Page 39 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
“It was my father who drove my mother to suicide,” she said, staring determinedly into the glowing heart of the campfire. “When she could finally take no more of her own abuse––and mine, I suppose––she opened the veins in her wrists on a summer’s morning whilst she was taking a bath.”
Edward saw that there were tears sparkling in the corners of Charlotte’s eyes. His own heart was wrung with pity for her. When she spoke though, her voice was as steady and calm as a loch at dawn.
“When my father found her,” she continued, “his rage was…incredible. Looking back on it now, I suppose it was because, in his eyes at least, it showed that my mother was weak. My father cannot abide weakness in anything. He thinks it is the chief of sins.”
Her pale sapphire eyes were suddenly fastened on Edward’s brown ones. “That’s when his mistreatment of me––the pushing, shoving and cursing––turned into hitting. He threw me down the stairs for the first time on a glorious summer’s day and broke my wrist.”
Charlotte held up both her hands and, by the honest light of the fire, Edward saw that one wrist was slightly more crooked than the other.
Edward had not thought that he could be any more reviled by Captain Bolton––had not thought that he had the capacity within himself for any more hate of that man––but he had been wrong.
He looked up at the Englishwoman across from him. It seemed incredible to him that one so soft-looking and kind-hearted had been able to withstand so much mistreatment for so many years. It cut him to the quick to imagine her suffering.
“Sasse––” he began, then stopped himself. “Charlotte, I am truly sorry fer the loss of yer mother. Truly. And fer all that ye have suffered.”
Charlotte smiled bravely at him, a single tear tracking down her face, leaving a mercury trail in the firelight, before she dashed it away.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she said. “On the contrary, Edward, you saved me. I feel safer with you than I ever did with my own father or any of the other men in that camp. You have showed me that there is such a thing as kindness unlooked for in the world. I owe you.”
This was too much for Edward, even for his hardened heart. He looked away from the beautiful young woman, his jaw clenched with anger and shame and guilt. He lay down with his back to the fire, rolled himself in his cloak and tried to keep the tremor from his voice.
“Best we get some sleep, Sassenach,” he said shortly.
The last thoughts that clouded his mind before sleep took him were uncomfortable, troubling ones.
Ye think ye have been hard done by, but how does yer sufferin’ stack up when compared to all this lass has gone through?
It was a pertinent question, but he had more pressing business to worry about first. A worry that he had not spared enough thought for as of yet.
Are we makin’ good enough time to get to me clan lands afore the men that Captain Bolton has undoubtedly set on our trail catch up with us?
13
Sheppard ran his fingers through the cold ashes of the campfire that had been set and left within the circle of dead fir trees and smiled happily to himself. It was a cold night––a night of frosty stars and a thin gibbous moon––but the signs he had found warmed him like good brandy.
“Good news, Sheppard, old friend?” the other tracker, Hirst, asked from where he sat atop his horse and picked at his finger nails with a wicked-looking knife.
“Indeed so, Hirst,” Sheppard replied. “I believe our quarry can be a little over a day ahead. If we were to push on through this night, we might make a considerable gain on them.”
“The braggart certainly seems to be draggin’ her in the direction of the MacQuarrie lands,” Savage said from the middle of a cloud of tobacco smoke.
“Hm,” Sheppard said, thoughtfully, “butishe dragging her, though?”
“What do you mean by that?” Hirst asked him.
“Well, none of us have found any evidence to suggest that Miss Bolton is, in actual fact, being kept against her will, have we?”
Savage took his pipe from his mouth and spat into the fir needle-covered floor. “You make a bloody good point, Mr. Sheppard,” he said. “No cut rope used for her bonds, no blood, no sign of her even trying to escape.”
Hirst stroked his top lip in a thoughtful fashion. “Of course,” he said, “it might be because she has been cowed by her captor.”
“If he’s as much of a brute as those two stinkin’ vagrants seemed to think him, then that could be a possibility,” Savage said.
Hirst rolled his shoulders, felt his neck click. “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose that we shall ascertain the state of the matter when we catch up with the two of them.”
“Indubitably true,” Sheppard said, in his calm bass voice. “Might I make a suggestion on that count?”
“On finding them?” Hirst asked.
