His Judas Bride (2 page)

But now she saw it wasn’t, she could look forward to being escorted to the wedding feast. To be truthful her heart thudded a little about what was going to happen when she arrived there, but so long as there were no further hiccups, she could do this.

“Bride?” He thrust the dagger back in his bell, displaying an inch of hardened stomach muscle. Then he curved his mouth into something that was not actually a smile. “Why, don’t you love how you learn something new in life every day, Princess?”

Yes, she did. Was she not loving learning that she was not going to have to fight him off until that ring sat on her finger, which was why she was able to rally so quickly, when what she wanted to do was smack her hand off his handsome jaw?

“Already my lord likes his little joke, I see.”

“Damn right I do.”

“That is heartening to know.”

He leaned closer. It was only the brush of breath against her cheek. Yet she swore the shock of the contact traveled the length of her body.

“Because where you’re concerned, you can count on it splitting my sides.” He turned to the mob surrounding him. “Well, can’t she, boys?”

Boys?
Pardon her for thinking she had seen better-looking corpses. But to a man they whistled and catcalled, so obviously they weren’t. As for that thing, that yowling creature at his boot heels… She straightened her spine.

“Oh, I think you’ll find when we’re wed, sir, I shall count on anything.”

“My lips are wet already.” He curved said lips in a deep grin. “With what you’re showing me here.”

“Good.” She removed her gloved hand from the reins. She would see just how much sarcasm the impudent bastard exuded when she located what her father had secreted inside her cloak. “Because you agreed to put an end to the war between our clans by wedding Chief Ian Dhub’s daughter, Lady Kara McGurkie. And I am Lady Kara McGurkie. My credentials
are
here should you wish to see them.”

An armory clinked. Claymores, dirks, and axes. All glinting in the snow-lit dusk. All leveled at her. Dear God, his men were good all right. Far better than her own. Heavens. Imagine the wedding night if they did that around the bed.

“Jesus
.
”

The sloping, three-and-a-half-legged—God almighty what was it exactly? dog or wolf—yowled, as Lord Ewen’s boot hit its backside.

“Hell, Dug. Shut up, will you?”

Dug? Kara’s eyes widened further. What the blazes would he call his children, if the dog’s name was Dug? Child? Bairn? You? Son…

For a second her ribs were such a tight cage she couldn’t breathe as a sudden thought struck her. A vision. Her boy. Her son. Appearing to her on Lord Ewen’s shoulder. Real to her there, as the snowflakes that dusted it. The same sea-green eyes. The same soft hair.

God
, her mind whispered,
don’t waylay me on the road to perdition. You can’t win
.

Children’s names? Wedding nights? Was she mad? There weren’t going to be any children. And there wasn’t going to be any wedding night.

Because, after the wedding feast, there wasn’t going to be any groom.

“Credentials, sweetheart?”

He slid his gaze over her, as if she were a snake. A fascinating one, that in terms of entertainment, he didn’t know whether to trample or to watch, and for the first time the thought scudded she had done something not quite right in revealing her dress.

“Don’t you think you’re showing enough? Hmm? Some of us boys here aren’t exactly what you’d call accustomed to the sight of such feminine charms. It’s not me. Hell. I don’t give much of a damn what you show me. But they’re simple lads and they get excited easily. They have to keep themselves at bay. Isn’t that so, boys?”

A chorus of ayes and whistles rang in her ears. Her father’s letter was what she’d been on the verge of showing him. Nothing else. The impertinent bastard.

Such words were ones she must resolutely refuse to let darken her coolly calculating mind, however. Neither about him or that toothless specimen blowing kisses in her direction.

“Now,” Lord Ewen canted his jaw, “how about you put your hand where everyone here can see it?”

Before she could open her mouth to protest, he leaned closer. Her throat dried. His thigh was a very handy option, wasn’t it? Though she strove to stop them, she widened her eyes. Drunk or not, debaucher or not, Lord Ewen reeked sexuality like a dangerous perfume.

Some people did. They just did. That was bad enough.

This sexual charge, this current, was worse. Because it demanded a response in kind. Under normal circumstances that would be the worst of it, not just worse.

But the worst,
worst,
was the honed, hardened edge and the sweet, sinful breath that said he knew her type. Perfectly. And said he knew why she was here, trying to get into Lochalpin. Said he wanted to tell her she was good. To tie her hands, but couldn’t because he was having to hold off. Really, really hold off.

And she still, still couldn’t quite take her eyes off his thigh. How could she? When Arland was at stake and the man was a dangerous snake. Even down to Arland appearing on his shoulder. What was Arland even doing there?

“Sir, I must pro—”

“Which part of ‘Put your hand where I can see it now’ are you unfamiliar with?”

Hell-cat was another word like slut. Expressing her fury was the last thing she should do here, but he had her so she could not think for the rage that swamped. And not just rage. For five years she had been dead inside. Her soul a calcified shell, it had taken her less than five seconds to sell ten short hours ago. Her body colder than the icy blanket of snow obscuring the trees and bushes around her. And what had it taken for her breath to rush through her nostrils like this? Her heart to hammer?

She snatched her hand from inside her cloak. “Satisfied?” Well, it wouldn’t rush. She would be nice.

He edged so his breath brushed her cheek. “Is this how you think you can waltz in here, Princess? Hmm? By bedazzling us with your”—he lowered his gaze—“breathtaking smile?”

“Oh, not at all, my lord.” Being nice was an exercise in restraint such as she had seldom experienced. Calm too when his gaze and voice washed over her with such deliberate sexual intent, she began to wish she’d kept the cloak shut. But if she did not speak, did not stand her ground here, that would be worse. “Actually, I thought my credentials would be sufficient.”

And when she did, it was very distracting that he should look over her shoulder like this at all the people she had with her. Her palms prickled. Yes, there were a lot. She was the first to admit it.

“Well, they are.”

“Good.”

“To get you in here but not them.”

Ice and stone. Not by a flicker, not by a gasp, could she appear anything less than controlled, although the words raised goose bumps on her flesh.

“My retinue, sir? I beg your pardon? The invitation does not extend to us all?”

“I’m certainly sure as hell not about to start another five-year war with your damned father by picking and choosing, Princess. The invitation is open to you if you still want to come. But you come alone.”

Alone? What a horrific suggestion. He must be mistaken.

“Now, let’s go.”

He wasn’t. She could barely believe the audacity with which he grabbed her reins.

There was of course a secondary plan if the first one failed. That was to go to Lochalpin. It was to marry Ewen McDunnagh. It was to spy. Dear God.

It wasn’t just that she hated the thought of what story might now get back to her father about her—
messing
this up, wasn’t the exact word that had been bandied over her head this morning—when the consensus of opinion was she would. How could she bed a man like this?

She could possibly—she suspected any woman could possibly—and probably quite happily too. But that just might be the trouble, when he was sin and blood. She’d sooner yank her reins free and bolt back down the pass.

Yet, this morning she was the very one to swear she would go down to hell and marry the devil himself, if need be. Was she going to lose this—she hesitated to call it heaven-sent—opportunity, her only chance to free, not just herself from the shackles that bound, the agony that tortured, but Arland?

“Sir, like you, I don’t go anywhere without my most trusted advisers.”

Yes. Yes, she was. Just listen to her, when she had opened the door of her heart once and knew perfectly well she would never ever walk these wild shores again. But how could the devil do this? Put a man like this across her path?

“Are you meaning them?” Again that smile, the one that didn’t quite reach his eyes, flicked toward her, although there was no denying impertinence totally transformed him. “Boys—she thinks you’re venerable.”

In spite of her intention to remain calm she had to keep her fingers clenched on the reins. The impulse to reach up and strike him across his sardonic face was so strong. But she’d a horrible prescience if she struck him, he was the kind to cherish it. Cherish it? He’d view it as sexual foreplay. No. She was going to have to do something she never did. Beg.

“Lord McDunnagh, please, I am a stranger here, so it is very unkind of you to jest in this manner.”

“On the whole that’s not something I do. Do you have any idea of the amount of breath it wastes?”

“Perhaps. But, it occurs to me, that in addition to my noble lords and advisers back there, these women who I have brought all the way from my father’s castle are my maids—”

“Maids? Hmm…”

She could barely credit the audacity with which he crooked his lips.

“You should have more care for their welfare then, if that’s what they are, Princess. Because that’s not how they’ll stay for very long in this glen.”

She flinched. Dear God. So it was true?
Every word of it.
How could she have shamed Lachlan’s memory by imagining their son, her son, Arland, on this rapacious bastard’s shoulders? And not just that. A rapacious bastard who basked in his actions. Look at him grinning to himself.

“Sir, you cannot mean this to be a McDunnagh affair entirely. I won’t have it. It’s ridiculous!”

His casual regard turned speculative. He expected an argument, and she was appalled that the snarl issuing from her lips meant he had gotten one.

“That’s too bad. With the amount of McDunnagh bastards about, there’s not much room for anyone else. Your prospective stepchildren will soon fill both sides of the church if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“My—”

This would, of course, make it easier to sleep with him. A woman of her experience, to fight was to suggest she was terrified. When she had already sworn to guarantee her and Arland’s futures by sleeping with him, if necessary. Something Kertyn and Ardene could not have done,
would not
, when they thought he was a troll.

Good God, it was spy for a few days, a week, at most, not live happily ever after, examining his sterling qualities as a husband. Nothing she had not sworn. Nothing she could not do. Well? Was it?

So she did not understand what made her part her lips in that instant. “That is not the agreement between our clans. The McGurkies were to be honored.”

The glob of spittle sizzling through the snowbank to his right said what he thought of that. Indeed it said what he thought about her.

He wiped a hand across his mouth. “You and me must be reading from two very different books.”

She swallowed. Reputedly the only thing that made Ewen McDunnagh vitriolic was getting to the bottom of a whiskey flagon. Much as she was tempted to glance around, she very much doubted there was one in sight, full or empty. Yet if his brows dropped any lower, his eyes would disappear.

“Sir…” Clearing her throat, she infused her voice with a note of honey sweetness. Lord Ewen’s rage would be nothing to her father’s, if he now sent her packing. Already she appeared to have inflamed this situation sufficiently to cause another war. “My father was assured, despite past enmities, enmities I know and understand your older brother, Callm, the Black Wolf, suffered—”

His jaw tilted. “Just you be careful there.”

“Me? Be careful? Why, just hark at that.”

“My ignorance isn’t as spectacular as yours.”

“Well, it looks to me as if it’s more. Her name was Morven, and she was his wife. So you see, I do know. But that deed,
reputedly
anyway
,
is in the past—”

He huffed harshly through his nose. “Just you keep telling yourself that. Now, come.” He clenched his lean hand on her reins with such ferocity, she expected them to snap in two.

“Not until you give me what was agreed by proxy.”

After all, it was best to start as she meant to go on. If she let him bully her like this, what would be next? Something she did not want to think of here?

“Now that would be difficult.”

Even as her own control spun from her, she marveled he could go from seething rage to carefully measured sarcasm in less time than it took her to breathe.

“Maybe you do that kind of thing over in your glen, but with all these people watching here, you’d be asking for trouble. Your damn crowd of thieving Irish tinkers would want to join in for a start.”

“
My
crowd—”

Ice. Stone. She could not show, she could not show him, how close to her own dark territory he ventured with that remark.

“Once we get to McDunnagh Castle you can ask the man who will.”

The man who will?

“Hell, you can even show him your credentials too.”

“My—Lord McDunnagh?” She almost fell off her horse. Sagged to the spinning ground and lay there. “You mean you’re not Lord McDunnagh? I thought…I… Why, you told me to stop in his name.”

He jerked his head. “You see that man there?”

She did.

“That’s Wee Murdie. You see that deer on his shoulder?”

That too.

“A wager.”

Kara’s stomach flipped all the way down to her boots. If he now said
See your retinue being herded back down the pass
,
she couldn’t bear it. The anger, the humiliation, the terrible way this had all gone wrong. And herself, not even in Lochalpin yet.