“The easiest thing would be to introduce you as Rose Owains, come from Wales to visit with me after our many years together as children.”
Rose cocked her head, her eyes wide.
“You mentioned that last night, about fostering with a Welsh family…” she drawled.
“Aye,” he answered, though he was not yet prepared to share that part of his life with her. “But there’s no time to discuss that. We must break our fast, and then I can take you into the village and you can ask all the questions you want.”
If her smile at greeting him had been blinding, the one she gave him now outshone the sun a million times over.
“What are we waiting for?” she snapped excitedly as she turned for the door, threw it open, and disappeared through it. “Pick up your feet, Thorn, I’ve a life to get on with!” Her words taunted him, even as a grin spread across his face.
Chapter Eleven
If Rose could bottle the hatred on the face of the woman seated across from her, she’d make a fortune selling it as a weapon.
She ignored Briar as much as she could, but since the woman never seemed to look away from Rose, Rose had to stomach eating her meal with the feeling of being burned alive with a gaze.
The food was good enough, filling if a little bland, but she didn’t care what she ate as long as Thorn kept his promise to take her into the village.
“Tell me again how this woman came tae our doorstep,” Briar sneered, her imperious expression cutting nicks in Rose’s carefully built wall. The wall meant to keep Briar safe from Rose’s temper.
She’s lucky I left my sword under my pillow, she mentally grumbled, doing everything she could to not sneer at Briar in return. What did the woman have against Rose? It wasn’t as though Rose had come to take Thorn from her; on the contrary, she was happy to leave Thorn in Briar’s capable hands, because if he was too busy with his bride-to-be, then he wouldn’t be around to drive Rose mad with the way her body responded to a simple look.
Damn him and his dark, devastatingly sensual eyes. And his lips should be a crime!
Thorn was at the head of the long table, set on a dais at the back of the great hall, and every one of his men—it seemed that way anyway—were all seated at other long tables in the room. And now, they were all turned to stare at them with interest and suspicion in their weathered and scarred faces.
“I have come from Wales to visit with your laird,” she answered, leaning back in her seat to appear unbothered by all the unwanted attention. Usually, she liked being the focus of men’s attentions, it made it easier to crook a finger and get them into her bed, a quick and easy way to numb the world for a few hours. But, here, in Thorn’s great hall, she wanted to pry out the eyes of everyone present and drop them onto the floor where they’d step on them in their panic to escape her.
She choked on a laugh at the vision that conjured, but reset her features as Thorn’s gaze landed on her.
“Aye, Rose Owains is an old friend, and she is here to offer condolences for my father’s passing,” Thorn commented, and Rose wanted to kick him under the table. The man couldn’t lie his way out of an arm-wrestling match with a babe.
Briar scowled. “After four years?” she shrilled. “Do ye take me for an idiot?”
Rose cocked her head as if to say, “Aye,” but she kept that to herself. Instead, she decided to clean up the mess Thorn had made of the situation.
“The Owains are busy, and we rarely, if ever, come close enough to Scotland to hear any news of Thorn or the MacPherson clan. The only reason I knew about his father’s passing was because I had met with two men in Port Eynon Bay who’d mentioned it. As the only Owains available, I was sent north on behalf of the family, to offer our sympathies.”
Thorn’s face remained impassive, but his eyes twinkled with unspoken amazement.
Her chest swelled, pride pulsing through her at that look. How long had it been since someone looked at her like that?
Too long.
“I see,” Briar intoned, with a sour turn of her lips. “And how long will ye be stayin’ with us…Rose?” A sick sort of joy crawled through her, and Rose let that sensation pick her next words.
“I will stay as long as Laird MacPherson allows it. He has already shown such…hospitality,” she said, emphasizing the last word, and cocking her lips in a lopsided smile.
Briar gasped, Garrick choked on whatever he was eating, and Thorn stared at her like she’d grown a second head. She wanted to laugh at them all, then laugh at herself for allowing her emotions to rule her mind.
“And by that, I mean that he has allowed me to stay, and has provided me with the proper attire befitting a lady. If he had not, I’d be sleeping with my horse on those bloody moors, and I would be well on my way to dead by exposure.”
Briar grunted, Garrick smirked into his mug of ale, and Thorn tried his damnedest to hide the smirk on his own face behind a frown.
Opening her mouth to speak, Briar was immediately interrupted by Thorn’s loud, authoritative voice. “Rose will stay here as long as she likes, and we will continue to be hospitable to her. She is a guest, in this house and in this country, and we will do what we can to show her that the MacPhersons are the best damn clan in all of Scotland.”
A rousing shout of “here, here” rose up, and many more voices followed, until the great hall was vibrating with the noise.
Cringing, Rose nearly missed the look of absolute hatred that blackened Briar’s face, but it disappeared the moment Thorn spoke again.
“Garrick, you will accompany myself and Rose into the village; she would like to take in the sights.”
Briar shot to her feet, a storm cloud hovering over her head. “My love, should I no’ accompany ye as well, as our weddin’ is approachin’, I find myself in need o’ a few things.”
Thorn wanted to turn her down, Rose could read it on his face and in his stiffened posture, but Garrick did it for him.
“’Tis better for ye tae remain here tae look after the needs o’ the men who’re comin’ in from their patrols in the north. They will need food and mayhaps nursin’ back tae health.”
Briar opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, but Thorn agreed. “I can trust no one else to the task, Briar,” Thorn offered coaxingly, and the scowling woman’s face fell.
Within the quarter hour, Garrick, Thorn, and Rose were mounted on their respective horses—Rose was glad to see her brave and handsome Martle again—and they were trotting out through the gates along the wide dirt road toward the village in the distance.
Unused to riding a horse while wearing so much fabric, Rose had needed assistance mounting, and when Garrick arrived to aid her, she dashed away the sharp disappointment that it wasn’t Thorn whose hand cradled her arse as she fumbled her way to sitting astride in a goddamn skirt!
As with every hurdle in her life, Rose learned quickly, and soon she was riding in between Thorn and Garrick as if she’d been riding in fabric shackles made of wool all her life.
They spoke little on the journey into town expect for the few attempts at conversation that Garrick had thrown. She gave one word answers, Thorn did the same, and eventually Garrick gave up. It wasn’t a long ride, anyway, and within a half hour, they were entering the village proper.
Will anyone here have what I am looking for? Will they know anything about my father…my mother? Me? If the laird of the MacDearghs was such close friends with Thorn’s father, surely there were some in the village who would remember him.
As they entered the village, small groups of people came to meet their laird, smiling up at him and raising their hands in greeting. Many of them stared at her, questions filling their eyes, but none of them spoke with her or spoke to Thorn about her. And she didn’t mind that. She didn’t want to have to lie and clean up another one of Thorn’s slips, though she wondered if the blunder at the table that morning hadn’t been intentional.
Dismounting, Thorn tossed his reins to a young lad, no older than her cousin B
rendan’s adopted boys, and came around to her right side. He gazed up at her, his lips quirking mischievously…sensually. Damn his perfect lips!
“Here, let me help you down,” he drawled, reaching up to grasp her around the waist.
A shock of heat and awareness blasted through her, and her breath caught. Thorn’s eyes widened and his pupils shrank in shock. Did that mean he felt that too?
Scooting forward, Rose allowed Thorn to pull her into his chest. He held her there for one, two, three, four beats, before loosening his hold so she could slide down the length of him, her breasts crushed against him, her nipples hard as they brushed his hardness.
A groan, deep and wicked, escaped his throat, and Rose groaned in return, the heat between them rising to surround them fully, as if to shut out the world around them, and cocoon them in their desire for one another.
Garrick cleared his throat and Thorn released his hold on her, and Rose wished—not for the first time that day—that she had her sword with which to cut someone.
Scowling at Garrick from over her shoulder, Rose tossed Martle’s reins to a waiting lad who was staring at her agog. What? Had he never seen a woman in a tartan before? She pondered her appearance; she’d left her hair unbraided, and it probably looked a fright after their ride into the village, but that couldn’t be why the boy was peering at her so.
Thorn leaned in until his mouth nearly touched her ear. “He thinks you are beautiful.”
Stunned warmth shot through her, a tingling heat that blazed from her ear where his hot breath fluttered over her flesh.
“Beautiful?” she repeated, still uncertain if that was the look on the boy’s face.
“Aye,” Thorn asserted. “And I agree with him. As beautiful as any woman has a right to be.”
His dark eyes burned down into hers, like black fire engulfing the depths of him. He must have seen an answering desire in her own eyes because his mouth drew into a line and his nostrils flared, making Rose’s own body vibrate with anticipation.
“The most beautiful rose in the world,” he whispered huskily.
This time at his words, the heat that blazed through her built from her belly outward, her womanhood pulsing with an ache she recognized as one she hadn’t felt in much too long. Attraction, deep and shocking. Aye, she’d been called beautiful many times before but…she hadn’t believed a word of it, until now.
Until Thorn.
Damn, she was walking right into trouble…and she couldn’t be more excited.
Chapter Twelve
MacDougal pressed the lit taper against the wick of the red prayer candle in the narthex. Just like every afternoon, he came to offer his prayers to the Holy Virgin, and his supplications to the Archangel Michael to bring about holy justice against those who’d wronged him. Wronged his family. Stole his son’s life.
There, in the quiet stillness of the chapel, his memories crept in, intent on haunting him once more.
“MacDougal… There has been an accident…” Those words had been the first step to his ruin. To the ruin of his family, of his clan.
“Where is my boy?” he’d asked, knowing that Bruce had gone riding with the eldest MacPherson boy and their foster, a Welsh lad named Dafydd, but his son had not yet returned, and the night had grown dark. “Where is my boy?” he’d bellowed, but the look on the guard’s face told him what his mouth had feared to say.
“What has happened tae him?” he’d demanded, and the guard, a man long dead now, had told him of how MacPherson’s boy, Aron, had goaded the other boys into swimming in the river, the same river that had been swollen from days of rain. The Welsh boy was lost first, and then his own beloved Bruce was washed down river. Blasted Aron MacPherson had been the only one who’d remained ashore—the coward had refused to jump at the very last minute, and onlookers were shocked at what he’d done. It had taken hours to find the bodies, both tucked up under the branches of trees that had fallen into the water, their roots unable to hold when the earth gave way.
“What o’ the MacPherson boy?” he’d asked, his unutterable sorrow swiftly darkening into rage.
“We dinnae know. He ran…”
Before his son’s body was laid to rest, he’d made it his mission to find and strangle the boy who had cost him his son’s life. But—once a coward always a coward—Aron MacPherson was found days later, hanging by his neck from a willow tree. In that moment, MacDougal knew that no matter what it took, he would get his revenge against the MacPhersons because their coward son had stolen that from him as well.
But his revenge was taking longer than he’d hoped. Since the Welsh lad had been lost, in order to make reparations to the family, MacPherson sent his own son to Wales to foster with the late boy’s family. In Wales, protected by the fierce Cylldon nobles, Dubhach MacPherson was untouchable. And though Dairmaid MacPherson was close enough to kill in his sleep, MacDougal wanted him to suffer as he had suffered, he wanted him to know what it felt like to lose his son. It would take years to get his revenge, but he’d believed it would be worth it. Then that bastard MacPherson had to die without aid from MacDougal—once again the MacPhersons stole something from him.
For the last time. No more. He would get his vengeance, and it would be sweeter now because once Dubhach MacPherson was gone, MacDougal would take all that was left; the wealth, the land, the legacy, and he would burn it all.
The sounds of pounding hoof beats dragged him from his battered, hideous thoughts.
“We have received word from Gleneden…” Barton announced, his chest heaving from the exertion it took to run from the courtyard to the nave of the family chapel. “MacPherson is headed into Kinloch Rannoch unescorted.”
“Thorn never leaves Gleneden; that man never has need. The women flock to his door as if it were a reverse brothel,” he sneered.
“Aye, but he is there, in the village. Many have remarked upon it.”
“So…he will be travelin’ back tae Gleneden before the sun sets.” It was a statement, one on which he could build the rest of what he’d been wanting to say for years.
“Take him. Kill any who get in yer way. This night, MacPherson will fall intae my hands.”
A thrill burst through his chest, as an idea began to form. Forget slowly burning everything MacPherson loved to the ground; he would take MacPherson, bury him in the dungeons, and watch as he slowly, painfully died in the dark. It would be fitting, since his own son had died in the dark and cold of the river.
“She certainly had much to say,” Rose remarked as Thorn closed the door to the cottage in which they’d spent the last three hours. “I have never met someone who knew so little about so much.”
Thorn chuckled, grinning down at the woman he simply couldn’t stop looking at. During their time in the cottage with old Mrs. Jenkins, he’d watched as she interacted with the woman, accepting the terrible tasting bowl of mutton stew and then the surprisingly tasty tart without a single grimace, and answering the woman’s questions even though they’d gone to that particular cottage to get answers from the old woman.
Mrs. Jenkins had been a pillar of the village for more than fifty years. She’d been there long before Thorn or his older brother, Aron, were born, and she would still be around long after Thorn was dead. She was as hard to kill as a flea, and just as tiny. But if anyone knew more about the MacDeargh clan, it would have been her. Unfortunately, she knew about as much about what happened to them as Thorn did. Not much.
He’d spent too long in Wales, and he hadn’t written to his father often enough. He knew that his father and Angus MacDeargh had been lads together, and he knew that the MacDeargh clan was an off-shoot clan of the MacPhersons. He also knew that, like many other smaller clans, during the famines that had decimated the land, their numbers dwindled. Marrying their children to one another was a desperate attempt to cement the clans, allowing for the isolated MacDearghs to take on the protection of the fierce MacPhersons.
But, after the MacDeargh laird died in that shipwre
ck, and Thorn’s betrothed presumed dead as well, the hopes for weaving the families together were lost. Angus was the last male of his line, and Thorn was now the last of his.
He was duty-bound to marry and beget strong sons to continue the line, which was why he’d agreed to marry Briar—she’d been the least terrible option.
Until Rose had arrived and turned everything upside-down.
Beside him, Rose walked silently, her face cast down in thought.
What was going on inside her head? What was she thinking about that made her beautiful lips pinch together like that?
“What is bothering you?” he asked, pausing to let her shorter legs catch up. She stopped abruptly, nearly colliding with him.
On a huff, she retorted, “Does something have to be bothering me? Can I not just…be?” She threw her hands into the air, nearly whacking him in the face.
“Your face gives you away, Little Rose. I remember how you used to pinch your lips together when you were contemplating mayhem.”
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“You remember that?” she asked, and he nodded. “About me?” He nodded again, unable to keep the smile from curling his lips.
“Aye. I remember much about you, Little Rose, but it isn’t the little girl I want to know now, ’tis the woman.” He reached out, sliding a finger along her cheek. Soft, silky, and flushed with pink.
“There is little to know about me, Thorn. I was lost, now I am found, and in between, I did a little sinning.”
“Oh?” he inquired, suddenly very interested in hearing about her sins.
She crossed her arms over her chest, but because of the modest blouse and the thick tartan she wore, her breasts were hidden. Shame. An utter shame.
“I take it you are wondering what sins your lost betrothed has committed,” she drawled, her upper lip cocking into a wicked grin.
“Of course, if only to help you repent,” he murmured, his voice dropping as he leaned down to get closer to those lips.
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