Saved by the Highlander (5 page)

Alana had arrived two weeks later. The punishment and enjoyment of Alana bore little resemblance to that of Catriona. Though Roderick had handled her first whipping and her defloration as he always did, in his favorite masterful style, it became clear that the girl was so submissive that Roderick’s favorite thing lately, as he anticipated news every day that his intended bride had met her tragic end on the road to Lormoran, was to bounce little Alana upon his cock, as he sat upon the Spartan wooden chair that graced her chamber and she straddled him, clinging to his shoulders and whispering, “My lord,” over and over.

Truly, the simple variety of the girls he fucked pleased Roderick, he thought, more than any one girl ever could. He supposed that it did not lead directly to the plan to murder Alice Lourcy before she could even come within sight of Lormoran, for he had sound political reasons for that little stratagem. It certainly added piquancy, though, as he held Alana’s well-whipped bottom-cheeks in his hands and felt her sweet young cunt slide up and down his cock, to think that in some sense Lord Roderick’s murder of his intended bride could be taken as a giving of the fig to the idea of monogamy.

“There you go, lass,” he said gently, loving the way his manhood made his maid’s eyes widen as it rushed into her belly. “Is that nice, now?”

“Oh, yes, my lord. So very nice.”

Roderick thought of Alice Lourcy then. When he had told Humphrey, the English mercenary he had hired to do the deed, that the man should go ahead with the plan, riding in person to the little farm where Humphrey maintained the appearance of ordinary village life while in reality being available—principally to Roderick, but also to other lairds who stood in need of the occasional dark deed—Roderick had felt a pang of regret. At Mowton he had become so aroused by the thought of deflowering the proud girl that he had had to go roger a plump scullery maid in the park, thinking all the while as he fucked the girl over a marble bench about what it would be like when he fucked her mistress Lady Alice for the first time.

The decision to forego that pleasure, and the answer to the question of whether he would have had to spank Lady Alice, or flog her, to make her compliant with a bridegroom’s just commands upon his wedding night, had cost him a little sorrow that even a forceful fucking of Alana’s pert little backside had not truly cured. Yes, he supposed it was monstrous that his sorrow over killing the lovely and accomplished Lady Alice Lourcy derived not from any ethical qualm, but rather from the loss of the pleasure of fucking away her maidenhead. But such monstrousness made up such an essential part of Roderick’s character that he had long since ceased to mind the occasional little reflection that viewed from the perspective of morality the laird of Lormoran had left the pale behind long ago.

“Oh, my lord,” Alana moaned. “I am going to spend. May I spend, my lord?” She bounced up and down most delightfully, and Roderick lost himself in the joy of mastering the pretty little thing. Lady Alice would never have provided such pleasure; she was not a girl who would ask permission to spend, he warranted, as Alana loved to do, and thus to make plain to both of them that he was her master and she his maid.

Roderick had no need of a wife, as far as he could tell, though he supposed that someday he would have to have one. Did not Lady Alice have a younger sister? She would be out in a year or two, and given the similarities of sisters perhaps Roderick would be able to experience what it would have been like to take Lady Alice’s maidenhead through the natural expedient of taking her sister’s instead.

The thought made his cock pulse, and he said, “Yes, lass, you may spend.” He gripped her bottom and she cried out, her cunt contracting upon his cock most deliciously as he pumped his hips wildly upward to get as deep inside the girl as he could, until the last drop of his seed had been spilled inside her.

Chapter Six

They reached Kilmorin just after moonrise, so that Niall could point out to Alice the beauty of the loch. She had walked stalwartly, although Niall could see that her slippers, terribly impractical for climbing the rocky paths into the highlands, were now nearly shredded. Along the way he had pointed out the sights to be seen in the twilight: the approaching Loch Lomond and, to the West, the reaches of Argyll, trying to puzzle out how well her spirits held up. Alice thanked him politely and composedly each time, but even when Niall asked her to tell him about her home in the South, she had merely said, “Mowton is a small castle, but I love it.”

Niall had decided that she remained resilient, and that the spanking had done her no ill—and might even have done her a little good. The rest of the MacAlpins held their peace, as highlanders usually did when upon a journey, especially when they had thought to return driving cattle and brought a Sassenach lady instead. Niall knew that Callum assumed that they would ransom Lady Alice Lourcy, for all Niall’s talk of merely safeguarding her, but if it did come out that the laird of Lormoran had attempted to have his bride raped and murdered, the better strategy might well be to show himself scrupulously honorable and gain the advantage that might well accrue from the girl’s safe return.

When he showed her the moon on the loch, he won from her the first real smile he had seen upon her face, and realized suddenly just how beautiful she was. She said, “And where is Kilmorin?”

Niall pointed down the path to where the dim lights of the village could now just be made out. “Down there,” he said. “Not far, now.”

“And where will you lodge me?” To Niall’s ears Alice sounded as if she tried to recover a haughtiness she thought she should have.

“With my aunt Fiona and my uncle Fergus, Callum’s da,” Niall said, “whose house is right by mine.”

“You are not married, then?”

“I am not, my lady. I had a wife who died these three years past.”

“I am sorry,” Alice said, and seemed to mean it.

As he led the way down the path, the memory of her, naked, bound, and ready for the outlaw leader’s pleasure, rose unbidden before his mind’s eye. Christ, but it had been too long since he had a girl. The shame grew in him just as his cock did, at the knowledge that the way the outlaw had meant to have young Lady Alice Lourcy, stilling her hips with his hands around her waist and riding her hard—first her cunt and then, surely, her arse—would have suited Niall MacAlpin marvelously. The essential proviso of course, thrown up by his mind as he guiltily indulged the fantasy of subduing a noble Sassenach lass with his cock, was that he would first determine whether Lady Alice Lourcy would care to be subdued that way.

Megan had not cared very much for Niall’s masterful ways in bed, or perhaps she had simply not cared for Niall as much as Niall would have wanted. He could not tell whether he deceived himself, or whether in the way Alice had responded to the spanking he gave her she had shown herself to be rather different from Megan, at least where the caring chastisement of a feminine backside in need of discipline were concerned.

Whatever the cause, or the justification, as Niall made his way toward home, and one by one the other MacAlpins said good night and parted ways to return to their own crofts, two of them undertaking to stable the captured horses in the big barn by the chief’s—Niall’s—house, a fancy took hold of him and would not seem to let him go. His mind, apparently of its own accord, dreamt up the story of how it might become necessary to spank Lady Alice again. He imagined asking her whether the outlaw had said anything to her as he had stripped her, so that Niall could determine how much of the girl’s innocence remained. Niall, to avert any shame that might arise in her, would spank her bare bottom until she felt properly chastened for any naughty thoughts that might naturally occur to her.

So he was grateful that she walked behind him, so that he did not have to see her form clad in the arisaid—shapelessly clad, it was true, but that could not prevent him from seeing again and again what he had seen as he and his highlanders fell upon the outlaws, and remembering how her backside had felt to spank through the silk of her chemise. He felt even more grateful to see that Fergus and Fiona came out of their croft house to greet him, and to shorten the time he must feel Alice Lourcy’s eyes boring into his back.

“Niall,” Fergus called, “what has happened? Is all well?”

“All’s well with the MacAlpins,” Niall answered, “though there are some Sassenach who’ll weep this night.”

Suddenly conscious of how he must sound to the English girl, he turned and looked at Alice, whose face had set itself into a mask of defiance. “I am sorry, my lady,” he said softly.

“Sir Frederick,” she said haughtily, “was my family’s oldest retainer. He died defending my life and my honor. I will thank you, sir, despite your high-handed ways with me, to honor his memory, as yourself a fighting man.”

Niall could not help admiring the spark in her eyes, though at the same time he wondered whether his fancy had gone far wrong in thinking that perhaps Alice might need a little more taming. He looked back at Fergus and Fiona, whose faces wore expressions of blank confusion.

Niall said, “Fergus and Fiona MacAlpin—”

But Alice interrupted, to Niall’s amazement. “I am Lady Alice Lourcy,” she said, “daughter of Robert Lourcy, earl of Mercester and lord of Mowton. Your chief Mr. MacAlpin has detained me on my journey to be wed to the lord of Lormoran. I beg your hospitality, and your aid in returning me to my intended husband. Mr. MacAlpin has raised his hand against me, and carried out a farcical sort of punishment, in order to ensure that I accede to his commands. I have small hope that you will go against your chief’s wishes in this matter, but I make my plea, in his hearing so that nothing be done under false pretenses, that you send me to Lormoran in the morning, and that word be sent to Lord Roderick as soon as ever it may, tonight.”

Fergus and Fiona stared at Alice in mute astonishment for a long moment, after she had finished her speech, which Niall thought she must have been preparing all along the path, to hold in readiness to give to the first person who might have authority to defy Niall’s intentions.
The little hussy,
Niall thought in exasperated admiration. She had seemed so obedient and sedate.

Fergus looked at Niall, as if to confirm that Alice spoke truly, and Niall nodded.

“Well, lass,” Fergus said. “I am well pleased to meet your ladyship, but I fear you will not get what you want of me. The laird of Lormoran has no friends in Kilmorin. I cannot think but that my nephew Niall intends to send you there, though. It will simply be upon his terms, and at his pleasure.”

“Mr. MacAlpin.” Alice’s voice seemed to have steel in it now. “Do you mean that your chief intends to hold me for ransom?”

Fergus looked to Niall again. “He’s the one to answer that question, lass. I intend to do as he tells me, seeing as he is my dead brother’s son and the chief of my clan.”

Fiona, who clearly grasped exactly why Niall had brought the English girl to Fergus’ croft house, said, “Come along inside, my lady. I am sure you have had a very trying day.”

The middle-aged woman, who had always been Niall’s mother, for all intents and purposes and for as long as he could remember, Niall’s own mother having died birthing him and his own father dying in battle soon after, beckoned to Alice with a kindly air. Fiona was plump, with a mild face framed in hair that was still more red than white, though her husband’s locks were now a uniform iron-gray.

Alice seemed to hesitate, catching her lower lip between her teeth and looking at Niall. “I should like,” she said in a tone that Niall could not decipher at all, so levelly and clearly did she speak. “Mr. MacAlpin to promise me that he will not… do… that again.”

“What?” Fiona asked, seeming to understand of a sudden what had happened, and what Alice had meant about ‘raising his hand.’ “Did Niall here give you a spanking, the naughty lad?”

Even in the dim light that emanated from the croft house’s windows, shed by the central hearth, Niall could see Alice color. “If you must know,” she said. “Yes, he did. And I find it most… vexing that you, in your tone, seem to think it a jesting matter.”

“It is no jesting matter, certainly,” said Fergus in a serious voice, though Niall felt sure he could see a twinkle in his uncle’s eye. “But I know my nephew and my chief, and I know that he would not have corrected you that way if you had not needed it, lass.”

“You shall call me my lady, if you please,” Alice said.

Fergus sighed, and looked at Niall to see how the younger man thought the elder should reply. Despite the frustration Alice Lourcy now occasioned, Niall felt a surge of gladness at how thoroughly he could trust the man who had played father to him all these years.

Niall said, “My lady, if you please, follow Mrs. MacAlpin into your lodging. I pledge that I will not punish you again, if you behave yourself as becomes a guest of the MacAlpins.”

“If…?” Alice said, almost to herself. Then she looked at Fiona, and afterward back to Niall. “If,” she said more firmly.

“If,” said Niall, feeling suddenly that he had entered a battle of wills.

“And if,” Alice said, recovering her hauteur. “I should say that I would not have your promise not to use violence upon me conditioned thus, what would you do, Mr. MacAlpin?”

Now Fiona looked thoroughly exasperated. She clearly had seen in the girl just what Niall had seen, too: a fiery spirit and a good heart, but covered over with a strange confusion of duty and honor. “He would spank you again—my lady.” Alice’s mouth opened, as if she would speak yet another word of defiance, but Fiona said, “And he would be right to do it—my lady. He has a village to run, and his firm hand, or his strap, upon your bottom, doing you no real harm and teaching you to behave as you should, is something you should reckon upon. And if you don’t do as he has said, and follow me now, I shall ask him to let me strap you myself—my lady.”

“You cannot be serious!” Alice said, her haughty tone turning to shock.

“If she wasn’t serious, I will make her serious,” Niall said. “I felt her strap many a time as I grew, and I was the better for it.” Fiona rewarded him with a smile. “Now do as I have said, if you please, my lady.”