Dungeon of Darkness Page 4

  "Which only goes to show how little ye know that lass out there," Duncan said with a chuckle. "She'll sgreuch an' sgread—screech and scream, She'll even fight ye,' perhaps, and call ye names ye had no idea she knew, but she'll not leave thee. I've seen the lust in her eyes when she looks at ye,' lad! Kathy loves ye,' and she knows very well when she's being wrong-headed. She simply needs a bit o' reminding, now and again. I speak from long experience—almost twelve years of it! If I know our Kate, she's feeling a mite trapped, now. She foresees a bleak and dismal future for herself, like that of every other weary and overburdened woman in this village, and the prospect doesn't please her, nor would it ye,' if ye were a woman. Ye need to let her know that this needn't be her lot in life. But first, ye'll need to get the lass's full attention. I suggest, since ye seem to hae' come here unarmed, a good switch or two, off yon' willow tree, there. Willow switches vigorously applied to a bare bottom will get any lass's attention. Although it's been quite some time, the disagreeable sensation will no doubt be familiar to her."

  "I cannot!" Stephen repeated.

  McGregor grimaced. "Fine, then, do as ye will, but get the bothersome shrew out of my garden, and out of my house. She's ye'rs, bought and paid for, and she's not returnable! I'm too old and my health too frail to digest another of her damned, inedible stews."

  When Stephen came around the corner of the house, he found Kathy standing by the window, attempting to look innocent though she had clearly been eavesdropping on his conversation with Duncan. She moved away from the window quickly, and began wandering about the garden, humming a tuneless ditty as she picked a few flowers.

  "Has Duncan asked for my dowry back?" she asked sweetly, bending to add a sprig of greenery to her bouquet.

  "Duncan does not want your dowry back, my sweet, because he does not want you back. It appears you have worn out your welcome in this house, and are doomed to return to my own humble cottage, forthwith."

  "Nonsense!" she cried. "I have no intention of following you meekly back, sir, if that is your thought."

  "I had something different in mind," Stephen said, making a sudden decision. "I shall carry you home over my shoulder, like a sack of flour, for the entire village to see and make sport of."

  She laughed merrily. "My word, Stephen, how bold you've gotten. And do you think I will tolerate that? Being made a public spectacle?"

  "I think you will be too busy rubbing your well-spanked ass to care," he said affably.

  Katherine stopped what she was doing and stared at him. "I am not a child, Stephen."

  "Then I advise you to stop behaving as one, and come home with me, at once," he said, reaching up into the branches of the previously mentioned willow tree. Kathy watched warily as he broke off several of the graceful striplings.

  "It is Duncan McGregor has put you up to this silliness," she said sharply. "He must also think me still a child if he believes I'll allow myself to be punished thus, now that I'm a woman married."

  "No, my love. Duncan does not think you're a child. He thinks you're a shrew," Stephen said calmly. "And I'll not have my wife regarded as a shrew. You and I have long needed to come to an understanding, and I believe this fine morning is as good a time as any." He stripped the budding leaves from the three slender, supple switches, and tested them against his boot top. Katherine frowned and backed up against the garden wall, dropping her bouquet.

  "Well enough, Stephen," she said quickly. "We'll return to our own cottage, as you suggest, and discuss this matter at greater length."

  Stephen shook his head, rather sadly. "The time for discussion has passed, my love. You told Duncan that you would have me be more...what were the words you used? Forceful, was it? Bold? Resolute?"

  "Stephen," she began, backing further away, "I am truly sorry if I've…" Lachlan reached out for her hand and pulled her to him.

  "No, my love," he assured her," it is I who have failed— in my duties as a good husband. Please believe that from this day forward, I will be all of those things to you—bold, resolute, and last but far from least, forceful. Starting this very day." With that, he sat down on the wall, dragged her across his lap, and trapped her kicking legs beneath one of his.

  "Stephen!" she hissed, looking frantically around for stray passersby. "Let me up! Immediately!"

  "Soon, beloved, soon," he said pleasantly. "But not immediately, I'm afraid." With no further discussion, he stripped off her stockings, tugging them down very slowly one leg at a time and tossing them over his shoulder. Trapped under his arm but still struggling frantically to get to her feet, Kathy felt his free hand rummaging about under her petticoats. She had expected, at most, a painful switching across her lower legs, and squirming as vigorously as she was, it was several moments— along with the feel of the cool morning breeze wafting across her bottom—before she realized that he had pushed up her skirts and shift, baring her from waist to ankle.

  Kathy's eyes went wide with alarm, and she began to thrash wildly, pounding her fists against Stephen's leg. "Stop this at once! I shall never forgive you if you go one step further. I swear to you, I'll….O-O-W-W-W!" The willow switches had just slashed across her naked bottom, three times in rapid succession. When she swore a vicious oath and tried to bite him, Stephen repeated the cycle twice more, feeling quite pleased with the result of his first swats and curious to see Kathy's reaction to the next.

  Stephen Lachlan had never spanked a full-grown woman before, although he had administered more than a few brotherly paddlings to Katherine as they were growing up. Somehow, it had come as a surprise to him when she reacted so vehemently to what he had planned as nothing more than a light switching. But when he pushed her skirts all the way to her waist and raised her shift to reveal her round, plump backside, her shrieks of protest made it clear that he had exceeded Kathy's expectations. A very interesting turn of events, indeed. Stephen smiled to himself. It was just as Duncan had foretold—he had finally begun to get Kathy's attention.

  Not wishing to waste either the freshly cut switches or his momentum, Stephen slipped one arm firmly around his wife's waist and pulled her more closely against him. When she tried to move a protective hand in place over her endangered backside, he took a moment to secure that arm firmly behind her back. And then, as though he had been spanking women for years, Stephen began again—delivering a barrage of solid, stinging swats to both soft, pink cheeks of Katherine's squirming bottom, and he continued swatting, hard and fast, until both tender hemispheres were thatched uniformly red and he could feel a distinctly warm glow arising from the region. With that accomplished, he moved downward and applied a small number of swats to her thighs and lower legs.

  Kathy, who had begun by howling at the top of her lungs, had quickly reduced her wails to low moans and curses when it occurred to her that there was some danger of her screeches being heard by McGregor's nearest neighbors. It was bad enough to be forced to endure a painful spanking without having her humiliation spread throughout the village by a bunch of busybodies and gossipmongers.

  McGregor's wildly overgrown garden had provided a small measure of privacy, but Kathy now feared that there was still the possibility that Stephen would make good on his earlier threat to carry her home over his shoulder. She was vastly relieved when he dumped her back on her feet, obviously winded from his efforts, and then tossed the well-worn switches into the bushes. Vowing not to allow him the satisfaction of seeing her rub her smarting buttocks, or massage the sting from the back of her striped thighs, she straightened her skirts and then preceded him through the rear garden gate, down the lane, across the small bridge, and into their front door before turning on her husband in a full-blown rage.

  "If I live to be one hundred years old, Stephen Lachlan, I will never forget this day, and I shall never forgive you for humiliating me so!"

  Stephen wasn't listening. He was rifling through the drawers of the small chest in the corner, and from there, he carried his search to the many messy shelves.

&nbs
p; "What are you looking for?" she asked querulously.

  Stephen smiled. "A hairbrush, my love—the very large, wooden hairbrush I'm certain I've seen about, somewhere. I've been advised to keep the thing close at hand, and after today, I see that as excellent advice."

  Yes, Stephen had gotten Kathy's attention, but if he truly believed that one switching, however disagreeable, would change his wife from stubborn to docile, or to in any way deter her from seeking the revenge that had burned in her breast for all these years, he was soon to be disappointed.

  Less than two months later, Kathy would leave him sleeping soundly in the cottage they shared, and return to the ruins at Drumannach Castle, alone, to learn more about the man she knew now by nothing but his evil reputation—and by a chilling Voice she had never been able to forget.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER THREE

  April 1203—That same night, on the road home from the ruins of Drumannach, to Caisteal Gailleann. The runaway has been found safe, and is being carried—reluctantly—back to Scotland.

  The ride north was not a pleasant one, particularly for Katherine Lachlan. She had anticipated that she would be punished for running away and coming here alone, but the spanking Stephen had administered had been considerably more formal and arduous than she had expected, and Kathy was openly resentful. Until now, there had been an almost playful quality to these spanking episodes, despite their sting and lingering discomfort, and the passionate sternness of Stephen's accompanying lecture. Additionally, it seemed that her prior spankings had almost always been followed by an equally passionate period of loving reconciliation in their wide, warm bed.

  Today's spanking had been different, though, Katherine thought, rubbing her throbbing bottom as she recalled the look of grim determination on Stephen's face throughout the incident. From the very first blistering blow, it had been "painfully" obvious that he was not feeling in the least playful. Whereas most of what had previously passed for spankings had been mild to barely moderate in intensity, today's whipping had been just that—a whipping, and not a spanking, at all! Stephen had calmly removed the wide belt from his tunic, lifted her skirt, held her down over a low wall and strapped her bared buttocks until she surrendered her pride and pleaded with him to stop. There had been no stern lecture before and no tender apology afterward. And now, with her backside on fire, she was expected to ride all the way to Scotland without protest. He had already warned her that should she complain, about anything at all, that he would repeat the whipping— for Duncan's benefit.

  Meanwhile, Duncan himself was behaving abominably to her, grinning each time her horse bounced unexpectedly on the rutted road, drawing another yelp of pain from her. All men were vicious creatures, she decided, intent on making all women subservient and docile.

  Whatever Stephen and McGregor believed, Kathy's reasons for returning to Drumannach had been neither frivolous, nor hasty. She had believed since childhood that it was her right and even her duty to come back to this place that still belonged to her, and that held so much of her history, and maybe her future. It should have been no surprise to either of these men who claimed to love her that she would try, with or without their help, to regain some small measure of what was rightfully hers.

  She had finally ridden over the rise and come upon Drumannach only yesterday morning, after a long and difficult journey made with few clues with which to find her way. Over the years, she had wheedled small bits of information from a reticent McGregor, but he had divulged only what he thought would answer her basic questions, without encouraging her fascination with the place, or her longing to return there. It hadn't worked, of course, and Katherine had written down and stored every scrap of information in a tiny wooden box she kept hidden under her bed. She committed to memory every described detail of the terrain, of the nearby hills, of how the manor itself sat in a small glen below a rise.

  When she attempted to reassemble her vague memories of that terrifying night and the flight from England, much of the story was missing. She could still bring back with startling clarity the freezing, storm-tossed trip across the Firth—still her best clue as to Drumannach's actual location. Rolled up in a locked desk drawer in McGregor's study, she had found an old but well-detailed map of England and Scotland, and it took her very little time to find the approximate spot on the map where Drumannach had once stood. She would not need a boat, it seemed, which would draw attention, but only a good, strong horse and several days' provisions.

  It had taken her some years to understand why McGregor was so opposed to her returning to her home, and to appreciate his desire to protect her from the painful memory of her flight from England. She knew that Duncan's caution came from the grim knowledge that somewhere, there was an evil man who bore her family an implacable hatred—a man whose exact identity Duncan claimed not to know, but who nurtured a bloodlust against the Drummonds that would live as long as one of her family still drew breath. And as she caught her first glimpse of Drumannach, she knew that that man could still be waiting for her—like a lurking spider.

  McGregor had also not shared with her the rumors he had heard—of Alric Grymwald's death. Quietly, he had sent Stephen to investigate the truth of it. Lachlan returned with the unwelcome news that not only did Grymwald still live and thrive, but that he had ingratiated himself in recent years with the corrupt Bishop of St. Cuthbert's Abbey. Together, the villainous pair had discovered that ferreting out heretics and witches was an excellent way to satisfy their shared, insatiable greed for land and money.

  Katherine's memories of her home and her parents had faded over these same years, until their beloved faces were only dimly remembered. Even the castle at Drumannach was little more than a vague dreamlike edifice, through whose burning halls she had raced on a long-ago winter night. But she remembered The Voice very well—a Voice of such evil, and bearing such malice within it that the sound of it had haunted her nightmares ever since. There was no face in her nightmares, but the Voice was unforgettable, and terrifying.

  Since that day, as a child of not yet six, Kathy had vowed she would someday return, find that Voice, and kill the beast to whom it belonged. Neither the gentle teachings of the good sisters at the village church where she attended school, nor the stern admonitions of Duncan McGregor himself, had changed her mind. After admitting to her thoughts of vengeance in the confessional, she had suffered through long hours of penance, kneeling in the chapel at St. Ebba's with pebbles under her knees. She had spent quite a few more hours rubbing her well-warmed bottom after repeatedly defying Duncan McGregor, and voicing her childish determination to "rip out the swine's bloody, dripping guts and make him swallow them!" Through the years, her lust for vengeance had never diminished, but only gone into temporary hiding.

  Her first journey back to Drumannach, though, had not been made in the name of vengeance, but out of simple curiosity. Katherine understood that she was still too young, and that she had no proper weapons yet with which to combat the man behind the evil Voice in her dreams. This trip had been to gather information and nothing more. She needed desperately to relive her own dreadful memories, and even to refresh those memories—to separate what she had always believed from what was true. Knowing the truth about what had happened here would be the most useful tool in finding and destroying The Voice from her past.

  As they continued homeward, her anger at Stephen and McGregor grew. She had searched for three days, traveling alone, and inquiring from those she met along the road how to find the ruins of Drumannach. Yet, the two men she loved and trusted had known the way, and known precisely where to find her. They had come directly from Gailleann in one-third the time it had required of her. More secrets, and more lies!

  * * * * *

  McGregor and Stephen had been cautious not to linger in the vicinity of Drumannach any longer than necessary. After finding the runaway, they'd stayed just long enough for Stephen to administer the thorough spanking he'd been planning in elaborate and cheerful deta
il since they left home. The trio had been on their way back to Scotland for less than an hour when a group of heavily armed men appeared on the gentle rise above the silent ruins of the once stately house, and rode down the green slope to where Katherine had watched her golden spider only a short time before. The luckless spider died an untimely death when one of the new arrivals— a stocky, white-haired hulk of a man—swore violently, and kicked the rotting timber where the spider lived into splinters and sawdust.

  The spider killer's arm had been severed, just below the elbow, and his face disfigured by a hideous network of livid scars. The scars were old, but they darkened with rage and began to throb when he realized that he had missed his prey by mere minutes. At some time in the past, the right side of his face had been ripped open, and the wound poorly repaired, so that a great, jagged scar crossed from his forehead, through one torn and empty eye socket, and thence, to the corner of his mouth. It was a face that struck those who saw it for the first time with a kind of sickening terror—the visage of a man who had seen the Devil himself amidst the fires of Hell, and lived to tell the tale.

  The ruin of a man was Alric Grymwald, whose ravaged features seemed to mirror the twisted soul within him. There were many, though, who would have argued that Grymwald was a creature without a soul, and that what lived on within his torn body was nothing more than the burning fires of hatred—flames he fueled with violence and vengeance.

  "A girl, then!" he raged, striking the nearest of his companions a vicious blow with a riding whip. "As I thought! But are you certain it was the one I seek, idiot? What was her exact appearance? Her age?"

  "It was the one, sire," another man said hurriedly. "I would swear it! It could have been none other. The bitch's age was correct, and her hair—flame colored, like her father's. Like many of the Drummonds."

  Grymwald laughed bitterly. "And why not simply some red-haired local trollop, meeting with her doltish lover, to fuck themselves into a stupor and provide the world with another mewling mongrel bastard? Why would the Drummond creature be so foolhardy as to come back here? It makes no sense, now, does it?"