Untamed (8 page)

“Well,” Eadith said grudgingly, “it does make your hair look bright.”

The handmaiden held out the plain silver circlet that was all Meg would wear to hold her hair from
her face. Incised on the inside of the band were ancient runes.

“I could fasten the brooch to—” Eadith began, only to be cut off.

“No.”

Meg gathered her hair into a single long fall down her back. Without a word she held out her hand for the hooded silver mantle that fastened to the dress at the back of her shoulders with two silver clasps. The fluid weight of the cloth swept down her back to the floor and beyond in a rippling silver train.

A quick motion of Meg's hands lifted the hood into place, covering her hair. Eadith put the circlet on her mistress and looked disapprovingly at the results.

“You'll not outshine the whore,” she said bluntly.

“Still your tongue,” Old Gwyn said from the doorway. “You know nothing of what is at risk today.”

When Meg spun toward the door, subtle currents of silver ran the length of her dress and crystals flashed fragments of rainbows, but it was her eyes that drew Gwyn's attention. Within the silver cloud of Meg's mantle, her eyes burned like green flames.

Gwyn's breath came in with an audible hiss. She touched her forehead in silent obeisance to the Glendruid girl who smoldered before her, wrapped in rituals and hopes as old as time.

Before Gwyn could speak, church bells rang, summoning Meg to marriage.

And war.

I
NCENSE AND PERFUME PERMEATED
the wooden building's sacred hush. Pews shone with recently applied beeswax. Myriad tongues of light rose from massed candles. Costly brooches, necklaces, circlets, girdles, and rings flashed like distant stars throughout the church, reflecting the dance of candle flames.

Scots thanes, Saxon nobles, Norman aristocracy, and knights of all kinds mixed together with the wariness of wild animals forced into unaccustomed closeness by a spring flood.

Dominic's wintry gray eyes catalogued the gathering. As he had expected, there was an abundance of swords evident beneath the men's mantles. Some of the sword hilts were set with gems, signifying that the weapon was intended for ceremonial rather than military purposes. Other swords were like Dominic's, gleaming with war's steel blush rather than with decorative silver.

Despite the crush of people in the church, no one stood close to Dominic, including the black-haired woman whose flowing scarlet dress and costly jewels had drawn many glances. Not even the dark-eyed
temptress dared approach Dominic now. There was the look of an eagle about him, a predatory readiness that radiated as surely from him as heat from fire.

Only Simon had the courage to approach his brother. Only Simon knew that intelligence held sway over Dominic's passions rather than vice versa.

“All is ready, save for the bride,” Simon murmured, stepping up close behind Dominic so that no one could overhear.

Dominic nodded. “Did the priest object?”

“He complained of crowding in the choir. I pointed out that there was little choice. I could hardly seat my men with the nobility, could I?”

Simon's bland summation made Dominic smile.

“Duncan's men are armed to the teeth,” Simon said.

“Yes.”

“That's all you have to say?”

“The Reevers are a ragged lot.”

“Their steel is well cared for,” Simon retorted.

Dominic grunted. “When Duncan appears, stay very near him. Be like his heartbeat. Close.”

“What of John?” Simon objected, looking at the first pew, where the lord of Blackthorne lay wrapped in costly robes. “Any trouble would begin with him.”

“He has the will to cleave me in two with a sword, but not the strength,” Dominic said dryly. “Duncan has both. He was once betrothed to Lady Margaret.”

Simon's dark eyes narrowed. He said something under his breath that would have made the priest flinch, had the good man heard it.

“You will do penance for that,” Dominic said, smiling slightly. “But I find myself in agreement with your sentiments concerning a man who would marry his daughter to his bastard son.”

“Perhaps she isn't his daughter?”

“Then why hasn't he set her aside and named Duncan his heir?” Dominic countered. “No man wants to see his lands pass to his daughter's husband while his own name and line dies for want of sons.”

A stir went through the church, for the bride had just appeared in the wide doorway. In the shifting illumination of the church, Meg appeared to be wrapped in silver mist from head to heels, a girl as ethereal as moonlight. A large man loomed behind her, all but blocking out the light from the cloudy day.

“Go,” Dominic said softly.

Without another word, Simon eased back into the throng clustered around the first pews.

Because the heir to Blackthorne had no male blood relatives capable of standing with her and giving her shoe to Dominic as a symbol of passage from her father's domain to her husband's, Duncan of Maxwell accompanied Lady Margaret in John's place.

The sight of the Scots thane walking with Meg clinging to his arm made something very like rage turn deep within Dominic. Its ferocity surprised him, for he had never been a possessive man. Yet he knew deep in his soul that he must be the only man standing close to Meg, breathing in the faint spicy fragrance of her breath and skin, feeling her warmth so near, touching him even as he touched her.

Then Dominic saw Meg's eyes and forgot Duncan's presence, forgot the priest waiting, forgot the swords buried in their sheaths, waiting for a word that might or might not be spoken. Dominic could only watch his future wife approach, beginning to understand why the common people of Blackthorne Keep looked to their mistress with expressions of agonized hope transforming their weathered faces.

If spring wore flesh and walked among mortals at winter's end, she would have eyes that color; and they would burn just like that, twin green flames radiant with the hope all men lay at spring's feet
.

Silence followed Meg's slow progress down the aisle. She didn't notice it. Her glance had fallen on the foreign woman whose lush body and costly clothing announced how well Dominic had paid to lie with her. Marie didn't notice the look she got from Meg, for the leman was watching Dominic hungrily.

The bride followed the leman's eyes. Meg's breath came in and stayed. Dominic was watching her approach, his body at ease yet obviously powerful. Motionless, he waited at the front of the church, following her progress with the intense stare of an eagle or a god. He was clothed like night, and like night there came from his darkness small splinters of light as chain mail glittered in place of stars.

With a distant sense of shock, Meg realized that Dominic wore a hauberk beneath his black cloak. The tension that radiated up through Duncan's arm where her hand rested told her that he, too, had noted Dominic's unusual wedding attire.

A wedding or a war
, Meg thought.
Which will it be?

The question consumed her so that she could barely follow the ceremony. As though in a dream, she moved through the kneeling and rising and kneeling, letting the plainsong chants of the concealed choir wash through her until the priest looked at her sharply.

“I say again, Lady Margaret,” the priest intoned, “it is your right to refuse this marriage if you so desire, for wedlock is a holy state entered into freely. Do you accept Dominic le Sabre as your true husband in the eyes of God and man?”

Meg swallowed dryly, trying to force a word past the constriction in her throat.

Behind her rose an agitation that began with Duncan and rippled through the crowd. In its wake were muted whisperings as though of steel being drawn. She turned and looked at the dark Norman knight who was watching her as though his will alone could force agreement from her lips.

But he could not. Nothing could.

Dominic knew it as well as Meg did. This was the one time in a woman's life when her desires could make or break the plans of men.

Marriage or war?

Suddenly it was easy for Meg to speak.

“Yes,” she said huskily. “I accept this man as my husband in the eyes of God and man.”

A surprised cry from Duncan was cut short.

Her father's cry of outrage was not. But before he could speak coherently, one of Simon's men materialized by John's side. Only one person saw the knife in the knight's hand, but that one person was John. He made no more objection to the progress of the ceremony.

Nor did Duncan. He had felt cold steel slide through the back slit in his hauberk to lie between his legs, pressing in silent threat against a man's most vulnerable flesh. Clammy sweat broke over his body. To die in honorable battle was one thing; to be castrated like a capon was quite another.

“Don't move,” Simon said very softly to Duncan.

Duncan didn't move.

“Unless you wish to disappoint Marie tonight,” Simon continued, “and every night hereafter, you will say nothing. Nod your head if you understand me.”

Duncan nodded his head very carefully.

“Hand Lady Margaret's shoe to my brother as tradition requires,” Simon ordered. “
Slowly
.”

With great care, Duncan gave Dominic a delicate shoe embroidered in silver thread. Afterward Duncan didn't move again, not even to check on the odd sounds issuing from the gathering behind him. He suspected that his men were having the same difficulty he was, and for the same reason—a knife between their thighs.

Thirty men-at-arms stepped out from behind the partition that had set apart the men who chanted the wedding mass. Though not one of the men raised the crossbow he carried, it was clear that the weapons were fully wound and ready to fire.

Meg looked at Dominic's men, sensed the currents of stifled rage and fear that swirled through the room, and knew that Dominic had foreseen the possibility of an ambush in the church.

Foreseen and countered.

Ice condensed beneath her skin as she waited in dread for the bloodletting that would surely follow such treachery. Trembling with fear for her people, she watched Dominic with haunted eyes.

Dominic's cold gaze swept over the church like a winter wind. No one moved. Many of the Saxons and Scots stood stiffly, as though afraid that any motion might be their last. And it would have been, for Norman steel lay against their vulnerable flesh.

“Well done, Simon,” Dominic said.

“It was my pleasure.”

“I don't doubt it.”

Then Dominic turned his back on everyone and looked only at Meg.

“As my betrothal gift of gold didn't please you,” Dominic said coolly, “I offer a different kind of gift today: I will slay no man for his part in this treachery. Do you accept this gift?”

Unable to speak, Meg nodded.

“A wise man will understand that his lord is merciful rather than weak,” Dominic continued. “A foolish man will try my patience again.
And die
.”

Though Dominic raised his voice not at all, his words carried clearly to every part of the church. There was a murmuring of relief as Duncan's men understood that they would not be taken out and summarily hanged for their stillborn rebellion.

Meg wanted to thank Dominic for his unexpected mercy, but her own relief that carnage had been prevented was so great she became light-headed. The church began to revolve slowly around her while light from the candles dimmed as though someone had drawn a veil over her face. The floor shifted beneath her feet.

With a soft sound of dismay, Meg reached for Dominic to steady herself.

Dominic heard Meg's low cry, saw the color run from her cheeks, and caught her up in his arms before she fell. Silver swirled and seethed against black before flowing into place, soft Glendruid cloth matching each fold of Dominic's war cape as though cut for that sole purpose.

The steady beating of Meg's heart against his hand told Dominic that relief rather than anything more sinister had temporarily taken her strength. He looked from her to the priest.

The man's face was as pale as a death lily, his guilt clear to see in the sweat standing on his brow.

“Finish it,” Dominic said coolly.

“I c-cannot.”

“Lady Margaret has done her part. Do yours or die.”

The priest began talking, his voice shaking so much that the words were all but unintelligible. He completed the ceremony with unseemly haste.

Meg heard the words as though at a great distance. Nothing was real to her but the knowledge that she had betrayed John and Duncan; and in doing so had saved Blackthorne Keep and its people from destruction.

Gradually the power of the man who was holding her sank into Meg's senses, giving her something tangible to cling to in a world that still seemed very insubstantial. She looked up at Dominic's face, trying to gauge the fate to which she had agreed, wife of the dark Norman lord.

Candlelight didn't soften Dominic's features. It brought them into bold relief, laying black shadows beneath his cheekbones and along the hard line of his jaw. His eyes were as clear and colorless as the eyes of the fabled Glendruid Wolf. And surrounding all was the grim winking of chain mail lying just beneath the flowing, midnight cape.

The church whirled around Meg again, but this time it wasn't the rushing of her own blood that caused it. The ceremony was complete. Dominic had turned and was striding down the aisle, carrying his wife in his arms as though she weighed no more than the mist her dress resembled.

Just before Dominic reached the doorway of the church, he stopped in the shadows to assess the reaction of the people of Blackthorne Keep. He didn't know if they, like the priest, had wished Duncan of Maxwell to be their new lord.

An uncertain sound went through the tenants when they saw their lady being held inside the church by the grim Norman warrior as though he had sacked a city and taken her as a prize. Seeing the harsh planes of Dominic's face, Meg could well understand the hesitation in her people. She herself could hardly believe Dominic had withheld the death that Duncan and her father had earned.

Yet Dominic had shown mercy. Duncan and her father still lived. Dominic had taken advantage of the shock caused by her acceptance of marriage and used those precious instants not to slay, but to force a peace.

Hidden within the shadows in the church doorway, Meg touched Dominic's cheek just above the cold chain mail, reassuring herself that he was indeed flesh rather than steel, and that she herself was alive to feel his warmth.

Dominic looked down into eyes that were the clear, burning green of spring itself.

“Thank you for not killing them,” Meg said.

“It wasn't done from the softness of my heart,” Dominic said bluntly. “Much as I would enjoy hanging the men who would have forced war upon me and incest upon you, I have no wish to be lord of a ruined keep.”

Chilled, Meg removed her fingers. “John is not my father.”

“Then why didn't he disinherit you?”

As Dominic spoke, he stepped forward, carrying Meg into the tenuous, silver-white light of day. Again, an uneasy murmuring ran through the gathered vassals.

“The people,” Meg said simply. “They are why.”

“What?”

“This.”

Again Meg touched Dominic.

This time the people of Blackthorne Keep saw their mistress's fingertips resting on the knight's cheek where flesh rose above chain mail. It was a touch freely given by their lady to her new husband.