Highland Angel Read Free

wasnae honest with me or my kin. He kenned there was verra little chance he could or would give me bairns. ’Tis all part of why he wishes to kill me.”
    “Because he is impotent? I cannae see that a mon would kill anyone to keep that secret, shaming though it is.”
    “Oh, Roderick isnae impotent. Nay with everyone, leastwise. I thought ’twas just me.” She grimaced and began to cut up an apple. “I am a scrawny thing and was e’en more so at fifteen. Young as I was, I decided he must have just wanted the lands I had inherited from my mother. It was a while ere I gained enough knowledge to ken that what I looked like should nay matter. That was when I began to look more closely at what was happening around me. It shames me to think I held myself blind and ignorant for almost three years, sulking o’er my sad lot like some spoiled bairn.”
    “Ye were verra young,” Payton said, but she just shrugged off his attempt to console her. “Why didnae ye return to your family, seek an annulment?”
    “And tell all the world my husband couldnae abide the bedding of me? Foolish it was, but pride gagged me. After almost three years, howbeit, I was thinking on it, for my husband is young and healthy. I began to see that I could be condemned to this empty marriage until I was too old to have bairns, tied for near all my life to a mon who seemed interested only in punishing me for every tiny real or imagined slight. Ere I acted upon that thought, I discovered the truth.”
    He watched as she finished off the apple and reached for another piece of bread. “And the truth is? He likes men?”
    “Nay. Children.”
    Payton sat up straight, a chill running through his body. He did not want to hear this. It stirred sad, ugly memories. He had been a pretty child, a pretty young man as well. Although he had escaped any true abuse, he had been made painfully aware of the dark side of people at too young an age. A part of him wanted Kirstie to leave and not draw him into this particular mess, but a far larger part of him was prepared to battle such evil to the death.
    “Wee boys?” he asked.
    “And wee lasses,” she replied. “Mostly the laddies, though. E’en now, I am oft mistaken for a child, and I have few womanly curves. I now believe that he thought he could mate with me, breed a child or two. Once I kenned the truth, I spent hours in the chapel thanking God that Roderick couldnae bed me, for he would surely have visited his sickness upon my bairns.” Kirstie sensed how taut Payton had become and was suddenly, sadly, aware that such a beautiful man had probably been a beautiful child or pretty youth. “In truth, if he had favored men, I could have accepted that. The church and some laws condemn it, but, if ’tis two grown men, I feel ’tis none of my business. I was willing to try to come to some agreement with Roderick, keep his secret but also gain my freedom so that I might seek out a true marriage.”
    “Are ye certain ’tis children he uses? Verra certain?”
    “Aye, verra certain.” Kirstie took a bracing drink. “I began to understand the whispers swirling about him and was determined to seek out the truth. I had thought the silence, e’en the sadness, of the children about the keep was due to the brutality so carelessly meted out. Then I truly noticed how Roderick keeps the wee ones e’er close, that near all the children are pretty, and, sometimes, a child is about for a wee while, then gone. I soon recognized that all those touches, caresses, he gave the wee ones were nay paternal. I began to try and catch him when he thought no one was looking. I found a way to spy upon him in his solar and his bedchamber.” She quickly had another long drink. “I dinnae think I can say what I saw. It haunts my dreams. I dinnae ken where I found the sanity to hold fast, to nay just rush in and kill the bastard, but I did. That might have failed and I would have been quickly silenced. E’en one child would nay have