Devil Black

by Laura Strickland

  “What does he deserve? And why—”

  Meg laughed harshly. “Believe it or not, we were close once, as children. We had a wild raising, just the two of us running these hills like pups, after our mother died. He was everything to me then. I thought his schemes clever and his escapades brave. I did not see his selfishness. But be warned, Mistress Isobel—my brother is utterly selfish. He sees only his own welfare, thinks only of his own hide.”

  “I am wed to him now,” Isobel said as steadily as she could. “Surely I can expect some consideration?”

  Meg’s lips twisted. Abandoning her role of confidante, she got to her feet. “Be warned—those about whom he is supposed to care, he treats the worst of all. I will tell you, woman to woman: whatever you do, do not fall in love with him. ’Tis a fate that I would not wish upon my worst enemy.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “I bade you wait for me.”

  Cold to the bones, wet and unaccustomedly anxious, Dougal MacRae slipped into his wife’s bedchamber. For hours without end, with a small band of men at his back, he had played at searching the roadways, hills, and braes for a woman he knew to be elsewhere, while his body ached for her. And his mind had dealt sorely with him, imagining just this moment over and over again: himself reaching the place where she waited, to find her clothed only in her hair and in one of the glorious positions to which he had introduced her last night, either on or off the bed.

  Instead he found her sitting sedately by the fire, fully clothed—sewing, by all appearances.

  She gave him a cool look and lifted an eyebrow. He felt his pulse leap. One of the things—the many things—that attracted him to her was her self composure.

  “I am waiting,” she said.

  He approached her, shedding clothing as he came—his sopping cloak came off first, then the clammy tunic beneath. Leaving a trail of clothing from the door to the welcome heat of the fire, he ended before the flames, clad only in his kilt.

  “And did you find the young lady for whom you searched?” she inquired.

  He shot her an appreciative look. “You speak of Catherine Maitland? We did not. I fear some dire fate has befallen her. To be sure, though, she is not here. The only woman in this chamber is the Mistress Isobel MacRae.”

  His wife made no answer to that, but continued to ply her needle, her bosom rising a bit faster than was called for by the activity.

  “Has the search been called off, the night?”

  He grinned. “Called for darkness. MacNab is beside himself with fury and suspicion. He would like to accuse me of something. He would also like to keep searching, but the weather is vile—snow, mixed with sleet and rain. All his helpers withdrew from him.”

  “I see.”

  She laid her sewing aside at last, and Dougal felt her looking at him, her gaze a virtual touch on his bare torso, arms, and the sopping hair down his back.

  “You will be chilled, Husband, and hungry for your supper. Shall I ask for it to be brought here?”

  Dougal allowed his desire to show. “I confess to being hungry, Wife, but not for food.” He saw the color flood her cheek. “Did I not,” he repeated himself, “tell you to wait for me?”

  “And have I not?” Her eyes challenged him. “Would you have me wait naked on the bed?”

  “Aye. Oh, aye!” Without thought, he unfastened his kilt and let it join the rest of his clothing on the floor. “Come, Wife, and only let me show you.”

  ****

  Some time deep in the night, while the wind still gusted about the stones of the keep and the sleet drove hard, Dougal MacRae found himself spent—or nearly so. He lay in the big bed with his wife naked in his arms and his hand splayed on her breast. She breathed softly, and he thought she slept, though he could not be sure. His own mind felt wonderfully empty of thought or conflict—for once he knew no anger, spite or desire for revenge. This woman had successfully relieved him of everything but satisfaction.

  Aye, and she proved clever and well adept, for a virtually untried, half-English woman, presumably gently raised. Curiosity prodded his mind as he wondered how, and in what circumstances, she had lost her virginity. He wondered, but it did not really matter. She proved passionate, open to try whatever challenge he set her between the sheets. And she tasted better than the sweetest honey wine.

  Curse it, just the thought made him want her again. He opened his eyes and caught her watching him.

  Surprised, he touched the hair clustered on her neck. “Wife, I thought you slept.”

  Unexpectedly, she said, “Your sister, Meg, warned me about you, today.”

  “Did she, so? Interfering bitch!”

  “There is no love lost between you, it seems.”

  “None at all.”

  “And why is that?”

  Dougal drew a breath that tasted of pain. “’Tis a long and ugly tale, that. Not suitable for your ears.”

  Her blue eyes narrowed. “You do know, eventually someone is going to have to tell me the truth. If I am to live here, your past and present cannot remain unknown to me.”

  “Aye so, but ’tis a tale for another time.”

  “Why does Meg hate you?”

  Dougal felt his heart grow heavy as a stone. “Let it just be said she has good reason. You have wed wi’ a devil, after all.”

  Isobel said nothing, though her eyes held his. He found himself breathless at such daring—not many women would face him so.

  “Is this, then, the devil’s mark?” She raised one finger to trace the scar on his cheek, and he shivered, affected by so simple a touch from her.

  “The devil’s mark, aye,” he breathed.

  “And this? And this?” She caressed with soft fingers the scars on his shoulders, chest, stomach, arms, some of them twisted and livid, seams on his skin. “How did you acquire so many blemishes? In hard battle?”

  “Hard battle, aye.” He captured her fingers in his and raised them to his lips. “Tell me, Wife, do these blemishes ruin me in your eyes?”

  “They do not,” she admitted steadily. “But I confess myself curious. Did you fight for the King?”

  “No.”

  “Against him?”

  “I am my own man, and fight only for my own causes.”

  “So many? You must indeed be a fierce warrior.”

  Not fierce enough. He felt grief flash through him again.

  “So, Wife, my sister has warned you against me—yet here you are still, available to my bed.”

  “Yes.” She gave a small smile that heated his blood dangerously. “It seems I cannot help myself.”

  “A fine thing, that.” He added, surprised to find it true. “Yet I would not have you regret the choice you made, to wed with me.”

  “Then satisfy my curiosity.” Her gaze challenged him. “Surely so fierce a warrior cannot fear speaking plainly to his wife?”

  “Time may come for that. Not now.” He captured her chin between his fingers and kissed her deeply, feeling the fire leap again. She was so hot in his arms, so pliable and willing. Yet his mind could not quite let him slide away into passion.

  “I admit, Wife, I am curious, also, about your circumstances. Will you confess to me how a delicate English flower came to be plucked before her time?”

  Again her eyebrow quivered. “I am a delicate English flower?”

  To Dougal’s own surprise, he smiled.

  “I have told you,” she said, “I am but half English.”

  “I stand corrected. You are but half English, and not so delicate as to wilt in my arms.” Dougal drew a breath. “And, Wife, it matters not that I did not find you whole, last night. That is the truth. Neither of us is without a past. Yet,” he traced the curve of her cheek with rough fingers, “I would not be a man, did I not wonder.”

  For the first time her gaze avoided his. “Husband, I have already opened myself to you completely. Will you allow me no private sin?”

  He snorted rudely. “Sin? Is that what you call it?”


  “Others have. Lying with a man outside of wedlock—”

  “Wife. Isobel.” Deliberately he used her name. “I am the not the man to condemn anyone. I believe not in sin. I do not even believe in God.”

  That brought her wide eyes back to his. “How can you fail to believe in God?”

  “Quite easily. He has, in turn, failed to believe in me enough to convince me He exists. The point is, a man—or woman—cannot earn the damnation of a nonexistent deity.”

  He watched the thoughts move in her eyes—such beautiful eyes. At last she whispered, “Well, then, if you believe not in sin, why would you hear the circumstances of my downfall?”

  Why, indeed? It was a legitimate question. And Dougal’s native honesty required him to answer it. With his hand hovering over her flesh, longing to touch her again, he admitted, “I would know what he meant to you, this unknown man who first enjoyed your favors.” And that, he acknowledged to himself, was a dangerous desire, indicative of the need for possession. He wanted to know this woman and so to own her, body and soul.

  She looked surprised. “What he meant to me? Pain and betrayal, nothing more. He was my brother’s friend, who came to stay with us that summer, a handsome wretch who paid me more attention than I deserved. He poured compliments and lies into my ears and tricked me into meeting him alone.”

  “He seduced you.”

  Color flooded her face. “It was my fault. My father made that quite clear to me after we were discovered. His actions may not have been right, but I bear full responsibility for my ruin, and I must live with the consequences.”

  “And he? This rascal who led you astray? What befell him?”

  “Naught. He returned to the army.”

  “Your father did not call him to task?”

  “Oh, yes, but he was betrothed to another; nothing could be done. I—I would not have wished to wed with him anyway. Once we lay together, I saw him for what he was, an empty-headed charmer with no morals and no substance.”

  “Had I been your father, I would have whipped him within a hair of his death.”

  That made her lips part and her eyes cling to his. “I believe you. But he and my brother, John, went back to their posts soon after—they were comrades in arms, you see—and almost immediately John fell in battle. My father could think of nothing else then but the loss of his son and heir.”

  And so she, Dougal thought bitterly, had no justice. No more so than he.

  “You did not pine in his absence? You did not miss him—love him?”

  Distaste and a hint of horror filled her eyes. “Love him? That craven, spineless deceiver? Yes, I pined once he had gone—with regret for the fool I had been, with remorse and grief for all I had given away.”

  “Grieve no more, Wife.” Dougal touched her at last, buried his fingers in the wild glory of her hair. “For have you not made a fine match with one of the most important—and infamous—landholders in all Scotland?”

  She whispered breathlessly, “It seems I have.”

  “I will never lie to you,” he vowed, “or deceive you—whatever my sins.”

  “Then surely our futures are cast together,” she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Husband—Husband, you had best come awake!”

  Dougal opened his eyes to weak, morning light and a staggering rush of emotion he identified, with some surprise, as contentment. For an instant he savored it, along with the warmth of the bed and his delectable awareness of the woman who lay, utterly naked, within his reach.

  He could not remember the last time he had experienced anything besides anger, bitterness, or the desire to strike out, to hurt and maim. Surely this strange, soft emotion came of being utterly spent on a sexual level—he had lost count of the number of times they had coupled last night. For he knew naught of happiness, did not deserve it, and certainly did not hope for it.

  Yet for this brief instant, it seemed his.

  The sleet had, at last, stopped dashing against the stones of the keep, and the wind had died. His wife summoned him from sleep.

  He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. A vision, a queen from a wild, ancient tale, with her auburn hair tangled about her naked shoulders, her lips—and her nipples—swollen from his kisses, and a fathomless look in her eyes. She looked like the war goddess who came to sleep with warriors and to bless them. Yet surely he was beyond blessings?

  He smiled at her and felt desire rush through him. Damn, if he did not want her again. He reached for her, and she planted both palms against his chest.

  “They call for you,” she informed him. “Someone waits, outside the door.”

  “Let them wait.”

  A dull pounding erupted at the door, and Dougal heard the voice of his man, Dermott.

  “My Laird? The search party waits without. Laird Randal’s men—”

  Dougal groaned as reality returned in a dark wave. Aye, he had a ruse to play. He must go and search for his neighbor’s, his enemy’s, missing bride—the woman who lay beside him. His bride, now, and truly tried. Had he not, these two nights past, had her every way a man could have a woman?

  Aye, and he wanted her all over again.

  He bellowed to Dermott, “I will be right there.” And then he kissed his wife, even as he heard Dermott’s steps trail away.

  “I suppose you must go,” she said with regret.

  “I must play at this game a little while.”

  “Eventually MacNab will discover I am here—and your wife. What will happen then? Can he not complain of you to the King?”

  Dougal sat up in the bed and shrugged his hair back over his shoulders. “What, again? The King will be tired of hearing about me. And ’twas the King who bade me wed.”

  “But he did not bid you capture and marry your neighbor’s intended bride.”

  “I have not, in actual fact, wed his bride, as he was contracted to your sister, Catherine Maitland. ’Tis she for whom we search, to be accurate about it. She whom he believes was in the wrecked coach.”

  “A fine enough point.” Isobel—his Isobel—looked worried. Could she truly be concerned for him? His heart, which he thought had solidified to stone, gave a twinge at the prospect.

  And that, in turn, was enough to get him up and into his still-damp clothing. He might enjoy bedding her and relish defying MacNab, but he had no room for soft emotions such as concern.

  “Let me worry about my own affairs, Wife,” he said shortly.

  She sat up in the bed, her hair swirling around her, not even bothering to cover her naked breasts. The sight of her, so, caught at him and stole his breath away.

  “You cannot expect to keep me hidden forever,” she pointed out.

  “Nor do I so intend. Your presence in my household will be revealed at the most strategic moment.”

  Her chin tipped up. “So, I am nothing to you but a weapon?”

  And he answered carelessly, “A hidden weapon, at present. Aye, Wife, what more could you be?”

  ****

  That day proved interminable. Though the sleet had ceased to fall, the weather remained sharp and cold, the roads sodden and mucky, and Dougal quickly tired of his private deception. Lachlan, bored and unconcerned as always, rode at his side, armed with a continuous stream of barbed conversation.

  They rode in company with Randal MacNab himself. The erstwhile bridegroom, Bertram, headed yet another search party. Randal trusted Dougal not at all and had decided the best place for him was under MacNab’s own eye.

  But the old man was clearly half distracted with worry and desperate to find his charge. His hands shook on the reins, and he pushed on through the day and the vile weather like a man possessed.

  At one point, Dougal heard him say to one of his companions, “I will need to send word to her father concerning what has occurred. He entrusted his daughter’s care and welfare to me, and he is an old friend.”

  Dougal smiled to himself in satisfaction. How does it feel, old man? How, to se
e someone stolen away and moved beyond your best efforts to protect her?

  “It is no use, MacNab,” he told Randal when night once more began to draw down. “You might as well call off the search—you will no’ find her.”

  Laird Randal glared at him, the hate visible in his eyes. “I will search as long as I choose, MacRae, and take no advice from the likes of you!”

  “Aye so, but I withdraw then, from the search. ’Tis a lost cause.”

  “Do as you will,” MacNab spat at him. “But if I find you had a hand in this, MacRae, the King himself will hear of it!”

  “I?” Dougal gave him his best smile. “Have I not been out here helping to search for this Catherine Maitland, like any worthy neighbor?”

  “I trust not your protestations of blamelessness, MacRae. This is a tender, young, innocent maid for whom we search—shame to any who takes advantage of that.”

  The words made Dougal’s face—and heart—darken. MacNab dared speak to him about the protection of tender innocence? Aye, and the man deserved to be flayed for his hypocrisy.

  Riding home with Lachlan at his side, Dougal was silent.

  “So,” said Lachy at last, obviously enjoying himself as always, “when will the ruse end?”

  “Eh?”

  “When will you reveal the existence of your new wife, along with her identity?”

  The same question Isobel had asked.

  “Soon.” He wanted to flaunt her in MacNab’s face, wanted MacNab to know this meant partial settlement of that old debt. And he wanted MacNab to see that his wife wanted to be with him. Even if it meant war.

  Lachlan gave him a sharp look. “You do realize it will bring a load of trouble?”

  “I am eager for trouble, Lachy. I have longed these years for a good, fair battle. The devil can bring justice, you ken, and I mean to bring it to MacNab.”

  “Aye. But Randal has the King in his pocket, do not forget.”

  “Oh, I will not forget.” Dougal rubbed the scar on his cheek. “His power served him well once, but I was a young man then, and too impetuous for my own good.”

  “You are still too impetuous. Will you invite me to dinner this night, so I might make your wife’s acquaintance?”