Teresa Medeiros (11 page)

Enid obeyed with a fresh wail. The fragile legs of the Turkish ottoman teetered beneath her weight.

Elizabeth paused before the shimmering blue confection that had once been her own wedding dress. “Careful, girls. I won’t tolerate a single water spot on that satin.” She jerked a lace handkerchief from her bodice, held it to the pinkened nose of a dimpled young maid, and snapped, “Blow!”

Dougal gritted his teeth. The maids were handling the pearl-studded satin as if it were a burial shroud.

The door flew open. It was not Aggie returning from her errand, but Sabrina, her eyes brimming with tears. Dougal saw his own dread mirrored in their sapphire depths. Enid’s wails died to sniffles. The maids’ trembling fingers dropped stitches, unraveling the work they’d done.

She flung herself across the solar and clutched his ruffled shirtfront. “Papa, you must relent. You cannot force me to marry such a hateful man. You heard him. He despises me. He despises us all. Why, he’d as soon wed Pugsley as me!”

Dougal gently caught her wrists. “I have no choice, lass. Perhaps someday you’ll understand.”

She turned away from him. “I shall never understand.”

He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Aye, my princess, there will come a day when you shall.”

Sabrina pulled away from him and ran to Elizabeth. “Please, Mama, surely you can soften his heart. He would do anything for you.”

Elizabeth cupped her daughter’s cheek in her palm. “I’ve already tried, darling. His mind is set.”

Sabrina slowly turned, her eyes overflowing with mute entreaty. She walked toward him—the man who had carried her on his shoulders through the village,
who had tickled her cheek with his beard until she squealed with laughter, who had devoted his life to granting her smallest wish—and dropped to her knees at his feet. Dougal wondered if the others could hear the crack of his heart breaking.

She bowed her head. A solitary tear splashed on his buckled shoe. “If you do this thing, you’ll have your peace, Papa. But you’ll doom me to a life of battle.”

Sabrina was the only one who didn’t see his hand reach toward the softness of her hair, then veer away. He yearned to make her understand, to tell her of the hopes and dreams he’d cherished in his heart for years, but he knew that some truths were better discovered in their own time. “I am as bound by the laws of the court as any other man. I swore to abide by them, and as my daughter ’tis your duty to do the same.” His voice softened. “Go now and prepare to make your vows.”

She rose and walked to the door. As she faced him, a current as palpable as lightning flashed between their eyes of identical color. “How will I ever forgive you for this?”

Even after she was gone, her helpless question hung like a torn thread in the air. Enid broke into fresh sobs, flung her apron over her face, and fled the solar, trailing vegetables in her wake. The maids politely withdrew. Dougal sank against the windowsill, rubbing his aching temples.

Elizabeth’s eyes blazed a cold fire. “How dare you speak of duty to that child? ’Twas your idea to wed her to that heathen, and no one else’s. Tell me—have you nursed this plot in your cunning brain since they were but children? How will she survive life with a man who detests her?”

“Morgan does not detest her,” he said wearily. “You know it as well as I.”

“But does he know it? And will he destroy her before he discovers it? Sabrina is like the rarest rose—sweet-natured, gentle, docile. We’ve never taught her to fight for herself.”

A wistful smile touched his lips. “She was doing an able job of it this morning.”

Elizabeth swept up her scraps of leather. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to prepare your lamb for the sacrifice. You swore you wouldn’t shed the blood of your sons, but you seem only too eager to shed the blood of your daughter.” She wrenched his betrothal ring from her finger and hurled it at him. “Give that to your precious Morgan as well.
’Tis your duty.
”

The door slammed behind her, rattling a miniature family portrait from the wall.

Dougal toyed with the ring, stroking the beveled planes of the glowing ruby. “Ah, Morgan, if my wee princess is half as docile as her mama, ’twill take far more than a ring to bind her.”

Sabrina and Enid lifted their tear-streaked faces to find Elizabeth standing in the doorway of her daughter’s bedchamber.

She nodded to Enid. “ ’Tis best you go now, dear. I must speak to your cousin alone.”

Still gripping her bowl of wilting vegetables, Enid stepped outside the door, only to have it slammed behind her. It seemed an eternity before her aunt emerged to stalk off down the corridor without another word for her.

Enid crept back into the room. Sabrina sat on the edge of the bed, eyes glazed and mouth ajar. She had gone stark white, her cheeks robbed of the roses that usually bloomed there.

Enid set aside the bowl and passed a hand over her cousin’s line of vision. Sabrina didn’t even blink.

Truly frightened now, Enid gave Sabrina’s shoulder a harsh shake. “Cousin! What is it? What did she say to you?”

Sabrina blinked. Her voice was barely audible. “She told me what I could expect from the marriage bed.”

“Oh, is that all?” Enid plopped down on the bed, then remembering herself, affected a look of wide-eyed horror. “Is it so dreadful?”

Sabrina shuddered. “Horrible!” Her eyes finally
focused. She cupped a hand around Enid’s ear and whispered into it.

Enid gave a satisfying gasp. “No! She must have been jesting. He couldn’t possibly put … that”—her voice rose to an excited squeak—
“there.
”

Sabrina nodded solemnly, then whispered something else.

“Oh, dear Lord!” Enid felt her eyes roll back in her head at the thought. Sabrina fished in Enid’s pocket, pulled out the bottle of hartshorn, and waved it under Enid’s nose. Enid fanned herself with her hand, hiding her dreamy smile. “Imagine doing that with such a strapping … male … animal.”

Shaking off her shock, Sabrina jumped down from the bed to pace. “Oh, that’s only the beginning. It gets worse. Much worse. Perhaps I should kill myself. After I’m dead, they can lay me out in the drawing room in my wedding gown. Papa can kiss my wan, cold cheek if he dares.”

Fresh tears sprang to Enid’s eyes at the vision of her noble cousin meeting such an ignoble end. “Perhaps Morgan’s not the monster you imagine. Might some part of him not be amenable to taking a wife?”

“No doubt. And thanks to Mama, I now know exactly which part.”

Her burst of energy spent, Sabrina dragged herself back to the bed and sank down beside Enid. “I swore I wouldn’t give him a moment’s pleasure, but it seems a man will seek his pleasure how he chooses and a woman’s will means nothing. Even before Morgan believed the Camerons murdered his father, he despised me. What’s to stop him from slaking all of his rage on me? What if he decides to make me pay for all the Cameron crimes against his family, both real and imagined?”

Enid saw Morgan’s face in her mind—stern, forbidding, beautiful even at its most mocking. She shivered. “How you must hate him!”

Sabrina bowed her head. “Would to God that I could.”

It was not her cousin’s lack of tears that rent
Enid’s heart, but her quiet despair. She touched Sabrina’s hair. It was soft and thick and so much more lovely than her own wispy blond strands.

Sabrina was the brave one. She had been Enid’s friend from their very first meeting. Shamed at being banished from London, Enid had been sniveling in her bedchamber when a fat, hairy spider had cornered her on the bed. It had been Sabrina who calmly scooped up the puzzled little fellow and escorted him to the window before drying Enid’s hysterical tears. Frustration now swelled in her. Even if there was something she could do to help Sabrina, she knew she would lack the courage.

Helplessly she patted Sabrina’s shoulder, forgetting the bowl of vegetables, which tumbled to the rug. A plump toadstool bounced across Enid’s foot.

As she bent to pick it up, her pale eyes narrowed with a fierce determination Sabrina wouldn’t have recognized. “Perhaps your Morgan will find his taste for revenge more bitter than he expects.”

Morgan stumbled over the stoop, biting off a blasphemy that caused every head in the candlelit kirk to swivel in his direction. Ranald stepped on his heels. Morgan threw back his shoulders, tacitly warning every Cameron who had come to witness this farce of a wedding that their first chuckle at this MacDonnell’s expense would be their last.

It was a miracle he could walk at all with the damnable leather flaps cinched to his feet. He had no need of sandals! His own soles had been toughened to callused hide by traipsing over heath and hills, stones and briers, all his life. Had his future mother-in-law not braved the derision of his men to deliver them, he would have given in to his temptation to fling them into the baptismal font.

He should have known his men were up to no good that afternoon when they’d lapsed into stunned silence. They’d been teasing him mercilessly ever since
he’d laundered both himself and his plaid in the icy waters of a rushing burn.

He had parried their taunts as he hung the plaid over a tree branch to dry.

“Och, Morgan’s near as pretty as Ranald when he’s clean, ain’t he? He’ll make a bonny bride for the Cameron wench.”

“Careful, lad, that staff twixt yer legs’ll shrink if ye get it wet.”

“Is that what happened to yours, Fergus?” he replied pleasantly before swinging around to face his tormentors, hands on hips, naked, dripping, and exhibiting bold evidence that Fergus was a shameless liar.

Only it wasn’t Fergus standing at the crest of the hill, but Elizabeth Cameron, a basket hanging over one arm and a maidservant cowering behind her. The mistress of Cameron Manor neither blinked nor blushed at the sight of him.

Morgan barely had time to yank the cold, wet plaid around his hips before a pair of sandals slapped him in the chest.

“I cannot find any shoes in the village to fit those slabs of beef you call feet, but I’ll not stand by and watch my only daughter wed a barefoot savage.”

With those words, she had turned on her heel and marched back toward the manor, regally oblivious of the whistles, applause, and appreciative hoots that followed her.

Morgan’s ears burned at the memory. He wondered if Sabrina had inherited her mother’s talent for making him look like a bloody fool.

He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He hadn’t set foot in a kirk since his last summer at Cameron. Its atmosphere of hushed reverence unnerved him.

Ranald echoed his thoughts. “Too bloody quiet in here,” he whispered. “Should have brought me pipes.”

“Shhh,” Morgan hissed. “Take off your bonnet.”

Ranald jerked off the jaunty hat and crumpled it against his chest, eyeing the narrow stained-glass windows as if he expected Jesus and his apostles to stage an
ambush. Morgan had wisely left the rest of his clansmen to the casks of ale Dougal had provided. With Angus dead, Ranald was the closest thing he had to true family, and it had been Morgan’s choice to have Ranald by his side to witness the vows.

An unexpected pang of loneliness touched him. He missed his da’s canny wit and tart tongue. His men cared for nothing but revelry, their chief concern being where their next flagon of ale would come from. At least if Angus were still alive, Morgan would have had someone to discuss his decision with. But if Angus were alive, Morgan wouldn’t be traversing this seemingly endless aisle to the altar.

Dougal Cameron stood at the end of that aisle, his bearded face as serene as an angel’s. Morgan bit back a growl, torn between suspicion and uncertainty. Was this marriage only a clever ploy to divert attention from Dougal’s complicity in Angus’s murder? But a father would have to be mad to entrust his daughter into the keeping of a man who would have the legal power to exact the cruelest sort of retribution with no fear of reprisal. And Dougal Cameron was no madman.

His men might be willing to condemn Dougal and gleefully anticipate the revenge Morgan would wreak on the Cameron’s fragile daughter, but Morgan found too many flaws in that theory for his satisfaction.

Dougal had also spared them an audience, inviting only his immediate family. As Morgan drew nearer, a blotchy-eyed blond woman crushing a bouquet of wilted flowers stepped aside to reveal his waiting bride.

Suddenly panicked, Morgan froze in his tracks, provoking another stumble and grunt from Ranald.
A bride
. What in God’s name was he supposed to do with a bride? His men had given him ample suggestions in the past few hours, none of which bore repeating in the house of the Lord. But not one of those men would appreciate the sacrifice he was about to make. Uniting with Clan Cameron in this unholy alliance would buy them both peace and the time they needed to build Clan MacDonnell to its former glory.

Sweat broke out on his brow. Dougal should have
left him to rot in the dungeon. His life was surely over now, severed not by chains of iron, but of matrimony.

The irony did not escape him. Unlike most of his clansmen, he’d always taken great care where he spilled his seed, lest his freedom be curtailed or his life be ended by an outraged papa waving a musket. Now, due to Dougal’s twisted idea of fair compensation, he was being sentenced for a crime he had not committed. Yet.

Fighting the urge to flee, he strode boldly down the aisle. Let no man say Morgan MacDonnell was afraid, especially not of some dainty scrap of a girl. As he approached the altar, Sabrina glowered at him fiercely. It puzzled him until he realized she was only mirroring his own scowl. A cloud of blue satin enveloped her, the color of the sky over the heath on a spring day.

The minister commanded them both to kneel. Morgan stood stiffly at attention. A MacDonnell knelt before no man. Not even a man of God. Sabrina bobbed, then straightened when she realized Morgan had made no move to obey. They glared at each other, neither willing to be the first to bend the knee. The minister rolled his eyes heavenward as if seeking some divine assistance.

It was not God, but Dougal who laid a firm hand on both their shoulders and drove them down.