His Judas Bride

by Shehanne Moore

  “I’m certainly sure as hell not about to start another five-year war with your damned father by picking and choosing, Princess. The invitation is open to you if you still want to come. But you come alone.”

  Alone? What a horrific suggestion. He must be mistaken.

  “Now, let’s go.”

  He wasn’t. She could barely believe the audacity with which he grabbed her reins.

  There was of course a secondary plan if the first one failed. That was to go to Lochalpin. It was to marry Ewen McDunnagh. It was to spy. Dear God.

  It wasn’t just that she hated the thought of what story might now get back to her father about her—messing this up, wasn’t the exact word that had been bandied over her head this morning—when the consensus of opinion was she would. How could she bed a man like this?

  She could possibly—she suspected any woman could possibly—and probably quite happily too. But that just might be the trouble, when he was sin and blood. She’d sooner yank her reins free and bolt back down the pass.

  Yet, this morning she was the very one to swear she would go down to hell and marry the devil himself, if need be. Was she going to lose this—she hesitated to call it heaven-sent—opportunity, her only chance to free, not just herself from the shackles that bound, the agony that tortured, but Arland?

  “Sir, like you, I don’t go anywhere without my most trusted advisers.”

  Yes. Yes, she was. Just listen to her, when she had opened the door of her heart once and knew perfectly well she would never ever walk these wild shores again. But how could the devil do this? Put a man like this across her path?

  “Are you meaning them?” Again that smile, the one that didn’t quite reach his eyes, flicked toward her, although there was no denying impertinence totally transformed him. “Boys—she thinks you’re venerable.”

  In spite of her intention to remain calm she had to keep her fingers clenched on the reins. The impulse to reach up and strike him across his sardonic face was so strong. But she’d a horrible prescience if she struck him, he was the kind to cherish it. Cherish it? He’d view it as sexual foreplay. No. She was going to have to do something she never did. Beg.

  “Lord McDunnagh, please, I am a stranger here, so it is very unkind of you to jest in this manner.”

  “On the whole that’s not something I do. Do you have any idea of the amount of breath it wastes?”

  “Perhaps. But, it occurs to me, that in addition to my noble lords and advisers back there, these women who I have brought all the way from my father’s castle are my maids—”

  “Maids? Hmm…”

  She could barely credit the audacity with which he crooked his lips.

  “You should have more care for their welfare then, if that’s what they are, Princess. Because that’s not how they’ll stay for very long in this glen.”

  She flinched. Dear God. So it was true? Every word of it. How could she have shamed Lachlan’s memory by imagining their son, her son, Arland, on this rapacious bastard’s shoulders? And not just that. A rapacious bastard who basked in his actions. Look at him grinning to himself.

  “Sir, you cannot mean this to be a McDunnagh affair entirely. I won’t have it. It’s ridiculous!”

  His casual regard turned speculative. He expected an argument, and she was appalled that the snarl issuing from her lips meant he had gotten one.

  “That’s too bad. With the amount of McDunnagh bastards about, there’s not much room for anyone else. Your prospective stepchildren will soon fill both sides of the church if that’s what’s worrying you.”

  “My—”

  This would, of course, make it easier to sleep with him. A woman of her experience, to fight was to suggest she was terrified. When she had already sworn to guarantee her and Arland’s futures by sleeping with him, if necessary. Something Kertyn and Ardene could not have done, would not, when they thought he was a troll.

  Good God, it was spy for a few days, a week, at most, not live happily ever after, examining his sterling qualities as a husband. Nothing she had not sworn. Nothing she could not do. Well? Was it?

  So she did not understand what made her part her lips in that instant. “That is not the agreement between our clans. The McGurkies were to be honored.”

  The glob of spittle sizzling through the snowbank to his right said what he thought of that. Indeed it said what he thought about her.

  He wiped a hand across his mouth. “You and me must be reading from two very different books.”

  She swallowed. Reputedly the only thing that made Ewen McDunnagh vitriolic was getting to the bottom of a whiskey flagon. Much as she was tempted to glance around, she very much doubted there was one in sight, full or empty. Yet if his brows dropped any lower, his eyes would disappear.

  “Sir…” Clearing her throat, she infused her voice with a note of honey sweetness. Lord Ewen’s rage would be nothing to her father’s, if he now sent her packing. Already she appeared to have inflamed this situation sufficiently to cause another war. “My father was assured, despite past enmities, enmities I know and understand your older brother, Callm, the Black Wolf, suffered—”

  His jaw tilted. “Just you be careful there.”

  “Me? Be careful? Why, just hark at that.”

  “My ignorance isn’t as spectacular as yours.”

  “Well, it looks to me as if it’s more. Her name was Morven, and she was his wife. So you see, I do know. But that deed, reputedly anyway, is in the past—”

  He huffed harshly through his nose. “Just you keep telling yourself that. Now, come.” He clenched his lean hand on her reins with such ferocity, she expected them to snap in two.

  “Not until you give me what was agreed by proxy.”

  After all, it was best to start as she meant to go on. If she let him bully her like this, what would be next? Something she did not want to think of here?

  “Now that would be difficult.”

  Even as her own control spun from her, she marveled he could go from seething rage to carefully measured sarcasm in less time than it took her to breathe.

  “Maybe you do that kind of thing over in your glen, but with all these people watching here, you’d be asking for trouble. Your damn crowd of thieving Irish tinkers would want to join in for a start.”

  “My crowd—”

  Ice. Stone. She could not show, she could not show him, how close to her own dark territory he ventured with that remark.

  “Once we get to McDunnagh Castle you can ask the man who will.”

  The man who will?

  “Hell, you can even show him your credentials too.”

  “My—Lord McDunnagh?” She almost fell off her horse. Sagged to the spinning ground and lay there. “You mean you’re not Lord McDunnagh? I thought…I… Why, you told me to stop in his name.”

  He jerked his head. “You see that man there?”

  She did.

  “That’s Wee Murdie. You see that deer on his shoulder?”

  That too.

  “A wager.”

  Kara’s stomach flipped all the way down to her boots. If he now said See your retinue being herded back down the pass, she couldn’t bear it. The anger, the humiliation, the terrible way this had all gone wrong. And herself, not even in Lochalpin yet.

  “But Lord Ewen swore. He swore to my father he would meet me here, and together…”

  “Well, he couldn’t. I think you’ll find Lord Ewen has more important matters than meet you here or anywhere.”

  By which he probably meant drinking and wenching. She shut her mouth with a snap. Was it so bad if Lord Ewen cared less about the wedding than she did herself? It might even be he had no interest in bedding her. For that she should be grateful because it seemed her sisters’ reactions were the right ones. But if this man wasn’t Lord Ewen…

  “And here was me laboring under the misapprehension my fame was legendary, Princess.”

  Legendary? She jerked her head up, dragging herself from her contemplation.
One only had to look to know why Kendrick had tried so hard to get her attention earlier. However much was said of Ewen McDunnagh, whatever affront he desired to offer her, his plaid wouldn’t look as if it cleaned Lochalpin glen and every other one in the vicinity on a daily basis. He wouldn’t be surrounded by this bunch of bandits. Or have that hellhound with him. Or bead his stallion’s mane with animal skulls.

  But there was one man who would. Oh, how terrible was this?

  She lowered her eyelashes. “A pity the same can’t be said of your modesty.”

  “I hardly see you’re in much of a position to go talking of such maidenly virtues.”

  “And you’re not one to talk, sir. Period.” Despite feeling a blush spread to the roots of her hair, she endeavored to retort. “Ogling what you can’t ever have. Isn’t there a word for that?”

  “Hell, now let me think.” He creased his lips, creating ridiculous dimples on his cheeks. “Nice?”

  “Sir, you should have made yourself—”

  “And miss what you showed me?”

  Just the same. Callm McDunnagh, the Black Wolf. Lochalpin’s famous guardian. Why, his hair wasn’t even black. And he didn’t look anything like the kind of ruthless, bloodthirsty monster who’d sold his soul to the devil.

  To think so was particularly stupid of her. When she’d looked at herself in the dark well in her father’s castle, after doing the very same, she’d still seen a woman.

  How could she be so stupid? The Black Wolf? The man who didn’t let the rain into Lochalpin Glen on a wet day. The Black Wolf who… She swallowed the perishing thought that she had been meant to marry him, courtesy of her father, five years ago.

  If she went on, she’d need to be more careful. Whether man or monster, intelligence said the Black Wolf could not be bought, bargained with, cajoled, or duped. Indeed, it was said he’d cut the throat in five seconds flat of anyone he suspected of the merest hint of duplicity.

  So now he’d disposed of her retinue, she needed to start praying to the god she’d abandoned that he better not find out the real truth of why she was here. And why her father had ordered Morven’s murder.

  Chapter Two

  Her name was Morven, and she was his wife?

  The damned bitch never said that there were five of them that day, taking turns of Morven in every way.

  She never said he’d loved her.

  “Jeez, Callm, just slow down will ye, for Christ’s sake, man?”

  As Callm urged his mount, Satan, up the snowbank, Snosh spurred his gray alongside.

  “Aye, Callm.” Wee Murdie’s mare cantered up behind. “Anyone would think you had the appointment with Father Andrew. No’ her and Monsieur Turd.”

  Callm couldn’t even force a grin at the nickname. What the hell was there to grin at after all? He dug his heels in harder and shifted his weight to give Satan his head. The stallion was a powerful leader cresting the rise without any urging from him. But he just…didn’t care.

  He should hate Lady Kara. Damned McGurkie that she was. Seeing her in that dress and thinking of her in the hands of the turd was his worst nightmare in months. It should have been a dream come true. How the hell could he forget how his life had changed in the blink of a spring afternoon?

  He’d noticed, of course. He’d have had to be blind not to. The hordes of McGurkies had swept in from the sea. On their way from Ireland, they said. Had they also said to set up house on the McDunnaghs’ doorstep—no damned intention of getting off it either—maybe his father would have done something then. Although even then the McDunnaghs didn’t have the numbers to fight back. And despite Ewen’s antics, they still didn’t.

  It had been hard when raiding parties started ravaging the Dunalpin meadows. Until that afternoon, he’d still thought the life of a chief’s older son would be his one day though, despite the fact Lochalpin, where deer roamed and linnets soared, was a jewel worth plundering. All it had taken was one afternoon.

  Snosh’s gray lurched forward, plowing through the heavy layer of snow, the movements clumsy as Satan’s were smooth. “Big Tam’ll no’ run away with the deer.”

  The last of his worries.

  “Aye.” Wee Murdie gathered his reins in one hand and tried sweeping a strand of sodden hair back from his mouth. “It’ll soon be on the spit.”

  Although it was almost impossible to hear in the wind barreling across the rise, carrying the sound of man and animal away with it, Callm could still make out Snosh’s chuckle. “Aye. And so will she.”

  Cursing, Callm reined Satan’s pace. All right. It was like this. The thing, the damnable thing, was that Morven had been a virgin on their wedding night and so ignorant it had been a cruelty to persist. So, naturally, when he thought of brides, how the hell couldn’t he help but imagine virgins, cowering in terror, in dresses buttoned up to their chins.

  He certainly didn’t think of women in daringly cut gowns of ruby red silk, with pretty golden curls whipping down their backs, offering themselves to him, bold as a brass chimney-plate, asking to be stoked.

  What the hell was a woman so beautiful doing dressed like a tuppeny whore? Did she think it that necessary to entice Ewen? That damned turd would shag a tree. The bastard would shag the whole damn forest.

  But maybe that was the whole idea?

  Edinburgh. It was where she’d been for the last God knew how many years, learning—plainly how to argue with him like that. So keen to get into Lochalpin she practically shoved her tits in his face. Then, when he finally decided to let her, digging her fancy heels in.

  He dragged a long frosted breath in a bid to cool the sweat that lathered him. He would like to say that was just like a woman. Edinburgh manners? Edinburgh dresses? Or what? But that damned army she had with her? No. No woman had ever put her hand in her cloak and nearly drawn on him either.

  He glowered over his shoulder through the spinning snowflakes. It was the first time he’d done so since they’d set off and he wished he hadn’t. That damned dress and what he wouldn’t mind doing to her in it.

  That damned dress or the thought of what he’d like to do to her in it, when she wasn’t even showing the damned dress—not a scrap, not a ribbon of it, when he hadn’t had a thought like that for five damned years—that made instinct scream, she was up to something.

  Now she lagged behind, so he could barely pick her out through the curtain of snow, the dipping boughs, it was tempting to think he had at least demonstrated his mastery of the situation to her.

  He just knew he’d be a whole glen happier if he could have flung her out on her stylishly appointed rump. But he was in no position to refuse her entry when the wedding had been arranged by proxy. Have her tinker chief father here complaining? Over the affront to her?

  Over something worthwhile, then maybe he would listen.

  “Not exactly alacritous, is she?” Wee Murdie pulled alongside. “I’ve seen faster slugs.”

  “Who can blame her? She gets up afore the turd in that frock, she’ll be lucky to walk for a week. Not one to unwrap a woman’s body like it’s a gift now, is he?”

  Snosh was right. It would be a great kindness to find somewhere to stop, let her exchange the damned thing for something a little less frivolous. Something preferably with a high neck, thick and serviceable.

  But damn her. The world was fast turning ghostly. Remove the blasts of wind and the silence of snow would stretch all the way down the long road of the pass. The stars would be out soon. They would never reach the castle at this rate.

  With Big Murdie—at six foot six, three inches taller than his brother—riding at the rear and Dug skulking in the trees, she wasn’t exactly going to get far if she tried bolting.

  Who would have guessed it would take this long though? Certainly not himself, or he’d have whipped that damned pony of hers along. He didn’t want to get stuck somewhere with her.

  He yanked Satan to a halt. “Go tell Shug to take the baggage horse on ahead to the castle, will you? That should mo
ve Goldie-locks along.”

  Wee Murdie wheeled his horse around. “Callm, that’s—”

  “Just do it. A woman and her trousseau.” Though he had forgotten so much, he was certainly glad he remembered that. “Easy seeing you haven’t ever been married. You just watch her break into a trot, if not a sweat. We’ll be home for supper, boys.”

  The cheer was music to his ears.

  Though Snosh did yell, “Hey, mind and ask her first if she’s got any more dresses like that one she’s wearing.”

  More? Christ.

  What was in the bags and boxes anyway? Soft lace shifts to match her creamy skin, little French shoes, totally impractical for glen walking, but meant for beguiling a man in, at a wedding dance. Dresses… Christ, dresses.

  “You think you can move your derriere a bit faster, Princess? The weather’s worsening. But maybe you want to have to spend the night with me?”

  He may have forced a grin, but it was no joke, not what grabbed his middle. And held it as if with hot pincers. Until that ring was safely on her finger, he didn’t want to see her or hear her. Or anything with her.

  A night beneath the same roof as her was the last thing in the world he wanted.

  * * *

  A naked man and woman. The cover for a bridal bed. At least Kara thought it was. Upside down, her hair ends trailing the stone flags, fighting the urge to kick and scream, it was difficult to tell what it was. But the Black Wolf continued on with grim determination, not stopping till he stood beside the bed.

  “Now. Don’t you get any more ideas in that sweet head of yours about me being your bridegroom. Just because I brought you here. Bundling’s not my thing.”

  He dumped her down, and the breath left her body as she thudded into the straw mattress. Perhaps he was right and she shouldn’t have lagged quite so far behind. And she shouldn’t have caught her foot in the stirrup and plunged from her horse when she dismounted in the yard, either. But it was all secondary to the instinctive knowledge, he lied.