His Judas Bride (20 page)

What? She nearly sank on the shingle. For a second she was glad the Wolf held her up. It couldn’t be. This was a chat surely? Before they went into the cave? So she still had time to think of something, if not to run.

“We will begin with you, Callm.”

It wasn’t. And in this unseemly fashion too. Not that everyone here didn’t know what they’d been doing.

“I’d like my bride to vow first.”

The knot in Kara’s stomach was like a drawstring. This, no matter how he held her, was deliberate. The bastard. So she would, she would do it. She would have to.

And yet, the proximity of his lips, the warmth of his breath, the whisper of no more than air that stood between them, the complete awareness of him—what was this, when the man was a sarcastic specimen, ruthless to the bone, she should find herself believing
in him
? In the rightness of this moment? So much so, that the beach and everyone on it seemed to recede, that looking into his eyes, she didn’t believe his asking her to go first was any more than an action complimenting this?

Her heart began to thud. Her palms sweated. She wasn’t going to edge her arm around his neck and stand on tiptoe was she?

Because if she did it would make it all the more impossible to tell the lie she knew she must.

“I swear. I swear to love you my whole life through.”

* * *

Even as Callm spoke the words to make her his wife, misgivings may have howled but his body responded as it always did in her vicinity, which was treacherously. Vows, priest present or not. He didn’t think he’d seen a woman more beautiful, the turquoise velvet matching her eyes to perfection, the winter light glinting on her tarnished-gold hair. He couldn’t help it. The need to kiss her, to hold her, was damned unbearable.

He didn’t. But it felt like he did, when her lips were less than an inch from his. What the hell was wrong with him that he felt like that? That he’d never wanted a woman more? He didn’t…he didn’t love her. He was trapped, nothing more. His wife couldn’t expect him to love her when her damned clan had murdered Morven and it was bad enough he’d slept with this woman.

From somewhere in his own cave, Shug produced a fiddle. Callm might have been dressed for the occasion, but Callm hadn’t planned on dancing. He hadn’t planned on hand-fasting either, but there it was. Even knowing it was already two o’clock and McDunnagh Castle lay an hour’s ride away, and he had this damned mess to sort out, he couldn’t resist the business of edging some slow steps with her in his arms and his lips short inches from hers.

There was something, something quite edgy about her, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, that beguiled even as it disturbed him. Something about her eyes, too large, too luminous. Too dark.

Anyway the men soon joined in. Whiskey and ale had begun to flow. This was his wedding day in a way. He hadn’t danced in years. With any other woman he’d have been shocked to realize it. But this one’s soft body fitted in his arms so well, it was a struggle to tell himself she wasn’t actually made for them.

Of course, the unfortunate thing was that someone had to find Ewen, didn’t they, before Ewen found out from someone else. And that task was his. Anyway, it was only a wedding day after all. A hand-fasting. Enough to keep everyone quiet just now. Her thieving damned father most of all.

As he galloped along the familiar loch side, he focused his attention on the party of riders bobbing into view from the snow-clad foothills to his left. Brotherhood men, he saw at a glance, recognizing them by the weather-stained plaids and variety of headdresses ranging from mildly decorative to downright blood-chilling. But he also recognized Archibald Kelty.

Wouldn’t that surprise everyone if he returned to the party? Hell. He could even manage another dance with Fallon standing on both his feet, while he danced her about. Then of course, there was his bride. He supposed another dance with her wouldn’t exactly kill him.

Even as he thought it, he narrowed his gaze. Slung across the back of a horse lay a figure he didn’t recognize.

The intruder. Well, well, well. There had been times he’d thought there wasn’t one. But there was. And he’d obviously been caught too despite the hell Callm had let the glen go to the last few days.

Relief, if not outright calm, stole through him. It was painful for him to acknowledge, that till he knew for certain the man was on no more than speaking terms with his lovely bride, he doubted he’d feel completely calm. He tamped the urge that filled him to leap down and drag the sorry-looking bastard from the horse—Big Murdie’s palfrey he observed.

“Callm.”

Archibald held up his hand. Anyone would have thought he proceeded under an imaginary banner of truce.

Callm yanked Satan to a halt. Then he dismounted. Unless he was very much mistaken, Big Murdie wasn’t likely to be kicking up any daisies. Big Murdie was the hardest man he knew. In this company it was saying something. That he’d chosen to lend the horse to this man meant one thing.

“The orders were to bring him in alive.” He squelched through the snow.

“And so we did, Callm.” Snosh sounded indignant. “We never touched him, even if he is a McGurkie.”

Callm dragged the man’s head up, with a hunger to see his face he didn’t want to admit bordered on starvation. Nor admit to the relief that flooded his veins either. That would be to also admit he had somehow imagined this moment being different, that what he felt for his bride was more than lust. This man wasn’t anywhere near in the first flush of youth. The gore-encrusted hair plastered to his temples said sixty. Maybe more.

The bloodshot eyes gripped him like a fist. Would this be him one day if he lived this long? Now he’d married Kara McGurkie, it was reason to think not. There would be peace with her clan. Maybe not right away, though. These things took time.

“Then how the hell did he end up like this?”

For a second, feeling the sickly stench of blood clog his nostrils, he hoped this was not a remnant from the McGurkie party he’d turned away. There were women in that. Her maids. He should have let them stay but he’d been distrustful that day. Especially of her in that red dress. Although why would it be a remnant, why would the tinker chief turn on his own?

“Who are you? Hmm? You better speak.” He leaned closer. Whoever he was, the ancient warhorse had led his men a merry dance. Half dead or not.

“Callm.” Snosh fidgeted in the saddle.

The man parted his broken lips. “I am someone ye should know.”

“Well, I don’t.”

Christ, was the old fool half-witted as well as half dead? Never mind who and what
he
was. What was this? Some wedding day prank, arranged by the men for sport? He narrowed his eyes.

“And you’ll come off even worse than you are already, if you try being smart about introducing yourself.”

“Callm.”

He raised his head. He’d heard the light calm edge in Archibald Kelty’s voice before. He just didn’t want to think of when. Not today of all days, did he damn well want to think of
when.

He raked his gaze around his men. Not one was even vaguely capable of squinting in his direction. Even Snosh who’d squinted like a myopic mouse since birth had both eyes on his mare’s neck. Callm turned his gaze back to their captive. “Where’s the rest of you?”

“Rest?” The old man’s eyes lost focus.

“The others. Unless you’re here alone?”

“Ah. When I said ye should know me that was not an invitation to fight, though I’ve seen the day—”

Something twisted inside Callm. He would not call it pity exactly. Since Morven’s death there had been no room in his life for that. First wanting to kiss his bride before Father Andrew, now this. He must be getting soft. “We’ve all seen the day, old man.”

“Then see this one, you and your clan, if ye are to save yourselves. My lady…my lady, Lady Ker…”

“Lady Kara?” He would be here all day if he didn’t hurry the old coot along.

The noise emanating from the back of the old man’s throat said he was already on his way though.

“You can die happy, old man. I’m keeping her safe.”

Astonishment rattled the old man’s lungs. Christ, but the McGurkies really were steeped in fear and loathing of him to generate such shock. The man was already halfway to whatever hell would hold him but look at him. Callm had the distinct impression, that had he not gripped him tightly by the arm, he’d have fallen all the way off Big Murdie’s horse and finished the journey.

“Callm, that woman he’s speaking of is not—”

“Hell, Snosh,” Despite everything, all the names Callm called the turd and the disrespect he held him in, he still didn’t want Archibald knowing before Ewen. “Why don’t you just tell the whole glen? Take a trumpeter out and broadcast it from Traitor’s Pole?” No. This was for the old man’s ears only. “Let me tell you, she doesn’t find it too unbearable either.”

The old man grasped his hand. “No. No. Not her. Kert—”

“Callm, for Christ’s sake, listen to me, will ye? For just once in your life.”

He felt him himself wrenched backward by such an iron fist, he nearly toppled over into the snow.

“You don’t have her.” Archibald Kelty didn’t release him either. “This woman he’s on about. So, ye can just stop congratulating yourself. The McGurkies have her. We have no more time to waste here.”

“Jesus.”

As he juddered into a tree trunk, Callm thought his eyes might have watered. He tried to focus his gaze. His body, strangely, acted independently of his mind so he yanked himself off the tree trunk. His legs even carried him several steps forward. He didn’t know how many, through the knee-deep snow, although how they did when he couldn’t add two and two together, except to calculate one thing, which made tattered ribbons of his gut.

This was not happening. None of this was happening. Only to a man in the grip of nightmare could this be happening. Twice. He had left her,
yes, in a ring of steel. Wee Murdie and Shug. No matter his doubts, there were chances, given who he was, he never took.

“Callm.”

“How?”

A valid question. Surely a valid question? One that would make the whole thing a mistake. One, the lightning bolt of realization also told him, he’d look stupider than a glen sheep for asking.

Because this man, his father’s most trusted friend, who’d just dragged him across the snow with the strength and alacrity of someone half his age, wasn’t coming from the cave. None of them were. So how could they know?

“Wise up, for Christ’s sake. The McGurkies aren’t holding the woman you’ve just spent the best part of four days shagging. All right? He serves Kertyn, her sister. Who, when she refused to marry Ewen, got herself locked up for her trouble, so far as he knows anyway, because he got left for dead. Still he has journeyed here to warn us, that woman prancing about—quite nicely too, I must admit, there’s not a man here wouldn’t have done the self same in your boots—was never here to marry Ewen. No, Ian Dhub went down the line to get her.”

Somehow Callm moistened his throat. “And you believe him, do you? Some old—” It was absurd to snatch this straw. But what the hell else was there to snatch at, the damn fool he must look?

Archibald canted his jaw. “Well, here’s the thing, Callm. According to him, she never came here to marry Ewen. She came to help murder him at the wedding feast.”

* * *

Murder him. While Callm had frequently felt like doing that himself, it was the
And all of us, you too
that got his gut.
He would give her
And all of us, you too
when he got hold of her, all right. He would give her murder too. The goddamned, treacherous, damned whore.

Aware he already pounded along the shore at breakneck pace, Callm dug his spurs harder. How was it he hadn’t known? Hadn’t seen it coming?
Him.
Who knew everything about everybody. Hell. He would let her have that too when he got his hands on her, by Christ, the tiny part of his brain still functioning told him.

Though instinct told him everything he needed to know about why so clever and shaggable a bitch was here, he still needed to get from her lying lips, the exact nature of the threat to his people. In advance of slitting her lying throat.

But when Callm flung himself from the saddle and burst through the cave entrance, scrunching onto the soft shingle, a surprise awaited him.

The cave was empty.

The lying damned daughter of a whore was gone.

Chapter Nine

“So, my lady? No, don’t squeal.”

Cold steel jabbed Kara’s throat. There was also the matter of her hair nearly being yanked from her head, so she supposed she wasn’t going to squeal. The tight, powerful arm wrapped around her was in danger of squeezing the air from her body otherwise, although her toes still fought for purchase in the snow.

“One word and ye’re dead. Ye hear? Ye understand?”

As God was her witness, to have steeled herself not to make a sound, as the Wolf’s boots had crunched feet from where she’d cowered—several days ago now—had been a torture. But the realization of the last time she’d smelled this man’s breath so close to her face, was worse.

The thing was she’d hardened quite a bit since then. Too much to allow her own breath to hitch even a quarter inch in fear although her mouth fell open. Where had he come from? Not once in the last hour, as she’d edged along that gully, had she any idea anyone was following. Or was it simple chance he was hiding in the bracken the same as her?

“Ye know, I’d just about given up on this moment ever arriving.”

She reached up a hand to try to free herself, to claw a breath, something. “Well, it has. So I’d be grateful if you’d take your arm off my throat.”

The low voice breathed close to her ear and she swore she tasted spittle.

“I just wanted to make sure it was you.”

She wanted to laugh out loud at that. He wanted to cut her throat with the gleaming blade more like. But she resisted the urge.

For now, she needed to consider her next move. Despite everything, she was no good to her son dead. She was no good to this man dead, either. “Me? Why, who else would it be, out here at this time in the morning?”