His Judas Bride

by Shehanne Moore

  “What the bloody hell is wrong with you?”

  A spittle-spraying swine too. All over her face. Not that she was terribly worried about that now she understood the real reason for catching her.

  “That’s a very nice plaid you’re wearing there, Kendrick.” Tilting her chin, she ran her fingertips over it. “Very, very nice actually. McDunnagh, I believe by the looks of it. How old was the boy it belonged to?”

  “Belonged to? What the—” A shadow fell across the table. Releasing her wrist, he snapped up his jaw. “Sorry, Mistress Maisie. My nephew, ye understand.”

  Nephew? A pity Kara could not drink the steaming posset the old woman set on the table but what this man had imparted made her gorge rise too high for that.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” It was all she could do to lower her voice, the second the woman bustled back across the hearth, to mend the fire. “Let’s just say traveling together like this has thrown us into an intimacy I never expected to share with you. I’m less than enamored of your attempt to worm your way upward in my bastard father’s esteem by killing more innocent boys. Like Lachlan.”

  Now, there was a name she never thought she’d say to him. A ghost that clung to his bloodied sword hilt. Yet was it so wise to let what burned in her veins quite this close to the surface?

  She could delay thinking it no longer though. The thing was she no longer feared wrath, viciousness, cruelty, whatever hellish torture was inflicted on her. Not really. Not now. What was the point? Even had her father not double-crossed her, she knew that. Indeed his double-crossing had nothing to do with this.

  But she did fear to face a five-year-old boy and tell him why they now would not go home together. When she had wanted nothing so much. That much she had already decided. Kertyn and Ardene too.

  She had done a terrible thing. How finally and how freely she admitted it. But had she not married the Wolf she would have done a worse thing.

  It wasn’t the only reason she knew not to waste her strength.

  With the wind howling through the stone cracks, the cobwebs festooning the empty stools, this old woman may have looked the part, but she was no more innkeeper than Kara was glen fiddler or this was an inn, for all a peat fire smoked.

  It still would be nothing to Kendrick to cut the woman’s throat.

  “Listen, you damned bitch. I’ve been hiding on the edge of this glen, crawling on my belly in the snow for six days now, all to get sight or word of ye. And if ye think I’ve been risking my life here, in Black Wolf territory, for nothing—”

  “Aye.” The old woman stopped raking cinders across the hearth. “As I said to ye the other day, sir, just so long as her new ladyship knows how to keep his lordship busy—no’ that his lordship’s ever likely to bother an auld hen like me.”

  Kendrick raised his eyes to the ceiling as if for forbearance. “The night would have to be dark for that would it, good Mistress Maisie?”

  “It would need to be pitch, sir. Aye.”

  Kara leaned closer. “But you’ve not been crawling on your belly in the snow for six days, now have you? As good Mistress Maisie over there just testified. What you’ve been doing is something else all together. A little murder. A little passing yourself off as my savior. A little staying here between times. If you want to talk about crawling on your belly through the snow, about sleeping in the snow, for that matter, let’s talk. I’m more than ha—”

  Kendrick snatched her wrist with bruising force, as if he’d like to snap it.

  “I just dinnae know though.” Maisie stood up from the hearth. “The Black Wolf’s men have been up and down at all hoors of the day and night. I saw him myself yesterday, and you’d think the de’il himself was on that poor horse’s back, the mood he was in.”

  Kara felt her gaze darken. Patrols were not unexpected. Had she not cowered in fear of them several times? But him? Yesterday? So close. The thought gave her no comfort. Indeed she fought not to push her fingers under her hood and through her hair.

  Lightning seldom struck twice though, because right now, the way her palms prickled, lightning like him? What would that be when she went down to hell willingly? An answer of sorts?

  “I told him what he’s needing is a wife. ‘A braw, bonnie man like you,’ said I, ‘With no woman warming your bed at nights. I’d be in a mood myself if I was in your boots.’ Now, if I was just that wee bittie younger.”

  Maybe the cackle wasn’t more than Kara could bear, it was still a close second to sitting here feeling her throat tighten.

  Kendrick rubbed his chin. “And what did he say, Mistress?”

  “He just gave me the look o’ steel, sir. Ye know the one that would freeze hellfire. And has us all trembling in our boots.” Not very afraid was she? Laughing hard as she mimicked her own words.

  Which was why it was important Kara did not think, not here, not now, not when Kendrick now sank his nails into her thigh, how well she knew that look.

  “When I get you past Black McDunnagh’s men when your father takes you back, when I marry you, as we agreed—”

  “Agreed?” She snapped her chin up. “When was this exactly?”

  “You will think yourself blessed. No other man would take a slut like you for a wife.”

  She glanced down at her leg. For once in her life, she would be calm. Iced. That essence people thought she was, when she knew perfectly well she was not. “That’s very nice of you, Kendrick. But you’re mistaken. Someone already has.”

  It did not seem a mistake to say so. So long as she said no more. Of course, the irony was her father hadn’t just dreamed of just such a match for her. It was why, when he discovered she was pregnant to Lachlan, his wrath had known no bounds.

  “Yes. You’d not want me to commit bigamy now to add to all my other sins, would you?”

  Something tightened in the gaze Kendrick locked on her. But the calm, the eerie calm that descended on her was perhaps the strangest thing about all this. Kendrick would tell her father, who would use every means at his disposal to learn who to. Yet her stomach didn’t churn. Not even by a notch. Didn’t clench. Didn’t fist. Didn’t knot. Perhaps because for the first time she realized her word, or rather lack of it, was a trump card. A quite suicidal one to play. But what she sought could not be gained by destroying a people. Whether her father destroyed Arland…

  “Don’t kid. That wedding hasn’t taken place. Ye think I don’t know?”

  “Who says it’s Ewen McDunnagh?”

  “Don’t lie, ye damned whore.”

  “Yes, I am a damned whore. And you’re a murdering bastard. The children would be singularly unblessed. Which is why I’m doing the world a favor by refusing you.”

  She gazed at his smoldering face. If he stormed out, so much the better. His help was hardly a requirement. She’d battled this far without it. Against the elements and the most ruthless man in Lochalpin.

  She let a smile play. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, isn’t it? Who he is. How it came to be.”

  “I said—”

  “Very pretty. I find myself almost charmed by your jealousy, Kendrick.” A thought occurred. “All these years awaiting my clan’s pleasure, I was there for the taking, had you wanted to. And I know you did, once. But you were never there.”

  “I don’t take stinking whores.”

  “Chieftainship must be a powerful aphrodisiac.”

  “Your father—”

  “Is not calling this. For the first time ever I am calling this. It’s going to be hard knowing you’ll never have what you’ve never had. The glen. Or me. And your little effort here has all been in vain.”

  “Get up.” He flung the chair back. Oh, this was not the plan, was it?

  “With pleasure.”

  “It doesn’t matter who the hell he is. Do ye hear?”

  As he stormed through the croft door ahead of her, she heard him snarl. “You’ll be a widow before this week is out.”

  The threat was barely u
ttered when he bent double over the dagger lodged in his chest.

  * * *

  It was difficult, the incredulity the unscrupulous slut feigned, for Callm to speak, clearly at that. But he need only consider her poor bastard lover lying dead at her feet for him to find his voice. “Stay exactly where you are.”

  Actually, to be truthful? What iced his brain? He had retreated to some place beyond that. Because this was his life, wasn’t it? To stand here looking hard. The defender of the glen. Whatever the cost. Whatever the consequence. And it was always going to be that now, so long as the tinker chief sat on Lochalpin’s doorstep. Peace? Jesus Christ.

  He dragged the back of his hand across his nose. A crowd, armed with whatever they could lay their hands on, had swelled from nearby doorways. People were used to him and his men chasing raiders down this end of the glen. They weren’t used to him killing his own.

  “It’s all right, Maisie. Go back indoors.” He huffed out a breath. “He’s not a McDunnagh. And that… Hell that…” That he could fix. “That’s not even a man.”

  He’d waited for this. For four damn days he’d waited for this. Discovering her bedecked in a McDunnagh plaid and half his bed pelts, only added to the fury storming through his veins. He’d feel calmer when he’d dealt with that aspect of things at least.

  She stepped back against the doorframe, lifting her chin, as he strode crisply through the crimsoning snow toward her. The devious whore was used to being without clothes, although the flinch as he snatched what covered her, the flinch was masterful. Christ. He’d never seen a flinch like it. What did she think? She could throw her arms around his neck and he would forgive her?

  “It’s a woman.” He flung pelts and plaid to Wee Murdie. “Now isn’t that so, Princess?”

  With false decorum, he lowered his head, standing for a moment to gather himself, trying not to stare at her shapely legs, or the tarnished riot of hair tumbling down her back, fluttering a little in the soft breeze across her grimy face. He’d never seen anything like that either. Christ, but the deceitful damned slut was as fetching, trembling there against the doorframe in his tunic, as she was when he’d seen her naked on his bed.

  If she were to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him, he honestly believed he’d kiss her back. He couldn’t kiss her back. People would think him insane. He would think himself insane.

  “Ye know, Callm, I knew so.” Trust the daft old woman, working her hands together, to have sufficient intelligence to sum it up.

  He canted his jaw. “And they call you daft?”

  “My, what awfie lengths these young lassies have to go to though, to hide themselves from your brother.”

  “She’s not hiding from him exactly, now are you, Princess?” He let a hardened grin play. “What’s wrong?” He would prefer it if she’d say something, instead of standing there, breathing down her nose like this. “Cat got your—”

  He never got further because the next thing he knew he was flying backward through the air. Then he landed with a splatter of snow and slush on the ground, if only for the second it took him to realize she also sprawled on top of him.

  Then he realized, horror raking his scalp, she wasn’t any damned where at all. Never mind trying to escape him. What about taking him down? Swift as a snake uncoiling, he rolled over.

  Fire and ice, he thought, grabbing her ankle. What an explosive mix. That was why in finding himself between her wildly kicking legs, he equally determined to cut her no quarter. This was one occasion where his body would not defeat him.

  “Your lover put these manacles on you for his own safety, did he?”

  Well, his body wouldn’t, would it? For God’s sake, she was false. Everything about the conniving bitch was false. Even that flinch a second ago was designed to take him off his guard, so she could escape back to her damned father and the fine life she lived in Edinburgh.

  Yet he could not believe the power of the desire that raged through his veins, filling them with such fire he strove desperately to slay the urge to hike up the tunic. Add to the rampant surrealism of this moment by taking her.

  Was he mad? It would be nothing short of rape. She didn’t offer herself. Rape with an audience too.

  “Get your hands off me.”

  Quite the wildcat, wasn’t she? Of course he’d seen that that night in the snow, so to have to keep hold of her wrists now—at least forewarned was forearmed, his eyeballs would be staying put. His other balls too.

  “Is this you telling me what to do again?”

  “Get off. Let me up.”

  His hand encircled her thigh. Really, the damned way she carried on, flailing and writhing and trying to kick him, anyone would think she actually knew what rape was.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m not letting you anywhere. Not now I’ve finally got you.”

  Another swipe and an attempt to raise her head. “Go to hell.”

  “Difficult when you’re already there.” Edging a breath he glanced sideways. If she thought she could win this ragged crowd’s pity, by playing the Here’s poor little me in danger of being ravished by the big bad Wolf of Lochalpin maiden she could think again. “This fine trollop is my wife, by the way.”

  “I am not.”

  Not that she exactly did try to play it that way, unfortunately. In fact he believed he’d tamed less wild horses than this, which was why he was careful, as he leaned over her, to keep his face a burning glare. Ride about this glen tomorrow with it scratched to hell? No. He didn’t think so.

  “Well? Aren’t you dearest? You didn’t think I was somehow going to let our little association end so soon, now did you?”

  “Och away, Callm, your wife? Ye mean ye’re a married man? Ye never telt me.”

  Callm almost collapsed. Trust Maisie, waddling about there, not only to somehow make those gathered here laugh but undermine his attempt to be intimidating.

  “Well.” He jerked his gaze around. “That was difficult, Maisie. You are the jealous sort.”

  “Och, Callm, ye’re too young te please a weel-oiled hen like me. But would ye not be better off doing that indoors? The ground’s awfie hard. It’s right sore on a lassie’s back. Believe me, I know. What about a pillow, or a blanket for her at the very least?”

  A pillow? Or a blanket? If ever Callm had thought Maisie’s nickname a shade inappropriate, this wasn’t it. What next? A feather bed? Chicken soup to warm the treacherous limbs, bucking and flailing beneath him?

  By Christ, he could see his way through this laugher though. And he knew what he must do now, before any more time went by.

  “Christ, no Maisie.” He tossed the hair out his eyes. “But I’ll take a length of rope if you’ve any.”

  That was one way to freeze this creature, as abruptly as if he’d tossed a bucket of icy water over her. Thank God for that, he had begun to think nothing would. Now he just might get a little compliance from her.

  “Sir.” Her throat fluttered.

  He would, wouldn’t he?

  “Sir, I know you’re angry.”

  “On the contrary, now I’ve gone and found you, and I’ve taken the liberty of getting a length of rope, you might even say, no happier man resides inside Lochalpin Glen. Or shortly will. Outside it neither. Maisie”—he snapped his chin around—“if you don’t mind?”

  “Aye.”

  “Sir, I am begging—”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “It’s just, it’s just there is something I have never told you, which is why I beg…I beg you—”

  “Haven’t you got anything better in your armory there than beg the big bad Black Wolf of Lochalpin not to kill you? After all, you seduced me, didn’t you?”

  The way her whole body tightened, he’d have been forgiven for thinking he’d slapped her. Except he didn’t want to be forgiven. He’d come too damned far for that. And he didn’t want her thinking she could do it again either. Not when he had her where he wanted her.

  Let t
his creature beg and he might change his mind. There couldn’t be one set of rules for her, another for the rest of the people of this glen. He had always been fair about that. It was why Traitor’s Pole existed. And if she squirmed, if she made that despairing noise at the back of her throat, her eyes brimming…

  “Here ye go, Callm. I always keep a bit handy, in case there’s a mannie on the loose needing caught. By myself, ye know.”

  As Maisie passed him the rope, he had the satisfaction of seeing the topaz eyes darken to midnight intensity. It forced the consideration. Was he playing his hand too soon though?

  How much more interesting it would have been to have kept his temper and continued this little game of hers, to the finish. After all, the damned bitch might have no idea he’d gleaned her little secret about her being here to take down his clan. Right now she was probably acting the unfaithful wife.

  But look where lies had gotten him.

  As for this acting talent of hers. He should have wondered what Ian Dhub was thinking, desiring to marry her off to someone as unappreciative as the turd when it was very clear she’d pack the booths in Edinburgh. Probably raise enough to feed the whole of the Highlands for the winter.

  Never mind her acting talent. He wished he could say he could have played on with confidence. How could he? His body’s reaction was treacherous. Shot with admiration too. Most men would have cracked entirely by now.

  “Now.” He edged back. “I am going to get to my feet. You are too.”

  “Please. I swear. I swear to you—”

  “You make one move in the wrong direction here and we’re not going to get as far as this rope. Is that understood?”

  “I won’t. I swear I will oblige you in whatever way you want.”

  He caught her wrist and jerked her to her feet. As ever the touch of her bare flesh burnt, so even knowing he mustn’t let it, it made no difference. “What did I say?”

  “I-I have a little—”

  “I don’t care what you have.”

  “He—”

  “Put out your hands.”