Shana Abe

by The Truelove Bride

  She could pretend to fall ill suddenly, faint and not rouse out of it until the priest grew tired of waiting—

  She could stand up as Claudia wanted her to do, refuse to wed Warner, publicly accuse Bryce of plotting her father’s death—

  Madness, all of it. Avalon gave a despairing laugh to a bayberry bush. Perhaps Nicholas Latimer had been right all along. Perhaps she really was insane.

  Up ahead came a rustling sound, limbs shaking and falling still, so insignificant she might have imagined it.

  Her steps slowed on the white stone path, then stopped. In one of the old trees a lark began and finished a song, short and trilling.

  The sky was drenched in purple and blue, matching her gown, fading quickly to the inky blackness of the night.

  The lark sang again.

  A curious sense of calm fell over Avalon. She moved forward into the garden. There used to be a marble bench somewhere here. There used to be a succulent vine of honeysuckle draping over it, creating a cave of leaves and flowers. She would like to see that again, the emerald leaves and yellow-throated flowers. She would like to smell the dewy perfume until it took away her troubles, let her understand clearly what she must do.

  The rustling came once more as she neared the end of the little path, and this time it was directly to her left, behind the smooth leaves of a winter cherry tree.

  Or rather, not really behind the leaves. Next to them, actually, where the stranger she had met last night at the inn now crouched.

  She stared down at him, unsurprised, as if it were completely natural to find a man hiding in a garden at dusk.

  He looked different in the lingering eventide light. His hair was loose and fell to his shoulders; the fine tunic he wore last night had transformed into a plainer one, covered with a tartan of black and gold and red and purple.

  That tartan. She knew it well, had worn it herself for seven years of her life.

  The man’s eyes met her own. They were both frozen, caught up in the odd instant of one monumental second turning over to the next, where nothing would ever be quite as it had been.

  His look turned feral, then triumphant.

  “Rosalind,” he said, and God help her, she still didn’t hear the Scottish accent.

  Of course not, because Marcus Kincardine had been away from his homeland for most of his life. He would speak as his knight had done.

  There was nothing she could do. She took a step back anyway, holding out one hand in front of her as if to ward him off.

  Marcus stood up, towering over her, matched the step she had taken away with a forward one of his own. His teeth flashed white in the darkness.

  “Or Lady Avalon, I should say.”

  And then they took her.

  Chapter Three

  They smuggled her out wrapped in a burlap sack, trussed and gagged and buried underneath a damp mound of hay on a cart.

  There were eight of them at least, including the son of Hanoch, who had personally tied her hands and bound her mouth, but not before she got in one powerful jab to his chin. She had fought as well as she could, but eight were too many, and they had her pinned down with barely a sound.

  Marcus had stood over her, dabbed the blood from his lips and given her that feral smile again as he leaned down to tighten her bonds.

  “Hanoch got to you, I see,” he said, sounding nothing like his father.

  The sack was a thousand times rougher than Elfrieda’s cape had been, smelling of sour apples and dust, making her eyes water. Someone lay almost on top of her in the hay cart, kept her from moving about.

  She didn’t need to hear his voice again to know it was him.

  “You’re doing very well,” Marcus whispered next to her ear. “Rosalind.”

  Beyond the hay she could hear others talking in the bailey, men discussing the day, the party, the weather. It would be the serfs, leaving again for the village. Bryce’s guards were still disgusted with their lord’s guests, waving the hay cart and its occupants on with no pause in their conversation about last night’s lack of sleep in the stables.

  The wheels creaked and thunked their way over the road, down to the village and then beyond it, only the crickets accompanying them now.

  Avalon shifted in the hay, testing the rope that tied her wrists together. Marcus inched closer, taking her hands in his through the sack and holding them immobile.

  “Not yet,” he said softly.

  Hay poked through the loosely woven sack, pricking her all over. The gag was clean but her mouth was becoming unbearably dry, making her long for something to drink.

  She had a sudden vision of Warner, standing bewildered in the middle of the great hall, a filled goblet in each hand. A laugh rose in her chest and caught there, delirious.

  She had wanted to escape.

  Well, by heavens, she certainly had pulled it off.

  It seemed like an eternity that the cart rolled and creaked along. Except for the sharp bits, the hay was somewhat comfortable, cushioning her from the worst of the pits in the road, but the air was musty and scarce. Marcus kept his hands firm on her own, letting her know without a doubt he had control over her.

  At last they halted, and for the first time she heard the others speak, clipped tones and hushed commands. Marcus moved; she felt the hay lift and lighten, then he was pulling her upright, yanking her down off the cart to stand on the path.

  “Are they here?” she heard him ask, still holding on to her as she balanced in place with her ankles tied together, blinded in the damnable sack.

  “Aye,” said a new voice. “Over here, my lord.”

  As soon as the words came she was swept up in his arms, sack and all, handed off to someone else and then handed up, presumably to Marcus, now mounted on a horse.

  “Ye got the lass so quickly, then?” asked someone else.

  “We had a change in plan,” Marcus replied. He put one solid arm around her waist and pulled her back to lean against him. When she resisted, he pulled her harder, holding her there.

  “The lass obliged us by coming out to the garden alone. We didn’t even have to go in.”

  “Are ye sure it’s the right one?” asked the same man, doubtful.

  “Oh, aye,” drawled Marcus, low and certain. “It’s her. She had her hair covered last night, but it’s her. She has the mark.”

  They spoke in English, certainly not for her benefit, Avalon thought. Perhaps this man was as unused to his native tongue as she was. She could probably muddle through the Gaelic in her head, but this made things simpler.

  Hanoch’s son had tied her hands in front of her, a serious miscalculation on his part. The rope around her left wrist had loosened slightly, just enough for her to slowly, slowly begin to ease her hand out of it.

  The horse leapt forward and she bounced back into his chest, unable to stop herself. Marcus held her tighter, then pushed the horse to a gallop.

  She could breathe better, but the wind brought the dust from the sack back into her face. Avalon turned her head to the side and squeezed her eyes shut. Her wrists were aching, her skin had a hot, slippery feel that had to be blood. But her hand was almost free.

  There were more than eight of them now, no doubt, but how many she could not guess from the pounding of the hooves. If they had planned to steal her away from the party, they could not be an inconsiderable number. If they had planned an all-out attack, there might be hundreds.

  It seemed so implausible that she let out a muffled laugh past the gag. A hundred men would never, ever reach the border in time.

  Marcus was silent behind her, moving to the rhythm of his horse’s steps, faceless to her, and, Avalon thought, brutal but not stupid.

  So there wouldn’t be hundreds of them. There would be just a core group, perhaps no more than thirty, his best warriors who would know how to move swiftly and stealthily on their mission.

  Thirty Highlanders. She would not be able to escape them. But she might outwit them.

  Her hand ca
me free. She kept it down with the other, waiting now for her moment.

  They rode for hours, faster and slower in turns, until the stifling blackness around Avalon’s head gave way to faint, gray light, and if she wanted to, she could make out the texture of the burlap weave next to her face.

  Her body was aching, her lungs were scalded from the dust and wind, and her backside was beyond pain, sitting sideways in the saddle. She would have slept if she could, but the constant turns and jolts kept her miserably awake.

  The horses were exhausted; she felt it clearly. The Highlanders had to stop soon. Their mounts would not hold out.

  Within minutes of this thought she felt the group begin to slow. They all came to a stop. From somewhere far away Avalon heard the crystal splashings of a creek.

  No one spoke. But there again sang a lark, exactly the same pattern of notes she had heard before in the garden, and then an answering warble in the distance.

  “Over there,” said someone, and the horses walked on.

  They dismounted in a place that crunched with fallen leaves, Marcus handing her down to someone before leaping down himself with a grunt.

  She was placed feet first on the ground, felt the cold smoothness of a blade between her ankles. The ropes were cut free. The sack was being pulled off at last.

  She blinked to get the dust out of her eyes, remembered to keep her hands together. Marcus was standing right in front of her. He began to work at the knot behind her head that kept the gag in place, his features totally impartial.

  The gag fell around her neck and then to the ground. Avalon tried to swallow past the dryness in her mouth, touching her tongue to her bruised lips. She saw something in Marcus flare to life at this, his eyes following the movement almost unwillingly before the blankness in his face returned. For the first time she felt a jagged streak of genuine alarm.

  She was in the middle of a circle of men, most in tartans. There were less than thirty, after all, and they stared at her—the crumpled gown with its amethysts, her hair fallen from its coif—and she stared back, trying not to wince at the rush of feeling to her feet.

  There was a herd of fresh horses nearby in the trees, she saw with dismay. Fresh horses. It meant they could ride all day.

  “My Lady Avalon,” said Marcus at last, looking away from her and over to his men. “Meet your new family.”

  She gathered herself, raising her brows as if she were only marginally interested in what he had to say. “I think you must be mistaken.”

  This got her some laughter, a few of the men elbowing each other. Marcus didn’t join them. His eyes roamed over her, held on to their frost.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Avalon d’Farouche has the Kincardine curse.” He indicated her hair and her face in a short gesture. “You are unmistakably Lady Avalon. And I am your husband.”

  “I know who I am, sir, and I know who you are. But you are mistaken in our relationship. I am the bride of Christ.”

  The group of men fell silent. After a long moment Marcus began to laugh.

  It was a deep, chilling sound that brought goose-bumps to her skin.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, piercing her with that feral smile.

  She clenched her fingers into the palms of her hands. The light was growing stronger, allowing her to take in his face in full measure for the first time.

  Dear heavens, he was nothing like his father. He was handsome and elegant, tall where Hanoch had only been burly; sinewy and strong where Hanoch had only been bullish. An Adonis to a Minotaur.

  In daylight his eyes became the palest blue, icy and rimmed with black lashes. His lips were sensual, his chin firm, his nose straight and unbroken. Of course she hadn’t recognized him. Not once in all her years in Scotland had anyone told her she was to marry a god.

  He was examining her too, the trace of that smile still shading his lips. There was no warmth to him at all, only cold, hard will. Perhaps he was not so different from his father, after all.

  “It is true,” she lied, fighting the sensation that she might be drowning. “I am a nun. I took my vows in Gatting.”

  “Really?” His tone implied nothing. She didn’t know what to make of it.

  So he took her by surprise when he pulled her into him and secured her there, using one hand to tangle in the mess of her hair and hold her still for his kiss.

  His body was massive and hard but his lips were skilled, covering hers before she could even draw breath. He slanted his mouth over hers, punishing her. The blood from the cut she had given him mingled between them, warm and salty.

  The sting from his touch swarmed back over her, so much stronger than it had been at the inn, leaving her frightened and yet darkly thrilled. The hum tingled through her again, sparking a prickling heat at his touch, taking her breath and making it short, letting her skin feel every unique sensation of this moment: his kiss, his breath, his scent, the roughness of his cheek against hers.…

  His hand in her hair loosened, became less a hold and more a guide, now gently tilting her head back further.

  The pressure of his lips lightened; the kiss grew slower and even more disturbing. There was a new tightness unfurling in her chest, it stretched and filled her whole body, making her acutely aware of him against her, her chest to his, her legs to his, her hands pinned between them. Everything else—the men, the forest, her abduction—faded away.

  Marcus tasted her lips with his tongue, plunging and invading. She gasped as the heat turned to melting honey, making her want to lean into him more, relying on his support.

  He brought his other hand up and cupped her face, no longer holding her prisoner, stroked her cheek, moved his lips over to the side of her mouth and savored her again by gently sucking her lower lip. She felt him smile against her, slow and victorious.

  “No nun ever kissed like that,” he said.

  She pulled back and pressed the point of the dirk she had stolen from him to his neck.

  “Take the lands,” she said, struggling to keep her breath even. At least her hand was steady and sure. The sight of her own blood, now dried and smudged against her wrist, took away the last of that stinging honey he had given her.

  Marcus didn’t move; none of the men did. She was afraid to look away from him, however, to confirm it. He had a challenge in the angle of his head, and she could not afford to lose.

  “Be reasonable, my lord,” Avalon said now. “I offer you everything you desire. I will freely give you all my lands, all my money. It’s yours. Only let me go.”

  The winter look grew colder. “Everything I desire?”

  “Come, come,” she said, impatient. “You must agree. You may have all the d’Farouche fortune with none of the trouble of me. How can you resist?”

  He was not afraid, she realized suddenly. Not at all. His manner at best could be said to contain a mild annoyance, as if he were dealing with a troublesome horse on the journey.

  “But what of the curse?” he asked, still mild.

  “Oh, the curse.” Avalon dismissed it with her tone. “Surely you don’t believe in such fantasy, my lord.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not. Everyone else does.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Aye,” he replied, with the beginnings of that chilling smile. “You have the look, Avalon. You meet the requirements. My people will not be content until they have you in the family again.”

  “It is naught but superstition!” she cried, forgetting herself. “You cannot be guided by the fears of a hundred-year-old story! There is no curse!”

  He moved like the wind, knocking her hand away, making the dirk fall to the leaves.

  “It is just a story,” she said to the circle, wanting to convince all of them, including herself.

  Marcus took her arm, turned to his men. “Let’s go.”

  One hundred years ago …

  The tale always began that way, and Marcus wondered how it could always be that same number of years wh
en he himself had been hearing the story for at least the past thirty.

  One hundred years ago there lived a laird and his lady, and she was the fairest lady to ever grace the lands. Her hair was light as moonlight, her eyes were the color of the rarest heather flowers, her brows black as jet.

  Lady Avalon sat quietly now in the saddle before him, only her hands had been bound again with a soft strap of cloth torn from a blanket. Whether or not her eyes were really the color of heather flowers Marcus couldn’t say, because she kept them cast away from him, kept them fixed on the horizon, searching for something he could not see.

  The laird loved his lady fair and she him, both of them ruling just and right over their clan. It was the days of riches for them, of long summers and gentle winters, when the mountains still sang their songs at night and the deer were plump and plentiful. Each day was a jewel in the mind of God, and the Clan Kincardine was the most blessed of all people.

  Into this peace came an evil faerie, who had watched the laird’s lady for such a time until he fell into envy. He wanted her for himself, her moonlight and heather and jet, and set about to win her, using magic and gold and gossamer promises.

  But she would not be won. Her heart was true to her laird.

  Marcus found himself focusing on every part of Avalon that touched his body, the softness of her lines pressed to him in the confines of the saddle, the heat of her stomach against the arm he had wrapped around her waist. She smelled of apples and flowers. She had tasted of spice.

  He wondered briefly if she was naive enough to be in love with her oafish cousin. She had seemed to accept his hasty plan to wed her without protest, even knowing the disgrace it would bring upon her, the war that might ensue.

  But she was a woman. He had no idea why women did anything.

  One day our lady went off wool gathering to the glen. She was so gentle that the thorns would bend back from the branches of the brambles, allowing her to harvest their treasured wool without harm.

  But the faerie came upon her, and he had lost patience with his wooing. He took her honor there in the glen and broke her true heart until she died on the spot, weeping for her love.