Bride of the Beast (11 page)

Sir Marmaduke's grip tightened when she tried to wrench free. "Leave him be," he said, accurately guessing her desire to follow her stepson. "Only after he's faced his dragons and laid them to rest, will he be able to rise high enough above himself to win yon men's admiration."

"And I suppose you are well-practiced at winning men's esteem?"

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "So some might claim."

"He wins the ladies, too," Sir Alec boasted, plunking down his ale mug. The crusty Highlander dragged his sleeve over his mouth. "Steals their hearts afore they ken what hit 'em, he does."

"Their hearts and all else they toss after him," another embellished with a bold wink. Others chorused agreement, her men joining in the ribaldry as well, until the remaining shreds of dissent evaporated amidst a flood of ever bawdier jesting.

"... he's so bi—er—
well-blessed
none of the ladies will even glance at the rest of us after he's—"

"By the Mass, Ross, hold your tongue," Marmaduke's commanding voice carried clear to the inky dark corners of the hall.

His man, a ruddy-faced Highlander, shrugged burly shoulders but appeared anything but abashed. "A spell-caster, he is!" he called out, slapping his thigh for emphasis. "Charmed Arabella, charms 'em all."

The more vocal amongst those present roared their approval and a swell of chortles tripped down the length of the high table and beyond.

Visibly paling, he released her shoulder at once. " 'Fore God, that's enough!" The massed power pouring off him silenced his men as much as the heat of his words.

Bracing his hands on his hips, he raked the lot of them with a fearsome stare. "I charge you to remember there are ladies present," he said, the very walls seeming to draw pause and listen. "Think well before you spout such foolery again, my friends."

"Beg pardon, milady," a bearded Highlander said, half-rising off his bench. " 'Tis a hard-bitten lot we are, not always fit for a fine lady's hall."

Generously proffered agreement poured forth from the others as well, but Caterine scarce heard the well-meant atonements nor her own murmured acceptance, for other words echoed in her heart.

Some sent heat inching up the back of her neck; others pinched deep into a hitherto unknown streak of feminine pique running straight through her core.

Big,
the ruddy-faced MacKenzie had meant to boast.

Well-blessed, he'd amended.

Caterine's face flamed. The English knight was both, as she'd seen.

With startling clarity, the Highlander's words summoned the unhindered view she'd had of his naked maleness in the moments before he'd settled into his bath.

A most splendid array of manhood.

And he'd been fully at ease.

Caterine's heart flip-flopped and her mouth went dry. Something deep inside her contracted to a tight and hollow ache. The recalled image, even in its relaxed state, weighted her belly with a pulsing warmth. Imagining him at need, fully aroused, filled her with a greedy, gnawing hunger she'd never believed existed until now.

"Do not heed their buffoonery, my lady. They forget themselves at times," he spoke at last, the smoothness of his voice wanning her soul as surely as remembering his male perfection fired her body.

Caterine drew a shaky breath, the image of his nakedness still emblazoned on her senses. She blinked, awakening as if from a haze.
He
was peering oddly at her.

Everyone in the hall peered oddly at her.

Someone sniggered.

It was a low titter, but enough to shatter the strange intensity charging the very air between them.

Conversation resumed at the tables. Everyday sounds of hungry men partaking of what humble offerings Dunlaidir could place before them. The sheer accustomedness of the noise made bald mockery of how quickly her own personal sense of normalcy had changed since the English knight's arrival.

Acutely aware of him, Caterine lifted a hand to her shoulder. Though he'd released her, the tingling warmth where his fingers had pressed against her yet lingered.

As if privy to her thoughts, he smoothed the back of his fingers down the curve of her cheek and the tingles spread, tumbling down her back in a startling cascade of pleasure spilling clear to her toes.

"You mustn't let my men unsettle you," he said, lifting away his hand.

You
unsettle me! she wanted to shout, but the hint of an amused gleam in his good eye gave her halt.

And made her bold.

Daring enough to challenge the sensations he'd awakened in her.

She wet her lips. "Is it foolery, my lord?"

"Is what foolery, my lady?" The barely there gleam became a full-fledged twinkle.

She stared at him, gladful that Eoghann had just plunked down a platter of roasted seabird. The rich smell of the savory gannet meat staved off curious glances.

Emboldened, she stepped a bit closer to him. Just near enough to test the persuasive mastery streaming out from every muscled inch of him.

"Are you a spell-caster?" She tilted her head to one side, her gaze as direct as her words. "A charmer of women as your men claim?"

His lips curving in the faintest smile, he caught her hand and began massaging her palm with the calloused pad of his thumb. "I would rather leave that for you to decide," he said, releasing her. "Mayhap one day soon you will favor me with your assessment."

Too stunned by the delicious prickling sensation dancing across her palm, Caterine blinked at him, too flustered to remember what else she'd wanted to ask him.

Before she could even catch her breath, he seized her hand once more and placed a searingly tender kiss on the inside of her wrist.

At her quick intake of breath, the skin around his eyes crinkled in amusement and his smile deepened to reveal a set of utterly appealing dimples. Two vertical creases running from mid-cheek to just below the corners of his mouth, and as charming as his scar was daunting.

But they vanished as quickly as they'd appeared. Without a further word, he turned and strode off into the shadows.

Only then did she remember what else she'd wanted to know.

Arabella.

The woman his men said he'd charmed.

"Who is Arabella?" her lips formed the silent question.

Three whispered words to taunt her.

A name to temper the fluttery excitement his touch and his dimples had left behind.

Who is Arabella?
This time her heart asked.

And more importantly, why was she so desperate to know?

**

A
braw English knight.

The words swirled around him as he passed through the darkened hall. Sweet praise to cajole him, a simply stated comment bursting with wondrous possibilities and brimming with hope.

The same kind of giddy elation a drowning man must feel when tossed a rope.

Braw, she'd said.

Marmaduke's heart swelled.

No maid had called him thus since he'd been blighted by his scar.

Slowing his steps, he considered abandoning his desire to seek out her ill-humored stepson and attempt to cure the young man's aches. An irresistible urge seized him to return to the high table, fetch his new lady, haul her into his arms, and see to tending his own woes.

And hers.

But while her words beckoned, the expression she'd worn after he'd kissed her wrist lent renewed speed to his feet. Wonder and bewilderment had filled her sapphire eyes and the memory of both rode hard on his shoulders.

Her wonder urged him to tear away the cool restraint she kept wrapped around herself and awaken her womanhood with as many soul-stealing kisses as it cost him.

The bewilderment signaled the need to woo her gently.

Caterine Keith's passion would require finesse, skill, and infinite patience.

So he strode on, searching the shadows for James and calling on every shred of his iron will to ignore the parade of conflicting desires trailing in his wake.

Her dog, the snarling beastie, followed him as well, snapping at his heels until he whirled around and gave the mite a ferocious look of his own.

The wee creature froze, his snapping jaws halted as surely as if Marmaduke had emptied a bucket of ice water on him. For a heartbeat, the little dog peered up at him, stunned surprise brimming in his round eyes before he tore off across the rashes, his short legs pumping faster than if a pack of rabid hell-hounds chased after him.

Soundly repelled by one fierce look.

A fearsome scowl from the ravaged face of a man once rumored to be amongst the most handsome of
England
's chivalry.

Marmaduke almost laughed and would have, did his accursed vanity not choose that moment to plunge cold shards of bitterness into his heart.

                                                               
...
forget so soon

                                                               
How you and I, the world away,

                                                               
Once lay and watched the moon?

The song, its familiar words a poignant memorial to a long-past time, sliced into him with all the vengeance of a marauder's arcing sword.

He spun around, his gaze searching the farthest end of the hall whence the haunting verse seemed to come. He spotted her immediately, despite the darkness of the deep window embrasure where she sat, softly plucking a lute and singing... as she'd done so many nights during their too-brief marriage.

Arabella.

Her slim body wrapped in the furred bed-robe he'd gifted her with a mere sennight before her death, her glossy raven hair hanging free, his long-buried wife strummed her lute and sang for him.

                                               
Can you forget the day,

                                                               
The day that we
—
? But I'm a fool,

                                                               
Alas, my love, that day is faded and gone.

Blood pumping wildly through his veins, Marmaduke made straight for her, uncomfortably disturbed by the way his heart exchanged Arabella's free-flowing black tresses for satiny locks of gleaming gold.

Even his ears betrayed him for they strained to catch softer, more honeyed notes than the throaty, smoky-sounding tones drifting from the shadowy corner.

Telling too, his burning desire to see her look up and gaze at him from sapphire eyes. But the first eyes to meet his when he reached the little alcove were dark.

Dark and masculine.

James shot him a sour glance, then scooted around on the window embrasure's cushioned seat, turning his back on Marmaduke to stare out on the great sweep of the iron-gray sea.

On the facing windowseat, Lady Rhona set aside her lute. "Sir," she greeted Marmaduke, her smile as cordial as James's rigid back was cold.

"Lady." Marmaduke inclined his head, still too flum moxed by what could only have been a cruel trick of the light to offer more than a perfunctory greeting.

Not lissome at all, nor as beautiful as Arabella had been, his lady's companion adjusted the furred skins tucked around her plump thighs and hips. "Your man, Sir Lachlan, rests comfortably in the late Lord Keith's solar," she said. "We squeezed a bit of sea lettuce juice into his wine to help him sleep. I will redress his wound later."

"Have a care lest you coddle him." James twisted back around to glare reproach at her. "He has but a flesh wound."

"That as it may be, there are times all men have need of being cosseted." She leveled a look of clear censure at him. "As there are times such pampering is wholly misplaced."

James stared at her, tight-lipped. He didn't so much as glance at Marmaduke, not that he cared. The skin on the back of his neck still prickled too coldly for him to pay heed to the charged undercurrents bouncing back and forth between his lady's friend and Dunlaidir's blazing-eyed heir.

More disturbing by far was the queer glimpse he'd had of long-ago days best forgotten.

Swallowing the bitterness rising in his throat, he studied Rhona, seeking to decipher what beyond Arabella's favorite love sonnet had summoned such painful echoes of another time.

A queersome instance, for naught on his lady's friend resembled his late wife save the same dark coloring.

"'Tis good you've come, my lord," she addressed him, her high color and James Keith's scowling countenance hinting they'd been engaging in more than lute playing and songs before he'd disturbed them.

"My lady has long had need of a champion," she added, casting a quick glance at James. "I knew her sister's husband would send a daring man in mail and sword-belt. A warrior unafraid—"