His Stolen Bride BN (13 page)

“Ask me,” he said into the long silence, smiling at her indecision, despite his irritation
with the subject of love.

“Ask what?”

The innocent uncertainty of her gaze warmed something in his chest. Nay, ’twas only
a sensation in his loins—lust.

“Do you not wish to know if I think you beautiful?”

She paused, hands clasped in her lap, until she shook her head. “Nay.”

Drake stared at his intriguing captive. Did she speak true? “Most women plead prettily
for compliments.”

“I would not.” Averyl frowned. “Though Becca, our steward’s daughter, told me such
tribute is…pleasant.”

“Have you never received a compliment?”

Her delicate ivory cheeks bloomed with color. “I am not the sort of woman to incite
others to poetry.”

So unsullied she was. Unspoiled by hate or jealousy, betrayal or revenge, Averyl knew
nothing of the real world, or her beauty. She knew only her father’s blind ignorance.

At once eager and reluctant, Drake extended his hand to her face, faintly aware of
his beating heart. He was going to touch her again. And though her eyes held wariness,
she would not pull away this time.

Desire tightened its hold about his throat…and lower.

His palm closed over her cheek in a soft stroke. His gaze sought hers. Staring into
the depths of her bemused hazel eyes, lust hardened him. The mystery of her floral
fragrance teased his nose. Lilies? Irises? Heather? He wasn’t sure.

“Averyl…” he whispered, barely hearing himself over the pounding of his heart.

The picture of modesty, Averyl cast her gaze to her hands folded in her lap. The set
of her shoulders was as taut as a longman’s bow.

“Averyl, whatever your father made you believe, you are lovely and worthy of any man’s
attention.”

Her teeth caught her bottom lip. “You need not say such to me. Since you want us to
wed, your efforts to set me at ease are understandable,” she said. “But you need not
lie.”

“I do not lie. I have no use for—”

The wet slide of a tear down her cheek stopped his words. Cheeks tight, Averyl drew
in a deep, ragged breath. Drake cursed. Why did her tears move him in a way no woman’s
ever had?

“Do not cry.” He paused for her response but found none. He grasped her words. “You
heard my conversation with Kieran. I admitted how beautiful I think you.”

Finally, she raised her head to gaze at him with eyes the wind-tossed green of a stormy
Scottish loch. He swallowed.

“Why do you say these things to me, if not to coax me into giving my hand and my maidenhead?”
she whispered, her gaze clinging to him like a spring-grown vine. “Why do you care?”

Why, indeed? ’Twould be simple to confirm that his words seemed the easiest means
to coax her into accepting their coming nuptials—and their marriage bed. But somehow
there was more, something he could scarce name. Some warmth where cold had recently
lived. Must be his conscience, he thought with gloom.

Drake looked away. The urge to touch her was strong. “I but speak a truth someone
should have told you long ago.”

He rose to put distance between them, knowing he had said far more than he intended.
He cursed when she followed.

“Such an admission of your feelings…puzzles me.”

With a scowl, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “’Tis not a feeling, but an observation
that I had hoped would cure you of the absurd fantasy that love will make you beautiful.”

Averyl backed away as if he’d struck her, the white gown billowing about her legs.
“I do not believe love will make me beautiful.”

“That is what you said.”

She shook her head. “’Tis peace I seek. To know someone accepts the plain face and
wild curls God gave me yet still wishes me near.”

He laughed. “Then it is not a man’s love you want, but his lust. You seek to know
you can stir his blood upon your whim.”

“Nay.”

“’Tis what you describe.” He advanced. “Besides, you cannot truly want love. It lies
with a serpent tongue.”

“That is not so.”

Drake grabbed her arm. “Forget what you dream. Accept the face God gave you. It will
not change. And no paltry emotion like love will grant you the peace you seek.”

“And lust would?”

He nodded. “It is more honest.”

“But fleeting, you wretched beast,” she spit in fury. “I will not handfast with you!”

She had not listened to him, had not absorbed a single word. Still did not believe
in her own charm. Stubborn Campbell wench.

“You are the last lady I wish to wed, as well. You know naught of life, and less of
men and women. But Fate has dictated we will be man and wife for one year—and without
that deceitful sentiment you call love.”

* * * * *

Stillness and mist blanketed the island’s rolling green hills the next eve. Averyl
lay awake in bed, her back to Locke, as he prepared to bed down beside the door. This
night, as last, sleep would not come. She could not blame the dark, for Drake kept
a candle beside her bed. Nor could she claim summer heat, for the nights had been
cool, brushed by gray sea winds.

Instead, she dwelt upon Drake’s proclamation.

How soon would he insist they wed? Who would witness their handfast union? How would
she stop this farce?

Then there was Drake himself.

By the door, Averyl heard the rustle of clothing. The whispers of him disrobing roused
her imagination. Somehow she could not prevent herself from envisioning him, muscle-hewn,
completely male. Even as her stomach fluttered, her mind rebelled. Pictures of him
stormed her—Drake tossing aside his simple black shirt and baring the golden angles
of his powerful chest, stepping out of his breeches and displaying hard thighs…

This must cease. Upon her word, what had become of her vow to resist him, of feminine
decency?

How could she despise and dwell on him at once?

Clutching her pillow in the firelit night, she could scarce deny that he dissipated
her logic like mist in sunlight. Her mind told her he was capable of killing Murdoch’s
father. She had seen the tangible anger that ran swift and hot under his icy façade.
But something within her protested the hasty judgment. Drake had not harmed her. His
strong arms had even held her on the wind-swept cliff while she battled her fear of
the dark. He had called her beautiful.

Chewing her lip, Averyl wondered which Drake was the real one. A depraved butcher
no sane person would cross or a tortured man driven to retribution?

Averyl rolled to her side, tangled in her own thoughts. The contents of Locke’s soul
mattered not. Even if he was innocent of murder, she would not wed him. Could not.
She need only concern herself with convincing him that she refused to accept a husband
with whom saving Abbotsford was not possible.

Still, the tang of ale and smoke mixed with the sweet smell of summer rain and damp
thatch to form the scents of Drake’s world. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply,
finding the fragrance, different from that at Abbotsford, oddly pleasing.

“Why do you not sleep?” Drake asked from across the room.

Averyl sat up in bed, looking across the small room to him. She tried not to focus
on the shadows caressing his bare chest—or her own flaming cheeks. “I cannot dismiss
from my mind this foolish marriage you seek to make.”

He sighed and leaned against the door, turning the golden expanse of his chest and
abdomen squarely into her view. She dragged her gaze away.

“Foolish mayhap, but necessary.”

“I cannot conceive that you wish to wed and bed a woman who wants you not. I’ve no
doubt you could find scores of women willing—nay, eager—to agree to what you have
proposed.”

“Scores?” he challenged. “You think much of my charm, Lady Averyl, particularly since
all Scotland believes me a butcher. Through you, I will see Murdoch brought to justice.”

“But you have already taken from me my keep, my father, my chances of wedding well.
I beg you, do not take my dreams from me, too.”

“Your dreams?” A moment later, his puzzled frown cleared to a scowl of annoyance.
“Ach, love again. ’Tis tiresome.”

“Only your refusal to believe in it is,” she replied, teeth gritted. “Love is real.
Will you not accept it?”

“If you have felt it not, why do you?”

She smiled. “My parents loved with such passion that even death could not tear my
mother from my father’s heart. I cannot settle for a union without that possibility.”

“You speak with the naïve eyes of a young girl,” he sneered.

And he spoke like a man who possessed no heart.

“I know my father loved my mother. He has not taken a leman since she died.”

Drake laughed. “That you know of. Fathers do not often flaunt their mistresses before
their well-reared daughters.”

“Abbotsford is too small a keep to hide such secrets. He loved her too much to dishonor
her memory with faithlessness.”

Rolling his eyes, Drake said, “Only a eunuch of a man remains faithful to a dead woman
for eleven years. That or a buffoon. Either could describe your father well enough.”

“That is unkind. You know nothing—”

“’Tis time to cease this prattle and sleep.”

Averyl clenched her jaw. The insufferable oaf refused to see any view but his own.
A eunuch? A buffoon?

“You are blinded by your hate for Lord Dunollie. Think back. Did your own mother and
father not love?” she asked impatiently.

The chill upon his indifferent countenance froze into icy anger. “Aye, until it became
the death of them both.”

She frowned at that riddle of an answer. “I do not understand.”

“’Tis not important.” His scowl was deep indeed. Clearly, the subject was not one
he liked.

“It is of import to me,” she argued, leaning forward on the bed. “I seek to understand
why you refuse me the simple request of leaving me unwed and untouched.”

“Simple?” He grunted. “Such statements only prove how little you understand of Murdoch
and his deceit.”

Averyl stood and crossed the room, trying to ignore the golden tongues of firelight
licking Drake’s taut skin.

“Then make me understand,” she challenged beside him.

Drake’s expression closed up tighter than a keep under siege. The glare of his dark
gaze held more chill than a Highland January.

Refusing to be daunted, she pressed on. He must see she would not wed where she could
not love. “If your parents loved, they surely loved you in turn, did they not?”

Her only reply was the bobbing of Drake’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed and looked
away.

Always sparse with his words, Averyl realized he was rarely this quiet. She frowned
and crouched before him. All parents loved their children. Did Drake believe he had
been unwelcomed?

She touched a hand to his arm, so rigid. With fury? Tightly held control? Curiosity
and sympathy gushed over her good sense in a torrent. “You cannot believe your own
mother did not love you?”

“I know she did not.” His words were flat, unequivocal.

“That cannot be,” Averyl argued.

He grabbed her shoulders and dragged her against him. She gasped when their gazes
met, his flashing rage—and something else. Pain? “Even mothers can be heartless.”

The bitterness in his tone shocked her. “I do not understand what—”

“Understand that my mother was incapable of caring for anyone, particularly the child
she never wanted. Or does that simply give you a clearer picture of me? An abductor
of women so loathsome even his own mother could not tolerate him?”

His hurt reached out to her, wrapping around her heart with a pang. His mother’s indifference
had cut him. Averyl longed to reach out to Drake, offer him comfort. After all, she’d
suffered at times from her father’s words. She knew the hurt such blows inflicted.
Yet she’d always known he loved her.

She palmed Drake’s whisker-roughened cheek. “I am certain your mother cared, even
if she did not express her love—”

At her words, Drake flinched and jerked away. “She told me I’d done naught but leave
scars on her body and that she wished I had never been born.”

Averyl faced the grim challenge on Drake’s face, her heart crumbling for him. How
could any woman be so cruel as to tell a small boy he was not wanted?

Reaching out, now tentatively, knowing he might reject her comfort again, Averyl touched
his shoulder. “I am sorry.”

His face tightened, the carved planes hard and closed. “I have no need of your pity.
Just your hand and your virtue.”

She withdrew her touch. “I will give you neither.”

Averyl returned his stony expression for a long, seething minute. Locke looked away
first, swearing as he lay back on his pallet, lacing his fingers across the taut flesh
of his abdomen.

“The terms of our marriage are not open for discussion,” he told her, shutting his
eyes. “Sleep.”

At his command, Averyl returned to her bed. Now was not the time to approach Locke,
or his wounded heart, to obtain release for her dream’s sake. But she would find a
way to escape. Certainly, they would have to leave the island to handfast. Her opportunity
must come then. Her life, her very soul, depended upon her not marrying a man with
such a fortress about his wounded heart.

* * * * *

Averyl rose minutes after the sun to find Locke gone, his blankets folded fastidiously
on the table.

Dear God, what had Locke demanded of her? Marriage. To him. A man almost certainly
a killer who could not repair her keep and send her an army, much less give her any
measure of love. And he had vowed to bare her body to his gaze, his hands…his mouth,
to consummate a union she wanted not.

She swallowed. From what she suspected of Locke, Averyl feared he would demand her
total surrender, not only of her body but her soul. ’Twas clear he liked to be the
master in all things. He would give none of himself that was not of the flesh. That
she knew for certain.