Shana Abe

by The Truelove Bride

  The scouts had alerted the inhabitants already and a crowd greeted them, people pouring out in spite of the rain and cold to see at long last the arrival of the laird and the bride.

  There were so many of them, Marcus thought, filled with pride and secret awe. There were so many, here and scattered like stones over the mountains, all of them loyal and brave and fierce and hungry. They were his responsibility. They looked to him with shining faces and all Marcus ever saw there was hope, and a faith so deep it scared him to his bones.

  He could not fail them.

  The group of warriors came up to the edge of the castle wall, the horses at last on even ground, and his men spread out behind him. All of them faced the expectant throng of people.

  Marcus carefully pushed Avalon forward a bit so he had room, then stood up in his saddle, keeping her in place.

  “Clan Kincardine,” he called out to them, his words frosting in the air, “I bring you your lass. I bring you the bride!”

  Avalon looked up at last, cold and wet, still covered in golden leaves and streaks of dirt. “Go to the devil,” she said to him, loud and clear.

  The entire crowd erupted into cheers.

  Chapter Five

  She had refused to undress in front of the women sent to attend her.

  There were six of them. They had set up a tub of steaming water for her; they had placed sprigs of lavender and mint in it. They had clucked over her and brought her barley broth with gentle, blurring words.

  Avalon wanted none of it. She wanted to be alone in this small room. She didn’t want to succumb to the kindness of these women, because they were still her enemy, no matter how much lavender they had to offer.

  But it seemed that even after everything she had been through last night and this morning, when her body was trembling with exhaustion and her mind kept fizzing to blankness, she could not be cruel to them.

  She thanked them for the broth and the bath. She used the most normal voice she could muster when she told them she wanted to wash in privacy. When they had given each other bewildered frowns and tried to dismiss her words, she sharpened her tone, backing up and away until they had no choice but to leave.

  As she was exiting, one of them picked up the tartan Avalon had discarded on the floor.

  “I’ll just rinse this for ye and set it to dry, mistress,” the woman said, carrying it over her arm.

  Oh well. It had been too wet to burn anyway.

  The black gown was tight. It took a good while and several spells of sitting to clear her head before she had it off completely. Her shoulder throbbed from her efforts. But worse than that, she now saw, were her ribs. This was the real reason she had wanted the women to leave.

  One look at the bruised, vivid mess of her side and they would have gone screeching to the laird, Avalon was sure. And she did not want the laird to know about this. God knew what he would want to do about it, and she still had some pride left.

  She settled into the short tub of water slowly, allowing the heat to sink into her skin as she went, until her knees were up by her chin and the water to her neck. Fragrant steam reached up and tickled her nose, helping the blankness in her head to expand. Avalon’s eyes slowly closed. Her head leaned back against the tin edge. Everything faded away.

  When she woke up the water was considerably cooler, so she found the cake of scented soap they had left her and began to scrub, starting with her hair and working down, until all the dirt was gone. She stood up, took the pitcher of clean water that had been placed beside the tub, and poured it over her head.

  There was a white woolen nightgown on the pallet, sturdy and warm, a tiny embroidered collar rimming the neck. She got it on just as the women returned with beaming smiles and a mug of something hot and delicious for her to drink.

  Avalon took it from them, and only after she had finished the buttered ale did they tell her it was from the Moor, and that he had wished her a pleasant sleep.

  Dammit. The room began to lose its shape. The women led her to the pallet and laid her down as carefully as they could manage, touching her side only twice. But the pain seemed distant now, Balthazar’s drug smothering it.

  There was nothing she could do but give in to it. As the sun began to break free of the clouds and saturate the room with gradual light, Avalon surrendered to sleep, letting out only the smallest of sighs at the end of her long journey.

  When she opened her eyes again the light in the room looked exactly the same, and for a moment Avalon was confused. She knew where she was, she remembered all of the past few days, but had she slept at all? Hadn’t the wizard given her some potion?

  She sat up and stretched her good side, taking care with her sore shoulder.

  “How do you feel?”

  The deep voice came from a corner of the room, a place where the sun had not yet touched. Marcus stepped forward into the light.

  He had changed in small ways. He wore a tartan that was clean and crisp, a black tunic beneath it. His dark hair was tied back neatly. That tremendous sword he carried caught a sunbeam and let it slide down its polished sheath, sharp blindness.

  She rubbed her eyes against the metallic light, turned her head away.

  Marcus looked down at her, then glanced at something in his palm she could not see. He frowned down at it, then back to her, considering. She knew then what he held.

  It had not helped to quell the legend that there existed a miniature painting of the comely wife of the hundred-year-old laird, and that she had resembled Avalon to an uncanny degree. The wife was said to have been the daughter of nobility, and in the painting, as Avalon recalled, she looked it: her gown was rich with elaborate embroidery, she wore a necklace of hammered gold.

  “Impressive,” said Marcus, holding his frost-blue eyes on Avalon again.

  “Coincidence,” she replied.

  Marcus handed her the framed oval without comment, letting her see for herself. She took it reluctantly, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him. But she knew the woman in the painting did favor her, even when she was a young girl the similarity had been remarkable. Avalon had not forgotten.

  If she had not been shown the miniature back then, she would have now thought it was painted as a trick, to convince her of the Kincardine fable. The laird’s wife had Avalon’s face, her very own. Those were her eyes, their strange shade of purple quite clear. Her own silver-blonde hair—in the painting loose, with a delicate band of gold across her forehead—her own black lashes. Even her own lips, with their distinctive cupid’s bow.

  And this was the face of her ancestress, her grandmother she didn’t know how many times back.

  To solidify the curse, there had come a plague a few years after the death of the wife, or so the story had been told to Avalon. This plague killed only the children, left the heartbroken parents untouched and frantic. Many scrambled away from the area, taking what few youngsters remained to safer grounds, trying to save the future of the clan. Eventually most came back, after the threat was seen as gone. But some never did, blending in to other places, and among these people had been the line that eventually led down to Avalon’s mother, and to Avalon herself.

  Marcus read her thoughts, or guessed them. “You are the daughter of the clan, after all. I believe it was—who again?—our great, great, great grandmothers who were sisters. That would make you and me …”

  “Cousins,” she finished for him flatly. “I find I have too many cousins for my taste.”

  She stood up and handed the portrait back to him. He gave her a cold smile.

  “I think it’s fate,” he said. “But you never answered me. How do you feel?”

  She walked away across the stone floor in her bare feet, only now remembering that she had on just a nightgown, and not really caring. There was a narrow window set back in the wall, and she crossed over to it and looked out onto a cloudless day.

  “I feel as if I could sleep a thousand years,” she said to the sky.

 
; “I think two days will have to be enough,” Marcus said behind her.

  “Two days?”

  “Aye. You would not rouse. We let you be. I suppose you needed the rest.”

  A hawk soared by, hovering and then dipping down to the bottom of the window frame, gone from sight.

  “I saved your life,” Avalon said, still looking out. “Honor dictates you owe me a boon.”

  “What boon?” he asked.

  “Release me, my lord.”

  His voice was impartial. “Your boon is impossible, my lady.”

  “I saved your life!” Her hands clenched on the window frame. The sky was a bowl of sapphire blue; it stretched out to forever before her, just beyond her reach.

  “Your mistake, then, for I’m not releasing you. That’s the way of war.”

  Avalon uncurled her fingers. “I see how it is,” she said at last. “Very well. I have three manored estates and most of the income from Trayleigh. I have lands that reach almost to the border of your country.”

  She heard him stir, come closer to her, though he made no move to touch her.

  “There is enough of everything to keep your sense of war satisfied, I would think. Lands and wealth. I offer it all to you. I will petition the king myself to hand it to you. I will sign whatever notes you want. Make it a ransom, if you wish.” She turned around now, sunlight behind her. “Only let me go.”

  He was closer than she had thought, not even an arm’s length away. She couldn’t read what he was thinking. There was a barrier up, there was nothing but cool deliberation in his look.

  “Not enough,” he said.

  “Crops, herds, rent. Fine manors. All of it yours, your people’s.”

  “Not enough.”

  “It’s all I have,” she said faintly.

  “No.”

  Now he did reach out to touch her, just her hair, picking up a strand and holding it in the sunlight, letting it wrap around his fingers. He studied it, the halo the sun made bouncing off of it, as if it were worthy of his undivided attention.

  “It’s not all you have,” he said slowly, looking up and capturing her gaze.

  She was drowning again, instantly, hopelessly, and his lips were on hers, tender and hot, his hands were stroking her back, feather touches. He was pulling her into him, and she was welcoming it, all of it. All of him.

  The nightgown shielded almost no secrets from him, let her feel the doubled folds of his tartan, the tunic, and beneath that, the hard planes of his body. The heat of him bled into her until her whole being was glowing with it, the slow nectar of his kisses, their breath mingling. She was alive again, she was awake and alive and he did this, this man, her enemy.…

  Marcus handled her carefully, mindful of her shoulder, now smoothing his hand down her back to cup her bottom, lifting her, making that intimate part of her press into him to feel how ready he was for her.

  “This is what I want,” he said against her lips. “This.” He pushed her hair aside and brought his lips to the delicate spot beneath her ear. “Can’t you tell, Avalon?”

  She couldn’t say yes, or no, or anything. He had taken her body and turned it into molten glass. All that she was flowed around him, into him, his arms and chest and thighs, that hardness between them. She wanted more of him. She had to satisfy this craving in her that was new and totally controlling.

  It didn’t matter who he was. It didn’t matter who she was. All that mattered was that he kept touching her.

  “You want it too, don’t you?” He took his hand and placed it on her breast, something no man had ever done, and she loved it, she arched into it.

  “Don’t you.” It wasn’t a question, he knew the answer already. His fingers found her nipple, he rubbed the gown over it in circles.

  She couldn’t stop the moan that came. Pleasure shot from where he touched all the way through her, like another bolt of lightning.

  He kissed her again, harder now, a different intent to it, shifting his hands down and then sweeping her up suddenly into his arms.

  And now she couldn’t stop the tiny cry that came, and it was not from pleasure. Her ribs were crushed amid their bruises.

  Marcus heard the difference and paused uncertainly.

  “What is it?” he asked, frowning down at her.

  “Put me down,” she managed to say around clenched teeth.

  He eased her to her feet, careful again. “That wasn’t your shoulder. You’re injured, aren’t you?”

  “No,” she said, trying to stand up straight without much success. He gave her a keen look, his gaze going right to where she had inadvertently put her hand on her side.

  “Let me see,” he said, reaching for her.

  “No!” Avalon backed up quickly.

  All traces of softness in him had vanished. The man who walked toward her now was purely the laird again, a mantle of winter around him.

  “You have a choice,” the laird said to her. “Take off the gown and show me your pain, or I will do it for you.”

  Avalon knew she could not win. “Turn your back,” she snapped.

  He did, folding his arms across his chest as he waited. At least it was only one side of her that was useless, Avalon thought, pulling off the gown with the hand that worked. She picked up a blanket from the pallet, wrapped it around her so that only her ribs would show, and sat down.

  “Fine,” she said sullenly.

  Marcus knelt and examined the spreading bruise, his face revealing nothing. It looked awful, she knew, growing more colorful with the passing of time.

  “It looks worse than it is,” she said.

  He leaned back on his heels, not replying. His face was perfectly empty.

  The chimera sounded a warning, alert.

  “I cannot believe you rode the rest of the way to Sauveur like this,” he finally said. There was a frigid undertone to his voice that went much deeper than his outer calm; it struck a previously unknown chord of fear in her.

  She stared over at him, suddenly, horribly aware that she was nearly nude with the man who had kidnapped her, who had almost managed to seduce her—and that he was utterly furious. God in heaven, what had she been thinking?

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she whispered.

  “No?” He reached out to touch the bruise and without meaning to she flinched. His hand stopped, not touching her. His voice was ice. “Doesn’t hurt? Don’t lie to me, Avalon. I will not abide it.”

  I will not abide it.

  Hanoch’s words to her, countless times. Don’t be disrespectful, don’t complain, don’t cower, don’t snivel, don’t cry. I will not abide it.

  “Won’t you,” she sneered, scrambling up and away despite the pain. “You have no right to tell me what to do! I don’t care who you are! You don’t own me!”

  Marcus made no move to go after her. She was panting and clutching the blanket to her as she balanced on the mess of the pallet. Her hair had tumbled down everywhere; even as she stood she had to keep one hand on her side, as if to hold in the sharp ache.

  “Nay, I don’t own you,” he agreed, watching her hand, then moving his gaze up to her face. “Not yet, Avalon. But I will very soon.”

  He left the room. She heard the lock turn and catch. She was a prisoner, after all.

  Fifteen minutes later came the same women as before, this time bearing a load of bandages and a salve that they insisted upon applying themselves.

  She could not refuse them. She was tired, for one thing. Still so tired. And also they were genuinely concerned for her. They patted her with compassionate hands and persuaded her to sit, exclaimed over her bruises and rubbed in the greasy salve.

  Also from the Moor, Avalon was told. It had done great things for other members of the clan, they assured her. Betsy had been kicked by a sick ewe, and this very salve healed her within days! Ronald had his skull half cracked open from that fall of his in the gorge, and now he was better than ever!

  And don’t forget the mare, added one of the women happily.
That old mare had been colicky for days, and she was fine after the Moor put his salve on her belly.

  “Oh, well, the mare, then,” Avalon said, trying not to shrink from their touch. “I’m sure it must be a fine salve.”

  “Aye,” chorused the women, delighted she understood.

  The bandages made the black gown too tight to fit around her now, and half her nursemaids fled to secure something a little more befitting for the bride. The other three picked up their bowl of salve and the rest of the bandages, folding them up between them.

  Marcus had left the miniature of the laird’s wife. He had probably forgotten it in his anger, Avalon thought, and tried not to feel woeful. She cradled it between her palms, studying the painted face that was her own.

  One of the women noticed, sidled over to her, and made the inevitable comparison.

  “A miracle,” she breathed, looking at the painted lady.

  The other two came close, solemn.

  “Our miracle,” said one.

  “Our bride,” finished the other.

  “Please,” Avalon began, and they looked at her, hushed, expectant of spectacular pearls of wisdom, no doubt. She took a breath, wanting to dispel this fantasy, but unwilling to crush their fragile hopes.

  “She was my ancestress,” she said at last, a pathetic attempt to concede to the conflicts within her.

  The woman with the bandages picked up the miniature, handling it like treasure. “We know, lassie. We know.”

  He owed her a boon. Marcus knew he did, and it hurt him in some way that he could not give her what she wanted.

  He had no memory of what happened after the lightning split the oak. In the seconds before it struck he had felt a clap of humming air hit him, burning his lungs and making the hair on his arms stand up. But that was it. After that, he was beneath the pine tree, and Bal had been examining his head.

  Hew filled in the gaps, how he had lain beneath the wild beast and the bride had tamed it, had run right up to it and calmed it with her touch. Hew looked to Bal for confirmation and Bal had agreed, wiping his hands free of mud.