Warrior Untamed (29 page)

Chase snagged her arm as she attempted to pass, and pulled her close.

“I canna dally, my love. The bride is waiting on my return,” she said.

“She’s waited all day. Another minute isn’t going to kill her.”

He dipped his head to kiss her, and for an instant, transported away by the feel of his lips on hers, she forgot that anyone else shared the hall with them.

Hall’s pointed clearing of his throat brought her back to her senses, and her face heated rapidly as she realized the groom wasn’t the only one who’d been watching.

By the old gods, Chase had the ability to steal away what little sense she’d been given.

“Save me a seat,” he called after her as she raced away on her mission.

As if he thought he’d need to remind her to do such a thing. He was such a part of her now, she couldn’t imagine not having him at her side. Thanks to him, and the Faerie who’d helped her find him, her life was every bit as wonderful as the charred runes she wore around her neck had foretold it would be.

H
ALL
O’D
ONAR ALLOWED
himself a wide grin as Christiana hurried from the dais. His debt to his old Faerie friend was settled well and good. Chase was safe and sound and, from the looks of it, couldn’t be happier.

That this was due in part to Syrie’s intervention only proved that what he’d done this morning in tricking her had been the right thing to do in the long run. Granted, it would take some time for the Magic to run its course for everyone concerned, but in the end, everyone in this room would benefit.

Even the hot-tempered little Faerie herself.

It was shaping up to be a banner decade for weddings at Castle MacGahan.

A hush fell over the crowd as a lone piper picked up the strains of a song unlike any Hall had heard before. All heads turned to the back of the room, toward the great entrance doors where Jamesy MacCulloch entered with the most beautiful woman Hall had ever seen in his life on his arm.

“Here we go,” Chase whispered next to him. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

Hall couldn’t answer, could hardly breathe. All that was left to him was to stare at the woman walking toward him, her face adorned with a smile to match his own.

By some frippery known only to the fairer sex, Bridget’s hair had been piled upon her head and surrounded by a garland of dried flowers.

She wore a dress of pale yellow, similar in color to the frock the Tinklers had given her, but the similarities stopped there. This garment had been fitted to his woman, baring her shoulders, hugging her breasts, and flaring over her hips.

A thin strip of rawhide circled her neck and disappeared into the lace and ribbons that contained her breasts.

She wore his necklace.

“I give unto yer care the well-being and happiness of my only sister,” Jamesy said when they reached the dais. As he placed her hand upon Hall’s, he whispered, “And dinna you forget the warning I gave you last night, aye?”

As if Hall needed his brother-in-law’s admonition to watch after Bridget.

“You look . . .” He paused, awed by the moment.

“Amazing,” Chase whispered loudly.

“You look amazing,” Hall finished.

Perhaps this was why Lady Danielle had insisted that every groom needed a best man. To offer help when his words failed him.

He tried again on his own. “Your dress is . . .” Not like anything he’d ever seen before.

Bridget shrugged, her cheeks coloring a delightful pink. “A bit revealing, is it no? Lady Dani assures me it’s quite modern.”

“Beautiful,” Hall assured her. “The gown is almost as beautiful as the woman who wears it.”

“Oh,” she breathed, her eyes filling with tears.

“Vows!” Chase hissed, with an elbow to Hall’s back.

Vows. Yes. Everyone in the great hall waited for him to start.

He cleared his throat and squeezed the hand he held within his own two.

“I, Hall O’Donar, take thee, Bridget MacCulloch . . .” He began reciting the words that would change his life forever, setting him on a path to happiness far greater than he had ever expected.

B
RIE UNFURLED HER
blanket over the soft green grass and kneeled to unpack the basket of food she’d brought. Once the midday meal was laid out and ready, she sat back to await Hall’s arrival.

As usual, she was much too early.

Not that she would complain about sitting here in the quiet beauty of this Irish hilltop, with the sun warm upon her skin and nothing but green as far as she could see. Far from it. Haven Castle had truly lived up to its name.

The spring and summer in her new home had been the most glorious months of her life, with each and every day bringing some new delight.

Saturday, as today was, had become her favorite day of the week.

With the arrival of warm weather, she and Hall had taken to meeting out here for their midday meal every Saturday, followed by her lessons. Between her determination and Hall’s, she’d managed to turn her knowledge of letters into an ability to read and write over the past seven months.

More or less. Brie was the first to admit that she could decipher words much better than she could form them with the tedious quill and ink that often taxed her patience to its limit.

She might have mastered even more, had their Saturday lessons not always dissolved into unfettered lovemaking. Though, in truth, it was mostly the lovemaking that kept her coming back for the lessons.

A smile lit her face as she spotted her beloved husband in the distance. He rode toward her at breakneck speed, shirtless, standing in his stirrups, one arm raised in greeting.

Bare-chested! A shiver ran down her spine and ended up centering low in her belly. No shirt likely meant he’d stopped for a dip in the pond before coming to meet her. And
that
meant they might skip lessons altogether this fine day.

A perfect way to say good-bye to summer if ever she’d imagined one.

“We’ve a letter!” he called as he jumped from his horse and gathered her up in his arms to greet her with the kisses she so anticipated. “Fresh from the messenger’s hands.”

She’d been right about the pond; his hair still held water droplets. And his face was freshly shaved, just the way he knew she liked it best.

With his bare, warm skin under her hands, her mind wandered down paths that had nothing to do with the letter he waved over his head, and everything
to do with how quickly she could climb out of her shift.

“Brie, love, lessons first, then dessert,” he laughed, dropping to sit before pulling her down onto his lap.

Her man might have only the purest intentions about the lessons, but the bulge under his plaid bumping against her bottom told her his body had other ideas. Ideas to match her own.

“It’s from Chase,” he said temptingly when she tried to turn in his lap. “News from your home. For your lesson today, you can read the letter to me while I relax.”

He scooted her off his lap and stretched out on his back, arms behind his head.

“Fine,” she relented. The sooner she blundered her way through the missive, the sooner they’d get to the “dessert” she wanted.

Chase formed his letters in the strangest fashion, which slowed her reading. She was able to decipher a few words quickly enough to realize the main reason for the letter, though.

“Malcolm and Dani have had their baby!” She scanned over the chicken scratching for more recognizable words. “A boy. They have a son.”

Damn her slow brain, but she couldn’t figure out half of the words Chase had written. “I canna find the babe’s name, Hall. Take this thing. Read it to me. Tell me what name they’ve chosen.”

“Only because my brother has the worst handwriting
anywhere.” He hoisted himself up on one elbow and took the paper she held out, scanning over the whole of it before speaking again. “He doesn’t give the name, love. Sorry.”

“No mention of the name? Yer brother is an idiot, Hall O’Donar. Only a man would forget to share such an important detail.”

“Then we shall consider this an opportunity.”

There was mischief behind the smile breaking over his face. “And how would not knowing something be an opportunity for us?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because it will serve as a perfect excuse for you to practice your writing. You can send a note of congratulations to Malcolm and Dani and ask them what they’ve named their fine new son.”

Her husband was a fiend for practice.

“I will, indeed,” she agreed, turning to lean over him, one hand on either side of his body. “As you say, it’s the thing to do. But no right now. I’m done with my lessons for this Saturday and I’m thinking, because of the frustrating nature of that missive, that I’ve earned that dessert you tempted me with, aye?”

“Aye,” he agreed, fastening his hands around her waist as she straddled to sit on him. “We’ve both earned it.”

She pulled the tie from her hair as his hands wandered up from her waist to fasten on her breasts, just as she liked him to do.

Yet in spite of the lure of his obviously ready
body, she could only picture a tiny nameless baby when she closed her eyes.

“I canna believe he did that.”

“Let it go, love,” Hall said on a sigh. “Later, when we pack up our blanket and return to the keep, you can busy yourself with planning the perfect revenge on my brother for having denied you that wisp of information that you wanted most out of his letter. I’ll even help you. We’ll think of something truly diabolical, if you like. Later.”

He wrapped one hand around the back of her neck and pulled her head down for a kiss while, with his other, he tugged at the skirt wrapped around her legs.

“If we ever have a babe of our own, I’ll see to it that yer brother doesn’t learn his name until he’s ready to take up arms of his own,” she threatened.

There. See how Chase Noble would like that.

“When, not if,” he corrected with a grin. “It will happen eventually. If we keep practicing your lessons, that is.”

“Lessons, my arse,” she replied, jerking her skirt out from under her so that she sat upon her husband, skin touching skin.

He closed his eyes, groaned, and slid both hands around her waist.

“If we do have children, I’d want them all to be sons,” she said.

His eyes popped open and he dropped his hands from her waist. “Why would you say that?”

It should have been obvious enough. She’d been raised by her father and her brother. “I wouldna ken what to do with a daughter, or how to begin to raise one properly.”

“You’re jesting, right? You’ll raise our daughters as you were raised. You turned out better than any other woman I’ve ever known, so why would we want to raise our daughters any differently?”

He reached for her again and she grabbed his hand.

“You’d no be ashamed of a wildling daughter, with no the first idea of how to put ribbons in her hair or what fancy gowns the other girls wear?”

Hall pulled his hands away and scrubbed them over his face.

“I’ll be every bit as proud of them as I am of you, love. I’ll be happy to have my keep filled to overflowing with nothing but wee, wild, brown-haired daughters, all growing up to be fine, wild, untamed warriors exactly like their mother.”

There wasn’t another man in all the world like hers. “Maybe daughters wouldna be so bad after all.”

“They will be wonderful. But”—he flipped her to her back in a move so fast, it took her breath away—“we’ll never get that keep full of wild, untamed warriors if you don’t quiet your blether and put your mind to the business at hand.”

“I will,” she answered, reaching up to tuck a
strand of hair behind his ear. “So that’s how you see me? As a wild, untamed warrior?”

“Exactly how I see you,” he confirmed, pushing her skirts out of his way to fit himself between her legs. “My own personal wild and free, untamed warrior, racing over the hillsides, bow drawn, arrow nocked. My perfect lifemate. I would have you no other way.”

How could she have gotten so lucky? To find the one man on the whole of the earth who saw her exactly as she saw him?

Two untamed warriors taking on the world. Together. For the rest of their lives.