At that, the chieftain’s eyes narrowed to slits. My father’s words had provoked him somehow. He seemed more interested, than before, in my offer. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” I said, quietly from my position of supplication.
“Old enough,” one of the warriors said.
The rest of the men laughed again.
And I felt my skin grow hot with embarrassment.
Holding my chin between finger and thumb, the laird twisted and turned my face as if to take in my features. Did he find me attractive? I knew that I had windswept red hair and with blue eyes, dark-lashed. After working the farm and rearing up so many little children, I hadn’t the soft beauty of a lady; the calluses upon my fingers marked me of the peasant class. But I knew I had a sturdy frame. A nicely curving back, breasts that heaved up over the top of my skiff, and wide hips. Men in the castle on market day always looked at me with wanting…but I never looked back. John Macrae was different. I couldn’t help but look back at the laird; indeed, I shivered at the touch of his fingers upon my chin.
Finally, he seemed to make a decision. "Good. You wish to save your father and I wish for him to suffer for his crime. Instead of his life, I’ll take his daughter's virtue—assuming you still have it."
I dared not look at my family now, who watched this spectacle of my humiliation. “You bastard,” my father snarled at the laird from where the warriors held him near a dangling noose. “I’d rather die!”
The laird did not even dignify my father with a reply. His gaze was on me. Intent. As if we were the only two people in the world. “Are you still a virgin, girl?”
I nodded, miserably, choked with tears. Somehow finding my courage anyway. “Yes, laird. I offer my virtue to you in recompense for my father’s crimes if that is what will keep him from the noose.”
Maidens offered themselves to him simply because of who he was, but I was offering him something more than sex. This was being negotiated before my father, my family, and all his warriors. I felt keenly that I was offering him my shame.
I only hoped he was fiend enough to want it.
Maybe that’s why it was so strangely gratifying when he said, “To be clear about the bargain, I want it stated before these witnesses that you offer your body to me for the purposes I decide, until such time that I’m sated of you. I want you to say it aloud.”
He didn’t need me to say it. He didn’t need witnesses either. But he wanted them. He wanted to humiliate me and my father, and shame me before all my siblings, who sniffled, wide-eyed as I bargained for our father’s life. He did want my shame.
Or, at the very least, he wanted my father’s.
The condemned man nearly spat with rage. “I’ll not have my daughter be your whore!”
One of the laird’s warriors landed a blow on my father’s kidney that sent him down to the ground, and renewed a chorus of wailing from my terrified siblings. Meanwhile the word echoed in my mind.
Whore. If I gave myself to the laird, is that what people would think of me? Everyone in the village would know what I’d done. But they would know that I had no choice in it, wouldn’t they? It wouldn’t make me a whore, but a good daughter. The chieftain took mistresses and when he did, they were treated with respect because he demanded it. Would it be so different for me?
The chieftain’s mistress. That thought alone, traitorously, intrigued me. I’d never even been left alone in the company of a man before, and now a mixture of curiosity and desperation rose up in me. The embarrassment of having to offer myself again in front of these sniggering warriors made me shudder and hug myself, as if to hide myself from their leering view. And when I met the laird’s gaze, it was dark and terrible. It set me atremble.
Still, I said the words he wanted me to say. “I offer my body for the purposes you decide, until such time that you are sated of me. I offer this so that my father may be absolved of his crimes.”
A flicker of warmth sparked in his stormy eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Lust? Admiration? Or something else? Then he quite nearly smiled, but it was more of a sneer. “Your father is quite right, girl. I do want to make a whore of you. Do you understand and consent to that?”
One look at the tear-streaked faces of my sisters and brothers, and my father’s body prone, in pain, and I gave a quick nod.
“Say it,” the laird barked at me.
“Yes, I consent.”
“To what?” he asked, impatiently.
Oh, yes, he did want my shame.
And I wanted to give it to him.
“You refuse him even if they run me through and spill my guts on the ground,” my father raved. “Do you hear me, Heather? You let them kill me rather than submit to the mad bastard or you’re no daughter of mine.”
The laird was waiting for my answer and I lifted my chin against the anger that roiled up inside me. Then, without looking at my father, I spoke the words. “I consent to be made a whore by you, my laird.”
The Macrae stared at me hard, without satisfaction. “I don’t even think ye ken what that means.”