Teresa Medeiros (17 page)

A dark shiver crawled over Sabrina’s skin.

A raspy voice said, “Aye, and when he sickens o’ her mewlin’, he’ll toss his scraps to us. I, for one, will be ready and waitin’.”

“Ye were born ready, Fergus. What makes ye think they’ll be anythin’ left o’ the lass when he’s through with her?”

“Cedric speaks the truth. Ye know what the women say about him. Bullheaded and—”

Sabrina gently pulled the door shut before she could discover what her husband’s lovers thought of his prowess. She flinched as another wave of black laughter crashed like thunder against her skull. Despite her most valiant attempts at optimism, her day seemed destined to go from bad to worse.

Stiffening her spine, she marched away from the door, unwilling to face the niggling fear that Morgan truly hated her enough to use her, then toss her to that pack of rabid wolves.

An arched corridor led her through a buttery into a poorly lit cavern that must serve as the kitchen. Milky sunlight trickled through arrow slits set high on the
wall. Sabrina hesitated in the shadows, her hands knotted even tighter than her stomach to discover women draped over the tables and benches in various states of slovenly undress.

There was no bustle of activity here as there had been in the Cameron kitchens, no mouth-watering scents of pork frying or porridge bubbling. The twin hearths gaped like toothless mouths, their ashes dark and cold.

There was no sign of Eve, but Sabrina had no difficulty recognizing the woman Morgan had cast out of his chamber the previous night. Alwyn straddled a scarred bench as if it were a bucking stallion. A tangle of golden hair hung well past her buttocks.

“Saw the wee bitch myself, I did.” Alwyn snapped a bite out of a shriveled green apple. “A haughty thing. Ugly too. Pale as milk with thick, dark brows that looked like slugs.” Sabrina absently traced the arch of one eyebrow with her fingertip. “I felt nothin’ but pity for me Morgan. Left alone all night with that pathetic bag o’ bones.”

An old woman cackled, revealing a mouthful of rotted teeth. “Maybe he put the pillow o’er her face ’afor he did the dirty deed. I ’spect a Cameron bitch is the same as any other when the candle’s blown out.”

The other women giggled, but Alwyn took another ruthless swipe at the apple, her gray eyes hardened to smoky flints. “I’d like to put a pillow o’er her face. One less Cameron would do this world proud.”

Golden juice trickled down her chin and Sabrina’s stomach betrayed her. Its fearful rumbling drew Alwyn’s gaze like a magnet. The woman’s sulky lips thinned to a malevolent smirk, but instead of pointing out Sabrina to her cronies, she simply flexed one of her long, shapely legs, revealing the wicked-looking dirk strapped beneath her gown. Sabrina was transfixed by the throaty venom of her voice.

“The Cameron wench may be a lady, but me Morgan needs a woman who can give as good as she gets. A lady won’t be able to handle a man like him.”
She looked Sabrina dead in the eye. “He’ll tear her apart.”

Sabrina retreated into the shadows of the buttery. She was beginning to understand why her mother had always warned her against eavesdropping. At Castle MacDonnell, it was less a matter of manners than survival.

Whirling around, she darted blindly down the nearest passage, feeling her way along the rough stone when the sheen in her eyes blinded her. The hollow ache in her gut was worse than hunger. She wandered the deserted catacombs for what seemed like centuries until she passed beneath a fluted arch and turned down a corridor that ended in a massive stone wall.

A dead end. A passage to nowhere. Just as her feelings for Morgan had always been.

But a glimmer at the far end of the corridor drew her forward. The wind moaned through a row of shattered windows, stirring rotted tapestries that looked as if they’d been shredded by giant claws.

Sabrina found herself face-to-face with her own reflection in a full-length wall mirror framed by tarnished bronze. A jagged crack severed her head from her throat. Mesmerized by the stranger peering back at her, she slowly unwound her hair, letting it fall in a dark cloud around her face. The warped glass distorted her features just as the past week had distorted her life. It was as if she’d tumbled into some nightmarish realm where everything she’d been taught to believe was only cruel illusion.

Her fingers sought the familiar arch of her brows, the slant of her nose, the trembling fullness of her lower lip. She’d never considered herself vain. She’d never had to be. Her beauty, like her wealth and the love of her family, had simply been a fact of life, as indisputable as the rich sable of her hair or the pearly evenness of her teeth. All her life, people had told her she was pretty.

But what if they had lied? What if they’d told her only what she wanted to hear? Had they been laughing
behind her back, or, worse yet, pitying her? Only one person had ever remained untouched by her beauty.

Morgan
.

Her vision clouded. Her dark hair and blue eyes shifted into the dear and familiar image of her papa, his expression as bereft as it had been in the moment she had denied him her farewell kiss.

The harsh whisper tore from her lips. “Oh, Papa. Why have you done this to me?”

But even as she condemned him, she pressed her palm to the mirror, seeking the prickly warmth of his beard but finding only the stark betrayal of cold glass.

Sometimes Morgan felt that Pookah was the only freedom he had ever tasted. The horse picked its way through the ferny bracken, docile beneath his control. Only on Pookah could Morgan escape the constant demands, whining, and clamoring of his clan.

He’d been sixteen when he had wrested the stallion from the drunken son of a wealthy laird who had been beating the horse into insensibility. After being given a taste of his own riding crop, the arrogant whelp had been only too eager to yield the horse to Morgan. He had saved his pride by proclaiming the horse stolen by one of those “thieving MacDonnells.” The outraged laird had hanged the next MacDonnell caught poaching on his land—a lad of twelve.

Pookah still bore the scars of his first master’s abuse, both outwardly and in the fierceness of his disposition. Morgan sometimes felt they were brothers beneath the skin.

Leaving the horse to root in the sparse grass, Morgan dismounted and entered a stone crofter’s cottage nestled in a glade. The thatch-roofed cottage was a quaint reminder of a time when the MacDonnells still had sheep and the crofters to tend them. Morgan often came here to think when he could no longer bear the crushing weight of the castle.

He cocked back a chair and propped his feet on
the windowsill. His father’s body now slumbered eternally beneath a blanket of stones.

Morgan knew in his heart that Angus had never loved him for who he was but for what he could do. The old man had taken great glee in provoking fights so Morgan could prove his worth with his fists. It was Angus’s mercenary games that had made Dougal Cameron’s affection so intolerable all those years ago. How could Morgan accept a regard not bought at the price of his own sweat and blood? Now Angus’s murderer had gone free, leaving Sabrina Cameron to pay the price for his treachery.

He let the chair thump down. Damn the Camerons anyway! Even when he should be mourning his father, all he could see was Sabrina’s face at the moment she believed he would strike her. Didn’t the wee fool know he could kill her with a single blow?

Morgan had never struck a woman, no matter how sorely tempted. He had learned long ago not to use his strength recklessly—at seventeen, while standing, chest heaving and blood streaming from his broken nose, over the crumpled corpse of a clansman who had been his friend. His father had provoked the good-natured brawl, then taunted Morgan’s rival into an enraged frenzy. Alarmed at the bloodlust gleaming in his friend’s eyes, Morgan had sought to end the bout before one of them was maimed. But the single blow designed to do so had ended his clansman’s life instead.

Angus had rushed forward to slap him on the back in congratulations. For the first time, Morgan had knocked his father’s hand away and towered over him, fists clenched in rage. The flare of fear in Angus’s eyes had sent Morgan reeling through the crowd to find a quiet place where he could relieve the churning of his stomach and his mind.

An uneven footfall struck the dirt floor behind him. Morgan didn’t turn around. Only one person would dare invade his sanctuary.

“Are you sorry to see him go, Eve?” he said softly.

“We both know he would’ve been dead before the first snowfall. But, aye, it galls me to know a Cameron blade cut him down. I hope ye’ll make that worthless wench o’ theirs pay.”

“Why? It wasn’t her hand that wielded the blade.”

“It might as well have been. I know her sort. She’s poison, like any other fancy lady. Cloudin’ a man’s mind with soft talk and sweet perfumes.”

Morgan swung around to face the stony jut of Eve’s jaw. “I’ve already killed one woman just by bein’ born. I’ve no intention of killin’ another. Shall I butcher the sheep Dougal gave me as well? And the chickens? Have they no other worth than vengeance?”

Steel clashed between their eyes before Eve dropped her gaze. The two of them had always shared respect, if not tenderness. A bond of intelligence ran between them, deeper than blood, stronger than even the strangling chains of clanship. They had long ago joined in unspoken agreement to do whatever it took to keep the faltering flame of Clan MacDonnell burning.

Eve tossed her braid over her shoulder and drew a chair around to straddle it. “Verra well, lad. If ye won’t kill the lass, then do somethin’ else for me own peace o’ mind.”

Morgan repeated the promise he had given Elizabeth Cameron, fully aware of the irony. “Anythin’ to please a lady.”

“Put yer babe in her.”

Morgan rose and paced to the barren hearth. He braced his hands on the crudely hewn stones. It had taken iron control to resist doing just that when he’d found Sabrina curled on her pelisse that morning. Had it not been for the smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes and the arm she’d slipped so trustingly around his neck when he’d lifted her to the bed, they would have been waiting to bury his father while he buried his seed in his wife.

A wheedling note sneaked into Eve’s tone. “I know what care ye’ve taken, lad. Ye’re the only man ’round these parts without a passel o’ green-eyed bastards trottin’ on yer heels. But what if Dougal changes
his mind? What if he claims ye stole his daughter and brings the redcoats down on our heads?”

“Let him come. He’ll not take back what’s mine.”

Eve limped over and slapped him on the back, reminding him eerily of his father. “That’s the spirit, boy. Swear ye’ll put yer brand on the lassie before ’tis too late.”

Eve was tall for a woman. Tall even for a MacDonnell. Her hot breath stung the back of his neck. He swung around to face her. “I’ll see to the matter in my own time. With no interference from you or any of my kin.”

Eve stepped aside to let him pass, a lifetime of battling Angus teaching her when to retreat.

“Oh, and, Eve?” he added. “I might meet with more success if you’d kindly keep Alwyn out of my wife’s bed.”

She crinkled her nose in a moment of rare mischief. “I just wanted to remind ye what ye’d be missin’ by sleepin’ with the enemy, lad. Shall I tell Alwyn ye’ll be comin’ to her from now on?”

“No.” He strode to the door, offering no further explanation.

“Morgan? Ye won’t disappoint yer da, will ye?”

He threw a humorless smile over his shoulder. “I never have, have I?”

Sabrina buried her nose deeper in
The Pilgrim’s Progress
in a vain attempt to ignore the rumbling of her stomach. Its next rabid growl sent Pugsley whining into the corner.

She tossed down the book, wearying of the long-suffering Hopeful and Faithful when her own burdens seemed so unfair. She felt more like Christian in the Valley of Humiliation, forced to fight the giant devil Apollyon, whose body was covered with shining scales of pride. She rose to pace, fighting back a wave of lightheadedness.

She’d been barricaded alone since her first disastrous foray into enemy territory. She had found her
way back to the chamber to discover her trunks piled neatly in the floor with no sign of being pillaged.

She’d passed the rest of the day stubbornly devoting herself to the tasks that had always given her pleasure: reading, sewing, writing a letter to her mother full of false cheer and humorous anecdotes about her new family. She had sanded and sealed it before realizing it made no mention of the two men who haunted her thoughts.

A rosewater sponge bath and a fresh gown had helped stave off melancholy, but now the shadows of gloaming were creeping over the windowsill. Her spirits fell with the darkness.

She lit six of the expensive wax candles her mother had packed, scattering their light across the gloom. She was being shamefully wasteful, but frugality seemed less urgent than holding the encroaching shadows at bay. Juniper scented the air, the fresh, pungent aroma reminding her of Morgan.

A rush of anger rendered the crisp fragrance more bitter than sweet. For all Morgan cared, she might have starved by now. She swept across the room, startled by how heady the anger made her feel. It flooded her veins, shoving aside her trepidation with a mocking jeer.

Her slippered footsteps drummed to the cant of her mother’s teachings. A true lady must never show her anger. A true lady must turn the other cheek. A true lady should starve politely in her chamber without inconveniencing anyone else in the household, least of all her husband.

Morgan could carve it on her headstone after he tossed her skeletal body into its rocky cairn.
Sabrina Cameron MacDonnell—A True Lady
. But since Morgan couldn’t write, she supposed she’d be deprived of even that modest tribute.

Pugsley cocked his head to the side as she marched past. She would have sworn she saw a gleam of hunger in his beady little eyes.

“Don’t fret, Pugsley. You’ll have my bones to gnaw on soon enough.”

She snatched a hand mirror from a trunk she’d upended to serve as a dressing table, half expecting to see a sunken skull peering back at her. Her reflection differed greatly from the one that had greeted her that morning. A tidy coronet of braids graced her brow. Bright spots of anger stained her cheeks. The dark wings of her eyebrows were drawn into a forbidding line.