WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (24 page)

"I thank whatever god still looks after me that Cat didn't think of that where
you
were concerned," he mumbled.

"Taking me as your bride," Rachel said, caressing his arm, "will make Catherine think twice about you ever living with her as man and wife again. Her pride will not allow her to hold onto a man who belongs to another woman by law."

"According to Rysalian law, I can have as many wives as I want," he teased her. "I just might ...."

"Enjoy being a eunuch," Rachel finished for him.

Conar laughed, drawing her into his arms. He put his chin on her head and forced a long sigh from his chest. "I'll think on it," he told her.

"The merits of becoming a eunuch?" she retaliated.

"The merits of becoming a husband to a conniver like you," he answered.

"I am only trying to help," she pouted.

His smile widened. "I never doubted it for a minute."

He dipped his head and grazed her neck with his beard.

"Don't!" she protested, wiggling within his embrace. "That thing feels like a scouring pad!"

"Then shave it for me," he shot back.

Rachel pulled back and looked up into his face. "You trust me with a razor to your throat, Khamsin?" she taunted.

"At my throat, aye," he answered. "Elsewhere, I'd rather think not."

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"Let your eyes or other parts wander, milord, and you'll find the blade where you'd least like it," she cautioned.

Conar reached down to swat her curving backside. "Go get what you need from Balizar.

I'll meet you back at the wagon."

"Aren't you coming with me, now?" she asked, her brows drawing together over the perfection of her upturned nose.

"No," he answered, sitting down again. "Let me think on what you said, Rachel. It might well be the answer to the problem."

Rachel's heart soared in her breast. "It only takes saying the words 'I divorce you' three times before witnesses to make it so in Rysalia, milord," she said on a breathless rush. "And a wedding can take place at any time."

He looked up at her. "Like tonight?' he asked. He did not miss the instant look of hope in her pretty face.

"At any time you wish it," she answered. She held her breath.

Conar sighed. "Go get the shaving implements. I'll be along soon."

The breath left Rachel's chest in a rush of disappointment, but she knew when she had been dismissed. To push this man was to only make him dig his heels in deeper. She had to be content that he was, if not pleased with her suggestion, at least considering it. Even if he did not fall into the silken trap she had set up to make him hers, and hers alone, forever, he would act on the divorce. She had no doubt of that. To have him free of Catherine was vital.

"I'll be waiting," she told him before turning to go.

Conar watched her walk away, her luscious form causing an immediate reaction within him, one he wished wouldn't occur. Wife or not, Rachel was going to be at his side whether it suited him or not. She'd made that more than clear to him. That he was sexually attracted to her, and on occasion made use of her willing body, did not escape him. If he had to be tied down, Rachel was just as good a tether as any other. If he had to marry another woman in order to make Catherine see he would no longer come to her, then Rachel was better than most.

He only hoped he could live with whatever decision he finally settled on.

His heart, already scarred beyond repair, had no say in the matter.

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"I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Conar felt the chill of them to the marrow of his bones. A deep sense of guilt cropped up in his heart and sprouted the seed of regret. He turned his bleak gaze to Rachel and found her watching him.

"What now, milord?" she asked.

"Will you marry me?" he asked, already knowing her answer.

"With the greatest of pleasures," Rachel answered, tears forming in her green eyes.

Balizar ground his teeth together. He sent a look of frustrated anger to Azalon before spinning on his heels and stalking off, not pleased with what he had been forced to be a part of. It wasn't that he disliked Rachel. He didn't. If anything, he loved the girl as though she were his own daughter. And it wasn't that he found Conar to be the wrong man for her for, if truth were told, he'd have no other asking for Rachel's hand. What had upset the old warrior so intensely had been the certain knowledge that the only reason for this had been Conar's warped sense of duty where Catherine was concerned.

"Don't do this, lad," he'd warned Conar earlier that afternoon. "This ain’t what you really want. You love that little Outer Kingdom girl. This will only cause you hurt."

Not that anything either he or Azalon had said had made any difference. The lad's mind had been made up before he'd asked the men to be witnesses to his insanity. And Asher had been no help at all for he had been more than pleased to hand his sister over into Conar's keeping.

"Welcome to our family, Khamsin," Asher had gushed with relish.

There were many in the camp who were beside themselves with happiness at the match and swore they'd seen it coming. Most were bewildered by the quick turn in events, but cheered the union, nevertheless.

Sajin Ben-Alkazar was going to be another matter, altogether, and Balizar kept hoping against hope that the Kensetti prince would show up to talk sense into Conar McGregor before it was too late.

"We need a Rabbi," Balizar heard Asher saying as the old warrior pushed his way past several meandering slaves.

"Any man of the cloth will do, Asher," Rachel protested. "If we were in Kenset, it would be different, but since we aren't, one of the local holy men will do."

"There's a holy man at Jabra," one of the archers spoke up. "I could ride there and be back in an hour."

"Go," Conar told him before he lost his nerve.

"Damn!" Balizar exploded. He knew a grave mistake when he heard one being planned.

"You're going to regret this mightily, lad!"

Within two hours time, Rachel Stone had become the Serenian's third wife.

It was a marriage plotted in the stars and conceived in the nether regions of the Abyss. And one that would never know the peace and happiness that either of McGregor's first marriages had known for despite Rachel's great love for him, and his gentle affection for her, Conar would never truly consider Rachel Stone his wife. Although she bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth, Conar's first and deepest love, Rachel would never be able to make him see past the beauty of her face to the woman beneath, a woman vastly different from Elizabeth McGregor.

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"We'll leave for Abbadon in the morning," Conar explained to his lady as they entered his tent after the ceremony. "I'll wait until Sajin gets here before we plan the next sortie."

"Then I hope he doesn't arrive too soon," Rachel whispered to him as she ran her hands over the taut muscles of his chest. "I would like some time alone with my husband before he goes out to risk his life again."

"The next time I go out, you'll be riding at my side," Conar promised her and laughed at the look of intense pleasure which crossed her face. "You like that idea, eh?"

Rachel threw her arms around his neck and pressed him to her, claiming his mouth with a hot, fevered kiss that turned her insides to molten lava.

"I like it
very
much, milord!" she swore.

That he showed no great concern for her welfare as he had for Catherine's did not register with the woman and when he eased away from her touch, she saw no deeper meaning in the action than that of a tired man. She allowed him to put distance between them as he began to remove his robe.

"Let me," she insisted, going to him and pushing his hands away. She helped him undress, then hurried to turn the covers back on his pallet and to turn down the lantern.

Conar blinked as the light became lower in the tent. He still had trouble adjusting to such changes and it bothered him more and more each day. His vision was worse than he let on and the headaches, back again with only minor levels of pain, brought with them even more blurring and darkening of his sight with each consecutive bout.

"Milord?"

He scrunched his eyes closed for a moment, then opened them wide to see his bride standing naked before him, the perfection of her limbs, the sleekness of her flesh glowing in the low lantern light. Her arms were out to him and with a sigh, he went to her, gathering her to him as he was expected to do.

"I love you, Conar," he heard her whisper to him as her lips trailed soft kisses on his naked throat.

"I know," he answered before scooping her into his arms and carrying her to the pallet he would now share with her as husband and wife.

If his legs felt a might too rubbery and his arms trembled more than they should, if his world tilted suddenly to the left, then righted itself with a lurch of pain behind his right eye, if his bladder felt full although he had relieved himself just before Rachel and he had entered the tent, and his mouth was so dry that he had difficulty returning the passionate kiss his lady bestowed on his unsmiling mouth, he did his best to ignore it. He had other things to worry about.

And if the name he called out in the throes of passion was not the name of the woman whose body he rode, he did his best to forget it. He had another woman's life to think about.

And if the woman in his bed cried bitter tears at the error and clung to him in pleading desperation to be recognized as his own, he would do his best to accommodate her.

He had, after all, made the worst mistake of his life.

"I won't have it, Meghan!" Conar shouted, glancing back at her only once as his long legs outdistanced her down the hallway.

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"You still got enemies about, boy!" Meghan shot back. "We're only doing what Meggie would ...."

Conar spun around and pointed a furious finger at the old woman. "No, Meghan!"

"She would not …."

"No!" was the bellow that fair shook the chandelier in the Great Hall of Abbadon Fortress.

"All right!" Meghan shouted back at him, her lower lip thrust out in a pout. "You want to take chances with your life, then so be it!"

He came back to her, towering over her short, squat frame. Glaring down into her militant face, he squinted a warning he hoped she'd heed.

"I can take care of myself, Mistress Dunne," he said in a too sweet, too gentle voice that didn't fool the old woman for one minute. The man was still furious with her, and all the womenfolk of the Fortress, and he was letting her know that he was. "I don't need your women following behind me and guarding me as though I were addled!"

"Well," Meghan sniffed, looking him in the eye, "you can't be
too
intelligent if you disdain them looking out for your precious hide!"

Conar ground his teeth together and forced a wicked, devastating smile to his lips.

"Meghan," he said in a reasonable voice, "I am well. I am capable. I am able. I don't need bodyguards, male
or
female hovering about me in my own keep. Leave off or I swear I'll send every last one of your girls packing!"

The old woman threw her hands up in surrender. She snorted her contempt of his ability to look after himself and swung around on the heel of her rundown house slippers. Shoving past two of the women guards who had accompanied her, her amble rump waddling from side to side as she stomped back down the hallway, the slippers making little slapping sounds on the carpet.

"Well?" Conar growled at the women left behind. When they appeared to stand their ground, not sure if they should desert him, his gaze narrowed to a dangerous glower and the snarl which lifted his upper lip put both women into immediate flight. He watched them hurry back down the hall in Meghan's wake and the corners of his sensual mouth lifted in a well-satisfied grin before he turned and headed for his room.

"You're a bully. You know that, don't you?" Rachel asked him later that evening as she helped him prepare for his bath.

"I don't need those women lurking about in the shadows looking for imaginary enemies in this keep, Rachel," he explained. "Every time I turn around, there's one of them standing behind me." He looked up from pulling off his boot. "I can't even piss without having one of them listening to it being done."

"They mean well," she told him, but she was pleased that the only woman he needed at Abbadon was her. She took his boots and placed them beside the unlit fireplace.

"They can mean well with some other man," he groused as he stepped into the hot tub of water. Easing himself down, he sighed with pleasure and reclined against the tall back. His lids closed and his head fell back against the high side.

"Did Azalon tell you he got word that Sajin's ship has docked in Basaraba?" Rachel asked as she knelt beside the tub and began to lather a soft, fleece cloth with cinnamon-scented soap she had had made just for him.

"He should be here by nightfall tomorrow I would think," Conar answered. The warmth of the water was intoxicating and he was tired from a day of fighting with Meghan and listening to the complaint’s of the men he had left behind that the womenfolk of Abbadon thought themselves in charge of the fortress.

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