The Laird’s Runaway Bride (Charmed by the Sassenachs #1)

Chapter 14

14

As Effie helped her lace up her petticoat, Amelia could hardly wipe the smile off her face.

Though she had woken that morning to find the Laird had left her to rest in her chambers, she had slept in his arms all night. And while they had not consummated the marriage in the traditional sense yet, she knew she was a damn sight closer to it than she had been the morning before.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of his hands on her skin, the way he had looked at her, as though she was the most perfect thing he had ever laid eyes upon, his tongue in her mouth, his teeth grazing her neck…

“You seem to be in a good mood this morning, Lady Amelia, if I may say so,” Effie remarked to her, as she went to fetch her dress from where she had laid it on the bed. Amelia flashed her a smile. She felt almost giddy.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” she replied coyly. She longed to talk to Effie about what had happened the night before, but she didn’t know exactly how to put it into words, or if it even would have been appropriate for her to discuss the goings-on in her bedchamber with someone who worked for Arran like that.

Effie cocked an eyebrow, a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Aye, there was some talk this morning that the Laird slept here last night,” she remarked. “Is there any truth tae it?”

“One could say that.”

Effie laughed, pinching her playfully on the arm.

“Aye, I knew it! Well, it won’t be long till we have an heir here, God willing…”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Amelia replied, lifting her arms and allowing Effie to slip the dress over her head. Effie tipped her head to the side curiously.

“Oh, aye? And what makes ye say that?”

“I still have my… my virtue,” she explained, her cheeks flushing slightly. “The Laird and I indulged in… other pleasures last night.”

Effie’s eyebrows nearly shot off the top of her head.

“Is that right?” she murmured, shaking her head. “Well, I’d not taken the Laird for such a man, but I suppose…”

The two women dissolved into giggles. Amelia felt as though she was walking on air, though she and the Laird had barely begun to know each other in an intimate fashion. If last night had been anything to go by, the journey that lay ahead of them was to be an interesting one.

“Aye, I told ye, it’s not so bad when you start,” Effie remarked, as she helped her do up her dress. Amelia couldn’t help but let her mind drift back to when Arran had been stripping her out of it the night before. She could still remember the way his hands had felt on her skin, the confidence and skill with which he had touched her, as though he already knew that she belonged to him, and nothing at all would change that.

She nodded, sinking back onto the bed as Effie set about plaiting her hair. It was a routine they had fallen into most mornings, and one that Amelia found soothing. She herself had done the same for her sisters when they had been growing up and, while she was still getting used to the reality of allowing someone else to take care of her in such a way, she found the gentle tug on her hair relaxing.

“I just wish I could see Mary and Lily,” she blurted out, before she could stop herself. Effie paused for a moment in brushing her hair, but then started once more.

“Yer sisters, are they not?”

Amelia nodded. It still stung to so much as think of them, but she knew she would be better off talking about them than trying to contain all the memories of them.

“Aye, I cannae imagine how it’s been for you, being apart from them,” Effie murmured. “I dinnae have sisters, but my cousins are like my wee sisters, and I wouldn’t cope with being away from them for so long.”

Amelia nodded. It had only been a matter of weeks, really, since she had last seen her little sisters, but it felt like they had been apart for a lifetime, perhaps due to how much she had changed in that time, or perhaps because of how much fear she held that something terrible might have been happening to them in her absence.

“Do you know much about Arran—I mean, the Laird’s family?” Amelia asked. When they had been out at the pond together, she had noticed the abruptness with which he had steered the conversation away from his mother when she had come up. She couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to that story than just the grief of having lost her, or perhaps not having known her at all.

Effie fell silent for a moment, and, at first, Amelia wondered if she hadn’t heard her at all. But then, with a furtive glance around, she lowered her voice and leaned a little closer.

“Aye, I’ve heard some… stories,” she admitted at last. Her tone was careful, as though she half-expected someone to swoop in and silence her before she could continue.

“Stories?” Amelia prompted her nervously. “Stories like what?”

“About his mother,” she replied, as Amelia turned to face her. Effie’s hands dropped into her lap, and she twisted her fingers into knots around each other.

“What about her?”

Amelia got the feeling she was going to have to guide Effie every step of the way. Whatever she had heard, it clearly spooked her. In the short time she had known the other woman, Amelia had never seen Effie so nervous or doubtful. She’d have been lying if she said it didn’t worry her. Perhaps this was where the stories about his brutish nature had come from.

“That she was a foreigner, too,” she replied. “An Sassenach, an outlander, like you. That part, it seems everyone can agree on, but what happened to her…”

She hesitated a moment before she continued.

“I’ve heard some people say that she died within these very walls,” she remarked, gesturing around her. Amelia’s stomach dropped, the color of the walls that contained them suddenly more macabre than before.

“So, did she? What happened?”

“I wasnae here when she was,” Effie admitted. “I can only tell ye what I’ve heard, and it’s… A lot of it contradicts itself.”

“Why? How?”

“There are some people who think that she took off into the night,” she explained. “Fled from here for some reason or another, though naebody can say what that might be. And that, as a result…”

Her eyes darted this way and that. Amelia’s heart twisted in her chest. She was sure that, whatever came out of Effie’s mouth next, she wasn’t going to like it.

“He had all the foreigners in the land killed.”

Those words just hung there, and Amelia did all she could to make sense of them. She could still recall the fear with which her father’s advisor had spoken about Arran. Was this why? Could it have been because he had killed off all the foreigners in the land, due to his mother’s abandonment? It was hard to believe that the man who had cradled her so tenderly the night before could have been capable of such brutality, but there were depths to him she knew she had yet to discover.

“If ye talk to some of the older maids here, they’ll tell ye that her ghost still roams the corridors,” she remarked, shooting a look towards the door as though the spirit might have been wafting there in that very moment. “I’ve never come across her myself, but this place does have an eeriness to it, on some nights…”

Amelia’s skin prickled with a sudden coldness. Effie was right. There was something to this place, though she had always put it down to the circumstances she herself had been brought here under. But maybe something more sinister lurked beneath the surface, something she might not have been able to put into the words. A troubled memory, a spirit tormented by the history of everything she had gone through.

“But ye ken how they can be,” Effie added quickly, as though sensing her lady’s discomfort. “Old wives’ tales. Meant to send a shiver up yer spine and little more. There! Yer hair is done.”

She rose to her feet.

“I should be going.”

With that, she scurried to the door, like she doubted her ability not to say too much. Amelia watched as she went, and, when the door fell shut behind her, she suddenly felt more alone than she had in a long time.

Was what she was saying true? Could it be? She supposed there was only one way for her to find out. She would need to speak to the Laird herself. She was not sure if he would be willing to expand on anything she had heard from Effie, but, as his wife, didn’t she deserve to know if there were dark secrets hiding beneath the veil of this place?

Amelia rose from her chair and strode to the door, mustering as much confidence as she could as she went to find her husband.

And to discover just what he might have done to the Englishwoman who had lived here before her.