Bride of the Beast (26 page)

Thus motivated, Marmaduke tried to pretend he didn´t feel as if a thousand needle-footed insects marched over the soles of his feet, and knelt beside the large leather satchel he kept near his pallet.

A pouch that held a few of his most prized possessions.

His mouth pressed into a grim line, he rummaged through its contents until he found what he sought: a bronze mirror of great beauty and antiquity he'd once recovered from the oozing mud bank of a
Highland
peat bog, and a plumpish earthen jar of Linnet MacKenzie's special ragwort
salve.

She
called the bright yellow ointment a beauty treatment.

He liked to think of it as an anti-scar unguent.

By any name, after long years of daily use, the highly effective healing preparation had diminished the most frightful effects of his scarring, relaxing his facial muscles enough for him to re-learn the wholly underestimated art of being able to smile.

Though he'd never regain the handsomeness he'd once been so proud of, t
hank
s to the miraculous workings of the lady Linnet's salve, he no longer looked as if he'd been cross-bred with a toad.

Marmaduke curled his fingers around the little jar, his gratitude heavy in his heart.

He never went anywhere without an ample supply, and not a day passed that he didn't rub a dollop of the precious wonder cream onto his blighted face.

This morn he'd splurge and use two dollops.

Bracing himself for the sight that never failed to smite him, he pushed to his feet and carried his treasures to the nearest window slit.

One hand curled tight about the mirror's intricately worked triple-looped handle, he angled its polished surface to catch what watery light spilled through the narrow window, then began massaging a generous portion of the ragwort salve onto his scar.

In two days he'd marry again, and he needed all the miracles he could get, for the same muscles that allowed him to smile, also enabled him to kiss well.

And he meant to kiss his lady very, very well at the nuptial ceremony.

He'd already won a goodly portion of her trust, even access to her sweet body.

But he wanted more.

He wanted her heart.

And a curl-her-toes-and-steal-her-breath wedding kiss seemed a good way to begin laying siege to the one thing she'd vowed she couldn't give him... her affections.

Her love.

The saints knew she already had his.

With great care, his jaw set with hard determination, Marmaduke massaged the glistening salve into his skin until every trace had been absorbed. Then he inhaled deeply of the briny new morn.

Two days.

Two more chances to reap the greatest benefit of Linn MacKenzie's beautifying ointment.

And then his assault would begin in bitter earnest.

With soul-stealing, knee-melting kisses.

With relentless, irrepressible care.

two days later,
on the other side of
Scotland
, a glittering coat of frost iced the stout walls of Clan MacKenzie's island stronghold, Eilean Creag. A keening wind, cold and black, tore with all its force across the crenellated battlements and whipped the surrounding waters of Loch Duich into a churning, white-capped frenzy.

But inside the castle's massive walling, in the smoky warmth of its dimly lit great hall, nothing stirred to greet the approach of another day.

Nary an errant draught dared ruffle the rush-strewn floor... or disturb the couple sleeping soundly in the bulky timbered bed claiming a place of honor on the raised dais at the far end of the cavernous hall.

Even the snores of the many MacKenzies slumbering 'round the hulking bed were
muted
snores. Those who valued their necks didn't snore at all.

Or toss and turn in their sleep.

Duncan MacKenzie, the dread Black Stag of Kintail, had issued strict orders: his lady wife's rest was not to be disturbed.

Nor was she allowed to leave the bed. That she'd repeatedly done so, ignoring her husband's Wishes and all good sense, was the reason he'd dismantled their bed, carted it belowstairs, then reassembled it in all its four-posted glory in full view of every man, woman, and child within Eilean Creag's walls.

And every last one of them had been ordered to keep an
eye on her.

But this morn's dawning brought a fearsome determination to Linnet MacKenzie's waking heart.

A powerful urge to climb the turret stairs, brave the icy winds blasting across the ramparts, and greet the new day with special fondness and joy.

She would, too, if the great swell of her stomach hadn't robbed her of her usual strength... and if her most ardent nocturnal watcher hadn't plied his usual tricks by keeping one impressively muscled thigh slung possessively over her legs and an equally well-crafted arm clamped around her
girth.

Careful not to disturb the handsome brute, Linnet slid a sidelong glance at her slumbering husband and weighed the dangers of slipping from his well-meant clutches.

"Do not even think to attempt it," Duncan MacKenzie warned, not even cracking his eyes.

But he did tighten his hold on her.

"Today is the day," his flame-haired wife responded, an odd breathiness in her voice, a sentimental thickness only she and a certain ugly-faced lout of an Englishman could
achieve.

And the sound of it, coupled with the cryptic words, banished any last dredges of sleep he might have hoped to cling to, instantly replacing them with cold, stark wakefulness.

"The day for what?" Pushing up on his elbows, he peered at her from narrowed eyes, his heart, his whole being, lurching with ill-ease simply from the look of her.

Faint torchlight leaking through the half-opened bed curtains spilled across her pale face, revealing gold-flecked eyes swimming with moist luminosity, and worse… a
slight trembling in her lower lip.

"The babe?!"
Duncan
launched himself to his feet, heedless of his naked state, uncaring of the public place their bed
now stood.

"Saints, Maria, and Joseph!" he roared, shoving his
hands through his hair.

"Crucifix! 'Tis too soon!" he bellowed, a wounded beast, dread like none he'd ever known sluicing through him in great, cold waves. "Mother of God, preserve—"

"Of a mercy, husband, becalm yourself." Shaking her head, Linnet smiled.

A reassuring smile meant for him... and every MacKenzie who now gaped at them, grog-eyed from sleep, the same terror stamped on their startled faces as on her husband's
handsome one.

"Everyone is staring," she said, clutching the bedcovers to her tender breasts. "You've roused them all with your blustering, and to no purpose. The babe will not come for some weeks yet."

"And it is awake they aught be!" Whirling around, he planted fisted hands against his hips and glowered at any who dared to meet his stare.

Glared at the lot of them until their sniggers reminded him of his unclothed condition.

Until the portent of his lady wife's words sifted past the thick cords of alarm twisting 'round his innards, tying his guts in knots and bows.

The babe will not come for weeks.

Cool bliss on his fired nerves.

Soothing balm to allay his fear of losing her ... and their bairn.

The first she'd managed to carry this long.

Heaving a great sigh,
Duncan
raked every fool gawker in
his hall with a formidable stare. "This bed is here for one
p
urpose only," he called out, his deep voice rising to the
va
ulted ceiling.
"You
are gathered round it for the same reason: to alert me if my lady attempts to leave it... or stop her folly if I am away."

He cast a dark look over his shoulder.

At her.

He'd deal with her repeated endeavors to defy him later,
after
the safe delivery of the healthy bairn she insisted they'd be blessed with.

His bug-eyed men would taste his wrath now. "Lest you wish to wear sackcloth and dine on naught but soot and ash the rest of your days, hunker back down on your pallets or where'er else you choose to rest your heads and ignore what transpires in or near this bed ... lest my lady seeks to escape its confines."

Folding his arms, he waited until their grumbles, grunts, and rustlings found an end, then turned back to confront his misty-eyed wife.

If the babe wasn't the reason for her mawkish expression, he had a good idea who was.

The only other person with as big a heart—as
soft
a heart—as Linnet herself.

Lowering himself onto the edge of the bed, he took her hand in his ... and hid his dismay at the clammy feel of her fingers behind a long huffed-out breath.

"What is with the great lout?" he asked, concern for his friend almost as laming as his fear for her and the babe had been. "Have you had a vision? Is he in danger?"

Linnet shook her head again, the smile welling in her heart swelling her tongue as well.

Her husband frowned—a daunting sight to any who knew him less well than she. "Your sister, then?" He smoothed the hair back from her brow, the tender gesture belying his fearsome expression. "Is she in danger?"

"Only of losing her heart," Linnet spoke at last, her joy at the knowledge almost overwhelming her.
"He
has already lost his," she added, a fat tear leaking from the corner of one eye.

Her husband glanced to the side.

When he looked back at her, an unusual brightness misted his own eyes. "They are happy?" he asked, his deep voice low and gruff. "Your gift has shown you?"

"Aye, my gift, but also my heart," she said, pressing the back of her free hand against his beloved cheek.

Capturing it,
Duncan
placed a warm kiss on her palm. 'That one-eyed bastard truly loves again?" he persisted as if he found the possibility highly improbable.

The raw edge to his words gave bold voice to how much the prospect pleased him. "And she loves him?"

Suddenly tired, Linnet pulled her hands from his grasp and leaned back against the pillows. Lacing her fingers protectively over her stomach, she gave him a wan little smile. "I doubt she knows it yet, but, aye, she does." A roguish smile spread across
Duncan
's face. "Saints, but I am ready to see that English whoreson again," he vowed. "I shall bedevil him from here to the gates of purgatory and back for being so bull-headed when we first urged him to go to your sister's aid."

A cantankerous snort came from somewhere in the shadows. "And when will we get to see the lovesick fool again?" Linnet's smile widened upon recognizing the voice. Her husband's dark brows snapped together as he combed the smoke-hazed gloom, searching the dimness for Fergus, Eilean Creag's aged seneschal, and the only soul in all of Kintail who'd dare break his edict of silence.

The grizzle-headed old goat thrust his bristly chin forward the instant
Duncan
's stare found him. "I grow weary of his frippery and gewgaws a-crowding my hall," the gray-beard complained, excusing his daring with a nod toward the teetering piles of Sir Marmaduke's possessions stacked just inside the hall's arched entry.

A veritable mountain of household goods, weaponry, and, as Fergus had claimed, fanciful baubles and trinkets only one as romantically inclined as the chivalrous Sir Marmaduke Strongbow would appreciate.

A wealth of goods
Duncan
and his men had been transporting across Loch Duich, to Marmaduke's as-yet-unoccupied Balkenzie, by the boatload, for weeks now.

And still they hadn't made a dent in the Sassunach knight's accumulated belongings.

" 'Tis time he returns and life gets back to normal in these parts," Fergus grumbled, then flounced onto his side on the makeshift pallet he shared with his equally aged wife, the bony arm he flung over his head clearly signaling he'd lose no more words on the subject.

And if there'd been any doubt, his particularly distinctive snores—high-pitched wheezy ones—soon heralded the irrefutable end to his disruptions.

"So, sweeting,"
Duncan
murmured, turning back to his wife, "when will we get to see that lumbering oaf again? Is his return upon us? Is that what you meant when you said
''today is the day?”

"Nay," Linnet answered in a tremulous voice, her sweet lips trembling again. "I do not know when they will return. You should ken by now that I cannot scry at will."

Pausing, she sent a quick glance to the mounds of goods crowding the opposite end of the hall. "But I pray it will be in time for Yuletide at Balkenzie as we are hoping." "Then what day is today?"