CHAPTER 31
Rap, rap.
Sybil did not bother lifting her head. The knock on the chamber door was too light to be Rory’s. The servant was bound to go away.
Rap. Rap. Rap. This servant was persistent.
“I’m resting,” Sybil called, her voice coming out as a croak.
When the door scraped open, she cursed herself for not crawling across the floor to draw the bar across it.
“Ye missed supper.”
Oh, hell, it was Rory’s sister. Catriona would not be dismissed as easily as a servant.
“O shluagh! What are ye doing on the floor in the dark?” Catriona said.
“Let me be,” Sybil said.
The door shut with a click, but Catriona had not gone. Light footsteps crossed the room to the table and a lamp flared. Sybil flinched against the sudden light.
“Ach, it’s freezing in here as well. Your brazier’s gone out,” Catriona said. “I’ll take care of that as soon as we get ye up off the floor.”
When Catriona knelt beside her, Sybil ignored her, hoping she would leave her to her misery.
“By the saints, what’s wrong?” Catriona shook her arm. “Tell me.”
“Your brother doesn’t want me,” Sybil said. “He regrets marrying me already.”
“I don’t believe that,” Catriona said. “When ye stood up to him and invited the Munros to stay, I knew ye were the wife he needed. And I’ve no doubt you’re the one he wants.”
“Nay! He regrets ever seeing my face. Ever hearing my name. Ever bringing me here.” Sybil shook her head as she spoke. “He regrets everything.”
Catriona lifted Sybil off the floor and dragged her to the low bench against the wall. After adding peat to the brazier and relighting the fire, she sat beside Sybil.
“If it’s any comfort, my brother is in a dreadful state as well,” Catriona said.
A sliver of hope entered Sybil’s heart.
“He’s not weeping, of course, but he’s so foul-tempered that Alex threatened to throw him into the loch,” Catriona said. “I watched the two of ye dancing last night, and ye both looked so happy. What happened?”
In halting words, Sybil told the story of her escape with Rory, the deception, and the rest, leaving out the intimate parts.
“I should have taken the secret to my grave,” Sybil said. “But once I fell in love with him, I had to tell him. I just had to.”
“Of course ye did,” Catriona said. “I can see why Rory is upset that ye did not tell him sooner, but it makes perfect sense to me.”
It made Sybil feel a wee bit better to have someone see her side of it.
“Let’s get your face washed and fix your hair,” Catriona said. “My mother used to say that will make ye begin to feel better.”
“Mine said that too, but it won’t help this time.”
“Well, my mother also said that wallowing in misery never fixed a thing.” Catriona leaned back and narrowed her eyes at Sybil. “Surely the two of ye can mend this breach.”
“I don’t know how to go about it,” Sybil said. “Rory will never trust me again.”
“After all ye went through to get here, ye seem like a determined and resourceful lass to me.” Catriona patted Sybil’s knee. “My brother is bullheaded, for certain. But you’ll find a way.”
Would she? Sybil had maneuvered through the politics and hidden undercurrents of court using the assets God gave her—her wits, her charm, her beauty. But what use were those in winning Rory’s trust and forgiveness?
“Come, lass, where’s your pride?” Catriona said with an encouraging smile. “Most of the clan believe you’re just a weak Lowlander. They’ll expect ye to give up at the first bump in the road. Ye want to prove them wrong, don’t ye?”
“We Douglases may have our faults,” Sybil said as she dried her tears, “but we are persistent.”
Sybil straightened her shoulders. She would fight for Rory and her place as his wife. She had to. He might believe he could set aside their marriage, but she never could. She took a vow before God to be Rory’s wife until death.
She would never let him go.
Damn it, Rory loved her. Even if he did not want to believe it anymore. She would find a way to earn his trust and win her Highlander back.
She must, for he owned her heart.
***
BANG, BANG, BANG!
Now that was Rory’s knock. Though Sybil had been waiting for him for hours, she did not respond but remained by the window with her back to the door. When it crashed against the wall as he flung it open, she drew in a deep breath to prepare herself. Slowly, she turned around to face him.
She fought to maintain a placid expression while her heart lurched at the sight of him filling the doorway. With his icy expression, tousled hair, and angry green eyes, Rory looked as if he had swept in on the harsh northern wind like a Norse god of legend.
“Ye haven’t been downstairs to the hall all day,” he snapped. “Have ye forgotten we have a castle full of guests to celebrate our marriage?”
“Strange as it may seem, I don’t feel much like celebrating.”
When she turned her back on him again, he spun her around and glared down at her, his chest heaving. She was determined not to cower.
“I’ll not have ye embarrass me like this,” he said. “Half my clansmen already question my judgment for taking ye for my wife without proving them right on the first goddamn day.”
“Perhaps ye should set me aside, then,” she said in even tone.
“Don’t tempt me.” He took her arm and started walking her toward the door. “If ye don’t want me to send ye back where ye came from, then you’ll play the part of loyal wife in front of our guests. We both know how good ye are at pretending.”
“I suggest you pretend you’re not a brute for a moment and take your hands off me.” She planted her feet and glared up at him until he released her arm, then she drew in a calming breath and brushed her skirts.
“Like it or no, ye will come with me,” he said.
“My mother raised me to be a gracious hostess, no matter how trying the circumstances.” As she spoke, she tidied the strands of hair that had fallen loose from her headdress. “So I will go charm our guests and pretend to be the happiest of brides.”
Sybil marched down the stairs, determined to dazzle them all. She would show these MacKenzies—especially the MacKenzie. She was tougher than any of them knew.
And she was playing to win.
***
Rory watched Sybil move among their guests with her usual grace and beguiling charm. Though he had asked—nay, demanded—that she do precisely that, the ease with which she masked her feelings and led everyone to believe she was the happiest of brides irritated him to no end.
“Can’t take your eyes off your bonny bride.” An older man named Fergus elbowed him in the side and chuckled. “I had my doubts about ye taking a Lowlander for a wife. Thought she’d be haughty and cold, but Lady Sybil is a delightful lass.”
“And she knows how to tell a good joke,” the man on his other side said. “Want me to tell it to ye? Well, it starts with …”
Rory was wretched, and his wife was telling jokes? The group that surrounded her burst into laughter as if to prove it. In the center of them, Sybil’s eyes sparkled and her cheeks were pink as she told a tale with great animation. Even more than her beauty, she had an inner glow that drew every person in the room to her.
Especially the men.
Malcolm appeared behind him and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “If ye can take your eyes off your bride for a wee bit, there are some men over by the hearth ye ought to speak with.”
As the evening crawled by, Malcolm drew him from one group to another. Rory hoped he showed more patience than he felt while he listened to old men urging caution and young men arguing for an attack on Hector. They all offered simplistic platitudes, rather than useful advice.
He watched Sybil across the room as she, too, moved from group to group. Each time he glanced her way, the men surrounding her were hanging on her every word.
When he could not stand it anymore, he decided to find out what she was telling them that was so damned fascinating and pushed his way to her side.
“A chuisle mo chroí,” pulse of my heart, she greeted him. She looked so sincere when she smiled up at him that he could almost believe she meant the endearment.
Worse, he wanted to believe it, which made him angry all over again.
“I must see that another keg of ale is brought up,” she said, and excused herself.
The man next to him spoke, dragging Rory’s attention away from the sway of Sybil’s hips as she glided away. “Your wife told us all about your plan.”
What lie had Sybil told them? He should have known she would try to undermine him when she agreed so quickly to come to the hall.
“You’re wise not to act rashly and attack Hector,” the man said, nodding. “Better to proceed with caution.”
“I agree,” another man said. “If our clan is spilling each other’s blood, the MacDonalds will see our division and seize upon our weakness.”
“The MacDonalds are strong,” a third man said. “We MacKenzies must fight as one if we are to push them back to the isles where they belong.”
Rory wondered how Sybil had succeeded in persuading these recalcitrant men that his decision was sound—and even more, why she’d done it.
All evening, men filled Rory’s cup to drink to his good fortune at finding such a bonny and clever wife. They could not see past her beauty and charm to her calculating and deceitful heart. She had fooled them, just as she had fooled him.
He was bleary-eyed with drink when the subject of their toasts slipped out of the hall and up the stairs. Luckily, Rory need not trust his wife to bed her.
“I’ll leave ye now, lads.” He stood up too quickly and had to grip the table to steady himself. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint my bride.”
The men laughed and slapped his back. Rory could hold his whisky better than most, but the circular stairs set his head to spinning.
When he pushed their bedchamber door open, Sybil was sitting on a stool, running a comb through her tumble of midnight hair. She looked up at him with those violet eyes and her full red lips parted, and desire tore through him like an angry storm.
God’s bones, how he wanted her. When he crossed the room in three strides and pulled her to her feet, she looked up at him from under her lashes and her lips curved up at the corners. Good, she did not intend to deny him. He could take her to bed with no pretense that it meant anything more to either of them than lust. Isn’t that what she had said after their first time?
Even drunk as he was, he knew he should wait until after he took her to bed to ask her what he wanted to know. The best course was to take her without a word. And yet he could not stop himself. He had to ask the question that had been burning a hole inside him ever since she confessed to her lies.
“Tell me, wife,” he said, “how many men did ye have before me?”
Sybil slapped his face hard enough to sting.
“How many?” He held her wrist to prevent her from slapping him again.
“How dare ye ask me that?”
When her eyes filled with unshed tears, he stifled a twinge of remorse. Doubtless she could weep false tears as readily as she lied.
“Tell me,” he said between clenched teeth. “Who had ye before I did?”
“Why does a man need to be first?” she said. “Was I yours?”
“Answer me, damn it,” he said. “I’ve a right to know why my bride wasn’t a virgin.”
“I was not a virgin,” she said, glaring up at him, “because I was married.”
“Married!” Rory fell back a step. His heart could not take any more. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, ye have a husband?”
“I had a husband,” she said. “We were wed a week when he died.”
Sybil was widowed. He tried to take it in. Well, that would explain why she was over twenty and unmarried. He waited for her to say more, but Sybil’s mouth was clamped shut.
“Is that all ye have to say about it?” he said. “Ye lied to me about being raped. For God’s sake, do ye know what that lie did to me?”
He had been torn apart with rage and misery imagining how her innocence was violently stolen from her. And her tale of rape had made him feel so ashamed for not being gentle with her that first time.
“I spoke the truth when I said ye were the first man I gave myself to freely.” Sybil stared past Rory’s shoulder as she spoke. “My grandfather had toppled a king and ruled our clan for fifty years. I was a pawn and not permitted to refuse the marriage he arranged for me.”
“An arranged marriage is no the same as rape,” Rory bit out.
“To a woman, I assure you, it can feel very much the same.” She brushed past him and went to stand at the window with her back to him.
“Tell me the rest of it,” he demanded.
“Perhaps one day I will,” she said. “You’re not ready to listen now.”
He heard a catch in her voice. By the saints, she could twist him in the wind if he let her. Talking had brought him no satisfaction, but he had a good idea of what would.
“’Tis late,” he said, and pulled back the bedclothes. “We should go to bed.”
“We’re not both sleeping in this bed,” she said, folding her arms. “Not after the things ye said to me.”
“We’re man and wife. We don’t have to like each other to fook.” He deliberately used the crass word for what he had foolishly thought was an act of love between them. What a fool he had been.
“You’re not sleeping with me.” She tugged the extra blanket off the bed and tossed it across the floor.
“I’m chieftain,” he said. “I’m no sleeping on the floor.”
“There’s a servant’s pallet under the bed. Ye can use that,” she said. “But if ye prefer, ye can sleep in the hall and let all the men wonder what you’ve done to your new bride that she won’t have you.”
“Perhaps they’ll think I’m the one who won’t have you.” He knew that was a ridiculous argument even before she rolled her eyes.
“After all my efforts to persuade your clansmen that I’m worthy to be the MacKenzie’s wife and that you’ve made me blissfully happy,” she said, “it would be a shame to ruin it.”
“I don’t find your gift for deceiving an entire hall full of people reassuring.”
He pulled the pallet out from under the bed and fixed his gaze on her as he began unwinding his plaid.
She blew out the candle before he was bare-arsed. Apparently she was not as anxious to see him naked as he was to see her. He listened to the soft rustle of her removing her clothes and imagined her gown slipping off her shoulders and over her breasts… He was breathing hard long before the ropes holding the mattress creaked as she climbed into the big bed. No matter how much she had wronged him, he longed to feel her skin sliding over his, to move inside her, to hear her sighs and moans…
She was so quiet she must have fallen asleep, while he lay staring up at the ceiling with his feet hanging off the servant’s pallet and his cock painfully hard.
“Have ye not tortured me enough?” he said aloud into the darkness. “After making me your husband with your lies, you’ve no right to deny me our marriage bed.”
“After how it was between us before,” she said. “I’ll not have ye touching me when your heart isn’t in it.”
***
Sybil awoke to an empty room and fought the urge to draw the bedclothes over her head and weep. Instead, she dressed and steeled herself for a long day of pretending, for the benefit of their guests and household, that all was well between their chieftain and his new bride.
Before she had prepared herself, Rory came through the door and shut it behind him. Her heart swelled with unbridled hope.
“I apologize for my behavior last night,” he said. “Though I was sorely disappointed to discover ye were untrustworthy and a liar, there was no call for me to be rude.”
Sybil felt as if he had slapped her. “I know I was wrong, Rory, but ye judge me too harshly.”
“I could forgive ye for deceiving me in the beginning, before ye knew me,” he said. “But ye kept on lying to me. Every day for weeks ye continued to deceive me.”
There was no point in arguing or trying to explain again. And the way he was speaking to her was beginning to prick her temper.
“Like it or not, we’re wed now,” she said. “And I’ll not let ye set me aside.”
“I can do nothing now without looking a fool, and ye know it,” he said. “So for the time being, let’s attempt to get along as best we can.”
Without another word, he left her.
“Ye made vows to me, Rory Ian MacKenzie,” she said, though he could no longer hear her, “and I’m holding ye to them.”