Summoned for Seduction

by Joanne Rock

  A bold warrior who would take such care with her heart and her body? The notion was a revelation. And provided her with a power she had never guessed she could possess.

  Easing away from him, she turned so that she faced him. If she lifted her blindfold now, who would she see? Her heart pounded hard, but not out of fear. Even as she felt his gaze upon her, devouring her with his eyes, she did not want this moment to end. She liked learning about her mystery lord slowly, without the watchful stares of a hall full of family and clansmen as witnesses.

  “I am willing, but untutored,” she confessed, the scents of honey and cinnamon filling her nose until she felt drunk on the fragrance of mead if not the taste. “I may need guidance.”

  Licking her lips, she stretched up on her toes, seeking contact. The low growl he made in his throat rolled through her like a possessive caress, an assurance he wanted her with a hunger that bordered on primal.

  By the time his mouth met hers, she flattened herself to him, her whole body seeking his. He gathered her tightly to him, his broad palms spanning her back and drawing her nearer, nearer until her spine curved into him.

  Sensation simmered just beneath her skin, her blood stirring hotly at the feel of all that hard male heat against her needy flesh. But although his hold on her remained tight, his kiss was unutterably soft, his lips gliding lightly over hers with a teasing caress she had not imagined. It was delectable. Heavenly. And not nearly enough.

  On instinct alone, her lips parted. That small accommodation rewarded her a thousand times over as his tongue stroked hers in a way that sent an echoing pleasure to her womb. Her hips answered as surely as her tongue, both pressing closer in a dance gone suddenly wild.

  “Please,” she murmured against his mouth, unsure what she wanted and certain he could provide it. She gripped his shoulders, needing him to steady her.

  But perhaps he thought she signaled that he stop for he pulled away sharply.

  “What is it?” she whispered, alert to some confusing change in the air.

  He stood so still. So rigid. Had someone entered the brew house?

  “Helene.” He did not speak to her as a mystery stranger but with the cold reserve of a Highland laird in the great hall.

  It was that note of wintry restraint that confused her. He sounded familiar in a way that made her stomach knot. Dread cooled her blood even before her brain caught up with what her instincts told her. Something had gone very wrong indeed.

  Without warning, he reached for her blindfold and shoved the silk up, away from her eyes.

  Revealing the mystery stranger clutched in her arms.

  Léod mac Ruadhán. The monster who chased his wife from his home, leaving her to die in the inhospitable north. The very beast who sought a second bride to fill the place left by the first.

  She realized she still gripped his hauberk in her fingers, an action she’d taken in the throes of a passion she hardly recognized in the cold air between them now. She relinquished it—him—as if burned.

  He had tricked her. Called her out into the winter night alone to shame her and then revealed himself as her tormentor.

  A weight closed on her chest like a tightening fist. She could not have formed words if she tried, but then all rational thought had fled from her head anyway. She could only feel a dark betrayal where unwise passion had been a moment before.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, releasing the blindfold like a child’s forgotten plaything.

  It sagged down her ear, a lopsided circlet of silk and foolishness.

  But before she could think to accuse him with righteous indignation or maidenly outrage, the powerful Highland laird spun on his heel and stomped out of the brew house into the night.

  The morning had not come fast enough for Léod. He would leave Domhnaill at once, but he needed some hint of daylight for the journey. Now, with a hint of dawn breaking on the horizon, he could finally dispense with all pretense of civility and depart the holiday festivities at the lavish keep. He’d never been one for merry-making anyhow. His life had been all about hard work and sacrifice. Making war and serving his king to enrich his own coffers. He’d never seen this trip to Domhnaill as anything more than a chance to find a wealthy bride to bring him more land and alliances.

  Now, he had.

  Because Lady Helene MacKail was not the sort of woman he could forget easily. He’d thought to trifle with her enough to make her see the error of her ways in refusing him, then choose another bride who would be more biddable and less frightened of him. He certainly had not planned to lie to Helene, play sensual games with her in darkened corners, and then marry her as well. No doubt she would hate him now more than ever.

  But something had gone amiss in his carefully laid plans for her last night. She’d trusted him in a way that pleased and surprised him. He’d seen a glimpse of how he might break through her hardhearted opinion of him, and he could imagine a sizzling future with such a temptress in his bed. Yet, even as that occurred to him, he’d known that he could not sabotage her trust completely by continuing the pretense of being someone else. He didn’t want her to fall for a mysterious stranger in a dusty brew house.

  He wanted Helene to fall for him and no other, even himself in disguise.

  Now, he gave the reins of his best mount to a groom outside the courtyard and approached the keep to retrieve his bride. He’d awoken her father from his slumber to confess a portion of his transgressions with the girl and demand her hand at once. Although the MacKail lord had protested the haste, they had finally agreed to a handfasting now and a formal exchange of church vows in the spring. All that remained was to obtain his wife.

  The woman who first appeared in the hall was not Helene but their hostess, Lady Cristiana of Domhnaill. A frown creased the lovely features of the keep’s famed mead-maker, her auburn hair only half contained in saffron-colored veils as she hastened toward him.

  “My lord,” she greeted him, granting him a deferential nod before placing a tender hand upon his arm. “Must you leave us so soon? All of the keep’s winter revels have been leading up to our Twelfth Night festivities.”

  The lady managed to run the keep effectively as her father aged and relied heavily upon her. Yet, despite her head for politics and lands, she continued to be an attentive chatelaine. She would have made a fine wife for a man seeking lands and wealth, yet she did not call to him in a primal way as Helene had from the first. Léod knew now he would have no other for a bride.

  “It is with regret I leave your fair company.” Lifting her hand, he bowed over it briefly. “I am in haste to introduce my new wife to her future home.”

  At that moment, he felt Helene’s presence in the corridor outside the great hall. She made no sound, but he sensed her nearness with a fever in his blood. Turning toward the stairs from the gallery, he found her at her father’s side, her eyes dry but rimmed with red as if tears had been there recently. Her mother hovered in the background, her face pale as she touched a steadying hand to Helene’s shoulder.

  Memories of his first wife’s vehement protests darkened his vision for a moment, the past tainting the present with ugly reminders that he’d already been found unworthy as a husband. He ground his teeth together to lock down his impatience.

  “Good day, Lady Helene. Are you ready to depart?”

  He looked to her father so he did not have to see her unwillingness. The MacKail lord gave a terse nod and nudged his daughter toward Léod with a hand at the back of her waist.

  Despite her frosty mood and her clear resentment, Léod could not help a hint of triumph at having her by his side. Later, he would figure out how to win back her passions. For now, he simply wanted to claim her.

  “I would hear the vows declared now,” Helene’s father insisted. “Perhaps Lady Cristiana would be kind enough to act as a witness.”

  If the MacKail laird had been worried that Léod would not honor the marriage contract, then a witness proved wise. But Léod had no intention of wi
thdrawing his suit. Helene would remain his from this day forward. He looked to her delicate form cloaked in travelling clothes and wondered how far he would have to travel to find some place to be with her privately. How long would it take to win back enough trust to have her come to him willingly again?

  He remembered the taste of her kiss so vividly that his body responded immediately to her presence as he drew her into the circle of his arm. When their hostess nodded her agreement to serve as a witness, Léod spoke the simple lines to bind them together forever.

  “I vow to take Helene MacKail as my legal wife….”

  Helene had listened to the pledge in silence. She must have repeated her promise at some point, because before she knew it, her father and Lady Cristiana were hugging her, wishing her well and sending her out into the snowy dawn with the dark deceiver who was now her mate for life.

  Any hope of a cart or her own horse was dashed when she spied the lone huge stallion in the courtyard. The beast pranced and snorted around the young groom who held him, as unfit for human company as the laird Mac Ruadhán himself.

  She stood still as Léod swung up on the great animal’s back. Her composure was more difficult to maintain when he bent down to pluck her off the ground, dragging her body across his as if his lap were a suitable saddle for her.

  Her cheeks heated at the nearness as he kicked the horse into motion and guided them out of the courtyard and across the drawbridge to the open fields around the keep. She sat so close to Léod that she could catch his scent. Memories from the night before—when she’d thought him a more tender soul—came back in a rush. The silk of his tunic laces and the muted spice of his scent brought on a bolt of pleasure no matter how staunchly her mind refused to acknowledge such wayward feelings.

  “Where are my things?” she asked, if only to avoid thinking about the way his chest felt against her shoulder where he had tucked her close. She attempted to peer backward over his shoulder, but his form was so broad and the snow swirled in the horse’s wake so that she could not discern much. “My father said he would send my clothes and the dowry items.”

  “They will take longer to pack.” As they darted around a low patch of brush, Léod readjusted his hold on her hip. His palm strayed low, grazing the curve of her rump and causing another flare of heat to sizzle over her skin. “A caravan will follow tomorrow once your father can assemble your belongings.”

  With his fingers curled around her hip, she could almost forget he had tricked her into marriage. Had deceived her just for the fun of seeing her humbled.

  “I see.” Her anger bubbled up to the surface again, blocking out the heat his touch still inspired. “And was this the same way your first marriage began? By force and deception?”

  He peered down at her with an expression more forbidding than she’d ever seen. She swallowed hard and almost wished she could retract the question. But if she remained fearful of this warrior’s ways, she would never find any peace in her marriage. If he planned to banish her, she would at least make her displeasure known first.

  She would not run from Léod again.

  “Margaret was not well from the first.” His voice held a harsh note, but the words were quieter than their earlier exchanges. In fact spoken as they were, close to her ear, the sound called her back to their intimacies in the brew house. “Yet her father wanted an alliance with me, and did not care that his daughter considered me the devil on earth.”

  She could hear the bitterness, yes. But she also heard him confiding something in her, a secret perhaps, that reminded her of all they’d shared the night before. Hadn’t they each expressed a desire to speak plainly and to be known for their true selves?

  “I’m sure she had her reasons to think as much,” she accused, though the words lacked force. Cocooned against Léod’s chest as the horse tore through the snow-covered woods, Helene could not help but remember the way he’d held her the night before. She had wanted those touches to be real. To mean something.

  Instead, they had all been an elaborate means to an end for him. A way to show her that she was at his mercy.

  “Nay.” Léod’s response brooked no argument, his hand tucking her cloak under her thigh where the wind had freed a small section. “She had been fiercely protected by her parents all her life because she’d been born too fragile for this world. I think they believed she would be all right once she was wed, but they chose a man who embodied all of her girlish nightmares of a bloodthirsty warrior.”

  Helene could see where a sheltered woman might balk at this man’s aspect. But she wondered at Léod’s description of the maid as “too fragile.” Helene had known a peasant girl whom she would have described as such—a sweet little thing who seemed to have been born with a babe’s simple mind. Had this woman been afflicted with that same gentle madness?

  It was the first time she’d considered the marriage from Léod’s perspective, making her wonder why she’d never thought to do so before. Had she been too prejudiced against him because of his reputation?

  “Rumor says she screamed herself hoarse that very first night,” Helene prompted. Not to goad him. Simply to learn the truth.

  “Aye.” The set to his jaw and the dark glower in his brown eyes confirmed he was not happy to be reminded of it. “And I did naught but appease the needs of a church union on our wedding night—with an audience of a priest and her father no less. Still she behaved as though I would breathe flames and devour her whole.”

  Helene shifted awkwardly against him as the great stallion jumped a small ravine. Her hips jounced in his lap, sliding between his thighs until she had to hoist herself back up on top of his legs again. The whole business made her skin flush hot and she could not meet his gaze.

  Ever since last night, her flesh seemed highly sensitive everywhere. Léod had woven some kind of sensual spell around her, making her captive to a man who had been a lie.

  “So you sent her as far from your keep as possible, leaving her to waste away to nothing.” Helene hoped if she concentrated on what he’d done, on the kind of man he really was, she could dismiss these awkward feelings for him—the heat, the ache, the needs that were too earthy to name.

  Her desires had gotten all tangled up and it was his fault for making her feel so itchy and responsive to every subtle movement of his powerful body.

  “Nay.” Again he denied the rumors the whole of the Highlands had repeated for many moons. “She begged help from travelers who visited my keep, convincing them I abused her person, then demanded passage to one of her father’s far-flung holdings. I could not find her for weeks and by the time I did, she was sick beyond help. I brought her home to her mother, hoping they could save her, but her parents had grown weary of caring for her and demanded I fulfill my responsibilities.”

  The cold fury in his voice made Helene lift her gaze. And though she fully expected to see that anger reflected in his expression, instead she saw a naked pain that would have been impossible to misinterpret.

  “You could not save her,” she realized, understanding that he regretted that much at least.

  His jaw flexed again, the muscle working ruthlessly as he mastered his expression into the impassive mask she’d seen so many times.

  “No one could have. It is a unique pain to watch the anguish of someone who willed herself to die.”

  They were the last words Léod spoke for many leagues. And because Helene was not sure how she felt about his version of events in his marriage, she remained quiet for the rest of their journey. For miles and miles of snowy trails and evergreens heavy with white, they travelled in silence save for the rhythmic beating of the horse’s hooves and the rush of the beast’s harsh breathing.

  As darkness loomed and still no words passed between them, she wondered where they would stop to seek shelter for the night. She had heard the Mac Ruadhán lands were situated high in the mountains. They could not possibly reach their destination in one day. Her former home, however, was only a day’s ride. There wer
e times when she’d checked the position of the sun and felt sure they were going in that direction. But as the sky grew more fully dark, she soon lost her bearings.

  It was not until the stallion crossed an ancient Roman stone bridge over a little brook that she realized they were indeed right next to her home.

  “My lord.” She straightened on his lap, her hair clinging to his hauberk and her cheek imprinted with the design of the embroidered fabric after hours cradled there. “We seem to be close to my father’s keep.”

  “I know.” He steered the horse up a sharp hill as darkness settled fast on them. “He invited us to pass this night here so you would feel safe.”

  Her heart eased after the fears of the day and the tears of the night before when she’d learned she would have no choice but to wed the man who’d tricked her. At the time, the union seemed impossible, but with the new possibilities tickling her brain about his last marriage, and his willingness to spend the night in the home of her birth, she wondered if she misjudged Léod in more ways than one.

  Could there be more hope for her union than she’d thought possible?

  As the horse climbed the high, walled passage that led to her father’s keep, Helene felt her heart ease by degrees. She waved to the gatehouse guard as she called out a greeting to a man-at-arms she knew well. The scent of a burning Yule log drifted on the breeze, the Twelfth Night festivities celebrated even though the lord and lady were absent. Though her parents were still at Domhnaill, Helene would be able to sleep in her own chamber. The thought soothed her somewhat.

  Until she remembered she wouldn’t be sleeping alone.

  The wide pallet she’d never shared with another would become her marriage bed.

  Chapter 4

  Léod could have toured the lands that would one day belong to his sons. The MacKail holdings were vast and with his marriage to Helene, he would gain some now and the rest would go to their children. So he had every reason to care deeply about the property. But instead of meeting with the steward or interrogating the chamberlain, Léod strode to Helene’s chamber as soon as he could reasonably free himself from a late Twelfth Night meal in the great hall. Helene had pleaded to take a more simple meal in her rooms despite the holiday, and he’d been inclined to allow it after the long day on the road. He’d eaten in haste with a handful of MacKail’s closest advisers.