If ever an evening was calculated to tighten nets about her, this was it. In every respect. Her father must just make do with what she had. Naturally she would have to pretend it was more than she did.
The determined scrunch of her footsteps was all that broke the silence, for what might have been the first hour or so. Despite that crack to her ankle, snow-light was easier to walk in than pitch blackness. It hardly mattered that the silence deepened, as the snow began to fall, slowly at first, then gradually blanketing her vision. She plodded on.
She’d thought she could marry Ewen McDunnagh. But it wasn’t just that. She hadn’t missed the way the Wolf’s eyes followed her during that dance. He may not have taken the hall doors off their sockets at the end of it, but she wasn’t going to pretend, something wasn’t right. He didn’t seethe for nothing. Or refrain from acknowledging or speaking to her as he had either. Why, only the other day he’d defended her.
She hardly needed to have been a fly on her father’s castle wall to know what would have been said when Kendrick and the others trailed back to Glen Gurkie without her. She put nothing past the old bastard. What if he’d determined to do this without her? She needed to get out of here.
It was hard, when the wind suddenly picked up though to see her way. And it was impossible when it nearly ripped her cloak from her shoulders and frost bit through her gloves, to stand upright. Never mind see through the maelstrom of snowflakes, whizzing everywhere. Her hood. Her throat. Her boots. Real leather, her father had said. Clearly the old bastard had been off there, or her toes were things she would feel. Everything was soaking, so cold against her skin making it hard to stop shivering.
She would stop to shelter if need be. For all she disdained the fact Ewen McDunnagh had made the former and the latter was harder than it was to keep upright, she had biscuit bread and chicken. It was more than she’d had in her father’s dungeon all the years. Then of course there was the whiskey.
What Ewen McDunnagh would say when he found it was gone from his chamber—well, he was probably more likely to miss that than her, so it was probably as well she would not be there to suffer his wrath.
She staggered on, her feet sinking at each step.
“Y-you’ll see, Arland. I won’t let you d-d-down.” She was ashamed hearing herself stammer, talk such nonsense too, but it was so cold, she needed something to preserve her mind, make sure each stumbling foot went down. And it wasn’t as if anyone could hear, which was probably as well. Serenne and the other women in particular. “Mammy’s coming. You r-r-remember that she said she w-would? She’s coming b-back for you. Y-you can walk beside me if you like. Take m-my hand.”
Losing things a bit wasn’t she? But as if to belie her certainty about staggering forward instead of trying to find shelter, she was aware of another noise being carried on the wind whistling through the branches.
One that was a little too defined, a little too steady to be anything so natural as the wind rattling or her lungs wheezing as she fought her way to her next step in this ghostly world. A noise that didn’t just sound like clip, clop, clop. A noise that was clip, clop, clop.
Dear God, someone was out here in the forest besides herself. She must hide. She couldn’t afford to be seen. Although her teeth chattered and frozen blobs beaded her eyelashes, she must run. What if it was a shepherd and he wanted to rescue her? Or worse?
Smothering a curse, Kara yanked her foot out the snowbank it had sunk in. The noise was closer and what was worse, coming her way. Clop. Clop. Clip. A shepherd wouldn’t very well be riding a horse, would he? Unless it was a very rich shepherd who had somehow managed to mislay all in his sheep in the forest.
“Son of a whore.”
She almost leaped out her skin. Oh God. The Wolf. Why must it be the Wolf? On that bloody great stallion of his. The one man in the world who was insane enough to be out here in the middle of the night. And not just insane.
She froze. So did the only part of her that had been warm until now, her marrow. Mammy would not be coming home quite yet.
But perhaps she hadn’t been seen? Perhaps he swore like that at someone else? It might even be if she huddled into the cloak for long enough with her head down, what was left of her fingers trying to clench the fabric in this howling snowstorm, he wouldn’t know it was her. Could she pass for some wandering peasant girl? Shepherdess? Maid? Crone of this glen even? Anything was worth a try. Her back was to him after all.
“Princess, is that you?”
She grimaced. Dying of shock was hardly an option. As if God would be so merciful when God never was.
Yet might she not also be deaf and mute? Stumble through the snow to her croft? A few steps toward the glistening tree trunk looming before her? Then, having reached it, if she could just dart behind it, around the other side, without slipping.
Oh God, oh God, why did he have ride around the tree, before her? Panic flared, running through every inch of her veins like water. Worse than that was the forlorn hunger, the bitter, biting, black hunger that swamped her throat, her lungs, tore at her heart like a claw. She had failed her son. Failed him, even as she promised this new life. How could she do such a thing?
The thing was she had. It was nothing in the face of the white-hot fury scrunching toward her. Alone, that animal thing of his absent for once. Never mind why he was here at this time of night. How the blazes was she possibly going to explain why she was?
“Princess?”
No. She could not deny it. So to huddle even deeper into the hood was bold. With his hair dragged back in a tail, she barely recognized him though. Why should he recognize her?
“No. Ah’m not.” Desperation commandeered Kara’s tongue and what was left of her wits. “And Ah’m certainly not needing your assistance either. So, if ye dinnae mind, sir…”
“Sir? Have we met before?”
If he caught her now, she was doomed, when to run was to prove she was not a shepherdess, maid, or crone, but how dare he laugh at her. She was not an amusing fool. Her brogue was as good as any around here.
Her breath screamed in her throat as his arms looped around her waist, so she jerked to a halt. His fingers snatched hold of her hood, as if enough of this had been had, almost stilling her heart.
“Give me that.”
It stilled to hear his semi-exasperated grit too. She fought to remain still while her hair tumbled down about her shoulders.
“Well, well. We have met, haven’t we? Do you mind telling me what the hell you think you’re doing out here, impersonating the local wenchery?”
Ice. Stone. If she had not run she could have pretended something. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what Ewen was like. Had he or had he not threatened him the other day?
“Nothing.”
“You’ll pardon me thinking this far from the castle is a hell of a long way to be doing nothing.”
“So? Kill me.”
Coupled with the dark stubble outlining his jaw, the hairstyle gave his face an altogether sleeker, more predatory cast, as he fixed his attention wholly on her. A cat with a mouse. “The weather’s doing a fair job of that. So why don’t you just tell me what the hell’s going on?”
Well, she wasn’t a mouse. “Certainly.”
Her knee collided with his groin. Let Arland go while there was yet breath in her body? And so long as there was, she could fight this. She could not be caught out now. She would do anything to escape.
“Jesus Christ.” He doubled over. “What the—”
Mother of God. What kind of man was this? She didn’t know men like this. Men who took the fall. Not when they could send her spinning into the snow. When one blow of their powerful fist was all it would take.
An unimportant thing when her breath tore like this and she had created this opportunity to run but that brief imprint of hard muscle when he caught her waist there—where was the revulsion? Shouldn’t her flesh have crawled? Especially now his footsteps scrunched behind her. He grabbed her wrist and je
rked her so she could not pull away. His body pressed against hers, even as she fought for purchase, against the ground, against him, against the fact he now had hold of both her wrists, and men who did that…
“Over my dead body am I going back there. I’m not. Not if you bring wild horses. Not if you…”
She was appalled by the awful low sounds that came from the very back of her throat. With that and wrists held, herself too, she yet attempted a squirming, flailing, bitten removal of his fingers—he was the Black Wolf, for God’s sake—when having been caught out here, she only made it worse. And Arland…Arland was still out there.
“Easy.”
But it wasn’t that his fingers cut into the flesh of her wrists that worried her. Or that he tried to control her with a grip of iron. Other men used their superior strength to hurt her. This was very different, as if she were a wild horse, a child, and all he wanted was to calm her.
Instinct had said that she should fight him. Logic told her this was why.
Kiss him. The voice in her head raged, as her gaze tracked the moonlight down his sculpted face. Do it. End this. Because if she didn’t…
Her heart accelerated to a crazy gallop. She thought it was going to burst from her ribcage. Everything was him. The water dripping from his clothes. His hair. The sensuous curve of his mouth. The strangely glittering eyes that said while he was astonished, he somehow expected it.
So much so she was appalled by what flamed in her mind. The thought—not about how he towered or how he was close enough for his breath to brush her mouth and she had only to press her lips to his to do this. To save herself. Save Arland. But the thought that she not only didn’t welcome when she didn’t want to find herself dragged back on a rope all the way back to McDunnagh Castle—if she was lucky—the thought was about Meg.
Had she fallen so low as to try to steal another woman’s man? A woman who was the mother of his child?
She must have. Oh God. And not just that. If she did it now, now while she was like this and with what thudded in her veins, she could not swear to doing it for the correct reason. Not the way he held her. Not the way he looked. There must be some other way. Some way to do this. Something to say. Something to do. Something that made this bit right, if nothing else, and overrode these storming sentiments when she’d made this scene.
And that was when her lips parted. “You see, there is someone else.”
Chapter Five
Kara wrinkled her nose. Something soft and damp tickled her cheek. Something so pleasant for all she couldn’t define or examine. She wished she could, except her nose was as much as she could move. The skin of it anyway. Maybe the muscles moved but she couldn’t tell. Even her head seemed stuck fast, while her fingertips made no connection between what lay beneath them and her brain. Or maybe it was the other way about? Her brain couldn’t make a connection with anything. As for her eyes, she couldn’t open them.
The softest breath brushed her cheek and a voice spoke. “Right.”
She strained to open an eye. Having investigated and satisfied herself whatever it was was, she closed it. The Wolf. She hadn’t dreamed it. Though stiff as pokers, her lips curved faintly. How fine was this? The Wolf. And he’d brought her here to this place somehow so now she lay on this soft, this nice, this velvety, furry…
Her eyes shot open. Darkly gleaming walls. Dank, dripping corners. Stone. Rock stone. Flames leaping at the edge of her vision. Nearby something lapping. Water? Waves? What? Close to where she lay with him on…on top of her.
She bolted up onto her elbows. He collapsed with a muffled curse on whatever they lay on. What they lay on was of no consequence.
Her throat constricted, her breath sharpening. Dear God, this wasn’t his and Meg’s. This wasn’t anywhere she recognized. Her heart stopped, then resumed with a wild, jarring thud.
No. There was only one thing missing from this place.
The sign saying “Welcome to Hell.”
And that was when she sprung up screaming.
“You know something, Princess?”
No, she didn’t. Not about how she got here. Or where she was. Or what he dug under whatever this strange platform they lay on was, to find, pull out, and bite the stopper from. Not when she was here. Not when he’d been lying on top of her like that.
“You need to stop showing your credentials. Especially on nights like this.” He helped himself to a long slug of the whiskey he’d pulled out. “Here.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Drink it.”
Fortunately her own hand was not so frozen she couldn’t shoot it out and knock the bottle down. “No!” She did not care that she dared him to implode with outrage, so long as she saved herself here. “M-m-mother of God. What is this awful place?”
“Awful place?”
He stared for what seemed like an eternity at the spreading stain on his tunic from where the bottle had spilled all over him. Then he stared at the amber puddle soaking into the furs from the still upended bottle. Lastly he stared at her, standing there with her back against the wall, trying not to tremble. His jaw tightened. His boots scrunched as he stepped down off the heap of furs. “Are you meaning here by any chance? Hmm?”
“Yes. Why have you brought me here? What are you—”
“Brought you here?”
Oh, he was furious with her. Never mind the low semi-snarl, dear God, what was he doing clinking his sword belt undone? He wasn’t about to… Oh God, he was hauling it off. And not just that. She shielded her face with her arm as his other belt, the one that held his plaid on, clanked against the ground.
“Well, why do you think? Hmm?”
She didn’t. She couldn’t.
“Get you drunk? Have my wicked way with you? Monster like me. Except the first’s not an option, the fine damned mess you’ve just made of my bed.”
“Your bed?”
“Here.”
There was no damn need to prance about it like that. That was what he was going to grit at her next, now that her feet wouldn’t stay still. A gasp escaped her as a lump of rough cloth flumped against her chest. His bed? Dear God. What was his bed doing here in a place like this?
Had Meg flung him out? Was that what he came to McDunnagh Castle to say? That he didn’t have a bed for the night? It would be no surprise. In the seconds leading to him pulling her hood off, there had been such a horrible flirtatiousness, the wonder was he hadn’t pulled more.
He was pulling off plenty now though. His plaid. His boots. Oh, good God, had he no sense of shame?
“But next time, next time you’re stuck up to your eyeballs in snow, and I can’t think where to take you, remind me to waste even more time looking for a fine palace.”
A fine palace? With difficulty she fought the sensations sweeping her veins, the acknowledgement that when he was as far from hurting her, as she was from abandoning Arland—because he wouldn’t yank his clothes like this—that was not why she shielded her face.
She’d keep the pressure on herself because he’d found her where she shouldn’t have been, in a situation she shouldn’t have been in. A situation, when she considered it she had just made worse, screeching like a banshee.
“But you—you…”
“Don’t like bundling?” The pile of furs sank beneath his foot as he reached for a dry tunic from the rope-line that dangled above her head. “Damned right I don’t. So don’t you start giving me any maidenly grief that you’re here and so am I. Or how I shouldn’t have brought you. Do you understand?” He snatched the tunic from the line. “Because so far as I’m concerned for tonight, you’re here…bed. I’m over there…chair.”
“A cave. You live in a cave.” She didn’t mean to sound so forlorn about it but he did, didn’t he? An underground cavern, to be precise. How could he? And how could she be so stupid, when what she needed was to be amenable, nice.
He whistled and Dug sprung up. “And she’s there. In the middle.”
“Dug? Dug? Dug’s a—”
>
Kara swallowed a gulp. Oh, the night was full of surprises wasn’t it? Horrible ones. And now if that glower was anything to go by, she had offended him further.
“Don’t you go telling me you never saw the damn cur’s minus more than a front paw. No one’s that stupid. Not someone here to be married. Not someone who’s got—”
“But you call her Dug.”
He tossed the tunic down. “Perhaps that’s because she doesn’t like being called bitch.”
Did she imagine it? The way he spat the word, the way he now tore down a dry plaid, that it was a word to consider here with regard to what she was? An ungrateful troublesome one, who hadn’t just spilt all his good whiskey on his bed, at that, but who had made that stupid, stupid statement about there being someone else. How was he meant to know that someone was him and she was trying to pick herself out a hole? He probably thought she was running off to meet a lover.
“I thought you lived with Meg?”
“Meg?” That he regarded her as if she were the local idiot was all the confirmation she needed. He and Meg weren’t a couple. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“I thought she was the mother of—” Oh, how weak it sounded now. As if she’d almost put the obstacle in the way. “Your daughter.”
“Meg?” He canted his jaw. “Has no one told you about the Isle of the Saints then?”
She shook her head vigorously. She could only pray he did not see right through her in this instant, what crept into her mind. Isle of the sinners, maybe.
He shifted off the platform and the damp sand left not an imprint as he crossed to the blazing fire.
“It’s a sacred place in the middle of the loch. Meg’s a nun. She was, anyway. When Morven died, she came back. I thought you’d have known she’s my sister.”
Kara edged down the wall. He didn’t need to hurt her. He had only to send her back to Ewen. And he would. She edged her gaze over his shoulders. It was true, that from the moment she clapped eyes on him, she’d been unsettled by the sensations he evoked. The feeling she was in the grip of a powerful force she could not quite control. A feeling as powerful as the forlorn despair that now clawed her heart at how she had overreacted to this place. Overreacted period.
His Judas Bride Page 9