do than
await you.”

“Await me, he says
,” the whore-woman remarked, sounding a little
insulted. “I’ve ridden men for days, my fine, perfectly-sized gent. I just wish
you’d come to me a-fore your lass stole your desire and turned it against you.”

“’T
was no lass,” Morgan heard Zander grumble. “Heave off and take
payment. I feel worse than when I arrived, no thanks to you.”