Page 15 of To Tame a Wolf

Hours had passed since she’d started working on her restraints. Blood trickled down over her fingertips, making them slippery and the knots harder to handle.

Alexandra heard the horses come to a halt, followed by the sounds of dismounting. The binding that connected her bound hands to her bound feet must have been cut because she found herself slipping down the horse’s side. Her feet hit the ground first, but caught off-balance, she landed on her backside. The binding around her ankles was severed, and she gasped in pain as blood flowed freely back into her feet. Pulled to a standing position by someone at each side, she was led with the hood still covering her head. She stumbled on numb feet and tried to keep up with her captors.

She didn’t know where she was being steered, but she could tell they’d entered a building by the change in temperature and the echoes. Congratulatory greetings rang out. She heard laughter and loud talk. She smelled roasting meat, but her stomach didn’t recoil. Suddenly released, she stumbled to a halt, disoriented and swaying to keep her balance.

“Well, let’s have a look at her!” she heard a booming voice say.

The hood was roughly removed from her head, and she squinted at the change in light. The room grew silent, and people turned to stare at her. She stood at a table before a grizzly-looking man with long, graying, red hair, and an unpleasant, mean-looking face.

“So this is the woman worth all that money,” the man drawled while looking her over. “Skinny little bitch. Don’t look like good breeding stock to me!” he declared to the group, who guffawed and pounded the tables with their mugs.

Alexandra wouldn’t have responded, even if she could have, as the gag was still in her mouth.

“Put her in the dungeon,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “No one’s to touch her! She’ll be worth more money to us! If they were willing to take her back in any condition, then they should be willing to pay extra if she’s left untouched.”

Relief flowed through Alexandra. She was amazed Niles’s words had been so misconstrued. Led away and down a flight of stairs to a very dark place, she was shoved through a doorway, and the door slammed shut behind her. She heard the slide of a wooden bar lock into place. It took several minutes for her eyes to adjust again. A single beam of sunlight came in from a small rectangular window near the ceiling. The stench in the room was almost unbearable, and she gagged before realizing she still had the cloth over her mouth. Reaching up with her bound hands, she pulled it free.

A moan emanated from the darkest corner of the room. Alexandra walked hesitantly toward it. When she got closer, she could make out a boy lying face down in the straw. His back was bloody and crisscross swaths of his shirt were missing. It looked like he had been whiplashed. She placed her hand gently on his shoulder, and the lad shrank away from her in terror, turning partially over as he did so. He held his hands palms outward to keep her at bay. Why, it wasn’t a boy at all. It was a woman! Her beautiful features were strikingly feminine, but her hair had been haphazardly shorn off, and it stuck out in uneven spikes.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Alexandra repeated, taking a step back and raising her own hands, “I am not going to hurt you.”

The young woman looked at her with glazed eyes. Alexandra was concerned she was running a fever.

“I just want to help,” Alexandra said.

The woman did not answer but put her hands down and rolled back over onto her stomach, emitting a strangled cry as she did.

Alexandra walked closer and kneeled to get a better look. She needed more light. She did not want to pull the woman’s shirt up without having any soothing ointment to apply. It looked like parts of the shirt were embedded in the open wounds, probably forced in by the whip. Fury rose up in her. The cruelty of some people never ceased to astonish her. She stood and walked to the door and started beating on it with her bound hands.

“I need help for this girl. or she could die if left untreated! Do you hear me? I need my medicinal supplies!” She’d had her healing bag strapped around her neck and at her side as usual when she was taken, surely they’d kept it. “And your laird has made a huge mistake! I need to talk to him!”

Alexandra continued to beat on the door and yell. She paused only long enough to bite at the knots in the rope binding her hands. Finally free, she shook her hands and examined them. They also needed healing salve. She determined as long as there was breath left in her, she’d stand at the door shouting and pounding until she dropped.

Eventually, after what seemed like hours, her medicinal bag was shoved through the sliding slot in the door.

“I need light! And I need to see your laird!” she yelled through the door, but received only silence in response.

She picked up her bag and took it to the section of the room where the last lingering rays of the day shone down through the rectangular window. It didn’t look like anything was missing, but it had been rifled through. She found the herb she needed and went back by the door where she’d earlier discovered a water barrel and plate of uneaten stale bread. Setting the bread aside, she made a paste on the plate with the powdered medicine and a little water.

She walked over to where the woman lay unmoving and set the plate down on the straw. She pulled the hem of her undergarment up to her mouth and used her teeth to start a tear, and then with her hands, started pulling long strips of cloth off the bottom of her chemise. With nowhere clean to set them, she wrapped each strip around her left arm as she tore one off.

When she thought she had enough bandages, she knelt next to the woman.

“Are you awake?” she asked.

The woman lifted her head and turned in Alexandra’s direction. Grimacing, she answered, “Yes.”

Alexandra carefully explained what needed to be done and how painful the process would be, and then she waited for the woman’s response.

Meeting her eyes unwaveringly, the woman nodded her head and whispered, “Please.”

Alexandra worked quickly, as the remaining light was fading fast. Gently inching the shirt up, she was relieved to see the woman’s back was not as bad as she’d first feared. Only several lashes had broken through her skin and those had bled heavily, causing the shirt to be caked in blood. The gashes were deep and she started the painful process of pulling the shredded remnants of clothing from them. The woman clenched fistfuls of straw, trying to hold back the screams, until she couldn’t take it anymore. She let out a piercing cry and passed out.

It was hard to work with tears filling her eyes and running down her face, but Alexandra worked mainly by instinct anyway. Applying a generous amount of healing salve, she quickly wrapped the strips of garment over and around the unconscious woman’s body.

Sinking to the ground when the job was done, she was overcome with weariness, almost too exhausted to tend to herself. She wiped what was left of the salve onto her wrists and covered them with the remaining strips. She was so very tired but hated to lie in the filth around her. Finally, she reconciled herself to the fact she had no choice. She needed all the rest she could get. Lying down on her side, she curled into a fetal position and rested her head on her folded arms. She would sleep until she heard the woman stir, and then go back to pounding on the door.

****

The McGregor waited in darkness for dawn to approach. His clan was ready for war. They had prepared their provisions, their weapons, and their horses. By first light, they would be on the ambushers’ trail, which undoubtedly led south toward the Conrad or Sullivan border.

A quarter of his men would stay behind under James’s command to defend their home against attack. It was a rare decision to make, but they both agreed. The cunning treachery of Niles could not be underestimated. Coming onto his land and stealing his wife was proof of that.

The McGregor clenched his fists at the thought of Alexandra back in the bastard’s hands. He hoped she realized she needed to keep silent regarding her marital status; elsewise, Niles would have no reason to keep her alive. If harm came to her, he would not stop until he tore the man apart, piece by piece.

The biggest obstacle to overcome in the upcoming battle was his own emotions. He needed to put a damper on his fury in order to think clearly. He would save Alexandra first and then he’d allow his feelings to run berserk.

****

Anguished cries woke Alexandra from her own nightmares. She reached out and squeezed the woman’s hand to reassure her she was not alone.

“Can I please have some water?” the woman pushed herself up into a sitting position.

“Of course,” Alexandra replied. She ran her hand along the wall to help guide her way. Moonlight now shone through the small window offering a reprieve from total darkness. She dipped the cup into the water barrel and also picked up the stale bread. Returning in the same manner, she held out the cup toward the woman’s shadowed outline.

“Here it is,” she said, waiting until she felt the woman’s hand over hers before she let go of the tin cup. Splitting the bread in half, she encouraged her patient to eat to keep up her strength.

Alexandra took a bite and wanted to spit it out. Instead, she let it sit in her mouth until it softened enough to be swallowed. They sat eating in silence until Alexandra asked, “May I ask your name?”

“Kathleen or Kat for short. And yours?”

“Alexandra. Who did this to you?”

Kat hesitated and then stated without emotion, “My father.”

Alexandra gasped. It was not the answer she expected. “I am so sorry,” she said as visions of her own father played out in her head. Scenes of him laughing and tossing her up in the air to catch her again; of his kissing a scrape on her hand and making it magically better; of teaching her to ride and hunt. At a loss for words, she said again, “I am so sorry.”

“And you? You are the woman who is being ransomed? I heard they were going to steal you from the McGregor clan.”

“Yes, only there’s just one problem—I am a McGregor now,” Alexandra replied.

It took a second for Kat to register the meaning behind Alexandra’s words, and then she chuckled before laughing outright. Wiping tears from her eyes, she said, “It serves the old bastard right.”

Alexandra worked her way back to the door and pounded on it. She yelled again that she had an important message for the laird and beat on the door with her closed fists. She stopped banging long enough to ask Kat if she wanted more water.

“No, but will you please come talk to me more. Talk about anything, it keeps my mind off my pain.”

Alexandra talked about her parents dying and Niles taking over their estate. She talked of his brutality and then about her ideal life at the nunnery. She paused to take a drink and said, “Tell me about your life.”

“I am the youngest of nine children, and the only daughter. I had a different mother from my brothers. Theirs died in childbirth. Most of my childhood was spent trying to keep up with them,” she said. “I learned how to fight, quick and dirty, as I can’t match their strength, but I can outride them and outshoot them. I used to try so hard to gain my father’s approval, but it was as if I were invisible. When I was old enough to understand, I found out my father killed my mother and her lover when he caught them cheating. People have told me I look like her. I think when my father looks at me he sees her,” Kat stopped talking, overcome with emotion and unable to continue.

Alexandra squeezed her hand in sympathy. “Why don’t you rest a while,” she said and rose to pound again on the door. If there was anyone out there, they wouldn’t be getting any more sleep than she did.

“Tell me how you met the McGregor,” Kat requested, and turned to lie on her stomach.

Leaning back against the door, Alexandra told her of Niles’s men picking her up from the abbey. She told the tale of Happy and of her reunion with Aggie. And then she told Kat about the disgusting pig her cousin had planned to marry her off to. As she described how her intended-to-be tried to examine her teeth, Kat gasped and sat up, and then gasped again at the pain she caused herself.

“What is his name?” she asked.

“Hugh Sullivan,” Alexandra replied.

“No!” Kat gasped again, standing up this time. “It’s the same man!” she exclaimed. “It’s the same man I refused to marry! He’s the reason I took this beating.”

“No!” It was Alexandra’s turn to gasp.

“I’d already told my father I would not marry, but he presented me to the Sullivan anyway. When he tried to check my teeth, I rammed my knee into his manhood and my fist to his throat. He went down quickly, wheezing and gagging. I guess after that he decided I wasn’t wifely material. And then my father ordered this,” she said and pointed to her back. “In case you haven’t already guessed, my father is laird of the Campbells.”

Alexandra’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. This beautiful woman was nothing like the repugnant man upstairs. And she thought she’d had it rough…

“The Sullivan must have decided to try elsewhere for a wife after I ran. Our fates and our destinies seem intertwined, don’t you think? We have overcome so much.” She squeezed Kat’s hand again, “We will get out of here.”

The women slept little. They talked, and yelled and banged on their prison door throughout the night. Kat wanted to know how Alexandra had become a McGregor, so she told of helping the McGregor escape, only to find out that he was the laird and she was his prisoner. Telling of how he’d proposed, she admitted her love for him and her uncertainty of his feelings toward her, other than being physically attracted and wanting to have children.

“I would have guessed your feelings for the McGregor just by the change in the tone of your voice when you speak of him. Love… I have never experienced it, nor do I want to. No man shall own me!” Kat confessed she wished she’d been born a man. She also told Alexandra of her love for the forest and how it had become her sanctuary.

Both women were surprised by dawn’s light. They’d spent the night forming a bond of friendship, and each wondered what it might have been like to have grown up with a sister.

Breakfast, which consisted of two bowls of runny porridge, was passed through the opening in the door. Alexandra jumped up to grab them and said, “Your laird is going to be very upset you didn’t pass along my message sooner. For your own sake, you must get me an audience with him.”

“Shut your mouth!” was the response she received from the other side of the door.

As the women ate their meager fare, they heard a raised conversation from beyond the door, but they could not make out any words. Alexandra lifted her eyebrows and looked hopefully at Kat. Maybe this would be it? The discussion soon ended and silence prevailed.

“I might be able to fit through the window,” Kat said. “This dungeon was meant to hold men. If we derive a way to get me up there, I think I could fit through the bars.”

“What’s on the other side?” Alexandra asked.

“The courtyard. I’d have to do it during the night. Even if I get out, there’s a chance I may be seen. But what do we have to lose?”

They were in the midst of discussing how they could hoist Kat up to the window when the dungeon door opened wide. Two angry looking men stood in the doorway.

“The laird will see you now,” one of them said and stepped in to grab Alexandra’s arm. Neither man made eye contact nor spoke to Kat. Alexandra was pulled from the room, and the door was slammed shut. She heard the rasp of the bar as it was locked. Rehearsing in her mind what she wanted to say, she was led up the steps and back into the hall. She stood once again before the laird’s table, only this time, she looked upon him with contempt.

Not waiting for him to give permission to speak, she said, “I am the McGregor’s wife, and I carry his child. He will stop at nothing to get me back. Your clan will be destroyed.”

The room went dead silent, and then a roar erupted from the bear. Clearing the table with a sweeping motion of his arm, he sent utensils and food flying. With another roar, he picked the table up and flipped it over. Alexandra did not cringe when it landed at her feet. The man cursed violently and paced before her. Then suddenly, he stopped as if realizing she might be bluffing.

“Do you have proof?” he demanded.

Alexandra pulled up on the chain around her neck and lifted the McGregor’s ring from between her breasts. She held the ring out for his inspection. The laird roughly grabbed it, bringing it, and therefore her, closer. Ignoring the sting of the chain, she stood still and watched his face when he made out the wolf head insignia. He dropped the chain as if it were hot and stepped back.

****

“We have been tricked!” he bellowed to his fellow clansmen, “Betrayed once again by a woman!” How was he going to get out of this? The reputation of the Wolf far preceded him. The kidnapping of a prize was one thing, stealing the man’s wife was another. This… this the Wolf would take very seriously. He had no doubt his clan would fall in an outright war. His wealth and strength had steadily declined over the years. He had hoped this ransom business would give him the prosperity he needed to preserve the clan.

“Set me free and give me the woman, Kat, to take with me, and I will do what I can to stop a war,” Alexandra said.

The old laird stopped in his tracks. Yes, that might work. He faced her and said, “Yes, tell the Wolf I was tricked! That I didn’t know who you were. Tell him I give to him my only daughter as a slave and a sign of my regret.”