Marin's Promise (Borderland Ladies Book 1)

by Madeline Martin

  “Did ye no’ enjoy last night?” He braced himself for her answer and combed through his memory of the night before. He only remembered their pleasure.

  Marin’s cheeks went pink. “Aye, but it doesn’t change what I must now face. I have given you everything, even my maidenhead. Please do not also take my tasks from me. I beg of you.”

  “Ye dinna have a maidenhead,” he said slowly.

  She stared at him and her mouth fell open before closing and falling open soundlessly once more. “Of course, I had my maidenhead.”

  “There was no blood.”

  Her brow furrowed and she glanced around the room as if she might find an explanation floating in the air. “I don't…understand…”

  “Mayhap when ye were taken?”

  Her gaze flicked to him. “What?”

  “When ye were taken, mayhap ye dinna understand what happened…” he trailed off at the incredulous expression on her face.

  “I think I would know.” Splotches of pink showed on her neck and the bit of her chest that was visible.

  “But if ye dinna, if ye were too young. How old were ye when it happened? Was it the Grahams?”

  “I wasn't taken,” she shot at him.

  “Yer sisters said—”

  “I know what they said.” Marin drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “They're only repeating what I told them, as well as my father, and anyone else who needed answers.”

  He shook his head. “If ye werena taken, what happened?”

  The confident squaring of her shoulders wilted, and she turned her face away, a clear indication she did not want to look at him. Or did not want him looking at her. “I wasn't taken. I ran away.”

  Marin had never spoken the truth aloud. Her new husband was the last person she would have expected to tell. Shame burned her face and kept her eyes averted.

  “Ye ran away?” His tone was slow with disbelief. “Ye, who do everything for yer sisters, yer people, yer home.”

  She folded her arms over her chest, a flimsy shield to staunch the agony thrumming in her heart. Her gaze slipped up to his face and she found him watching her with guarded curiosity. He stood too close to her, and his very presence seemed as if he were trying to press for the truth.

  She looked away again, not only to keep her embarrassment from being so painfully transparent, but also to avoid remembering the lurid details of the night before. In truth, leaving that morning had only partly been due to the tasks needing to be seen to. The castle knew well enough its own functions and each person responsible was aware of their routine. Most had not been expecting to see her about that morning.

  The larger part of her leaving had been sheer cowardice, to avoid facing the awkward discomfort of waking up curled in his naked arms, her body so intimately pressed to his own, their deeds laid bare in the light of a new day.

  There had been wonder between them the night before, a heart-pounding magic that robbed her of thought and modesty. But now, with their clothes on, going about their daily lives, when only hours before a part of his body had been buried within her most intimate place. Only hours before he had licked his fingers after…he had…

  He leveled his gaze with hers. Sunlight streamed in through the thick glass window and made the dark irises of his eyes glow a warm brown with small flecks of black in them. She hadn't noticed those before.

  “Will ye tell me why ye ran away?” he asked earnestly.

  She folded her arms over her chest. “Do you believe me that I was truly a maiden when you had me last night?”

  He studied her for long enough for her to assume the answer might be no. “In truth, I dinna care if ye were a maiden or no’. But I want to know if someone hurt ye. And I want to know why ye felt ye needed to run from yer own home.”

  With the crook of his finger, he lifted her face higher and he gazed down at her with such consideration, she thought he meant to kiss her. Her traitorous body hummed to life with anticipation and sent whorls of hot, sensual memories flitting about in her mind.

  “You want the truth,” she surmised. He nodded.

  She hesitated and his hand gently swept down her neck, making her skin tingle.

  “I'm yer husband, Marin,” he said in a seductive tone. “Ye know my past. Isna it fair for me to know yers?”

  “I ran because…” She winced. Thinking the words was hard enough; speaking them was like tearing her heart from her chest and baring for him to see. “I ran because it was too much.”

  His callused palm cradled her jaw and the gentle sweep of his thumb whispered over her skin, too near her mouth. “What was?” he said encouragingly.

  “My mother died when Leila was born.” It was too easy to remember the weight of mourning as it settled over Werrick Castle and shrouded all their hearts. The laughter and joy had ceased, though in truth it had already been much muted through the months that her mother’s stomach swelled with life. “There had been an attack on the castle before we had a curtain wall. They broke through our defenses. No one was safe.”

  Bran lowered his hand from her face. “The Grahams.”

  “Aye,” she replied. No doubt everyone on both sides of the border remembered the Grahams and how they had wreaked such havoc and horrors on Werrick Castle. “My father tried to protect us, but he was knocked aside. We thought he was dead.” She shook her head at the memory, wishing to clear the image of her father laying still and bleeding. “My mother charged at the man who meant to kill us all. She did save us, but at a terrible cost to herself.”

  Bran’s jaw tensed and he flicked his gaze away in angry understanding. Marin shuddered at the memory of finding her mother on the floor, her gown ripped, sobbing, not wanting to live. It had been Marin who helped her to her feet, who got her to Isla for healing.

  “We discovered she was with child.” Marin glanced to the closed door of the solar. This was nothing she wanted Leila to hear, especially not when the girl was so loved and cared for now. For surely that was what truly mattered, was it not?

  “Mother was despondent. She didn’t eat enough or sleep enough.” Marin spoke gently despite the closed door, ensuring their conversation remained fully private. “She was a ghost of her former self. Despite my efforts, I knew she would not be strong enough to survive the birth. And she did not.”

  Bran put his hands on Marin’s shoulders in an oddly comforting act, as if he sought to help her continue standing upright. “That was Leila.”

  Marin nodded.

  “Her father…?”

  Marin cringed at the question he didn't need to complete. “She is our sister and that's the only thing we’ve ever cared about.”

  “Yer da?”

  The image of her father's weathered face with his gray-white hair and summer-sky-blue eyes welled in her heart. “He loves her perhaps more than any of us, and we've never faulted him for it,” she answered. “She’s the center of our world, our mother’s last gift to us. Any doubt we might have harbored has only produced a fiercer affection for her.”

  “Then why did ye run?” He asked the question gently, as though he worried that he might frighten her.

  “Everyone needed me.” The memory squeezed around her chest like a vice. “When my mother died, everyone looked to me. I cared for Leila and for my sisters, trying as best I could to aid them through their bitter loss and heartache. Mother's loss was difficult on my father as well. It was as though the Northern Star had burnt out and he did not know which direction to walk without it. Without her.”

  “Then there was ye.”

  “Then there was me.” She drew in a deep breath, but the pressure around her chest seemed to grow tighter. The way it had that day. “I was too busy to accept my own grief.” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “I didn't know the battlements or strategy or how to handle the soldiers. Without my father, we would not have protection, nor would we have the funds necessary to stay fed and safe. I tried to rouse him, but he would not rally. And I felt so…so helpless.” Her voi
ce caught and she drew a deep breath to calm herself. “Everyone needed me all the time and I had nothing left to give.”

  She had to stop for a moment to keep from letting the dismal emotion swelling inside her consume her.

  Bran leaned over her and pressed a kiss to her brow. It was so surprising a gesture, so loving, it took her aback. No one had given her their undivided attention like this. Aye, the servants did for their tasks, the men for their orders, even her sisters for advice. But no one had listened to her heart. Not like this. With his focus and his concern, he sprinkled seeds of trust into her heart.

  And she knew then, she could tell him the truth.

  20

  Marin spoke freely under Bran’s encouragement, without the emotion pinching painfully at her throat. “Leila had been up through most of the night, and the other girls were abed with illness. I tried to appeal to my father to rise once more and he…he began to sob.” She fisted her hand at the memory. “To see so great a man crumble beneath his heartache, to know I was doing all in my power, and for it to still not be enough…”

  Her eyes went warm and she knew she was losing the fight against her tears. “It was more than I could bear. My heart was shattered, and I had nothing left to give.” She sniffled and fixed her gaze on the floor. “After I left my father's room, I went outside where it was cool and quiet. I meant only to go for a walk, but as soon as I left the castle grounds, I started to run.” She closed her eyes and could feel the cold air on her hot cheeks again, the incredible liberation. “It felt so exhilarating, like my body was finally alive. By the time I stopped, it was dark.”

  She blinked her eyes open and kept her gaze averted, too ashamed of her next words to look at him. “I didn't care. I didn't want to go back. Everyone would need me, pull at me, drain me of what precious little I had left.”

  It had been on that lone winter night, with fat snowflakes drifting around her like the fluff of wool bits on sheering day, that she had finally given in to the pain of her mother's loss. Her heart had cracked open and she had curled herself around its intensity, letting it suck the sobs from her throat and spill them out into the frosted air. She did not say as much to Bran. Such a private moment need not be shared, especially when she had confessed so much already.

  “They found me later, laying in the snow.” Marin relaxed her clenched hand and looked down at the creased lines of her palm. “They said I was near death. I didn't notice, not when my entire being had become so hollow and numb.” She shrugged as if it were nothing. But it wasn't nothing. It'd been the single darkest day of her entire existence. When she’d failed.

  Worse.

  When she'd given up.

  “Ye told everyone ye'd been taken,” Bran said.

  She nodded. “The truth was far too painful to say aloud. I couldn't tell everyone I had been…” Her voice caught. “That I'd been such a coward.”

  “Marin.” His voice was a soothing purr and he finally released her shoulders, cupping her face now instead. “Ye werena a coward. Ye were a lass who was given the weight of the world. Ye took on more than any lass should have to, and the proof of yer efforts is apparent today in everything ye do. I noticed it even the first day.”

  She looked up and found him staring at her with heart-breaking sincerity.

  “Everyone needs someone to need,” he said, using her own words. “And ye dinna have anyone.”

  A hot tear spilled down her cheek. His thumb followed its path and wiped it away.

  At that moment, her husband understood her perhaps far better than anyone else in the whole of her life ever had. It crashed down on her and left her eyes welling. Not trusting herself to speak, she pursed her lips to staunch the ache in her throat and nodded.

  He pulled her to him, those strong arms of his securing her in an embrace of compassion and protection that left her heart nearly crying out in gratitude.

  He pressed a kiss to her brow. “Let me be the one ye can need, aye?” he murmured against her hair.

  She scrunched her eyes tightly against the scratchy fabric of his reiver's doublet to keep the tears at bay, and instead breathed in the spicy, sandalwood scent of him, of her husband. A man who not only understood her but gave her something she had been too long missing in her life. Comfort. Strength.

  She wanted to stay there for a lifetime, cradled in his arms, secured to the reassuring solidness of his body. Not alone, but with a true partner who would guard her back the way he had during the battle when they'd reclaimed her sisters.

  Marin pushed her face into Bran's doublet, wanting to be closer still. Her breath exhaled against the wool and spread heat against her cheeks and nose. His hand ran in slow circles over her back. Though the caress was meant to be one of soothing, she could not help the languid pulse beginning to thrum between her thighs any more than she could still her memories from the night before.

  The powerful stroke of his body into hers, the straining groans as he reined in his lust to be gentle for her benefit. The way he'd licked his fingers…

  She tilted her face upward, eager to be claimed by him once more, so the hurt of her past might burn away in the flames of passion. Bran’s palm slid up to cup the base of her neck as his mouth lowered to hers. Her need had been unspoken, but he had answered the call. He’d been there for her as she’d known he would be.

  Her sorrow was the tinder to their lust, and it ignited them both with a white-hot intensity neither could deny. Their hands moved over one another's bodies, their mouths panting and breathlessly kissing.

  Bran's deft fingers found the peak of her breast, which he teased as his lips moved down her throat. He tugged at the top of her gown.

  She wanted this, and yet a voice of piety nipped through the pleasure.

  Marin gasped and folded her arms over her chest to stop him. “The sun is up.”

  He gathered up her long skirt in eager handfuls. “Aye, and I'll be better able to see all of yer beauty.”

  His fingertips skimmed over the backs of her thighs and up to the base of her bottom. Her body hummed in response and her sex grew damp with need. He kissed her and drew his tongue over her lower lip.

  “It's a sin to do this with the sun up,” she protested between kisses. “And on a Friday for that matter.”

  He pulled back and stared at her, his brown eyes dark and shining with want of her. “If we go by the church's rules, it willna be until Monday evening when we might have one another again.” His fingertips curled around her bottom, so his fingertips were wonderfully close to her sex. He lifted a brow and swept a single finger between her legs.

  Marin's knees went weak and threatened to drop out from beneath her. Bran pulled his hand away, evidence of her need glistening on his fingertips. She swallowed.

  “Can ye wait that long, wife?” He pulled her closer to him and her heart pounded erratically. “I intend to show ye many ways of pleasure and can assure ye, no' any of them are sanctioned by the church.”

  Her nipples prickled into hard points and a breathy moan was all she could produce by way of a reply. A knock sounded at the door, startling her nerves and making her jump.

  Bran released her gown and the silk fell heavily into place. He put his finger into his mouth, the one he'd touched her with, and gave her a look that shot straight to her core. Marin's knees buckled this time, but she managed to set her hand to the solid desk and brace herself. Bran's mouth curled in an arrogant smile. One she wanted to kiss off his face.

  He backed to a respectful distance and bade their intruder to enter.

  Drake strode into the room and nodded courteously to Marin. “Good morrow, my lady. Pardon the intrusion.” His gaze met Bran's. “’Tis the Grahams.”

  Marin stepped forward, shedding aside the desire of moments before as the soldier in her came to attention. “Are they rallying?” she asked.

  Drake cast her a regretful look. “They are here.”

  Bran stood at the battlements and regarded the large group of reivers dott
ing the grounds below, like vultures waiting for death. Their ponies moved on anxious legs beneath them, anticipating a battle. Not that attacking the castle would win them any victory. It would be difficult for the men on horseback to overtake the castle.

  But not impossible.

  Bran had proven as much himself when he took the castle by threatening Cat. It simply depended on how determined the Grahams were willing to be, how vicious.

  “There's more than two score of them.” Marin rested her hand atop the depressed crenellation of the wall and tapped her forefinger against the stone in thought. “Why do they stay when they know they cannot defeat us? Do they mean to intimidate?”

  Bran narrowed his eyes against the cutting wind and leveled his stare at a single man on a dark hobbler. “That is exactly why they stay.”

  “They are assessing us,” she stated.

  He grunted in agreement.

  “What can we assess of them?” she queried. “Aside from evidence of their brashness, of course.”

  Bran had not wanted Marin to join him on the battlements, especially without her chainmail. He'd almost put his concerns to voice when the ferocity lit her eyes as Drake gave them information on the Grahams. She knew Werrick Castle better than perhaps anyone else, certainly better than him. Mayhap even more than the earl himself. Bran would do well to remember what a valuable treasure she truly was.

  And yet seeing her facing the armed men below in naught but a silk gown, with her hair secured beneath a delicate gilded caul, left him with the driving need to stand in front of her. For all he knew, their wedding night had resulted in a babe.

  The possibility jolted through him like lightning.

  His child could be seeded in her flat belly at that very moment.

  Marin frowned at him. “Why do you stare at me so?”

  “What if ye are with child?”

  She laughed. “I’m sure you haven’t cause for concern.”

  He could not pull his gaze from her stomach. “Ye could be. It can take only one time.”