His Judas Bride

by Shehanne Moore

  The bloodshot eyes gripped him like a fist. Would this be him one day if he lived this long? Now he’d married Kara McGurkie, it was reason to think not. There would be peace with her clan. Maybe not right away, though. These things took time.

  “Then how the hell did he end up like this?”

  For a second, feeling the sickly stench of blood clog his nostrils, he hoped this was not a remnant from the McGurkie party he’d turned away. There were women in that. Her maids. He should have let them stay but he’d been distrustful that day. Especially of her in that red dress. Although why would it be a remnant, why would the tinker chief turn on his own?

  “Who are you? Hmm? You better speak.” He leaned closer. Whoever he was, the ancient warhorse had led his men a merry dance. Half dead or not.

  “Callm.” Snosh fidgeted in the saddle.

  The man parted his broken lips. “I am someone ye should know.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  Christ, was the old fool half-witted as well as half dead? Never mind who and what he was. What was this? Some wedding day prank, arranged by the men for sport? He narrowed his eyes.

  “And you’ll come off even worse than you are already, if you try being smart about introducing yourself.”

  “Callm.”

  He raised his head. He’d heard the light calm edge in Archibald Kelty’s voice before. He just didn’t want to think of when. Not today of all days, did he damn well want to think of when.

  He raked his gaze around his men. Not one was even vaguely capable of squinting in his direction. Even Snosh who’d squinted like a myopic mouse since birth had both eyes on his mare’s neck. Callm turned his gaze back to their captive. “Where’s the rest of you?”

  “Rest?” The old man’s eyes lost focus.

  “The others. Unless you’re here alone?”

  “Ah. When I said ye should know me that was not an invitation to fight, though I’ve seen the day—”

  Something twisted inside Callm. He would not call it pity exactly. Since Morven’s death there had been no room in his life for that. First wanting to kiss his bride before Father Andrew, now this. He must be getting soft. “We’ve all seen the day, old man.”

  “Then see this one, you and your clan, if ye are to save yourselves. My lady…my lady, Lady Ker…”

  “Lady Kara?” He would be here all day if he didn’t hurry the old coot along.

  The noise emanating from the back of the old man’s throat said he was already on his way though.

  “You can die happy, old man. I’m keeping her safe.”

  Astonishment rattled the old man’s lungs. Christ, but the McGurkies really were steeped in fear and loathing of him to generate such shock. The man was already halfway to whatever hell would hold him but look at him. Callm had the distinct impression, that had he not gripped him tightly by the arm, he’d have fallen all the way off Big Murdie’s horse and finished the journey.

  “Callm, that woman he’s speaking of is not—”

  “Hell, Snosh,” Despite everything, all the names Callm called the turd and the disrespect he held him in, he still didn’t want Archibald knowing before Ewen. “Why don’t you just tell the whole glen? Take a trumpeter out and broadcast it from Traitor’s Pole?” No. This was for the old man’s ears only. “Let me tell you, she doesn’t find it too unbearable either.”

  The old man grasped his hand. “No. No. Not her. Kert—”

  “Callm, for Christ’s sake, listen to me, will ye? For just once in your life.”

  He felt him himself wrenched backward by such an iron fist, he nearly toppled over into the snow.

  “You don’t have her.” Archibald Kelty didn’t release him either. “This woman he’s on about. So, ye can just stop congratulating yourself. The McGurkies have her. We have no more time to waste here.”

  “Jesus.”

  As he juddered into a tree trunk, Callm thought his eyes might have watered. He tried to focus his gaze. His body, strangely, acted independently of his mind so he yanked himself off the tree trunk. His legs even carried him several steps forward. He didn’t know how many, through the knee-deep snow, although how they did when he couldn’t add two and two together, except to calculate one thing, which made tattered ribbons of his gut.

  This was not happening. None of this was happening. Only to a man in the grip of nightmare could this be happening. Twice. He had left her, yes, in a ring of steel. Wee Murdie and Shug. No matter his doubts, there were chances, given who he was, he never took.

  “Callm.”

  “How?”

  A valid question. Surely a valid question? One that would make the whole thing a mistake. One, the lightning bolt of realization also told him, he’d look stupider than a glen sheep for asking.

  Because this man, his father’s most trusted friend, who’d just dragged him across the snow with the strength and alacrity of someone half his age, wasn’t coming from the cave. None of them were. So how could they know?

  “Wise up, for Christ’s sake. The McGurkies aren’t holding the woman you’ve just spent the best part of four days shagging. All right? He serves Kertyn, her sister. Who, when she refused to marry Ewen, got herself locked up for her trouble, so far as he knows anyway, because he got left for dead. Still he has journeyed here to warn us, that woman prancing about—quite nicely too, I must admit, there’s not a man here wouldn’t have done the self same in your boots—was never here to marry Ewen. No, Ian Dhub went down the line to get her.”

  Somehow Callm moistened his throat. “And you believe him, do you? Some old—” It was absurd to snatch this straw. But what the hell else was there to snatch at, the damn fool he must look?

  Archibald canted his jaw. “Well, here’s the thing, Callm. According to him, she never came here to marry Ewen. She came to help murder him at the wedding feast.”

  * * *

  Murder him. While Callm had frequently felt like doing that himself, it was the And all of us, you too that got his gut. He would give her And all of us, you too when he got hold of her, all right. He would give her murder too. The goddamned, treacherous, damned whore.

  Aware he already pounded along the shore at breakneck pace, Callm dug his spurs harder. How was it he hadn’t known? Hadn’t seen it coming? Him. Who knew everything about everybody. Hell. He would let her have that too when he got his hands on her, by Christ, the tiny part of his brain still functioning told him.

  Though instinct told him everything he needed to know about why so clever and shaggable a bitch was here, he still needed to get from her lying lips, the exact nature of the threat to his people. In advance of slitting her lying throat.

  But when Callm flung himself from the saddle and burst through the cave entrance, scrunching onto the soft shingle, a surprise awaited him.

  The cave was empty.

  The lying damned daughter of a whore was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  “So, my lady? No, don’t squeal.”

  Cold steel jabbed Kara’s throat. There was also the matter of her hair nearly being yanked from her head, so she supposed she wasn’t going to squeal. The tight, powerful arm wrapped around her was in danger of squeezing the air from her body otherwise, although her toes still fought for purchase in the snow.

  “One word and ye’re dead. Ye hear? Ye understand?”

  As God was her witness, to have steeled herself not to make a sound, as the Wolf’s boots had crunched feet from where she’d cowered—several days ago now—had been a torture. But the realization of the last time she’d smelled this man’s breath so close to her face, was worse.

  The thing was she’d hardened quite a bit since then. Too much to allow her own breath to hitch even a quarter inch in fear although her mouth fell open. Where had he come from? Not once in the last hour, as she’d edged along that gully, had she any idea anyone was following. Or was it simple chance he was hiding in the bracken the same as her?

  “Ye know, I’d just about given up on this moment ev
er arriving.”

  She reached up a hand to try to free herself, to claw a breath, something. “Well, it has. So I’d be grateful if you’d take your arm off my throat.”

  The low voice breathed close to her ear and she swore she tasted spittle.

  “I just wanted to make sure it was you.”

  She wanted to laugh out loud at that. He wanted to cut her throat with the gleaming blade more like. But she resisted the urge.

  For now, she needed to consider her next move. Despite everything, she was no good to her son dead. She was no good to this man dead, either. “Me? Why, who else would it be, out here at this time in the morning?”

  “Where you’re concerned, who knows? But I think ye might say, I’ve been waiting for this moment.”

  “How charming of you.” She clasped the arm now encircling her neck with both hands, eased her chin up a notch. “Next you’ll be telling me how much you missed me.”

  “Oh, there’s a lot of people missing you. I’m just one of them. Now let’s go.”

  What? She did not expect to be shaken free like this. Not by this ruthless bastard. She had expected him to play with her a little more.

  But then of course, she did have secrets to spill. Lots of them. And she’d no doubt he thought she was going to spill them too.

  “So?” She took care as she regained her balance neither to wince nor gasp, despite what shot through her ankle. It wouldn’t do to let him see any weakness in her. “I’m all ears. How did you manage to find me, Kendrick?”

  * * *

  Callm tossed the finger of whiskey he’d taken to warm himself down his throat and strode past Wee Murdie into the bleak midmorning light. The amber liquid had done nothing to warm the terrifying chill inside him. Even as his lips parted, the black cloud of fury clung so tightly to his whole body, he couldn’t even bring himself to thank Duncan, the clan blacksmith, for sparing him the warming drop.

  He stared across the ghostly expanse of what was otherwise a favorite view, even on a day like this when the colors were all one and the silver glitter was the only variation in a gray illuminated by a struggling sun.

  No sign? He was in no mood to listen to Wee Murdie’s conformation of the crafty bitch’s continued ability to evade him. The most obvious way to stop her from leaving Lochalpin—and it was written in his blood, he damn well would—was to station men at the top of the pass. He’d done that. Hell. Four days now. He’d done everything.

  She had somehow escaped capture. As if she had vanished off the face of the earth into that same ghostly landscape. As if she’d never been on the earth in the first place and he’d dreamed her.

  How the hell could that be? He was master of this glen. And there wasn’t a nook, a cranny, a fallen twig, the underside of a boulder, or upturned tree trunk, he didn’t know about. So how? How could she possibly evade him? A fine Edinburgh educated trollop like her.

  He didn’t even understand how the treacherous bitch had managed to escape the cave under his men’s noses. The place was a fortress. As for Dug—he saved his best glower for the stupid bitch keening at his boot heels in the bitter cold, the cur would know the depth of her disgrace—Dug hadn’t picked up so much as a sniff of her scent.

  What the hell was she exactly?

  Whatever she was, she’d humiliated him, in every respect. And she could rest assured that when he found her, he’d repay the compliment. Tenfold. That much he did know.

  “Are the men quite sure?” He unhitched Satan from the post. “The last time now, it seemed she paraded out from under your sorry noses. But hell, maybe she’s some kind of ghost that can disappear into thin air.”

  Shame should have nipped his tongue. Wasn’t he the damn fool who had let her in his bed, not Wee Murdie or any of the others? Knowing every word that dripped like nectar from those sinful damned lips of hers was a lie? Arguing with his gut when it told him otherwise? But he was past shame. It was the oldest story in the book. Lust. And he’d been desperate.

  “Archibald’s men don’t know the glen like we do, that’s all. It was them I spoke to.”

  Callm canted his jaw. “Archibald?”

  “He’s just trying to help.”

  Of course, but Archibald’s wry comment still rankled. So, Callm, you were just questioning her were you? That’s a queer kind of questioning that involves fetching Father Andrew to marry you both.

  He spat on the ground. The whiskey—the first thing he’d put in his gut in eight hours of straight riding—was already disagreeing with it. He felt taut, jarred, sick. But still able to maintain the calculating, moody front behind which he took his own silver hip flask—his father’s actually—from inside his tunic.

  “Fine.” He spun the top loose with his thumb. “If he’s out there on his big white charger we’ve nothing to worry about then, have we?”

  He took a sip. He wanted no reminders of how he’d had to face his men with the shameful knowledge burning in his breast that he’d bedded a damned traitor for the best part of four days. They’d not laughed. They were his men after all. But their pity… Never in his life had he wanted anyone to feel sorry for him.

  “Callm, I’m just saying—”

  “Well, don’t say. Let’s just get out of here. This ground’s not exactly going to cover itself.”

  “Could I have a mouthful is what I was saying.”

  Callm handed him the flask. He hitched himself up into the saddle. They were all of them, man, woman, and child, lucky to be alive.

  So would she be, when he found her.

  “Have ye not considered the possibility that just maybe she might not have survived out here in the open? I mean, how likely is it? And if she froze or fell into a gully, it would explain the lack of—” Wee Murdie’s confidence wilted. He averted his gaze from Callm’s freezing stare.

  “Do you think I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours straight turning this place upside down in the hope of finding a corpse? The time before that either?”

  “Some of the men do. They think we’re wasting our time.”

  While he felt like it, he refused to fist the reins. “That’s their prerogative. But it’s not mine. The damned bitch has questions to answer. So she better not be dead. She can save that for when we’ve done.”

  That was the reason he refused to picture her lying cold in some gully. Why he’d not slept for four days. Right?

  “You see, I just know she’s here, because I know there’s no damned where else for her to be. I know her.”

  If only.

  “The day’s young. We take a party and fan out from the pass. We knock on doors. We ask. See if she’s not holed up somewhere. She’s not left this glen. Now, let’s go.”

  He dug his heels into Satan’s flanks, his gaze filtering every sweep of valley land beneath the old road. Abruptly he yanked the reins, ignoring Satan’s snort of protest.

  “What? What is it, Callm?”

  “Nothing.”

  He thrust the thought away. Christ, but the bitch had worked her way under his skin so that he spied her everywhere. In the trees. In the very snowfall. The frost beneath his nose. But mistaking some skinny, wind-whipped boy for her, simply because deformity made him limp slightly. What kind of bad way was he—limp?

  He narrowed his eyes. No. He was not going to get excited about this. In long years, he’d learned not to be that. Still, the crafty, conniving bitch. Correct him if he was wrong but wasn’t that even a McDunnagh plaid garbing her slanderous form? One of his in all likelihood. And pelts from his bed to keep her traitorous limbs from shivering too much in the cold. And him, not even noticing them gone. Because her clothes were gone too and he’d been damn well looking for the bitch in them.

  Oh, he could almost envy this damned slut, the audacity of her sheer, bloody brilliance. But his humiliation was known to half the glen. He permitted himself a cold grimace. Easy when for four days his teeth had been clenched together.

  “Down there. Look. Outside Daft Maisie’s.”<
br />
  It was her all right. Maybe he knew damn all else about her, maybe she’d managed to disguise everything else, but the proud tilt of her head was impossible to change.

  With a pang he didn’t want to examine, he recalled how well he’d come to know that during the last week. He’d see just how proud she was when he’d finished with her.

  “Her.” He did not want to take his eyes off the wily slut for a second. She’d cost him too dearly for that. The damn fool she’d made him look before the whole glen.

  “But Callm, they’re—”

  “Exactly.” And not alone. He trained his gaze on the man at her side. While he fought it a shadow descended on his heart. So this was what the slut preferred to him? Who she must, in all probability, have been running off to meet when he found her that night up to her eyeballs in snow. Swaggering. Stocky. Middle-aged. Obviously, whatever he thought about it, a man wasn’t just a man.

  “He’s no more McDunnagh than she is. Just because you wear a McDunnagh plaid it doesn’t make you a McDunnagh.”

  He strove to tell himself it wasn’t so. Of course there was more to this. Much more.

  The thought brought him sharply to the conclusion he realized he’d attempted for two sleepless days to avoid.

  He could not afford to let her leave this glen alive. Her lover neither. In the two seconds he took to consider his next step, he knew.

  He would do this cold.

  “Let’s go.” He dug in his spurs.

  * * *

  Kara sat at the table by the smoking peat fire. Maybe it was a pleasure to find so hospitable a place on so cold a morning, she wouldn’t know. Not when the company rankled.

  To think she had edged all the way along that gully, slipping out the way of the Wolf’s patrols, only to be caught by this festering swine.