Page 38 of A Promise of Love

" Y ou'll do just fine, Meggie," Judith explained patiently for the fifth time.

"Your greatest danger will be in falling asleep, not in being a bad shepherdess," she said, in an effort to reassure her.

There were no natural predators around Tynan.

Wild dogs did not seem to be a problem and the Highlands were too isolated for poachers .

Meggie reluctantly followed Judith up the path worn into the hillside by a hundred sheep over the past weeks. Her look was grim, as if she were walking to the gallows, rather than assuming her new chore .

The few young men who could have been spared to shepherd were needed at other occupations which required strength, like harvesting the huge nets strung at the entrance to the cove, or helping to build new dwellings.

The elders of the clan, those old men who sat outside their cottages and commented on the comings and goings of everything and everyone, had balked at being sequestered on a hilltop with nothing but sheep as company.

Therefore, the women took turns on the hills, ensuring that the sheep didn’t stray too far from MacLeod holdings .

"None of the new lambs will be born until next spring," Judith said, "and by that time, you'll be an old master with sheep. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were not Tynan's resident animal midwife by then ."

To the left, Judith could see Tynan, perched like the sentinel it was, guarding the MacLeods. Perhaps it was not black and brooding now, but it was just as ugly, just as ruined as the day she first saw it. But nearly everything else had changed, hadn't it ?

Meggie still wore that look of unrepentant unwillingness, but at least she was no longer chuckling about Judith’s encounter with Fiona, an episode which brought a blush to Judith's cheek even now .

One moment, the two women were walking up the track, the next, Judith had grabbed Meggie by the arm and was roughly jerking her down into the waist high moor grass. Meggie’s mouth was open to loudly protest Judith’s actions when she glanced past her friend’s suddenly stricken face .

At the top of the hill, set in bold relief, their tunics a crimson slash against a gray Highland sky, were six mounted British soldiers.

All but one of them controlled his mount with ease.

The sixth held a squirming lamb, who in its fright was causing him no end of grief, not to mention the caterwauling sounds it gave off to signal its mother .

Meggie glanced at Judith, who motioned for quiet, one finger to her lips, her eyes never straying from the mounted patrol.

With her left hand, she pointed to her left , to a gouge carved into the earth as if a giant had scooped it free with a huge spoon.

The embankment above it, only two feet wide and weed choked, was the only place to hide on the whole hillock.

Any second now, the English soldiers would cease their torturing of the hapless lamb and might chance to glance down the hill .

She and Meggie edged slowly to their left, cautious that movement alone would signal their presence.

The sound of panicked bleating became more audible, but there was nothing they could do.

The lamb would be slaughtered, if not the entire flock.

Even in the best of times, however, two lone women were no match for six men.

This was a scant three years after Culloden and those were English soldiers .

Bennett Henderson led them. His blonde hair was a beacon, drawing Judith’s attention to the thin, aquiline face, the cold blue eyes, the thin lips curled into a smile as he watched one of his men sever the lamb's tail with a flick of his wrist and a wickedly sharp dagger .

All the English had to do was move five feet in either direction, and they could easily spot the two women cowering below them.

Tynan was a long way away, and no men worked these deserted hills where the sheep roamed freely.

Their only chance was to remain silent and hope the English patrol passed them by, that the only cruelty they showed this day was for a hapless lamb .

They reached the relative safety of the embankment, the sight of the soldiers blocked from view by the same gorse choked earth that might save them. Judith shivered, crossed her arms around her stomach, pressing her back against the concave earth, almost as if she wished to press herself into it .

This was a nightmare, revisited and sun lit. In her dreams, she could never outlast him, never escape him. Judith could only pray reality did not mirror her dreams .

The sound of the lamb's distress was growing louder.

So, too, the masculine laughter which punctuated it.

Judith put her hands over her ears, and turned, pressing the side of her face into the earthen bank, absorbing the smell of it, the cleanness of it, the rightness of it.

If she trembled, she held herself too tightly to feel it, pacing the moments by the feverish beat of her heart, by her shallow, open mouthed breaths.

She willed herself to be anywhere but here, with Bennett no more than fifty feet away .

Meggie, beside her, was just as still, her own panic fueled by the stark terror on Judith's face .

There was silence now. The birds did not call, the waves ceased their rolling to shore, the gentle bleating of the sheep had ceased. It was as if everything were waiting. An eternity of time measured in long, breathless moments. For discovery or freedom ?

It was to be discovery .

Judith saw the sleeve of his tunic first, just as she pushed Meggie from the gorse choked earth and downwards toward Tynan .

"Run, Meggie, run!" Her voice sounded raw, as if a scream were trapped against her throat .

Meggie, damn her, did not move, frozen into immobility by the sight of the five soldiers who surrounded her, their grins enlivened by anticipation. She slowly backed away from them, careful steps accompanied by wide eyed fear .

Judith wanted to scream at her, shout, beat her hands against the other woman's back. Anything to get her to move, to make her feet pound against the track, to force her to run for shelter, protection! But a hand gloved in leather was clamped cruelly against Judith’s mouth, an arm rigid in its strength was pulling her inexorably back against a male body she knew too well.

Her struggles were futile, her kicking found nothing but air .

"Sweet Judith," Bennett Henderson said, his breath upon her cheek oddly fresh and smelling of mint. It should have been fetid and foul. "I have missed you. Dare I tell you how much ?"

Judith closed her eyes against his words, against the sight of the men approaching Meggie. They laughed and taunted her with promises of what would happen next .

Please God. What a useless prayer. How many nights had she prayed that worthless prayer ?

"Shall we watch, dearest Judith? Although it was Anthony's bent, was it not?

More so than mine. He chose to watch, I chose to act.

The perfect pair, with the perfect wife between us.

Tell me, dearest," Bennett said, his hand inching down her bodice, cupping the softness he found there with the most gentle of touches, "have you missed our little soirees ? "

The arm tightened against her throat as she pulled away, the red wool abraded her skin, her words of loathing muffled behind a leather gauntleted hand .

Meggie's screams lanced the air, sharp, shrill.

Judith struggled again, but it was as if she were moving against air, there was nothing she could do to hurt her attacker.

That was the most horrible part of it all.

If she could have inflicted any pain, however small, it would have made her feel less powerless, less a victim.

Her blows, however, were ineffectual, her struggles were as impotent as praying to God for relief .

Bennett turned her in the direction where Meggie now lay, her skirts around her waist, her legs held apart by two of the men.

A third pumped rhythmically into her while scratching her breasts, freed from her ripped bodice.

Another solder held her arms while she struggled, one other waited impatiently for his companion to finish.

A section of her own petticoat had been ripped and thrust into her mouth, but it was not enough to totally silence Meggie’s frantic cries .

"You are next, sweet," Bennett said, pushing his arousal against her back. "I'm not a selfish man, I share what I have ."

Hate was too small a word to hold all the feelings Bennett’s touch invoked.

If emotions had colors, the rage she felt would be bloody black, the color of witch’s Sabbaths, unholy practice and congealed blood.

Could it be possible to live with so much rage?

And how impotent this feeling. How empty her hate.

It could not save Meggie. It would not protect her .

It was, strangely, the sheep which saved Judith.

The lamb's cries had alerted its mother, which had parted from the flock in search of her lost offspring.

The flock, more than willing to follow anything at its head, had swung off from their determined trek across the moors.

It was as if a giant sea of white undulated over the short grass .

"Get your mind back where it should be, laddie," Malcolm said with a none too gentle push. He had stood on the top of the ladder handing thatch up to the MacLeod for what seemed like hours, and now the man had his sights not turned on the nearly completed roof, but on the rise of land near Tynan. There was a frown of concentration on the MacLeod’s face .

"Malcolm," he said, the tone of his voice sharp and oddly urgent, "did we ever finish the fence near the southeast pasture ?"

"I've only got two hands, lad," Malcolm said, grunting under the weight of the thatch, “it’s on my list of chores to do." He dropped the thatch onto the ground below .

"Well," Alisdair said, moving across the front of the roof in preparation for descent, "unless we get there first, it looks like the sheep will harvest those fields before we get a chance ."

The mere mention of danger to the food supply was a great motivator with Malcolm, who in turn rallied the rest of the building crew .

The English soldiers, brave and dauntless when accosting two women, chose not to confront thirty angry Highlanders armed with timbers and hammers .

They were too late, however, to save Meggie .