The Widow's Bargain. Juliet Landon

and Alex could not help wondering if she had already been promised to one of them. Not that it made any difference: she had made him an offer and that was a prize not to be rejected for the sake of such niceties. A widow she might be, desolate, loyal and chaste, but he would not deny her the satisfaction of becoming a martyr for the child, since that’s what she seemed intent on. The fun would begin when she discovered that it was all quite unnecessary.

      The hollow click-clack of the key was the last humiliating blow at the end of an unforgettably harrowing day. Ebony had pleaded to be allowed to stay with Meg in the claustrophobic steward’s office that had begun to reek of Sir Joseph’s sweaty bulk and the unguents they had plastered over him. But her dour escort had not been open to bribery and she had been obliged to leave before she had had time to fully explain why her plan to escape had gone wrong. Meg had assured her that she understood, but Ebony knew she didn’t. How could she? Almost in tears, she hit out at the door, but not so hard as to wake Biddie and Sam.

      Biddie’s hope of more sleeping-space appeared to have misfired, for now Sam’s fair head was on the pillow next to her dark curls, their faces inches from each other in sleep, and Ebony could guess how Biddie had relented after only one small wheedle.

      Tiptoeing across to the unshuttered window, she looked out into the darkness, just able to make out the shining black loch below, the black line of forest on the far shore, the ragged outline of mountains against the clear starlit sky. He was wrong about there being no moon, she thought; the silver crescent hung like a fine sickle that the men used to cut the hay. No light, but a slim signal of hope, focussing her thoughts.

      In many ways she would find it hard to leave the place that had been her home for three years as a maid and three as a widow, though regret did not accurately describe the fear that she could now admit with no act of bravado to maintain. Sir Joseph had kept her and her child safe from harm and hunger during the terrible years of famine that had affected the whole of Europe. At the time she had paid scant attention to the itinerant merchants’ tales of rotting crops and drowned livestock, of starving villagers eating rats and dogs and worse, and of salt costing as much as gold, of the murrain that affected herds of cattle, the shortage of wool, the closure of markets, the ruin of tracks, roads and bridges. She had had her own losses to contend with, a terrified child, her own black despair. Who could lose more than that?

      Sir Joseph’s stores had not suffered; he had money and a large castle sited well above the flooded glens. His fields were between wooded slopes, well drained and safe enough for his precious herds of pure-bred Galloway ponies. He had contacts in every town and port, and what he lacked he gained by raiding, as others did. His cellars had never been empty of expensive wines.

      That, of course, was only part of the story, for to raid consistently and indiscriminately, as he did, one must needs be ruthless to a degree, unprincipled, brutal, and without a shred of compassion. In these traits, no one surpassed Sir Joseph Moffat. His name inspired fear in men, his reputation for hard-dealing was legendary, and Ebony was afraid of what he was doing to his grandson. The only ones who had not feared him were Robbie and Meg and, perhaps, his nephew. Now Sir Joseph was immobilised, and Ebony had exchanged that fear for another kind, though of an equally ruthless nature.

      She could have borne her incarceration at Castle Kells with a better grace if Sir Joseph had been less of a tyrant, living only for what he could get and who he could subdue to get it. His conduct was the opposite of that which she wanted Sam to emulate, yet keeping a six-year-old out of his grandparent’s way was not easily done, even in a castle of this size, and the child had already begun to absorb the horror stories that Sir Joseph in his wisdom believed would make a man of him. He was never on hand to soothe away Sam’s shrieks of terror at night, to take him hot possets and sleeping-draughts, or to show him the gentler intellectual skills. That, he said, was what the women were for.

      There had been many times when she had longed to escape from Galloway, from Sir Joseph’s crudeness, his swearing and unacceptable bad manners, his rough friends who overstayed their welcome. She had asked to be allowed to go, many times, and had been refused permission. Where would she go to? Sir Joseph had bellowed at her. Who indeed? Lady Jean Nevillestowe, her mother, had disappeared in the same year as Sir Joseph’s wife, though her destination had been harder to place. Two years ago, Scottish reivers had broken into her beautiful home in Carlisle, terrorised her servants, stolen everything they could carry and abducted her, too. After which there had been conflicting accounts of Lady Jean’s willingness or unwillingness to be abducted, though only the most ungenerous critic could blame her, an extremely attractive and wealthy widow. The fact that no ransom had been demanded for her release suggested that whoever was holding her had no intention of selling her back.

      Ebony had worried constantly, but Sir Joseph would not allow her to take Sam to Carlisle, and she dared not go without him. Since 1317 she had had no word of her mother or her whereabouts, and the guilt of not being able to communicate weighed as much as death itself.

      Pushing herself away from the cool draughts of night air, she closed the shutters at last, drawing her mind back to more immediate dangers. She had made constant enquiries about who these raiders could be, where they had come from, who had seen them arrive, but the wounded men knew nothing of any consequence apart from agreeing that they certainly knew what they were doing. More non-committal replies came from the household servants who seemed too relieved to venture any curses upon them. Her main concerns, however, were for Meg in a lonely vigil with only her maid and chaplain to aid her. Had she herself not been involved in this foolish talk of escapes, she would have been free to offer her comfort.

      As she undressed, thoughts of the day’s happenings jostled through her mind, reminding her of the shameful things she had hoped to suppress. She slipped her small dagger under her pillow and, so that she would be able to locate it accurately, she sent her hand several times to seek it in the dark, just in case.

      Being deserted by both Biddie and Sam at the same time took some getting used to, and for a long time she lay exhausted but too concerned to sleep as she listened to Biddie’s gentle snores, to the hoots of an owl and its mate. There were still nights when she longed for Robbie’s arms, yet there was self-reproach too that her yearning ought to have endured longer, been more loyal, more specific. Lately, she had begun to question whether their loving had contained all the ingredients of a lasting passion, and why, if she craved his loving warmth, was she unable to recall the details of his body or remember how she felt at the moment of his release.

      At first, he had been before her whether waking or sleeping, always gently adoring. More recently, her need for a man’s arms and kisses was so strong that she could scarcely tell whether it was Robbie who called to her or whether it was her own body crying out to be reminded of what it was missing, some of which she had never experienced. No man had held her since her loss, except for today, nor had she wanted one to except in the deepest seclusion of the night when the vibrations came silently to overpower her with a craving that left her trembling, ashamed and weeping.

      Her first half-sleep was broken and confused by a blur of remorseless questions without answers, most of them concerning a large and commanding figure that stalked into each jumbled scene, restraining her, taking her offer with a staggering self-assurance. It would mean no more to him than some light relief on his journey, a trophy to flaunt after a successful raid. But vague notions of what this threatened intimacy would mean to her were, in the darkness of her longings, not as clear-cut as she had made them sound at the time of her bargaining, and then there was little more than a token sign of those sacred memories of Robbie as they became alarmingly confused with indecent curiosity.

      Barely inside the boundaries of sleep, a warmth spread comfortingly across her back. Was it Sam? Or Biddie? Or Robbie? His knees tucked beneath hers, curving her into his lap and cradling her into a deeper sleep. Later, she turned and felt her head being lifted gently to rest in the crook of his shoulder, pulled closer to his body, enfolded by his warm arms with her naked breasts against his chest, her hair lifted away, her forehead brushed by his lips. As it had so often done, her leg moved over to rest on top of his, and she heard her breathing change to the ragged gasps of craving that invariably left her desolate, alone, and whimpering in her sleep. This time, however, his comfort stayed with her until a peace came to replace the