The Black Room: Door Six Read online

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  We ride across the highland through wind and driving rain. For an hour we ride, more perhaps, but when all one can see is darkness ahead and behind, when nothing exists but the thunder of hooves and the cold wet misery chilling down to the bone, time ceases to have much meaning.

  Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Conrad slows our horse and gathers the reins tight in one fist. I hear him pull back the hammer of his musket and feel him tense, his body alert and straight.

  “Expecting trouble?” I ask, keeping my voice low.

  “Always. But on nights like this, it pays to take extra precautions.”

  A few hundred yards ahead, I can see the dim glow of a light burning in a window. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, the dwelling itself is little more than a patch of blackness, somewhat darker than the night around it, except for that tiny square of yellow-orange light. Conrad lets the mount sidle a bit further forward, and then he reins us in. We are close enough that I can make out the door, the low sloping roof, a hint of wet stone around the window. Conrad gives a low three-note whistle, and then waits, musket held casually at the ready in one hand. A tense moment, and I half-expect Charlie and Martin to emerge, guns blazing, from the door. I know this is not possible, given the wild speed of our journey here, but still, the fearful expectation causes my heart to thud as the door finally swings open.

  I feel Conrad relax behind me as he uncocks the hammer of the musket. “Angus,” he says, “I need your hospitality, old friend.”

  I can make out little of the man in the doorway except that he’s wearing a kilt, is built broad and stout, and has a sword held in both hands, fully as large as the one on Conrad’s back. “Hospitality, is it?” His voice is gruff and rolling. “Harbor from the lobster-backs, more like.”

  Conrad laughs. “True enough, but not just for me, this time.”

  “Who’ve you brought, Conrad?”

  “Her name is Hannah. We had a bit of a run-in with Charlie Markham and Martin Ellis, and one other. You well know the reputation of that despicable pair.”

  Angus’s laugh is mirthless, bitter. “Markham killed my nephew and raped his young wife. So, yes, I’d say I’m familiar. Martin was there that night as well.”

  Conrad swung down out of the saddle, tossed his musket to Angus and then reached up and lifted me from the saddle. “Well, I fear I’ve earned another bounty on my head. Martin, Charlie, and some other lick-spittle bastard they had with ‘em, they had Hannah here cornered and were ready to take their hatred of me out on her. I slew the nameless one and then rode off here with Hannah.”

  “Should’ve ended Markham while you were at it,” Angus said, ushering us into his home. “He’ll have revenge on his mind now, and he’s good at nothing so much as revenge.”

  “I’m well aware, Angus,” Conrad says, a note of irritation in his voice. “I know Markham needs killing, but it’s not so simple as just lopping his damned head off. You know as well as I that he’s got too many friends in power. I’m not so worried about the poor bastard farmer’s boy from the English countryside that I killed tonight, but they’ll just add more to the price on my head. Eventually they’ll catch me and stretch my neck, but if I kill Markham, it’ll bring the power of the crown down on me, you, and everyone I know.”

  Conrad led me into the croft as he spoke, and I was glad for the warmth and safety it afforded us.

  “You took his fun, killed his friend, and embarrassed him,” Angus returns. “He won’t let that slide, Conrad.”

  Now that I could get a good look at him, I could see that Angus was shorter than Conrad by nearly a foot and close to twice his width, but none of it fat—he’s merely enormous, built of raw power. His hair is queued to mid-back, brown as rich soil. He wears a kilt in red tartan, his sporran left off, his claymore laying across the table, shirt loose and untucked. The interior of Angus’s home is similar enough to Conrad’s that it could have been the same dwelling: large irregular blocks of stone stacked and mortared, a big fireplace crackling with a blazing fire, hand-made furniture.

  Conrad slumps into a chair at the table, snags the clay jug sitting near to hand, yanks free the cork and takes a generous slug of the contents. “Again, Angus, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  Angus blows out a breath, takes a seat and drinks as Conrad did. “Keep growing the price on your head as you’ve been, eventually the price will be too much of a temptation for someone.”

  “I know this, too.”

  “We’ve been friends since we were wee lads, Conrad. You know I’ll stand by you no matter what, but…you’re making a hanging an inevitability at this rate.”

  “He threatened to bring a company of redcoats to find me,” Conrad admits.

  Angus snarled a curse. “Not an idle threat from a man of his connections.”

  I was left standing near the doorway, listening, dripping wet, naked under the cloak and shivering. I inched closer to the fire, sitting on the edge of the hearth to dry out.

  Conrad shot a glance at me. “Shite, sorry, Hannah. You’ve got to be frozen.” He turned to Angus. “Have you got any women’s clothing about?”

  Angus just blinks for a moment. “Women’s clothing? Why would I keep such around?” He glances at me suspiciously. “And why hasn’t she any of her own?”

  Conrad hesitates. “She was…washing when Charlie and Martin showed up.” A shrug. “I’m a fair hand with my sword, but so is Charlie, and Martin’s no slouch himself. I thought it best to get shot of them quick as I could, which meant she’s got nothing to wear but that cloak of mine.”

  Angus’s fair skin reddens. “Ah. I see.” He lumbers to his feet, shuffles to a thick wooden chest in a corner, opens the top and rummages. “I’ve little enough, but…aha. Here it is.” He comes up with a wad of wool in his hand, dark, soft looking, aged. He hands it to me and I shake it out. I see that it’s an old woollen underdress. “It’s all I’ve got but my tartan and another old cloak and some clean shirts, I fear. But it’ll warm you.”

  I eye the garment suspiciously. “Is it…clean?” I sniff it.

  Angus is still red in the cheeks, shifting from foot to foot. “Oh, aye, it’s clean. Been in that trunk for nigh on twenty years, but it’s clean.”

  Conrad clears his throat, and when I glance at him, it’s obvious he’s holding back laughter. “That’s—why Angus, that wouldn’t happen to belong to Mary Ainslie, would it?”

  Angus clears his throat a few times. “It’s all I’ve got, damn you. Never you mind whose it was.”

  Conrad chortles, coughing to cover it. “It is! One tumble in the hay with a girl twenty years ago, and you’ve still got her shift?”

  “’Twas more than once, damn your eyes. I was near to askin’ her to marry me, you might like to know.” Angus turns away, slugs at the jar of whisky. “Then that business with the Darroch clan swept us all up, and by the time I got back to her, she’d taken up with Murray of the Campbells, and that was that.”

  Conrad’s laughter abates, then. “I’d no notion it was that serious.”

  Angus shrugs. “Was for me, at least. I always suspected it was rather less so for her. I’d no great place in my clan, nor aspirations for much more than what I’ve got now. She always had designs on a mite more than she figured I could provide.” A wolfish grin, then. “But she was more than willing enough to dally with me
of a night. Left that shift here, the last night we passed together.”

  I felt a bit awkward, then. “Are you sure you want me to wear it, then?” I asked. “I don’t want to take anything from you that might have sentimental value to you.”

  Angus waves a hand. “Sentiment, bah. I held on to it because it seemed daft to throw it away, perfectly good shift an’ all, y’ken? I stuffed it into the trunk and forgot it till now.”

  It was obvious enough that Angus was lying to me but I let it go, grateful at least to have something to wear. “Thank you, then, Angus.”

  I wait, hoping Angus at least would turn around so I could change into it, but he and Conrad both merely sat at the table, engaged in conversation.

  Eventually I clear my throat, glance around for a separate bedroom like Conrad’s home had, but there’s only the one open space, and the loft. “Might I use your loft to change in, then?”

  Angus shoots to his feet. “Oh. Right. I’ll just…go check on the…um, outside.”

  He was gone in a blast of cold rain and a glimpse of darkness. Conrad tips back in his chair, eyeing me. “Like me to leave too, Hannah?” His voice betrays his own ideas on the subject.

  I hesitate a moment, then unfasten the brooch holding closed the cloak, shrug it open, letting the heavy wet wool fall to the floor. I stand naked in front of Conrad. His intense dark eyes fasten on me, raking over my body. The cabin is warm, the fire hot at my back, yet my nipples pucker and tighten as he stares at me. My skin pebbles, and my breasts feel heavy. My long blonde hair is damp at my neck. Conrad slowly sets the front legs of his chair down, slides it backward, and stands up. His movements are slow, deliberate, predatory. I shiver as he approaches, but not from cold. Everything inside me burns, aches, trembles, and he’s done nothing but take a handful of steps in my direction. I stand where I am, wait for him to step closer. He’s all the cabin contains now. Him, his heat, the damp scent of him, wet wool and man.

  He’s an inch from me, then. The tips of my breasts brush his shirt, my erect nipples so sensitive that even the slight, subtle brush of my flesh against the wet linen of his shirt is almost too much. His eyes bore into mine, unblinking, impenetrable, a brown so dark they’re nearly black. His hair is soaked, sodden, dripping down his back. I just stand there, silent, staring up at him, waiting.

  He reaches then, his palms grazing my hips. “Hannah…you’ve always been troublesome, you know,” he says, a tiny smile playing at the corners of his lips.

  “Have I?”

  His fingers tighten against my hips, digging into the flesh, tugging me nearer. “Oh, aye. All the trouble I can handle. Wherever you are there, too, is trouble.”

  I feel my breasts crush against his chest, feel his heart thudding. His fingers toy with the flesh at my hips, daring inch by inch toward my ass. My hands curl at his shoulders, my fingers clutching at his shirt.

  “Yet here we are together.”

  He slides a palm up my side, to my ribcage, around to my back, between my shoulder blades, grasps my hair in his fist. “Yet here we are. I don’t seem able to leave you to your trouble.” He tugs my head backward, tipping my face up. “Can’t stand the thought of anyone else with his hands on you. This pale, perfect skin of yours…I fancy it belongs to me.”

  “Doesn’t it?” I breathe.

  His lips touch my jawline, midway between chin and ear. “You’re asking me?”

  “I am.”

  His answer is…delayed, somewhat. His lips are busy along my jaw, then traipsing down my throat, and the hand cupping my hip moves and curls to knead into the generous flesh of my buttocks. I can’t move my head for his grip on my hair, and his touch has me paralyzed, dizzy. There’s no breath, no movement, no heat, no life, nothing but Conrad. I can only stand in his touch and wait, hope for more. My throat is bared for his mouth, and his lips touch and dance and slither down the column, stutter over my clavicle, and then I feel his tongue on my skin between my breasts. I manage to let out a breath, and that breath is a plea—

  kissmetouchmemoremoremore

  “We can’t,” he murmurs, pressing his face against my shoulder. “Not here, not now.”

  “Conrad—”

  “I know, lass.” He breathes against me, fingers clutching me roughly, desperately. “Soon, I swear.”

  Conrad holds me, a moment longer, and then crouches down and snags the shift I’d dropped and forgotten. He tugs it over my head, and I thread my arms through, and just like that I’m covered, but I don’t want to be. I want to feel Conrad against me, I want to push him down to the bed and bring him to climax, want to feel him grunt and clutch at me and feel him dominate me, and feel him release inside me.

  “Soon, Hannah,” he murmurs in my ear.

  Did I speak those thoughts out loud? I didn’t think I had, but his words seemed a direct promise to my needs, to my thoughts.

  Conrad backs away from me, a devilish glint in his eyes, then turns away and opens the door, calling out for Angus to return. Then it’s Angus and Conrad and me sitting around the table. Angus had a stew on the fire and he serves some up, warming us from the inside out. The whisky goes a long way to warming us as well, the jug passed around generously.

  All I feel is the return of the heat, the pressure of need. The brief moment together wasn’t enough to sate me, was only barely enough to whet my appetite. I’m more ravenous than ever, I fear, having felt his touch—but it was only a tease, only a taste.

  Conrad’s eyes don’t ever quite go to mine, but somehow I’m aware of his attention. He’s biding his time, it feels to me. Chatting quietly with Angus, discussing old friends not seen in many years, other friends lost in one way or another, girls they once knew, skirmishes fought and won or lost. I’m content to sit near the fire and listen, drowse to the sound of their voices lilting in quiet murmurs.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask.

  Conrad and Angus exchange glances. “Well, I’ve a few notions, and unfortunately, most of them include riding for somewhere Markham won’t easily go, not without a large troop along.”

  I’d ask more, but I’m drowsing with exhaustion, and my eyes close and I feel arms beneath me, catching me up, cradling me against a warm solid chest.

  I’m limp, loose, warm, asleep but not enough to be unconscious, but too nearly so to be able to move.

  “Take the bed, Conrad,” I hear Angus say. “She’ll need the rest.”

  “I’ll not throw you out of your own bed, Angus,” Conrad argues, his voice pitched low. “That’s pushing hospitality too far, even for you.”

  “A night in the stable won’t hurt me. I insist. ‘Sides, the stable’s no place for a lady.”

  “There’s the loft.”

  Angus snorts. “Bah. Full of sacks of meal and a half a dozen generations worth of who knows what. I’d not let her sleep up there if she were an Englishman.”

  “Angus—” Conrad starts.

  “No, you shut your damn gob, Conrad. You’ll owe me a jug and the tale of how you came to know such a fine lookin’ lass.”

  Conrad snorts, and I feel the huff of air on my cheek. “Fine, and be damned, you stubborn Scot.”

  “You’re the elder of us, so where’d I learn such stubbornness, then?”

  Conrad just snorts again, and I feel him moving with me to the bed. He lays me down on something soft, and I’m covered with thick, warm, scratchy wool. “Keep a wary ear, Angus. Markham’s a canny one,” I hear him say, moving away from me.

  “Calum is out grazing, and he’s the orneriest, meanest damned mule I’ve ever seen. He’s an ill-tempered, evil son of a bitch, and has no tolerance for strangers. He scents an unfamiliar horse or man, he’ll kick up an almighty loud fuss, and is like to start kickin’ and bitin’ as well. He’s better than a dog for guarding in the night.” Angus grunted a laugh. “That’s the only reason I’ve kept the old bastard around, truth be told.”

  Conrad’s laughter is low and rueful. “I bore a bruise on my thigh for a month
the last time I got near him. I was there when you first got him—winnings from that card game.”

  “He heard you call him a nasty old fuck, and he resented it. He understands every word we say, I swear, and every damned bray he lets out is his laugher at us.”

  “You ever try to ride him?”

  Angus’s silence is telling. “Ride Calum? Are you daft? I can barely fit a halter to the wicked beast without losing teeth or suffering a broken bone and that’s just from trying to move him to fresh graze, or to haul a boulder. If I tried to ride him, he’d toss me off faster than you can spit, and then dance on my bones for spite.”

  Conrad laughs again. “True enough. It’d be funny to watch, until I had to set your leg.”

  “You’d have to set more than my leg, I think. Arms, legs, ribs, maybe even fit me for false teeth. He’s the spawn of the devil himself on four legs, I tell you.”

  I hear hands slap thighs, and then short strides thunking across the wood floor. “I’m for the stables, then. Be at home, and if you hear Calum honking, get your girl and ride for the winds.”

  “Thanks, brother.”

  “Aye, well, you always did have better luck with the lasses than I, and far be it from me to stand in the way of your conquest.”

  A short silence, then. “It’s not like that with her, Angus.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Angus harrumphs. “Never thought I’d see this day, I’ll admit. Well, it’s your business. There’s wood by the hearth, and more stew. See you in the morning.” The door opens and the scent of rain floats over me, and then the door thuds closed and a wash of cold damp air skirls in the room, and I hear Conrad moving about the room.

  I’m beginning to drift deeper under when I feel the bed dip as he lays beside me.

  “You’re not asleep,” he whispers, “and I wasn’t done with you.”

  ..

  The blanket lifts, settles, and he’s beside me.

  Bare.

  Hard muscle, warm flesh, his breath on the back of my neck. His hot hard hands smoothing over my waist. I breathe out, a soft sigh I cannot help. His lips, touching between my shoulder blades, curve in a smile.