She wasn’t a classical beauty, he admitted, but there was a purity and innocence—and goodness—to her rounded cheeks and chin and sparkling eyes that appealed to him. Perhaps he should have sought a wife from among the less sophisticated sooner. This one wouldn’t connive behind his back, deceive him with pretty words, or flutter her lashes at other men. He had complete confidence in that, even if he didn’t have complete confidence in the odd workings of her mind.
Patting himself on the back for being logical enough to accept that a woman’s mind didn’t work like his, Drogo didn’t catch the bishop’s intonations until he heard the whispers rise behind them. Ninian’s hand squeezed his, and he returned to the moment.
Now that he had Drogo’s attention, the bishop repeated his question. “Do you vow to love, honor, and take this woman in equality, for so long as you both shall live?”
Equality? “Love and honor” were familiar meaningless phrases he’d heard all his life but equality? The word seemed to whisper ever louder through the church, echoing back and forth and rising to the soaring rafters. Equality!
Ninian didn’t look at him. Her side of the church hushed expectantly. His side seemed in imminent danger of explosion. What the devil was this equality business?
The heavy brass doors at the front of the church slammed open with a violent clang.
Reacting instinctively, Drogo tugged Ninian behind him, placing her out of danger as he swung to face whoever had entered. He hadn’t forgotten Ninian’s warning of a stranger in their midst, but the man staggering down the aisle with a pistol in one hand and sword in the other wasn’t a stranger.
“Twane!”
His brothers all surged to their feet as a party of large men followed Twane. Drogo gestured for his family to stand back. His mother and stepmother screamed, but for the most part, Ninian’s family appeared to regard the newcomers as a dramatic performance, perhaps part of the ceremony with which they weren’t familiar. Behind him, Ninian stiffened, and her wrist tried to twist free of his grip.
“I want my wife, Ives!”
“You’re foxed, Twane. Go home to your doxie and sleep it off.” Drogo couldn’t tear his gaze from Twane’s to see what his brothers were up to now, but they’d disappeared from his field of vision. He had to calculate his next move carefully. Twane’s men looked uncomfortable and would no doubt leave peacefully given half a chance. He had no idea of the accuracy of the pistol aimed at him, but it had only one shot. The sword was a different matter. He hadn’t worn his own into the church; Twane had probably counted on that. If he tried to leap aside to avoid attack and disarm the madman, he endangered Ninian and the bishop. If he released her, would Ninian have sense enough to remove the clergyman and herself from the line of fire?
He heard her muttering something under her breath, but he couldn’t make out the words. Her aunts in the front row appeared to take up the chant, though, and a low prayer rose and fell in rhythm. On the other hand, the loud grumble on his side of the church grew angrier and more boisterous. Backed by the confidence of his men and his drunkenness, Twane didn’t appear to notice.
“Let’s take this outside where we can discuss it privately,” Drogo suggested, reluctantly releasing Ninian and praying she had sense enough to duck.
“My wife, Ives!” Twane raised his pistol and took aim.
An explosion of gunpowder shattered the growing rumble of voices. Someone tackled Drogo by his knees. Off balance, he tumbled down the altar stairs. Falling, pelted with an odd hail but feeling no wound, he twisted as he hit the bottom. Discovering Ninian kneeling on the step above him, he grabbed her and pulled her down, rolling over and covering her with his body while all hell broke loose over their heads. He couldn’t believe the damned woman had knocked him down instead of running for cover.
“You idiots, now look what you’ve done!” Dunstan’s voice rang out in the annoyed tone he reserved for castigating their younger brothers.
A frenzy of feathers flapping overhead created a crescendo of disconcerted female screams.
Feathers?
One drifted down to tickle Drogo’s nose.
“Devil take it, where did the damned pigeons come from?”
That had to be Ewen. Cautiously, Drogo peered over his shoulder—and dodged a flapping wing.
“My family must not have been able to find doves,” Ninian whispered from beneath him.
“Get him! Get the devil!” a male voice shouted as someone grabbed Drogo’s arm.
Well, hell. Drogo elbowed his assailant and forgot about pigeons. If he’d been hit, he didn’t feel it. He bloody well intended to put a hole in the ass who’d disrupted his wedding though, and he’d be damned if he let anyone touch Ninian. Keeping her huddled beneath him, he grabbed his assailant’s arm and twisted until the man screamed and stumbled. Then he rose to his knees and jerked Twane’s legs out from under him.
Twane landed with a thump, and Drogo was on him in an instant.
Amid the confusion, Ninian sat up and gazed in wonder at the magnificent chaos erupting through the once-peaceful cathedral. The bishop had dropped to kneel and pray behind the protection of the pulpit. Scattered bits of grain still flew through the dusty air and covered the aisle and half the pews. She recognized the inventiveness of Drogo’s brothers in the cannon shot of grain pellets and didn’t even bother looking for the weapon. They’d evidently intended to shower the wedding procession in a less than traditional fashion. The birds that were always part of Malcolm ceremonies had settled down to peck through the chaff on the marble floor.
The humans, however, were doing nothing so peaceful.
While Drogo and Twane rolled about the center aisle, scattering pigeons in their wake, Drogo’s brothers leaped to defend him from Twane’s army. Ninian identified young David swinging repeatedly at one of the men who, trapped between two pews, cowered and covered his face. The youngest, Paul, had leaped on the back of an enormous man, dislodging his wig. Gripping the man’s sparse hair with one hand, he pummeled him with the other. The giant’s shrieks as he ran down the aisle filled the church.
Drogo’s mother and stepmother had fled to the protection of Ninian’s aunts, who had ordered their broods into a protective ring. Since no one challenged them, they chanted the incantation for safety while shooting dagger glares at the men disrupting the sacred ceremony.
Ninian would have giggled if not for the danger of the still loaded pistol Drogo had kicked toward the altar, and the sword he had yet to dislodge from Twane’s fist. Still kneeling, she reached for the pistol when a large arm caught her by the waist and jerked her upward.
“I don’t think a pretty little thing like you needs to be playing with a man’s weapons,” a deep voice admonished.
She’d felt the rage approaching, but had thought it all a part of the chaos around her. Sometimes, her Gift was not at all helpful. Defiantly, she met the grim expression of the man Drogo couldn’t identify, the man who most certainly had to be an Ives.
“The damned earl really doesn’t know what he has here, does he?” the man asked, with almost a thoughtful tone.
Ninian heard past his words to the suppressed fury of this man’s soul. She wouldn’t scream and distract Drogo from his fight. Malcolm women didn’t scream. Generally, they didn’t fight either. But Ninian had always been a malcontent, as her grandmother had told her often enough.
Taking a lesson from Drogo’s brothers, she grabbed the man’s lace jabot at the throat, jerked his head down, and fastened her teeth into his extremely prominent nose.
He yowled in both pain and surprise. He caught her hair and tried to rip her away.
Ninian bit harder and kicked his shins with as much strength as she could muster. Her pointed kid slippers weren’t as useful as her heavy country clogs, but they did their job. Her attacker began leaping about to avoid the blows.
“Drop her, and she�
��ll let go,” a voice spoke steadily from behind her.
Drogo. Ninian sighed in relief as the heavy hand at her waist fell away, and she released her aching grip on the man’s nose. Drogo caught her and gently pulled her back against him. He was breathing hard, but he didn’t seem to be hurt. She didn’t dare turn to see. Holding his injured nose, the stranger focused his attention above her head.
“You would do well to look further into the origins of the family you marry into,” the man said flatly. “Equality!” he snorted. “I suppose you’re getting what you deserve.”
With that, the large stranger stalked down the altar steps and past the men hauling Twane from the center aisle. He skirted around the chanting women—several of whom stopped chanting to admire his masculine form—and removed the musket from the Ives brother hastily reloading it with buckshot from his pockets. With scarcely a hitch to his progress, he marched out the front door.
“Who was that?” Ninian murmured from the comfort and safety of Drogo’s arms. She didn’t think her knees would lock under her if he let go. She didn’t question the ease with which she sought the security of his shelter or his swiftness in offering it.
“Devil if I know,” Drogo answered, although his voice held a thoughtful note. “But I daresay he won’t stick his nose in our business again.”
Ninian almost certainly heard him chuckle—whether at his witticism or her handiwork, she couldn’t tell. With the enemy in retreat, Aunt Stella broke up the ring of chanting cousins and sailed toward the altar. The bishop emerged from hiding, all but shaking his ruffled feathers. Dunstan had begun to round up his excited brothers who, now that the danger was over, were overly aware of the admiring feminine glances from the other side of the church. Before all the powers descended on them, Ninian turned and hastily searched her bridegroom for injury.
Drogo caught her hands between his and forced her to look up at him. “I’m not one of your patients yet,” he said gently. “Twane was too drunk to be much of an opponent.”
“That was Claudia’s husband?” Her husband’s world was a strange one, much more violent than the cloistered one she’d grown up in. She could scarcely blame Claudia for escaping to the peace of Wystan. She just didn’t understand how all these worlds connected. Or her place in them. Her jaw still ached from her unprecedented violence.
Dunstan, Stella, and the bishop converged on them all at once, but Ninian’s aunt and the clergyman fell into a heated conversation, leaving Dunstan to examine his brother for damage.
Deciding Drogo was relatively unharmed, he turned a wary glance to Ninian. “Remind me never to put my nose in your vicinity.”
Too caught up in the whirlwind of emotions swirling around her, Ninian didn’t even have the grace to blush as she leaned into her bridegroom’s embrace. “Just don’t stick it in my business.” She said pertly, although uncertainty held her in its grip. Would he call off their wedding now? Or would the bishop?
“I won’t ask what Twane wanted, but who the hell was that your bride nearly maimed?” Dunstan demanded, turning to Drogo, apparently satisfied Ninian wouldn’t leap out and snack on him.
“Damned if I know, but I mean to find out.” Drogo lifted Ninian’s chin and forced her attention back to the conversation. “What did he say to you?”
Beneath his dark gaze, she blinked. He was forever doing that to her. She’d never known that much heated attention, and she needed time to become used to it. “Nothing we don’t both already know,” she answered without thinking.
Drogo raised his eyebrows and waited.
Ninian grimaced and straightened, reaching to set her coronet straight. “If I may quote him directly, he said, ‘The damned earl really doesn’t know what he has here, does he?’ But what that has to do with anything is beyond my understanding. I’ve not met an Ives yet who made any sense to me.”
“Ives?” both Dunstan and Drogo said at once.
She glared at them impatiently. “Of course. Did you not look at him? He’s every bit an Ives.” She glanced at Dunstan. “And he’s even angrier than you are.”
Aunt Stella chose that moment to descend upon them. “We’re to take the rest of the ceremony to the church steps. The fool won’t risk his precious church on the lot of you any longer. Ives, if you don’t keep better control of those young nuisances…”
While she scolded, Ninian met Drogo’s gaze. Did he intend to go through with the ceremony or had he time to realize they were wedding chaos to calamity?
She watched him study her face, then drop his gaze to the place where their child rested. His jaw tightened, and with that grim look she was beginning to recognize, he clasped her arm over his elbow. The brawl had half torn his black cloak from his shoulder, but the gold band remained fastened around his neck. She thought he looked more dangerous than a medieval knight returning from the Crusades.
“Marrying on the church steps is much more to my liking,” he declared, hauling her with him down the aisle and past their expectant audience. “Equality?” he whispered in her ear as they hurried forward. “What the hell does that mean?”
Twenty
With the doves—pigeons—dispersed and the grain already thrown, the rest of the wedding was anticlimactic. As Drogo grimly repeated his vows—including the one of equality—Ninian accepted the token ring binding her to him, and preening Ives males carved swathes through flirting Malcolm females.
As Drogo leaned over to seal his vows by kissing his bride, a sigh of happiness wafted from their feminine audience, and ribald laughter and shouts erupted among the males. Feeling like one of the beleaguered characters in the political cartoons posted in news shop windows, Drogo limited the kiss to a highly unsatisfactory nibble.
“Scotland would have been better,” he muttered against her lips.
“Or not at all,” she answered sweetly.
She might very well have the right of that. Warily watching the crowd for any sign of Twane or his men—or the mysterious man who was bloody lucky to still have a nose—Drogo eased Ninian through the cheering mob of well-wishers.
“You don’t suppose they’ll all follow us home?” he asked glumly as he assisted her into their waiting carriage. He’d left a footman and a driver standing guard while they were inside, but he ordered a final hasty inspection while Ninian took her seat. He didn’t fear Twane, but his brothers were capable of unfastening carriage wheels or placing Chinese firecrackers under seats.
“I suppose they’ll not only follow us,” Ninian replied as he climbed in beside her, “but I also suppose my uncles and their sons will be waiting at the house to welcome you into their ranks. They do like a free meal.”
“They’re not Malcolms, are they?” It didn’t look as if he would be bedding his new bride any time soon, Drogo concluded with disgruntlement.
“Of course not, but I’m sure they’ll be happy to console you with all the trials and tribulations we bring. Were it not for the lack of available men, Malcolm women should never have left the forest.”
He’d had enough warnings. He really needed to start paying closer attention to the annoying details now that he had what he wanted. As the carriage halted in the convoluted traffic of a narrow intersection, Drogo studied the bland, innocent features of his country wife. “Are you trying to tell me all Malcolm women are… witches?” He had difficulty even saying the preposterous word.
Ninian tugged at the gold band fastening her cape. “Of some degree. Of course.” The band snapped open, and she sighed in relief before looking up at him quizzically. “Did you have some doubt?” She continued without waiting for an answer. “Actually, from studying what books I could find at the cottage, I’m theorizing we’re descendants of Druids. Women played a very large part in that cult.”
Drogo was used to facing the world and its caprices with impassivity, but even he was having difficulty swallowing a lump this large. “Druids? Tree wo
rshippers?”
She shrugged. “Trees have their powers, just as herbs do.” She touched the halo of twigs in her hair. “Aunt Stella will have laid an enchantment on this rowan, offering me protection. Actually, though, rowan seeds are poisonous and can be used to disable enemies. You should approve of the logic.”
“We should have forced rowan berries down Twane’s throat?” It was easy to slip past her superstitious silliness while watching Ninian’s luscious lips press together in an inviting bow. If only they had time, he could slide his tongue between that sweetness and have her skirts up shortly thereafter.
He checked the jam of horses and carts outside the window. If they delayed much longer… The carriage lurched into motion. Damn.
“Why do you hide Claudia from her husband?”
Were she anyone but Ninian, he would hear suspicion or jealousy in her question, but this one sounded as innocent as the lips speaking it. “He beats her, badly. Among other things,” he added reluctantly. He didn’t want to introduce a new bride to the perversions of some members of his sex.
“Ahh, that accounts for it. I should have bitten his nose.” She folded her hands in her lap without explaining.
It seemed to him that she left a lot of things without explanation. Drogo narrowed his eyes. “Accounts for what?”
“Claudia’s pain and anger and sorrow. And lack of…” She screwed up her face in search of the right word. “Her lack of confidence in herself, I guess. She’s a very unhappy person. I’m glad she’s safe now.”
Drogo wanted to relax at this perfectly sensible answer. Ninian had spent months in Claudia’s company, and his bride was more perceptive than most. But she’d pulled this little trick of describing people’s feelings one too many times and a little too recently for comfort. He needed further reassurance. “I suppose you know that the same way you know Dunstan suffers from spurned love and that the man with the sore nose is angry? Not that any man wouldn’t be angry after being bitten.” Mentally, he rubbed his own prominent beak.
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