She could ignore what he said. But it wasn’t for nothing she’d learned in her father’s dungeon the value of a second’s respite. She just had never thought to require that moment because what sparked in her veins was so unruly. She supposed she should be grateful when it came to eating and drinking, the words be merry weren’t added to the list. “Very well.”
“In exchange for a little information.”
“Information? About what?”
“Truthfully, Princess, I’m surprised at you asking so stupid a question. Especially when we have this disagreeable little situation here, on what is technically our wedding night, concerning you, me, and your, well, whatever the hell that man I killed, was to you. Oh. And let’s not forget your noble father, who I have technically been at war with for five years. Long ones, which is why I won’t just cut that lying little throat of yours right now and send you home in a box.”
She glanced sideways, then back again. In all the scenarios she had imagined since Kendrick dropped dead in front of her, this wasn’t one. The being sent home in a box bit anyway.
It gave her a bargaining counter, didn’t it? Just because she had spent five years in a dungeon, it didn’t mean she wasn’t entitled to certain things. It didn’t mean he knew that.
“Hell, Princess, cat got your tongue again?” He let go of her wrists, although she did not miss the watchful way his eyes grazed her as he stepped back. “Why tiptoe here when your talent is great for hobnailed boots? Just spit it out, if the story is you took one look at me across Father Andrew’s prayer book and decided to run.”
“No. Thank you.”
He huffed out a breath, a derisive one. “Hell. Why not?”
Although his footsteps echoed softly, his jaw had hardened. He was getting impatient. Up to a point she didn’t blame him. If she had brought him in here to show him all these nice things and he was being no end of stubborn, she would be impatient too. It was just, tell him the truth? How could she?
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“I don’t spit.”
He rounded on her. “Well, isn’t that the damndest thing. You don’t spit? And you don’t stick about after wedding ceremonies much either. But at least you don’t try spilling that you love me. Now, isn’t that one blessing to be thankful for?”
Well, wasn’t it? Great God Almighty, when she had not really considered it. Yet the knowledge of him today, standing in the castle yard, and at the hand-fasting. Later, when she had known, perhaps as she even knew then, in these seconds when she held him in that dance, she could not betray him because she could not imagine a world where she would do that, only a world where she’d sacrifice herself. Dare she think, was that love?
She had tried so hard to tell herself this, all of it, was lust. Because she had lived so long without that feeling—for her son perhaps, but nothing else. And all of this had happened at a rate she could neither grasp, nor comprehend, everything spinning beyond her control. She could not let it get in the way of Arland.
She could not let it get in the way of herself when previously such a runaway shore as she had danced on had ruined her life. And so she had not wanted to see, because she preferred not to, that here was a man she might like, because then it might be a man she could love. She did not know she was capable, the dried shell that she was.
And even now, doubting that he asked her because he expected her to say yes, what pathetic integrity she still possessed in his eyes, would be irretrievably lost, if she did. Because even now it seemed, although there were many times they had not played it, this was a game.
“No. I—I actually don’t know why you’re asking me to spill that, when it’s obvious you don’t think so. And I don’t believe you’d have tied me up if you did. However—”
“Kara, how about you stop this now?”
“You—” Fortunately her scalp wasn’t so damaged, she didn’t have the presence of mind to snap her mouth shut on the word know. After all, he had never called her that.
Even as the thought stirred she knew he must be well pleased with his victory. Having created this moment, she doubted he’d shrink from taking it.
“Call it being one step ahead. You know, I honestly believe you thought I was stupid. Now are you going to tell me exactly what I want to know, so I can decide what I’m going to do about it, or must I take that information by any means I can?”
She shrugged. “If you’re going to rape me, you might as well get on with it.” After all, she had a son to protect. She had already failed to put him first. She couldn’t do it again.
Chapter Eleven
So help him, she said that damned word, rape, again, he was going to struggle to keep his dwindling temper. Yes, he would have that information, but not like that. There were plenty ways of getting information. For example, he could try asking.
“Listen, you blasted minx. I brought you here out of respect for your position.”
Of course asking was not as easy as all that. He gestured toward her, where she stood against the wall as if her shoulders were pinned to it, although her head was bent. A first.
“As you so rightly reminded me earlier today, when I freely admit, I was angry, you’re my wife. For better. Or for worse. But there’s dungeons here the same as anywhere else.”
She lowered her head further. “I know. I saw them already. The other day.”
He could try being nice too. But that was harder. Especially when he knew perfectly well, bent head or not, she watched him. “Is that what you think? These ones you saw are all we’ve got here? Do you believe I have a reputation founded on these?”
“I’m sure you’ve more. Special ones. For people like me. Threats to the glen.”
“You rest assured, Princess, if I felt anything, anything for you at all, those paradoxically, are the ones you’d be seeing right now. Do I make myself plain?”
“Not really.”
He must also conclude this baggage thought she could evince her mastery of him, of this whole sordid situation, because Morven’s fate was a talisman that would protect her from him sexually.
She must. And was that why she stood there, with her eyelashes coolly swept down, for all he stepped closer, prepared to face whatever she thought he devised—how could she think him so low—with the disinterest reserved for a distant, semi-senile grandparent?
If he was to be honest though, placing her in this situation, this clever one he had purposely devised precisely so she wouldn’t be able to face him up and force his admiration, hadn’t just widened the rift in his chest. It had ripped his chest apart. He knew he shouldn’t have played his hand at Maisie’s door. How much easier it would have been to pretend. Where she was concerned he was totally damned incapable.
Love? He wished he hadn’t used that word either. Had he thrown a viper at her, she couldn’t have looked more horrified. It made him look needy. What was more the fact he’d found himself waiting for her reply said he was, when he didn’t give a damn for this creature, dancing back from Edinburgh to do this. It had been easier to shag her though, those days in the cave, than admit to any doubt about her, hadn’t it?
She lifted her chin, looked right into his eyes. “Because the fact is I’m not now. Am I? Seeing these dungeons?”
Although his palms itched, Callm resisted the hitherto unknown urge to slap a woman. He couldn’t stand the faintly glistening, faintly hopeful look she edged him. He would like to determine it as smug.
Standing like this, listening to the minutes sizzling by in a spittle of peat flame, while God alone knew what would be burnt by morning—his people, his glen—he wasn’t sure.
He tilted his jaw, offering his best glare. “You never let me finish. I was going to say if I felt anything, anything for you at all, I’d be angry enough to lock the door and throw away the key, in any one of them. Stop you ever seeing the light of day again. Because that’s the kind of man I am, when I get angry, about things I care about. But I’m not that ang
ry. And that should tell you, I’m not even that interested where you’re concerned.”
“Thank you so much for clearing that up.”
All right. That was brutal but a woman who’d refused a dangled straw-end, the opportunity to appeal to his heart, was hardly likely to quake in her traitorous boots and start talking, simply because he’d spelt her position out for her.
But even he hadn’t expected it to be as difficult as this. For her to stand there shuttered, veiled, her husky, light voice brushing him, just like it had that day in the cave, when he was set for packing her up bag and baggage. And then, he’d felt bad about it.
Or course, he tried not to admit it. He should never have brought her in here at all. He should have locked her up. Then he should have heaved the key in the loch. With a ton weight attached. The heaviest he could find but still lift.
Now he at least had her here, if not exactly as he wanted, it would be a great mistake to capitulate. Not only had she amply demonstrated how casually she could seduce one man, while belonging to another, she’d casually failed to caterwaul over his corpse.
“You’re welcome. And now you’re going to return the favor. Clear up some things for me. Let’s start with one very simple question.”
He had the satisfaction of seeing her run her tongue around her lips. At least it would be if he didn’t find himself staring so closely.
“The four days.”
He could tell, by the way her gaze skittered sideways, the question was so far from what she expected, he just might get an answer.
“The four days, ninety-six hours, you and I didn’t happen to be together in the man and wife way of things.” He didn’t want her thinking he meant the other days. The ones Archibald Kelty had taken such issue with.
“Would you mind telling me how the hell you managed it? To give me the slip? I like to think my defenses are strong. Obviously you had help. How many of you are there here in Lochalpin?”
That, if the look she scarred him with was anything to go by, made him more determined to threaten.
“Listen, Princess, if I have to turn this glen upside down, I will find them.”
“If that’s what you enjoy. Don’t let me stand in the way of a good time.”
“Don’t you worry your sweet little head about that. That’s exactly what I’m going to have. Where’s your clothes?”
“Clothes?”
The attempt at surprise was admirable. Unfortunately though, it would do her no good at all here.
“The wee things you wear. Less often in your case. Of course, maybe you enjoy standing here half naked.”
He’d asked. She’d tell. And until she did he was going to plant himself here. In front of her. Lean his arm on the door too. Just a pity she turned her face away.
“You said one question. That’s at least another two.”
He smothered the semi-sardonic huff that rose on the back of his throat. “Well, like you, I lied. But while we’re on the subject of counting, would you rather we added up the amount of times we fucked during the four days you spent in my bed? How you felt about each one and how often you enjoyed it.”
He didn’t know if he’d ever seen a look like that on the face on any woman. Such fury sparked he suspected it was fortunate her hands were tied.
“My clothes are at the bottom of the loch.”
“Drown them, did you?”
She straightened her chin. “Your dog would have picked up a scent. So I weighted them. And then, I’d obviously nothing to wear. So I took your things.”
And damned fetching she looked in them too. Except he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“I thought you’d search down the pass, toward the entry to the glen. So I went the other way. Back up the loch side. There’s places there behind the big ring of boulders. You’ll know of them.”
He straightened his shoulders. Jesus. Of course he knew of such places. He just hadn’t looked in them, had he?
His unwilling scrutiny dropped down her bare leg to the limp, damp boot lying beside her foot. It must have come loose when she had sprung for the door. She was so extraordinarily beautiful, so nicely spoken too, not for the first time he couldn’t help thinking that bracelet of bruises didn’t make any sense.
He stared harder. When he paused, when his rational self considered it, these stories he’d heard about the McGurkies, was it possible there was something he missed here?
Oh, for Christ’s whispered sake. Not again. What was this?
For a woman who didn’t appear too terribly troubled about how he took the information, she said a lot. For a man who’d sworn to get that information at all costs, he let her.
He raised his chin. “So how did you get out the cave?”
“That was the easy bit. I waded.”
It wasn’t possible. He didn’t believe her. He refused to believe her. But an image imprinted itself on his senses of her wading through the swirling water in her bare legs, wearing only his tunic. What flooded his senses wasn’t the usual lust the thought of her thighs engendered. He knew how perishing that water felt.
He clasped his dagger hilt. He had said he would untie her in exchange for some information. Anyway, if she tried escaping he would deal with it. “Here.”
He slid the blade beneath the rope. Must she look as if he took her by surprise, though?
“A deal’s a deal. I think I said I’d untie you in exchange for some information.”
“T-thank-you.” She rubbed her wrists together.
He narrowed his eyes, staring at her fingers from which all the blood had seeped. In truth he had tied the rope as tightly as he meant.
So what the hell was he doing hurriedly sloshing whiskey into a silver goblet? What would it be tomorrow when he had to tie her to Traitor’s Pole and cut her throat before the clan? Silken chords? Bandages for her throat? Soft cushions to protect her delicate feet from cold?
Because he knew he’d have to do it. There was no avoidance of glen law. He should know. He made it. It didn’t matter that she was Ian Dhub’s daughter. Ian Dhub had sent her here to murder. He would have a damned nerve to complain. If Callm let that go, Christ knew what would be here next. So he couldn’t let it go. He just found it hard, getting his head around what she was here for when he thought about her, some of the times anyway, in his bed. And it wasn’t just how she’d beguiled him with her body.
“Drink this.” He strode across the floor. “Go on. In fact, here.” Ignoring—trying to anyway—the way her mouth dropped open, he dragged the chair forward. “Sit down.”
“Is…is it poisoned?”
“Poisoned?”
He fought to keep the irritation out his voice. In fact the McDunnagh kitchen staff appeared to have excelled themselves for once. Whatever else appeared to have gone to pieces here, and whatever might be in these covered dishes, the smell winding around his nostrils was mouth-watering. Venison maybe? In a good rich gravy. “Well. Why don’t you drink it and find out?”
Under other circumstances it would have been pleasant to sit down with his pretty, young bride, partake of a little food and drink. The whole night before him to taste everything else in. The sweet lips. The even sweeter body.
But no. Because she plotted murder with a thieving bunch of tinkers and had the audacity to wonder just how many had spat in the stew. And he had just sat her down on a chair.
“Of course, Princess, maybe there’s a more prescient reason you don’t want to drink that, you’d now like to tell me about?”
“I’m not pregnant if that’s what you’re wondering. Well. Unless, of course…” Her hand shook, be it ever so slightly as she raised the goblet to her lips.
Callm stared at her there, with her throat strangely fluttering and her topaz eyes seeming to look at nothing at all, except maybe the bottom of the goblet that she was in the process of draining at a rate that would have put Ewen to shame—who said people didn’t get like those they live with? And he struggled, quite badly, in fact, wi
th what swamped his veins, to smother the urge to upend the table.
Of course she didn’t know. She’d no damned way of knowing. And he knew that when he’d almost forgotten himself, it was all ancient history. But damn it all to hell, with the exception of Morven, she was the only woman he’d ever spilled inside. No matter the women he’d had.
He had a daughter. The first time Fallon was placed in his arms was one of the happiest moments of his life. All right, so he hadn’t been a father to her since. She was still his. All he’d left in the world of the woman, the only woman, he’d ever loved.
How dare this damned bitch, who’d schemed Fallon’s destruction, attempt a clumsy play on his sympathies with the dangerous suggestion she was pregnant. And that just maybe therefore she was entitled to live. Before he felt an instant’s disbelief at her lunatic musing, he needed to remember how badly he’d let her undermine him before. And how.
Or the question of whether or not the damned woman was pregnant wouldn’t arise.
“I’m not talking about that.” He tamped his first desire, which was to hurl the whiskey flagon against the wall. “I’m talking about murder under trust. I’m talking about going to tell Ewen I’d just married you, precisely because I believed I had deflowered his fiancée, and finding out I couldn’t have, at least it would be technically impossible to have deflowered his fiancée, when his fiancée had no damned intention of marrying him in the first place, but one of helping cut his throat at the wedding table. So, if chance should have it, that you’re now pregnant from the four days you spent whoring yourself in my bed, I’d say that is the very least of your worries.”
“How do you know?”
Such surprise flared in his chest, she had stood up and set the goblet on the table before he realized it.
“Whether it’s the least of your worries, you’re pregnant, or your sister’s a guest of your father? Why, bad news travels fast. Did no one ever tell you that? It happens your thieving tinker clan let someone slip. Her own personal bodyguard.”
His Judas Bride Page 20
