Teresa Medeiros (16 page)

Now that he’d committed himself to the low road, he plunged down it with utter surrender, determined to wring what pleasure he could from his own destruction. He’d wanted Sabrina Cameron before he’d been old enough to know what wanting meant. Tonight he intended to have her. Without counting the cost to either of them.

He hesitated before the closed door of his chamber. Surely tomorrow would be soon enough to humble
himself, to plead prettily for her forgiveness and remind her that the vows she’d made before the minister of God were more binding than the angry words they’d snapped in her father’s court.

Bracing her weight with one arm, he twisted the rusty doorknob. The door creaked open. A smoky peat fire snapped on the grate and he silently blessed Eve’s intuition. Even in her grief she had hot forgotten him.

He eased the door shut and pivoted just in time to see a frowsy blond head emerge from the bedclothes.

“Morgan, me darlin’, I thought ye’d never come!”

At this rate he never would, Morgan thought despairingly as he looked down to find his bride blinking up at him, her eyes as bright and wary as a baby owl’s.

At the adoring melody of Morgan’s name on another woman’s lips, Sabrina had snapped awake. The rumpled creature in her husband’s bed did not cling to false modesty. She didn’t even trouble to pull the sheet up over her naked breasts. An unexpected burst of starch infused Sabrina’s veins. She stiffened, sliding from Morgan’s arms like a wooden plank.

His jaw worked as if in time to his thoughts, but Morgan was a man of action, not words. He strode to the bed, wrapped a sheet around the intruder, and guided her toward the door without so much as an if-you-please.

The statuesque blonde dragged her feet as she stumbled past Sabrina. “Who the bloody hell is she?”

Feeling short, damp, and bedraggled, Sabrina tried not to wither beneath the woman’s hostility.

Morgan deposited her in the corridor. “My wife,” he replied, closing the door gently but firmly in the woman’s dumbfounded face.

Without turning around, he leaned against the door, weight braced on his splayed palms, one knee cocked forward. Silence crackled between them, louder than the fitful sputter of the fire.

Sabrina applauded lightly. “Gracefully done. Brian would have admired your technique. You tossed her out as if she weren’t any more consequence than a cooled bed warmer.”

“She’s not.”

“You owe her no explanation?”

“I explained.” He swung around to face her, crossing his arms in a stance that might have been warning or challenge. “Shall I call her back? I’m a bit weary, but the day hasn’t yet arrived when I can’t handle the both of you.”

Sabrina ignored the heat rising in her cheeks. Morgan seemed determined to miss no opportunity to remind her of the kind of man she had wed. “I couldn’t help but notice a family resemblance. Who is she? Your paramour? Your cousin?” She paused for an insulting beat. “Your sister?”

“Alwyn is Ranald’s cousin.”

“But I thought Ranald was your cousin.” When Morgan’s own brow clouded with confusion, Sabrina pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Oh, never mind. I’m too exhausted to untangle the twisted branches of the MacDonnell family tree. I suppose you’re fortunate to know who your mother was.”

When she opened her eyes, she was alarmed to find Morgan stalking toward her. He backed her toward the hearth, firing off each word like a pistol ball. “I haven’t slept in over thirty-six hours, lass, and it’s beginnin’ to tell on my judgment. So unless you’re willin’ to expand my family tree right here and now, I’ve no wish to discuss it with you.”

Morgan’s temper exuded more heat than the brooding fire. As Sabrina tipped her head back to meet his gaze, all the fears she’d forgotten while cradled in his arms came flooding back. The MacDonnells were notorious for three traits—their savagery, their voracious carnal appetites, and their hatred of the Camerons. She
feared she was about to learn about all three at the merciless hands of this disgruntled giant.

His arm came up, casting a shadow over her face. She shrank against the warm stones, biting back a flinch. In her entire life no one had dared to strike her. Not even when she deserved it. But having been warned that the MacDonnells despised any show of weakness, she pressed her eyes shut and prayed she could keep from crying when that big hand descended.

A chunk of peat hissed on the flames. Warm fingers sought her cheek, easing back her hood and freeing the wavy tumble of her hair. Sabrina opened her eyes to find Morgan gazing down at her, his eyes shadowed as if she had struck him a mortal blow out of pure cruelty.

“I’ve taught you well, haven’t I, lass?”

Sabrina couldn’t tell if the note of wry contempt in his voice was for her or for him. She inclined her head, ashamed that he had read her fears so easily. He turned away from her, his steps weighted by weariness.

She hugged back a shiver. In Morgan’s absence, the fire was a poor shield to ward off the misery and chill she’d been fighting all day.

As if oblivious of her presence, Morgan drew the bodkin from his plaid and began to painstakingly unravel its drapes and pleats. Sabrina was riveted by his unselfconscious display. He shrugged the plaid from his shoulders. Firelight licked at the rugged slabs of sinew and muscle in his chest. Tendrils of heat danced down Sabrina’s spine, chasing away her chill. The tartan unfolded over his taut abdomen and she caught herself holding her breath like a child on Christmas morning, eager to see what new treasures might be revealed.

But when without warning the plaid spilled into a pool at his feet, Sabrina got more than she’d wished for. Much more.

As Morgan padded nude to the bed, she stared so hard at the wall that her eyes crossed with the effort. The bed creaked beneath his weight. His satisfied groan made the hair on her nape tingle.

“Aren’t you comin’ to bed, lass?”

“No,” she said hastily, scrambling for any excuse not to prostrate herself on the altar of that magnificent male animal. “I won’t sleep there. Not on the same bedclothes as your … that … woman.”

Hr grunted. “Suit yourself.”

She dared a peek over her shoulder. As if it were of no import to him where she slept, Morgan had rolled away from her, dragging the ragged quilt over his nakedness.

She stood for a long time, half hoping he would comment upon her wounded sniffs. Her knees started to ache, so she drew off her pelisse and made a tidy nest of it on the stone floor, balling the hood beneath her head as a pillow. She was lying on her back, watching the unfamiliar shadows writhe on the ceiling and wondering if that might be a rat scratching outside the door, when Morgan’s quiet voice pierced the silence.

“You’ve no need to flinch from me. I’ll not lay a hand on you, Sabrina Cameron.”

“Sabrina MacDonnell,” she whispered to the darkness, but Morgan’s soft snores were her only reply.

Sabrina awoke the next morning to watery sunlight and the distant drone of bees. Hundred of bees. Thousands of bees. All clamoring for a taste of her tender flesh. Her fingers plucked at the nubbed fabric of the quilt. A nasal wail assailed her ears.

Not bees. Bagpipes.

Nothing had changed, she thought. She was nestled in her cozy bed, waiting for her mother to bring her morning chocolate. Morgan was entombed beneath her, his life hanging by the tenuous thread of her father’s mercy. She opened her eyes. Her elegant half-tester was gone. The murky recesses of a stone ceiling loomed high above her, reminding her that she was now the one entombed at Morgan’s mercy.

She sat up. Her pelisse lay trampled on the dusty floor. Morgan must have carried her to the bed before he arose that morning.

Pugsley trotted into the chamber and jumped on the bed, his mud-caked paws leaving tiny footprints.

“You’re looking quite pleased with yourself,” she exclaimed as he dropped his offering into her lap. She held the grimy cylinder up to the light. It was a bone. A bone that looked suspiciously and alarmingly human. “Probably belonged to Morgan’s last wife,” she muttered.

Leaving Pugsley to gum his treasure, she climbed down from the high bed, wincing as her pinched toes hit the floor. She had never slept in her shoes before. The nearest window was a gaping hole in the stone shielded by warped glass. As she drew aside the drapes, the rotted silk shattered in her hands.

Far below, the woods parted to reveal a grassy knoll where the MacDonnells had gathered to bid their chieftain a final farewell. As Augus’s body was lowered into the shallow cairn, Sabrina’s gaze unerringly found his son in their midst. Morgan’s shoulders were unyielding even in grief. The last bittersweet skirl of the pipes trembled on the wind. Sabrina shivered at the melancholy sound. Eve might be rough and crude, but she could make the bagpipes weep with a skill that would have been the envy of any music master from London to Edinburgh.

The MacDonnells slowly dispersed, leaving Morgan alone. He didn’t follow their path back to the castle, but mounted Pookah and melted into the dusky gloom of the forest.

A stab of grief tore through Sabrina’s heart. She was Morgan’s wife now. She should be at his side. But he did not need her, she reminded herself. He had made it painfully clear that there was only one reason a man like Morgan needed a woman at all.

She shoved open a window on the opposite side of the chamber. Wind battered her, stinging her eyes and tearing her hair away from her face to reveal the raw magnificence of the view. Snowy mountains adorned the cloudswept horizon like a pearl-studded crown. Jagged cliffs hugged the mountainside in a sheer drop to the heath below. A narrow road snaked along
their edge. Sabrina shuddered, thankful that she had slept through the nightmare of Morgan’s high-strung mount prancing along that narrow ribbon of stone and dirt.

Her hands clenched on the stone in nameless longing, responding to the untapped wildness that beat in her heart. Morgan must have found the gently rolling hills and rock-enclosed pastures of Cameron unbearably tame. She imagined him growing up here, surrounded by impenetrable forest and unscalable cliffs. Was it any wonder his heart was no less unbreachable?

Sighing, she turned back to the bed. Its cozy invitation was spoiled by a lurid image of Morgan entangled in Alwyn’s sun-bronzed arms.

Fueled by indignation, she stripped the musty quilt from the thin tick and hurled it out the window. It billowed down to sink into the dank, bracken-choked moat without a trace. She tossed the bone after the bedclothes, grabbing Pugsley before he could hurtle himself out the window after it.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Yours is the friendliest face I’m likely to see today.”

His tongue laved her nose. She noted that someone had already pried the paste gems from his collar. Her trunks were probably meeting the same fate, being meticulously unpacked by Morgan’s clanswomen. She shuddered to imagine the busty Alwyn squeezing herself into one of her own delicate corsets. On the heels of that came another shudder, this one prompted by both horror and guilt.

Enid
!

Good Lord, how could she have abandoned her cousin to those lusty barbarians! The poor dear was probably cowering under some cobweb-festooned bed, praying for deliverance. Or death.

Without bothering to straighten her rumpled clothes, Sabrina dropped Pugsley on the bed and shot out of the chamber at a dead run.

•  •  •

Sabrina careened around a blind corner, slamming her toes into a pile of rubble. She hopped up and down, massaging her throbbing foot, then raced on, refusing to squander precious seconds when her cousin’s virtue might hang in the balance. The jagged windows cut at irregular intervals puzzled her until she realized they weren’t windows at all, but holes torn in the mortar by enemy fire.

After passing Morgan’s chamber twice more, she heaved a sigh of relief to find a broad staircase winding into the belly of the castle. She ran down the stairs, flying past a handsome woman garbed in Swiss-dotted muslin.

“Good morning, love. You’d best do something with that hair. Aunt Elizabeth would have fits if she knew you’d gone to bed without braiding it.”

Sabrina teetered on the edge of a crumbling step, then pivoted on her heel. “Enid?”

Her cousin was picking her way over a fallen rafter. A white lace cap perched on her bobbing ringlets.

“Enid! Where do you think you’re off to?” Sabrina cried.

Sabrina recognized the straw basket draped over Enid’s arm as containing the food her mother had packed for their journey. “Ranald and I are dining outside this morning. He’s promised to show me some sights I’ve never seen before.”

“I dare say he has,” Sabrina muttered. “Do you think it wise to go off alone with him? You’ve known him for less than a day.”

“Oh, pooh! Ranald is like a cuddly little bear cub. He wouldn’t harm a flea.”

“But I was hoping the two of us might—”

A wheedling burr floated up the stairs. “Oh, Enid? Where’s me plump sweet pumpkin? Yer furry bearkins is hungry and waitin’!”

Sabrina laid a hand over her churning stomach, thankful she hadn’t eaten yet.

“I’m coming, dear,” Enid called. With her eyes sparkling and her cheeks glowing like polished apples,
Sabrina realized her cousin was almost pretty. “I’ll find you as soon as I return,” she promised Sabrina. “I’ll tell you all about Ranald and you can tell me about Morgan.”

That shouldn’t take long, Sabrina thought grimly.

She sank down on the steps and watched her cousin teeter off on her narrow heels. Loneliness gripped her. Even Enid didn’t need her anymore.

Her stomach began to rumble with genuine hunger. Knowing it would do her no good to sit on the dusty steps feeling sorry for herself all day, Sabrina rose to seek the kitchens, absently working her hair into a knot at her nape as she walked.

After passing through a deserted hall, she pressed her palm to the first door she found. As it swung inward, a burst of harsh masculine laughter assailed her.

“He’ll tire o’ the Cameron whore soon eno’, I’ll wager. It won’t take a man like Morgan long to wear out what’s betwixt those frail thighs.”