Bride of the Beast (31 page)

As was the dripping blade of the English knight who'd slain him.

Too stunned to even blink, Marmaduke stared across the melee, wholly transfixed. He swiped the back of his am across his brow and watched as Sir
John
's riderless horse bolted into the night.

Sir
John
's bloodied body, having gained momentum from j the violence of its fall, rolled down the hillside, leaving a' red-stained path in its wake.

"If that isn't beyond all," Ross panted beside him, his own heaving chest well splattered with blood.

But not his own. "So we erred—"

"God's mercy, don't speak it," Marmaduke cut him off, instinctively lifting his sword to repulse yet another attacker, hot bile rising so thick in his throat he could scarce breathe-

His suspicions about the older Scotsman lashed at him as furiously as the man-at-arms closing in on him. Swerving his saddle, he avoided the man's swinging blade, but not the biting sting of his own shame.
                                     

All the rage of the night, and the greater swell of his guilt flooding him with renewed strength, he swung back to face
the sworder.
        
                                                       

As if the man had glimpsed the very devil in Marmaduke's own face, he tried to wheel away, but, with a roar of outrage, his cool broken at last, Marmaduke drew back his sword-arm and slew him with one great, downward
stroke.

You are a dead man.

If my suspicions are true ...

A dead man.

For the rest of the long night, through all the bloodletting and cries, Marmaduke's own words rode his back.

A constant companion, a leaden weight on his honor.

And a greater foe than all de la Hogue's metal-bound henchmen combined.

**

Above and all around the hillside, a cold wind blew, its own wail echoing the moans of the dying ... souls it'd soon carry from the relentless fray. And though Marmaduke himself would've sworn the saints had deserted him at last, they'd simply sent an angel to watch over him in their stead.

Though he couldn't see her, a lone woman stood beside a hawthorn tree at the very edge of the fracas. Tall and dark as fee moonless night, she made no sound.

Nor did she move.

Wrapped in cowled robes and the swirling mist, she followed his every move throughout the night, a world of pride in
her shadowed eyes.

A wealth of love to keep him safe.

And if her own heart bore a trace of sadness, she didn't let it show.

He
glanced her way once, and for a moment almost saw
her, so she lifted her han and forced a little smile. A reassuring
one to let him know, this night, too, would pass. And

though her time here was gone, he had many long years yet before him.

B
right days and bliss-filled nights.

Her smile fading, she stared across the silence at him, lending him her comfort as best she could, marveling at
w
valor and strength.

As she always had.

After endless-seeming hours, the fury of the battle finally lessened, the outcome clear. With a deep sigh torn from all her yesterdays, she sent one last smile his way, then slipped into the shadows of her world once more.
                        

One with the mist and darkness.

Until he needed her again.

**

"So you do believe in the Laird's Stone?"

At Rhona's amused whisper behind her, Caterine gave a startled shriek and slammed down the lid of the iron-bound strongbox at the foot of her bed.

"Since when do you roam the halls in the middle of the night to go poking your nose where it doesn't belong?" Caterine said, straightening.

She put a hand to her breast. "And," she added, pausing for emphasis, "I was not peeking at that fool piece of granite."

Rhona folded her arms. "Then why aren't you abed?"

Because it will soon be cockcrow and our men have y# to return.

Because I fear for him.

"Mayhap I could not sleep," she owned, stating the utter
truth, if not the reason.

Cold apprehension had churned in her belly all night and still roiled with unabated fury. Her heart slamming against her ribs, she slanted a glance into the darkness of the ante- room where, ignoring the comfort of his own bed, Leo lay curled atop the rough pallet.

Until just a short while ago, he, too, had roamed the bed chamber, his short legs carrying him on endless treks between the ante-room, the window embrasure, and, always,
he closed door where he'd drop onto his wee rump and turn pleading eyes on its oaken planks.

Waiting for a champion.

As the long, empty hours of the night had consigned her
to
do as well.

"Can it be you could not sleep for the same reason I, too, am restless?" Rhona peered at her, one finger tapping lightly
against her chin.

Caterine drew her bed robe more securely about her shoulders against the frosty air seeping through the shutter slats. But mostly so Rhona wouldn't see the nervous rise and

fall of her breasts.

"You've taken up a mistaken cause if you wish to pry admissions from me about things that do not exist," she said, sorely wishing Rhona would cease her finger tapping.

She did.

But the dark brow her friend arched proved equally vexing. "You care about him as I do James," Rhona said. "You worry because they haven't yet returned, and that fear is robbing you of sleep and sending you to examine the Laird's

Stone."

"Aye, I care about him," Caterine admitted, running a hand through her unbound hair. "He is a gallant and noble-hearted man. But I was not examining the Laird's Stone. I was putting away his ring."

"Putting away his ring?"

Lifting her left hand, Caterine wiggled her bare fingers.

"But you admit you care for him?"

"I put away his ring
because
I care," Caterine said, opting for her best defense against Rhona's badgering: plain
sp
eech.

I put away his ring because I honor him too much to
wear
it so long as I cannot give him my heart."

Rhona looked skeptical. "Something in the way you said at tells me you already have given him your heart."

"Nay, I have hot." The denial sounded hollow even t Caterine's ears.

Her patience waning, she crossed to the darkened window embrasure and wrenched open the shutters. Needing welcoming, the blast of icy air that streamed into the chamber the instant she did so.

Following her, Rhona made a snorting noise. "If you have not given him your heart, then I am a virgin."

"My heart is and shall remain my own," Caterine shot back, sinking onto the window seat. "I have told him so."

Hugging the bed robe tightly about her, she clung to the frankness that protected her from folly.

And pain.

"He shall have all else I can give him," she said, stunned by the pang of longing that ripped through her just thinking about him. A tight and breathless yearning for the fierce passion she'd only begun to catch glimpses of.

She wanted more, much more than the kisses and caresses they'd shared thus far.

"So what 'all else' do you mean to bestow on him?" Rhona persisted. "Admiration? Respect? Companionship?"

"So long as he is with us, aye. All those things and… my body."

Rhona's jaw dropped. "Your body?"

Caterine nodded. "I have told him I should like to explore desire."

"Explore desire?"

"You needn't look so shocked," Caterine fixed her friend with a reproachful stare. "If I mind a-right, 'twas you who claimed I am in dire need of such?"

"But, my lady, I never meant the one without the other” Rhona dropped to her knees, reaching for Caterine's hands in a strange mirroring of how
he'd
knelt before her in the very alcove.

How easily he'd made her want him.

Rhona squeezed her hands. "I'd hoped you'd find both love and desire with your champion."

"With an English champion?" Caterine amazed herself with how little that mattered now.

"I do not believe you are still troubled by his Englishry," Rhona pressed her.

"Nay, I am not," Caterine didn't deny. "It is the Englishry of other men that plagues me ... as you aught know."

Their ghosts and the stains they left behind.

Digging her fingers into the satiny covered comfort of a pillow she'd drawn onto her lap, Caterine stared out at the thick sea mist drifting past her window.

A barrier as impenetrable as the gateway to her heart.

With surprisingly little effort, she concentrated on the wild physical yearnings her champion had stirred in her ... and tried to banish the cold other Englishmen had put in her soul.

That
proved a more difficult task.

"Have you told him?" Rhona tightened her grip on Caterine's hands, massaged her cold fingers. "Does he know how they used you before your first husband's eyes, then slew him before yours?"

Caterine kept her gaze on the swirling mist. "Not in so many words, but he is wise enough to have guessed. I told him I have not known much physical pleasure and would enjoy exploring such intimacies."

At her companion's silence, she straightened her spine. "I am not getting younger," she said, suddenly weary, the sleepless night bearing down on her. "Why should I not sample what other women claim to glory in?"

She met Rhona's tight-lipped stare. "He agreed, so you've no need to look so disapproving."

"Agreed to what? Pleasure you?"

Caterine answered with the merest nod.

Her companion's brow soared to lofty heights.

"Why shouldn't he?" Caterine didn't even try to hide her pique. "He is a lusty natured man. I can tell that by hi
_s
kisses. I vow he'd gladly indulge any woman desirous of experimenting with such urges."

"Nay, nay, nay, my lady," Rhona said, releasing Caterine's hands and pushing to her feet. "Not any woman. Have you not seen the way he looks at you?"

Caterine pressed her lips together and plucked at the folds of her bed-robe, not quite able to believe her braw champion would harbor such rampant passion for her.

"Oh, but he does, my lady," Rhona crooned as if she'd read Caterine's doubt. "That is why he will be pleased you fancy him in such a way. He is sore smitten with you. Only
you."

"He agreed to more than ... the pleasure part," Caterine said, and the deepest reaches of her heart quickened in fierce objection to the other half of what he'd agreed to.

"What other agreements?"

Caterine drew a breath. "That any intimacies we indulge in shall be just that... pure physical acts without emotional
attachments."

"And you believed him?" Rhona's voice rose two notches. "That he will pleasure you senseless and not claim
your heart?"

"And what is wrong with allowing him to pleasure me?"

"Nothing, except that if you deny him your heart, that is all it will be... simple pleasuring." Rhona fingered the ends of her braids, a slight flush creeping onto her cheeks. 'That, my lady, is what I did with the garrison men. It brings swift pleasure, but fades as quickly."

"You keep your heart from James." Caterine sought to change the subject. "Are you merely 'taking swift pleasure' with him, too?"

"I do not keep my heart from him, he does," Rhona said hotly. "He can claim my full affections the day he chooses to, and it is my hope that will be soon."

Smoothing her skirts, she glanced heavenward and
sighed. "And, nay, we have not yet come fully together, though he knows I am experienced. That part of me, I am keeping from him." She looked back at Caterine, her gaze dreamy. "For now."

"But you want to ... lie with him."

Rhona nodded, her brief discomfiture gone. "Oh, aye."

"I want that, too," Caterine sighed. "I am weary of feeling cold and empty. I want to know intense pleasure. Delicious and wicked pleasures."

"My lady!" Rhona's cheeks tinged pink again, but as quickly, a conspiratorial smile spread across her face. "What kind of wicked pleasures?"

Caterine stood to whisper her most secret desires into her
friend's ear.

Rhona gasped. "That is beyond wicked." The tops of her
ears glowed red. "A lascivious act."