Page 3 of The Scot Beds His Wife
Shame washed him in layer of filth and self-hatred.
Thorne looked down at his hands and wanted to cut them off. To keep himself from doing something unutterably foolish, he crossed his arms in front of him and gripped each of his skinny biceps, wishing with everything he possessed that he had a fraction of Liam’s corded brawn. Or even Hamish’s doughy bulk.
He was still a boy. He knew that. Nothing he’d done tonight made him feel like a man. No actions recounted to Callum would induce anything but disgust. Or worse, pity.
“Weakness is tedious and disappointing.” The Laird sneered at Thorne. “Like yer mother. Like ye. At least I have two strong sons.” He clapped Hamish on the shoulder.
“The whore is going to talk, Father,” Hamish the younger had warned. “She might make trouble for us.”
“Nay. There are ways to ensure her silence.”
A soul-deep tremble racked Thorne’s entire frame at the way his father spoke. He wanted to rip his flesh from hisown sullied body. He wanted to flee this room and never return. He burned to take the dirk from his father’s boot and shove it through his cruel, dark eye, ending both Thorne’s misery, and his mother’s.
But he couldn’t reach that high. Not without his father cutting him down first.
Not yet.The thought snarled through him.
“There’s a social in Gairloch tonight, and my blood is still up.” The Laird yawned. “I think I’ll wander there for some further sport.”
“Can I come with ye, Father?” Hamish queried.
“Aye, there’s a woman I’ve been after a long time, and tonight she willna tell me nay.”
Then Thorne was alone. Naked but for his kilt and one wool stocking.
He didn’t know how long he stood there in the dark and watched the candles flicker, the shadows performing a nightmarish reenactment of the horrors this room had been privy to. His gorge rose at the sight of the bed. There was blood on the sheets. Oh God, he couldn’t look any more.
Eventually, his legs moved, and he wound his way through the corridors of Ravencroft Keep until he found himself in his mother’s chamber. The slide of the lock roused her from her slumber, and the next thing Thorne knew, he’d collapsed against her, dry-eyed, and confessed everything. He wondered, rather numbly, if she could smell the sex and disgrace on him. If she’d stop loving him now. If she’d fear him like she did his father.
When he finished his tale, she just held him in the darkness for a long while, her hot tears dripping into his hair. “I’m sorry,” she whispered piteously. “I’m sorry that he’s your father. I wish I’d known. I’d have run to the ends of the earth rather than married him. You have to understand, I was only sixteen. He and my father had business and…well, I was very innocent. I didn’t know what he was like. I would have chosen for you a different father if I could reach through time and change it all.”
Thorne’s guilt doubled for distressing her. For laying his sins at her feet. He just didn’t know where else to go.
“He wants to turn us into him,” he whispered, despair threatening to drown him in the absolute darkness of her chamber. “What do I do?”
His mother’s small hands, so prone to trembling, gripped the sides of his face with surprising strength and held him aloft in front of her. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. It was almost as though she could somehow make out more than his outline in the heavily draped room.
“Donotbe his son. Do not be a Mackenzie,” she pleaded with a whispered fervency he’d never before heard from her. “Hamish is his son. Liam is his son and heir. But you, dear heart, aremine. I am sorry I cannot protect you from him, but remember this in the years to come. You are the Earl of Thorne. Lord of Inverthorne Keep. You are beautiful and you are clever and you are good.Promise meto remain good. To never touch a woman but sweetly. To never delight in cruelty. To make your own way in this world, apart from this accursed keep and clan and your father’s tainted legacy most of all.”
“I swear it.” Thorne felt the vow solidify in his chest, hardening his heart, nurturing the seed of cold darkness that had been planted this night. “I amnothis son. I am no Mackenzie.”
Thorne allowed his mother to cling to him, to wash away his sins with her tears. It felt unmanly to do so, but he didn’t care. Tonight made up for all the nights he’d tried to save her from his father’s attentions, and was thwarted by size and age. For all the tears she’d valiantly tried andfailed to hide from him. They were equals now. Burdened by the same pain.
And the same name.
He did not have to be Hamish Mackenzie’s son.
The Celts were matrilineal before. He didn’t need the Mackenzie name to make his way. He’d establish his own name. His own land. His own legacy.
For he’d sire children with a woman he loved. And he’d hold them. And protect them.
They’d be safe. They’d never know fear, or hate, or this soul-crushing ignominy.
They’d be proud of their name.
His name.
Thorne must have nodded off, because he woke to a desperate shake and a sound like thunder.
