His Stolen Bride BN

by Shayla Black

  By nightfall, she’d seen no sign of him.

  Again, she prepared their meal, pacing, cursing, crying. Concern remained, but irritation had joined as the hours ticked by, chafing like gritty sand against her skin.

  Admittedly, telling Drake of her love had been far from wise, but he needn’t have scurried off like a deer from a huntsman. ’Twas not as if she had demanded any display of his feelings in return. Indeed, he was hiding from her like the veriest of babes! And over three little words.

  With a huff, Averyl sat down to a solitary supper, determined to enjoy her colcannon without him, despite the fact she disliked cooked cabbage. Determined, in fact, to enjoy every moment of his absence. He would not be around to watch her, taunt her, tempt her to unrequited emotions. She could prepare for bed in privacy, enjoy the last of the wine.

  And most like, Drake sat out on the island somewhere, huddled against the chilly fog rolling in, oblivious to all but himself, his wants, and his selfish needs, as usual.

  Pushing most of her brash-smelling dinner away untouched, Averyl stood with a stomp. Her captivity, indeed their entire marriage, had been about Drake and his wishes. What of her? Her own needs? Her feelings? Doubtless, Drake was too rooted in whatever foolish thoughts populated his head to realize she had thoughts and desires of her own.

  That time, she vowed, had come to a halt.

  She, too, had feelings, which ran as thick and sure as his. His past was littered with tragedy, but her own had been as well. Did she use that as an excuse to hurt others, to turn away from whatever love and solace was offered her? Nay. She accepted it, gratefully. Nor did she have any difficulty in admitting her own feelings in return.

  So why did Drake believe himself different? Certainly even he had run out of tragedies and excuses.

  Averyl paced the cottage’s dirt floor and paused at the window. Clouds dimmed the moon’s white glow, and she smiled.

  Her errant husband, when he returned, would soon learn he was not the only one whose sentiments mattered.

  * * * * *

  By the position of the thin moon in the gray-black sky, Drake determined the hour somewhere close to midnight. Weary and troubled, he opened the ravine’s gate.

  His haunting thoughts of Averyl returned. Why had she spoken those damned words? Why had his pulse quickened in joy?

  He was a fool, no more, no less, for hiding upon the shores of his own island, away from his own cottage until he felt certain his bride was hours deep in sleep. He, who had never backed away from a necessary battle, never dismissed a worthy opponent, had left Averyl behind and hidden like a coward. The realization filled him with shame.

  Still, naught had changed. In the morn, she would awaken, and he would tell her of his decision.

  Inside the cottage, he expected no more than the remnants of an evening fire to keep her fear of the dark at bay. But as he pushed the door open, nothing in his imagination prepared him for the sight of Averyl fully dressed before a roaring fire, candles lit all about the room, matching the determined flames in her eyes. Clearly, she had no intention of retiring soon.

  “So you’ve finally returned?” she said acidly before he could even wonder why she did not yet sleep. “Have you finished brooding or do you wish to sulk more?”

  He winced at her sarcasm and realized he had once again underestimated her mettle. Once, Averyl might have curled up into a ball and cried herself to sleep over his callous behavior. Now, she met him face-to-face, hands positioned upon her hips, clearly as ready for battle as any warrior.

  Drake stepped around her, anxious to avoid this confrontation. He’d rarely known how to handle the sensitive and self-doubting girl she’d once been. He had even fewer ideas how to manage the woman spitting such resolution from her eyes.

  “There is much you do not know or understand,” he told her.

  Though there was only one fact of which Averyl was unaware, ’twas a fact she would likely find terrible.

  “Nay, I cannot understand,” she countered, “because you refuse to tell me all. ’Tis only part of your tale you give, parts that make no sense. You hide from me in every other way, while you have demanded and coaxed until I have bared all my thoughts and fears.”

  “Averyl, I but spare you from ugliness.”

  “Nay, you selfish knave,” she said through clenched teeth. “You keep me in darkness, telling me scattered tales of your past that make little sense when put together so you do not have to reveal yourself.”

  Drake turned to face her, the blood within his body suddenly very still. How had she stumbled upon that truth?

  “’Tis late and I am tired. Rest—”

  “I will rest when I have need to,” she argued. “At this moment, I want answers.”

  “I have no more to give you.”

  “Can you do aught but lie? Or is that all you know?”

  Her fiery green gaze blazed with determination, with fury. Again that sense of shame, the feeling that he owed her the truth crept through him. Perhaps after all the trials he’d put her through, he did owe her something more. More, as long as the worst secret could remain his.

  “Damn you!” she railed before he could recover from his guilt. “I do not dispute you were accused of murder or that you were blamed. But why you? Why not another member of the clan?”

  Drake chose his words carefully. “Murdoch hates me most.”

  Averyl’s delicate forehead wrinkled into a disbelieving scowl. “Why should he? ’Twas he who bedded your mother, not the other way around.”

  “Bedding my mother was just another way to show defiance to Lochlan and prove his hatred of me at once. But his loathing started long before then, when we were but children.”

  The suspicion shadowing Averyl’s face showed she remained unconvinced. “You still speak in riddles, you rogue. Why should he hate you most, and how could one child come to despise another for a lifetime?”

  Drake forced nonchalance into his shrug. “Only Murdoch possesses the answers to your questions. I do not presume to know what is in his mind.”

  Averyl clenched her fists. “You know—or at least possess a very good idea.”

  Shrugging, Drake turned away, refusing to say more.

  “Your revenge is against Murdoch, and you, too, hate him. Now, even if you say you know nothing of the reasons for his enmity for you, you certainly know the root of yours for him.”

  He could hardly dispute her. “’Tis true that I came to hate him while still a child.”

  “For…?” she trailed off impatiently, clearly awaiting an answer.

  Drake sighed wearily and sat before the crackling fire. Mayhap, telling her this little bit would hurt nothing. “For his cruelty to me, to Lochlan.”

  “For seducing your mother?”

  “If Diera had not turned to Murdoch, she would just as easily have found another to warm her sheets. ’Twas her nature,” he sneered.

  “None of what you say makes sense,” she declared, stomping closer. “Though I cannot say such surprises me in the least!”

  Drake watched the swish of her skirt, heard the slide of her boots upon the dirt floor and wondered what to say now.

  “’Tis the truth,” he defended.

  “Aye, but ’tis no more than your usual attempt to disguise the whole truth by revealing a few facts. Tell me!” she insisted. “For I cannot understand how this childhood hatred you describe, coupled with Murdoch’s seduction of your mother, which you claim was not uncommon anyway, would lead Murdoch to blame you for his father’s murder. Or why you would seek to kill him. None of that adds up to your bitter rage and determination for revenge. Why did you not simply try to clear your villainous name and remember that Murdoch and your mother both enjoyed causing others pain?”

  He stood and walked past her again, this time to the open-shuttered window and the fathomless inky night beyond. “There is ample proof of my guilt,
none of my innocence beyond my word. I cannot allow Murdoch’s deeds to go unavenged. Remembering that he and my mother were cut from the same cloth only inflames me further.”

  “Why?” she demanded, standing but a breath behind him.

  The scent of her floral skin, the sound of her tortured struggle for understanding suddenly coupled with memories of her lovemaking, of her tears. A hollow place in his chest ached.

  Aye, she deserved better than he’d given her. She deserved the truth. But if he gave it, would she ever speak to him again?

  “You cannot understand,” he said finally, defeated. What plagued him to want her gone even as he craved her near?

  “I tire of hearing such a truth, for I cannot understand what you will not explain! And I tire as well of your unpredictable behavior. Passionate one minute, cold the next. Caring in the eve, remote by morn. Can you not see how this hurts me?” She crept closer, until her breath was a whisper in his ear. “Or are you like your mother and simply do not care?”

  Drake whirled to face her, a new fury roaring in his ears. “What did you say?”

  “’Tis not deaf you are,” she challenged, chin raised. “I asked why you cannot find some way to resolve the past and get on with your future. Perhaps you are more like Diera than you realize. Mayhap you enjoy destroying others for the pleasure—”

  “Damnation, never.” His gaze bored into the depths of her troubled eyes. There he read anguish and anger, bewilderment and desperation. And need. That was his undoing. “You seek the truth, my lady wife. As you wish. But ’tis sorry you will be.”

  He grabbed her arm and hauled her against his body, denying the niggling fear this might be the last time she allowed any such intimacy. She leaned into him, pliant, trusting. Inhaling, he filled his head with her soft floral scent. Slowly, he pressed against her, wondering how betrayed she would feel once he had revealed all and how much she would hate him for concealing so much for so long.

  “Your betrothed, the man you nearly wed to save Abbotsford from ruin, we share a common bond. We share a father.”

  Averyl’s concentration quickly dissolved into white-faced shock. “Lochlan? He was…?”

  “My father as well.”

  “Then Murdoch is—”

  “My half brother,” he confirmed.

  Shock dominated Averyl’s open-mouthed expression. After a still, awful moment, she writhed for escape, drawing out of his embrace. Drake let her go, regret and fury weighing upon him.

  Drifting silently to the hearth, Averyl sat as if dazed. “Why would you use me so against your own brother?”

  Drake sighed, running his hand across his tired face. He could almost see the disillusion crystallizing in Averyl’s eyes. Remorse tugged at him.

  “My father and mother wed several years after Murdoch’s own mother met her grave. I know not why Murdoch always hated me, but he did. He tried to drown me when I was a boy of three.”

  Averyl gasped, disbelief and horror pasted on her pale countenance. Drake merely continued on.

  “When I was but six, he abandoned me in the forest until my father found me two days later. In my tenth year, I visited home from my knight’s training. He put a snake in my bed. At twelve, he poisoned my food. While a child, I endured his superior age and strength each time I came home, along with his unreasonable hatred, never knowing the reason behind it. I still do not understand it. That is God’s truth.”

  “By the saints.” Averyl’s voice trembled.

  Drake pushed on. “As I grew, the rows he and my father had became more heated. My father threatened to send him away, up north to an uncle of cruel reputation. In retaliation, Murdoch, then a young man, seduced my mother. Not because he wanted her or cared for her, but because my father did.”

  “And you found them together.”

  Drake nodded. “He arranged the liaison in the solar, knowing full well I enjoyed spending my evenings there.”

  “He plotted just to hurt you?”

  Pain and shock laced her voice. Drake refused to believe her tone, take succor from it.

  “At first, I believed that. I later realized he arranged it thus so I would tell our father. I was the one person whose word Lochlan would never doubt.”

  “Why did Murdoch not arrange for your father to find them? Would that not have been simpler?”

  Drake’s sweating hands curled into fists. “Our father would likely have killed him on the spot, so great was his love for my mother. Murdoch is no fool; he knew that.”

  Averyl frowned her confusion. “What had Murdoch to gain by angering your father?”

  “At first I could think of naught but pure spite for the threat to send him away. Later, after Murdoch left of his own accord for life at court, he and my father began exchanging letters. Murdoch made clear he only desired that Lochlan exile me and my mother, and claimed that he had only bedded her to prove her a faithless bitch not worthy of our father’s devotion. He was also quick to point out that the child of such a whore could only be baseborn and without honor.”

  Anger fired Averyl’s expression. “Certainly your father did not succumb to such manipulation.”

  “Nay, as Murdoch discovered. After Diera died, my father grieved for months—then rewrote his will, forcing Murdoch to wed you before you turned eight and ten.”

  “But ’tis a strange provision.”

  Drake shrugged. “Not really. The war between the Campbells and the MacDougalls needed to end. My father believed marriage for such a cause would help Murdoch mature into a better man. And until such an event transpired, Lochlan made me tanist of the clan. Had I not been accused of murdering him, I, not Murdoch, would have assumed the role of chief upon our father’s death.”

  Comprehension began to dawn in gray tones upon Averyl’s chalky face. “So Murdoch had Lochlan killed and you blamed.”

  He nodded. “After my mother’s death, he arranged for some butcher in Campbell colors to attack Lochlan on the battlefield. Murdoch himself was in Glasgow.”

  “Such explains why Murdoch sent for me, hinting of a wedding, months before we expected a summons.” Averyl placed a trembling hand over her mouth.

  “You refused him?”

  “’Twas just after Christmas when we received his letter. My father demurred, citing the harsh weather and the illness of my people. We were not able to travel to Dunollie until ’twas nearly June.”

  Drake nodded, wanting the conversation over. He had never told anyone so much, not even Kieran or Aric. Refusing to dwell on why he had spoken so to Averyl, he closed his eyes, feeling the ache of his muscles, the pounding in his head.

  “So Murdoch had you falsely accused for Lochlan’s murder so he could become chief?” she asked, disturbing the silence.

  “Aye. He still had friends within the clan, powerful friends willing to believe the murder was all my doing, some English conspiracy with my grandfather to gain power. Once they convinced the others that I most stood to benefit from Lochlan’s untimely death and produced the bloodied knife I pulled from my father’s body, ’twas not long before I became a condemned man.”

  “And Murdoch, being your father’s eldest son, was restored to power.”

  “Aye. He convinced them that no will, written in grief over such a paltry thing as a woman’s death, and an English one at that, was important enough to keep the rightful heir from becoming chief.”

  “By the blessed Virgin,” she breathed. “So Kieran and Aric freed you, and you vowed revenge.”

  He nodded grimly.

  “Oh, Drake. ’Tis a terrible tale indeed.”

  She placed her hand in his, her face solemn. Drake looked down at their palms, clasped together skin to skin. He felt something sharp and hot sting his eyes.

  Gritting his teeth in effort, he pulled his hand away. “I do not seek your pity.”

  “’Tis not pity I give you,” she assured.

&nbs
p; “Then what?” he asked, wary.

  “Advice. ’Tis clear to me that you let past words and deeds rule your future. You must make your own,” she urged. “Do not let your mother and father’s enmity destroy you.”

  Confusion eddied through Drake. She spoke as if he had any say in past matters, as if he could change or forget them with a sweep of his hand. “Of what foolishness do you speak?”

  “You need not shout,” she said. “I but try to help. You see, I realized yesterday morn that I had allowed my father’s opinion of me to color my belief of myself. I had allowed his words and deeds to control my thoughts and actions. You do the same, though you do not see it.”

  Fury and incredulity fought for Drake’s tongue. “Am I to forget what’s been done and pretend I am not wanted for my father’s slaying?”

  She sighed. “Of course not. ’Tis a fact that nothing will change. But in the case of love, you allow your parents’ bitter union to control your feelings, and it should not be so.”

  Wishing he could shake some sense into her, he grabbed Averyl’s elbow. “Listen to me, woman. Love started this chain of events, my mother’s death, my father’s murder. What love did to my family now forces me to take my revenge, to see Murdoch into poverty before he draws his final breath. Aye,” he said, answering the shock on her white face. “I want him to die knowing that all he has plotted to gain has been taken from him. When you turn eight and ten, he will lose the money and power for which he had our father murdered. Then I will kill him.”

  “None of that is love, but hate. Would you let hate and Murdoch end your life as well? What would happen then?”

  Drake’s jaw clenched. “The money and position transfer to our cousin Wallace.”

  “’Tis not the money I ask about. Think of what Murdoch can do to you!”

  “And should I run, hide like the veriest of cowards? Nay, I will see my revenge finished and end the damage love has wrought upon us all.”