Bride of the Beast (19 page)

A firm, rousing squeeze.

"Rub more of the salve on my body," Marmaduke ground out, amazed his voice didn't crack.

"And," he added, the unquenched throbbing in his nether parts urging him to press his good fortune, "you may toy with ... whatever catches your favor."

Most especially the sizable specimen of man-flesh she will find if you peel down your hose for her,
the devil whispered in his ear.

Marmaduke cleared his throat. "Lady, the good saints themselves would weep if they knew the great comfort your hands afforded me just now." He spread his arms wide and nodded to the little bowl sitting so innocently on the nearby table. "Will you not continue until all the healing unguent has been used?"

Her white-knuckled grip still holding fast to her
arisaid,
his soon-to-be-bride appeared to consider his plea and his form, for her deep blue gaze flitted over the hard-slabbed muscles of his shoulders and chest.

Letting go of the wrap at last, she pleased him immensely by scooping up a fat dollop of the ointment. "Aye," she agreed, "it would be a shame to waste the salve."

"A shame indeed."

Pleasing him even more, her attention dropped to his stomach and lingered almost expectantly near the waistband of his hose as if she wished he'd strip off that impediment to her perusal as easily as he'd discarded his tunic.

The very thought sent a fresh surge of blood pumping through his loins, filling him in a manner the thin wool of his hose could not hope to disguise.

Yet she looked on, seemingly fascinated by the taut muscles of his abdomen, her fingers spreading the cold salve in ever-wider circles over his abraded flesh.

And all the while, his manhood swelled and lengthened beneath the ever-more-uncomfortable confinement of his braies.

At last she lowered her gaze, no longer peering at his midsection but at
him
... at the very essence of his masculinity.

A roguish beast no longer his own.

Her fingers stilled immediately. "Merciful heaven."

'Tis heaven indeed when properly tended,
his demons
roared with mirth.

Her eyes widening, she gasped again, an earthier, blood-firing gasp this time. The kind he'd not expected to hear from Caterine Keith's sweet lips for it was more the breathy sort of heavy-lidded moan man-eager bawds give forth at the sight of a ready-to-pleasure-them piece of well-aroused

manhood.

Not the gasp of a well-born lady raised on monkish preachments against the pleasures of the flesh. But then, Caterine Keith was not just any lady. She was a plain-speaking one.

"Your men spoke the truth," she said, proving it anew. "You are over-large."

Too flummoxed to speak, Marmaduke inhaled a great fortifying breath and expelled it as quickly, for his body had gone so tight his lungs could scarce expand.

"And you are well-versed in judging such ... endowments?" he jerked out with a breathless wheeze.

He regretted the words the instant they left his tongue, for that tarnished vehicle of thoughtlessness had misspoken them, lending an appalling veneer of censure to a meaningless snippet he'd meant in jest.

Surprisingly unabashed, she tilted her head slightly and narrowed her eyes to peer even harder at him. Blessedly, at his face. She only looked at him, though. Not that she needed words to tell him how she' d come by

such knowledge.

That sad truth, was writ all over her face... and not from bathing visiting knights and tending the wounded.

His ardor soundly deflated, Marmaduke resisted the urge to grimace as darkly as the frowning crags of granite on which her castle stood.

Saints forbid, she'd think his displeasure targeted her and not a past that hadn't been kind.

Steeling himself against his own ghosts, he drew a deep demon-banishing breath.

"Lady, you asked about Arabella," he said, the calm of his tone at stark contrast to the knot in his gut. "I shall tell you of her, and how I came to renounce my own blood."

She lifted a brow, her frank gaze declaring her willingness to listen, her resumption of her sweet ministrations, sealing his fate.

Saints, he would spin her the
Song of Roland
in its entirety if only she would continue to gentle her fingers over his flesh in such a bewitching manner.

"My tale is not a chivalrous one." He had to warn her. " 'Fore God, it is quite ugly. Will you still hear it?"

"I am most intrigued to hear of your wife," she said, her hands drifting to his shoulders, kneading the muscles there. "And how you came to pledge fealty to my sister's husband."

"Then so be it."

Though each word would cost him, Marmaduke knew a satisfaction deeper than the solace of her gifted fingers, for while her face still appeared a shade too pale, a blue spark of interest now replaced the dimness that had cloaked her beautiful eyes just moments ago.

Girding himself, he stared at the burning peat until its cheery reddish glow grew and surged, eventually becoming angry licking flames consuming the simple wattle-and-daub homes of the innocent.

Innocents who happened to dwell on the wrong side of a border.

Bile rose in his throat and he almost swung away, breaking the spell of the past—and the magic of her hands—but then, to his amazement, a second pair of hands joined hers. Gentle and cool as
Highland
mist at dawn, they smoothed over him, helping her ease the knots in his shoulders ... and his tongue.

A familiar touch, giving him free to tell her tale as well.

Releasing him to care for another.

A great shudder tore down his spine, and then he began. "Many years ago, the summer I earned my spurs, I soon learned that shining symbol of knighthood was all I shared with my peers. That, and mayhap a too-generous dose of
pride."

One pair of the caressing hands, the warm ones, stilled a
beat. "'Tis known English knights are proud."

"Indeed. Proud of rank and heritage, the privileges vested
to them, and their hope of amassing enough
honors
to dine
off gold and silver plate."

He paused to shut his good eye for a moment, to block out
the nightmare long enough to draw a deep, soul-cleansing
breath.

Expelling it, he continued, "My values conflicted with theirs. I honored virtue, loyalty, and the high reputation I believed synonymous with being one of
England
's finest. But on my first foray into
Scotland
I learned that, for most, being a
Flower of English Chivalry
meant having a license to embark on a career of outrages."

"Outrages?"

Something in her tone made Marmaduke glance sharply
at her.

And hate what he saw mirrored on her lovely face. Caterine of Dunlaidir knew exactly the kind of outrages
he'd meant.

"You sought to halt these ... spoliations?" she said in her

forthright manner.

Proving his assumptions yet again.

Marmaduke nodded. "I refused to take part in such brigandage, especially the ruination of innocent women, some of them little more than children. It seemed my peers' chivalry toward the fairer sex did not extend across the border ... or the classes."

"And you thought differently?"

Cold fingers traced his scar.

Loving fingers.

Ethereal ones meant to encourage when he may have faltered.

"I took up my sword against my own men. Men I now think of as black-hearted sons of Satan for the wickedness they displayed that day. I would have cut down every last one of them, but these were amongst the best fighting men in the Realm and I was one facing many."

"What happened?" she asked softly, the compassion in her voice melding the two pairs of tender hands into one.

And with Arabella's
blessing
came the strength to confront his other ghosts.

The English ones.

Ripping open old wounds forced him to relive every biting lash of the whip that had scored his back.

"Do you not wish to speak of it?"

Marmaduke blinked. "Nay, I do not mind, for it is how I came to meet my late wife, and I do believe good comes of all our trials and hardships even if we must sometimes search far and long to see the truth of it."

And despite that truth, a bitter taste filled his mouth. Even after so many years, he could still feel the corded flails shredding his flesh.

The worst pain of all had been knowing that English hands wielded the whip, for each time their lashes had cut into his back, another of his youthful ideals had withered and died.

Until none remained at all.

Even his burning love of his homeland had been wrested from him that day.

"I was stripped and beaten," he finally told her, sparing her ears the vilest of the grisly deeds they'd visited upon him. "Flogged and left for dead by my own men."

"Duncan MacKenzie found you?"

"His father," Marmaduke amended. "That good man took me to his hall where his womenfolk nursed me to health.

Every man, woman, and child beneath his roof welcomed me into their midst and refused to let me die. They tended my wounds, inside and out, and it's been my greatest honor
to serve them ever since."

Glancing away, he stared at the slow-burning peat fire, once more seeing other flames ... friendly ones this time. As were the faces evoked by the recollection of the massive hearth in Eilean Creag's great hall.

Then a strong gust of sea wind rattled the window shutters and the flames and the faces faded.

The memories remained.
                            
                       

Caterine trailed her fingertips along his collarbone, down his sides and then away. "Arabella was one of the women
who tended you?"

"Nay, she was but a slip of a girl at the time." The images that had once made him throw back his head with laughter, now flooded him with pain. "She was ruled by her passions even then... a spitfire and hellion. She made faces at me and called me names some knights I'm acquainted with wouldn't know the meaning of."

"But she grew into a beautiful woman and stole your
heart."

"But she grew into a beautiful woman and stole your
heart."

"That she did, my lady." Marmaduke couldn't lie. "And for all her devilry when I first arrived at Eilean Creag, not a night of our marriage passed that she didn't massage my

blighted back."

"Do you think she'd mind if I lent you such comfort now?" The words came so soft they could' ve been a rustling
of the wind.

No, she'd be pleased.

This time the words
did
carry on the damp breeze.

The hairs on the back of Marmaduke's neck lifted and he started to answer, but already his new lady had taken gentle hold of his arms and was turning nun around.

Turning him so she could see his back.

A bone-crushing dread took hold of him as well... the
fear she'd cry out in horror, wholly repulsed. Or worse, that she'd pity him, and such a reaction would lance him deeper. Marmaduke held his breath.

She pulled him now, urging him steadily away from the peat fire's meager glow and closer to the nearest wall torch. The one that burned the brightest. "The old wounds pain me no more," he said, strangle-voiced. Already feeling the warmth from the blazing torch ... full aware its hissing flames well-illuminated the maze of raised welts criss-crossing every inch of his bare back. "There is no need for you—"

"God in heaven!" His new lady's outrage allayed his
dread in one fell swoop.

And swelled his heart.

Not a tone of revulsion colored her outburst.

Nor the slightest tinge of pity.

Only indignation.

Then she was upon him, smoothing her bliss-sending fingers over the travesty that was his back. "Your men did this to you?" she breathed, the horror in her voice clearly addressing his malefactors and not the state of his flesh. "Your
own peers?"

"Lords and barons of the land or belted knights, each
one."

"May their debased souls roast on the hottest hob in
hell."

Marmaduke wheeled around, undone by her ire. "Saints cherish you," he said, and rested his hands on her shoulders. "My back... I do not repulse you?"

Shaking her head, she traced the tip of one finger down the scar slashing across his face. "I told you once, sir, your scars mean naught to me. Each one is a badge of honor and ^y who does not see them thus is a fool."