Bride of the Beast (6 page)

A very handsome man indeed.

"I said I regret if speaking with me ill suits you, but, nevertheless, we should do so," he said, his tone brisk, less warm than she remembered. "Now, before I join my men on the ramparts."

He studied her, and the intensity of his perusal gave Caterine the disturbing impression he peered into her very soul, saw all her deepest secrets.

Her dreams.

And laid them bare one by one.

Something ... anger? frustration? ... flashed across his face, but vanished before she could decide. "Lady, I assure you my intent in coming here was not to aggrieve you."

Heat surged up the back of Caterine's neck. "I know full well why you are here."

"But you did not expect a Sassunach."

You did not expect a man whose visage would give you worse nightmares than those already plaguing you.

"I did not expect any man," she said, surprising him. Pushing back from the table, she stood. "Aye, we must speak, but not here. I will accompany you to the ramparts."

Marmaduke didn't flinch when she ignored his proffered arm. "After you, my lady." He made her a stiff bow instead, carefully hiding how deeply her slight had stung him.

Calling on every shred of his hardihood, he followed her through the darkened hall, pausing only to retrieve his fur-lined cloak before ascending the curving stairs behind her. When they reached the top landing, he swirled his heavy mantle about her shoulders.

"It will be cold on the parapets," he said simply, his fingers brushing the smooth warmth of her nape, the silken weight of her braided hair cool against the back of his hands.

To his relief, neither of the two men he'd sent to patrol the ramparts watched this segment of the wall-walk. Naught but the chill dark and countless winking stars greeted them.

The night sky, a frigid wind, and the steady thumping of his heart.

Going straight to the crenellated wall, Marmaduke rested his hands on one of the square-toothed merlons and gazed out at the sea. A crescent moon rode low on the horizon, its pale glow casting a thin ribbon of silver across the night-darkened water.

Gripping the cold stonework, he let the wind's stinging bite ease the tight knot of heat Caterine Keith's rejection had put at the base of his neck.

Steeling himself, he turned to face her. "Your sister sends you warm greetings and bade me to assure you she is well," he began, purposely omitting any mention of Linnet MacKenzie's tender state, as had been the lady's express wish. "She would like—"

"I doubt, sir, that you wished to speak to me about Linnet," Lady Caterine said, the agitation humming in her voice at stark contrast to the haunted look in her eyes.

A goddess of ice. Beautiful, proud, and mightily agitated.

She drew a deep breath, her annoyance palpable. "What I must tell
you
has naught to do with her either."

Marmaduke leaned back against the merlon and folded his arms. "Then speak your heart. I am listening."

"My heart, sir, has even less to do with it." She looked sharply at him, escaping tendrils of her hair dancing on the night wind. "See you, there has been an error. My sister was duped. I did not send for you. My companion did. Lady Rhona. My dearest friend and worst enemy."

"Your worst enemy?" Marmaduke lifted a brow, noted the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, the shadows beneath them. "I think not, my lady. I doubt she deceived you with ill intent."

"She stirs mischief without thinking of the consequences."

Heeding an irresistible urge to be near her, Marmaduke pushed away from the merlon and went to stand before her. "And are the consequences so unpalatable? For truth, I have been here but a few hours and can already see you are in grave need."

She cleared her throat. "I did not want a champion, nor am I desirous of a... man."

"And now your friend has plunged you onto a forcing-ground where you must suffer both."

She nodded, a flash of anger sparking in her beautiful eyes. But she said nothing. She simply stared at him, her chin lifted in clear objection to everything he was and had hoped to do for her.
With her.

Hoping the dark hid the muscle jerking in his jaw, Marmaduke fought the overpowering urge to lower his mouth to hers and silence her objections with a kiss. A fierce and claiming one.

"Lady Caterine, 'tis well I know I am not a man to turn heads and steal hearts," he said at last, the words coming from the devils that rode his back and not his own true self. A self still handsome and unmarred. "But scarred or nay, English or not, error or otherwise, your sister asked me to champion you and I shall," his true self said. "I gave the lady Linnet my word. Denying her would be as impossible as not drawing breath."

"Aye, impossible," Caterine agreed, the sheer futility of her situation as annoying as the inscrutable look on her unwanted champion's face. She peered at him, willing him to say the words she'd hoped to hear when she informed him he'd come in error.

Summoned in a wild scheme spun by her meddlesome friend.

But rather than announce his swift departure, he watched her with an unbelievably vexing air of imperturbability and
baldly informed her he intended to champion her whether she wanted him to or not.

Worse, t
hank
s to Rhona's underhanded machinations, she had little course but to accept his help.

His leaving would only hurl her into more troubling waters.

"Lady, I desired to speak to you privily because I must inform you there is one request your sister made upon me which I cannot fulfill," he said then, his rich-timbred voice mellifluous as a bard's.

Spoiled only by its trace of Englishry. Caterine arched a brow, taking refuge from the lure of his oddly soothing voice in a studied veneer of indifference. "And what request of Linnet's might that be?"

"My shoulders are good and wide, Lady Caterine. Well able to bear any burdens troubling you," he said, more disturbed by her chilly reception than he cared to admit. "Any and all burdens save one. I will not pose as your husband." An indefinable expression crossed her face, and before it could blossom into something he'd rather not see, Marmaduke clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing the narrow breadth of the wall-walk, his gaze fixed on the far horizon.

Anywhere but on her face.

Anything but risk seeing her horror when he proposed a true marriage.

"Four well-blooded warriors came with me," he said, hoping only he heard the slight quaver in his voice. "We bring you full use of our sword arms and our steadfast protection."

He stopped before her then, clenching his hands against the unsettling notion he was about to make himself look a fool. "And I, Lady Caterine," he rushed on before his nerve took flight, "I would offer myself to you. Not as a pretend husband, but as a true one."

She gasped. A tiny, breathy sound, barely audible above the wind. Not that she needed words to convey her revulsion. Her whole demeanor, her wide-eyed stare, screamed her displeasure louder than any winter gales that could race in from the sea.

"No." The terse rejection ripped a deep chasm between the man he'd once been and his dreams of ever being that old self again.

"And why not?" the sons of Beelzebub made him ask.

To his astonishment, a tiny wry smile curved her lips. "Not for the reason you suspect, I assure you." She lifted her hand to his face, tracing his scar with a touch light as air.

Marmaduke stiffened. No woman had ever touched his scars. Not the slashing one that marred his once-handsome face, nor the countless welts crisscrossing his back.

No woman until now and the gentleness of that one fair touch near melted his heart.

She withdrew her hand, a look of confusion flashing across her face as if she, too, had felt something. But the look passed so quickly it may never have been there at all.

"Your scar does not bother me," she said, her bluntness taking him off guard. "I find your looks ... arresting," she added, surprising him even more.

She drew a deep breath. "My situation has changed since Rhona took it upon herself to plead my sister's aid. It is indeed a true husband I now require, not simply a man willing to play the role," she said, her pronouncement sending hope thundering through Marmaduke.

"But I cannot accept you as that man." The plain-spoken words dashed his newly revived spirits as thoroughly as if she'd plunged him over the rampart wall and into the sea.

"Still, I wish you to know my feelings have naught to do with your face." She smoothed a fingertip along his scar once more, the gentle touch torturing him this time. "Nor is it anything you have said or done, not you personally. 'Tis your English blood alone. That, sir, is a taint I cannot overcome. My sister should have known better."

For the first time in Marmaduke's life, words failed" him. Her frank avowal careened through him, mocking him and taking staunch sides with his demons.

And stealing his ability to do aught but stare at her.

"Lest I lose my courage," she plunged ahead, clearly unaware of the raw anguish twisting inside him, "I would beg one favor of you."

"Name your desire and it shall be done." The chivalrous words came of their own volition, spoken as if by a stranger, though the voice was undeniably his.

She peered at him, a profoundly earnest look in her deep blue eyes. "As my sister surely told you, Sir Hugh de la Hogue, who has been plaguing me for months, has vowed he will soon take me, and this holding, by force."

"de la Hogue?"
Marmaduke's gut clenched at the mere mention of the abased churl's name.

"You know him?" The simple words seemed to etch worry lines onto her face.

"I have met him, yes," Marmaduke admitted, the pulsing knot at his throat sending tendrils of heat into his shoulders and up his neck. "In the early years of my knighthood—at the

"He is the reason I must ask your help. Not so much for myself, but to protect James, my stepson," Caterine said, mentioning the young man Marmaduke had heard of but not yet seen.

The heir to Dunlaidir.

"Should Sir Hugh make good his threats, he would have done with James before the nuptial vows passed my lips. And with James dead, his two-thirds of Dunlaidir revert to me... to Sir Hugh if I am forced to wed him."

And the black-hearted whoreson would have your life as quickly.
Marmaduke kept his suspicions to himself, but from the look on Lady Caterine's face, she knew this danger without him giving voice to it.

"You needn't fear de la Hogue, my lady." Marmaduke held her gaze, his own cares, his disappointments, forgotten. "He will regret the day he drew his first breath if he dare so much as look at you. On that, I give you my solemn oath."

Averting her gaze, she stared into the darkness, the brisk sea wind whipping his cloak about her legs. "T
hank
you," she said, her pride doing visible battle with her need of him.

Marmaduke struggled with his own battered pride. "I came here to help you, but if it is a husband you seek and you will not wed me, then what it is you would have me do?"

"Your men," she said, looking back at him. "I beseech you to persuade one of them to marry me. A marriage in name only ... to protect Dunlaidir and my stepson."

Marmaduke frowned at the rekindled hope rising in his breast upon hearing her words.

"Fair lady, I must disappoint you." He hated the way her face fell, loathed himself for seeing his own good fortune in the crushing of hers.

She looked down. "They are already wed," she said, correctly guessing the reason for his denial.

"All save
Lachlan
, the youngest. And even he is spoken for. The lad left behind a much-loved maid who eagerly awaits his return."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "Then there remains only you."

Marmaduke nodded, his throat too thick to speak.

"Then so be it," she said, the moon's pale light falling full on her face and leaving no doubt about her distaste for the notion. "But a marriage in name only."

Easing his cloak from her shoulders, she handed it to him, then slipped through the half-opened door before he could stop her.

Or warn her he meant to win her heart.

He took a step forward, but already she was gone, swallowed up by the darkness of the stairwell, leaving him alone.

Alone with the cold night and the heavy weight of his mantle, still warm from her body heat, indelibly branded with her scent.

For a long while, Marmaduke remained where he stood and looked out at the sea, the cloak clutched in his arms. The moon was higher now and, may God forgive him for taking advantage of her plight, so were his spirits.

Lifting a calloused hand to his face, he retraced the path of her fingers. Saints, he'd almost swear his scar yet tingled from her touch.

He knew his heart was still affected.