“While I do thank ye for takin’ our comfort into consideration, I can assure ye, ’twill not kill me to go a bit faster.”
Married for less than an hour, the last thing he wanted was to argue. At his new bride’s insistence, Black Richard tapped the flanks of his mount and went faster. Aeschene seemed pleased, even though it couldn’t be considered more than a fast trot.
“What does it look like?” Aeschene soon asked him.
“What does what look like?” he asked, confused by the question.
“Where we are,” she replied. “Usually, Marisse describes things to me so that I can picture it in my mind.”
To Black Richard the landscape was nothing special, for ’twas MacRay lands they were on. “We be in a wide glen,” he told her.
“Be the grass wavin’ in the breeze?” she asked.
“Aye, ’tis.”
“What color be the sky?”
Without looking or thinking, he replied, “Blue.”
She let out a frustrated breath. “Could ye ask Marisse to come closer?”
“Why?”
“She has a way of describin’ things that allow me to see it.”
While he thought mayhap that the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, he did not want to make her feel uncomfortable. Turning slightly in the saddle, he looked back for the maid. “Marisse,” he called out to her. “Aeschene would like to speak with ye.”
Unaccustomed to hearing her name spoken without disgust or shame, ’twas surprising to hear it said simply and plainly. Marisse was the only person, until this moment, to ever say her name in a tone lacking contempt. Her father and brother’s rarely ever spoke to her. But when they did, ’twas always in anger or with a tone of disgust. It had gotten to the point where she despised hearing her name.
Just the manner in which Richard said it made her stomach feel light, her heart happy. Such an odd sensation and wholly unfamiliar. Mayhap ’tis just the excitement of bein’ away from yer home for the first time in yer life, she told herself. Ye never thought ye’d be married, let alone travelin’ so far away. ’Tis naught more than that.
“I be here,” Marisse announced, drawing her horse close to Richard and Aeschene.
“What does it look like?” Aeschene asked.
Marisse need not inquire as to what Aeschene meant. “It be green for as far as the eye can see,” Marisse said. Even Black Richard could hear the awe in the young woman’s voice. “A thousand shades of green,” she said with a smile. “Ye can feel the breeze, aye?”
“Aye, I can,” Aeschene replied as she closed her eyes.
Marisse smiled warmly at her friend. “Well, the breeze be making the grass sway to and fro, ye ken. There be tiny flowers scattered here and there. Yellow, pink, and blue. The breeze is also ticklin’ the leaves on the trees, they be to yer right.”
Keeping her eyes closed, Aeschene turned her head ever so slightly to the right. “I can hear that too.”
“Me grandsire once told me that the sound of the breeze rustlin’ through the trees sounds just like ocean waves. I do not ken if that be right, but I always believed him,” Marisse told her.
They were silent for a long moment, each of them taking in the sights in their own ways.
“Now the sky, it be right pretty over head,” Marisse said as she leaned over a bit in her saddle. “A bonny blue, ye ken. But ahead, the sky be growin’ dark. A storm be a brewin’, I think. It be a dark gray, the color of auld Liam MacRay’s hair,” she giggled.
Aeschene took in a deep, happy breath before letting it out slowly. “I can see it,” she said. She could picture it all in her mind’s eye, almost as clearly as if her eyes worked properly. “’Tis a beautiful sight, aye?”
“That it is, my friend, that it is.”
Richard sat in bemused silence, listening and watching the two women converse. The manner in which Marisse described what she was seeing was nothing short of extraordinary. He imagined that were he blind, he could have seen everything just as she described it to Aeschene.
His men had drawn closer, listening intently as Marisse spoke. A quick glance at them told him much. They were just as mesmerized as he. Not only by the words Marisse spoke but also by her voice. ’Twas a low and sultry, and made him think of the sirens in the stories his grandminny had told him when he was a boy. Marisse’s was certainly calling his men to her, and she was speaking in naught more than a whisper.
What magic did these two, slight women possess that drew men to them like bees to new blooms? Black Richard most certainly did not believe in witches or sirens until this day. Now, after his wife’s touch calmed his ire as water douses a flame, and her maid drawing all the men to her with the mere sound of her voice, ’twas enough to make him reconsider his previous beliefs. Mayhap things such as those did in fact exist.
Nay! He refused to believe it. His reaction was nothing more than the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman in too many years to count or admit to. He was a man and she a very beautiful woman. A beautiful blind woman who could not see his hideous face. It stood to reason he would be physically attracted to her. He wasn’t dead after all. Any man would feel the same.
However, he would not succumb to his desires, no matter how intensely he might feel them.
With the decision made that he would not be seduced by his wife’s touch, or the sound of her voice, or her bewitching eyes, Black Richard felt better. Aeschene would be naught more than a way to procure an heir as well as peace for his clan. The only reason he had agreed to the union was to appease his king and to stop at least some of the border raids. That was all she was or could ever be to him; a means of peace.
He was, after all, a scarred, battle-hardened warrior. He had not survived all these many years only to be weakened and knocked down by such a tiny lass as Aeschene. Nay, he was made of stronger stuff than that. Mayhap in his youth he might have had his head turned or his resolve weakened by such a bonny lass. But he was older now and much wiser. He knew the only thing more dangerous than a Highlander bent on revenge or in the heat of battle was a beautiful woman. Beautiful women were deadly.
The sooner he got her back to his keep, the better he would feel about the situation. Once there, he would ensconce her in a chamber with her maid, and try to forget she was even there. Save for the making of an heir, he would keep a very wide and safe distance.
After some time of traveling over a wide-open glen, the terrain grew hillier and rockier. Up and over hills they went, riding in silence, while Richard stewed. Once they were alone, he would explain the way of things to her. He would warn her not to get her hopes up on any kind of warm or romantic feelings betwixt them. He simply was not that kind of man.
He would also order his men, the besotted fools they were, to stay the bloody hell away from the maid, Marisse. She would be forbidden fruit only because he needed her to keep his wife busy and occupied throughout the day.
As he was otherwise lost in his own thoughts of how to survive the next twenty years or so as a married man, he was paying very little attention to his surroundings. They had just crested a large hill and were riding down the other side when they needed to cross a small ravine. ’Twas by no stretch of the imagination a wide or treacherous bit of land. Tapping the flanks of his horse, he urged it forward at a faster pace in order to jump across the small space. ’Twas nothing he hadn’t done a hundred times or more in his life.