His Judas Bride (7 page)

To arrange for it to be filled first though? That was masterful. Well, hers wasn’t just empty, when she thought of Arland, of Ardene begging her help the other week, it was perished. What else could she do here but go on? What escape was there for a woman like her? Her father…well, she just must try and set conditions, a piece of information for a life.

“My lady. My lady, wait.”

Hearing a voice behind her, Kara sucked a breath. When so much was at stake, the last thing she needed was Meg thinking anything was amiss with this, with her, with
him.

“Are ye all right?”

“Yes.” Although she wasn’t, not in the least, she couldn’t very well say so. Because now, now that damned mount of Kertyn’s was being fetched out into the yard, and Kara, after falling off it yesterday, right under his nose, was going to have to get back on it. She did not see how. She did not see anything really. Not when her lurching heart seemed to play havoc with her stomach but she supposed she just must.

And where the devil was the Wolf? Off planning what to show her next? Dog, daughter, was there anything left? She swallowed the constriction that barred her throat.

“Just desperately eager now to meet my betrothed. Is it far?”

Meg’s footsteps sounded softly beside her. “Not the hurry Callm seems in. Here, take this.”

For two pins what Kara wanted was to take the nearest path out of Lochalpin. Or one of the knives that daughter of theirs had flung about the yard. Anything but what she now unwrapped from the rough piece of cloth. The oat bannocks, still warm, although frost nipped the air, and lumps of cheese. She could hardly believe it. She couldn’t take these.

“He won’t think of it. He never does. He’ll ride all day on nothing, like he’s driven to it.”

And Meg thought what? Kara was going to nursemaid him? For her? She had heard so much about this man. That the slopes of the pass were littered with the bones of those whose throats he’d cut, that his rage when Morven was murdered knew no bounds. Please God, don’t tell her he cared even less about things than she did. About himself anyway.

Her sideways gaze was arrested by the sight of him leading his black stallion out of the stables. That might also explain why he disdained to dress properly for the weather. Arm himself to his proverbial teeth, broadswords on his back, two of them, targe slung over his shoulder, but dressed? No.

“He is expecting trouble?”

“He has a name, Princess.” He glowered as he edged his hand over the skulls beading the stallion’s mane. “And if I get any, you can rest assured I will meet it too. Now you wanted to go, so perhaps you can stop standing about here?”

“Don’t mind him.” Meg’s fingertips brushed Kara’s wrist. “He is just looking out for you.”

He could have fooled Kara. Meg could have fooled her too, but never mind.

“I don’t know what kind of a welcome ye have had—”

“Oh, not everyone wants me here—”

“While that is true, feelings still run high over certain things, and we’re not quite at the peace most of us want, Callm won’t let any harm come to ye, whether he wants that peace or not.”

Kara averted her gaze. She had not thought, had she? That in addition to him, there must have been a queue of others who hated her simply because of whose daughter she was and the trouble he’d visited upon them. Not just the five years, the five before, and the ones before them.

“Why, how heartening to know.”

Yet how hard it was to deny, even as she tried to think why on earth that should be the case, how the blazes, on top of everything else must he be honorable that way? All right, if she were to choose a man, a man who might
conceivably
protect her, he certainly looked the part, whatever she’d just thought about that scene in the hall there, which she admitted she’d wanted to think, that he was a pussycat.

So long as want didn’t become need. As if it would. What he was going to show her next? Well, that question had just been answered though.

“It is my lady.”

That was why Kara was going to mount the horse, just take the bannocks and go. Anyway, he had given her an order, hadn’t he? It would be a good thing to obey for once.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

She had but to grasp the reins, difficult given the size of the nag and how her heart was pounding. She had forgotten how huge horses were. Of course it was Kertyn’s nag. Had it been hers it might not have started clopping about the yard like this. At least she might have been able to stop it when it did, so she could at least get a foot in the stirrup. Stop it baring its teeth at her too.

If Meg hadn’t given her these bannocks perhaps. For him too, which was why she wished he wouldn’t knit his brows like that as he set his boot in his own stirrup. Lady Kara would be able to ride, wouldn’t she? As opposed to spending the morning walking up and down the yard, while he now showed every sign of departing.

Yesterday she’d stumbled at this point too. It was why her father’s men were of the opinion she’d mess this up. It was why she felt obliged to smile nicely, in the hope of seeming blasé, especially now that the nag, its head flailing wildly, nickered sideways into the wall.

“Go.”

And now, now his hand descended on her reins, she was forced to wonder if he perhaps meant her. Would he dismount and stride through the snow to tell her that though? He might when she was as hopeless as this and it looked as if she would have to walk with the horse all the way to McDunnagh Castle, hoping it would let her on its back eventually.

Humiliation scorched to her hair roots. She didn’t want to look at him standing there so close. To see his brow furrowed with irritation, his mastery of the disobedient nag was bad enough. She really wasn’t cut out for this was she? The not being kept in shackles.

Logic said no. But that scene at breakfast hadn’t just twisted her heart, wrenched her stomach for the reasons she’d thought. She and Arland had never been like that.

Never more acutely than that second had she felt her life was one of looking through a window at the happiness of those in a room beyond. And while she had never been gifted with the ability to see around any corners, she had a horrible prescience she always would. And what she did here, when it was accomplished, could only make that feeling that she was nothing more than inadequate, worse.

While this man now had an ease with things she didn’t just absurdly wish was hers, she wished it might rub off on her in some miniscule way, as if standing in his shadow would mask these blemishes and she might feel, not that she belonged, but that she stood a chance.

The thing was you could look at a man. You could find him attractive. You could feel drawn, despite everything you were and he was, to consider what would it be like to have one night with him. Worlds had been ripped apart. Empires destroyed for just such thoughts. Why, if anyone knew that, she did. Wasn’t that what had happened with Lachlan?

She also knew—she knew now anyway—fires only raged out of control if you let them. Starve them and cold ash resulted.

So this other feeling? Stupid? But even his holding steady of the horse meant she could now, maybe not mount it terribly well, but at least make a show of perching herself up there in the saddle.

When he belonged to Meg and Kara was here for what she was? Yes, it was.

Chapter Three

“So?” Tightening her hands on the reins, Kara cantered level, the nag’s hooves splashing in the water frothing at the loch side. She attempted to anyway. In addition to being fickle, the creature was frisky and needed dragging. Still this was her chance. “You’ve still not said, sir—”

“Said what?”

She tossed the hair back from her face. Of course it could have done with combing with more than her fingers this morning. “How far it is to McDunnagh Castle?”

A cold glimmer of irritation escaped him. Actually, she had caught him up because he had begun to do what he had accused her of yesterday—plod.

“Far enough.”

Kara wound her fingers even more tightly. Wound them so her glove seam whitened. She only wished it was possible to wind them around his throat. To have ridden for two jarring, brittle, biting, silent except for words exchanged with Snosh, with the Murdies, with everyone but her,
hours, to discover
so
much.

She wanted, she needed, to know exactly. The sky was a clear, cloudless blue; the wind had finally dropped and with it the scattered snowflake squalls. The sun would still have to melt a ton more snow than it presently had. The last time she’d run away with this amount on the ground, she’d been with Lachlan. They’d thought, dear lord, how laughable it was now, they could actually get to Edinburgh.

Of course, that was then. She had more to sustain her now. But that first bit of the journey from Meg’s, what she remembered of it anyway, given the rent torn in her senses, was through a very difficult gully. A gully that was more a perilously secret path between the mountains, with rocks and scrambles, she’d had to dismount several times to manage, and when she had, stones had cascaded into the raging torrent hundreds of feet below.

“What are you so desperate to know for? In a hurry to meet that charming sweetheart of yours, are you?”

His face was such a grim triangle between the curtain of hair, she wondered if it was in fact politic to open her mouth. She didn’t see why she shouldn’t though. Anything to ease what had somehow taken up residence inside her. Even if it meant drawing this man like a gloveless falconer, with a honeyed hand. She cleared her throat. After all, his contempt made it easier to also clear herself of these stupid feelings that had risen in her in that yard. To acknowledge she didn’t belong and it didn’t matter. Belonging wasn’t what she was here for.

“Actually, I am, sir. Yes. Indeed I confess to being agog with curiosity. Deprived by not meeting him yesterday and being happily wed to him by now. I know we’ve only been riding for about two hours now, but will I see him by nightfall, do you think?”

“Like having nightmares, do you?”

“Not really.” Holding out her honeyed hand was certainly taking a bit of doing, especially when it was savaged like this. “That’s why I’d like to know if I’ll have to spend another night in your company or not.”

He snapped his brows lower. “My company?”

She nodded. Why not? Lochalpin
was
beautiful. The snow-capped peaks, inky blue mist, the trees towering like silent sentinels around her. What she saw, reflected in the plate-glass surface of the loch, was so stunning, she could understand her father coveting this place. Even if his real desire was to walk among the other clan chiefs as an equal.

By far the most stunning thing here was this damnable specimen. Of course, if she’d now to lay odds on his arm muscle tightening as he tugged on his own reins, on that smile, denting his faintly stubbled cheeks, she’d be rich.

“That’s the first I knew you spent a night in my company. Did I fall asleep and miss something here, Princess?”

She tightened her shoulders. Miss something indeed? Knew it, didn’t he—what a stunning specimen he was. Why else turn a simple request for information into a sexual quest? Well, she would not rise to this shabby bait.

Although she expected a little better from him. Was this honestly the best he could come up? A tit-for-tat retaliation? Slow off the mark at that. Take him down a peg or two though? This would be a pleasure through and through.

She edged her gaze sideways, letting what she hoped was a smile play. “Of course, I can only speak for myself. If I had, and it’s an
if
you understand, you’d not have fallen asleep.”

“That would be beyond your miniscule capabilities.”

“You like to think?”

“I don’t just think. I know.”

Just how the blazes did Meg put up with it though? This very deliberate casting of nets on the waters of female sexuality? So even Kara felt horribly threatened? And his unutterable damned cheek that accompanied it?

In a few words?

Because he scorched sheets.

“You know, Princess, not that I’ve any use for them, but that wasn’t a very virginal thing to say.”

Now look what she’d gone and done. Made him nudge closer, so their knees almost touched. When she didn’t want them to touch. If she dug her spurs in though he’d probably be after her faster than that damned dog had her belt this morning. Ice. Stone.

All right, she could tell herself blazing sexuality seldom fished for nothing. Here she was, betrothed to his brother—supposedly anyway—and he still couldn’t stop himself, flashing that confident smile at her. He probably flashed it around half the women in the glen. And they fell at his feet. Well, she wasn’t going to fall at his feet,
if that was what this was about. If it wasn’t something more. Some attempt on his part to spy her out.

“Oh?” She tilted her chin. “You speak virginese do you?”

“Virgin—what?”

Although how would she sort it, when that flickering grin said she had just made it worse?

“I’m keeping my lips sealed, Princess. Least said, soonest mended.”

“That will be a first. But very welcome if you honestly believe there’s one rule for what I can say and another for what I can listen to. You know perfectly well, you didn’t spend anything with me. So don’t pretend you did. That is not the kind of lies I want reaching the ears of my beloved.”

Out the corner of her eye she saw his gaze sweep her. He narrowed his eyes. Was that because she could have fooled him? “I’d keep the endearments till you meet him. See what fancy words you come up with to call him then.”

Well, she could. But this was too much. What was wrong with him that he felt obliged to knock her down when it was already hard enough to stay upright? And not just that, she wanted him to stop making this worse for her, by saying things—curse him, herself too—that if he had been her mentor he would have told her not to say. After all, presenting herself as a sweetly virginal bride at McDunnagh Castle, especially now she was going to have to marry Ewen McDunnagh, was what mattered here. Not crossing swords with this damnable specimen who seemed to want to rattle her in every way it was possible to rattle her, and more beside.