She wanted, she needed, to know exactly. The sky was a clear, cloudless blue; the wind had finally dropped and with it the scattered snowflake squalls. The sun would still have to melt a ton more snow than it presently had. The last time she’d run away with this amount on the ground, she’d been with Lachlan. They’d thought, dear lord, how laughable it was now, they could actually get to Edinburgh.
Of course, that was then. She had more to sustain her now. But that first bit of the journey from Meg’s, what she remembered of it anyway, given the rent torn in her senses, was through a very difficult gully. A gully that was more a perilously secret path between the mountains, with rocks and scrambles, she’d had to dismount several times to manage, and when she had, stones had cascaded into the raging torrent hundreds of feet below.
“What are you so desperate to know for? In a hurry to meet that charming sweetheart of yours, are you?”
His face was such a grim triangle between the curtain of hair, she wondered if it was in fact politic to open her mouth. She didn’t see why she shouldn’t though. Anything to ease what had somehow taken up residence inside her. Even if it meant drawing this man like a gloveless falconer, with a honeyed hand. She cleared her throat. After all, his contempt made it easier to also clear herself of these stupid feelings that had risen in her in that yard. To acknowledge she didn’t belong and it didn’t matter. Belonging wasn’t what she was here for.
“Actually, I am, sir. Yes. Indeed I confess to being agog with curiosity. Deprived by not meeting him yesterday and being happily wed to him by now. I know we’ve only been riding for about two hours now, but will I see him by nightfall, do you think?”
“Like having nightmares, do you?”
“Not really.” Holding out her honeyed hand was certainly taking a bit of doing, especially when it was savaged like this. “That’s why I’d like to know if I’ll have to spend another night in your company or not.”
He snapped his brows lower. “My company?”
She nodded. Why not? Lochalpin was beautiful. The snow-capped peaks, inky blue mist, the trees towering like silent sentinels around her. What she saw, reflected in the plate-glass surface of the loch, was so stunning, she could understand her father coveting this place. Even if his real desire was to walk among the other clan chiefs as an equal.
By far the most stunning thing here was this damnable specimen. Of course, if she’d now to lay odds on his arm muscle tightening as he tugged on his own reins, on that smile, denting his faintly stubbled cheeks, she’d be rich.
“That’s the first I knew you spent a night in my company. Did I fall asleep and miss something here, Princess?”
She tightened her shoulders. Miss something indeed? Knew it, didn’t he—what a stunning specimen he was. Why else turn a simple request for information into a sexual quest? Well, she would not rise to this shabby bait.
Although she expected a little better from him. Was this honestly the best he could come up? A tit-for-tat retaliation? Slow off the mark at that. Take him down a peg or two though? This would be a pleasure through and through.
She edged her gaze sideways, letting what she hoped was a smile play. “Of course, I can only speak for myself. If I had, and it’s an if you understand, you’d not have fallen asleep.”
“That would be beyond your miniscule capabilities.”
“You like to think?”
“I don’t just think. I know.”
Just how the blazes did Meg put up with it though? This very deliberate casting of nets on the waters of female sexuality? So even Kara felt horribly threatened? And his unutterable damned cheek that accompanied it?
In a few words?
Because he scorched sheets.
“You know, Princess, not that I’ve any use for them, but that wasn’t a very virginal thing to say.”
Now look what she’d gone and done. Made him nudge closer, so their knees almost touched. When she didn’t want them to touch. If she dug her spurs in though he’d probably be after her faster than that damned dog had her belt this morning. Ice. Stone.
All right, she could tell herself blazing sexuality seldom fished for nothing. Here she was, betrothed to his brother—supposedly anyway—and he still couldn’t stop himself, flashing that confident smile at her. He probably flashed it around half the women in the glen. And they fell at his feet. Well, she wasn’t going to fall at his feet, if that was what this was about. If it wasn’t something more. Some attempt on his part to spy her out.
“Oh?” She tilted her chin. “You speak virginese do you?”
“Virgin—what?”
Although how would she sort it, when that flickering grin said she had just made it worse?
“I’m keeping my lips sealed, Princess. Least said, soonest mended.”
“That will be a first. But very welcome if you honestly believe there’s one rule for what I can say and another for what I can listen to. You know perfectly well, you didn’t spend anything with me. So don’t pretend you did. That is not the kind of lies I want reaching the ears of my beloved.”
Out the corner of her eye she saw his gaze sweep her. He narrowed his eyes. Was that because she could have fooled him? “I’d keep the endearments till you meet him. See what fancy words you come up with to call him then.”
Well, she could. But this was too much. What was wrong with him that he felt obliged to knock her down when it was already hard enough to stay upright? And not just that, she wanted him to stop making this worse for her, by saying things—curse him, herself too—that if he had been her mentor he would have told her not to say. After all, presenting herself as a sweetly virginal bride at McDunnagh Castle, especially now she was going to have to marry Ewen McDunnagh, was what mattered here. Not crossing swords with this damnable specimen who seemed to want to rattle her in every way it was possible to rattle her, and more beside.
A thought came to her. “You’re the older son, aren’t you?
He canted his jaw, still trying to beat her down with that dazzling grin. The one that never reached his eyes. “My mother certainly thought so.”
He wouldn’t beat her down. It didn’t matter the thought occurred she was the same stranger to such smiles, proper ones, that just maybe this unnerving behavior was an act. An armored suit behind which the real man lived. She had spoken as she should not. So now, not only was it vital she relieved the preening peacock of any suspicions he might harbor about her, since he wouldn’t give her the single, solitary answer she sought, she must ensure he kept his distance for the remainder of the journey.
“So that’s what this is all about, is it?”
“What’s what about?” He bunched the reins with his hand. He was a man, after all. Unaccustomed to self-analysis.
“Why you’re like this? You’re jealous of your very own brother? And that is why you can’t be nice about him?”
Logic told her no, but he straightened his shoulders for all he fought to keep that grin pasted.
“You don’t refuse a clan chief’s wishes on his deathbed. That would just be rude.”
“Oh? So it wasn’t just a case of you falling down drunk on the floor more times than Ewen that he’s chief and you’re not?”
She had heard, of course. Not just about the drunken rage he had descended into when Morven died, what he did to those responsible. How he dragged them behind his horse for a whole day before depositing what was left of them on her father’s doorstep. The furrow denting the bridge of his nose said it was nothing to what he’d like to do her now.
A favor, if he did but know it. Still she eyed him squarely.
“I suppose you think you’re very clever, Princess, knowing just about all there is to know about me.” That grit in his voice, if it came from any lower, it would be the ground itself.
“Oh, not at all.”
“Just you know this. On his deathbed, Lord Mhor, my father, put the people here first. He weighed protecting them against governing them. And know this too.”
/> She didn’t, but she continued eying him anyway. It seemed best somehow. To flinch was to suggest some weakness in herself. She was not weak. Except for the fact she somehow wished he would not look like that. So grim and gritted, she was horribly aware of the truth, not just in what he said but behind it.
There were reasons his eyes were dead. Any man who’d done what he had that day. How did you come back from that? As she was going to have to do herself? And not just that. Any man who did that, the pain in him…
“You, you’re about to see why.”
That fleck of white on the back of her glove, should she brush it away? She didn’t want to but if she didn’t, what she saw here, that she was right about the cockiness, although why he should be like that, when he and Meg… “Oh really? And why is that?”
He dug his spurs in to his black stallion’s flanks, as if he could not take any more, of her primarily. “That question you wanted an answer to? McDunnagh Castle? That’s it there.”
* * *
McDunnagh Castle, standing squat on the loch on a low outcrop of rock, seagulls screeching about it like banshees, was not what Kara expected. Not that it was terribly important that in one word the place was terrible.
After all, she wasn’t here to clean, or live, in it, which was as well, since it would have taken her weeks to make even the smallest room her gaze edged sideways into on the way inside, habitable. Cobwebs, dust, clutter, dead rats, even dead bats, everywhere.
She was less sure about its master.
Yesterday she’d wondered why he’d not come to meet her. But there, the maidservant had kept him. And still did. Her breasts were obviously preferable—anything was to meeting Kara. Yesterday she’d also sworn to go down to hell and marry the devil himself.
That might be preferable.
God almighty, all the years, even before she disgraced herself, she’d always believed her father adored Kertyn. How could he hold her sister in such little regard he was prepared to marry her to a toad with sausage fingers digging halfway down the maidservant’s blouse? Even if that same toad was to have been a dead toad after the completion of the ceremony. It wasn’t just for herself Kara was tempted to refuse. She was tempted on Kertyn’s behalf.
There was only one thing she would be if she did though. That was dead before she could explain to her father that any accompanying McDunnaghs were an escort, when he had been most specific about that. And not just her. Or them. That was of course providing the Wolf let her leave the castle alive. She knew the way here now, and it was more than any other McGurkie. A few days. A week. She would be free. Of this nightmare. Of her father. She and Arland would be together. It would be as she’d dreamed. Five years.
Swallowing the temptation, the shudder that crept up her spine—no wonder Kertyn had ran about shrieking her refusal, Ardene too—Kara stood stock-still in the middle of the stone-flagged floor of the great hall. She even tried—it was not easy—to smile faintly.
When only a few feet separated her and the Wolf—at least she had him where she wanted him finally—she preferred not to add to his probable enjoyment of the situation.
Anyway, in some ways Ma was right. Kara had always been too smart for her own good. So, her betrothed could barely stand upright and his boots scraped against the floor as he tried to?
Was that necessarily a cause for complaint? A man as repulsive as this? She should be grateful she could just put him to bed. Pretend. The way Ma had with her father. The fact was that neither Kertyn nor Ardene would have been able to stand here as she did.
As for the cavernous room itself. Yes, it was filthy. Cups, bowls, half eaten lumps of bread and meat and stone bottles of whiskey strewn about floor and table, ragged hangings on the wall. She wrinkled her nose. Even the smell of smoking peat. She had thought the McDunnaghs a cut above the McGurkies. Certainly they had always behaved like it. Plainly down to the two pups scrapping over a bone, the mother licking spilt whiskey off the rushes, licking the rushes too, they were no better.
This was a place where her lack of Edinburgh polishing would be of such little consequence, it would not even be noticed. She would not be noticed. Given the foolish errors she had already made, it was what she needed, wasn’t it?
“You remember that bit of paper you signed, Ewen?”
It was a pertinent question. Her bridegroom was so busy fondling the serving girl’s thighs, he did indeed appear to have forgotten such a piece of paper existed, let alone he had put his name to it. Obviously he had, or Kara would not be here. For the Wolf to have to ask it though, yet made humiliation scorch her spine.
“About a month ago now?”
If it had only been defiance, Ewen’s ignoring of him. But it wasn’t. Seconds stretched. Then, being done with fondling the maidservant’s thigh, Ewen again attempted to get back on his feet. That he did not succeed in no way detracted from his efforts. “Aye.”
“Well, Ewen, it happens this is her.” The Wolf took a step toward him, his face a mask of shadows. “All the way from Edinburgh. Your bride. Lady McGurkie.”
Kara bent her knees and sank to the dismal flagstones in a formal curtsey, keeping her face as studied a mask as the Wolf’s. If nothing else, finally Ma would be proud. “My lord.” Of the low, rich timbre of Kara’s voice too, the lowered head, downcast eyes. Why, anyone seeing this would think she really had been in Edinburgh.
“Mah bride?”
Ewen’s voice was sullied by drink. So sullied Kara could barely understand a word he said. At last, he had noticed her though. Drunk or not, the dimness of the peat-smoked room could no more disguise his eyes glowing like burning coal than it could the glint of silver on the sword hilt the Wolf fingered, she saw, edging her gaze upward and around.
Her heart hit ever so slightly against her ribcage. She had honestly not expected it to be quite so pronounced. Ewen’s stare, that was.
Of course, she’d hoped not to have to bed him, given everything she’d heard. That was why seeing how safely accomplished this was, she determined not to dwell on it. To be exactly as she should, no more, no less, to guarantee the futures of all who depended on her. Herself included. Anyway, what was it to sleep with him? With any man now? She wasn’t just cold inside, she was dust and ashes.
If Ewen expected she would speak, well she would. “Yes, my lord. I am Lady Kara, Chief Ian Dhub’s oldest daughter.” Very nicely too, making no reference to the fact that Chief Ian Dhub’s second and also his youngest had already proved so unexpectedly sticky about signing the agreement, one had said she’d sooner cut off her hand.
Ma—well, a woman as good as Ma could only be in one place, unlike Kara who was surely destined for hell—Ma, God rest her soul, would be doing cartwheels, if she was watching this.
Ewen’s bear-like paw strayed toward the whiskey jug. More slopped onto the table than into the wooden goblet. “S’well, s’not before time. Ah was just saying te S’Ulla, here…there…wherever S’Ulla is…ye took yours, madam.”
Dissatisfied with the mess he was making of the table, Ewen dispensed with the goblet. “Maybe ye were not wanting a sight of me? Eh?” He set the jug down and wiped his mouth.
Was it Kara’s imagination? Did that hardening of the Wolf’s jaw betoken his desire to go over there and drag Ewen across the floor to stand before her? She prayed not. He was bad enough over there. She did not want him here.
“Oh, not at all, my lord.” She smiled, not just in the hope of appearing delighted, but in keeping the Wolf where he was. Ewen too. “Now I’m here, I cannot tell you how deeply I regret the delay.”
No lie. She would sooner have gotten this over by now. Instead of which she still had it all to face.
“Do ye s’lear that?” Ewen waved the jug at the Wolf. “She likes me. Here, have a drink.”
“My lord?”
Did he mean her?
“Aye. You. Come here.”
“Yes, of course, my lord.”
She rose. When she had sworn to be amenable, t
here was little point in doing anything else but smother the little shudder of unease that swept her spine. The one that rose in her gullet too, so her breath felt bumpy.
How the blazes did it happen though, that one minute she swept across the stone-flags, her boot heels echoing hollowly, her cloak swishing, as much decorum as she could muster and with steely determination too, and the next she was pinned to a great, barrel-like chest, her lips being christened by a blast of the foulest, most sinking breath imaginable? Whiskey, last night’s, last week’s—last year’s by the sniff of it.
The answer was apparently connected with Lord Ewen. As was the fact the neckline of her dress sprang apart. Ripped actually. Because his great paw tore it.
“And give your lord a kiss.”
She was ready for this. Ready, in that she did not expect to find the chastity of a monk in a man known for ravishing half the female population of Lochalpin. Ready in that she would, if need be, provide him with that kiss.
What was a kiss to get back Arland, after all, when so much had already been taken from her? When she had always clung to the hope her world would somehow regain its course and would one day cease its unbearable orbit of a darkened star? When she outlived her father? And instead this chance had landed in her lap?
Yet she must have completely misjudged this drunken bastard, or by God, his fingers, strong as steel, wouldn’t now be inside the bodice of her gown. Raking. Grabbing at her breasts. So her stomach churned and her heart pounded and black suffocation, black gorge, rose from the pit of her stomach and engulfed her.
She’d faced men down. Enough of them anyway to know screaming or wrenching would be no use against a brute like this. Drink-sodden or not, he was strong as steel. His fingers would not be at her waist otherwise. And her dress hauled open. Open in front of not just him.
The room spun. Her spine stiffened to regal formality. Because yet, never mind what she could yet face down, she was Lady Kara. And Lady Kara would not let any man take her without the benefit of legitimization.
His Judas Bride Page 6
