Bride of the Beast (21 page)

Eoghann swelled his chest. "That's what I've been telling her. No victuals, no feast." He snorted derisively. "Lest we serve braised mist harvested from the fog e're rolling in off fte sea. Of that, we have plenty."

At his words, a new kind of prickling seized Marmaduke, toe kind of nigglings he cherished ... the birth of an idea.

The beginnings of a plan.

Three sides of salt beef hung from the ceiling. Ancient-looking, they appeared to be the only source of meat in all toe undercroft's fastness.

Save a few scrawny seabird carcasses, yet to be plucked and dressed.

"You once had an impressive herd of cattle." Marmaduke slanted a glance at James. "My liege raved about them for days after his last visit. He swore he'd never eaten finer beef."

"Aye, the best beef to be had within a three-days ride is what was said," James owned. "Now, with our cattle grazing the fields de la Hogue usurped from Sir
John
, we have scarce enough stores to satisfy the grateful belly of a single wandering friar."

Resting his hip on the edge of the well, the young lord seemed to age years. "In my father's time, this holding was a major strength in this part of
Scotland
," he said, somber-voiced. "Then Sir Hugh smashed his iron fist on us, not taking our walls but ravaging our land and lifting our cattle." "Put the fear of God into the burghers, too," Eoghann supplied, gall etching hard lines into his craggy face.

"A black-hearted blighter if ever there was one," James agreed.

Only Marmaduke withheld comment, his attention on the creel of oxhides.

At last he knew what must be done. "You wish to host a marriage feast," he said to Rhona. "I humbly accept. But," he added, glancing at Eoghann, "we shall celebrate two wedding feasts."

Behind him, James made an odd choking sound. "Two?"

"One feast following the nuptials, serving up whatever is
on hand," he explained. "The second a few nights later and
garnished with the best beef to be had within a three-days
ride."

"You are full mad." A look of sheer incredulity stole over James's face.

"Nay, I am hoping my wedding night will prove a dark and moonless one," Marmaduke corrected. "The first friage feast will be our smokescreen."

"Smokescreen”
That from Eoghann.

Marmaduke nodded. "A ruse to allow a few of us to slip onto Sir
John
's old lands and win back your cattle."

"I still do not understand," James puzzled.

"I do," Eoghann owned. "I can't believe I didn't think of it."

James looked confused.

"Don't you see?" A gleam came into the seneschal's eyes. "Who would expect a man to launch a cattle raid on his wedding night?"

"Oh." Comprehension began to steal across James's face. "And what about the night of the second marriage feast?"

"That, my friend, remains to be seen," Marmaduke lied for the second time that morning.

He knew exactly what would transpire.

**

Shellfish and seaware.

Food for the poor.

And soon to be the mainstay offerings at a marriage feast she'd only this day learned would take place.

The second celebration presented even more absurdities, but of a wholly different nature.

All manner of disquieting prospects parading through her "Bind, Caterine tossed another handful of wet, dripping sea tangle into one of the dozen or so creels scattered along the narrow shoreline where Dunlaidir's cliffs met the sea.

Inhaling deeply of the salt-laden air, she pressed cold-numbed fingers against the small of her aching back and Wished herself anywhere but here ... on the one tiny sliver of beach accessible to the stronghold's residents.

Reached by a precarious path carved centuries ago into the living stone of the mainland's cliff-face, its tidal pools
shallows, protected by the deep curve of a hidden bay, provided rich harvesting ground for a variety of seaweed and other gifts of the briny deep.

Blessed sustenance she and the most trusted members of the household had been gathering for hours.

And the gloaming would soon be upon them, a day spent in toil and labor.

And the hatching of covert plans.

Closing her eyes, Caterine turned her face into the chill, blustery wind and contemplated the wisdom of grown men sneaking about disguised as oxen.

A fool notion to her, a brilliant strategy to those who meant to act it out.

Especially her champion, who'd sprung the idea on them, claming the late King Robert Bruce had once used the same trickery—the tossing of oxhides o'er one's crouched body, then using the stealth of darkness to merge with a herd and thus near a watching garrison undetected.

Caterine scoffed at the very idea.
She
had never heard of
Scotland
's hero king sneaking anywhere.

And if he had, he'd certainly not done so camouflaged as a... a
cowl

"There are distinct advantages to this day's ungentle chores," a familiar voice whispered in her ear.

Caterine's eyes flew wide.

A blast of massed trumpets couldn't have startled her more.

She stared hard at her companion. "I know that look on you," she said. "You were collecting limpets from the rock pool on the other side of the strand. What
advantages
drove you over here to startle me out of my wits?"

"You wound me." Rhona whipped a bulging sack of the conical shells from behind her back. "This is the sixth one
I've filled. As for the advantages ..."

She cast a sidelong glance at the straining muscles of Sir Alec's bared back as he hefted a full creel of glistening dulse onto his shoulder for the climb up the cliff stairs.

"My lady, have you e'er seen so much prime male flesh in one place?" she wanted to know.

Caterine glanced toward the water where the MacKenzie men and a few of Dunlaidir's best waded through the shallows, their seaweed-filled nets floating behind them.

To a man, they'd discarded their tunics. Some had even removed their hose, opting to brave the cold waters in naught but their braies.

They may well have been naked. Every last one of them, including
him.
"Aye, I've noticed." Caterine saw no need to be coy. She'd also noted which man's clinging underhose revealed the largest and heaviest-looking bulge.

And the sight of it filled the lowest part of her belly with a warm, pulsing
tingle.

She sent a glance down the beach to where an equally shirtless James worked the rock pool. "Think you James would approve of your ogling?"

Rhona shrugged. "There is no harm in looking. I suspect James Keith would lose all interest in me if he thought I couldn't appreciate a man's well-fleshed pleasure tools. Especially when they're displayed so—"

"Pleasure tools?”
Caterine near choked on the term. " 'Tis how I think of them, but there are other ways of calling them."

"How can you occupy yourself with such foolery when you ken full well why we are here?" Caterine glanced at the men with the nets.

No better than her friend, Caterine's attention sought and rested where it shouldn't.

There was something sublimely arousing about the way the thin cloth of the men's braies hugged that part of them. The damp linen molded itself so perfectly to their flesh, not just the length of their shafts and the swell of their ballocks could be determined but also the abundance of the thick hankering their maleness.

At once, a weighty tension began pulsing deep in Caterine's belly, becoming even more insistent when her gaze settled on the thus-displayed male parts of the man who raged heads above the others: her champion's.

"He would pleasure you well, my lady," her friend declared, low-voiced.

"I do not want to be pleasured," Caterine denied, appalled by how stale the statement tasted.

How false.

Her entire body ached to know pleasure.

Rhona tossed her bag of limpets onto a growing pile of limpet-filled sacks. "I take my pleasure where and when I can find it," she said, then strode down the beach toward James and the waiting rock pool.

Even then, she was ruled by her passions.

Unbidden, Sir Marmaduke's description of his first wife popped into Caterine's mind.

Taunted her, was more like it.

Caterine's chest tightened with discomfiture. Like Arabella, she suspected her companion, too, was a woman of passion.

She
was not.

Not that she didn't know what passion was ... she did.

Especially since
his
arrival.

She'd just never reached out and grabbed hold of it.

But maybe she should.

Her decision made, she scooped up another dripping handful of sea tangle and dropped it into the waiting creel. She'd buried two husbands—the first dying of cold English steel when he was but a few years older than James is now. The second died of old age—and she wasn't getting any younger.

No one would fault her if she took advantage of her attraction to the Sassunach ... and let him teach her what it meant to be a woman ruled by passion.

So long as she kept her heart out of such intimate explorations, she wouldn't fault herself either.

many hours later,
in the most silent depths of the night, Caterine stole from her bed and into the ante-room.
He
hadn't yet sought the rough pallet he'd made for himself on the tiny chamber's rush-strewn floor, and the saints knew where he held himself.

Most likely he walked the ramparts.

Or mayhap he'd found succor in the arms of a fetching kitchen wench eager to air her skirts for one of his rare dimpled smiles and a few fair words.

More piqued by that possibility than she cared to admit, Caterine frowned at the innocuous pallet.

Lumpy and straw-filled, it loomed empty but held the imprint of his braw self as surely as if he reposed on it in all his well-hewn glory.

Seized by the odd tightening of her chest that seemed to
Prague
her each time he came to mind, she hastened from the ante-room only to have to acknowledge his all-encompassing Presence pervaded the whole of her quarters.

Not just the small portion he'd claimed for his own.

Even the curtained confines of her great four-poster bed couldn't spend her sanctuary for it was there the strangely | Palpable feel of him proved the most pervasive.

Which was why she'd fled its cold depths in the first place.

And dared to do so as bare-bottomed as she slept.

Surprised by her daring, heat inched up her neck even as the fresh night wind pouring through the opened shutters kissed her flesh with chillbumps.

Not at all unaccustomed to men seeing her undressed, having been robbed of all maidenly timidity at a tender age, the thought she'd risked having
him
awaken and view her thus, set off alarm bells of the most serious nature.

And sent rivulets of trickling excitement spilling through her.

Acutely aware of the throbbing tension building low by her thighs, she snatched her discarded camise off the strongbox at the foot of her bed, and pulled it swiftly over her head.

Not that its thin linen could shield her from the keen-edged anticipation eddying inside her.

Ripples of sensation put there by the damning knowledge that, soon, she would stand naked before him and, despite the reservations of her heart, her body, long starved of any form of tactile pleasure, would joy in it.

Revel in encouraging him to assuage an ache she no longer cared to deny.

Her senses reeling, she stood before the strongbox, desiring to watch the remainder of the night drift by from one of the his-and-her seats carved into the sides of the chamber's largest window embrasure, but found herself unable to move.

The iron-bound chest exerted an irresistible thrall, soundly staying her feet and demanding her attention.

Beckoning to her.

Or rather, the cloth-covered clump of granite inside the chest, beckoned.

The Laird's Stone.

Her blood pounding in her ears, she stared hard at the innocent-looking strongbox. Legend claimed the Laird's Stone measured a man's prowess and chivalric courage
when recognizing a new Master of Dunlaidir. So shouldn't the Sassunach's bold claiming of her quarters, the sheer proximity of his stalwart self, influence the stone's allegiance?

Inspire it to weep?

If indeed it could.

Before she could stop herself, she dropped to her knees, fumbled with the cold iron of the lock, and raised the chest's lid.