“My one course of action is to forge you to me, so you cannot speak against me.” Giving in to temptation, he reached out and seized her arm. “I can avail myself of a priest. It shall be done this night.”
“Against my will?” Her head came up and her nostrils flared. “You would force me? So, you are a bully as well as a bandit.”
“There will be no forcing, lady. When I get you in my bed, you will want what I have to give.”
He pulled her hard against him, into his arms. His mouth plundered hers, battered it open, and he felt her terror spike. Yet it subsided as swiftly as did his desire to handle her roughly. Sweetness met passion and broke over them both like a shower of fire. He felt her hesitate, and his lips softened, began to woo hers, coax and persuade them further apart. Greed washed through him in a staggering tide that left him feeling all at once weak and powerful. Surely he would sell his soul for the taste of her.
She raised both her hands and planted them flat against his chest. He expected to feel her push him away; instead her fingers curled into the fabric of his tunic and pulled him closer.
The motion went straight to his head. He contemplated pushing her down there before the hearth but dismissed the notion. Not before they saw the priest. He would stand accused of raping no woman.
He broke the kiss, and a sound came from her throat, a sigh of protest. They gazed deeply into one another’s eyes, and Dougal’s heart began to pound the way it did before a battle, when his sword cried for blood.
She still had her fingers fastened in his tunic, and they stood barely a breath apart. Every inch of him could feel every inch of her—some more than others.
“So, lady,” he said, allowing one corner of his mouth to turn up, “will you wed wi’ me?”
****
Isobel fought to retain the few shreds of reason which she assumed must still lurk somewhere in her mind. She did not know what this man might be—monster, villain—but her attraction to him was prodigious. Just touching him had the power to suspend her common sense and native caution, both.
She forced her fingers to release him and then drew back one hand deliberately, intending to slap his face. He caught her wrist before she completed the motion.
“No,” he said, the passion flaring in his eyes again, “you will not! You were a willing participant in that. Do not lie to yourself.”
Heat rushed to Isobel’s face. She wanted to evade the brutal honesty in his eyes but could not. She struggled for breath.
“Very well,” she said then. “I participated. What of it?”
He smiled, and she felt the effects all the way to her toes.
Hastily, she said, “What now?”
“I think we had better wed, and swiftly, do you not?”
“I do not.”
“So, would you rather be bedded on the wrong side of the blanket? Honestly, now!”
“You do not deserve honesty.”
“Nay, but we have established you do. By any road, contrary to what you may believe, there is honor among thieves—and bandits. We shall have the priest this night.”
Swiftly he released her and went to the door, where he bellowed. Isobel, feeling strangely bereft, wrapped her arms about herself.
A man came in response to MacRae’s call—not the same one Isobel had seen before. This man looked younger and, if possible, even rougher. He wore a sword buckled at his side.
“Aye?” he said with barely a modicum of courtesy.
“Go fetch O’Rourke. Bring him here at once.”
“He will be drunk.”
“Aye, so. Bring him anyway.”
The man swept Isobel with a brilliant glance and went.
“O’Rourke?” Isobel questioned.
MacRae splashed more whisky into his cup. “The priest.”
“The priest is drunk?”
“Most of the time. It prevents him making moral judgments. As a consequence, he is a friend of mine—much as can be said of anyone. I do not truly have any friends.”
Isobel contemplated this for an instant. “Is this terrible priest not defrocked?”
“No. He is able to perform the marriage service, and ’twill stand even before your father—and the King. We will need witnesses, mind. Likely not my sister. Her reputation in the district is woefully lacking.”
“You discuss this as if you dream I will agree.”
That caused him to turn those eyes—the color of a stormy sky—upon her again. “Must I kiss you once more?”
“No! I believe, as I said before, you should release me.”
“I cannot do that. I do not wish MacNab to have benefit of you, you see. It is an old quarrel, but a sharp one.”
“Then just send me home. Send me with a safe escort, and I will tell my father you treated me well. I will tell him you rescued me from my abductor.”
MacRae’s eyes narrowed.
Isobel rushed on. “I shall describe my abductor as some vile lout who thought to hold me for ransom. You came along and rescued me at sword point. You will look the hero, I swear it.”
“You are a clever wench, I will give you that.” He actually seemed to consider the proposal, and Isobel’s heart quivered with hope. She just might talk her way out of this.
“Sit,” he bade her again. He came and sat beside her, the cup of whisky in his hand. “What of the fact that, should I send you home, your father would turn about and ferry you to MacNab once more—under escort of an army, no doubt?”
“He will not,” Isobel lied. “I can talk him round.”
MacRae drank from his cup, and Isobel watched him closely. Those lips of his—they would taste like whisky now. A part of her—a wicked part—focused intently on the pleasures and possibilities of sampling them.
Almost carelessly, he said, “Yet I have already sent for the priest.”
“That is easily undone.” Isobel leaned toward him. “All this is easily solved. It is a mad blunder from which we can agree to extricate ourselves.”
“I must confess, lady, you are no’ what I expected to be delivered to Bertram MacNab, and far too good for him, I am thinking. Randal MacNab is a clever man. His mother was a Campbell and bequeathed him a crooked, scheming mind. He always covers his back, is in well with the King, curse him, and he will do aught he must to keep the world from discovering his true nature. His son, Bertram, has inherited that nature in full. What do you know of him?”
Isobel shrugged. “Very little. Randal MacNab and my father are old friends—I am not sure how that relationship originated. Both Randal and Bertram came to England for my mother’s funeral service. That is the only time I met them.”
“Aye? And how long ago was this?”
“Ten years.”
He studied her moodily and tossed back the contents of his cup. In what looked like an unconscious gesture, he lifted his hand and rubbed at the small scar that disfigured his left cheek, just below the eye.
“You ask me to play at having rescued you, lady, and I say I have already done so in truth. You know me not, and have no reason in the world to trust me, but believe it when I say you have had a narrow escape. You would no’ wish to find yourself in Bertram MacNab’s hands, nor in his bed.”
“Fine, then.” A surge of desperation raced through Isobel. “You have rescued me, now send me home.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I regret, but I have told you I cannot. I will not take the chance on losing you to MacNab, anon.”
“I am no bone to be fought for among hounds.”
“Are you not? Yet so many women find they are exactly that. No wonder some of them fight back.” His gaze seemed to caress her. “I do not see you submitting meekly to MacNab, with his twisted desires.”
“Nor to you!” Isobel flared.
“Ah, but the thing is, lady, that I am able to imagine.” He leaned toward her and his eyes kindled until flame leaped within their grey mist. “Need I prove it to you again?”
God help her, Isobel wanted him to. A w
anton part of her wished to ravage that mouth of his, throw herself, shameless, into his arms, expose the side she had kept strictly in check ever since she had been deflowered. Ah, what would it be to find herself in this man’s bed this very night?
A shiver traveled down her spine. She could have this, she could claim it—the danger, the risk, the immediate pleasure. For she knew, in every part of her, there would be pleasure in abundance. What he offered, in his backhanded fashion, provided escape from MacNab, escape from living beneath her father’s roof and under his dictates, and perhaps even escape from the mistakes of her past.
And entrance into a far greater blunder?
She had made a dire mistake once—she could not allow another. She knew that with every practical thought in her mind.
Yet rather than give the man a denial, she heard herself say, “Well, so long as you have summoned the priest, I suppose we should be wed.”
Chapter Nine
“I shall summon the witnesses.”
Dougal MacRae did not know when he had felt so enflamed. Certainly, he had never lived the life of a monk. He enjoyed the act of coupling. Even more did he revel in his ability to bring a woman pleasure. He gloried in the power of it, the control, and having a woman quite literally in the palm of his hand.
In his experience women—most women—liked to pretend themselves immune to arousal, a product of how they were raised, he supposed. But once he got his hand up a skirt or down a bodice, his efforts were well repaid.
This woman, he sensed, would need little such coaxing. Her veneer of modesty lay very thin over a momentous fire. And it kept him so hard, he somewhat doubted he could wait for the priest.
He smiled wryly to himself as he returned to the door and bellowed for another servant. He always kept control, even in the direst circumstances. Indeed, he prided himself on his steely composure. How could he falter now?
He stole a look over his shoulder at his captive. There she sat with her auburn hair fallen, loose about her shoulders, and that look in her eyes—half knowing and half speculation—that drove him wild. He must have her this night, witnesses or no.
When Ranald—another of his guards—appeared, Dougal told him, “Go fetch Lachlan.
“That is one witness accounted for,” he said, turning back to his captive, once the man had gone. “The hour being what it is, I suppose my sister will have to serve after all.” Because he could not wait.
“Who is Lachlan?”
“An acquaintance, and a gentleman of the district. Do not fash yourself, lady, he will come.” Dougal poured himself more whisky, then went to the door and bellowed a third time. “Meg!”
His sister must have been lurking in the vicinity, pretend otherwise as she might—she arrived far too swiftly, in response to his call, to have been far distant.
Without preamble, Dougal commanded, “You will stand witness for me. We are to wed this night.”
Meg bent a look on him before sweeping his captive with an incredulous glance. “What new madness is this?”
“No madness.”
“Aye, so—perhaps it is, rather, revenge. You want her because she was to be MacNab’s?”
He wanted her because the blood in his veins demanded it. He said, “O’Rourke is on his way. Take our guest to her room, send her your maid, and help her—” he waved a hand, “prepare.”
“Prepare?” One of Meg’s eyebrows ascended. “For you?”
“Just do it, Meg. I mean to accomplish this respectably.”
Meg laughed harshly. “You snatch her off the road, another man’s bride, and then speak of acting respectably?”
Dougal met her stare with one of iron and, miraculously, she backed down.
“Come,” she said to his captive, who shot to her feet, strung tight and trembling, and followed Meg out.
Damnation, Dougal thought when they had gone, and splashed more whisky into his cup. He felt keen as a knife’s edge and had to fight to find the patience that had stood him in such good stead these last years. All would come in time, revenge and pleasure. He had never dreamed they might be so intertwined.
****
In silence, Isobel followed the beautiful woman—Meg—back to her room, where Meg brushed past the guard as if he did not exist.
Once inside, Meg closed the door and turned to regard Isobel carefully.
“This is a bad night’s work,” she said. “I tell you now, I cannot influence my brother. Even God—whom Dougal refuses to acknowledge—cannot influence him once he has something in his head. But I swear, if he is forcing you to this, I will do my utmost to stop him.”
Isobel heard no sympathy in Meg’s voice, no softness—just the same savage certainty that emanated from Dougal MacRae.
“I appreciate that,” she said.
“Oh, I do naught for you—and I stopped fretting for his soul long ago. But he is taking you to further a dangerous feud, and if he winds up on the losing end, it shall benefit me not at all.”
I have landed in a nest of vipers, Isobel thought, each more selfish than the other.
Cautiously, she said, “This feud of which you speak is with MacNab?”
Emotion sparked in Meg’s eyes. “My brother may be many things—hot tempered, hard-headed, misguided—but his memory is long and his mind set on revenge. You find yourself, now, a pawn in his game.”
“For what does he seek revenge?”
Meg shook her head. “That is not for me to tell. But know MacNab once took something that was Dougal’s alone. He has waited long to strike back.”
Isobel’s mind raced, trying to make sense of disjointed thoughts and emotions. “And I am the means of striking back?”
“So it would appear—at least for the present. What he may do anon, even the devil cannot say.”
“Can you get me out of here?” Isobel asked frankly. “Persuade him to send me home?”
Meg shook her head. “I might convince him to ransom you, though quite frankly I doubt it. If you ask me, woman to woman, I will try.”
And there lay the dilemma, thought Isobel, in the starkest of terms: marriage to Bertram MacNab, for which she had already steeled herself for Catherine’s sake, or to this man who turned her bones to water with a single glance. A choice—at last.
She must go to the bed of one man. Which would it be?
She drew a ragged breath and took a turn about the barren room. If she honored her agreement with MacRae, faced the priest with him, would he lie with her in her bed this night? So had he vowed. She found the prospect as thrilling, and terrifying, as that of an approaching storm.
Meg waited, impatience radiating from her.
This, Isobel thought, may be the only choice I am given to make in my entire life. If she went to MacNab, at least she had hope of seeing her father again, perhaps even Catherine, some day, and Catherine’s child. If she threw her lot in with MacRae, she chose unknown danger and darkness. And passion, curse it—there was the passion, as well.
“Send me your tire woman,” she said, looking at Meg again. “I have nothing to wear for a wedding. All my luggage was lost.”
She heard Meg draw a breath, sharp with surprise. “You choose him? You are certain? I warn you, once the choice is made, I abandon you to your fate.”
As I have long been abandoned, Isobel thought, and nodded. “Send your woman.”
Without another word, Meg went out. Isobel stood where she was, wondering at herself. Surely she had gone mad, in this place of madness. But her soul—at least that would be her own.
Meg’s woman, who arrived soon after, proved nothing Isobel expected. A virtual child, with pale hair and fey eyes, she wore a cap and a dove grey gown. She carried an armload of clothing, and she cast a measuring glance over Isobel as she entered.
“My lady sent me, Lady Catherine,” she said softly.
And Isobel thought—Catherine. They think me Catherine. When the drunken priest arrived, when he performed the ceremony, he would marry Catherine Maitlan
d to Dougal MacRae. Would that be binding, would it stand?
“Shall you bathe?” the maid asked, and Isobel considered it. In a manner completely unanticipated, she went to her marriage bed this night. Unprecedented intimacies would open her to that man downstairs.
She looked at the maid. “Tell me your name.”
“Nell, lady.”
“Nell, I am ill prepared for this. I have no belongings, I am not sure—”
Briskly, Nell dumped the clothing on the bed. “My lady sent some things of her own that you may borrow.” She pulled out a gown of pale green, embroidered all over with patterns of leaves. “I will tell the men to bring hot water.”
Nell turned away, and Isobel examined the gown, stroking it with numb fingers. Her wedding finery.
Sudden tears filled her eyes. Seldom had she felt more alone, nor, if she admitted it, more frightened. She could not let herself give in to the fear. It would avail her nothing. She told herself she did this, too, for Catherine’s sake. She knew she lied.
The tears, she promised herself, were tears of anger. Life had not dealt fairly with her, so far—did not deal fairly with her now—but she wanted this one thing, this one man.
She wanted the feelings he had aroused in her with that kiss, and all the desire that accompanied them. Yet if he came to her bed this night, he would discover the truth—she was no tender virgin—and something about the hard honesty she had seen in his eyes made her wish to be honest with him, as well. She did not wish to begin her marriage—sham as it might be—on the basis of a lie. He needed the truth, and he needed to know her name.
“Isobel Maitland,” she whispered under her breath. “Nay—Isobel MacRae.”
Chapter Ten
“Dougal MacRae, you vile sinner!” O’Rourke exclaimed as he entered the hall. “What need has a devil like yourself for a man of God?”
“God does not come into it,” Dougal returned swiftly. The argument, an old one between them, had no end and no meaning. O’Rourke was clearly in his cups, so drunk he could barely stand.
Dougal felt inflamed, fabulously alive, strung so tight he barely knew himself. More than half his attention remained with the woman upstairs who prepared for their wedding.
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