The Highlander's Forbidden Bride

by Donna Fletcher

  As his shivers hadn’t entirely ceased, she hurriedly removed his boots. His feet were cold as ice. She tucked all the blankets securely around him. Then she placed the flat pan in the hearth to heat so that she could use it to help warm his feet.

  She rushed around, gathering everything she needed and, though she was busy, she couldn’t keep her mind off the fact that he had believed it was Hope who had come to his rescue. She was no fool. She knew his delirium had been caused by his wound. But to hear him call out to Hope and once again to hear him say he loved her brought joy to her heart and soul.

  However, she needed to remain cautious. She didn’t know when he woke if he would recall the episode. And if he did? The truth would suffice, he had merely been delirious.

  For now, though, she would remain Hope and tend him as she had once before, with gentle hands and all her love.

  Before she started, she wrapped the warmed pan in her wool shawl and tucked it beneath his feet. His shivers stopped almost instantly. She then spent the next twenty minutes tending his wound. The stitches went fast since she was so prolific at setting them. The suturing complete, she managed to clean all the blood off him and away from his eye.

  When he woke, he would have no trouble seeing her.

  After she was done, she set a broth to brew in the hearth so that if he woke hungry, she’d have something to feed him. When she was finally finished, she moved the rocking chair next to the bed and took his hand in hers.

  She smiled, the warmth of his hand spreading through her own, and fell asleep, content.

  Chapter 15

  “Hope?”

  “I’m here.”

  Ronan squeezed the hand in his, relieved to feel it there. “I’m cold, and my head hurts so badly that I can’t bear to open my eyes.”

  “Keep your eyes shut. It’s late, and you need to continue to rest. I’ll put more wood in the hearth and—”

  “—Then you’ll crawl in bed with me and keep me warm.”

  “If that is what you want.”

  “More than anything I want that,” he assured her with a gentle squeeze of her hand.

  He wanted so badly to look at her, but every time he tried to open his eyes, the pain would force them closed. At least he had Hope. She was there with him, and soon she’d be in his arms, but this time he wanted more.

  “Hope,” he said, and held out his hand. When she took it, he locked his fingers firmly with hers. “I want your loving body heating mine. Undress and help me to do the same.”

  He was glad she didn’t hesitate and with great effort, her tender assistance, and more pain than he cared to experience, he undressed. It didn’t take her long to shed her clothes and join him beneath the blankets.

  She cuddled against his side, her hard nipples poking his chest as her hand splayed across it. Her leg dug between his two, to nestle comfortably close to his groin, and she gave a quick kiss to his chest before resting her head there.

  His arm wrapped around her protectively. She was warm and ever so soft, and he wasn’t surprised that his body reacted to her nakedness. But he didn’t have the stamina to pursue his desire. He would have to be satisfied with simply holding her.

  They lay embraced, Ronan stroking Hope’s arm and drifting closer and closer to her breast until finally his fingers skimmed across it to toy with her hardened nipple.

  “I love the feel of you,” he whispered.

  “And I love your touch.”

  “I wish I could make love to you tonight, but I can barely move without it paining me.”

  She slipped ever so slowly over him until her naked body covered his, and she whispered against his lips, “Then let me make love to you.”

  “I don’t have the strength—”

  “You need none,” she cajoled between kisses. “You need only to let me give you pleasure.”

  He tried to protest, wanting this time with her to be special, but he couldn’t speak; he could only feel. And he felt every touch and kiss, his own hands seeking her intimate flesh, frustrated when it seemed beyond his reach.

  Damn, why did it have to be this way? He had waited so long, so very long to be with Hope, and now his pain was too great to allow him the pleasure.

  Still, she wrung groans and moans from him, or was that from the pain? He and she intermingled, and he wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began. He only knew that he was lost in a haze of pleasure.

  Her lips seemed to sear every part of him, top to bottom, side to side, and all areas in between. She explored every inch of him, and he relished the pleasure. This was how he had imagined it. This was how it had been meant to be between him and Hope.

  This was her loving him.

  He was on the precipice of tumbling off, falling into the abyss of pleasure, when suddenly light blinded him, pain tore through his head, and his eyes sprang open.

  He wasn’t sure where he was. It took him a moment to remember what had happened to him. Then, when he finally had his senses about him and realized he was in bed at the cottage, he realized someone slept beside him naked.

  He shut his eyes against the inevitable, but knew he had to look, and when finally he did, he grew furious.

  There beside him, pressed intimately against him, was his archenemy Carissa, stark naked.

  He would have bolted from the bed if the pain in his head hadn’t stopped him when he tried to move. He did, however, push her away.

  She woke startled, and he was surprised when she anxiously pulled the blanket over her nakedness. Then, as if she realized where she was, she grinned and let the blanket fall away from her breasts.

  With an exaggerated stretch, she said, “What a night.”

  Ronan wanted to choke her, or was it he who deserved the punishment? Had he truly made love—no—had sex with his enemy? Good lord, what had he done?

  Carissa twisted her blond hair up and reached across Ronan to snatch her comb off the seat of the rocking chair and secure her long locks in place. Then she turned, and with a wicked grin and a lick of her lips, said, “Feeling better?”

  “What did you do?” he demanded, realizing that if he didn’t move too fast, he’d suffer no pain.

  “Nothing you didn’t want me to.”

  “You’re an evil woman.”

  “You didn’t think so last night,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk.

  Ronan couldn’t believe that he would mistake Carissa for Hope. It just wasn’t possible. But then that would mean…

  Before he turned glaring eyes on her, she slipped out of bed and dressed.

  “Don’t torture yourself, Highlander. You weren’t up to performing.”

  “Give me my clothes,” he demanded, truly relieved.

  She tossed him his garments once she was finished, then moved the rocking chair to where it usually sat by the hearth.

  He was slow to dress but not to question her. “It was you who found me?”

  “Who else would it be?”

  Yes, who else, he thought. Certainly not a dead woman.

  “You were delirious.”

  Was I? He wondered if his mind had played tricks on him, or had Carissa been playing tricks all along?

  “You thought me Hope,” she said, walking to the table to slice bread for breakfast.

  “And you responded as Hope.”

  She shrugged. “As I said, you were delirious.”

  “You sounded like Hope.”

  “Did I?” she shrugged again. “Or was it what you wanted to hear?”

  He moved slowly from the bed to the rocker, the pain slight. “You’re petite and slim like Hope.”

  She jabbed the tip of the knife into the wooden tabletop, and it stuck there as she glared at him. “Say what you mean, Highlander.”

  “There are too many similarities between you and Hope. And when I think of it, I also wonder how a slave could sneak away from her master every night without being caught.”

  “So you’re suggesting that I’m Hope, the dead slave y
ou still love?”

  “It seems more and more obvious,” he admitted.

  “Why would I bother to pass myself off as a slave?”

  “To gain my confidence and information about the Sinclares.”

  “That sounds as ridiculous as my claiming that I am truly more like Hope than Carissa, that somehow I felt safe enough with you to be my true self, a kind and thoughtful woman.”

  He gave a robust laugh and instantly regretted it. The sharp pain struck like lightning, at the side of his head, then down along his neck. He gasped as he said, “That’s a tall tale if I ever heard one. Mordrac’s daughter kindhearted and thoughtful. Please spare me the absurdity.”

  “Your tale may not be tall, but it is ridiculous,” she said. “It makes not an ounce of sense for me to have posed as a slave and pretended to love you.”

  He cringed, though it wasn’t from the pain in his head. It was from the pain in his heart. Had Carissa truly played him for a fool? Had he laid bare his love to his enemy?

  “And why would I sell you to the mercenaries?”

  “To keep me imprisoned,” he said, as if just realizing it himself. “You knew I wouldn’t go anywhere until I rescued Hope.”

  “And what would be the point of keeping you imprisoned?”

  “I would make good fodder for barter.”

  She shook her head. “If that were my intentions, I would have used you to save my father’s life. But I was wise enough to realize that my father’s fate was inevitable.”

  “Just like yours.”

  “Spare me your repetitive threats,” she said. “They are as meaningless to me as what you now suggest.”

  “Why? Because I’ve caught you at your little game?”

  She sauntered over to him, her slim hand resting provocatively along her hip. “If it is a game, what makes you think that I don’t have you right where I want you?”

  He jumped up; the intense pain slamming his eyes shut, and he grabbed hold of the mantel to stop from collapsing.

  “Sit.”

  Her anxious order sounded just as Hope had when she worried over him, and it made him angrier to realize that more than likely the woman he loved had never existed.

  “Sit,” she urged again, and took hold of his arm, tugging him down.

  Her hand never left his arm after he sat, and her warmth poured into him just as Hope’s had always done. He had teased her about it once, and she responded by telling him that it was her love for him that radiated the warmth.

  He glanced down at the hand resting on his tan shirt. Even the linen couldn’t stop him from feeling her heat, or was it her love? Damn, but he didn’t want to believe that Hope had never existed. He wanted her to have been a real warm, loving woman. He wanted everything he had shared with her to have been real; most of all, he wanted their love to have been real. He could endure loving a woman who had died, but not loving a woman who had never lived.

  She removed her hand from his arm, and a bleak emptiness descended over him. Could it be true? Could Hope have never existed? Had he been merely chasing a dream?

  He grabbed his head with his hand, not knowing if the pain came from his wound or his troubled thoughts.

  “I’ll fix you something to eat,” she said.

  Her voice was sharp like Carissa’s, or was he merely trying to find reason not to believe what he suspected?

  “I’m not hungry,” he said, and moved from the chair, climbing into bed slowly.

  “Rest,” she said, pulling the blankets over him. “I’ll set a fresh broth to brewing for when you wake.”

  Now she sounded like Hope, considerate, and his head began to spin as he prayed for the blessedness of sleep.

  Carissa collapsed in one of the chairs at the table. All hope was gone, but what had she expected, Ronan to embrace her and be grateful that Hope was alive? Hope wasn’t alive in any sense. He reacted as she had suspected he would. He had rejected her. Not for a moment had he believed, or even considered, that she could be more like Hope than Carissa.

  If he hated her before, this would make him hate her even more.

  So had her father been right? Hate endures while love doesn’t last.

  Ronan believed the worst of her. To hear him say that she had sold him to the mercenaries to imprison him couldn’t have been further from the truth. She had sold him to free him. She had assumed he would contact his family, pay the money the mercenaries had paid for him, and return home, intending eventually to rescue Hope. Instead, he had remained with the mercenaries and begun plans to rescue Hope.

  When she had realized he wouldn’t give up, she had no other choice but to make him believe Hope had died. That was why it had been so easy to answer him when he had asked why she had killed Hope.

  It really had been necessary.

  Foolishly, she had not given thought to Ronan possibly wanting revenge. She thought he would be so heartbroken that he would return home to his family to grieve.

  She had to admit that part of her cherished knowing he had loved Hope so strongly that he abandoned reuniting with his family for her. And even when he learned of her death, it had not driven him home but only made him more determined to revenge Hope.

  Carissa shook her head silently admonishing herself. It had been foolish of her from the start to play such a dangerous game. But it had been done without malice and with such innocence. He had been needy; but then so had she.

  She had, however, made it worse.

  His sorrowful groan had her off the chair and to his side in seconds. He looked in the throes of a nightmare, his face scrunched in agony and his mouth tightly gripped. It broke her heart to know she was the cause of his suffering.

  She stroked his face with gentle fingers, running them lightly across his forehead, then drifting down to circle his cheek and in a waving motion across his chin and along his jaw from ear to ear. She repeated the route until his face relaxed, and he slept contentedly. She had done the same to him before, when he had thought her Hope, and he had loved it. He had told her that she possessed magic hands.

  She had told him that her magic only worked on him.

  With a teasing boldness, he had informed her that soon they would work magic together. But they had never had the chance, and now he suffered even more because of her.

  She couldn’t stand to see him hurt anymore.

  This had to end.

  And she was the only one who could end it.

  Chapter 16

  In four days, Ronan felt better. He had rested and eaten well and spoken little to Carissa. And he wasn’t surprised that she had kept her distance from him. He had caught her in her lies, revealed her ruse, and sealed her fate.

  He could try to convince himself that he was wrong, that Hope truly had existed, but the more thought he gave it, the more it was obvious that Carissa had played him for a fool, and like a fool, he had fallen right into her trap.

  She and her father must have had a good laugh over him, the young, blind Highlander who was stupid enough to trust while in enemy hands. He had shared stories of his childhood with her, and in turn she had learned about his brothers, about his family, about his own hopes and dreams.

  Whatever had made him confide in the slave?

  She was a complete stranger to him, but she had also been the only one who had shown him any help or kindness. Being blind had been challenging in itself, but being wounded as well made it that much more difficult. She was a ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.

  Oddly, though, he felt safe with her, and that was what he didn’t understand. How could he have so badly misjudged his own gut instinct? He had always prided himself on being a good judge of a person’s nature. And though he had no visual to go by with the slave, it had been her caring way and her consistent encouragement that had his gut believing she was a good, honest person.

  His musing was interrupted when he noticed Carissa reach for her cloak on the peg. He waited and watched as she turned and grabbed hold of the small
cauldron.

  “Don’t be long,” he ordered.

  It surprised him that she didn’t respond but simply walked out the door.

  That the last couple of days had been a strain on them both was obvious. The truth had to be told, this matter settled. He needed to know for certain. He needed his pride to heal, and his heart.

  She returned, and after shedding her cloak and setting the cauldron in the hearth, she sat on the chair to stare at the flames. He had expected her to retire to the table to chop or mix, or do whatever it was she did when preparing a meal.

  “Say what you have to say to me and be done with it,” she said solemnly.

  “I want the truth,” he said.

  She laughed and shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “The truth speaks louder than lies.”

  “Truly?” she asked.

  He nodded. “If you speak the truth, I will hear it.”

  She folded her hands across her chest and with a firm tilt of her chin she said, “Good, then I will tell you the truth.”

  He sat forward eager to listen.

  “I am not what you think, and when I met you, I felt safe to be who I truly—”

  “Stop,” he shouted, annoyed, and rose to brace his hand on the mantel. “I hear no truth in your words.”

  She jumped up, and although her height by no means matched his, her annoyance did. “Then you are deaf.”

  “I hear well enough, and what I hear is you thinking you can make a fool of me yet again.” He shook his head. “That will not happen.”

  “Of course not,” she argued. “Once a fool always a fool.”

  “Now I hear the truth.”

  “You know nothing of the truth,” she said, her voice growing loud. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it stared you in the face.”

  “Now that I’m not blind, I can see your lies clearly.”

  “You saw better when you were blind,” she said, giving a frustrated groan and turning away from him.