Read Bride of the Beast Online
Authors: Sue-Ellen Welfonder
The little dog settled himself without a single glance or grunt of gratitude. And, soft-hearted fool that he was, Marmaduke settled back for a long night, too.
And consigned himself to kneading the wee beastie's still-shivering shoulder rather than plying the lush bounty of his lady's irrefutable charms.
Charms he meant to claim in full very soon. Her charms and her heart.
Resting his head against the chair back, he listened to her tossing and turning behind the bed curtains. All the night through, the rustlings and her frustrated sighs continued. They hung sweet in the air ... fair music to his ears. Burgeoning hope to a heart besieged. For even one as blighted as he recognized what lurked behind her inability to sleep.
A slow smile curving his lips, Marmaduke stared into the darkness, for the hearth fire had all but burned itself out, and the torches had long since flickered their last.
Slipping a hand inside his cloak, he rubbed gently behind Leo's floppy ears and savored each and every soft
swishing
noise to leak past the bed curtains, relished each breathy little burst of impatience to escape her sleep-deprived lips.
Utterly feminine sounds, pointed and recognizable, their meaning well-known to any man capable of satisfying a woman.
Even more so to a man accustomed to winning a lady's heart.
His own heart quickening in response, Marmaduke pulled his cloak closer about his little friend and settled back in the chair to await the coming dawn.
And revel in the knowledge that his lady wife wanted more than just his prowess .. .she wanted his love.
And mayhap, if he was very, very lucky, she'd want it enough to give him her own as well.
She already has, my dear heart,
the keening wind whispered somewhere out across the night-blackened waters.
She already has.
a sennight later,
in the small hours of a silent, moonless night, Sir Marmaduke, James, Black Dugie, and a few carefully selected garrison men reined up on a low, tree-dotted knoll at the head of a shallow valley. Cloaks as black as the cold heavens hid the gleam of their armor as they stared across the winter-brown gorse to where Kinraven's towers rose dark against the night sky.
Faint light shone in but a few of the stronghold's narrow slit windows and the blustery wind carried only deep quiet and the gentle slapping of water on the nearby lochshore.
One of the garrison men edged his mount forward. "Should we mount a sham attack on one of the towers before we move in?" he asked, his low-spoken words overloud in the quiet.
Marmaduke shook his head. "If my men scale the walls as swiftly as they've climbed others, and those with them spread enough tinder in the right places, Kinraven will be a blackened waste by first light whether we draw our swords or leave them sheathed."
He glanced round at the lot of them. "Nay, my friend, we have no need of such a ruse. Dark of night, surprise, and our own good sword arms will suffice."
Murmurs of agreement rose from the gathered men.
"James." Marmaduke addressed the younger man. "You have the best vision amongst us. Can you tell if our men have breached the parapets?"
James narrowed his eyes to stare across the valley. "The ladders are in place and the two men I can see are nearing the topmost rungs."
"Any sentries in sight?" A second Keith man-at-arms wanted to know.
James shook his head just as another of the garrison men emerged from the thicket. The man kneed his winded horse closer. "All is in readiness," he said, shoving back his mailed coif.
"Our men are in place," he said. "Every last twig of dried gorse and broom we've collected over the last days has been put about. We even plundered the stables of straw."
Marmaduke looked toward Kinraven, could just make out the stream of men moving up the rope scaling ladders. They appeared to be slipping unhindered over the parapet walls. Satisfied, he returned his attention to the man-at-arms. "And those entering the keep have enough tinder to set the inside ablaze?"
The other nodded. "We pulled the thatch from a few outbuildings."
"The cattle?" James tore his gaze from the distant stronghold. "Are they out of harm's way?"
"The herdsmen are gathering them now," the man-at-arms answered, rubbing his spume-flecked horse behind its ears. "They'll have them past the loch-head and on the way back to Dunlaidir before the first flames—"
"By God, they've started!" Black Dugie thrust out an arm, his finger pointing to where shooting flames, orange and bright, punctuated the inky darkness. Already, great, pluming clouds of smoke rose above Kinraven's walls.
The wind carried the noise of distant shouting, shrill cries and curses, and an eerie reddish glow began spreading across the night sky. The stronghold and its surrounds, no longer dark and sleeping, erupted in hellish chaos.
Wheeling his horse around, Marmaduke raised his mailed arm. "Come, men, it is time to show yon blackguards the road to
England
," he called out. "God's mercy on those who choose not to follow it."
Then, digging gold spurs deep into his horse's flanks, he sent the beast plunging down the scrub-covered slope, the others spurring after him. Together, they thundered across the valley floor toward the flaming pyre that had once been
**
Within the sheltering walls of
A void she hoped to assuage with at the dubious comfort of Rhona's chatty presence. But this night even Rhona gave herself subdued. She reclined on James's bed, contenting herself with petting Leo.
Ignoring her, Caterine prowled at the windows, her gaze repeatedly flickering to the cliff road. She tried willing her husband and the others to appear, but the mainland cliff-head, stretching as far into the darkness as the curving bank of windows allowed her to see, remained deserted.
She glanced at Rhona. "Shouldn't they have returned by now?"
"Nay, my lady. I doubt we will see them before cockcrow. Mayhap not even until Vespers."
"Vespers!"
Caterine's heart dipped. "It will be gloaming by then."
Rhona peered at her. 'Think you it will be an easy task to a holding the size of Kinraven into soot and ash?"
"If I thought such a feat could be accomplished without risk, I would be asleep in my bed this moment," Caterine said, staring out at the night-darkened waters as she paced past the bank of windows,
"You are wearing a track in the floor rushes," Rhona said, and Caterine glanced sharply at her.
"James is very particular about such things," Rhona explained with a shrug.
Caterine stared hard at her, striving to see if some spark of distress hid behind her friend's dark eyes. "Are you not at all concerned for them?"
She
had
to be, for the depth of her feelings for James permeated the chamber... in the array of her trinkets and clutter scattered about, through the number of her clothes hanging on the wall pegs.
"Oh, lady, have you so little faith?" Rhona stroked Leo's back. "Your precious champion swings a mighty blade," she said. "If I am not worried for
my
love's safety, then surely you should have no concerns for—"
"He is not my love," Caterine denied, stepping closer to the nearest window and resting her forehead against the cold, grainy stone of the elaborately carved tracery.
She welcomed its cooling relief on her heated brow.
"I enjoy his attentions," she said, squaring her shoulders lest Rhona attempt to pry deeper. "He is ... well-skilled in such arts."
"Truth tell?"
Trailing her fingers along the window's molded edge, Caterine stared out at the thin white mist rising slowly from the sea... determined to drop the subject.
Rhona rattled on regardless. "He is a fine, braw man, my lady," she claimed. "A gallant knight, a
champion
of men. How could he not steal your heart?"
"You are not going to press a declaration of passionate devotion out of me," Caterine broke her silence. "The only thing he has stolen from me is my aversion to his English blood and my ... my desire to live an abstemious life."
"So you enjoy lying with him."
Caterine could feel her friend's I-told-you-so smile clear across the chamber. "That does not mean he has stolen my heart. One pleasure can be savored without the other, as you of all people aught know."
She whirled around and immediately wished she hadn't for Rhona was tapping a finger against her chin. And whatever gem of wisdom she was about to let fall had to do with
him.
And thus far, all her pronouncements and predictions had come true.
"I have it!" Rhona cried suddenly. "You are full right. He has not stolen your heart at all... you've given it to him."
Caterine drew a strangled breath ... of cold, briny air and bitter denial.
"You are in love with him," Rhona declared, and Caterine's heart agreed.
"Nay, I am not,"
she
returned.
Rhona snorted.
And Caterine wondered.
But before she could look too deep into places she might not want to go, she swung back to the windows. Far out to sea, billowing white fog blotted out the horizon, smudging it from view much as her champion's smooth gallantry and fiery passion had blurred and knocked down every barrier she'd thought to raise against him.
Until not a one remained.
None save her determination not to let him go.
A tiny smile curved her lips.
She possessed one remaining
allure
he hadn't yet partaken of, and she knew instinctively that once he had, he'd never leave her side.
Her smile deepened.
Upon his return, as soon as he'd refreshed himself and bathed, she would love him.
Fully.
**
Chaos and confusion greeted Sir Marmaduke and those with him as they thundered up to Kinraven's burning gatehouse. Sleep-dazed men, most half-clothed, some naked, poured from its ruined, smoking entrance to scatter in the turmoil of the red-glowing night.
A brave few souls clashed furious swords with Marmaduke's Highlanders, and the clanging ring of steel on steel made a hellish echo against the pandemonium of running, shouting men and the neighings of wild-eyed, prancing horseflesh.
Other Keith guardsmen rounded up the English soldiers seeking to flee, while those already subdued, stood under guard in a tight cluster, stamping their feet against the cold, their faces dark and unsmiling.
Pressing into the middle of the fray, Marmaduke pushed up in his stirrups, his blade raised high. "Cease!" His deep voice rang out above the fracas. "Hear you, my own good men and the rest of you. This is between de la Hogue and myself. All others, put back your steel."
"A pig's arse, I will!" someone called back.
Sir Gowan.
The rest of his men obeyed at once, expectant, knowing grins spreading across their faces. Others followed suit more slowly, until gradually, the worst of the tumult died down. The Keith men exchanged dubious glances, but kept their blades lowered... so long as their opponents complied as well.
The remainder of the shirt-clad English soldiery, divested of any arms they may have wielded and encircled by grim-faced Keith guardsmen, looked on with a mixture of wariness and grudging respect.
Considering them, Marmaduke drew a long breath of the biting, acrid air. Without the resplendent trappings of their knightly station, wild-haired and half-clothed as they stood shivering before the burning gatehouse, they made a pitiful sight.
With their bared limbs and torn night-shirts streaked with soot, some with blood, they appeared more frightful-looking than his caterans at their worst.
And they looked ... young.
Too young to die for an ill-chased cause.
Too
English
to deserve the leniency Marmaduke meant to spend them.
Swallowing the great oath rising in his throat, he swung down from his saddle and tossed his reins to James. "Men of de la Hogue," he addressed them, raising his voice above the roar of the flames, "I, Marmaduke Strongbow of Balkenzie, greet you."
Tight-lipped silence greeted him.
Unfazed, he swept them with a measuring stare. "Where is your lord? I would challenge him to single combat... if he is man enough to accept."
"I am man enough, Strongbow, but I see you are somewhat ...
lacking
since last we met."