Bride of the Beast (5 page)

At once, the knight released her hand and stood. He inclined his head. "Yes, my lady, I am of English blood, but my heart beats only for Scotland. You have no cause to fear me."

"I do not fear the English." Caterine gathered her skirts for a swift retreat. "I revile them," she said, then whipped around and sailed toward the stairs, her little dog, Leo, fast on her heels.

She mounted the steps two at a time, desperate to put the massive oaken door and the hall's thick walling between herself and the Sassunach knight her sister had had the ill-sense to send her.

Unfortunately, it was not as easy to run from the disturbing flare of raw and needy emotions his gallantry had breathed to life deep inside her.

hours
later, caterine
sat in stiff-lipped silence at Dun-laidir's high table and tried hard to ignore her keen awareness of
him.
Even without looking directly at him, simply knowing him beneath her roof sent a strange warmth tingling through her.

Pretending indifference, she smoothed her fingers along the edge of the heavily scarred table. Torchlight fell across her late husband's elaborately carved great chair, calling conspicuous attention to the chair's emptiness.

And the gravity of her plight.

"Are you troubled by his scar?" Rhona's softly spoken words cut through the quiet.

With a start, Caterine snatched her hand from the deep knife scorings she'd been tracing with idle fingers. A silly occupation chosen solely to keep from sneaking covert glances at him.

She met her friend's probing gaze. "Think you I am so shallow?"

Rhona ran a slow finger around the rim of her wine chalice. "Nay, though the frozen-faced expression you've worn since he entered the hall gives me cause to wonder."

Annoyance, hot and tight, coiled in Caterine's breast. "You should know what it is about him that aggrieves me."

"There is more to a man than the width of his shoulders and the charm of his smile.
Your own words, my lady," Rhona reminded her. "Mayhap there is also more to a man than his blood? He did come to champion you."

"He is English."

"He was sent by your sister."

Something snapped inside Caterine. "Then he holds Linnet in such thrall she's forgotten why I would never welcome an Englishman into my home."

Rhona's expression softened. "I doubt she's forgotten, though I wish you would." Reaching across the table, she pressed Caterine's hand. "This man is no craven. I cannot see him hurrahing over the land raping innocents and dirking men before their wives' eyes. Truth to tell, he seems quite the gallant."

"An
English
gallant."

"You cannot blame him for the villainy of others, what was done to you years ago and by—"

"English soldiers, and more of them than I could count," Caterine finished for her, steeling her back against a deep-seated shame still as laming as the long-ago day she'd been so violated.

Half-turning in her chair, she pretended to study the nearby hearth fire. Anything but peer across the table and see sympathy in Rhona's eyes. Instead, she risked a glance at the broad-shouldered English knight. He sat at a table on the far side of the hall, quietly conversing with his men, holding their rapt attention with the same mastery his sheer presence dominated the vastness of Dunlaidir's great hall.

Vexation welled in Caterine's breast. Even seated, his bearing marked him as a confident man.

A leader of men.

A charmer of women.

Indeed, if not for the scar running from his left temple to the corner of his mouth, he would have been quite handsome. Marred or not, he made a striking figure and possessed an air of calm assurance she would have found most appealing were he not a Sassunach.

He looked her way then, almost imperceptibly inclining his head as if he knew she'd been perusing him. Knew, too, the conclusion she'd reached.

Her cheeks flaming, Caterine swung back to face Rhona. All traces of commiseration gone from her pretty face, the younger woman gave her a slow smile.

A knowing smile.

Caterine cleared her throat. "I did not mean to imply he is ungallant," she said, her voice hoarse with the admission.

It was the best she could do.

Rhona cast a slant-eyed glance at a glum-faced man slouched in the shadows near the hearth, "He is more courteous than some Scots nobles I shall not name," she vowed, low-voiced.

"Sir
John
has good reason to brood with de la Hogue and his minions housing in his keep," Caterine defended her late husband's friend. "We can be grateful we weren't visited by so ill a fate and it wasn't Dunlaidir Sir Hugh took possession of when he came north. God's curse on the dastard!"

"And I say a pox on any who frown into the soup you offer them," Rhona hissed, her unflagging loyalty coaxing an inward smile from Caterine's heart.

Outwardly, she kept her expression impassive. "Sir
John
has suffered much. He lost everything."

"Were it not for your hospitality, he would be sleeping in the heather." Rhona wanned to a favorite topic. " 'Tis glad of a bed and dry roof he aught be, and not raise his brows at (he food you set before him."

Tossing a glance at the English knight, she pressed her point.
"He
is quality. Did you see how tactfully he declined Eoghann's best attempts to seat him with us? You know he only refused because you made it obvious his presence anywhere near the dais end of the hall would displease you."

Caterine drew a long breath. She had noticed his chivalry toward Dunlaidir's doughty seneschal, just as she'd noted the smooth gallantry he'd displayed when kissing her hand ... and the way her heart had leapt at his touch. But the sour taste of her own bitterness weighted her tongue and kept her from making any such admissions.

Instead, she tore off a chunk of coarse dark bread—
peasants ' bread
—but found herself tearing it to bits rather than eating it as she'd intended.

"Nor did he or his men rumple their noses at the salted herrings and cabbage soup Eoghann set before them," Rhona continued her litany of praise. "They surely received finer fare at Eilean Creag. I vow your sister's alms dish is better fil—"

"Cease, please." Caterine reached across the table and lifted Rhona's hand away from her chalice. "And stop running your finger around the rim of your glass. It's annoying."

As if to rile her even more, Rhona snatched the chalice, and, twisting around, lifted her glass at the English knight and his men. When they raised theirs in return, she flashed Caterine a triumphant smile.

"Aye, most gallant," she declared, plunking down her chalice with a grand flourish.

"He is English." The objection sounded peevish even to Caterine's own ears. "A Sassunach."

"A man." Rhona leaned forward. "One who went down on bended knee to offer his services to you. A Sassunach, aye, but with four stout-armed Gaels standing beside him. They do not seem to mind his English blood."

Smiling benignly, she trailed a finger along a particularly deep scar in the tabletop. "You should joy in such a brave man's attentions."

/
did,
Caterine's heart acceded.

His mere touch had warmed her in places she'd thought forever cold ... until she'd heard his voice.

She stiffened, bracing herself against the disconcerting sensation she was teetering on the edge of a bottomless chasm and about to lose her balance. "Not all at Dunlaidir are as enamored of our visitors as you and Eoghann," she said, tossing a pointed glance at the empty laird's chair.

The seat of honor usually occupied by her grown stepson, James Keith.

"Or have you seen James since their arrival?" Ire danced atop each word Caterine spoke. "He's abed. He said his leg pains him, but I suspect the real reason for his absence is because he, too, isn't pleased my sister sent a Sassunach to help us restore Dunlaidir's failing fortunes."

Irritation flashed across Rhona's face but she masked it with an artful shrug. "Would he exercise his leg more, he'd have no need to resent the arrival of those more able to defend his home than he."

"You are too hard on him. It is not his fault that he is lame."

"He is not lame, he was kicked by a horse." Rhona blew out an impatient breath. "Naught would ail him at all if he'd stop pitying himself."

Pausing, she cast a meaningful glance at the scar-faced champion.
"There
is one who manages quite well, and with a more daunting impairment than an aching leg."

Caterine, too, peered across the hall, irritation making her bold. She stared hard, her open gaze searching every inch of the man's strapping build, looking for faults and finding none. Worse, she couldn't deny the ease with which he conversed with Eoghann, one of the household's most loyal retainers.

Even more telling, the slump-shouldered seneschal stood straighter the longer he listened to whatever the Sassunach knight was saying to him. Bobbing his head in apparent agreement, Eoghann talked profusely and gestured about the darkened hall.

Like her sister and Rhona, the seneschal had clearly fallen under the man's spell.

A condition she would not fall prey to.

Rhona yanked on her sleeve. "Have you noticed the bulge of his arm muscles and the size of his shoulders? You could do worse, my lady," she purred. "Many are the maids who would crave his favor."

"Who would not notice his fine form?" Caterine snapped, annoyance loosening her tongue. "Or do you believe me as withered as Sir Hugh claims? Beyond taking note of a man so tall, so broad-shouldered?"

Rhona gave her a wounded look. "Ne'er would I call you—"

"I am neither wilted nor blind," Caterine cut off Rhona's prattle before the younger woman sent her into a fine fit of pique. "Acknowledging the flawlessness of his form is no different from admiring the fine lines of the great warhorses his accursed countrymen ride about on."

Except no English destrier had ever set her heart a-flutter with one gallant hand kiss.

Rhona reached across the table and poked her arm. "In the shadows of the hall, it's almost possible to imagine what he must've looked like before he was scarred."

"In mercy's name!" Caterine gave her friend a sharp look. "It matters naught to me what he looked like then or ..." she trailed off to stare at the Sassunach's table.

He and his men now stood, and his companions had donned fur-lined cloaks. Two of them followed Eoghann toward the hall's vaulted entrance, disappearing with the seneschal into the cold night while the other two made for the turnpike stairs.

Stairs that led to the wall-walk.

They meant to patrol Dunlaidir's ramparts.

Caterine's breath caught at the unexpected lurching of her heart. An unaccustomed sense of being protected,
cared for,
cloaked her with all the warmth and comfort of a much-used and well-favored blanket.

An unfamiliar emotion, but powerful enough to wage fierce battle against her pique.

Too many were the months she'd gone to bed wary, half afraid to sleep lest she awaken to find de la Hogue's henchmen looming over her.

Or worse, the earl himself.

A sharp kick to her shin shattered the troubling image. "He—is—coming," Rhona mouthed the warning, barely finishing before the tall English knight stood before them.

"Ladies," he said in the fluid tongue of the
Highlands
, his voice deep and smooth.

Her own tongue too clumsy to form the simplest response, Catherine slid a glance toward the hearth, hoping support from Sir
John
, the only person at hand who loathed the English as soundly as she, but the sore-battered lord had slipped from the hall. The deep shadows where he'd stood loomed black and empty.

Wishing she could vanish as well, Caterine peered up at her sister's ill-chosen champion. "Good sir," she managed, her voice declaring her wariness despite the genial greeting.

Their eyes met and held, and a strange giddiness tripped through her. A curious breathlessness she'd never before experienced. Light from a nearby torch cast a sheen on his dark hair and glanced off the steel rings of his mail shirt, gilding them in such a way that his powerful arm and shoulder muscles appeared all the more pronounced.

Faith, but he unsettled her.

"... ill suits you ..." he was saying, but his proximity flustered her so thoroughly she caught but a snippet of what he'd said.

She blinked. "If what ill suits me?"

"If he speaks with you," Rhona answered for him.

Not heeding her friend, he gave Caterine a half-smile, and in the flattering play of light and shadow, that one brief smile clearly revealed that Sir Marmaduke Strongbow, late of
England
and soon of
Balkenzie
Castle
in the west, had once been a very handsome man.