The delicate scent of her enveloped him like an embrace, reminding him of her soothing touches and tenderly spoken words.
“Ye're standing by yer word then?” He eyed her, half-expecting her to change her mind.
“As you held by yours.” She inclined her head graciously.
A knock sounded at the door and Marin pulled away. Bran feared it might be the healer, come to take Marin's place to see to his bathing and the changing of his clothing and the sheets. He waited in bed, unable to see the visitor from around the door, helpless.
Agitation rippled through his restless limbs. He'd been abed too long, treated as an invalid. He was trapped, cared for, like some silly bird in a cage, and it rankled him.
Marin returned with a tray in her hands and the door shut behind her. “I've asked the kitchen to bring you some bread to go with your broth.” She said it as though she thought he might be glad for the bowl of clear liquid.
“I could do with a hunk of venison and some ale,” he offered irritably.
She ignored him and sat on the chair beside the bed. He'd noticed it earlier and had wondered if that was where she'd bided her time with him. She held the bowl in her palms and gently blew at the steaming broth. The steady rise of steam broke in quivers that resumed between her breaths.
“I dinna need ye to care for me like a child.” He held out his hand for the soup. “Ye'll do anything for yer sisters, it would appear. Even feed me.”
“You certainly were easier to care for when you were sleeping.” She set the bowl into his waiting hand.
Bran put his lips to the bowl and drank the broth. It splashed over his tongue like molten lava. He swallowed fast and got the sting of it at the back of his throat for his efforts. His entire mouth was prickly and thick with the effects of the burn.
“Who is Ena?” she asked. “And Gregor?”
His heart caught and he lowered the bowl from his mouth. The broth churned in his stomach and soured. “Gregor is dead.” He stared down at the murky brown broth.
“And your mother?”
“Dead.
“Ena?”
“Alive. For now.” He lifted the bowl and drained the rest in one burning swallow before handing it back to Marin.
Marin took it from him. “Loss is by far the most painful of all wounds.”
Words spoken by one who understood. His renewed grief cut him to the quick. As sharp and poignant as it had been twenty years ago.
She set the bowl on the tray with a clink. “What happened?” she asked. Her voice was kind, the way it'd been when he was ill, when she'd cared for him.
She leaned on her knees. So wonderfully near. She focused her full attention on him. “Tell me what happened.”
Mayhap it was the comfort of her voice, or his addled state, or even the pressing guilt for having taken the castle in the first place, but he found himself ready to tell his story for the first time in his life.
15
Regardless of what had triggered his need to speak, Bran found the memories rising inside him and bared them before Marin for her mercy.
He welcomed the angry, frustrated rage firing through him. It was an easier emotion to handle that the ugliness of his hurt. He couldn't fall prey to such pain. Not again.
“I know Leila is not Ena,” he said.
Marin nodded.
“Ena was the same age, with the same long dark hair…” Brown eyes surfaced in his mind, doe-like and dark, fringed with long lashes. “She doesna have blue eyes like Leila. The hit to my head knocked my wits about.” He put his hand to the back of his skull in demonstration and found his scalp still sensitive.
Marin leaned forward to rest both elbows on her knees, as if she needed to be as close as he yearned for her to be. “Who is Ena?”
“My sister.” His voice was gravelly with disuse, from the ragged pain of his loss.
“And Gregor?”
The pain of that name tore a fresh rawness in Bran’s heart. “My brother.”
“Will you tell me what happened?” Marin's request was equally as kind and calm as her expression–an invitation, but not in any way a demand.
“I was still a lad, the youngest of the three of us.” He drew in a deep breath, but it did not ease the band of tension squeezing at his chest. “We lived on the border as ye do now, but we didna have yer wealth. We didna have yer stone castle and yer guards. We were villagers, with homes that barely kept out the wind, let alone reivers, and with walls thin enough for us to hear them coming.”
A scream rang out in the dusk and immediately cut off. Mum edged toward the door and brought down the latch over the frame, a meager means of protection. “Hide.”
Another scream rent the air, this one longer, tinged with anguish. And far closer. Bran didn't move. He stared, watching the door, uncertain where to go. What to do.
“Now,” Mum hissed.
Gregor, the eldest of the three of them, grabbed the sword their da had used before he died. “I’ll protect us, Mum.”
“Nay.” She reached for the sword. “They’ll kill ye.”
Bran looked to Ena, the way he always did in times of crisis. She always knew what to do. Her arms closed around Bran, enveloping him in safety.
She gave him a reassuring smile and pulled at him. “The cupboards are safest.”
She tucked him into the darkness within, but he reached out to her.
“There's only room for one, sweet Bran.” She stroked his hair and kissed his brow. “All will be well.”
A thump sounded at the door and her eyes went wide.
Mum hid on the opposite side of the cupboard, buried in the shadows. Near him. He knew she'd done that for him, to make him feel safe. Gregor was at her side, sword in hand. Brave Gregor, who was ready to defend them all.
Ena ran to the center of the room and stood for one panicked moment. Time crawled to stillness then, in the hissing pop of the fire and the distant cries of loss and pain. Ena dove under the table just as the door flew open in an explosion of splintered wood.
“Ena hid me, then went under the table,” he said around the rawness–of his throat, of his memories, of his heart. “My mum and older brother had hidden near me to ensure I'd be safe.” Bran balled his fists. The action echoed in a light sting on his shoulder where the arrow had nicked him days before. He reveled in the physical pain, even wished it was more, anything to distract from the blaze in his chest. “Four of them came in, broke through the door as though it were nothing. They threw the furniture about in their search for food, coin, whatever they could take. Then they flipped the table and saw Ena.”
Marin pulled in a hard breath.
Bran dragged his gaze from her, unable to bear her sympathy. “Ena tried to run, but they grabbed her by her hair and yanked her back. They pulled out their swords, ready to run her through. My mum came from her hiding place, screaming, and Gregor was there too, running toward them with that damn sword.”
His mother's voice cut through his mind, filled with terror.
No’ my bairn.
No’ my bairn.
He shuddered. “Gregor stabbed one in the neck and the man fell. Two reivers caught him and held him down while the third ran him through. He’d only seen eight summers, still a lad.” He hesitated, trying to ward off the memory and falling prey to its clutches regardless. “My mum was next, and then Ena.”
The blade shoved through Gregor’s skinny chest and he dropped like a sack. Mum’s screams were like an animal, feral and wild with grief before they too cut off with a choked cry.
Bran's hair stood on end and he buried his face in his knees to keep from seeing anymore. He wished he could close his ears too, to keep out the sounds of Ena’s cries, of how she struggled.
Bran stared at the coverlet of the bed, where a wrinkle in the fabric shaded the other side. “I waited a long time before I came out and that’s when I found them all. Ena was still alive, only barely. And so, I did what I could to care for her.”
&nbs
p; The shame of it all pressed hard on him, the way it always did when he thought of that day. Deep, burning shame for having been the cause of their deaths. If he hadn't frozen, Ena would have hidden better. If his mother hadn't thought he needed protection, she and Gregor would have as well. They would have both been alive.
“Ena lived.” He swallowed. “But it took several days before she was strong enough to leave.”
“You stayed with their bodies?” she asked softly.
Their bodies. Those of his mother and brother. He nodded. “Aye. I didn’t want to leave them, but I couldn’t bury them. I was too small.” Too weak. “Leaving them was hard. It made their deaths so real.”
“I understand.” She eased from the chair and settled on the bed beside him, the way she'd done when she was nursing him through his wounds. “I struggled with the finality of it all when my mother died.”
He wanted to curl against her and breathe in her sweet, soothing scent, to sweep away these awful memories. Hell, he didn’t know why he was telling her now. For a cathartic cleansing of his soul?
“When I got hit on the head.” He looked down at the coverlet where their hands were nearly touching. How he craved the brush of her smooth skin, the connection to keep him grounded through the awful reliving of his worst moment. “It brought me back to when I was caring for Ena.”
She reached up and put her palm to his cheek. This time he did give in to the temptation to lean into her. He put his hand over hers and cradled her against him. He allowed himself one perfectly wondrous moment to savor the moment before lowering her hand and easing back.
He was being weak, he knew. The pressure of the past fortnight had built around him: Ena’s marriage to the Englishman when the rule preventing English and Scottish from marrying was always broken before without consequence. The Middle March Warden using it to his advantage and stringing up a rope to kill her. The bloody bargain Bran had been forced to accept so that she might live. The warden had been looking for an excuse for years to get Bran to work for him. Ena had provided him with the perfect opportunity. And now here Bran was, pouring out his soul to the woman whose castle he’d taken.
He scrubbed a hand over the thickness of his untrimmed beard, as if he could clear the sensation of her caress. And how much he wanted more. “I shouldna have told ye any of this.”
A sad smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. “Everyone needs someone to need, even the strongest of us.”
“I dinna need anyone.” He said it gruffly, as though it might mask the exposed underbelly of his buried hurt, as if a brawny display could overwhelm his vulnerability.
“Why did you tell me?” she asked.
He shrugged, but deep down he realized he knew the answer he would never say. The considerate sweetness of her care had aided in the healing of his physical wounds. Foolish though it may be, he'd hoped she might likewise do the same for his soul.
Trust was a precarious thing, and somehow it had begun to spin between Marin and Bran like a delicate web with thin, fragile threads.
Mayhap she ought to rein in her curiosity, but she could not. This intimidating man with his wild ruggedness had been a wounded boy forced to witness the violence and brutality at an even younger age than she. She didn't need to ask to know it was not a story he'd shared often. The way it had rasped from his throat, as though wrenched from a buried darkness. Mayhap he had never shared it at all.
“Why did you share with me?” She wanted to reach for him again, to cup the rasp of his beard against her palm. But the way he turned from her told her he did not wish her comfort.
“Ye're to be my wife,” he answered, and shrugged as if what he'd done were no large matter. “Ye should know.”
Aye, he would be her husband. This man who had stolen her castle and then helped her save her sisters. This man whose family was destroyed by reivers before becoming one himself. This man who had been a broken boy.
And she would be his wife. After years of being allowed to cast aside suitors, to focus her efforts on her sisters and weapons mastery and the upkeep of the manor, finally she would succumb to marriage–the one thing she never wanted.
Already her roles stretched her in so many directions between her father's people, the castle itself and her sisters. How could she possibly make time to be a wife?
There would never be enough light in a day to see to everything and everyone reliant on her.
The idea of a child slipped into her mind and glowed within her chest. A child of her own cradled to her breast… An ache blossomed where she’d imagined the babe, a desperate, deep pang she had told no one of. After all, how foolish to not wish to marry and yet crave a child so.
Bran's dark gaze searched her eyes. He reached up slowly, as if he feared startling her. His fingertips gently stroked over her cheek and down her jaw, the touch light and tender. “I'll be the most envied man in all the land.”
Marin did not move from the caress. “Because you'll have Werrick Castle?”
“Because I'll have ye.” He let his hand drop, but the intimacy of his gaze did not diminish. As if he still touched her through the intensity of his stare.
Her cheeks went hot.
“Ye're lovely, Marin,” he said simply. “I'm sure ye know as much.”
She glanced away. She had never paid any mind to her appearance. Not like Anice, who spent hours using creams and powders and the most foul-smelling concoctions Isla could dream up.
Marin had a care for her looks to the point of ensuring she made her father proud to call her his daughter with her fine clothes and cleanliness. There had been interest from others, but she was the eldest daughter of a powerful earl. Such attentions were to be expected.
Never had she cared if she was considered beautiful. Yet his compliment caused a pleasant twist low in her belly.
“Ye're compassionate and gentle and I like that verra much,” he said.
“I assure you that I am not always so gentle.” She returned her gaze to him and smirked. “And my compassion is what makes me weak, does it not?”
He tilted his head in silent question.
“It is what caused me to open the portcullis,” she reminded him gently.
“Aye, it was.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile that made his face look almost boyish. “But with such attributes to recommend ye, ye’re a fine balance for an arse of a man like me.”
He grinned at his own statement. He was handsome when he looked at her like that, eyes crinkled, full lips parted to reveal his strong, healthy teeth starkly white against the darkness of his beard. She found her eyes drawn to his mouth, remembering the heat, the sensuality, the way his kisses made her insides melt.
He reached up once more and gently caressed her cheek. The touch of his skin to hers was barely a brush it was so light. She looked at him, marveling how so powerful a man could have had such a harrowing past. Mayhap almost losing everything was what rendered him so fearless.
She found herself drawing closer to him, pulled by some unseen force. Her mouth connected with his. His lips were as warm as she remembered and far softer. A little sound emerged from the back of her throat at the realization. His hand eased up the nape of her neck and cradled her head. The fierce warrior turned lover.
She parted her mouth and let the tip of her tongue dance against his lips. His tongue grazed hers in reply, salty from the broth and spicy with his own natural flavor. She moaned on an exhale and her body sank against him. He pulled her closer to him with his good arm so the shape of her fitted snuggly against him. A hungry heat pulsed between her legs, ignited by the kisses and the solid strength of his body.
“Marin,” he said her name on a groan. “I want ye.”
A knock sounded at the door and Marin leapt back like a naughty girl caught sneaking a pastry. Indeed, she had been nearly caught and her cheeks singed with the knowledge.
She swept a hand over her skirts where they might have rumpled when her body pressed so flush against his.
“I, um, you may enter.” Was that a crease? She frowned and bent over the blue silk, her fingers working at the delicate fabric.
Isla entered and looked between Marin and Bran. “Did ye need a few more moments?” A knowing smile lit her face.
“Nay,” Marin said far too quickly.
The healer didn't bother to hide her grin. “’Tis time he was fully bathed.” She lifted a linen-wrapped parcel from her bag and the yeasty scent of freshly baked bread filled the room. “I brought some bread with me from the kitchens when I heard he was sitting on his own.”
Bran sat forward, eyeing the bundle. “I'll take the bread now and can verra well bathe myself, though I prefer to do so in the morning.”
“Ye may lose yer balance and injure yerself,” Isla said with obvious skepticism.
“I'll be fine.” His gaze remained locked on the bread as Isla came closer. “Have a bath sent up tomorrow.”
The old healer sighed. “Verra well. If ye think ye’re healed enough…”
Bran smiled over at Marin in a way that was far more charming than she cared to admit. “I believe I'm well enough to make good on my promise to make Marin my wife.”
“I should go…to check on Leila.” Marin stammered through the excuse. “And we truly ought to ensure you are entirely recovered.” She edged toward the door to make her escape. From this conversation that felt like it was happening too soon, and from the overwhelming presence of him, of the memory of that kiss.
“Tis been nearly a week, lass,” Bran replied. “I assure ye I'm recovered enough.” There was a deepness to his tone, which reverberated through her and made her slow her pace, even as her mind screamed at her feet to move faster.
Isla gave a wheezing laugh. “Ach, ye have a lusty man here, my lady.” She winked. “If ye dinna mind my saying so.”
“On the morrow,” Bran said.
Marin stopped short and turned to him. Her heated blood tangled up her emotions and left the desire in her body warring with the stubbornness of her mind. So, this was why he’d wanted his bath in the morning.
Marin's Promise (Borderland Ladies Book 1) Page 13
