Devil Black

by Laura Strickland

  “Do not ask that of me. Anything else.”

  “Yet it is what I need to know.”

  “It is not.” His thumb brushed across her lips, causing her to part them and draw a breath—causing desire to flare low down in her belly. What would she not do for this man? Yet what he demanded of her—to live with him without love—must prove hardest.

  “All you need to know, Wife, is I will fight with the last of my strength to keep you.” He laughed harshly. “Poor reassurance as that may be.”

  Somehow, Isobel found the strength to pull free of his grasp. “And if I ask Meg for the truth?”

  “Do not do that,” he said. “I warn you—do not, if you wish to retain any semblance of harmony between us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “A party of riders approaches, Laird! A large party, and flying MacNab’s banners.”

  The bellow from the battlements froze Dougal’s heart in his chest. A fortnight had passed, awaiting the arrival of his new wife’s father, and the situation in the keep had steadily deteriorated. His warriors were edgy, Meg irascible, Lachlan gloomy. And Dougal’s relationship with his wife veered between cautious hostility and passion so bright it seared him to the bone.

  Now on this cold, bright, snow-dusted morning it seemed something would happen—at last.

  Dougal had been up since dawn, unable to sleep and unwilling to disturb his wife’s slumber. In the chilly dining hall, he nursed a mug of ale for his breakfast and half listened to Lachlan whine about his continued ill-treatment at the hands of Meg. When the summons came, he and Lachlan stared at one another, and then Dougal swore viciously. His sword was in his hand even before he rushed to the outer door with Lachlan in his wake.

  Aye, and there they were, Gerald Maitland no doubt among them. They made an impressive showing in the clear light, a group at least a score strong with their pennants snapping in the cold wind.

  Dougal’s warriors, no doubt as eager for action as he, formed a group around him, and he knew the men on the walls would be ready to fight as well. If it happened here, on his doorstep, so be it. ’Twould not be the first time blood had stained this ground.

  As the party approached, Dougal’s quick eyes dissected it. He saw no agents of the King, just a strong battalion of MacNab clansmen at Randal and Bertram’s backs. And there at Randal MacNab’s side a stranger, well-muffled against the cold, who must be Gerald Maitland.

  Dougal sneered. He supposed he could not offer his wife’s father a naked blade in greeting, much as he longed to. The blood pounded in his veins, and he felt rabid for a fight. Yet talk must come first.

  The party came to a neat halt perhaps thirty feet from Dougal’s doorstep, the horses blowing steam into the cold air. Dougal, with his entire birthright at his back, felt the weight of the moment. The choices he made in the next few minutes could cost everything. And he had never been a man to play it safe.

  Yet he had a wife now to defend, as well as an inheritance—and, perhaps, a child on the way? He had wondered about that this morning before dawn, when he ran his hand over her naked belly. She showed no sign, yet, of increasing. But how could he pump so much seed into her without founding a bairn?

  His narrowed eyes moved to the man at Randal MacNab’s side, searching for some resemblance to Isobel and finding none. The man’s high forehead and prominent nose made him look pained, his grey hair gave no hint as to its original color. But the expression he wore defined, quite well, his mood.

  “MacRae!” Randal MacNab hollered. “Do you mean to give us battle? Or let us in?”

  “A braw question,” Dougal returned. “Which does your arrival warrant? And what of the fact you ha’ been haunting my lands for weeks, trespassing and tempting my warriors’ swords?”

  “Looking after my interests,” MacNab maintained.

  “You have no interest in what is mine.” For a thousand pounds sterling, Dougal could not have kept the disparagement from his voice.

  “But this man does.” Randal gestured to the rider beside him. “This is Gerald Maitland, father to the woman you abducted and raped.”

  “Oh, aye?” Dougal snarled. “And can Gerald Maitland not speak for himself?”

  “I can.” Maitland edged his mount forward. “Are you holding my daughter? Did you seize and force her against her will?”

  Dougal struggled to remind himself this man knew only what MacNab had fed him—a poisoned fare. He considered giving Maitland the benefit of the doubt, and failed to persuade himself.

  “And which daughter might that be?” he shouted, knowing his very tone was an insult.

  Even at that distance he saw the angry flush rise to Maitland’s cheek. “Isobel, as you know right well.”

  “Truly? Yet I perceive, sir, ’tis your daughter Catherine you sent north as a bride for Bertram MacNab.”

  Maitland exchanged an incredulous look with Randal MacNab before saying, “I thought to send my daughter Catherine but was deceived in that. Isobel took her place.”

  “And you did not miss the one for the other? Tut, tut, sir. What sort of father must you be?”

  “Cur! Answer my question, else you will do so at the demand of my sword! Do you hold my daughter Isobel?”

  “She abides here with me, aye.”

  “Do you hold her against her will?”

  “I do not.”

  “You imply she chooses to be here with you and is not, in fact, captive?”

  Dougal had already parted his lips to answer when something struck him in the small of the back with the force of a hurled boulder. He jolted forward and then pivoted as his wife pushed past him, half fastened clothing and hair flying, to face the party on the doorstep.

  “Father? So, you came.”

  “Isobel! Daughter, are you safe?” Very little emotion, besides anxiety, colored Maitland’s voice. Dougal heard no hint of affection, and he scanned his wife’s face for her reaction. She looked stricken, guarded, and angry. Aye, by now he knew what passed for anger in her eyes.

  “Has he harmed you?” Maitland shouted, giving her no chance to reply.

  “No.” Isobel shook her head violently, her hair tumbling. “But why are you here?”

  “I am mounting a rescue, of course. I have come to take you out of this prison—by force if need be.”

  “Well!” Isobel glanced into Dougal’s face and back at her father. “Then I suppose you had better come in so we can discuss it.”

  ****

  “There is absolutely nothing to discuss,” Gerald Maitland said in a voice whose educated accents barely covered the basic Yorkshire. A tall man who, at close hand, displayed the bones and blue eyes of Viking forebears, he paced the hall before the fire, the sword he wore rattling.

  Dougal thought Maitland did not look entirely accustomed to that sword, yet the glint in his eyes, not unlike Isobel’s, argued he would use it.

  Dougal hoped not. He would hate to fell Isobel’s father at her feet, even though on the face of it there seemed to be very little affection between them.

  Only a small group occupied the hall—Maitland with both Randal and Bertram MacNab, Isobel, Dougal, and Lachlan. Dougal felt some surprise about Lachy’s presence—until now, he had kept the full extent of his relationship with Dougal under cover. And being here was a virtual declaration of war. But Dougal could spare little attention for that now; he was far too fascinated with watching his wife.

  She glowed and shimmered with emotion, like a candle that would not blow out in a gale. Dougal could not, however, quite read the emotions, especially when she looked at her father, for she guarded them then. Rage? Distrust? Determination? All he knew was, she looked rampant as a warrior queen.

  “This farce is over,” Maitland went on. “You are coming home with me. And if this blackguard who calls himself your husband objects, I shall take you back by force—just as you came into his hands.”

  Isobel shot Dougal a cautionary glance. This one he interpreted quite clearly: it said, Let me
handle this. And, aye, he was willing, for the moment. But if things went badly, he would step in. No one would take her from him.

  “He is my husband,” Isobel said in a voice that struggled for steadiness. “We were wed—”

  “Under duress, no doubt! He pulled you from the wreck of your carriage and brought you here only half conscious, had the priest mumble a few words, and thought, so, to steal an interest in my lands.”

  “Ah!” The tone of Isobel’s voice altered. “It is about the lands. I thought it must be.”

  “Do not be foolish!” Maitland barked. “I care about your welfare also, far more than you seem to. You have yet to explain to me why you came to Scotland, and where your sister has gone.”

  “You mean, you do not know?”

  “I have been half mad with worry! I thought it was you who disappeared the same morning she came north. I sent men out searching—there was no trace. At length, my bailiff came to me, confessing that his son, Thomas, had also disappeared. I thought you had run off with him, willful, ungrateful daughter that you are!”

  Isobel seethed. “I warrant you were relieved then, to have me, disobedient and damaged, off your hands?”

  “It made some sense. You had transgressed, so, before. When my good friend MacNab’s messenger came advising me Catherine had never arrived and that it was you, and not she, being held captive, I did not know what to think. But relief never came into it.”

  “If you do care about my welfare, as you claim, then you should thank that man, my husband. He rescued me on the road, brought me here, and kept me safe.”

  “Rescued you! I have it on the best authority it is more likely he held up the carriage, abducted you, and forced the marriage.”

  Head high, Isobel demanded, “Do I look like a woman who has been forced to do anything?”

  Dougal, remaining silent with difficulty, had to admit she did not. She looked proud and magnificent, but Maitland’s nostrils flared in anger.

  “You have never known what is good for you, Daughter. Would you even recognize coercion in the form of kindness?”

  “I would, despite the fact that I have seen so little warmth or kindness my life long.”

  Maitland’s stern face convulsed with rage, and he lashed out for Isobel’s cheek, but fast as he moved the blow never landed—Dougal caught his wrist in a grip of iron.

  “Nay, sir, you will not,” he growled. “That is my wife.”

  “She is my daughter, and I will discipline her as required.”

  Dougal stared into the man’s eyes. “And you wonder why she fled you?”

  “Do not speak to me that way, you snake,” Maitland began.

  Isobel pushed her way between them, breaking Dougal’s hold upon her father. “I know not what lies your friend MacNab has told you, but I am clearly not in need of rescue. Father, it is Randal MacNab who would use me, who uses you now in an effort to further the quarrel between him and my husband.”

  “Now, just a moment!” Randal MacNab started up. “I have acted, in this, only for the good. This man—” he gestured at Dougal, “has a reputation in the district as a rogue and a lawbreaker. Abduction is surely not beneath him. Your daughter, Gerald, was contracted to my house. I had a right to step in—more, a duty to do so.”

  “Aye, well, your duty ends here,” Dougal grated. “You have brought the man, and he sees his daughter is content. And when it comes to it, MacNab, your spawn was never contracted to this woman but to her sister.”

  MacNab glanced at Maitland. “He took your daughter in marriage only to get back at me, and to stake an interest in her inheritance.”

  “Aye?” Dougal heard himself say. “And why should I wish to get back at you? Why do you not tell the man how your fine son used his first wife, and then he will see what a narrow escape his daughter has had.”

  Now it was Bertram MacNab who pushed forward. “If you, bastard cur, believe that old score remains unsettled, perhaps you will fight me on it—single combat, one on one?”

  Rage rose to Dougal’s head, so intense that for a moment Bertram’s sneering visage flickered before his eyes and the room dimmed.

  “You will pay,” he promised, low and agonized, “for every indignity you forced her to suffer, for every bruise on her body, each tear she shed.”

  “Aye?” Bertram MacNab’s face became a leering, taunting mask. “It is an old matter, that. I acted with a husband’s right to discipline a wife who needed it.”

  “She? The sweetest soul ever born to this world?”

  “If you wish me to pay,” Bertram goaded, “then draw your sword and face me here and now—coward!”

  Dougal felt the rage explode in his head and leapt at his tormentor, welcoming a rush of relief when his hands closed on Bertram’s throat. He had lived nearly eight years for this, and every fiber of him wanted to mangle and harm. He heard Isobel’s cry of alarm, and any number of hands seized him and pulled him away.

  His vision cleared slowly. The first thing he saw was Bertram MacNab’s face, blood on his jaw and triumph in his eyes, letting Dougal know he had played right into his enemy’s hands.

  “You see?” Randal MacNab bellowed. “The man is dangerous—violent! Gerald, you cannot leave your daughter in his keeping.”

  Before Gerald Maitland could speak, Isobel pushed forward once more to face her father.

  “If you cannot see, Father, what has just happened here—”

  “Oh, I see, Isobel. Pack your things. You are coming with me.”

  “I have no ‘things.’ All was lost with the coach. And I am going nowhere.”

  “Obey me, daughter—for once in your life!”

  “I obey now only my husband. Father, the marriage is valid. It has been consummated—”

  Maitland flushed with anger. “No matter. I am willing to take you back anyway.”

  “Is that not decent of you?” Dougal stepped up to his wife’s side. “She stays with me.” He looked Bertram in the eye. “And, I will fight—and best—any man who says differently.”

  Bertram sneered, “I have heard that claim before.”

  “Aye, and this time ’twill be fairly done.”

  Randal MacNab bridled. “Do you accuse us of falsity? You, who summoned that malodorous excuse for a priest to perform your scurrilous joining?” To Maitland he said, “The priest is morally fallen and well known in the district as a drunken fool. We shall prove the marriage invalid and take your daughter back, under weight of law.”

  Maitland nodded and looked at Isobel. “I shall yet rescue you, Daughter, and that is a promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “My father does not make promises lightly,” Isobel said unhappily, dread forming a corrosive ball in the pit of her stomach. She lay curled in a tight crescent on the bed in her chamber and spoke over her shoulder to Meg who, rather surprisingly, had brought a tray in an effort to persuade her to eat.

  Three days had passed since her father’s visit. During that time Dougal had kept away from her, had spent his daylight hours—and nights, for all Isobel knew—riding his boundaries and pacing his battlements. When Isobel saw him from her windows, he wore a grim face and an ugly air of gloom that befitted the name they called him in the district, Devil Black.

  Isobel craved the reassurance of his presence. Even a single visit from him in the night would give her something to hold on to in the midst of all her uncertainty. She knew he did not love her, but an indication he wished to keep her for some reason beyond his desire to spite MacNab would go far to bolster her spirit.

  “In fact,” she mused to Meg’s silent presence, “I can count but three times my father made any promise to me.” The first had been when they stood watching Isobel’s mother being put into the ground, Isobel holding Catherine’s hand, and he promised he would look after them. She supposed he thought he had done that, to the best of his ability, and he thought he was looking after her now. If he believed the lies MacNab poured into his ear, then he believed she nee
ded rescue and of course he would listen not to what he considered Isobel’s misguided words.

  He had made his second promise when he told both Isobel and Catherine he would see them well married and cared for. That was before Isobel’s seduction and downfall, when she had completely disgraced herself in her father’s eyes. Then, he had promised her she would live to regret her deflowering.

  And she had—oh, she had!

  “You need to eat.” Meg slid the tray onto the bedside table. “You have taken nothing in three days.”

  “I do not care,” Isobel admitted, still surprised Meg apparently did.

  “You should.” Meg seated herself on the foot of the bed so Isobel could not escape looking at her. “What if you carry my brother’s child? Have you not thought of that?”

  Isobel sat up abruptly. “But I have no reason to assume I am with child. Have I?”

  Meg shrugged diffidently. “You expect me to know?” She inspected Isobel slowly. “Surely it is possible, given the joining has been consummated as vigorously as you continue to claim.”

  “I feel no different.”

  “Still, would you gamble on it, if ’tis possible you carry the heir my brother so deeply desires?”

  “Does he, truly?”

  “Aye. These lands may not seem much to you, coming from the sweet south, but they are Dougal’s life’s blood.”

  “Yorkshire is scarcely the sweet south.”

  “Well, we live simply and starkly, here. You had better take something to eat, for the sake of us all.”

  “All right.” The food on the tray looked unappealing, but Isobel took up a crust of bread. “Will you stay and talk with me while I eat?”

  “I am no fit nurse or companion.”

  “Tell me what’s been happening. What is going on downstairs?”

  Meg scowled. “Naught to the good. My brother wears himself thin minding his borders, and that fool, Lachlan, minds me. I wish he would take himself off! I will never give him what he wants.”