Page 2 of Married to the Icy Highlander
Where had she put the damned basket? Where was everybody?
“Ma?”
Preoccupied with running her finger over the hole in her sleeve, pushing aside the fabric and prodding her soft skin, she was hardly paying attention as she started up the stairs to her mother’s room. She would certainly have a needle and thread in there.
“Ma?” she called again, the stairs creaking under her slight weight.
She added checking the nails in the stairs to the never-ending list of things she had to do.
When she heard footsteps ahead of her, she lifted her head with a bright smile to greet her mother. But it was not her mother that she saw.
Instead, Ferguson Arran stood in the narrow stairway, blocking her path with his bulky frame. He had to lean slightly to the side to accommodate his protuberant belly as he smirked down at her.
Ceana froze, her hands dropping immediately as her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in.
While the past year had thinned the rest of them slightly as they had to adjust to the absence of her father, Ferguson Arran had taken every opportunity to benefit from their misfortune as best and as often as he possibly could.
“What are ye doin’ here?” Ceana demanded unkindly.
There was nothing about the foul creature in front of her that deserved softness.Nothing.
The large man was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, his face and the apples of his cheeks flushed where they peeked out from beneath his graying beard and mustache. He wasted no time in appraising her despite the way she shrank away from his inappropriate gaze.
“How did the delivery go, Ceana?”
“That is none of yer business, Ferguson,” Ceana snapped rudely. “What are ye doin’ in me home?”
As it usually did when her temper irritated him, the lecherous smile that he wore a second ago dropped. “How can ye always talk to me this way, Ceana? Do ye have nay manners at all?”
“For ye? None,” she retorted.
He took three steps down, and she wanted torun.
“If ye had any idea how much I do for yer family, perhaps ye would have chosen to be kinder to me,” he snapped back. The smell of whiskey she had been talking about earlier invaded her nostrils. “Ye wouldnae have any whiskey to deliver at all if it werenae for me!”
What was that supposed to mean? She knew that he wanted her to ask, or else he wouldn’t have said it. He wanted her to ask him what he meant, to beg for more information so that he would lord it over her. Teasing and taunting her was his favorite game in the world.
She hated it. She hatedhim.
“But I suppose ye’re pretty enough that I can forgive ye,” he added with a smirk, running his tongue over his thin lips as he lifted a chubby hand to run his knuckles down the side of her face.
Ceana recoiled, batting his hand away and pressing her back against the wall. She might have to endure a conversation with him from time to time, but she certainly didn’t have to let him touch her. He had no right.
At the same moment that she slapped his hand away, a voice hissed angrily from the top of the stairs, “Keep yer hands off me daughter!”
Ceana could hardly see her mother, with the figure in front of her.
Ferguson only laughed. “Ye’ll both come around, sooner or later.”
He pushed past her down the stairs, jostling her small frame on purpose as he left the cottage.
Ceana had to concentrate to keep from glaring daggers at her mother, who stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at her sheepishly.
Only… her mother’s dress was rumpled. Her hair, which was usually immaculate, was disheveled… and she was flushed and trembling.
Och… och nay.
Guilt and pain stabbed Ceana right in the chest. She gathered her skirts and hurried up the stairs, quickly pulling her mother into her arms. She had no idea that her mother was… that she had been forced to…
