by Shayla Black
Beside her, Drake’s mouth twisted in a sneer of contempt. “There is the man you sought to wed.”
Averyl flinched at that truth.
“You could help it very much by closing your legs to every man who walks your way,” Murdoch sneered. “Remember that the next time you want a man to claim your brat.”
With a dismissive wave, he turned to a shorter man beside her. “Wallace, see to her care before she nags me to death.”
With a nod, the woman and the soldier disappeared, presumably inside the inn. Averyl felt cold with shock. True, she’d wondered for some time if Murdoch was the dream lover she sought, but she had thought him steadfast, kind. His callousness of a woman so clearly in delicate discomfort sent horror curdling in her belly.
“’Tis cruel,” she whispered.
Drake nodded. “Especially since the bairn is his.”
“But Murdoch said—”
“That she made herself available to any man? No man at Dunollie would be fool enough to dally with Murdoch’s leman. Few men find a tumble worth their lives.”
Averyl took in Drake’s words in solemn shock. Edina’s tale, along with Drake’s warnings and Murdoch’s actions, painted an ugly picture of the man she’d nearly wed. A man with whom life could not have been peaceful, much less happy, particularly if he had killed his father, as Drake claimed. As she now feared he was capable. She could nae have loved a monster like that. And it stood to reason he had no real wish to wed her, either, other than to fulfill the terms of his father’s will.
Such meant that, if she could escape Drake, ’twould not be to seek Murdoch. Marriage to such a man would be like a descent into hell, permanent and fraught with evil. But what to do now?
Swallowing a hard lump of truth, Averyl realized she could not escape Drake’s velvet prison. Not yet, for she had nowhere to run. Abbotsford lay too far away, and her father would only try to wed her off to the odious Murdoch again. And there was that binding matter of her handfast to Drake…
He had her well and truly trapped—but only for now.
“Where to, my lord, since we found naught on the western isles?” the man named Wallace returned to ask Murdoch.
Beside her, Drake smiled. Apparently their hidden cottage had not been breached. Something that made little sense, something that felt oddly like relief, slid through her.
The MacDougall paused, rubbing his thumb against the square block of his chin. “Ask the innkeepers within if they’ve seen the swine and that scrawny bitch.”
Panic infused Averyl as she gazed wide eyed at Drake. Looking shockingly unruffled, he released her and grabbed her valise. “We must be away.”
“Where? They will find us before we can safely flee.”
He shook his head, sparing another glance out the window. “Gordan and Edina will lie for us, much as I’m loathed to see them do it. They will give Murdoch naught. But we must not linger, in case he demands to search the inn.”
“Aye,” she whispered as he pushed her toward the door.
“They slept here just last night says the innkeeper’s wife,” the voice outside told Murdoch.
Averyl froze. Were Drake’s friends Murdoch’s as well? Had they betrayed him?
“And?” the MacDougall barked with impatience.
“They left early this morn, headed north.”
Drake smiled once more at the blatant lie. Averyl felt her tension ease.
After a pause, Murdoch added, “The Highlands offer many places to hide. But Diera’s by-blow cannot hide forever.”
“’Tis true,” Murdoch’s henchman, Wallace, added.
Beside her, Drake tensed, nostrils flared, jaw strained. Without thought, Averyl placed her hand on his arm in a gesture of comfort.
“Let us search the rooms in case he left aught behind,” Murdoch called, then ducked out of sight, through the inn’s main door.
Averyl’s heart lurched in her throat. Drake merely glanced at her, brows raised, before he shot her a wolf’s smile and dropped her valise.
She shivered as he crossed the room and withdrew a knife strapped inside his boot. Without hesitation, without flinching, he drew the blade across his palm, unearthing a ribbon of crimson blood across his browned skin. Stomach churning, mind racing, Averyl watched as he swiped his injured hand across the white sheet, staining it red.
When Drake turned back to her, mischief filled the corners of his smile. “Let Murdoch think what he will of that.”
Bitterness rose. Nay, he wanted her not, but would let his own blood to have others believe he did. Her belly clenched. ’Twas fury, she swore, not pain.
Drake wanted Murdoch to feel certain she had shared those tangled sheets with him like the most intimate of lovers. Why? As a statement of possession? Of revenge?
Still wearing a grin, her husband wrapped a kerchief about his hand and grabbed her valise with the other before showing her out the door and down the back stairs, away from the foul sounds of Murdoch’s curses.
As Drake’s hand rested protectively at the small of her back, Averyl found herself unaccountably grateful that he had taken her from Murdoch’s clutches, despite her resentment. Despite the fact she knew her new husband could not love her.
* * * * *
Upon a choppy but uneventful boat ride back to Arran and their hidden cottage, evening fell. With it, desire and memories of Averyl’s soft body and willing moans rose.
Once inside the damp cottage, Drake turned his back to his virgin bride and sloshed ale into a tin cup. Her wide hazel eyes stabbed at his conscience as did his memories of her midnight tears the night before. Raising the mug to his mouth, he downed the contents in one quick swallow, then poured more. He repeated the process twice within seconds, hoping at once to drown his lust and his guilt.
Aye, how he wanted her. Burned to possess her. Should, in fact, take her tonight—now—to make their handfast binding.
But he could not make himself do aught that might hurt her.
Still, he recognized that one could not be had without the other. Christ’s oath, she wanted love, some fool’s notion of devotion and chivalry that existed not.
A quick glance at her pacing near the door revealed a cautious expression, her greenish eyes still accused. Maybe she did not understand what love really meant, what it wrought. How could she? As a sheltered innocent, she could not know what he did, had not seen the devastation left in love’s wake.
Drake paced, downing another long swallow of the bitter brew in his cup. He could tell her, aye. But would she understand?
Mayhap the problem was his. Averyl had never professed to love him, just to be seeking love itself. Perhaps he assumed more since she would not leave his mind.
Since this morn, he’d begun to wonder what spell she had cast over him. Why could he not tear her from his gaze, absent her essence from his senses, free her from his thoughts?
Drake paused to refill his cup and empty it once again. “She nearly killed my father.”
A frown wrinkled Averyl’s brow. “Who?”
“My mother.” Eyes narrowed, he turned away with a harsh grunt. “Her perfidy wounded him. The rest”—she shook his head—“nearly ended his will to live.”
When Drake spun toward her again, her face was a study in turmoil. Warmth and liquid fire washed through him.
“The rest?” she choked out. “We spoke of your mother’s seduction at Murdoch’s hands. Is there more?”
He tossed back another long swallow of ale, his fingers tightening around the little cup. “The bairn.”
“Bairn? Your mother conceived another one?”
He nodded, turning away so she could not see his face. Schooling his emotions, he waited for her inevitable question.
“Who sired…”
After a terrible moment of silence, Averyl gasped. Drake gnashed his teeth, thankful that she had spared him the humiliation of answ
ering.
“Murdoch got your mother with child?”
Drake turned toward the horror hanging in her every syllable. “Aye.”
Face white, she placed a trembling hand over her mouth. “What happened then? Your father must have been…”
“Furious,” he slurred. “Hurt. Bewildered to be so betrayed by his wife.” He nodded, tossing back more ale. “Choose any among them. Each fits,” he said, making a sweeping gesture. “But that was not the worst. Not by half.”
Looking into his empty cup, Drake swayed toward the ale and refilled it. “My mother knew there would be reprisals for her faithlessness.” He stared moodily into his cup as if it foretold the past. “She tried to abort and died.”
Averyl placed protective hands over her stomach. Drake saw the gesture, which warmed and irritated him at once. Still, the impact of his words on her soft face could not be discounted, though he’d begun to see two of her. Shock had replaced her anger, concern overridden anxiety. A curious softness took up residence in his chest.
Raking a hand through his long hair, Drake was annoyed to find that it shook. “My father was a proud man. A fierce warrior who put fear into the hearts of many on the battlefield. My mother stripped him of that. He held Diera while she bled. He cried like a child as he chanted his love for her over and over, as if it were some talisman against death.” Drake frowned, bitterness seething in his gut. “As she drew her last breath, she told him to rot in hell.”
“Oh, Drake. How terrible,” she whispered, her words like a soothing balm on the chafed surface of his soul. He closed his eyes against a suddenly swaying world.
“Aye,” he said. “’Twas bad enough until Murdoch framed me for a murder I did not commit, the murder of a man I loved well.”
Trembling, Averyl rose and placed a soft hand on Drake’s taut arm. He stared at her, his eyes anguished yet unfocused.
Sliding her hand in his, Averyl squeezed his warm palm. Her heart pained for him, for she understood now what a bitter threat he thought love to be.
Given his knowledge of Dunollie and of his nemesis, Averyl could only assume that the soothsayer at the fair had spoken true of some bond the two men shared. Perhaps Drake’s father had been a soldier for Lochlan MacDougall, mayhap even one of his clansmen. Not only had his father most likely watched the more powerful Lochlan take to his mother’s bed, he’d known she had also bedded down with the chief’s son. A terrible tragedy for Diera’s ambition or passions to have wrought.
She soothed a hand over Drake’s clenched fist. “I am heartily sorry.”
“’Tis in the past, and I do not want your pity,” he spat, wiping the melancholy from his sharp features. “’Tis your body I seek now, the sweet surrender I should have taken last night.”
He reached for her, the dark tones in his face matching his voice. His warm palm slid across her shoulder, gliding down her tingling arm, before he wrapped his fingers around her elbow. Averyl trembled with awareness, wondering why she always reacted to Drake this way, even when he presented the mask of an inebriated, irrational stranger, even when he lashed out in pain.
“You want revenge, not me.”
Bitterly, he laughed. “I want you.”
“But—”
“My mother showed me early that a man should never leave a woman’s bed untended. Diera’s passions were too strong to go long without a lover.” He paused, his gaze invading her soul. “I will not be fool enough to make that mistake with you.”
“I’m not your mother,” Averyl corrected warily.
“’Tis true enough, but you are more dangerous,” he said huskily. “You make me feel.”
Averyl absorbed that shocking news as Drake grasped her other arm and hauled her against his chest. His eyes, though half-closed now, gleamed with a golden, hungry light that made her heart pound. “I want in your arms. Your verra bed, lass. To feel your sweet mouth”—he swayed, then steadied himself—“your sweet mouth beneath mine.”
He swerved again, his head rolling to one side, eyes closed. She scarcely had time to wrest the tin cup from his limp fingers before Drake sank into the chair behind him. His snores moments later told her there would be no more talk that night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Averyl lifted a quilt over her sleeping husband with shaking hands. Sleep softened his angled features, the hard slant of his mouth. He looked tired, and after speaking so much of the past he clearly hated, Averyl knew he needed whatever brief rest the ale could give him.
Disillusionment was exhausting, as experience had taught her. Hope, a brief, shining star against the backdrop of her life, always died a slow, wearying death, leaving behind only bleak reality. Learning to live without her mother, without her father’s approval, and most recently without a husband’s adoration, had taught her to understand such bitterness. Drake had learned, too, from his mother’s rejection, Murdoch’s cruelties, and the Clan MacDougall’s murder accusations.
His self-imposed distance made sense now. After Diera’s betrayal, he had sealed off his heart from any possible hurt that might mirror his beloved father’s. Drake needed love. Instead of feeling the hunger for it, as she did, he guarded himself with mail-clad barricades so tight he could not see that truth.
He seemed determined to believe he was utterly alone in this world and even more determined to convince himself that he preferred life in solitude. Only ’twas not true. Averyl saw now his great need, even as he continued to deny it.
A sad smile floated across her mouth. Drake could pretend evil, could try to convince her of his harmful intent. She knew better, indeed probably understood more than he wished.
With a light touch of her finger, she caressed his stubbled cheek. He needed the very comforts she sought: understanding, acceptance, to believe that someone cared.
’Twas her duty as his wife to provide them. But the burgeoning sentiment in her heart had only to do with a bond she now felt linked them. Aye, she understood him, knew him.
Cared for him.
’Twas a foolish feeling, one he would never return for many reasons, chief among them his scarred heart and her homeliness. Still, she clung to her notion like a treasured secret. She could treat him well when the rest of the world wished him ill and hope he held some regard for her. That seemed her only recourse, for to tell him of her sentiment would only drive a wedge between them the size of Abbotsford’s debts.
* * * * *
Drake woke the next morning to the assault of sunlight and Averyl cheerily humming by the stove, clad in modest gray and one of those frilly white caps he hated. Groaning, he rolled away from his pallet and donned his breeches, feeling as if a hairy creature had taken up residence in his mouth and a marching army now lived inside his head.
He also felt as if his senses had taken leave of him last night.
Turning to him, Averyl gazed at him with soft eyes and a face flushed. “Would you break your fast?”
Food? He grimaced and shook his head.
A moment later, she sat down with some heated wine and a bread. Drake watched her, wondering when his head would cease aching…and what Averyl thought of his foolish loose tongue.
Aye, he remembered—with unfortunate clarity—what he had told her in his drunken state. Never, from the day he had taken Averyl from Dunollie, had he intended to tell her of the past, particularly the goriest of details, the kind which he’d revealed last night.
Then he’d seized her in his drunken grip, likened her to his mother, and all but told her he wanted to swive her.
Damnation! Could he have been any more thoughtless?
Whispering a curse, he strode to the window and glared out. The late morn air held a breeze. The sun shone upon the tufts of green grass swaying across the ravine floor. Drake sighed.
Averyl did not need to know of his past, of his mother and father, what motivated him to seek revenge. She had no notion what linked him to Murd
och, nor would he tell her.
More power over him Averyl did not need, for as the ache in his head subsided, the ache in his loins grew. A yearning to be beside her seized his logic. He wanted her in a way that went beyond mere desire. ’Twas not something he understood—or liked. But Drake feared nothing he did, short of lowering her to his mattress and taking her repeatedly until he could no longer want, would change his craving for her.
Still, he owed her an apology—more than one—for his behavior last night. For his surly mood of late. For allowing her to believe he’d thought her too homely to consummate their marriage.
“Are you certain you’ve no wish to break your fast?” came her soft inquiry from across the room.
“Aye,” he said, facing her. “I must fish, else we will have no meal this eve.”
A wistful yearning filled her eyes with green, just as spring did the land. “Aye.”
On silent footsteps, he approached, softened by her expression, the lonely turn of her mouth. Averyl’s melancholy disturbed him, even pained him in some silent way.
He frowned. “Averyl, I know when we were last here you did not leave this cottage much for the out of doors.”
“True.” Her smile looked tight and grim. “As a child, my father used to tell me I liked sun too much, for it gave me freckles upon my nose.”
Drake pictured her, all blond curls, freckles, and mischief darting about the green Scottish hills, laughing, pretending…
He shook the image away, disgruntled with the thought he had taken that pleasure from her. “Would you like… You could walk along the beach whilst I fish, if it would please you.”
Her hazel gaze flashed up to his, full of appreciation and excitement, like a child with an unexpected sweet.
“It would please me greatly.”
Together, they left the cottage. Ascending the steep hill to the gate, Drake turned and retrieved the key. He unlocked the barrier and let her through with a wave of his hand.
Her gentle smile, the one that curled her pink mouth and brought joy to her eyes, flashed across her face. Before he could stop himself, Drake found himself responding in kind.
