Border Bride (2 page)

"Told you what?"

"He told me that you were unmarriageable—more… mature. I expected—" He cleared his throat. His gaze fell to her breasts. "May I say you have preserved yourself admirably."

The clumsy comment, delivered with a lustful leer, disgusted Alpin. Because she was small, people always thought her younger than her age. As a girl she had hated being mistaken for a child. Now she could use her youthful appearance to her advantage.

"How very thoughtful of you, Mr. Codrington. Would you like to see the mill?"

He jumped up so fast, the satchel fell to the floor, forgotten.

Twenty minutes later, her fingers trembling, she opened the pouch and scanned the legal documents. At the sight of the name on the transfer papers, she tossed back her head and groaned through clenched teeth. Her childhood rose up to haunt her.

By the time she replaced the papers and returned to the mill and her guest, Alpin had made her plans. She breathed deeply of the spicy smells of Barbados, but her thoughts had already turned to Scotland and Kildalton Castle. She was about to mount the next siege in the years-old war with the scoundrel who now controlled her destiny.

Chapter One

Kildalton Castle

Summer 1735

"And if I refuse?"

Craning his neck, the soldier squinted into the dim interior of the falcon mews. "She is prepared for a refusal, my lord, and up to her old tricks, I trow."

Malcolm's hand stilled, his fingers holding a scrap of meat above the open mouth of a hungry owlet. The wounded mother owl looked on. "How is that, Alexander?"

"Lady Alpin said if you doona come and greet her personally, she'll carve out your eyes and feed them to the badgers."

Malcolm dropped the meat into the hungry maw. Childhood memories flashed in his mind: Alpin splintering his toy sword and throwing it down the privy shaft, Alpin howling with laughter as she locked him in the pantry, Alpin hiding in the tower room and crying herself to sleep, Alpin coming after him with a jar of buzzing hornets.

A shudder coursed through him. Years ago she had played havoc with the life of a gullible lad. The world-wise man would now play havoc with hers. "I wonder what she'll do if I call her bluff?"

Alexander Lindsay, trainer of archers and master of the hunt, moved cautiously down the aisle between roosting falcons, agitated kestrels, and a trio of golden eagles. The predators paced on their perches, wings stirring the air. When he reached Malcolm, Alexander doffed his bonnet and revealed a pate as bare as the pinnacles of The Storr. Still squinting, he looked in Malcolm's general direction. "I only brought the message, my lord. 'Twas not my place to interrogate your guest."

"Guest?" Malcolm laughed. The wide-eyed and downy owlet peeped for more food. Smiling, Malcolm tore another piece of meat from the carcass and fed it to the eager bird. "Tell the lady Alpin I'm busy. And report to me the moment Saladin returns from Aberdeenshire."

Alexander eyed the owl with wary curiosity. "To be sure, the sentry will signal at the first sight of the Moorish lad. But Lady Alpin, she also said if you wilna come, she'll change her mind about forgiving you for what you did to her years ago in the tower room."

"
She'll
forgive
me
? Blessed Saint Ninian, she's twisted the events of the past. Send her on her way to her kin in Sinclair."

"Aye, sir. England's the place for her kind." Alexander strolled out the door and closed it behind him.

Sinclair Manor, a short hour's ride away, south of Malcolm's Scottish holdings and beyond Hadrian's Wall. In England. Alpin would hate it there. She always had. Only now she couldn't don the clothing of a bootboy and seek sanctuary here in Malcolm's Border fortress. As a lad he'd borne the brunt of her wrath. He'd been seven years old and she six when she was justly deemed uncontrollable and exiled to the island of Barbados. Years of separation had dulled the enmity Malcolm felt toward her. But five years ago when he learned of her disloyalty to her island guardian, Malcolm had put in motion the wheels of revenge.

Long ago she had taken from him his heart's desire. Now he'd taken hers.

A grinding ache, bone deep and soul scouring, held Malcolm immobile. Sensitive to his moods, the birds grew restless, their deadly talons clicking on perches of rough-hewn oak. The worried owl tried to draw her chick beneath a protective wing. Malcolm felt cheated, self-betrayed, for he made a practice of leaving his cares outside this dark sanctuary. Today he'd brought them inside with him.

He'd also maneuvered Alpin MacKay into a corner. Since receiving word of Charles's death, Malcolm had expected news of Alpin's return to the Borders. In a week or so he'd pay a call on her at the home of his English neighbor. Then he'd watch Alpin squirm like a mouse impaled on a claw.

Secretly pleased, he forced away the old pain and spoke reassuringly to the distressed owl.

The door swung open. Sunlight flooded the room, making the owl hiss and the kestrel squawk. The owlet pecked Malcolm's finger. He drew back his hand, his senses fixed on the figure of a woman standing in the doorway.

"Hello, Malcolm." Her panniered skirt almost filling the opening, her features obscured by the brightness of the light, Alpin MacKay stepped into Malcolm's private haven.

Darkness settled over the mews again. Malcolm watched her blink, trying to focus her eyes. Alpin's expertise lay in deceit and avarice. Which would she practice first?

Despite his memory of past injustices, Malcolm couldn't help but admire the pleasant changes that had occurred in his childhood nemesis.

He remembered a scrawny hoyden nicknamed "runt" with a grudge against the world, her matted hair trailing to her waist, and a spotting of freckles like measles dotting her nose and cheeks. Alpin MacKay had matured into a vision of petite femininity. No taller than his chest, she looked small enough for him to carry on his hip, her neck slender enough for him to circle with one hand.

She wore a gown of sunny yellow satin, the bodice cut square across the top and dropping to a point below her narrow waist. Her dress was modest, but even a monk's robe could not have hidden the bountiful charms of Alpin MacKay.

"Where are you, Malcolm? I can't see." Her alluring violet eyes surveyed the mews. "Say something so I can find you."

The rich, husky timbre of her voice also seemed at odds with the caviling shrew he was certain she'd become. But he'd changed, too, as she would soon discover.

He tossed the rabbit carcass to the watchful mother owl, then walked to the door. "I'm here, Alpin." He touched her elbow.

She jumped back, her skirts tipping over an empty bucket. "Oh!" Delicate fingers curled around his forearm. "Please don't let me fall."

As a child she had always smelled of the food she'd filched and the animals she'd rescued. As a woman she smelled of sweet, exotic flowers blossoming in the tropical sun. The idea that anything about Alpin MacKay would please him shocked Malcolm more than her presence in his sanctuary. She should have gone to Sinclair Manor to await the return of the uncle she hated. Events of late had left her nowhere else to go. Malcolm had planned it that way.

"I doubt you'll fall," he said. "You were always nimble on your feet."

She laughed, tipped back her head, and squinted up at him. "That was before stays, skirts as big as hayricks, and modern shoes. Are you standing on a box?"

"A box?"

Her expression softened, but her eyes were still adjusting to the darkness. "Either that or you've grown as tall as an oak."

He stared at the crown of her head and the thick coil of braids she'd made of her hair. Wisps of mahogany-hued ringlets framed her face. "You don't seem to have grown at all."

She pursed her lips. "I expected a more original observation from you, Malcolm Kerr. A kinder one, too."

She could expect whatever the hell she wanted, but James HI would sit on the throne of the British Isles before she'd get honest pleasantries from Malcolm Kerr. "Why, I wonder," he mused, "for kindness was never the way between us."

"Because—because we've known each other for so long."

"A circumstance," he murmured, "that brought me great heartache and other assorted pains as a lad."

"Oh, come now." She leaned into him, her shoulder pressing against his ribs. "Surely after more than twenty years you've outgrown your hatred of me. I've certainly outgrown playing tricks on you."

Tricks? She had a gift for understatement. "But you haven't outgrown threats, unless carving out my eyes and feeding them to badgers is your usual way of greeting an old acquaintance."

She bristled with indignation, a trait she'd mastered before she lost her milk teeth. "You are
not
an acquaintance. You're my oldest friend. And I was only jesting."

"I'm relieved, then," he mocked and threw open the door. Shielding his eyes from the sunlight, he stepped outside. Alpin's closed carriage stood across the castle yard. A group of curious children had gathered around the conveyance. Releasing her, Malcolm turned and plunged his arms into a barrel of rainwater so cool it chilled his anger. He began scrubbing his hands. "It's nice of you to visit. You had a pleasant voyage?"

"Visit?" Lifting her chin, she cupped her hands over her eyes to shield them from the sun. "I've come all the way from Barbados to see you, which I haven't had the opportunity to actually do, what with the darkness in there and the sunshine out here, and all you have to say is some insipid nicety before sending me off?" A sheen of tears glistened in her eyes. "I'm wounded, Malcolm. And perplexed."

Guilt pricked his conscience. He hadn't witnessed the trouble she'd caused in Barbados, and Charles hadn't supplied the details. Malcolm believed it, though, for Alpin MacKay could turn a May fair into a bloody feud. But this snip of a woman couldn't threaten him now. Since his father's elevation to marquess of Lothian, Malcolm, as earl, ruled all of Kildalton and half of Northumberland. His enemies feared him. His clansmen respected him. Alpin MacKay, the woman, suddenly intrigued him. "I had no intention of wounding you."

She smiled and rubbed her eyes. "I'm relieved," she said in a rush. "I have a million questions to ask you and at least that many stories of my own to bore you with. You can't believe how different Barbados is—" She stopped, her eyes wide in surprise.

"What's amiss?" he said, thinking he'd never seen a woman with lashes so long and skin so sweetly kissed by the sun. He knew her age to be twenty-seven. She looked nineteen. Where had her freckles gone?

"My God," she breathed, her gaze scouring his face. "You're the image of my Night Angel."

Malcolm's admiration turned to puzzlement. "Night Angel. Who's that?"

She stared at the old tiltyard, concentration evident in the pucker of her chin, the crease in her forehead. Then she shook her head as if clearing her thoughts. " 'Tis nothing but my memory deceiving me. Your hair's so dark and—and yet you favor Lord Duncan."

At the mention of his father, Malcolm thought again about the misery this selfish woman had visited on everyone who had ever befriended her. But now was not the time to reveal his feelings or his plans for Alpin MacKay. Now was the time to bait a line with friendship and go fishing for her trust. "Mother would certainly agree that I favor Papa."