She pressed her lips together and twisted her arm more forcibly. “Graeme Brodie and Malcolm Campbell are fine men. My sisters didn’t need to worry about marrying them.”
Finally, Sorcha successfully pried her elbow from Brandt’s grip. She pushed past him, into the open part of the room, and took a deep breath. The air was no longer filled with his scent, a heady mix of sun-warmed leather, spice, and clean soap, and her body instantly felt steadier, her mind, sharper. She found her boots and sat upon the edge of the bed to pull them on, ignoring the press of Brandt’s eyes. She didn’t have to look up to know he was watching her slide the snug leather over each foot.
“Will your sister’s husband agree to keep you on Brodie lands?”
Her hands slowed, and her heart pumped out an extra few beats. Well, why shouldn’t he already be thinking about possible obstacles for his plan to leave her there?
“I am kin.”
“Yes, and so far, what has your kin done for you? Other than throw you into a betrothal you wanted no part of, and then force you down the aisle to wed a complete stranger.”
Sorcha finished with her boots, yanking indignantly on each lace, and shot to her feet. “You chose to marry me, in case you’ve already forgotten. And you don’t know anything about my family.”
Except that they were brutes. And intolerably rude. And tied down by harsh tradition and loyalty. All these things her brothers had laid bare to Brandt yesterday, and clearly, his Sassenach mind held it all in contempt.
He came to stand within inches of her, so close her breasts would have brushed against his chest had she taken a deep breath right then.
“I know enough to understand we have two very different views of what good kin is,” he replied.
“Don’t insult my family.”
“You’d defend them, even after how they’ve treated you?” Brandt asked, his brows furrowing in confusion. The expression cut small lines around his eyes. It was skin that had seen sunshine and wind, harsh elements and a rugged life. It was stunning how clear and perceptive his eyes were.
“Of course I do. They’re…they’re my brothers,” she said, her throat constricted. They were untamed jackanapes most of the time, but they were still her blood. They defended her as much as they bullied her. They teased her as much as they protected her feelings. But with Malvern, they’d had no choice. Neither had her father. A part of her hoped, at least, that Finlay and Evan had been relieved to find her kissing a stranger at the festival, if only because it allowed them to order her to marry someone other than Malvern.
She heard the riot of clomping footsteps in the upstairs corridor and twisted away from Brandt’s judgmental glare as a heavy fist came down on the locked door to their room.
“Mr. Pierce!”
It was Gavin, and by the loud voices joining his in the background, she assumed her brothers had come to fetch them as well. Someone pounded again, and then the doorknob jiggled.
“Open the door,” Evan said.
Brandt rolled each of his shoulders as he opened it and stood within the frame. Evan and Finlay looked ready to push inside, while Gavin stayed in the center of the corridor. But Brandt didn’t give an inch. He wouldn’t let them pass.
“Is it done?” Finlay bellowed. It took Sorcha a moment to understand what exactly he was asking, and then a blush rushed to her cheeks.
Brandt said nothing, but turned, and with his mouth set in a grim slash, went to the bed and pulled the bottom sheet from the mattress. He balled up the linen and lobbed it at Finlay. Her brother caught the sheet, and Sorcha watched with mounting humiliation as he and Gavin inspected it for the telltale sign of her innocence lost. She thought she might be ill, not just because it was brash and barbaric, but because it was yet another lie.
Finlay lowered the sheet and dropped it onto the floor. He entered the room and picked up her portmanteau. “We leave for Maclaren immediately.”
And with that, Sorcha’s brothers and her cousin departed. She and Brandt stood, motionless, for a few seconds. The room seemed to deflate around them. Their ruse had worked. She had the notion she should have felt more relieved than she did.
“Are you ready?” he asked, without looking at her.
She nodded and followed Brandt out of the room, trying not to look at the bundled-up sheet on the floor. Her brother had accepted Brandt’s blood as her own. If they knew the truth, what would they do? Force him to commit coitus? While standing over them with forbidding glares and sharpened claymores?
Sorcha bit back a crazed giggle at the image.
Those intense hazel eyes met hers, tinder to her ribald thoughts, and the laughter died on her lips. Neither she nor Brandt spoke a word as they descended into the inn’s main room, where a handful of revelers were still drinking and dozing. The conscious ones raised their tankards in acknowledgment and made sputtering comments that Sorcha pretended not to hear or understand as Brandt stopped to speak to the innkeeper. He asked for pen and paper, and after jotting something down quickly, folded the parchment and handed it to the innkeeper with hushed directions. Sorcha strained to hear, but couldn’t make anything out under the sudden and off-tune rendition of “Johnnie Scot” now making its way around the room. Brandt then took her by the arm and led the way outside, to the inn’s stables.
Her brothers and their men were busy saddling their mounts. They loaded the wagons with the goods they’d purchased and traded for at the festival, including a few fat hogs, several bolts of woven wool, cotton, and linen, a crate of pipe tobacco, small casks of gunpowder, and several more of barreled mead.
Sorcha had ridden to Selkirk on Lockie, and as she approached her beloved gray stallion standing beside a Maclaren groom, she saw he’d been saddled and readied for her. With a stroke of sorrow, she reached for him, her eyes skipping to the enormous, scarred horse closed into the next stall over.
With its ragged coat of scar-torn midnight jet, the animal looked like a beast born of nightmares. Brandt went to him, clicking softly and whispering words Sorcha could not decipher. The animal nickered a brief hello to its master, its great nostrils expelling misty clouds into the cool spring morning air.
“Rest well, Ares?” he murmured to the horse, taking an admiring, and entirely too possessive, glance at Lockie. “Make a friend?”
Sorcha’s chest constricted, but there was nothing to be done for it. Lockie was now his as well. “Ares?” she asked, running a hand up Lockie’s velvet snout and scratching him behind the ear. “He certainly looks like a warrior.”
She wondered how he’d come by his scars.
“He is,” Brandt said as he saddled him. “Brave enough to carry my backside into any manner of hellish situations, at least.”
Like the one he’d found himself in the day before. She was certain it was what he was thinking, too.
“I’m sure he and Lockie will get along fine,” she said, drawing him to the stable entrance and feeling another pang of regret.
“He’s magnificent,” Brandt replied, taking the time to look at Lockie and even run his hands along the gray’s flanks and neck. “Even though he’s young, he seems rather good tempered. Easy to command.” He slid his gaze to Sorcha and with a salty grin, added, “Nothing at all like his mistress.”
She parted her lips to let loose with a biting retort when a shrill whistle parted the inn’s stable yard.
“Finlay!” one of the Maclaren men, Bogan, shouted as he entered the yard, mud splattered up his ankles and onto the hem of his tartan. “’Tis Malvern.”
The ground beneath Sorcha’s feet turned to sand. She gripped Lockie’s traces and felt the horse stiffen with alarm, reflecting her own sudden panic.
“Malvern?” she repeated, her throat closing. “He’s here?”
Bogan continued to address Finlay. “He arrived last night, and must’ve heard news of the wedding. He’s coming with his men now.”
“Shite,” Evan growled as he and Finlay went to their horses and swung up into the sadd
les. Gavin crossed himself and closed his eyes, muttering a prayer before doing the same. The tension in the stable yard snapped tight as the rest of the men mounted, fast.
Behind her, Sorcha felt the ground tremble with Ares’s hoof falls. Brandt appeared beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.
“Stay close to me,” he said, his tone composed. She wanted to feel the same level of quiet dignity, but her body rebelled. What was bloody wrong with her? Hadn’t she bested Craig in a sword fight the day before? And he certainly hadn’t curbed his blows. When it came to battle, Sorcha was skilled and able, though the impotent rage she felt now was debilitating. Malvern held the power and the means to destroy her family, and his despicable first knight, Coxley, was more than happy to carry out his orders.
At that moment, a handful of armored men on horseback turned into the stable yard. They were dressed for war, it seemed. Sorcha held her breath as Lord Malvern turned in, pushing through his men and coming to the fore. He had not changed since the last she’d seen him, months ago.
The marquess was straight-backed and tall, thickly built, and fox-faced. His mouth was constantly drawn, as though perpetually disappointed in something, as it was right then. Malvern’s glare cut around the stable yard until it landed upon Sorcha. His watery blue eyes froze her with a pointed look of ownership that made her flesh crawl. His thin nostrils flared and then his eyes shot to the man standing at her side. Brandt was unnaturally quiet as every last sound in the courtyard perished. None of the Maclaren men moved. Not one horse nickered.
Until the marquess drew his sword from a saddle sheath and pointed it straight at Brandt. “I demand satisfaction. Raise your sword, upstart, and prepare to pay for your presumptuous mistake.”
Chapter Five
A ripple of agitation shivered through Ares, and Brandt hushed him with a soft sound. His horse could sense the threat hanging in the air just as keenly as every other man and animal present.
And woman.
Beside him, he could feel Sorcha bristling, her jaw fused shut and her eyes sparking with frustration. Lord Malvern was not a man to be taken lightly, not with several of his men surrounding him and a dozen more out front of the inn. They outnumbered the Maclaren men two to one, and there was something else present. Some sense of forced obeisance surrounding not just Sorcha, but her brothers as well. Malvern commanded this stable yard and all those within it. That much was clear.
Even as he struggled to understand why her dauntless brothers would bow down to someone like Malvern, Brandt stepped forward, Ares’s reins still in hand. “You’ll have to seek satisfaction elsewhere, Lord Malvern, for I’ve made no mistake, and I’ve no wish to fight,” he said to him.
Malvern’s eyes narrowed. “You know me.”
“I know of you.”
He could read men the same way he could horses, and Brandt had known from the first time he’d encountered Malvern in London at White’s, years back, that he was a master of deceit. A man like Malvern didn’t play fair at anything, and he wouldn’t fight fair, either.
The marquess shifted his sword, pointing it at Sorcha. The fact that he would ever align the tip of his sword with a woman infuriated Brandt. That it was Sorcha he’d taken aim at, enraged him.
“Then perhaps you do not know that this woman is to be my wife, as dictated by the king himself.”
“You’ll do well to lower your sword,” Brandt said, reining in a flash of irritation. “And she is no longer a maiden, but a married woman.”
“Aye, Lord Malvern, ’tis so,” Gavin said from his saddle, his hand clasped around the cross resting against his chest. “Lady Pierce’s reputation was at stake. ’Twas nothing to be done but see them wed.”
The somber words hung thickly in the air between them like a cloud.
“Lady Pierce?” An animalistic growl ripped from Malvern’s throat as he sliced the sword through the air before returning it to its sheath. “You inbred fools. Do you have any idea what punishment Maclaren will suffer for such a betrayal?”
Sorcha sucked in an audible breath and lurched forward. “It wasn’t his fault—”
“Silence!” the marquess seethed. “I will not listen to the words of a maimed harlot.”
Sorcha drew back, as if she’d been slapped, and the desire to tear Malvern limb from limb shook Brandt to his core. Finlay and Evan directed their horses between him and Malvern before Brandt could charge forward.
“Calm yerself, Malvern,” Finlay said in a bizarrely placating voice. “Ye’ll be compensated, I vow it.”
To this, Finlay received a contemptuous scoff from the marquess. “Compensation,” he repeated. “What I want is the alliance I was bequeathed by the bloody King of England, you cock-brained idiot.”
A collective hush fell over the stable yard. Maclaren men eyed one another as Sorcha’s brother tightened his posture in his saddle. Brandt expected him to reach for his sword and swing at Malvern’s head for the insult. But, other than the slight hitch of his blocky chin, Finlay remained motionless. He said nothing in his own defense, though his jaw clenched tight with anger and his fingers whitened against the reins. Brandt frowned as a peculiar sense of dread trickled into him.
“The marriage will be annulled,” Malvern announced. “Immediately. Coxley, fetch the magistrate.”
A hulking knight behind Malvern turned to follow the order. Coxley. A chime of recognition strummed at the back of Brandt’s mind. Coxley had been Malvern’s colonel during the war, and his deeds on the battlefield had chilled Brandt to the bone when he’d first heard of them. Coxley had slain many a soldier, but it was his penchant for disemboweling his enemies with perverse fervor that other Englishmen had remembered.
Brandt pushed the sickening images away. He would not be intimidated by Malvern’s man. Nor would he pay attention to the unnatural cowardice the Maclaren men were displaying.
“An annulment is no longer an option.”
Coxley stopped his horse, and Malvern’s livid glare came back to rest on Brandt.
“Well then, Pierce, as you’ve already done your duty as husband, I will take pleasure in making my future bride a widow.” He paused, a slick grin thinning his lips, and then he repeated what he’d ordered earlier. “Take up a weapon.”
The man was tenacious, Brandt would give him that.
“Lord Malvern!” Gavin shouted from his saddle. “There will be no bloodshed upon sacred ground.”
Malvern’s men eyed one another, then roared with laughter.
“It’s an inn, not a church,” one of them shouted back.
Gavin extended his arm, an adamant finger pointing to the gray stone exterior of the building that flanked the other side of the stable yard. Brandt felt like clapping Gavin on the shoulder. “That is a house of the Lord, sir, and ye’re standing upon consecrated ground,” Sorcha’s cousin said, while Brandt’s eyes shot to the narrow opening between the stables and the corner of the church.
Quickly, while Malvern’s men shouted foul objections to Gavin’s claim, Brandt determined the layout of Selkirk’s village, its proximity to the nearest copse of trees, and the forested hills beyond. He had a brace of pistols, his boot dirk, and a sword sheathed in the harness of his saddle along with a quiver and two dozen arrows.
He could stay and fight Malvern, but his senses warned that there was absolutely no way for him to win, not here. Not on Malvern’s terms. If Brandt knew anything, it was to trust his instincts.
“You heathen bastards wouldn’t know God if he kicked you in the arse,” Malvern muttered, but he turned up his nose at Gavin’s pious claims and speared Brandt with a venomous glare. “Follow me to the paddock opposite the smithy.” His eyes flicked to Sorcha. “Leave the Beast here.”
Brandt held Malvern’s stare another moment and nearly gave in to the desire to ignore instinct, and stay and fight. He wanted to break every single tooth inside the man’s arrogant mouth. The marquess and his men turned and rode out of the stable yard. No doubt he was currently instr
ucting his soldiers to circle the village to cut Brandt off should he cower and run.
Sorcha gripped Brandt’s elbow, and he could feel the tremor in her hand. Glancing back at her, he saw her eyes had rounded into alarmed orbs. Before, she had merely appeared paralyzed by frustration and disgust for Malvern, but now she suddenly seemed wary and afraid.
For me, Brandt realized.
“What are you going to do?” she said. “You can’t mean to duel him.”
He shook his head. No, he didn’t plan on being so agreeable. He wouldn’t be surprised if one of Malvern’s men loosed an arrow straight to the middle of his back. His gaze slipped to the muscled gray stallion at her side. And he didn’t plan on losing his hard-won gains, either. He needed a way out of this stable yard—and he needed to take Sorcha and Lockie with him.
“Get on your horse,” he said as softly as possible. “Be ready.”
Obeying his command, Sorcha climbed into her saddle and wrapped her fists around the reins. He pulled himself up onto Ares’s back and met Sorcha’s wide, intense eyes.
“I need you to trust me, Sorcha,” he said, but before he could explain, Finlay rode to his side. Evan was busy riding between the other men, giving terse orders.
“He willnae let ye live, Pierce, ye ken,” Finlay said. “He’ll cheat ye.”
“I know.”
Finlay jerked his chin at Sorcha. “The lass will stay with me.”
“Like hell.” Brandt wrapped his hands around one of Sorcha’s reins. “I don’t know what Malvern did to crush your ballocks and your spine, but it’s clear he owns you. She stays with me.”
Finlay grit his teeth, his jaw muscles jumping, but Brandt didn’t have time to argue. “I’ll ride for the northern woods. If you want to keep your sister safe, we’ll need a distraction. A big one. Now.”
My Scot, My Surrender (Lords of Essex) Page 5