Chapter Four
Sorcha’s eyes cracked open to a slim golden beam of sunshine cutting the darkened room in half. It was coming from a window, its coverings drawn and blocking most of the daylight. Stretching her arms wide across the bed, she recognized the dated, peeling decor of Pollock’s. It wasn’t the first night she’d spent in the inn, and it wouldn’t be the last. She’d probably drunk too much, and one of her brothers had thought it best if she slept it off.
She blinked, her eyesight adjusting over the lone spear of light in the room, and froze. A man slumbered in the armchair near the window. Swallowing a scream, she sat up abruptly, the previous night’s happenings coming back to her in a brutal rush—a kiss, her brothers, the chapel, a ceremony, dinner—and the indisputable fact that the man asleep in the chair was her husband.
Lifting her fingers, she stared at the antique ring with the green, blue, and gold crest he’d given her in the chapel after pledging his vows. She squinted at it. The blend of colors looked familiar, but all the Scottish family crests tended to blur after a while. He could be a Lowlander for all she knew. Then again, she did not care about his last name, so long as it was not Malvern.
Christ in a tartan, she was bloody married.
She was no longer Lady Sorcha Maclaren; she was Lady Sorcha Pierce.
Well, she wasn’t his wife in truth. Shifting her hips quietly, she stared down at the brownish-red markings on the white linen and clutched the blankets to her chest. She would be lying if she didn’t admit she was grateful he hadn’t seen the whole of her. No one had in years, not even her maids, who drew baths for her but knew their lady preferred to see to her own ablutions. With the drapes drawn. Always with the drapes drawn.
Sorcha had learned that painful lesson and would never repeat it. She closed her eyes against the memory, though it echoed no matter how she tried to banish it. Her bedchamber at the Maclaren keep. The sound of gasps and horrified whispers as she had risen from a bath. Her maid, rushing the open arched window and telling someone to shoo.
Three boys, Sorcha learned the next day, when her father had leveled a punishment of horsewhipping for their spying. She had been fourteen, the boys all a year or two older, and one, Aric Ferguson, she’d admired for ages. The son of a neighboring laird, Aric was the only boy who ever looked at her twice, and she’d quickly learned why.
He’d found her later, forced to apologize by his father and hers, but his apology had been naught but a twisted, sullen insult. I’m sorry we peeked on ye. ’Twas a dare, ye ken. He’d lowered his voice then, so their fathers, standing nearby, could not hear. Ye have my promise—I’ll no’ look at such a beast again. And with a grimace as his eyes drifted over her newly blossomed chest, Aric had walked away.
He never looked her in the eye again. Nor did the others. Though soon after, Sorcha had started hearing the word beast in passing. And eventually, Beast of Maclaren. The painful nickname had gutted her at first. Then she’d gotten her revenge a year later at a clan fair when she’d trounced Aric soundly in the ring, dressed in her brother Evan’s old clothes.
“How does it feel to be beaten by the Beast?” she’d spat.
The dumbstruck look on his face when she’d revealed herself had been priceless, almost worth the cost of his cruelty. Her gratification, however, couldn’t erase what he’d said, or the years of loneliness that followed.
Aric had been the first, but she vowed he would be the last. No man in his right mind would want—let alone want to see—what lay under her shift, and she would never subject herself to such scorn again. Sorcha had long given up hope that any man would truly desire her. Except for Malvern, who had wanted her dowry, not her body.
Though she’d consented to the agreement of marriage in name only, she hadn’t been certain if her new husband would expect to carry out his conjugal rights. He was a man, after all, and after their kiss and the way he’d touched her…she’d started to think he might want what was owed to him.
Only he hadn’t.
Sorcha closed her eyes on a silent sigh, her heart pinching slightly with thwarted longing. Had she wanted him to bed her? She’d been promised to Malvern for so long that she’d never even thought of other men. And certainly not a prime specimen like him.
Turning carefully, Sorcha sneaked a glance to where he slumbered. Brandt Pierce was a tall man, and the armchair looked far too small to contain his lanky frame. He was not as broad as her brothers, but his lean physique was deceptive. She had seen his strength with her own two eyes when he’d walloped Craig and his cousins. His chest, a swath of tanned skin visible through the loose lawn shirt he wore, rose and fell with deep, even breaths. A lock of bronzed hair hung over his brow, and his mouth was parted in repose.
Beneath that tumbling curl, she could recall the color of his eyes in minute detail—they were the earthy, changeable hues of the Highlands in the throes of autumn. But now, thick russet eyelashes rested against his cheeks, hiding them from view. Fine grooves bracketed that stern but sensuous mouth. It was, without a doubt, a mouth molded for pleasure. One she’d experienced firsthand. With a tiny sigh, Sorcha remembered the feel of those wide male lips on hers and the clever, silken glide of his tongue. A rush of heat swamped her limbs, and she pressed her suddenly slack legs together.
Brandt grunted softly in sleep and twisted his long body in the chair. It could not be comfortable, sleeping in such a cramped position, and yet he had kept his promise that he would not lose control of his desires. Her brain tripped over the memory of his words. His desires. She hadn’t known what to make of it then, and still didn’t. Had he been expressing sarcasm, the idea of feeling desire for her ridiculous? Or had he been genuine, honestly saying that he would fight the urge to give in to his body’s craving for her?
The thought was a dangerous one, making the blood in her veins start to simmer. Restlessly, Brandt shifted again. He stretched out his long legs in front of him, hooking one ankle over the other and causing the edges of his shirt to ride up against his muscular torso. The night before, she had averted her eyes while he undressed and bathed not two lengths away. Now, though, her gaze took greedy inventory, and Sorcha found it suddenly hard to swallow. Or breathe. Or do anything of use at all.
Christ’s holy baubles.
She shouldn’t swear, but her breath fair fizzled in her throat at the tantalizing display of chiseled abdomen and hard male flesh descending to the noticeable rise of his trousers at the juncture of his trim hips. For a moment, she wondered whether the thin line of bronzed hair arrowing beneath his waistband would continue on to that riveting swell, and then, Sorcha’s breath well and truly abandoned her.
It wasn’t that she’d never seen a shirtless man before—she’d seen plenty of them on the Maclaren training fields. But none of them had ever had such a heathen effect on her. Her nipples had contracted to hot points beneath her night rail, the wool deliciously abrading her too-sensitive skin. She wanted him to kiss her again. She wanted to feel every inch of that lean male frame plastered against hers, bracing her body into the mattress.
God’s teeth, she was shameless! Closing her eyes, consumed by the arousing tableau her imagination conjured, a tiny moan escaped her lips as she knotted her fingers into the bedsheets. Sorcha flipped over and groaned into the feathered pillows.
“Sleep well?” The warm voice slid across her overheated senses, and every muscle in her body tensed in frenzied awareness. Her husband was awake.
“Yes,” she replied into her pillow. “Thank you.”
More sunlight flared into the chamber as Brandt parted the drapes. Feigning sleepiness, she stretched and turned to face him. His grin and notched eyebrow made her abandon the pretense. “It didn’t look that way. You seemed to be moaning and groaning. Night terrors?”
Sorcha narrowed her gaze at him. The amusement in his voice hinted at knowledge…knowledge of her shameless perusal. The blasted bounder had been awake and hadn’t made a sound! She blushed to the tips of her ears and wished that she could pull the sheets over her head.
“That was probably it,” she said as blandly as she was able.
“Tell me about them,” he said, walking over to the washbasin to splash some water on his face and clean his teeth with a square of linen and tooth powder.
Sorcha stopped herself just in time from sticking her tongue out at his back as his hazel eyes caught hers in a sphere of mirrored glass on the wall. “I dreamed I went to a country festival and married a complete stranger.”
“That sounds frightful.”
“It was,” she said. “Terrifying.”
“Was this stranger you married a dreadful ogre?”
“Of the most monstrous ilk.” She sat up and shifted her legs over the edge of the bed, the sheet falling away. Brandt’s eyes met hers in the mirror again, his hand stalling in mid-air as his hot gaze dropped to a spot below her chin. Sorcha glanced down and resisted the urge to grab for the discarded sheet. The worn woolen fabric of her nightgown was snug against the curves of her body, and at his stare, her nipples, which had not ceased tingling, tightened even more. Flushing, she crossed her arms over the offending points and glared at him. “Worse than you can imagine,” she added sourly.
He laughed, and the deep rumble made her pause. She couldn’t help noticing how his laughter lit his eyes in the most fascinating way. “Did your monstrous ogre threaten to boil your flesh and suck the marrow from your bones?”
It should have been awful what he was suggesting, but the teasing words shot bolts of exquisite heat down her spine. The combination of flesh and suck together with her earlier fantasies made her face feel as if it were on fire.
“No,” she gritted out and hurried behind the privacy screen. “I kicked him in the head.”
The thought of using the chamber pot with him so close by made her cringe, but she managed it quickly when she heard him walk to the opposite end of the room to get dressed.
Her husband’s reply floated over the barrier. “Poor ogre. Sounds like he got the raw end of the deal.”
“Why is that?” she couldn’t help asking.
“Because ogres need love, too.”
A ripple of laughter bubbled in her chest, and Sorcha poked her head around the barrier. Except for her little brother Niall, banter did not come this easily with other people, especially with a lout who was using her plight to get his hands on her horse. Though, to be fair, she was using him, too.
“Tell me more,” Brandt said as he deftly fastened the buttons of his waistcoat. “Was he a strapping young blighter?”
Strapping. Handsome. Irritatingly attractive.
Once more, Sorcha flushed and cursed her body’s idiotic response. Undressing swiftly, she tied her stockings and garters, then pulled a chemise and clean dress over her head. “He was a bit of a runt, actually,” she said, her voice muffled by the layers of cotton and wool.
“A runt? I think not,” Brandt said in an affronted voice that seemed suddenly loud. Sorcha realized why as she settled the dress into place. She almost screeched. He was standing right in front of her, behind the screen. “Let me,” he said, turning her shoulders around before she could form a tart reply. “This one looks to have fasteners up the back.”
She felt the deft tug and pull of the fabric as he buttoned her dress. At home, Kira, her maid, would often help with buttons and sometimes dress her hair. But no man had ever attended to her like this. Was this what husbands did for their wives? Surely, Malvern would never have offered such a thing. Sorcha closed her eyes as Brandt finished. She had to stop worrying about the marquess. She was out of his reach now. And, most of all, she needed to stop making a martyr of her pretend husband who had traded marriage vows for horseflesh.
“Playing the servant comes easily to you,” she said in a cool tone, peering over her shoulder. “Well done.”
Fathomless gold-flecked green eyes met hers. “My lady’s wish is my command.”
“Until you get your hands on my stallion.”
“Until then, of course.”
She watched him, interest sparking. “Why do you want Lockie so badly anyway?”
“I hope to breed him with one of my mares,” he said. “His brawn with her speed should make for spectacular foals.”
It was the first bit of true excitement she’d seen from him…outside of their kiss. Sorcha fought back a shiver. Then, he’d been as enthusiastic as she.
“You breed horses?” When he nodded, she went on. “I confess, I’m not as horse-mad as my father, but I’ve raised Lockie from a colt myself. He’s special—” She broke off, the to me sticking in her throat as a rush of guilt swamped her. “He’ll make a great sire.”
“That is my hope.”
His hands fell away from her dress, but Sorcha continued to feel the heat from his body. He remained behind the screen with her, the small space growing warmer. She turned, thinking to slip past him, but was caught by the flat of his palm as it gently gripped her elbow. Brandt peered at her, one brow propped high.
“When you’re angry, you sound like your brothers, but otherwise…you sound English. Why?”
Sorcha frowned at him. It was true. She lost control of her accent whenever her temper flared, and it was something her mother endlessly chastised her about. No English lord would want a wife who spoke with such a provincial, rustic brogue, her mother had always claimed. She would need to be as cultured and elegant as any of the fine English ladies she would undoubtedly encounter in London or Edinburgh when she became Lady Malvern. Any daughter of mine will bring honor to Clan Maclaren, her mother had intoned so often that it popped into Sorcha’s mind without warning whenever she lost her temper and the pretty manners and rounded vowels she’d been bred to possess.
“My mother is from Cumbria,” she replied, noticing with growing unease that Brandt’s strong hand was still on her arm. “She insisted her daughters break from the Scots tongue whenever we went to London, but, since I was the one chosen for an English marquess, she concentrated her efforts on me.”
Brandt’s fingers tightened around her elbow. “They chose you for Malvern, not your sisters. Why was that?”
The question brought with it the same slow, gouging sensation of some invisible injury that Sorcha had suffered for years. Annis and Makenna were beauties, and as such, they were the Maclaren daughters who could secure those important alliances with the Brodies and the Campbells. Malvern was not an alliance. He was an unfortunate and unavoidable attachment. Her father would have never considered giving Annis or Makenna to him.
“My sisters had their own matches already.”
Brandt’s eyes narrowed by a fraction. It was enough to indicate that he didn’t believe her. She wriggled her elbow, wanting freedom from the closed-up space behind the dressing screen and from his knowing stare. Brandt held on firmly.
“And neither of them feigned scandal in order to avoid those matches?” he asked, a muscle in his jaw twitching. Ever since waking up in that lumpy chair, he’d been conversing easily with her. Joking even. Sorcha had started to hope that perhaps he was no longer furious, that his plan to leave her at the Brodie keep and then return to his home with one of the most valuable horses in the Highlands as payment would be a balm. But here his anger was, yet again, bubbling to the surface. Hers notched in response.
She pressed her lips together and twisted her arm more forcibly. “Graeme Brodie and Malcolm Campbell are fine men. My sisters didn’t need to worry about marrying them.”
Finally, Sorcha successfully pried her elbow from Brandt’s grip. She pushed past him, into the open part of the room, and took a deep breath. The air was no longer filled with his scent, a heady mix of sun-warmed leather, spice, and clean soap, and her body instantly felt steadier, her mind, sharper. She found her boots and sat upon the edge of the bed to pull them on, ignoring the press of Brandt’s eyes. She didn’t have to look up to know he was watching her slide the snug leather over each foot.
“Will your sister’s husband agree to keep you on Brodie lands?”
Her hands slowed, and her heart pumped out an extra few beats. Well, why shouldn’t he already be thinking about possible obstacles for his plan to leave her there?
“I am kin.”
“Yes, and so far, what has your kin done for you? Other than throw you into a betrothal you wanted no part of, and then force you down the aisle to wed a complete stranger.”
Sorcha finished with her boots, yanking indignantly on each lace, and shot to her feet. “You chose to marry me, in case you’ve already forgotten. And you don’t know anything about my family.”
Except that they were brutes. And intolerably rude. And tied down by harsh tradition and loyalty. All these things her brothers had laid bare to Brandt yesterday, and clearly, his Sassenach mind held it all in contempt.
He came to stand within inches of her, so close her breasts would have brushed against his chest had she taken a deep breath right then.
“I know enough to understand we have two very different views of what good kin is,” he replied.
“Don’t insult my family.”
“You’d defend them, even after how they’ve treated you?” Brandt asked, his brows furrowing in confusion. The expression cut small lines around his eyes. It was skin that had seen sunshine and wind, harsh elements and a rugged life. It was stunning how clear and perceptive his eyes were.
“Of course I do. They’re…they’re my brothers,” she said, her throat constricted. They were untamed jackanapes most of the time, but they were still her blood. They defended her as much as they bullied her. They teased her as much as they protected her feelings. But with Malvern, they’d had no choice. Neither had her father. A part of her hoped, at least, that Finlay and Evan had been relieved to find her kissing a stranger at the festival, if only because it allowed them to order her to marry someone other than Malvern.
She heard the riot of clomping footsteps in the upstairs corridor and twisted away from Brandt’s judgmental glare as a heavy fist came down on the locked door to their room.
“Mr. Pierce!”
It was Gavin, and by the loud voices joining his in the background, she assumed her brothers had come to fetch them as well. Someone pounded again, and then the doorknob jiggled.
“Open the door,” Evan said.
Brandt rolled each of his shoulders as he opened it and stood within the frame. Evan and Finlay looked ready to push inside, while Gavin stayed in the center of the corridor. But Brandt didn’t give an inch. He wouldn’t let them pass.
“Is it done?” Finlay bellowed. It took Sorcha a moment to understand what exactly he was asking, and then a blush rushed to her cheeks.
Brandt said nothing, but turned, and with his mouth set in a grim slash, went to the bed and pulled the bottom sheet from the mattress. He balled up the linen and lobbed it at Finlay. Her brother caught the sheet, and Sorcha watched with mounting humiliation as he and Gavin inspected it for the telltale sign of her innocence lost. She thought she might be ill, not just because it was brash and barbaric, but because it was yet another lie.
Finlay lowered the sheet and dropped it onto the floor. He entered the room and picked up her portmanteau. “We leave for Maclaren immediately.”
And with that, Sorcha’s brothers and her cousin departed. She and Brandt stood, motionless, for a few seconds. The room seemed to deflate around them. Their ruse had worked. She had the notion she should have felt more relieved than she did.
“Are you ready?” he asked, without looking at her.
She nodded and followed Brandt out of the room, trying not to look at the bundled-up sheet on the floor. Her brother had accepted Brandt’s blood as her own. If they knew the truth, what would they do? Force him to commit coitus? While standing over them with forbidding glares and sharpened claymores?
Sorcha bit back a crazed giggle at the image.
Those intense hazel eyes met hers, tinder to her ribald thoughts, and the laughter died on her lips. Neither she nor Brandt spoke a word as they descended into the inn’s main room, where a handful of revelers were still drinking and dozing. The conscious ones raised their tankards in acknowledgment and made sputtering comments that Sorcha pretended not to hear or understand as Brandt stopped to speak to the innkeeper. He asked for pen and paper, and after jotting something down quickly, folded the parchment and handed it to the innkeeper with hushed directions. Sorcha strained to hear, but couldn’t make anything out under the sudden and off-tune rendition of “Johnnie Scot” now making its way around the room. Brandt then took her by the arm and led the way outside, to the inn’s stables.
Her brothers and their men were busy saddling their mounts. They loaded the wagons with the goods they’d purchased and traded for at the festival, including a few fat hogs, several bolts of woven wool, cotton, and linen, a crate of pipe tobacco, small casks of gunpowder, and several more of barreled mead.
Sorcha had ridden to Selkirk on Lockie, and as she approached her beloved gray stallion standing beside a Maclaren groom, she saw he’d been saddled and readied for her. With a stroke of sorrow, she reached for him, her eyes skipping to the enormous, scarred horse closed into the next stall over.
With its ragged coat of scar-torn midnight jet, the animal looked like a beast born of nightmares. Brandt went to him, clicking softly and whispering words Sorcha could not decipher. The animal nickered a brief hello to its master, its great nostrils expelling misty clouds into the cool spring morning air.
“Rest well, Ares?” he murmured to the horse, taking an admiring, and entirely too possessive, glance at Lockie. “Make a friend?”
Sorcha’s chest constricted, but there was nothing to be done for it. Lockie was now his as well. “Ares?” she asked, running a hand up Lockie’s velvet snout and scratching him behind the ear. “He certainly looks like a warrior.”
She wondered how he’d come by his scars.
“He is,” Brandt said as he saddled him. “Brave enough to carry my backside into any manner of hellish situations, at least.”
Like the one he’d found himself in the day before. She was certain it was what he was thinking, too.
“I’m sure he and Lockie will get along fine,” she said, drawing him to the stable entrance and feeling another pang of regret.
“He’s magnificent,” Brandt replied, taking the time to look at Lockie and even run his hands along the gray’s flanks and neck. “Even though he’s young, he seems rather good tempered. Easy to command.” He slid his gaze to Sorcha and with a salty grin, added, “Nothing at all like his mistress.”
She parted her lips to let loose with a biting retort when a shrill whistle parted the inn’s stable yard.
“Finlay!” one of the Maclaren men, Bogan, shouted as he entered the yard, mud splattered up his ankles and onto the hem of his tartan. “’Tis Malvern.”
The ground beneath Sorcha’s feet turned to sand. She gripped Lockie’s traces and felt the horse stiffen with alarm, reflecting her own sudden panic.
“Malvern?” she repeated, her throat closing. “He’s here?”
Bogan continued to address Finlay. “He arrived last night, and must’ve heard news of the wedding. He’s coming with his men now.”
“Shite,” Evan growled as he and Finlay went to their horses and swung up into the saddles. Gavin crossed himself and closed his eyes, muttering a prayer before doing the same. The tension in the stable yard snapped tight as the rest of the men mounted, fast.
Behind her, Sorcha felt the ground tremble with Ares’s hoof falls. Brandt appeared beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.
“Stay close to me,” he said, his tone composed. She wanted to feel the same level of quiet dignity, but her body rebelled. What was bloody wrong with her? Hadn’t she bested Craig in a sword fight the day before? And he certainly hadn’t curbed his blows. When it came to battle, Sorcha was skilled and able, though the impotent rage she felt now was debilitating. Malvern held the power and the means to destroy her family, and his despicable first knight, Coxley, was more than happy to carry out his orders.
At that moment, a handful of armored men on horseback turned into the stable yard. They were dressed for war, it seemed. Sorcha held her breath as Lord Malvern turned in, pushing through his men and coming to the fore. He had not changed since the last she’d seen him, months ago.
The marquess was straight-backed and tall, thickly built, and fox-faced. His mouth was constantly drawn, as though perpetually disappointed in something, as it was right then. Malvern’s glare cut around the stable yard until it landed upon Sorcha. His watery blue eyes froze her with a pointed look of ownership that made her flesh crawl. His thin nostrils flared and then his eyes shot to the man standing at her side. Brandt was unnaturally quiet as every last sound in the courtyard perished. None of the Maclaren men moved. Not one horse nickered.
Until the marquess drew his sword from a saddle sheath and pointed it straight at Brandt. “I demand satisfaction. Raise your sword, upstart, and prepare to pay for your presumptuous mistake.”