Bride of the Beast (44 page)

About the same time, in the frost-gleaming uplands a goodly distance from Dunlaidir, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow drew rein so violently, his horse near reared up on his hind legs.

The beast
did
neigh shrill protest.

Marmamduke's
men
laughed.

Great choking bouts of glee.

The purest of know-it-all vaunting.

"Holy saints, but that took you a while," Ross egged him, already turning his mount.

The others followed suit, all swiveling their heads toward him. And not a one looked shocked.

Or even surprised.

Truth tell, they all grinned.

Well warned, Marmaduke kneed his horse before they could bedevil him anew. Digging in his spurs, he urged his mount into a thundering gallop and tore off in the direction whence they'd come, his horse's drumming hooves mirroring the hammering rhythm of his heart.

"By the Rood!" Sir Ross called out a short while later, pointing. "Looks like you charmed that one, but good." Following Ross's outstretched arm, Marmaduke spotted her—a lone female figure, bent low over her mount's neck, and swiftly closing the distance between them.

"'Fore God," he breathed, his heart near to bursting, scalding heat blurring the vision in his good eye.

Leaving his men to stare after him, he spurred across the winter-stubbled ground, meeting her halfway. He swung down from his saddle before she'd even reined in. His men reached them just moments later, their wild shouts and hoots bringing a furious blush to his lady's face.

The little dog peeking at him from a leather pouch affixed to the back of her saddle, made his heart pound even faster. Leo's presence had to be a good sign.

Striving for a semblance of dignity—lest indeed she'd only come to tender her farewell—Marmaduke ran a shaking hand over his singed, wind-blown hair and strode up to her.

"Lady," he addressed her, damning himself for a sentimental fool when a tear leaked from the corner of his good eye. "What brings you this way?" he managed, his throat almost too thick for him to speak. "Did you come to bid us farewell?"

Sliding down from her horse's back, she came toward him, the smile on her face
almost
banishing his demons. "And you, my lord," she countered, an odd tightness to her voice, "are you not riding in the wrong direction?"

Something in her damp-shimmering eyes, and the catch in her throat, allowed Marmaduke's hope to soar.

Even his men's bawdy jaunting ceased as, gathering near, the leering bastards followed the exchange with unabashed nosiness. Wheeling around, Marmaduke swept them with his most wicked glare, but they only laughed.

To a man, they threw back their ugly heads and guffawed to the heavens.

And at the sound, the utter
joy
behind it—their undeniable belief that she'd chased after them for the one reason Marmaduke himself was too afraid to believe she had—

something deep inside him cracked open and his demons, every last one of them, took flight.

With a great flutter of black wings and all the doubts that had e'er plagued him, the whole host of them were caught up by a sudden, peculiarly strong gust of cold, wintry air and whisked away.

Be gone and harry him no more,
the wind seemed to call after them, but then the chill gusts slackened and his men's chortles and hoots began to sound suspiciously wet and sloppy.

When Gowan blew his nose and dashed a meaty hand across his bearded face, Marmaduke knew he'd won the day ... and his lady.

For his men were rough-hewn but no fools.

Drawing back his broad shoulders in best champion fashion, Marmaduke turned to his wife. "I was not riding in the wrong direction, I was returning for you," he admitted. "I told you I always do."

"And I was coming to join you on the journey," she gave back.

"It is a rough journey, my lady."

"A lady who loves never fears a spot or two of roughness, my lord."

Marmaduke blinked. "What are you saying, Caterine?"

She smiled. "Do you not know?"

"I would hear the words," he said, his heart swelling, already flooding with joy.

She glanced at his men, then apparently uncaring that they gawked, she gave a little cry and flung her arms around his neck, clung to him.

"I love you," she said, her words strong and loud enough for his ear-straining friends to catch every privy word. "I believe I have since the day you rode into Dunlaidir and kissed my hand so gallantly," she confessed, running her fingers through his less-than-perfect hair, pressing so sweetly against him, he feared he'd melt at her feet.

He'd consigned himself to never seeing her again, never again feeling her supple curves crushed against him.

The soft fullness of her breasts, and something very small and decidedly ... hard.

Hard, and jabbing ever deeper into his own chest, the closer she pressed herself to him.

Pulling back, he glanced down, the hot tears he'd tried so valiantly to hide, spilling free the instant he spied the small, hard object.

His ruby signet ring.

The heirloom hung about her neck on the fine, golden chain he'd meant to give her for it.

The ring she'd claimed she wouldn't wear until she was able to give him her heart.

His
heart slammed against his ribs and his throat went completely, utterly tight. His men, for once, had the decency to turn away.

His lady, her own cheeks wet with tears, spoke her mind. "I found the chain in the ante-room, half-buried in the floor rushes," she explained, cradling his face as she did so, pushing up on her toes to kiss his scar.

Smiling through her tears, she turned her blue gaze on him—the open gaze of a woman who never lied. "And, yes, my lord, I wear the ring because you hold my heart," she told him. "Fully, irrevocably, for all our days and beyond."

And Sir Marmaduke believed her.

But later, after they'd all re-mounted and resumed their homeward journey, traveling once more in the
right
direction, he cast a grateful glance heavenward and t
hank
ed the saints all the same.

Balkenze Castle, Western Highlands at Yuletide

A fierce winter
gale tore across Loch Duich, whipping its slate-gray surface and lashing at Balkenzie's stout walls with a ferocity seldom seen even in these wilder reaches of the Highlands.

But the night's fury couldn't dampen Sir Marmaduke's high spirits as he surveyed the castle's gaily festooned great hall. Many revelers had come to celebrate Yule.

And welcome him back to Kintail.

Home.

His own, and his sweet lady wife's.

At last.

Nay, the black night raging outside Balkenzie's snug walls did not bother him a whit, nor steal a teensy bit of the joy from his heart.

And neither would the dark-frowning countenance of his best friend and liege. Pointedly ignoring the festivities, the handsome Highland laird glowered at the Yule log rather than joining Marmaduke and the other carousers in spreading good cheer.

"How much longer do you think she will need?" he asked Marmaduke for the hundredth time.

Lounging against the edge of a nearby trestle table, Marmaduke shrugged. "However long the good Lord wills she must, I'd wager," he said, and lifted his cup of spiced wine in calm salute.

His cheek earned him another sizzling glower. "You can wipe that smirk off your ugly face," Duncan MacKenzie groused. "I have every right to be concerned."

"No one doubts your rights, my friend," Marmaduke conceded, sipping his hippocras, "though I sometimes wonder how the lady tolerates your bluster."

He slid an eloquent glance at the empty four-poster bed still crowding the middle of his hall. "I do commend you for allowing her to birth the child above-stairs rather than...
there."

To Marmaduke's amazement, his old friend had the decency to look contrite.

But only for a moment.

"She disregarded all good sense and persisted in traipsing about despite her frail state," he argued. "I had no choice but to keep her where she could be watched over at all times."

"And her old nurse and my own good wife watch over her now, so you've no cause to stare holes of wrath into the hapless Yule log."

Duncan's brows snapped together. "I am not
staring
at anything, you great lout, I am straining my ears for the cry of a bairn."

He made a great sweeping gesture' with his arm. "A near impossibility with all the buffoonery going on around us."

"It
is
Yule," Marmaduke reminded him, filling a mug with the warmed, spiced wine and handing it to Duncan. "Even one of your sour disposition should be able to tolerate a bit of revelry."

"And a
bit
would have been enough." Duncan snatched the hippocras and downed it in one great gulp. "Ne'er have I seen a more gaudy display."

As if to prove his point, he strode to the nearest table and, with two fingers, lifted a long, winding garland of twined holly and ivy a few inches above the tabletop. "Whoever heard of draping every table in the hall with greenery? Is it not enough to hang the stuff on the walls? And all the mistletoe—"

"A blessed custom and one that pleases me. And my wife. I vow we would be taking full advantage of the tradition this very minute were she not needed above-stairs," Marmaduke said, glancing at a window alcove across the hall where young Lachlan laid bold siege to his lady love beneath one of the hanging clusters of pale-berried mistletoe.

Closer still, beneath yet another of the kissing boughs, Sir Gowan took sore advantage of a toothsome serving wench, the buxom maid's squeals of delight underscoring
her
joy in the holiday tradition.

And even young Robbie, just eleven, and Duncan's son from his first marriage, had been seen earlier using that very clump of mistletoe to sneak chaste kisses from the bonniest young lassies.

The image bringing a smile to Marmaduke's heart, he refilled his friend's wine cup. "Surely one so lusty-natured as yourself would not deny others a spot of amorous adventure?"

"I do not care how many lasses are ravished this night, how loud the trumpets are blasted, how much roast boar is imbibed, how often every blithering fool in your hall shouts 'Wassail!'... nor if they all dance so hard they fall flat on their faces," Duncan declared, folding his arms when Marmaduke tried to offer him the hippocras.

"Tsk, tsk." Marmaduke shrugged and set down the wine cup. "And I'd thought your fair lady wife had mellowed your temper."

"And it is that fair lady who is on my mind, you dolt!" Running a hand through his dark hair, Duncan glanced for the hundredth time at the vaulted ceiling. "She is up there, mind you, and—"

A babe's cry, faint but undeniable, sounded from above, fine and lusty enough to be heard over the din, its portent in-

stantly wiping the dark from Duncan MacKenzie's handsome face.

A grin spreading across his own face, Marmaduke drew back his hand to give his friend a hearty clap on the shoulder, but his liege was already sprinting across the hall toward the turnpike stair. Marmaduke ran after him, and, together, they took the winding stairs three at a time.

The bairn's wails grew louder the closer they came to Marmaduke's and Caterine's bedchamber, and the door burst open as they neared. "You have a fine bairn, my lord," Caterine beamed upon seeing the MacKenzie laird. She held wide the door. "A wee lassie with your dark hair and deep blue eyes."

"A maid?" Duncan's eyes widened, his heart laid bare and smiling. "A wee lassie?"

Caterine nodded, dashing away a tear. "And such a fine one. She is perfect...
beautiful."

But Duncan had already pushed past her into the room.

"She looks just like him," she said, smiling up at Marmaduke, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. "Raven-black hair, and lots of it, a sweet rosebud mouth, and the deepest blue eyes."

Pausing, she swiped the back of her hand across her cheek. "Ne'er have I seen a more lovely babe."

His good eye watering as fiercely, Sir Marmaduke slung an arm around her and led her into the bedchamber, purposely hanging back in the shadows to allow his liege a few private moments with his wife and their new child.

As private as one could be with old Elspeth, the midwife, bustling about, hovering over the bed and clucking like a mother hen.

Worse, every fool from below now gathered in the corridor, straining their necks to catch a glimpse of the MacKenzies' new bairn...
some
cheeky souls even pressing straight into the birthing room.

"I told you, you had naught to fret about, laddie," Fergus declared, his scrawny chest puffed with pride. The cheekiest of the lot, he marched right up to the bed.

Leaning forward, the aged seneschal examined the child for an indecently long moment, then turned to the knot of merrymakers crowding the door. "A bonnier lass ne'er graced these hills," he pronounced, and, with even more cheek, smoothed his gnarled hand down the side of the mother's face. "As we knew she'd be, eh, lass?"