The Pleasures of Sin (2 page)

“Just do this one last deed, and we will help you on your journey. For certes, Father would grant you permission to enter the convent.”

Permission. The one thing she needed to be accepted into the holy order.

Adele rapped her cane on the planks, causing her raven hair to bounce. Duncan barked and scurried atop a trunk. “We will have men ready to whisk you away as soon as Montgomery is dead. They will be outside this door when we give the signal, and Panthos will lead you out the back tunnel to a safe cottage by the river.”

“Panthos?” The mastiff. “I’m to commit murder, then be led by a
dog
to escape the wrath of The Enforcer’s men?” Both of her sisters had turned lunatic.

“Aye,” Adele said calmly. Her intense, dark eyes shone with intelligence, not fever. St. Paul stretched languidly in her arms and let out a loud purr. “I have told Panthos of your danger, and he has agreed to protect you. Duncan will go with you as well; he is good at catching rabbits.”

Brenna perused her dark-haired sister who was composed and serene, floating as always in her secret ethereal haze above the pain of her deformed leg and the chaos of the earth. Of a truth, she had uncanny kindred with the beasts of nature, but—to be led by one dog and fed by the other?

“You are both daft.”

Panthos sat on his haunches and cocked his head at her.

“You too,” she told him.

“Prithee, Brenna.” Gwyneth shuddered, and the stiff silvery-blue houpelande rustled with the motion.

Gwyneth’s silky skirt contrasted with Brenna’s own shabby, faded wool one. More proof of their father’s love toward his favored daughter. She tamped down the ache in her chest. If only she could have won even half as much of his love. Her father had taken all of her beautiful clothing away years ago. As a nun, she would have to give them up anyway, but her chest still ached from the memory.

Gwyneth plucked the falling headdress and veil from her blond hair and set it on Brenna’s head. The veil was a thick material sewed with tiny pearls. The heavy frame that fashioned the hat into a butterfly shape felt awkward and foreign.

“We are nigh the same height, and if we cover your red hair, he will not suspect,” Gwyneth said.

Brenna snorted. The elaborate hat looked bizarre against her simple clothing. Save for the height, she and Gwyneth looked naught alike. Especially not since she’d hacked off her thigh length curls. Gwyneth’s hair, when loose, was a mass of shimmering gold that hung past her hips; her own was a close cropped mess.

Reaching up, Brenna touched the scar on her cheek that ran from her ear to the bridge of her nose and lifted a strand of her copper hair. ’Twas shorter than
l’occhio del diavolo
and not nearly as symmetrical.

“Surely Montgomery has heard you are the fairest lady in all of England,” Brenna said to Gwyneth.

Gwyneth shot her a sympathetic look, but did not deny the charge. Both of them knew Gwyneth’s beauty was a possession most prized by their father—’twas the thing that would catch the eye of a wealthy man so he would have more gold to pump into his cause of ridding England’s throne of its king.

“I am sorry about your hair,” Gwyneth said gently. “I truly appreciate your sacrifice to save me from Lord Brice. It was so brave of you to shear it and pretend you were me so I could be rid of him.”

Brave? Bloody hell. All she’d had to do was introduce herself as Gwyneth. Without her long beauteous locks to soften her features, her face had frightened him into running like the very devil chased him. As if she was plagued. No man wanted a scarred, ugly, shorn woman as wife. Another reason her father should have allowed her to enter the convent. Silently, she cursed his stubbornness. Why did he have to be so obstinate?

“What’s done is done,” Brenna said, refusing to allow herself to dwell on her missing locks. What need did an artist and a nun have for vanity?

Gwyneth reached up and patted Brenna’s short curls. “But I know you miss your hair. I’ve seen you tug at the strands.”

Adele rapped her cane again, causing the terrier to run around in tight circles. “There is no time to talk of hair! Get dressed, Brenna. Use the veil to cover your scar—there is enough fabric to obscure your face. I swear, I’d kill Montgomery myself, but for this lame foot of mine. I do not look enough like Gwyneth to pass, and only a bride will be able to get close enough to slay him.”

Before Brenna could open her mouth to insist that she did not look like the beauteous Gwyneth either, Gwyneth scrambled from her wedding gown and held it out. “You have pretended to be me before; you can do it again.”

Clad only in her shift, Gwyneth reminded Brenna of a specter. A specter of her
past.

Brenna had a new life awaiting her in Italy. Glancing at the open door, she thought of her satchel beneath the bed.

“Oh, curse it all to the devil. This battle is not my concern,” she said. She needed to leave. She could not spend her life rescuing her sister from one suitor or the next. “Marry the man and he’ll set Father free. With your looks, you’ll be able to bend him to your will.”

At that moment, thunderous footsteps clamored up the stairs of the tower.

The chamber door banged open.

The three sisters gasped. The dogs barked, and St. Paul bolted beneath the bed.

The largest pair of men Brenna had ever seen stepped inside the room. They were fully clad in chain mail and armor and seemed to be at least seven feet in height.

One had eyes so blue they glowed like the coals of hell beneath his full-face helm. He carried a large broadsword. The other held a crossbow at the ready. They seemed to scrutinize the bed, the trunks, the table-desk, and the paintings before gazing intently at Brenna and her sisters.

Gwyneth, still in her shift, tried to hide behind Brenna and Adele.

The mastiff barked wildly, rearing upward. Adele held him by the collar, bracing her booted feet against the floor. Her hennin bobbed. The terrier leapt into the window embrasure seat and growled low.

“Call him off,” the crossbow-man commanded, swinging his weapon around to the mastiff. He was a tall, dangerous looking brute with a missing finger.

Gwyneth grasped Brenna’s hand in a clammy grip.

With a few whispered words, Adele calmed Panthos. Duncan tucked his tail and bolted beneath the bed with St. Paul.

“I am here to collect my bride. Which of you is she?” the man with the wicked blue eyes asked. He swung around to Gwyneth, seeming to take in her sunshine-like beauty.

Chain mail clinked as he reached for her, more beast than man. Huge hands. Brawny shoulders. An arrogant masculine presence.
Bloody hell.

He was worse even than Lord Brice.

He’d eat her sister alive.

Gwyneth gave Brenna a look of pleading desperation as the man’s brutish hand touched the pristine linen of her shift. Her pulse fluttered in her neck.

With one last glance at the satchel under the bed, Brenna stepped forward, pushed Gwyneth firmly behind herself, and faced off the monster. She could not leave her sister to be raped and ravished by this fiend. Her skill with a knife would have to be enough.

She said a silent prayer of thanksgiving that Gwyneth had shoved the veil on her head so that her scar was partially hidden and the man would not see her unevenly chopped locks.

“I am your bride, my lord. Just give me a moment to change into my wedding gown.”
And hide the dagger.

He
would
have revenge.

Through the eye slits in his helmet, James of Montgomery glowered at the hostile crowd gathered near the steps of the chapel for the wedding. Lecrow, the lord of this keep and the bastard who had ambushed him this morn, knelt between two guards, tied in place by ropes. He was a squirrelly, gray-bearded man with fanatical eyes. James vowed silently to see the man beaten and made a public example of in the streets of London.

“Easier to keep guard inside,” he said to his men as he flung open the church doors and led them into the darkened sanctuary. His position as an earl allowed him to be married near the altar instead of on the outer steps. He latched his hand firmly around his wife-to-be’s wrist and dragged her in his wake.

“Bring her father to the front to witness the ceremony,” he barked at the two men holding Lecrow.

His duty was to bring peace to the region and he intended to crush the fight out of the old man by showing him that despite his little ambush, the wedding would go on. Just as the king had commanded. The town’s prized port—currently under the command of the Baron of Windrose, but spelled out in the wedding contract to be turned over to James—would be a huge boon to his shipping trade.

He paced past the rows of pews. The others followed. They prodded Lecrow with the point of a sword, and he shuffled forward on his knees.

“You won’t get awa—” Baron Lecrow started.

One of James’s men drew a dagger and held it to Lecrow’s throat, effectively silencing him.

James nodded approval and turned to the woman he was to marry.

Thankfully, his new wife was the strong, stubborn one instead of the weepy, teary-eyed blonde, as he had feared. This one may not enjoy being married to him, but at least he doubted he’d have to listen to tedious pleas for mercy on the wedding night. He had no use for the sniveling cries of women. And he had no intention of granting mercy.

Three of his men lay dead from this morn’s attack.

Jacob, Robert, and Collin. Good men all.

Guilt ate at him that he had led them to their deaths like defenseless sheep.

’Twas his duty to enforce the king’s law and bring to heel the rebels who threatened the peace of England. The port was being used to smuggle in wine and weapons and needed tighter control. The wedding was arranged to bring stability to the region: both this woman and the prized port would be his.

The king had warned him of possible treachery, but he had not expected an outright attack.

Anger curled through him like a living demon as he thought of the price his men had paid.

The ambush had been a betrayal of the lowest kind. Her father had beguiled him to come here to Windrose, rather than his grander castle at Montgomery. His bride-to-be had sent him a sweet perfumed message.

And it all had been a ruse to kill him.

He could scarcely imagine this warrior-like queen standing beside him would write something so flowery and delicate.

Tightening his grip on his bride-to-be’s wrist, he vowed by all that was holy that both she and her family would learn what it meant to bow to his rule. To live under The Enforcer.

Every step down the chapel’s aisle sent another shot of fury pulsating through him.

“Slow down,” the woman beside him whispered. Her enormous silver-blue gown rustled. “My slipper—oh, drat it all to hell—” She stumbled slightly, kicked off one of her pointed velvet slippers and righted herself.

The bride-to-be’s father glared at him with narrowed eyes. He strained against the ropes.

The urge to take the man by the tunic and hang him from the large oak just on the other side of the sanctuary door snaked fiercely through James. But, nay. The man was a political prisoner, and the king himself must deal with his treason.

His hand tarried to the hilt of his sword, in case her tripping was a ruse to get him off guard so her father could attack. He would
not
be caught unaware again.

A heavy veil obscured her features, but he could feel her glowering at him. “I am coming. There is no need to drag me.”

“Mind your tongue, wife.”

She propped one hand on her hip, causing her enormous butterfly headdress to tilt and ruin the serene loveliness of the silver-blue gown. “I am not your wife yet.”

He bared his teeth at her, vowing both the stubborn old man
and
his rebellious daughter would be cowed afore this was over.

“You will be, wench.” Squeezing her wrist, he pulled her the last few feet down the aisle. Did none in this family know when they had been squarely defeated and have the sense to submit?

A harpist and violist played an off-key wedding song, as if they hadn’t had adequate time to tune their instruments.

The priest standing in front of the altar cleared his throat. He had a huge nose and watery eyes, which he rubbed from time to time on the sleeve of his robe. “Ready to begin, my lord?”

James nodded. “Make haste, priest. This helmet itches my neck.”

The clergyman opened his Bible. “Dearly beloved…”

Not releasing her wrist, James peered down at the woman standing beside him. She stood as straight as any warrior, proud and sturdy. She was covered from head to toe in fabric just as he was clad in armor. Mother-of-pearl buttons lined her sleeves like tiny shields.

She didn’t try to pull away from his grip, but she didn’t stand any closer than she had to either. Her bones felt small within his grasp, and yet, strength of will radiated from her.

Yes, this marriage was a battlefield. And it would be true justice to bend her will to his. King Edward had demanded this union to bring peace to this turbulent region, and he would definitely start by conquering his own wife.

As Father Peter droned on with the wedding ceremony, Brenna seethed with anger that her new husband had hauled her here like a prized sow. Coldness from the floor tiles seeped into her one bare foot. Damned barbarian.

She twisted slightly to peer up at him.

He was the largest man she had ever seen—nearly seven feet in height with shoulders as wide as a bull’s.

Huge. Enormous. Utterly grotesque. He reminded her of one of the fearsome warriors from her paintings. Only he was fully clad in battle gear, not naked as most of the figures in her artwork were.

He smelled of leather, blood, and the heady scent of male musk. Blood splattered across his blue surcoat, right at eye level.

A tiny bit of relief flowed through her that he didn’t flinch when Father Peter mumbled her name. Thank the stars he did not realize he had been duped into marrying the wrong sister. Their union had been arranged by that bastard King Edward so mayhap he did not know the name of his future bride. Or mayhap he could not hear well with the helm on.

“I worship thee with my body,” she gritted out when prompted, wishing she could grasp the dagger hidden in the bodice of the wedding gown to bolster her nerve.

Standing beside him here at the altar made her feel tiny, even shorter than usual.

She averted her eyes from the bloodstains on his surcoat and tilted her head back, wishing she could see beneath the shiny silver helm that concealed his features. She swallowed, thinking of her sister’s assessment of his scarred face. Bloody hell. Was there nothing about the man that wasn’t daunting? ’Twas no wonder children ran from him.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
she began silently, unsure if she was saying a prayer or her last rites. Gwyneth said he’d murdered his last wife…

She’d have one chance with the dagger. And if she failed, only God knew what her punishment would be. With luck, he’d have her hung. But The Enforcer was not reputed to be a man who merely hung those who crossed him.

She squelched the shudder that threatened to quake her shoulders. Mayhap he was enormous and forbidding, but at the plunge of her dagger, he
would
bleed like any other beast.

“Kiss your bride,” Father Peter said, squinting up at the man’s covered face. He rubbed his watery eyes and gave Brenna a sympathetic look.

“My lady,” her new husband taunted, his voice muffled because of the helmet.

Her heart pounded against the steel blade betwixt her breasts and gooseflesh popped up on her arms. By force of will, she remained stock-still in front of the altar, fighting the urge to flee. Nay, not kiss the beast!

“This is no love match,” she sneered, fighting for a measure of control. “We have no need to kiss.”

The warrior’s palm covered hers, rough and large. Claiming. “The kiss seals our bargain.”

Her stomach cramped. He’d been holding her wrist all through the ceremony like a manacle. She glanced down and, for an instant, was surprised to realize he had man-hands, not paws like a bear. He had long, blunt fingers with thick calluses. He was a privateer; no doubt his hands had been roughened from pulling the rigging on a ship. His grip was firm and strong, but not biting or painful.

Fresh from battle, his hands should have been filthy, but instead were clean as if freshly washed for the wedding. She wondered at that small measure of respect.

He pulled her closer and she checked the urge to withdraw her hand. Best to make him think she was cowed and submissive.

Damn beast. Loathsome, unholy barbarian. Brenna ducked her head to keep him from noticing her glower.

“As you wish, my lord,” she said through clenched teeth. Tonight, she vowed, ’twould be his life that would be spilt, not her virgin blood.

His chain mail clinked as he released her to remove his helmet.

Patience, girl, patience
, she coaxed herself.
Soon he will be without his guard and you can use the dagger.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his warriors grip their sword hilts tighter. They stood around the perimeter of the sanctuary, also still in full armor.

Unbuckling the lower strap, her husband slowly lifted the helm.

Husband.
The word sent a new shot of fury through her. Being a wife was akin to death for an artist. A passel of brats. A household to attend. Duties. Duties. More duties.

But, by the rood, she wouldn’t be married very long. She would be a widow by the first cock’s crow. She allowed herself a small smile at that thought. Widows had freedoms that maidens did not.

Montgomery’s helmet rose. Her first impression was a strong jawline chiseled with cold precision. She widened her eyes and leaned her head back so she could peer directly at the monster she would soon slay. Nary a stray whisker protruded from his close-shaven cheeks.

She gulped.

He was not a beast.

He was perfect.

Too perfect.

Like a beautiful painting with no passion. As if he had no tolerance for human flaws.

His black hair was thick and as close-cropped as a Roman warlord’s. Cobalt-blue eyes gazed down at her, shining with hard resolve. He had a broad aquiline nose, angular cheekbones, and a severe mouth that could have been carved from stone. Even his eyelashes were blunted into perfect midnight crescents, as black as his soul.

A shiver raced down her spine. Gwyneth had told her wrong information: no scars marred this man’s perfection.

He was breathtaking. Magnificent. The handiwork of an arrogant artist, too prideful to show a blemish that would make the work a true masterpiece.

She’d ne’er seen a man like him afore.

Kill him? How could she destroy such beauty?

Biting the inside of her cheek, she hardened her resolve. Beautiful or no, she would not become the chattel of a man to be raped and beaten at will. Nor would she leave her family at his mercy.

Even with her back turned, she felt her father’s intense, expectant glare from the front bench in the chapel. This was her chance to finally redeem herself in his eyes—to put to rights the rift that had formed betwixt them. Then she could leave for Italy with his blessing.

Gwyneth sat beside her father on the pew, wringing her hands. She wore a loose blue wool surcoat with a deep red underdress. ’Twas obvious she was trying to look as plain as possible—in place of one of her elaborate headdresses, she wore a wimple—but her beauty was like the sun, too brilliant to hide.

Adele, with her uncanny ways, had managed to escape from the ceremony.

Tension pulled across Brenna’s shoulders.

At once she found herself glad of the severity of her new husband’s perfection. If he had even some tiny flaw that caused him to seem more human and less cold, she might have found the task of destroying him impossible.

“Wife,” he said, reaching for the hem of the silver veil covering her face. “You are mine.” A touch of harshness laced his voice.

Her knees knocked when he lifted the pearl-sewn fabric away, but the hidden dagger pressed her flesh again, steeling her. Unless he had fangs, she could surely survive his kiss.

He cupped her chin and tilted her face up to his.

She scowled at him and shifted her feet restlessly when he did not move closer to kiss her.

His gaze roved her face, lingering on the scar that ran across her cheek.

She
thought
he’d seen her scar earlier, but perhaps his helm had blocked his view and now he was having second thoughts about forcing such an ugly woman to marry him. Ha. Served him right.

“Hasten and be done with it,
husband,”
she sneered. Mayhap she should snatch the veil from her head, and give him a look at what he’d married. Mayhap he’d run like Lord Brice.

But, as satisfying as that would be, she still needed to get him alone and unarmed if she was to kill him.

“They said you were comely,” he stated.

His words stung. There was no reason for them to sting, but they did.

“Well. I’m not.” She glared at him. Of course such a handsome man would expect a comely wife.

He thumbed her scar and she hardened her resolve. Yay, she’d kill him and take delight in the act. ’Twas no secret she was unsightly, but for him to stand there in his perfection and inspect her scarred cheek like damaged goods was excruciating.

“As I said,” she ground out, jerking her face from his grip, “there is no reason to kiss.”