His Judas Bride (26 page)

“Thank you so much for clearing that up.”

All right. That was brutal but a woman who’d refused a dangled straw-end, the opportunity to appeal to his heart, was hardly likely to quake in her traitorous boots and start talking, simply because he’d spelt her position out for her.

But even he hadn’t expected it to be as difficult as this. For her to stand there shuttered, veiled, her husky, light voice brushing him, just like it had that day in the cave, when he was set for packing her up bag and baggage. And then, he’d felt bad about it.

Or course, he tried not to admit it. He should never have brought her in here at all. He should have locked her up. Then he should have heaved the key in the loch. With a ton weight attached. The heaviest he could find but still lift.

Now he at least had her here, if not exactly as he wanted, it would be a great mistake to capitulate. Not only had she amply demonstrated how casually she could seduce one man, while belonging to another, she’d casually failed to caterwaul over his corpse.

“You’re welcome. And now you’re going to return the favor. Clear up some things for me. Let’s start with one very simple question.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing her run her tongue around her lips. At least it would be if he didn’t find himself staring so closely.

“The four days.”

He could tell, by the way her gaze skittered sideways, the question was so far from what she expected, he just might get an answer.

“The four days, ninety-six hours, you and I didn’t happen to be together in the man and wife way of things.” He didn’t want her thinking he meant the other days. The ones Archibald Kelty had taken such issue with.

“Would you mind telling me how the hell you managed it? To give me the slip? I like to think my defenses are strong. Obviously you had help. How many of you are there here in Lochalpin?”

That, if the look she scarred him with was anything to go by, made him more determined to threaten.

“Listen, Princess, if I have to turn this glen upside down, I will find them.”

“If that’s what you enjoy. Don’t let me stand in the way of a good time.”

“Don’t you worry your sweet little head about that. That’s exactly what I’m going to have. Where’s your clothes?”

“Clothes?”

The attempt at surprise was admirable. Unfortunately though, it would do her no good at all here.

“The wee things you wear. Less often in your case. Of course, maybe you enjoy standing here half naked.”

He’d asked. She’d tell. And until she did he was going to plant himself here. In front of her. Lean his arm on the door too. Just a pity she turned her face away.

“You said one question. That’s at least another two.”

He smothered the semi-sardonic huff that rose on the back of his throat. “Well, like you, I lied. But while we’re on the subject of counting, would you rather we added up the amount of times we fucked during the four days you spent in my bed? How you felt about each one and how often you enjoyed it.”

He didn’t know if he’d ever seen a look like that on the face on any woman. Such fury sparked he suspected it was fortunate her hands were tied.

“My clothes are at the bottom of the loch.”

“Drown them, did you?”

She straightened her chin. “Your dog would have picked up a scent. So I weighted them. And then, I’d obviously nothing to wear. So I took your things.”

And damned fetching she looked in them too. Except he wasn’t going to tell her that.

“I thought you’d search down the pass, toward the entry to the glen. So I went the other way. Back up the loch side. There’s places there behind the big ring of boulders. You’ll know of them.”

He straightened his shoulders. Jesus. Of course he knew of such places. He just hadn’t looked in them, had he?

His unwilling scrutiny dropped down her bare leg to the limp, damp boot lying beside her foot. It must have come loose when she had sprung for the door. She was so extraordinarily beautiful, so nicely spoken too, not for the first time he couldn’t help thinking that bracelet of bruises didn’t make any sense.

He stared harder. When he paused, when his rational self considered it, these stories he’d heard about the McGurkies, was it possible there was something he missed here?

Oh, for Christ’s whispered sake. Not again. What was this?

For a woman who didn’t appear too terribly troubled about how he took the information, she said a lot. For a man who’d sworn to get that information at all costs, he let her.

He raised his chin. “So how did you get out the cave?”

“That was the easy bit. I waded.”

It wasn’t possible. He didn’t believe her. He refused to believe her. But an image imprinted itself on his senses of her wading through the swirling water in her bare legs, wearing only his tunic. What flooded his senses wasn’t the usual lust the thought of her thighs engendered. He knew how perishing that water felt.

He clasped his dagger hilt. He had said he would untie her in exchange for some information. Anyway, if she tried escaping he would deal with it. “Here.”

He slid the blade beneath the rope. Must she look as if he took her by surprise, though?

“A deal’s a deal. I think I said I’d untie you in exchange for some information.”

“T-thank-you.” She rubbed her wrists together.

He narrowed his eyes, staring at her fingers from which all the blood had seeped. In truth he had tied the rope as tightly as he meant.

So what the hell was he doing hurriedly sloshing whiskey into a silver goblet? What would it be tomorrow when he had to tie her to Traitor’s Pole and cut her throat before the clan? Silken chords? Bandages for her throat? Soft cushions to protect her delicate feet from cold?

Because he knew he’d have to do it. There was no avoidance of glen law. He should know. He made it. It didn’t matter that she was Ian Dhub’s daughter. Ian Dhub had sent her here to murder. He would have a damned nerve to complain. If Callm let that go, Christ knew what would be here next. So he couldn’t let it go. He just found it hard, getting his head around what she was here for when he thought about her, some of the times anyway, in his bed. And it wasn’t just how she’d beguiled him with her body.

“Drink this.” He strode across the floor. “Go on. In fact, here.” Ignoring—trying to anyway—the way her mouth dropped open, he dragged the chair forward. “Sit down.”

“Is…is it poisoned?”

“Poisoned?”

He fought to keep the irritation out his voice. In fact the McDunnagh kitchen staff appeared to have excelled themselves for once. Whatever else appeared to have gone to pieces here, and whatever might be in these covered dishes, the smell winding around his nostrils was mouth-watering. Venison maybe? In a good rich gravy. “Well. Why don’t you drink it and find out?”

Under other circumstances it would have been pleasant to sit down with his pretty, young bride, partake of a little food and drink. The whole night before him to taste everything else in. The sweet lips. The even sweeter body.

But no. Because
she
plotted murder with a thieving bunch of tinkers and had the audacity to wonder just how many had spat in the stew. And
he
had just sat her down on a chair.

“Of course, Princess, maybe there’s a more prescient reason you don’t want to drink that, you’d now like to tell me about?”

“I’m not pregnant if that’s what you’re wondering. Well. Unless, of course…” Her hand shook, be it ever so slightly as she raised the goblet to her lips.

Callm stared at her there, with her throat strangely fluttering and her topaz eyes seeming to look at nothing at all, except maybe the bottom of the goblet that she was in the process of draining at a rate that would have put Ewen to shame—who said people didn’t get like those they live with? And he struggled, quite badly, in fact, with what swamped his veins, to smother the urge to upend the table.

Of course she didn’t know. She’d no damned way of knowing. And he knew that when he’d almost forgotten himself, it was all ancient history. But damn it all to hell, with the exception of Morven, she was the only woman he’d ever spilled inside. No matter the women he’d had.

He had a daughter. The first time Fallon was placed in his arms was one of the happiest moments of his life. All right, so he hadn’t been a father to her since. She was still his. All he’d left in the world of the woman, the
only
woman, he’d ever loved.

How dare this damned bitch, who’d schemed Fallon’s destruction, attempt a clumsy play on his sympathies with the dangerous suggestion she was pregnant. And that just maybe therefore she was entitled to live. Before he felt an instant’s disbelief at her lunatic musing, he needed to remember how badly he’d let her undermine him before. And how.

Or the question of whether or not the damned woman was pregnant wouldn’t arise.

“I’m not talking about that.” He tamped his first desire, which was to hurl the whiskey flagon against the wall. “I’m talking about murder under trust. I’m talking about going to tell Ewen I’d just married you, precisely because I believed I had deflowered his fiancée, and finding out I couldn’t have, at least it would be technically impossible to have deflowered his fiancée, when his fiancée had no damned intention of marrying him in the first place, but one of helping cut his throat at the wedding table. So, if chance should have it, that you’re now pregnant from the four days you spent whoring yourself in my bed, I’d say that is the very least of your worries.”

“How do you know?”

Such surprise flared in his chest, she had stood up and set the goblet on the table before he realized it.

“Whether it’s the least of your worries, you’re pregnant, or your sister’s a guest of your father? Why, bad news travels fast. Did no one ever tell you that? It happens your thieving tinker clan let someone slip. Her own personal bodyguard.”

“No. What’s a worry to me? You don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about me. You just think you do.”

True. But it also seemed, as he stood breathing heavily, what swept him could not be denied. Nor could the way she’d brushed past him. Him. Who had known from the very first second he glimpsed her, she lied yet let her into his bed, despite the warning bells clanging in his senses.

They were clanging now, as if he was entering territory he should not darken. But by God he was damned to it almost as much as he was damned to her.

“Is that what you think?” He would see what rattled her. He pinned her against the table in one swift movement, his body trapping hers against the edge. “I don’t know you? Because, believe me, I know all that’s important.”

“No. You don’t.”

“About your damned lips.”

“You just think you do.”

How true. But he’d pinned her to the table now, so he was hardly going to look stupid by saying he didn’t. It was time she realized exactly who she dealt with, this Edinburgh-educated creature.

“About your body.”

How true that was too, which was why he wanted her to understand, while he wouldn’t play so low as to touch her, what she was, a woman playing men’s games, she should consider it. Just how much of his mercy she might be at, when standing here, inhaling her cold, brackish scent, feeling her there against him, wild, trembling, he wanted her so badly. What was more, he knew he could so easily make her want him. That much, if nothing else, he did know about.

He continued to fixe his gaze on her. Though he was willing to accommodate this for a while longer, it couldn’t continue. “Because I killed him? Is that it? Why you won’t tell me the one damned thing I don’t know. Why you did it?”

“Because it would kill you. It would kill you to hear all—”

“Kill me?” He could so little believe it, he spat the words through his clenched teeth. “You didn’t exactly think about sparing my sensitivities when you arrived here armed to the teeth to do just that.”

“Even if I denied that you wouldn’t believe me.”

No. He wouldn’t. Not when he’d known she was lying since the second he clapped eyes on her. But it was a little late to wish he never had. He clawed a deep breath into his tortured lungs. He supposed he was angry, and that was why, he not only reached behind her, but bowls, plates, and the delicious concoctions of the McDunnagh kitchen staff, scattered in all directions.

“Damn right I don’t. And shall I tell you why?” He did not expect an answer to that question, so he went on anyway, regardless of the way shock reverberated through her whole body. “Because I’ve had everything there is to have of your lies. I was going to send you home. Yes. Guarding your virginity before I found out what an empty trunk that was. But you had to go and seduce me.”

He was fast. But she was faster, the remaining bowl joining its sisters on the floor as she whisked up on her knees on the table. It gave the lie to the fact she was helpless. Even his shadow hadn’t moved. And how the hell did she get hold of his knife from his belt?

Her eyes blazed. “Don’t come any closer.”

Come closer? With cold steel jabbing his windpipe? Was she crazy? Except however she got hold of his knife he needed to get it back.

He shot his hand out to grab her wrist. “Give me that.”

Maybe she was built like a willow rod, but she had the ferocity of a wildcat. Under other circumstances he’d have marveled at the dark calculation with which she attempted an attack on his eyeballs. But he was a little too preoccupied trying to impress upon her who was boss, as he pinned her to the tabletop.

“Finished begging for mercy already, have you, Princess? That never took long.”

The castle walls were not so thick his men would be deaf to this sweating, grunting racket. Relief flooded as the blade spun across the tabletop and onto the floor. It had barely done so when she spat.

“Go on.”

His mind spun. For Christ’s whispered sake, what now?

“You know you want to.”

By God, when his blood thrummed like this, Callm did not deny that he did want. And it wasn’t just the truth. What was more he’d damn well forgotten, she was naked under that tunic. Not only was she naked, she was completely at his mercy. Silky flesh through flimsy linen. Linen he’d only to touch to be inflamed by. As expected as the look of burning hell she gave him.