His Judas Bride (19 page)

He was mistaken to think this woman wasn’t afraid of anything. He’d never have thought so the other day when she stood in the castle hall and faced the turd down. Why else would she wipe her palms down her gown though? Or why else would the color sink from her face, leaving it white as the snow he’d found her in?

“Of course.” One thing that could be counted on was Meg’s color didn’t sink. But maybe she blushed for him and the situation he found himself in. His brother’s betrothed. “That is why you’re here isn’t it, my lady? In Lochalpin, anyway, to marry Ewen? You know, I’m only surprised he never came here to ask Callm for help.”

“Well, he wouldn’t. Right?” The hell. Speak? He had no damn choice but to speak, from the very bottom of his boots at that.

“Or that you didn’t know he was looking, Callm?”

“Well, I did. I did know, Princess. Shug told me that first morning. But by then—”

“You did?” Meg cocked an eyebrow. “Well, not that it matters, now the weather’s eased a little, you’ll be able to send word up the glen. Or maybe the wedding could even take place here? Of course, it’s a bit untidy, but nothing Ewen’s not used to.”

Callm felt his heart clench like a fist in his chest. Standing here was about as much as he could manage when he was conflicted by the fact that most women would have press-ganged their way to the altar by now.

But this one, this one dug him out a hole. As for Meg waltzing in here, was he meant to believe she didn’t consider for a second how Ewen’s bride came to be missing in the first place?

He couldn’t not marry this woman. Could he? Now he saw again the self-possessed creature who’d thanked him for his body as if it bored her, instead of the one whose body was so sweet to possess, sweat broke out on his skin just thinking about what they’d shared, why the blazes should he? He had to consider why she dug him out a hole. Why she didn’t start some scene as she had the other day.
Twice.
A glen princess like her. Didn’t she want to marry him?

Of course it would have helped matters in terms of making a decision had his men found whoever was in this glen. Then he could have looked her in the eye and said
I know what you’re about.
Except if he knew what she was about, what the hell had he been doing for four days pretending he didn’t?

She was beautiful though, wasn’t she? And it wasn’t just that. The times he’d possessed her had all been so different. At least, he wanted to think they weren’t just a physical connection. Pure lust. There had been a tenderness too. A warmth that stole about his senses. Although that wasn’t why he now cleared his throat of the constricting gunge.

“There’s not going to be any wedding. Right?”

It wasn’t. But the words were past his teeth before he could stop them.

Meg spun around fully on her heels. “Sweet Jesus. Callm, you’re not saying—”

He supposed, in a confused way, what else could he damn well say? That he should have kept his breeches fastened because he had never felt more trapped in his life?

He didn’t want a wife. How could he, living here, no matter how sweet this creature was in bed? What else was he to do but offer his hand though? At least for now. Ian Dhub would have a tartan fit if he didn’t. Did he want that trouble for his people?

It was just the calumny of it. The McGurkies had killed Morven.

Kara edged her gaze sideways as if she had been struck dumb. A first. She squeezed her velvet skirt tighter. Maybe it was that betraying fact, that hint, that tiny hint of hopelessness that she thought he would be so ruthless as to discard her—it was what it would be—after keeping her in his bed for the best part of four days.

Anyway, he didn’t have to live with her, did he?

“This is what I’m saying.”

He scrunched across the cave floor. Reaching out, he cupped the back of her head, dragged her mouth to his before she could protest, and kissed her.

As he did the world and everything in it, retreated. All he knew was this. The full possession of her lips. The taste of her, edgy and somehow full of tears, so damned sweet, that the way she carried on, so he didn’t know where he was with her half the time, the strange mixture of smoldering, steel-back boned,
vulnerability
she was, didn’t matter. How could it, when she kissed like this?

“Callm.” Behind him, Meg gave a half sob. “Are ye completely insane?”

He steadied himself. He shouldn’t swear to this right now. That would be running to the edge of the precipice and stepping into midair. But then if he sent her with Meg he’d be without the pleasure of her incredible body. And if there was anyone else—what kind of woman would open her legs to one man as she had, while in thrall to another, because it hadn’t all been desperation, had it?

Anyway she hadn’t exactly accepted him yet, had she?

“Maybe.” He traced his thumb-pad over the ruby lips he found himself staring at all of a sudden. “But what do you say to Wee Murdie there fetching Father Andrew, now? A hand-fasting.”

“Callm, am I to understand…now just tell me if I’m wrong here. You are sending for Father Andrew to…to marry…”

It was probably unwise to have spoken with Meg there, as the clatter of a stool being knocked over resonated around the cavernous walls. But so long as she now picked it up, sat down, and shut her mouth, it would be fine.

“For God’s sake. Your own brother?”

Of course he was, or he wouldn’t be asking, which was why he wished
she
would answer him. His heartbeat increased. What if she said no? Would he not lean a little more toward relief if she did?

“Not exactly, Sis. That would be incest of the worst kind. I’m asking Lady McGurkie here. A hand-fasting, till we can be properly anointed. What do you say?”

It would be a blow to his masculine pride. A fairly amusing one if she did say
no. But why, as the seconds inched by, did he find himself tempted to tear that one word from her tongue:
Yes.

It was not a disreputable match, even if he wasn’t clan chief and he did live in a cave. But, incredibly for a woman who, from the moment he confronted her on that hillside, had been incapable of closing her mouth, she’d shrunk into silence.

“Will you have me? Or are you going to decline my offer?”

* * *

Have him? Rounding a rock on the shore, Kara huffed out a breath. She had had him. She had had him several times. And look at the good it had done her. She would die before she had him again.

She clutched her cloak tighter as a gull screeched around her head. Arland. Arland. Arland. That path off the beach, up the hillock, was her best, her only chance. It was all she had found in half an hour of searching, padding up and down the shore, smiling beguilingly at his men, as if all she sought was a little air.

My God.
Yes.
Such a little word. And she had struggled so to say it to him, her tongue might as well as been stuck to the roof of her mouth. Because it
was
a little word. One that meant…meant she needed to get out of here, before this got any worse. For God’s sake why hadn’t she just married Ewen McDunnagh?

“What are you doing, Princess? Looking for me?”

She tugged a breath into her parched lungs. What had she just thought about dying before she had him again? That might be sooner than she thought. How could she have got attached to the damn man like this?

“Or are you trying to escape?”

His voice, how was it that even his damned voice had that affect on her? Her spine was affected in particular so that stupid little quiver swept up it. All the way to the very top. She prayed he didn’t see her bridling desperation.

“Me? Oh, not at all, sir.”

She jerked her head around and instantly wished she hadn’t. Look at him. Even through the misty curtain of her breath, she knew she would sooner not.

Breeches of soft, buttered leather. The beautifully muscled chest hidden beneath layers of black velvet and crisply pressed white cotton. Still no dusting of lace at his throat. A soft woolen plaid to match his eyes. Sea-green. She parted her lips in shock. Given the amount of grit and grime that usually covered his and the other men’s clothes, she’d actually thought the McDunnagh colors were brown.

The worst though was what glinted on his chest. So dazzling was the plaid brooch he’d picked from God alone knew what tattered remnant of his life that she spoke with difficulty.

“Yes. Pray forgive me, but why would I do that? A lucky woman like myself?”

The thought thudded right there in the winter sunlight dappling his face, that she was a lucky woman. Although she was not going to be foolish enough to believe a man of the Wolf’s bleak and bloody experience equated the need to marry her, with anything so earth-shattering as love. No.

It might even be he had dressed like this to see just how far she was prepared to go, which really, when she considered how low she had already sunk, he might be surprised about.

Which was why that silver brooch he wore fastened on her heart. He couldn’t know he was a fatal draw, could he, when he pinned it to his chest, even as it now seemed to prick hers?

That kiss earlier had not exactly been that of a man trapped.

So now she must ask herself. Did he mean to do this properly? She must see that under any other circumstances than these, a man like him, the one her father had hoped for, for her, five years ago… Her throat tightened. Wasn’t really what she wanted.

“Because.” He stepped closer in that way that from the start had made him dangerous. Not because of who he was. Because of what always overrode everything. Lust. As if he was some stupid, damned addiction.

Well, she wasn’t addicted.

“There’s never any telling with you.”

There wasn’t. How very good of him to remind her of the little game she played here. Him too, she must conclude.

If only he would not reach toward her, sweep a tendril of hair back from her forehead as he did, as if him knowing there was no telling was not a bad thing. “Look, Princess.”

If only he wouldn’t call her that either.

“I know you probably think, after this morning and Meg turning up anyway, and me being…” His gaze flicked over her, then it settled fully. “Well, you probably feel—”

Feel? She didn’t. Great God almighty, how could she be so preposterous as to feel, simply because another piece of herself dripped away beneath his beguiling fingertips to places she could not possibly follow? As preposterous as to let this ceremony take place either? Or listen to the way her breath came so much faster of a sudden?

“Oh, not at all, sir.”

His hair ruffled in the faint breeze. Of course she wished it didn’t. Especially when he looked like this. He didn’t need to do this at all though, did he? He could run. Hole up in the glen with his men. Already they lived like robber bandits.

“I just had no desire for you to feel, to feel that you were somehow trapped by my rashly impetuous behavior, in throwing myself at you, into—”

“Father Andrew’s here now, Callm.”

Her attention was diverted by Wee Murdie scrunching toward them across the shingle.

“He’s not very pleased at being hauled out his bed on a cold winter’s day, but he says he’ll do it.”

Kara’s stomach dropped several notches, into her boots in fact. An old man trudged, his cassock trailing in the slush at the water’s edge, so she could not very well clutch it. Her stomach that was, although the cassock, if she was to throw herself on her knees and beg for mercy…

She groaned, mentally digging her heels into the shingle. And say what? If only her father could be persuaded to agree to a marriage to the Wolf. Only then he’d also need to be persuaded to keep his mouth shut and
that,
the debt it would put her in,
the reel she’d be made to dance to… Even
if
he agreed.

The beach filled with Brotherhood men. Even as she tried to back away, the Wolf performed the introductions to Father Andrew. Kara strove not to shrink. It was hard when every bit of her churned. When even in her cell she had not felt so confined.

At the same time one thought only made her nod her head, as her gaze skittered down to the loch side looking for a way out of this. Only before a man who loved her, loved and respected her without question, would she not shrink from telling the awful truth, not just of her blemished past, but why she was here.

When the Wolf did this only because he had been caught out, she would rather die.

“Well, now.”

As his gaze swept her, Father Andrew was quite crisply business-like in a way that made her heart shudder and her die
in the turquoise dress and cloak. But then he had been hauled from his bed. The circumstances of his being hauled were somewhat different from hers, which probably had a bearing on his ability to deal with it. She would deal with it in a minute. She just needed the right one.

It was nothing to do with the fact the Wolf would not want her then, that indeed, looking at him, so young, so sleek, so handsome, she did not know how he could ever have wanted her at all that made her shrink from saying she was a whore. Of course it wasn’t. Fallon was present. She couldn’t very well say in front of her how Kara’s father had murdered Morven because he wanted the Wolf to marry Kara. So now here she was with a son in a dungeon. How would that look?

“You both understand, although this is not a full ceremony, it is still a solemn exchange of vows?”

Of course she did. She wasn’t that stupid. Except perhaps at times, which was why she squirmed.

“With God as your witness.”

What a joke that was when she thought of the things God had been witness to in her life.

“You cannot put these vows aside.”

She sipped a breath. As if she was being mocked by the vow she had given in that darkened cell. By the fact she could not help but admit that under other circumstances, this man, this man who stood—not just facing her, but with his arm hooked around her waist, his eyes, his lips inches from hers, was very beguiling? Lust was a terrible thing.

“Then all that remains for you to do is swear that you will love and honor one another.”