Chapter 2
ó Riagáin’s head was lolling back, his eyes closed while his cheek occasionally jumped with the pain of his injury. Olivia held her dagger, crusted with blood, in her hand and gazed out the window as the gently rolling hills receded, and a majestic castle was revealed.
The castle appeared to rise from the base of the mountain, nestled in its protective embrace. It was dark gray stone, worn by wind and rain, with turrets and towers, and a massive wall surrounding it, protecting the inner courts from invasion.
She watched as they followed a smooth pathway that snaked up the hillside and passed two towers with guards pacing and stationed on the turrets above.
Then, they were into the outer court, and she gazed upon a castle with two stories on the outer wings.
It had a taller keep peeking from the far left, and the turrets on each corner made the fortification loom over them and carried a daunting intimidation with it.
The frantic beating of her heart—starting the moment the attackers had come—had slowed and she suddenly felt fatigued and depleted. When Conner’s men came to open the door and take him out, Olivia stepped out as well, but her knees gave out from under her.
Arms circled her waist and she found herself in Conner’s arms, who, while he looked as fatigued as she was, still held her up. “Easy there,” he murmured while his golden eyes pierced right though hers.
Then, nodding to another man behind her, he said, “Take her to her quarters, and send up a healer and her maid after,” then to her, he added, “Thank ye, lass.”
Olivia held his gaze, and oddly, through the grave situation, found some humor. “I am yer wife, arenae I?”
A corner of his lips flickered, but he still looked serious. His gaze roamed over her face, “That ye will be.”
“This way, me lady,” a soldier said while nodding to the doors in front of them.
As she entered the great hall, with ó Riagáin, Olivia drew to a halt instantly. The room, as long as it was wide, with trestle tables and wide casements, was as empty as a graveyard.
Olivia blinked—had she been expecting a welcoming party, a jubilant feast of fifty?
The truth was, ó Riagáin had not anticipated, liked or welcomed the crown’s order for him to marry her—why would he celebrate it?
Olivia flattened her lips and followed the soldier up two flights of stairs, and down a corridor to a room that, truly, could host royalty.
Thick furs covered the wooden floor, and rich tapestries were on the wall. The bed was massive, piled high with furs, woolen blankets, and pillows, and three cressets filled with burning oil cast a gilded light over the room. She went to the bed and touched the post. “It’s…very English.”
“Aye,” a young woman said behind them, and Olivia turned to see a lass, younger than Olivia was—she was sure—standing at the doorway in a modest gray dress.
“His lairdship had once thought to incorporate English elements to his home, but then again, he swiftly changed his mind when the wars started.”
“Who are ye?” Olivia asked.
“Ana, me lady,” the girl curtsied. “His lairdship assigned me to be yer maid. Should I—” Ana’s eyes dropped to Olivia’s bloody clothes, “—shall I draw ye a bath?”
Dropping to the edge of the bed, the dire truth of what had just happened to her and ó Riagáin descended on her like a bag of bricks, and she knew she needed a moment to think, so she nodded. “Please.”
When her new maid went off, Olivia braced her blood-splattered hands on the rugs and leaned over. Why had someone tried to kill them—why now—on the day he had come for her?
It’s an enemy… but is it mine or ó Riagáin’s?
Conner clenched his teeth as the needle bit into his skin repeatedly to sew his wound together. The metallic smell of his blood was thin in his nose, but it was there. It was not his first time being stitched together, but he damn well hated it.
The wounds he had collected over the last ten years, chasing down any sign of his missing mother and sister, had made a silvery roadmap across his body.
Training his gaze—and mind—away from the healing woman and his hip, he began to grimly decipher the attack, little by little.
Not attack, t’was an ambush—they had been waiting for us.
“Aye,” the healer snapped the cord made from sheep’s gut. She stood, her diminutive frame and wiry fingers twitching, as she smeared it with a paste of fern and comfrey before wrapping bandages around it. “That should hold ye for the healing, me laird.”
Looking at the strips of white around his thigh, Conner nodded. “Thank ye, Lady Frigga.”
“If ye had let the lady to come to ye like I had advised,” Sionn O’Bernei, a member of Conner’s council came in, the taps of his elder-wood cane loud in the room, “then ye wouldnae be laid up on a sick-bed.”
Looking up, Conner shook his head. “Aye, I ken, Elder O’Bernei, I ken, but I believed it to be a show of faith and me diligence if I went to speak with McKoy first. How would ye take it if a strange man summoned yer daughter to his home to marry her without a word from him?”
Sionn’s lips thinned, while his forehead furrowed, shifting the thinning hair that barely covered his crown. “I wouldnae take kindly to that, nay.”
“Then ye ken why I did what I did,” Conner said, shifting and drawing his kilt over his thigh. “What bothers me most is who sent those men and why. It was an ambush, Elder, a bald-faced attack from a sorry fool who will be even sorrier when I get me hands on him.”
“Hmph,” Sionn came closer, his old, weathered face inscrutable. “And what about the McKoy lass?”
“What d’ye mean?” Conner asked, stepping off the bed and looking at his closest advisor. “We’ll wed. That is the order of our dear King, isn’t it?”
“It’s a foolish order,” the man snorted. “What is the sense? Ye have had other lasses to court, better lasses to court. Look at the McDonald lass, I—”
“Doubt she would have flung a dagger into one of the attackers’ head or use a sword like Lady Olivia had done today.
” Conner swallowed, thinking of how fearlessly Olivia had fought for him— for them.
“What’s more, even if we had courted, she had her hat set on the Turner lad since her eyes were at her knees.
I’d have made a cuckold the day after the marriage. ”
“He is a poor mockery of ye,” Sionn sniffed.
“Despite it all,” Conner said as he went to the doorway, “I am going to be a married man, His Highness’s irrefutable orders.”
Leaving the room, he headed up to where Olivia’s rooms were as he had to speak with her a little more.
He was still awed that a lady like her could handle a weapon so effortlessly.
When had she learned—why had she learned?
As he came to the corridor, he saw the guard posted at her door standing with his hand on his sword.
“At ease, Willam,” Conner nodded, “Is she inside?”
“Aye, me laird,” Willam nodded.
Gently, Conner pried the door open but took only two steps inside.
The lass was asleep, her face—thankfully free from any trace of blood—was resting peacefully on a pillow, her hair, tossed over her shoulder, was gleaming rich brown in the low light.
His eyes traced the line of her body under the sheets, the delicate nip of her waist, and the curve of her hip.
Silently, he backed away and closed the door, then nodded to Willam, “When she is awake, send for me.”
“Aye, sir.” Willam bowed his head, dark red strands flopping into his eyes.
One thing he did know about the lass back there—she was not as she seemed and a part of him wondered what more was there about her, he would learn. She had already started to earn his admiration and respect, maybe they would grow to be true companions one day.
Though he knew there was nothing he could have done about his marriage, Conner felt guilty about robbing the lass from finding a true husband and lifelong partner.
The swell of longing in his chest was not the pain from the attack, but hot sweltering guilt.
She would be cared for, protected, provided, given anything she wanted—but he would never love her. That, Conner was sure.