His Judas Bride

by Shehanne Moore

  But this one, this one dug him out a hole. As for Meg waltzing in here, was he meant to believe she didn’t consider for a second how Ewen’s bride came to be missing in the first place?

  He couldn’t not marry this woman. Could he? Now he saw again the self-possessed creature who’d thanked him for his body as if it bored her, instead of the one whose body was so sweet to possess, sweat broke out on his skin just thinking about what they’d shared, why the blazes should he? He had to consider why she dug him out a hole. Why she didn’t start some scene as she had the other day. Twice. A glen princess like her. Didn’t she want to marry him?

  Of course it would have helped matters in terms of making a decision had his men found whoever was in this glen. Then he could have looked her in the eye and said I know what you’re about. Except if he knew what she was about, what the hell had he been doing for four days pretending he didn’t?

  She was beautiful though, wasn’t she? And it wasn’t just that. The times he’d possessed her had all been so different. At least, he wanted to think they weren’t just a physical connection. Pure lust. There had been a tenderness too. A warmth that stole about his senses. Although that wasn’t why he now cleared his throat of the constricting gunge.

  “There’s not going to be any wedding. Right?”

  It wasn’t. But the words were past his teeth before he could stop them.

  Meg spun around fully on her heels. “Sweet Jesus. Callm, you’re not saying—”

  He supposed, in a confused way, what else could he damn well say? That he should have kept his breeches fastened because he had never felt more trapped in his life?

  He didn’t want a wife. How could he, living here, no matter how sweet this creature was in bed? What else was he to do but offer his hand though? At least for now. Ian Dhub would have a tartan fit if he didn’t. Did he want that trouble for his people?

  It was just the calumny of it. The McGurkies had killed Morven.

  Kara edged her gaze sideways as if she had been struck dumb. A first. She squeezed her velvet skirt tighter. Maybe it was that betraying fact, that hint, that tiny hint of hopelessness that she thought he would be so ruthless as to discard her—it was what it would be—after keeping her in his bed for the best part of four days.

  Anyway, he didn’t have to live with her, did he?

  “This is what I’m saying.”

  He scrunched across the cave floor. Reaching out, he cupped the back of her head, dragged her mouth to his before she could protest, and kissed her.

  As he did the world and everything in it, retreated. All he knew was this. The full possession of her lips. The taste of her, edgy and somehow full of tears, so damned sweet, that the way she carried on, so he didn’t know where he was with her half the time, the strange mixture of smoldering, steel-back boned, vulnerability she was, didn’t matter. How could it, when she kissed like this?

  “Callm.” Behind him, Meg gave a half sob. “Are ye completely insane?”

  He steadied himself. He shouldn’t swear to this right now. That would be running to the edge of the precipice and stepping into midair. But then if he sent her with Meg he’d be without the pleasure of her incredible body. And if there was anyone else—what kind of woman would open her legs to one man as she had, while in thrall to another, because it hadn’t all been desperation, had it?

  Anyway she hadn’t exactly accepted him yet, had she?

  “Maybe.” He traced his thumb-pad over the ruby lips he found himself staring at all of a sudden. “But what do you say to Wee Murdie there fetching Father Andrew, now? A hand-fasting.”

  “Callm, am I to understand…now just tell me if I’m wrong here. You are sending for Father Andrew to…to marry…”

  It was probably unwise to have spoken with Meg there, as the clatter of a stool being knocked over resonated around the cavernous walls. But so long as she now picked it up, sat down, and shut her mouth, it would be fine.

  “For God’s sake. Your own brother?”

  Of course he was, or he wouldn’t be asking, which was why he wished she would answer him. His heartbeat increased. What if she said no? Would he not lean a little more toward relief if she did?

  “Not exactly, Sis. That would be incest of the worst kind. I’m asking Lady McGurkie here. A hand-fasting, till we can be properly anointed. What do you say?”

  It would be a blow to his masculine pride. A fairly amusing one if she did say no. But why, as the seconds inched by, did he find himself tempted to tear that one word from her tongue: Yes.

  It was not a disreputable match, even if he wasn’t clan chief and he did live in a cave. But, incredibly for a woman who, from the moment he confronted her on that hillside, had been incapable of closing her mouth, she’d shrunk into silence.

  “Will you have me? Or are you going to decline my offer?”

  * * *

  Have him? Rounding a rock on the shore, Kara huffed out a breath. She had had him. She had had him several times. And look at the good it had done her. She would die before she had him again.

  She clutched her cloak tighter as a gull screeched around her head. Arland. Arland. Arland. That path off the beach, up the hillock, was her best, her only chance. It was all she had found in half an hour of searching, padding up and down the shore, smiling beguilingly at his men, as if all she sought was a little air.

  My God. Yes. Such a little word. And she had struggled so to say it to him, her tongue might as well as been stuck to the roof of her mouth. Because it was a little word. One that meant…meant she needed to get out of here, before this got any worse. For God’s sake why hadn’t she just married Ewen McDunnagh?

  “What are you doing, Princess? Looking for me?”

  She tugged a breath into her parched lungs. What had she just thought about dying before she had him again? That might be sooner than she thought. How could she have got attached to the damn man like this?

  “Or are you trying to escape?”

  His voice, how was it that even his damned voice had that affect on her? Her spine was affected in particular so that stupid little quiver swept up it. All the way to the very top. She prayed he didn’t see her bridling desperation.

  “Me? Oh, not at all, sir.”

  She jerked her head around and instantly wished she hadn’t. Look at him. Even through the misty curtain of her breath, she knew she would sooner not.

  Breeches of soft, buttered leather. The beautifully muscled chest hidden beneath layers of black velvet and crisply pressed white cotton. Still no dusting of lace at his throat. A soft woolen plaid to match his eyes. Sea-green. She parted her lips in shock. Given the amount of grit and grime that usually covered his and the other men’s clothes, she’d actually thought the McDunnagh colors were brown.

  The worst though was what glinted on his chest. So dazzling was the plaid brooch he’d picked from God alone knew what tattered remnant of his life that she spoke with difficulty.

  “Yes. Pray forgive me, but why would I do that? A lucky woman like myself?”

  The thought thudded right there in the winter sunlight dappling his face, that she was a lucky woman. Although she was not going to be foolish enough to believe a man of the Wolf’s bleak and bloody experience equated the need to marry her, with anything so earth-shattering as love. No.

  It might even be he had dressed like this to see just how far she was prepared to go, which really, when she considered how low she had already sunk, he might be surprised about.

  Which was why that silver brooch he wore fastened on her heart. He couldn’t know he was a fatal draw, could he, when he pinned it to his chest, even as it now seemed to prick hers?

  That kiss earlier had not exactly been that of a man trapped.

  So now she must ask herself. Did he mean to do this properly? She must see that under any other circumstances than these, a man like him, the one her father had hoped for, for her, five years ago… Her throat tightened. Wasn’t really what she wanted.

  “Becau
se.” He stepped closer in that way that from the start had made him dangerous. Not because of who he was. Because of what always overrode everything. Lust. As if he was some stupid, damned addiction.

  Well, she wasn’t addicted.

  “There’s never any telling with you.”

  There wasn’t. How very good of him to remind her of the little game she played here. Him too, she must conclude.

  If only he would not reach toward her, sweep a tendril of hair back from her forehead as he did, as if him knowing there was no telling was not a bad thing. “Look, Princess.”

  If only he wouldn’t call her that either.

  “I know you probably think, after this morning and Meg turning up anyway, and me being…” His gaze flicked over her, then it settled fully. “Well, you probably feel—”

  Feel? She didn’t. Great God almighty, how could she be so preposterous as to feel, simply because another piece of herself dripped away beneath his beguiling fingertips to places she could not possibly follow? As preposterous as to let this ceremony take place either? Or listen to the way her breath came so much faster of a sudden?

  “Oh, not at all, sir.”

  His hair ruffled in the faint breeze. Of course she wished it didn’t. Especially when he looked like this. He didn’t need to do this at all though, did he? He could run. Hole up in the glen with his men. Already they lived like robber bandits.

  “I just had no desire for you to feel, to feel that you were somehow trapped by my rashly impetuous behavior, in throwing myself at you, into—”

  “Father Andrew’s here now, Callm.”

  Her attention was diverted by Wee Murdie scrunching toward them across the shingle.

  “He’s not very pleased at being hauled out his bed on a cold winter’s day, but he says he’ll do it.”

  Kara’s stomach dropped several notches, into her boots in fact. An old man trudged, his cassock trailing in the slush at the water’s edge, so she could not very well clutch it. Her stomach that was, although the cassock, if she was to throw herself on her knees and beg for mercy…

  She groaned, mentally digging her heels into the shingle. And say what? If only her father could be persuaded to agree to a marriage to the Wolf. Only then he’d also need to be persuaded to keep his mouth shut and that, the debt it would put her in, the reel she’d be made to dance to… Even if he agreed.

  The beach filled with Brotherhood men. Even as she tried to back away, the Wolf performed the introductions to Father Andrew. Kara strove not to shrink. It was hard when every bit of her churned. When even in her cell she had not felt so confined.

  At the same time one thought only made her nod her head, as her gaze skittered down to the loch side looking for a way out of this. Only before a man who loved her, loved and respected her without question, would she not shrink from telling the awful truth, not just of her blemished past, but why she was here.

  When the Wolf did this only because he had been caught out, she would rather die.

  “Well, now.”

  As his gaze swept her, Father Andrew was quite crisply business-like in a way that made her heart shudder and her die in the turquoise dress and cloak. But then he had been hauled from his bed. The circumstances of his being hauled were somewhat different from hers, which probably had a bearing on his ability to deal with it. She would deal with it in a minute. She just needed the right one.

  It was nothing to do with the fact the Wolf would not want her then, that indeed, looking at him, so young, so sleek, so handsome, she did not know how he could ever have wanted her at all that made her shrink from saying she was a whore. Of course it wasn’t. Fallon was present. She couldn’t very well say in front of her how Kara’s father had murdered Morven because he wanted the Wolf to marry Kara. So now here she was with a son in a dungeon. How would that look?

  “You both understand, although this is not a full ceremony, it is still a solemn exchange of vows?”

  Of course she did. She wasn’t that stupid. Except perhaps at times, which was why she squirmed.

  “With God as your witness.”

  What a joke that was when she thought of the things God had been witness to in her life.

  “You cannot put these vows aside.”

  She sipped a breath. As if she was being mocked by the vow she had given in that darkened cell. By the fact she could not help but admit that under other circumstances, this man, this man who stood—not just facing her, but with his arm hooked around her waist, his eyes, his lips inches from hers, was very beguiling? Lust was a terrible thing.

  “Then all that remains for you to do is swear that you will love and honor one another.”

  What? She nearly sank on the shingle. For a second she was glad the Wolf held her up. It couldn’t be. This was a chat surely? Before they went into the cave? So she still had time to think of something, if not to run.

  “We will begin with you, Callm.”

  It wasn’t. And in this unseemly fashion too. Not that everyone here didn’t know what they’d been doing.

  “I’d like my bride to vow first.”

  The knot in Kara’s stomach was like a drawstring. This, no matter how he held her, was deliberate. The bastard. So she would, she would do it. She would have to.

  And yet, the proximity of his lips, the warmth of his breath, the whisper of no more than air that stood between them, the complete awareness of him—what was this, when the man was a sarcastic specimen, ruthless to the bone, she should find herself believing in him? In the rightness of this moment? So much so, that the beach and everyone on it seemed to recede, that looking into his eyes, she didn’t believe his asking her to go first was any more than an action complimenting this?

  Her heart began to thud. Her palms sweated. She wasn’t going to edge her arm around his neck and stand on tiptoe was she?

  Because if she did it would make it all the more impossible to tell the lie she knew she must.

  “I swear. I swear to love you my whole life through.”

  * * *

  Even as Callm spoke the words to make her his wife, misgivings may have howled but his body responded as it always did in her vicinity, which was treacherously. Vows, priest present or not. He didn’t think he’d seen a woman more beautiful, the turquoise velvet matching her eyes to perfection, the winter light glinting on her tarnished-gold hair. He couldn’t help it. The need to kiss her, to hold her, was damned unbearable.

  He didn’t. But it felt like he did, when her lips were less than an inch from his. What the hell was wrong with him that he felt like that? That he’d never wanted a woman more? He didn’t…he didn’t love her. He was trapped, nothing more. His wife couldn’t expect him to love her when her damned clan had murdered Morven and it was bad enough he’d slept with this woman.

  From somewhere in his own cave, Shug produced a fiddle. Callm might have been dressed for the occasion, but Callm hadn’t planned on dancing. He hadn’t planned on hand-fasting either, but there it was. Even knowing it was already two o’clock and McDunnagh Castle lay an hour’s ride away, and he had this damned mess to sort out, he couldn’t resist the business of edging some slow steps with her in his arms and his lips short inches from hers.

  There was something, something quite edgy about her, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, that beguiled even as it disturbed him. Something about her eyes, too large, too luminous. Too dark.

  Anyway the men soon joined in. Whiskey and ale had begun to flow. This was his wedding day in a way. He hadn’t danced in years. With any other woman he’d have been shocked to realize it. But this one’s soft body fitted in his arms so well, it was a struggle to tell himself she wasn’t actually made for them.

  Of course, the unfortunate thing was that someone had to find Ewen, didn’t they, before Ewen found out from someone else. And that task was his. Anyway, it was only a wedding day after all. A hand-fasting. Enough to keep everyone quiet just now. Her thieving damned father most of all.

  As he
galloped along the familiar loch side, he focused his attention on the party of riders bobbing into view from the snow-clad foothills to his left. Brotherhood men, he saw at a glance, recognizing them by the weather-stained plaids and variety of headdresses ranging from mildly decorative to downright blood-chilling. But he also recognized Archibald Kelty.

  Wouldn’t that surprise everyone if he returned to the party? Hell. He could even manage another dance with Fallon standing on both his feet, while he danced her about. Then of course, there was his bride. He supposed another dance with her wouldn’t exactly kill him.

  Even as he thought it, he narrowed his gaze. Slung across the back of a horse lay a figure he didn’t recognize.

  The intruder. Well, well, well. There had been times he’d thought there wasn’t one. But there was. And he’d obviously been caught too despite the hell Callm had let the glen go to the last few days.

  Relief, if not outright calm, stole through him. It was painful for him to acknowledge, that till he knew for certain the man was on no more than speaking terms with his lovely bride, he doubted he’d feel completely calm. He tamped the urge that filled him to leap down and drag the sorry-looking bastard from the horse—Big Murdie’s palfrey he observed.

  “Callm.”

  Archibald held up his hand. Anyone would have thought he proceeded under an imaginary banner of truce.

  Callm yanked Satan to a halt. Then he dismounted. Unless he was very much mistaken, Big Murdie wasn’t likely to be kicking up any daisies. Big Murdie was the hardest man he knew. In this company it was saying something. That he’d chosen to lend the horse to this man meant one thing.

  “The orders were to bring him in alive.” He squelched through the snow.

  “And so we did, Callm.” Snosh sounded indignant. “We never touched him, even if he is a McGurkie.”

  Callm dragged the man’s head up, with a hunger to see his face he didn’t want to admit bordered on starvation. Nor admit to the relief that flooded his veins either. That would be to also admit he had somehow imagined this moment being different, that what he felt for his bride was more than lust. This man wasn’t anywhere near in the first flush of youth. The gore-encrusted hair plastered to his temples said sixty. Maybe more.