His Judas Bride (11 page)

She licked dry lips. “The—the pleasure, my lord?”

“What do ye say to a nice wee jug?”

Not a great deal. What was there to say to a jug? Even less than to a jig, which she supposed he probably meant, except he slurred his words, so it was hard to tell what he meant. “A—a dance, my lord?”

“Is that not what Ah said?”

It was the very last thing she needed, him barking like that so heads no doubt swiveled her way. And one head in particular.

“What Ah mean is—madam.” Ewen’s breath rushed down his nostrils, as if he was also aware of that fact and struggled to lower his tone. He was obviously terrified of the Wolf. Why else come over here? “Would you like to dance?”

Yes. This tone was more reasonable, but she’d a horrible feeling the damage was done. His guests gaped. The serving girls gaped. Even the Wolf turned his head, his sea-green eyes glinting silver beneath his lowered brows.

This wasn’t just a question of keeping her expression neutral. After his performance in this very hall the other day the last thing Kara wanted was the Wolf striding over here and taking further issue with her betrothed. Not when the notion he
owed
her the reprieve was one she only just clung to.

When it was clear Ewen wanted to make a show, she must swallow her annoyance that the offer would never have arisen in the first place had the Wolf not waltzed in here, stand up, and take the arm Ewen McDunnagh now extended. But the crippling thing was that her father’s dungeon wasn’t the place for jigs. She had not danced in years.

To stand out there on the floor was to expose that fact. A jug, she could not help feeling, would be so much better. At least a jug would not leave her looking like a damned fool when she was meant to have lived in Edinburgh for five years jigging nonstop. There must be something she could do that would prevent this.

“The music is not to your satisfaction, perhaps?”

Suppressing the desire to grit her teeth, she forced a smile. “Oh, no, not at all my lord, the music is lovely. Quite beautiful, in fact. And you do me very great honor. I could not help noticing though, the fine dancer you are, while I—I, how can I possibly say this—”

“Something slower for my bonnie bride. She has been learning in Edinburgh and will show us the latest steps.” Ewen clapped his hands together before she could possibly say anything at all. Of course he would, although she could still scarcely believe it.

Nor could she scarcely believe the abrupt manner in which the wild skirling, like rats trapped in the gutter, tailed off either. As for what floated out on the air, behind the second of stunned silence while dancers stood frozen in chaotic poses in the center of the floor, that was worse.

Have two left feet
was what she had been on the verge of saying. Now she saw that whether she had left feet or not, she was going to have to move them onto the floor, which had emptied now the lord and master had spoken. Even someone with three feet could dance to the slow lilting melody.

If she didn’t dance she ran the risk of infuriating Ewen, of offering great affront, to add to the stack she had already offered. Unwise when the fact of the matter was, she had no idea whatsoever of what was being said in that alcove.

Lord Ewen’s arm said she should take it. A few slow steps with her betrothed. And not just her betrothed. If she was to convince the Wolf, should he be busily telling Archibald she had a son or that Edinburgh would be as surprised as she was to learn she had ever set foot in it, he should be her
beloved.
It wasn’t as if Ewen was even being unreasonable. He stood a good step away from her, his head politely inclined. Why, he could, as lord of this particular gathering, drag her onto the floor.

Edging the chair back, she rose to her feet. “But of course, my lord.”

For goodness sake, if she could not take his arm, how could she climb into bed with him, as she knew she was going to have to do in a few days time?

Before she could summon an answer to that question, he splayed his clammy fingers against the base of her spine.

Cold gathered, a cold that spread like a masking fog, up her spine, then down again. A horrible bridling panic she could not govern. She wanted to turn on her heel and run.

For God’s sake, it was a few sweeping steps of the floor. She had put certain things behind her, so it distressed her more than she could say, to find specters clung to Ewen McDunnagh. To his hair. To his clothes. That even as she took a step forward, a glide, a turn, she was in that cell. And it was dank and slimy, those walls she’d clung to, looking for protection when there was none.

Her breath shortened. To keep her lips curved was a torture. How was it she had plunged back into that nightmare, where deep in her heart, her soul, in places that nothing ever touched, what rose, what engulfed, was so swamping, her flesh crawled.

Five days? There was still another two. But she couldn’t stay here.

She was fleeing now. This very night.

* * *

Knowing she might be caught sneaking a horse, and anyway that damned nag would probably give the game away, Kara determined to jump from the window ledge and skirt the exterior castle wall while clinging to it so as not to slip into the black water lapping inches from her toes. It could be done.

It was just that she wasn’t sure how well it could be done, when that crack, the one her ankle gave as she hit the ground, said more than her boot had split. But she couldn’t very well go back. It would mean going through the actual gates. Climbing back up to the window ledge wasn’t an option either.

So long as she could stand and walk sufficiently to hobble away from the castle, nothing else mattered.

The moon was up. The stars shone. No one in his right mind would be out in the glen on a night like this. Easing a breath, she bent down to pick up the sack of provisions she’d filched from the kitchen. So long as she could manage two miles an hour, by the time anyone noticed she’d gone, she’d be safe.

If ever an evening was calculated to tighten nets about her, this was it. In every respect. Her father must just make do with what she had. Naturally she would have to pretend it was more than she did.

The determined scrunch of her footsteps was all that broke the silence, for what might have been the first hour or so. Despite that crack to her ankle, snow-light was easier to walk in than pitch blackness. It hardly mattered that the silence deepened, as the snow began to fall, slowly at first, then gradually blanketing her vision. She plodded on.

She’d thought she could marry Ewen McDunnagh. But it wasn’t just that. She hadn’t missed the way the Wolf’s eyes followed her during that dance. He may not have taken the hall doors off their sockets at the end of it, but she wasn’t going to pretend, something wasn’t right. He didn’t seethe for nothing. Or refrain from acknowledging or speaking to her as he had either. Why, only the other day he’d defended her.

She hardly needed to have been a fly on her father’s castle wall to know what would have been said when Kendrick and the others trailed back to Glen Gurkie without her. She put nothing past the old bastard. What if he’d determined to do this without her? She needed to get out of here.

It was hard, when the wind suddenly picked up though to see her way. And it was impossible when it nearly ripped her cloak from her shoulders and frost bit through her gloves, to stand upright. Never mind see through the maelstrom of snowflakes, whizzing everywhere. Her hood. Her throat. Her boots. Real leather, her father had said. Clearly the old bastard had been off there, or her toes were things she would feel. Everything was soaking, so cold against her skin making it hard to stop shivering.

She would stop to shelter if need be. For all she disdained the fact Ewen McDunnagh had made the former and the latter was harder than it was to keep upright, she had biscuit bread and chicken. It was more than she’d had in her father’s dungeon all the years. Then of course there was the whiskey.

What Ewen McDunnagh would say when he found it was gone from his chamber—well, he was probably more likely to miss that than her, so it was probably as well she would not be there to suffer his wrath.

She staggered on, her feet sinking at each step.

“Y-you’ll see, Arland. I won’t let you d-d-down.” She was ashamed hearing herself stammer, talk such nonsense too, but it was so cold, she needed something to preserve her mind, make sure each stumbling foot went down. And it wasn’t as if anyone could hear, which was probably as well. Serenne and the other women in particular. “Mammy’s coming. You r-r-remember that she said she w-would? She’s coming b-back for you. Y-you can walk beside me if you like. Take m-my hand.”

Losing things a bit wasn’t she? But as if to belie her certainty about staggering forward instead of trying to find shelter, she was aware of another noise being carried on the wind whistling through the branches.

One that was a little too defined, a little too steady to be anything so natural as the wind rattling or her lungs wheezing as she fought her way to her next step in this ghostly world. A noise that didn’t just sound like
clip, clop, clop
. A noise that was
clip
,
clop
,
clop
.

Dear God, someone
was
out here in the forest besides herself. She must hide. She couldn’t afford to be seen. Although her teeth chattered and frozen blobs beaded her eyelashes, she must run. What if it was a shepherd and he wanted to rescue her? Or worse?

Smothering a curse, Kara yanked her foot out the snowbank it had sunk in. The noise was closer and what was worse, coming her way.
Clop
.
Clop
.
Clip
. A shepherd wouldn’t very well be riding a horse, would he? Unless it was a very rich shepherd who had somehow managed to mislay all in his sheep in the forest.

“Son of a whore.”

She almost leaped out her skin. Oh God. The Wolf. Why must it be the Wolf? On that bloody great stallion of his. The one man in the world who was insane enough to be out here in the middle of the night. And not just insane.

She froze. So did the only part of her that had been warm until now, her marrow. Mammy would not be coming home quite yet.

But perhaps she hadn’t been seen? Perhaps he swore like that at someone else? It might even be if she huddled into the cloak for long enough with her head down, what was left of her fingers trying to clench the fabric in this howling snowstorm, he wouldn’t know it was her. Could she pass for some wandering peasant girl? Shepherdess? Maid? Crone of this glen even? Anything was worth a try. Her back was to him after all.

“Princess, is that you?”

She grimaced. Dying of shock was hardly an option. As if God would be so merciful when God never was.

Yet might she not also be deaf and mute? Stumble through the snow to her croft? A few steps toward the glistening tree trunk looming before her? Then, having reached it, if she could just dart behind it, around the other side, without slipping.

Oh God, oh God, why did he have ride around the tree, before her? Panic flared, running through every inch of her veins like water. Worse than that was the forlorn hunger, the bitter, biting, black hunger that swamped her throat, her lungs, tore at her heart like a claw. She had failed her son. Failed him, even as she promised this new life. How could she do such a thing?

The thing was she had. It was nothing in the face of the white-hot fury scrunching toward her. Alone, that animal
thing
of his absent for once. Never mind why he was here at this time of night. How the blazes was she possibly going to explain why she was?

“Princess?”

No. She could not deny it. So to huddle even deeper into the hood was bold. With his hair dragged back in a tail, she barely recognized him though. Why should he recognize her?

“No. Ah’m not.” Desperation commandeered Kara’s tongue and what was left of her wits. “And Ah’m certainly not needing your assistance either. So, if ye dinnae mind, sir…”

“Sir? Have we met before?”

If he caught her now, she was doomed, when to run was to prove she was not a shepherdess, maid, or crone, but how dare he laugh at her. She was not an amusing fool. Her brogue was as good as any around here.

Her breath screamed in her throat as his arms looped around her waist, so she jerked to a halt. His fingers snatched hold of her hood, as if enough of this had been had, almost stilling her heart.

“Give me that.”

It stilled to hear his semi-exasperated grit too. She fought to remain still while her hair tumbled down about her shoulders.

“Well, well. We have met, haven’t we? Do you mind telling me what the hell you think you’re doing out here, impersonating the local wenchery?”

Ice. Stone. If she had not run she could have pretended
something.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what Ewen was like. Had he or had he not threatened him the other day?

“Nothing.”

“You’ll pardon me thinking this far from the castle is a hell of a long way to be doing nothing.”

“So? Kill me.”

Coupled with the dark stubble outlining his jaw, the hairstyle gave his face an altogether sleeker, more predatory cast, as he fixed his attention wholly on her. A cat with a mouse. “The weather’s doing a fair job of that. So why don’t you just tell me what the hell’s going on?”

Well, she wasn’t a mouse. “Certainly.”

Her knee collided with his groin. Let Arland go while there was yet breath in her body? And so long as there was, she could fight this. She could not be caught out now. She would do anything to escape.

“Jesus Christ.” He doubled over. “What the—”

Mother of God. What kind of man was this? She didn’t know men like this. Men who took the fall. Not when they could send her spinning into the snow. When one blow of their powerful fist was all it would take.

An unimportant thing when her breath tore like this and she had created this opportunity to run but that brief imprint of hard muscle when he caught her waist there—where was the revulsion? Shouldn’t her flesh have crawled? Especially now his footsteps scrunched behind her. He grabbed her wrist and jerked her so she could not pull away. His body pressed against hers, even as she fought for purchase, against the ground, against him, against the fact he now had hold of both her wrists, and men who did that…