The snarl said not. But its claws scraped the flags, so at least it was moving.
“That’s it. Good, good—”
She swallowed a gulp as her feet almost left the floor. She had meant for the stupid brute to jump but it was too fast for her, latching onto her belt with its teeth. Hopefully anyone chancing by would think she was having a little game with it. One that involved her nearly being swung into the fireplace, having to dig her own heels in as hard, to avoid, not just a collision with the door, but being tugged across the chamber floor and her arms being yanked from their sockets.
She hung on however. If she let go of the belt, or this panting, whining thing did, she would be attacked. Then, not only would she have to explain to the Wolf what she thought she was doing, she in no way wanted bite marks detracting from her ability to be an alluring bride.
He had taken away her trousseau. At least she saw no sign of it. Which meant she also saw no sign of so much as a comb to straighten her wildly tangled hair. A change out of this disgusting bedraggled gown and poker stiff—how could it possibly have dried like that—cloak. She could not possibly add a savaging to that.
She backed into the hall, inch by inch, hoping, praying, as she did, slowly, tortuously, one foot, then another, clasping the belt, she did not back into anything, anything that…that…
The belt twinged, and she yanked the door shut. Wasn’t the Wolf in for a big surprise the next time he whistled for the mangy brute? Now to reach the other door, the one across the flagstones at the other side of the hall, draw some fresh air into her starved lungs.
The iron handle was bigger and heavier than her chamber one, but the door opened easier. Oh, thank goodness. One tug and a gust of cold fresh air blew in.
“Son of a—”
The gust of fresh air was not all that blew in. As the knife juddered into the jamb inches from her nose, Kara froze. Indeed she half expected her nose to land on the ground with a thud.
She could smell frost however, so obviously it was still attached to her face. She wrinkled her nostrils to make sure. First that thing at her door. Now this. Was this the Wolf’s way of showing his affection? Or did he simply plan to kill her outright?
“Careful, Princess.”
He scrunched through the snow toward her, the worn leather breeches looking as if his legs had been poured into them, and his hair—yesterday, damp, it had been umber, today, dry, the struggling light glinted on muddy blond streaks that said he spent a lot of time in the sun.
Kara quashed her first impulse. To retreat would be to acknowledge the tiny flip her stomach gave at the sight of the stray snowflakes melting on his slicked back hair and the pelt flung carelessly across his shoulders.
It would be to admit she was up to no good. Already the man was dangerous enough and not just because of his reputation.
“How kind.” Of course, she wasn’t for simpering. “A peace offering is it, sir?”
His eyes slid over her like glass paper. “Uh-uh. If it had hit you now, that would be the peace offering.”
Of course. And it was fine by her that he felt that way. Better actually given all that lay before her. Before she could move, he reached past her and yanked the knife out of the doorjamb. Her first instinctive thought—So, hit me, you’d be doing us both a big favor—was replaced by another, one that made her stomach knot.
More than rubies, more than pearls, when this was over, what she desired was contentment. With Arland only. It was her hope. Her desire. What had kept her alive through nights sometimes, too dark to contemplate. It was not difficult to think like that when she knew she wouldn’t even pass muster as a mistress. Not now.
So her scalp prickled to note, if she could not stop what spiked her center, when she stood near a handsome man—especially a man who wasn’t even civil, let alone free—that contentment would be as hard to find as a snowball in hellfire. Not just spiked. Rutting was she believed the word for it, the desire that overtook her in that second to do just that. No preamble. Just heat. Such heat, she marveled at her ability to stand here talking—looking anyway—as if everything were normal, when in fact even to breathe was a struggle, and her mind had emptied of all normal thought.
Perhaps, after all, her father was right about her.
Hadn’t she been the one to argue that Kertyn and Ardene couldn’t have done this, to think yesterday they might have had they thought this man was their bridegroom? Had she or had she not thought they might get conflicted if he were?
“Fine.” Grasping her skirts, she swung on her heel. “Please don’t think your rudeness bothers me because it doesn’t.”
He flattened his hand on the wooden door panel in front of her. Masculine. With a scar sliced deep into the knuckles.
“Hell, Princess, just because I didn’t fall over myself, it doesn’t mean that wasn’t an apology. Right?”
An apology? She almost fell down on the ground. Him? She didn’t know about the business of his name being used to terrify children into obedience, but he was as rude, as abrasive, as sarcastic as could be. Still his winter-rich voice rumbled so close to her ear, his breath brushing her hair, and she had to fight to remind herself of what were probably fairy stories. To think of how things her father said about her weren’t true. She snapped her eyes shut. Ice. Stone. When she considered all that had been done to her, all she was here to gain. An apology? She preferred his contempt. She passed her tongue over her lips.
“A—a what?”
“Apology. All right?”
She edged her startled gaze sideways. The very air seemed to still. An apology. It was not a mistake. She had heard that.
She swallowed. The note of vaguely masculine irritation. That little huffed out breath. This must be sheer and utter torture for him. For all five years had passed since Kendrick killed Lachlan, her hatred for her clan was miser’s gold. Counted nightly. Hoarded in her breast.
The Wolf didn’t know, and she could hardly tell him, not without getting her throat cut for her trouble, how she would feel—a mistake to think of it here—but how would she feel if she were being asked to accept her sister’s marriage to Kendrick’s son?
Her throat tightened. An apology, given all that, despite the fact Kendrick didn’t have a son. “Sir, I…I…”
Aware her heart pounded, she slid her gaze back. Actually, what was it to her to accept? It wasn’t as if the Wolf was going to have to live with it for long. Raising her chin, she edged around. On some men the tiny grooves nicking their cheeks might have seemed interesting. On him they were devastating. Nor had she noticed yesterday just how tall he stood. Although his scent, cool as an iced mountain stream… She gulped, realizing she breathed at her peril. What was it for her to accept the apology?
Everything.
Certainly it would be, if Meg now came out and caught her staring like this. As if she were a lovesick girl. Seventeen again. As if the world had dropped anyway and she was not Kara McGurkie, any more than he was the Black Wolf of Lochalpin. She sipped a breath. Lovesick? This was lust-struck. This man was very, very dangerous. He’d a lazy way of staring, of speaking, of smiling. A caressing flame that licked.
When she dare not see how he never bared his teeth when he smiled or let it touch his eyes, how his hair only framed his features when it didn’t hang over them, when they weren’t darkly glowering and a furrow didn’t dent the bridge of his nose, it was a flame she risked being scorched by if she stood too close. Looked. Saw that, like her, this man was damaged. This man was not what he showed to the world at all.
How could she know? Because however she stood here, however she looked, she also wore a mask.
“Swear it on my wee lass’s life.” As if he had not done enough and already it was difficult enough to breathe, he tilted his face toward the stable doors. “That’s her over there by the way. So you’ll see how much I don’t want her falling down dead.”
Falling down dead? How Kara kept her gaze fixed, her throat from fluttering, how she
stood there at all, when what assaulted her vision, her senses was so acute. A grimy-faced tot who might as well have Callm McDunnagh’s etched into her forehead, small, so pretty, padded in the snow, wearing a scratchy hand-spun tunic.
Never mind what he’d just said, ramifications that tightened her throat further, ones she should equally consider could just as easily be a threat, what was that gleaming thing, that even now thudded into the stable door, with deadly accuracy too? Kara’s lips froze. A knife was what. Other men played hide and seek, tig, pitch and toss with their little girls. This man plainly taught his to throw knives.
An apology? No. His reputation was what she needed to remember here. Not that an apology, a child—shown to her in this almost shy way too, as if this was the baggage that went with him—somehow made him human. She was going to have to marry Ewen McDunnagh and face what went with that. It was partly her fault. She’d said she would—what was it to her, after all? But it was also his. Was he going to apologize about that?
Dragging her gaze to his, she forced her coolest stare. “What for? Trying to murder me. Leaving that thing at my door. Or both?”
He drew his brows down. “Both?”
He shot his gaze over her shoulder. It was just very unfortunate that as it did a bloodcurdling yowl emanated, not just from the house behind her, but the region of her chamber to be precise. Because then he ricocheted his gaze back to her, and she did not doubt for a second that if that hellhound had broken the door down, it would do the same.
“What the…”
The darkening stare said he was going to knock her aside. Imagine, when she’d nothing left to fear, terror should rake giant talons across her scalp, forcing an obedience she did not usually feel. An attempt to cover up what she had done.
“But, but wh-whatever one it is, whether you tried to, or left Dug at my door, I do of course accept.”
And yet what had she done really?
“Well, you can just consider it withdrawn.”
Obviously quite a lot.
“Where the hell is Dug?”
It was difficult the way he gritted his teeth and his brows thundered down to speak as if she did not know what Dug was, let alone where. “Are you meaning the—”
“You know damn fine what I’m meaning.”
She was quite, quite wrong to think he did everything in a lazy, negligent manner. Not when it was obvious that he barged past her into the hall to defray his desire to take her by the throat.
“What the hell have you done to Dug?”
This was not unlike that time she had poked a stick in a hornet’s nest to see what would happen. Except the hornets hadn’t yanked any doors off any hinges—almost yanked, that was. Their language—well, of course, they’d only buzzed. But they had stung too. It was something he looked capable of doing in a moment, the ferocity of his glare as his shoulders strained against her chamber door.
And not a word said about him putting that creature at her door in the first place, although it did not seem wise to take issue with that here. Not when her need to appear innocent was paramount. And she could see, as she swished across the floor, she had made more trouble for herself and should perhaps have stayed put. But how was she to know he was so volatile? That there would be all this fuss over a dog? It wasn’t as if she’d killed it. On the contrary she had been lucky to survive it.
“Sir, I’m offended, after the kind hospitality you have offered to me here—”
“Offered?”
“Hospitality, I can tell it pains you to show me—”
She didn’t know about it paining him but it certainly pained her chamber wall to be slammed by a flying door like that when he threw it open.
“—that you are somehow of the impression I would do anything to your dog.”
Dear God, he really liked that mangy brute though, didn’t he? Her throat dried. Imagine that. A man like him. The terror of her glen. Stroking and patting the hybrid brute’s shaggy coat. Whispering and fondling its ears.
And just look at Dug. Kara hardly wanted to. Not when the creature was milking this for all it was worth, the second it clapped its beady eyes on her. Whining and cowering against him. As if she’d beaten it. Frightened? Of her? Aye, right. When she was the one lucky enough to still have a hand left her? And an arm to put it on? Why didn’t he just kiss the shabby brute and have done with it?
And yet, was it so wise to stand here looking, when she did have a hand, she had two, and while she did, she needed to force herself forward, twisting them together. To speak. To take this back. Not stand there letting the thought creep. A daughter, a dog, such softness, such goodness, these were things she…well, she had been locked up, hadn’t she? No one had ever broken a door open on that cell for all her hopes, for all her prayers.
Bad enough she imagined things she shouldn’t with him. If she now started thinking just maybe she’d be lost. Her father had wanted her to marry this man, five years ago. Thinking the choice would have been better than Lachlan didn’t just shame Lachlan’s memory, it made this impossible. She had not spent five years in a dungeon for this. She had spent it dreaming of the day she would be free.
“Sir, I know what you’re thinking.”
Obviously she didn’t. Obviously that was not what tightened her throat. But, not only did she need to kill these thoughts dead, she now needed to focus on making him give her the benefit of the doubt. Twenty-two was not seventeen, she accepted that. She was meant to have lived in Edinburgh. So of course it was probably expected she would be a little worldlier.
There was still a limit to just how much, but so long as she stopped this, stopped everything now, it would be fine. Why give him, of all people, the opportunity to suspect anything was amiss, when it was vital she get Arland back?
These years in Edinburgh, a whirl of balls and parties, were meant to have turned her into a proper glen princess, the ideal chieftain’s wife, not some damned shrew, incapable of keeping her mouth shut.
“You know what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.”
He glanced up. To an undiscerning woman, his handsome face was cool and contained. But she was a discerning one. She was aware of his intent gaze and the utter stillness with which he regarded her. All of her. Top to toe. Although, of course she did not flinch.
His eyes narrowed. “Well then, half an hour, you be outside, fully ready to leave.”
“Fine.”
Well, so it was. Did he think she couldn’t marry his brother, when she had been locked in a dungeon and made, at the age of seventeen, to know far worse than him? Why blanch at this ruthlessness, when this encounter only made her welcome it?
She jerked up her chin. “We can go now if you want.”
* * *
Go now? They could. Callm was happy to, especially if it meant seeing the back of this troublesome piece. But wasn’t he the one who gave orders around here?
Cursing beneath his breath, he strode to the door to call Fallon inside. She shook her head and went on plodding back and forward in the snow, which made him clench his fist on the jamb. Was anyone prepared to do a damn thing he told them this morning?
He cursed even more foully. The thing was he couldn’t have got past Dug. But there she’d stood cool as a mountain stream as if she’d no idea what she’d done. Locked Dug up and everything. An animal that had seen the heat of battle, chased and savaged McGurkie stravaigers, torn the throats and jaws of horse and dog alike, yet was terrified out its coat by her.
A damned wisp who didn’t even reach his shoulder—something else that wasn’t his type either when it came to women. Morven was tall. And when she stepped out into the yard, what had she been planning exactly? To run after that damned army she’d brought along with her?
Well, within half an hour they would be underway. Yes. He would see how eager she was then, how long it took before she ran the same screaming mile all Ewen’s women did. The Brotherhood could make wagers on it. He gave her five seconds. If that.
Already she looked green as pea soup and her cloak looked as if she’d slept in it, for all she’d stood there coolly defying him. He knew because he frequently did such things himself. That was if she’d slept at all.
So really he must conclude for all her talk about things being fine and the cool way she’d glided past him into the chamber, her chin so high, the miracle was she didn’t strike her forehead on the lintel. She was up to something all right. Half an hour?
She would bed Ewen if he had to damn well hold her legs apart himself.
* * *
“The half hour is up.”
As her voice peeled across the hall with the clarity of a bell, Callm shoved a spoonful of steaming porridge into his mouth.
Damn, but did she have any idea what it was like eating breakfast in such congenial surroundings? A fire roaring in the hearth. Half a dozen or so Brotherhood men, those who had joined him this morning, and those who had been here last night, dotted around the table. Fallon darting about with plates of oat bannocks. Dug at his feet. Meg and the serving girls pottering in the background.
Dinner? Who knew what that would be? Or where it would be eaten. Tea? A joke usually. Supper? That depended.
Only there she stood, in the doorway, the topaz eyes like shards. The ruby lips he could unfortunately only think about kissing set in a defiant line. And the laughter at the long trestle table ceased, as if Wee Murdie, Snosh, and the others sitting there, had all just died.
His mother, Lady Breanne, had taught him about the rudeness of talking with his mouth full. He shoveled in another spoonful of porridge—a large one—and chewed it around. “What of it?”
If the chit couldn’t make out a word he said, so much the better.
“You said half an hour.”
She could tell the time. Well? Wasn’t that good? So she could also understand this, standing there pretty as she liked, for all her hair wasn’t even combed, he wasn’t for budging.
His Judas Bride Page 4
