Page 21 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
“Ten minutes I have been sitting here awaiting your arrival.” He patted the pocket of his white waistcoat in which, Charlotte knew, sat the pocket watch that her late mother had given him as a present. There was a miniature portrait of her mother on the inside of the lid.
“Ten minutes I have been sitting here and pondering just what might have called you away from your tent at this strange hour,” her father continued, pensively. “I shall be exceedingly interested to see if the real reason marries up with any of my conjecture.”
Charlotte swallowed. Her mouth was suddenly very dry.
Ten minutes. Only ten minutes he has been sat there. I still have a chance to avoid repercussions.
“Well, Father,” she said, trying to hitch what she hoped was a look of girlish innocence onto her face, “I stepped out to, um, well to make water and then got mesmerized by the stars. I must have stepped out just as––”
Captain Bolton rose like a striking snake and hit her hard across the face with the back of his open hand. It was not the hardest blow that she had ever received at the hands of the man who was supposed to care and protect her, but she had not been expecting it.
Charlotte fell to the floor like a ragdoll, knocking over the low stool at which she sat in front of her dresser. She did not cry out––there was no time. She lay stunned for a moment or two while her head tried to catch up with events.
Her father hauled her to her feet before she could so much as utter a whimper of protest.
“You presume to lie to me, girl?” he snarled at her. His eyes glittered, and his teeth were bared just in the same way that the fox cub’s had been.
“I’m n-n-not lying, Fa-Father,” Charlotte managed to reply, her own eyes as wide as saucers. “I-I just stepped out f-f-f-for––”
The second slap cut her words off just as the first had. This time, Captain Bolton hit her with his open palm, on the same side of her face as the first blow. The sound of the slap covered her own little cry of pain and terror.
Do not make a sound. It will be the worse for you. You know how it enrages him more.
She would have fallen once more, but her father’s adamantine grip on her upper arm prevented her from doing so.
“Don’tlieto me girl,” he hissed, and she felt flecks of saliva spray across her face.
“I––” she began, her voice high with fright and anxiety at what might happen next.
Captain Bolton flung her away from him with terrifying strength, though it seemed to exert him little. Charlotte stumbled backwards, tripped on her cloak that she had let fall to the floor, and fell onto her bed. She lay there, breathing hard through her nose and staring pleadingly at her father.
Captain Bolton stood towering over her. His face was a mask of the utmost contempt and coldest fury.
“I have been sitting in that chair for gone an hour,” he said, breaking off each word like icicles from the edge of a roof.
“You had better give me an account of yourself––one that I believe––otherwise, so help me God, you’ll wish you had never been born!” he said, his voice as merciless and forbidding as a winter gale.
Charlotte pointed at her mother’s old foraging basket and then at the book that lay open on her dresser.
“I’ve b-b-b-been studying local herbs and f-flora,” she said, trying to keep the shrillness in her voice to a minimum. “I thought it m-m-might be useful if one of your men was s-s-sick or i-injured.”
Her father looked at the empty basket on the ground and sneered, “It seems that, for someone gone an hour, you have had precious little luck in finding a single thing.”
Charlotte could taste the hot, metallic tang of fresh blood in her mouth. For a moment, she could think of no reason for her not having found anything. She could feel the blood starting to pulse in her face, the side of her face where her father had struck her thumping in time with her heart.
Captain Bolton took a threatening step towards her and this loosed her tongue so that she tripped over words in her haste to explain.
“I was attacked, Father!” she gabbled. “I surprised a fox pup in some brush at it attacked me! See!” She showed him her wrapped arm.
Her father looked down at her with narrowed eyes.
“A fox pup?” he said, suspicion coloring each word.
“Yes, I swear it. Look at my sleeve!” and she exhibited her tattered sleeve where the cub’s claws had ruined it.
Please do not let him look at the wound. If he sees the poultice, there will follow some unanswerable questions.
To distract her father, she said quickly, “I did not mean to go so long, but then I had to go to the store wagon and retrieve some bandages. I was so embarrassed that I had been hurt by such a little creature that I wrapped them myself in secret.”
