Bride of the Beast (27 page)

"Their wedding day," she said, and
Duncan
didn't doubt her for an instant. "Today is the day they will marry."

**

Her wedding day.

Caterine paused on the top landing of the outer stairs and stared down at the milling throng crowding Dunlaidir's bailey. The unaccustomed activity stirred an odd warmth in her
heart… and plunged her headlong onto a proving ground that hovered somewhere between exhilaration and ill-ease. "They came, my lady," Rhona enthused beside her,
her
elation barely contained. "They came just as he said they
would."

Too moved to speak, Caterine reached for her friend's hand and squeezed tight.

The burghers had indeed come, just as her soon-to-be-husband had predicted, and from what she could tell, they'd brought all their friends and family with them.

Her emotions welling to a dangerous degree, she strained her eyes to peer through the billowing sheets of thick white mist drifting across the cobbled bailey.

A sea of familiar faces returned her gaze.

Beaming
faces full of pride and... hope.

Beloved faces she hadn't seen in many long months, but that now stared up at her from the bottom of the stairs. Or shouted well-wishes from as far away as the distant gatehouse.

Clinging to Rhona's hand, Caterine drew a deep breath of the frosty air and struggled to find her voice.

"Are there truly so many?" she finally pushed past the hot lump swelling her throat.

"More than the stars in the night sky," Rhona answered, a suspicious catch in her own voice. "For truth, I vow they line the causeway to the mainland as well,
and
clog the cliff-side path to the village ... if my eyes aren't teasing me.

"And," she went on, tilting her head to the side, one finger tapping furiously against her chin, "if my ears aren't Paying tricks as well, isn't that the kirk bell?"

It was.

Muffled and faint, but its every chime striking loud and beckoning chords in Caterine's heart.

It´s pealing, and her companion's exuberance, carried her off the proving ground, but handed her into the risky arms of exhilaration.

And hope.

Though, were she wholly honest, the exhilaration had been winning the field ever since
he 'd
ridden into the court-yard, dropped on bended knee, and pressed a gallant kiss to
her hand.

The hope had come later, but grew stronger by the day. "Come, my lady," Rhona urged then, tugging her down the stairs even as she spoke. "It is time."
Aye, it is, and many blessings to you..
.. The voice, feminine, dark and sultry, rose above the revels of the crowd, soft as the drifting mist, but as distinct as if the words had been whispered directly in Caterine's ear. She whirled around to ask Rhona if she'd heard the voice, too, but James had already seized her friend's arm and was now escorting her toward a waiting palfrey.

And not a one of the boisterous shouts of the villagers matched the soft, almost melancholy, note of the woman whose blessing had just hushed past her ear.

A chill that had nothing to do with the frosty, cloud-cast afternoon streaked down her back, but Caterine lifted her chin against the mystery, drew her cloak against the cold, and let Eoghann help her onto her mount.

Suddenly eager to reach the little cliff-top church and the brave champion who awaited her there, she'd no sooner gathered her reins before a furtive movement near the seaward wall caught her eye.

A lone woman stood there, hauntingly beautiful, dark as
Rhona, but tall and willowy.

Strangely silent.

And cloaked more by the swirling mist than the cowled robes she wore. As Caterine stared, the woman lifted her hand in salutation, then drew the back of her fingers across her cheek, just below her shadowed eyes.

As if to wipe away tears.

The skin on the back of her nape prickling, Caterine tried to wheel her mount toward the woman, to go to her, but in
that same moment, Eoghann thwacked her mare on the rump and James called out the command to ride forward.

Her efforts thwarted, Caterine and her little party clattered beneath the raised portcullis of the innermost gatehouse. But before her mount could carry her too deeply into the darkness of the tunnel-like pend, she twisted around to look back.

The woman was gone.

Nothing moved near the seaward wall save curtains of
shifting mist.

Then the crowd surged forward, pushing into the pend behind them, each celebrant caught up in the excitement of the day, just as the strange woman's words were caught up
in the wind.

A cold, dark wind that followed her through the yawning
tunnel as surely as the cheering burghers.

Love him well, Lady Caterine,
the voice implored.

I bid you love him well.

**

Looking far too confident for one so blighted Sir Marmaduke Sttongbow waited for his bride beneath the arched entry porch of the village church, and drew the simmering wrath of a dark-cloaked figure standing but a few paces away. Every bit as hard-bitten as the Highlanders gathered round the tall Sassunach, the silent watcher fought back a sneer of disdain at their protective stances.

Their weapon-hung brawn and steel-eyed bravura As if his man would strike now, with the cold she-bitch and her entourage nearly upon them. He almost gave a derisive snort, but wisely disguised it as a cough.

For some reason he couldn't fathom, his liege still wanted the woman. Nor would he wish a melee to erupt amongst the villagers, who, for whatever dubious reasons, chose this day to spend their obeisance to the castlefolk. The cloaked figure glowered at the lot of them.

Simpering fools to a man, but his lord needed their backs and would take out the loss of a set of toiling hands on his back.

His gaze returned to the Sassunach.

God's blood, but the bastard could stand proud.

Gall bubbled and roiled in the cloaked figure's belly, but he ignored the discomfort. The Sassunach's comeuppance would claim him soon, after the nuptial ceremony. And neither his skill with a blade nor his fierce-eyed Highlanders would save him.

Most especially not the gawking simpletons lining the road.

Drawing the hood of his mantle closer about his face, as much to shield his ears from the incessant pealing of the kirk bell as to hide his black frown, the man turned his attention to the bridal party's approach.

But in truth, his gaze moved carefully down the rows of burghers flanking the village road.

He searched the crowd for a single man.

But as if the very saints had taken sides and weren't on his, thick sea-mist rose in great clouds over the cliffs to drift inland, creeping over roofs and between the densely clustered stone cot-houses.

Undulating curtains of fog sent from above to cloak the jostling onlookers in a giant white shroud.

A near impenetrable one that hampered his ability to locate the face he sought... and soundly darkened his mood.

As did the piercing glare he knew was aimed his way from the distant hillock where Sir Hugh de la Hogue and his men watched the proceedings from a goodly distance.

A safe distance, for de la Hogue had no desire to soil his hands this day.

The sorry task had been left to
him.

And he'd passed it on to a graceless craven who seemed to have vanished in the crowd.

Giving up all pretense of playing the amused courtier to
w
edding of two people he abhorred, the cloaked figure indulged himself in the huff of contempt he'd been holding back, and slipped away from his position near the church steps to meld with the masses.

His nose wrinkling in distaste, he suffered the indignity of rubbing elbows with the lower classes ... and went in search of Sir Marmaduke Strongbow's assassin.

**

"Shall we disperse them?" Sir Alec ranged himself closer to the edge of the church steps.

Tearing his attention from the approaching bridal party, Sir Marmaduke followed his friend's gaze to a distant ridge where de la Hogue and his contingent of mounted miscreants aimed fierce glowers at the men of Kintail.

Their stares, more felt than seen because of the swirling fog, bored holes straight through Marmaduke's fur-lined cloak, the resplendence of his deep blue surcoat,
and
the steel mesh of the hauberk he wore beneath it.

Hand on his sword-hilt, he shot another quick glance at his lady. Nearing the middle of the village, she held herself tall in the saddle, the lift of her chin bearing evidence she'd noticed their uninvited guest... and possessed the backbone to ignore him.

His chest swelling with pride, Marmaduke let his gaze cling to her, and gloried in every detail of her appearance. The shimmering folds of her sister's wedding veil—just one of the special gifts Linnet had sent along for her. The luster of the braids curled over her ears, their gleaming perfection teasing him through the transparency of the head veil.

Reminding him of the darker gold of her
other
hair.

At once, heat to rival the devil's own furnace blasted into his loins.

"Bleeding saints of Christ!" The invective burst past his lips, louder than he'd intended.

Marmaduke scowled toward the distant hillock. The very idea of de la Hogue having even courted the idea of making Caterine his, doused the fire her comeliness had sent licking through his loins.

"We have keen-eyed archers near that hill," Gowan said beside him, clearly mistaking the reason for Marmaduke's momentary loss of composure. "A few well-placed bow shots—" "Nay."
"Nay?"

Marmaduke turned to his friend. "The dastard seeks but to provoke us," he said, dipping into a well of patience the Highlanders sorely lacked. "Allowing him to do so, would be to bow our knees to him."

A look of incredulity washed over Gowan's bearded countenance. "Since when do you shy from a good blood-letting?" "Mayhap since I do not wish my lady to witness a massacre on her wedding day."

"Mayhap since falling in love has turned you into a mushpot, I'll own," Gowan muttered, and Marmaduke didn't bother to contradict him. He
had
fallen in love.

Cuffing his friend on the arm, he said, "Mayhap since I refuse to let some swollen-headed blackguard foul my own pleasure in this moment."

Gowan swung round to the other MacKenzies. "I knew he loved her," he guffawed, slapping the nearest Highlander, Sir Ross, on the back.

Good-natured ribbing ensued, the tension, for the moment, diffused.

Letting them to their ribaldry, Marmaduke curled his fingers around the signet ring pressing into his palm and scanned the crush of burghers pouring into the little churchyard.

Interspersed among them were heavily armed men from the Keith garrison, those who'd been there upon his arrival at Dunlaidir, and a few village men newly elevated into their ranks.

Unlike the burghers, who deftly concealed the habiliments of war recently distributed to them, these men wore their metal boldly and were well-skilled in its use.

Other stalwarts skirted the village, unseen and silent, these men accomplished in darker methods of warfare.

A ruffianly lot, but loyal.

And willing to ply their unsavory trade without blinking an eye if need be.

Only Marmaduke's own men shifted and fidgeted, their jesting already giving way to more serious pursuits. Their brows once more darkening with
Highland
edginess, they cast repeated glances at the distant hillock.

"All are in readiness." Sir Ross claimed Marmaduke's ear. "One word and—"

"Not this day." The clipped words left no room for further appeals.

With a grim nod, Marmaduke indicated the perspiring Father Tomas. The holy man hovered just inside the church door, praying and wringing his age-spotted hands.

At the sight, some of the bluster ebbed out of the Highlanders and Marmaduke released a long breath. "There are times I am almost grateful for the coolness of my English blood," he said, more to himself than his men.

"The cur will be brought to heel soon enough, but lest he come closer, I mind it's wiser—for now—to let him see this marriage is a true one," he added, lifting up his voice so the black-frocked priest was sure to hear. "We can draw steel on Win later... when innocents won't be caught in the fray."

An audible sigh of relief came from the candle-lit interior of the somber little church.

Grumbles of discontent issued from his men.

But both the relief and the grumbles soon gave way to the joyous roar that went up from the crowd when at last the bridal party rode into the churchyard and Lady Caterine Keith reined in before her groom.