by Shayla Black
She stifled disappointment and glared at him. “’Tis good fortune that we will be spared so unpleasant a deed.”
“Unpleasant?”
He reached for her. Refusing to back away from him again, she stood her ground, her heart pounding inside her chest. His palm gripped her cheek as his thumb caressed her jaw, down to her mouth, leaving a trail of tingles in his wake.
“I will not find bedding you an unpleasant task.”
Averyl tried to ignore the whisper that made her stomach quiver and her legs unsteady, and concentrate on the words themselves. “I—I thought you…that we just agreed bedding me would gain you naught.”
“Aye. Bedding you alone would gain me naught but pleasure. ’Twill be different when I bed you as my wife.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Your w-wife?” Averyl sputtered.
Drake nodded as her eyes widened with pure shock. Her face turned waxen, as white as her gown. Her dismay was to be expected. It meant naught. For him, it must mean even less if he wished to succeed.
“Aye, Averyl. I will bind you to me for the next year, irrevocably.”
Horror spread across her face. He looked away from it. It should not anger him, to be rejected by a Campbell, a wench who thought him scarred and guilty. But fury curled in his belly.
“We will handfast,” he said. “If I survive until your birthday, you cannot wed Murdoch, even if he finds you or you escape. When our year of handfasting is done, I will free you.”
She shook her head, denial spreading across her chalky countenance, radiating from the suddenly cool greenish depths of her eyes. “Release me. I-I will wed cousin Robert—”
“Nay.” Drake reached out to vow they would wed, to tell her he would be no ogre who contented himself by beating his wife. As he touched her chilled fingers, she jerked away.
“Do not touch me,” she hissed. “Ever. I will not call a murderer my husband.”
Before he could stop himself, he flinched against the one barb that had the power to sting. His hand fell away to clench at his side. Something cold and hard settled in his chest.
“I will touch you, Averyl, for we will consummate our union. Do not doubt that.”
“Will you force me to your bed?”
“If that is your choice.”
Her distress disturbed him, annoyingly enough. Why, when revenge left no room for mercy?
She charged him like a pained animal, head tossed back, teeth bared. “You despicable creature! ’Twas not enough for you to abduct, frighten, and threaten me. Now you would cut off any hope I have of ever wedding a good man, a chief with the coin to save my keep and the heart to love me. Instead, you force me to wed you, a murdering knave without a heart.”
He held her against him, letting the familiar anger wash over him, revive his purpose. “Murdoch ensured I cut my heart out long ago. He would soon show you how dangerous are your foolish notions of love.”
“You who seek a selfish end and a senseless death? What know you about the gentle matters of love?”
Feeling. Always such great displays of emotion and drama.
Drake cursed. “Why desire a sentiment that makes field mice of men and scheming felines of women?”
“Field mice? Felines?” Her eyes narrowed beneath the fawny arches of her brows. “’Tis ignorant you are. I know of love’s power, its ability to comfort the lonely, better the sick, heal the hurting, and humble the arrogant.”
He arched a brow in challenge. “And which of those miracles do you believe love will wrought in you?”
She tossed her head back, a proud goddess shedding light in the predawn dim. “’Tis no miracle, for I know that if I am looked upon with eyes of love, I shall never have to fear.”
Of what did she babble? “Fear what?”
With a sigh of frustration, she stomped past him, toward the cottage’s main room. “I cannot explain such to a man who refuses to understand.”
Frowning, he watched her small form retreat, her thick golden braid swishing across her back. Firelight penetrated the thin, cloud-like shift she wore.
He followed her, trying to keep his eyes off the velvet curve of her backside. “No man can understand when you speak in female riddles.”
“Have you never felt less than perfect?” Before he could answer, she rolled her eyes and gave a frustrated wave of her hands. “A foolish question. You, I am certain, have never doubted yourself for a single of life’s moments.”
A remembrance of Lord Carmichael’s disparaging words to his daughter at Dunollie, at the tears they had nearly engendered, flashed through his mind. The fool thought herself ugly.
Sighing, Drake approached her. When she would have fled, he grabbed her hand and held fast. “’Tis misguided you and your father both are.”
“What do you know of my father?” Suspicion painted her features.
“Has he not always told you that you lack womanly charms?”
Averyl’s eyes widened with dismay until the only color on her face was huge green-brown orbs. “How could you know that?”
He waved her question away. “Your father is a dolt.”
Averyl drew in a breath and bit her bottom lip, all the while regarding him with a questioning gaze. Drake knew she wondered if he thought her beautiful.
“Ask me,” he said into the long silence, smiling at her indecision, despite his irritation with the subject of love.
“Ask what?”
The innocent uncertainty of her gaze warmed something in his chest. Nay, ’twas only a sensation in his loins—lust.
“Do you not wish to know if I think you beautiful?”
She paused, hands clasped in her lap, until she shook her head. “Nay.”
Drake stared at his intriguing captive. Did she speak true? “Most women plead prettily for compliments.”
“I would not.” Averyl frowned. “Though Becca, our steward’s daughter, told me such tribute is…pleasant.”
“Have you never received a compliment?”
Her delicate ivory cheeks bloomed with color. “I am not the sort of woman to incite others to poetry.”
So unsullied she was. Unspoiled by hate or jealousy, betrayal or revenge, Averyl knew nothing of the real world, or her beauty. She knew only her father’s blind ignorance.
At once eager and reluctant, Drake extended his hand to her face, faintly aware of his beating heart. He was going to touch her again. And though her eyes held wariness, she would not pull away this time.
Desire tightened its hold about his throat…and lower.
His palm closed over her cheek in a soft stroke. His gaze sought hers. Staring into the depths of her bemused hazel eyes, lust hardened him. The mystery of her floral fragrance teased his nose. Lilies? Irises? Heather? He wasn’t sure.
“Averyl…” he whispered, barely hearing himself over the pounding of his heart.
The picture of modesty, Averyl cast her gaze to her hands folded in her lap. The set of her shoulders was as taut as a longman’s bow.
“Averyl, whatever your father made you believe, you are lovely and worthy of any man’s attention.”
Her teeth caught her bottom lip. “You need not say such to me. Since you want us to wed, your efforts to set me at ease are understandable,” she said. “But you need not lie.”
“I do not lie. I have no use for—”
The wet slide of a tear down her cheek stopped his words. Cheeks tight, Averyl drew in a deep, ragged breath. Drake cursed. Why did her tears move him in a way no woman’s ever had?
“Do not cry.” He paused for her response but found none. He grasped her words. “You heard my conversation with Kieran. I admitted how beautiful I think you.”
Finally, she raised her head to gaze at him with eyes the wind-tossed green of a stormy Scottish loch. He swallowed.
“Why do you say these things to me, if not to coax me into giv
ing my hand and my maidenhead?” she whispered, her gaze clinging to him like a spring-grown vine. “Why do you care?”
Why, indeed? ’Twould be simple to confirm that his words seemed the easiest means to coax her into accepting their coming nuptials—and their marriage bed. But somehow there was more, something he could scarce name. Some warmth where cold had recently lived. Must be his conscience, he thought with gloom.
Drake looked away. The urge to touch her was strong. “I but speak a truth someone should have told you long ago.”
He rose to put distance between them, knowing he had said far more than he intended. He cursed when she followed.
“Such an admission of your feelings…puzzles me.”
With a scowl, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “’Tis not a feeling, but an observation that I had hoped would cure you of the absurd fantasy that love will make you beautiful.”
Averyl backed away as if he’d struck her, the white gown billowing about her legs. “I do not believe love will make me beautiful.”
“That is what you said.”
She shook her head. “’Tis peace I seek. To know someone accepts the plain face and wild curls God gave me yet still wishes me near.”
He laughed. “Then it is not a man’s love you want, but his lust. You seek to know you can stir his blood upon your whim.”
“Nay.”
“’Tis what you describe.” He advanced. “Besides, you cannot truly want love. It lies with a serpent tongue.”
“That is not so.”
Drake grabbed her arm. “Forget what you dream. Accept the face God gave you. It will not change. And no paltry emotion like love will grant you the peace you seek.”
“And lust would?”
He nodded. “It is more honest.”
“But fleeting, you wretched beast,” she spit in fury. “I will not handfast with you!”
She had not listened to him, had not absorbed a single word. Still did not believe in her own charm. Stubborn Campbell wench.
“You are the last lady I wish to wed, as well. You know naught of life, and less of men and women. But Fate has dictated we will be man and wife for one year—and without that deceitful sentiment you call love.”
* * * * *
Stillness and mist blanketed the island’s rolling green hills the next eve. Averyl lay awake in bed, her back to Locke, as he prepared to bed down beside the door. This night, as last, sleep would not come. She could not blame the dark, for Drake kept a candle beside her bed. Nor could she claim summer heat, for the nights had been cool, brushed by gray sea winds.
Instead, she dwelt upon Drake’s proclamation.
How soon would he insist they wed? Who would witness their handfast union? How would she stop this farce?
Then there was Drake himself.
By the door, Averyl heard the rustle of clothing. The whispers of him disrobing roused her imagination. Somehow she could not prevent herself from envisioning him, muscle-hewn, completely male. Even as her stomach fluttered, her mind rebelled. Pictures of him stormed her—Drake tossing aside his simple black shirt and baring the golden angles of his powerful chest, stepping out of his breeches and displaying hard thighs…
This must cease. Upon her word, what had become of her vow to resist him, of feminine decency?
How could she despise and dwell on him at once?
Clutching her pillow in the firelit night, she could scarce deny that he dissipated her logic like mist in sunlight. Her mind told her he was capable of killing Murdoch’s father. She had seen the tangible anger that ran swift and hot under his icy façade. But something within her protested the hasty judgment. Drake had not harmed her. His strong arms had even held her on the wind-swept cliff while she battled her fear of the dark. He had called her beautiful.
Chewing her lip, Averyl wondered which Drake was the real one. A depraved butcher no sane person would cross or a tortured man driven to retribution?
Averyl rolled to her side, tangled in her own thoughts. The contents of Locke’s soul mattered not. Even if he was innocent of murder, she would not wed him. Could not. She need only concern herself with convincing him that she refused to accept a husband with whom saving Abbotsford was not possible.
Still, the tang of ale and smoke mixed with the sweet smell of summer rain and damp thatch to form the scents of Drake’s world. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, finding the fragrance, different from that at Abbotsford, oddly pleasing.
“Why do you not sleep?” Drake asked from across the room.
Averyl sat up in bed, looking across the small room to him. She tried not to focus on the shadows caressing his bare chest—or her own flaming cheeks. “I cannot dismiss from my mind this foolish marriage you seek to make.”
He sighed and leaned against the door, turning the golden expanse of his chest and abdomen squarely into her view. She dragged her gaze away.
“Foolish mayhap, but necessary.”
“I cannot conceive that you wish to wed and bed a woman who wants you not. I’ve no doubt you could find scores of women willing—nay, eager—to agree to what you have proposed.”
“Scores?” he challenged. “You think much of my charm, Lady Averyl, particularly since all Scotland believes me a butcher. Through you, I will see Murdoch brought to justice.”
“But you have already taken from me my keep, my father, my chances of wedding well. I beg you, do not take my dreams from me, too.”
“Your dreams?” A moment later, his puzzled frown cleared to a scowl of annoyance. “Ach, love again. ’Tis tiresome.”
“Only your refusal to believe in it is,” she replied, teeth gritted. “Love is real. Will you not accept it?”
“If you have felt it not, why do you?”
She smiled. “My parents loved with such passion that even death could not tear my mother from my father’s heart. I cannot settle for a union without that possibility.”
“You speak with the naïve eyes of a young girl,” he sneered.
And he spoke like a man who possessed no heart.
“I know my father loved my mother. He has not taken a leman since she died.”
Drake laughed. “That you know of. Fathers do not often flaunt their mistresses before their well-reared daughters.”
“Abbotsford is too small a keep to hide such secrets. He loved her too much to dishonor her memory with faithlessness.”
Rolling his eyes, Drake said, “Only a eunuch of a man remains faithful to a dead woman for eleven years. That or a buffoon. Either could describe your father well enough.”
“That is unkind. You know nothing—”
“’Tis time to cease this prattle and sleep.”
Averyl clenched her jaw. The insufferable oaf refused to see any view but his own. A eunuch? A buffoon?
“You are blinded by your hate for Lord Dunollie. Think back. Did your own mother and father not love?” she asked impatiently.
The chill upon his indifferent countenance froze into icy anger. “Aye, until it became the death of them both.”
She frowned at that riddle of an answer. “I do not understand.”
“’Tis not important.” His scowl was deep indeed. Clearly, the subject was not one he liked.
“It is of import to me,” she argued, leaning forward on the bed. “I seek to understand why you refuse me the simple request of leaving me unwed and untouched.”
“Simple?” He grunted. “Such statements only prove how little you understand of Murdoch and his deceit.”
Averyl stood and crossed the room, trying to ignore the golden tongues of firelight licking Drake’s taut skin.
“Then make me understand,” she challenged beside him.
Drake’s expression closed up tighter than a keep under siege. The glare of his dark gaze held more chill than a Highland January.
Refusing to be daunted, she pressed on. He must
see she would not wed where she could not love. “If your parents loved, they surely loved you in turn, did they not?”
Her only reply was the bobbing of Drake’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed and looked away.
Always sparse with his words, Averyl realized he was rarely this quiet. She frowned and crouched before him. All parents loved their children. Did Drake believe he had been unwelcomed?
She touched a hand to his arm, so rigid. With fury? Tightly held control? Curiosity and sympathy gushed over her good sense in a torrent. “You cannot believe your own mother did not love you?”
“I know she did not.” His words were flat, unequivocal.
“That cannot be,” Averyl argued.
He grabbed her shoulders and dragged her against him. She gasped when their gazes met, his flashing rage—and something else. Pain? “Even mothers can be heartless.”
The bitterness in his tone shocked her. “I do not understand what—”
“Understand that my mother was incapable of caring for anyone, particularly the child she never wanted. Or does that simply give you a clearer picture of me? An abductor of women so loathsome even his own mother could not tolerate him?”
His hurt reached out to her, wrapping around her heart with a pang. His mother’s indifference had cut him. Averyl longed to reach out to Drake, offer him comfort. After all, she’d suffered at times from her father’s words. She knew the hurt such blows inflicted. Yet she’d always known he loved her.
She palmed Drake’s whisker-roughened cheek. “I am certain your mother cared, even if she did not express her love—”
At her words, Drake flinched and jerked away. “She told me I’d done naught but leave scars on her body and that she wished I had never been born.”
Averyl faced the grim challenge on Drake’s face, her heart crumbling for him. How could any woman be so cruel as to tell a small boy he was not wanted?
Reaching out, now tentatively, knowing he might reject her comfort again, Averyl touched his shoulder. “I am sorry.”
His face tightened, the carved planes hard and closed. “I have no need of your pity. Just your hand and your virtue.”