Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
For several moments after Colin MacKenzie declared her his bride, Elspeth could do nothing but stare at him.
It was not that she had no words. On the contrary, she had so many that they crowded together in her throat and strangled one another. Elspeth’s whole life had been taken from its proper course and thrust, without warning, into the hands of a stranger.
Behind Colin MacKenzie stood three men who had the unmistakable air of belonging to him without serving him.
They were not guards, though each looked capable of turning a church into a battlefield before the priest finished a prayer.
They were his allies, men who knew what was happening, while she herself had not been granted even the courtesy of knowledge.
“There has been some mistake,” she urged.
Colin MacKenzie looked down at her. He was near enough now that she could see the faint scar at the edge of his jaw and the darker lashes that made his eyes seem colder by contrast. He possessed the sort of face a woman remembered against her will.
“I dinnae think so,” he replied calmly.
“Ye dinnae think so?” Elspeth repeated, and some wild spark of temper leapt up inside her. “How fortunate fer us all that me life has been arranged upon the strength of yer thinking.”
One of the three men behind him made the smallest sound, quickly smothered.
Colin’s gaze didn’t leave hers.
“I was told ye kent.”
There was a slight flicker of confusion in the cold depth of his eyes.
“I kent,” she snarled through clenched teeth, “that I was tae attend me cousin Rose’s wedding. I ken me maither was frightened intae silence. I ken strangers bowed as though I were being led tae me own execution. That is what I kent, Laird MacKenzie. If there is more, then it has been spared me.”
She stepped back… or tried to. His hand closed around her wrist. His grip did not bruise flesh. It merely stopped her as easily as a wall might stop rain. Elspeth looked down at his hand, then slowly back up to his face.
“Release me.”
“Nae until I understand what game yer faither is playing.” He moved closer, and to everyone watching, they were merely adjusting their positions before the priest. “What were ye told?”
“That Rose was tae marry.”
“And ye?”
“I was tae stand beside her.” Her throat tightened. “Nae in her place.”
Colin turned his head slightly, his attention cutting toward the first rows.
Her father stood with his face as immovable as carved stone.
Not a flicker of remorse disturbed him. If anything, he appeared impatient, as if she were delaying a matter of business by having the poor taste to possess feelings.
Beside him, her mother looked as if grief had hollowed her out. Her eyes lifted once to Elspeth’s face and instantly fell again. That single glance told Elspeth more than any confession might have done.
“When,” she asked, “was this arranged?”
He looked at her for a moment, perhaps weighing truth against convenience.
“At the Masquerade,” he revealed. “One week ago.”
“One week,” she whispered.
Those were seven mornings in which her father had looked upon her at breakfast and said nothing, and seven evenings in which her mother had sat across from her and swallowed whatever grief threatened to rise.
Elspeth almost laughed. It would have been a terrible sound.
“One week,” she whispered. “And in all that time nay one thought tae inform me?”
Colin’s jaw tightened. “Yer faither gave his word that ye had been told.”
“Me faither gives many things that dinnae belong tae him.”
This time his eyes sharpened. She hated that some foolish, detached part of her mind observed the line of him, the quiet force, the dark attention now fixed wholly upon her.
“How was this arranged?” she asked.
Colin’s answer came without softness. “I bought ye.”
The world went very still. Elspeth did not understand him. Or rather, she understood every word, and her mind rejected them as one rejected poison before the tongue could name it.
“Bought?” she echoed.
The music began in a hymn that should have been sacred and instead seemed monstrous. The sound filled the cathedral, drowning her next breath, her next question, her next protest. She turned toward her father, but the priest had begun to speak.
“Dearly beloved—”
“Nay,” Elspeth declared.
The priest faltered. Colin’s hand still encircled her wrist. He didn’t move to hurt her, nor to comfort her. He simply kept her in place.
“Nay,” she said again more loudly.
The music wavered. Her father’s face hardened. The Crown men watched. Whatever bargain had placed her here, it had not been hidden from them. It had been witnessed.
The priest’s mouth trembled. “Me lady—”
“I am nae supposed tae be married,” Elspeth urged. “I havenae consented. I… have nae even been told.”
A stir moved through the church, swift and hungry as wind through dry leaves.
Colin leaned closer, his voice low enough that only she could hear. “If ye refuse now, it willnae free ye.”
“How comforting. Is that what passes fer courtship in Wester Ross?”
His mouth almost changed. It wasn’t a smile, but something more dangerous because it had not decided whether it wished to be one.
It was in that very moment that she turned to her mother.
Her father’s grip had shifted from her mother’s hand to her wrist. His thumb pressed into the tender inside of it with deliberate force.
She made no sound, but pain pinched her mouth.
Elspeth’s whole body went cold. If she resisted, her mother would pay first.
She looked at Colin again. The priest began faster this time, as though speed might lend holiness to coercion. Elspeth heard very little. Words passed around her in a solemn blur.
Duty. Union. Obedience. Covenant.
She stood in her ivory gown and felt herself becoming a possession before the eyes of God and men, while her father held her mother in pain and her bridegroom held her by the wrist.
When the moment came for her vows, silence opened before her. Elspeth’s mouth remained closed. Her father’s fingers tightened around her mother’s wrist.
Elspeth smiled. It was not a pretty smile. It did not belong to a bride. It belonged to a woman who had found, amid terror and humiliation, a single sharp weapon and meant to keep it hidden until it could draw blood.
“I will,” she nodded.
The words tasted like ash. The vows passed.
Hers were spoken clearly. His were spoken with such cold steadiness that one might have thought he had pledged himself to a treaty, not a woman.
And yet each response pulled the invisible knot tighter, until Elspeth could scarcely breathe beneath the weight of what had been done.
Then, a sound rose outside. At first, it was nothing more than a disturbance beyond the great doors. Then another shout came more sharply, of metal striking metal.
Colin’s head turned. So did the men behind him. The polished one moved first, and the iron-built man’s hand went to his sword. The wolfish one looked toward the doors with an expression that made him seem almost pleased to have been proved right about the world.
The priest stopped speaking entirely. Colin’s eyes snapped back to him.
“Finish it,” he snarled.
The poor man found his tongue. His words tumbled now, holy phrases made breathless by fear, while the noise outside grew louder. Elspeth’s heart hammered so violently she felt it in her fingertips. Then, the priest pronounced them husband and wife.
The words had scarcely entered the air before Colin turned to her. Elspeth knew what came next. Even in her ignorance of the marriage bed, she knew enough of ceremonies to understand the public seal of a kiss.
She turned her head slightly and hissed. “If ye dare kiss me, I will kill ye.”
For the first time since she had seen him, Colin MacKenzie laughed. The sound brushed over her skin in a way that made her furious with him, and still more furious with herself.
“Will ye?” he murmured.
“With great satisfaction.”
His hand rose, not to seize her, but to cup the side of her face. The contact was shocking. His palm was warm, and his fingers callused, but his touch was gentler than she had expected and therefore more alarming than force would have been.
“Then I shall count meself warned.”
He kissed her anyway. Elspeth had no time to turn away.
His mouth came down on hers with a certainty that robbed her of thought.
It wasn’t the soft, ceremonial brush she might have expected before witnesses.
It was brief, yes, but it was no timid thing.
His lips were firm and warm, tasting faintly of wine and winter air, and for one treacherous instant something low in her belly tightened with a startled, unfamiliar pleasure.
Horrified by herself, she bit him… hard. Blood touched her tongue.
Colin drew back. A gasp moved through the nearest witnesses. The priest made a strangled sound. Elspeth braced herself for the cruel lash she had learned to expect from men who did not enjoy being opposed.
But Colin only looked at her. A line of red marked his lower lip. Slowly, he touched it with his thumb, looked at the blood, then looked back at her. Then he smiled, as if she had amused him, as if she had interested him… as if he had liked it.
The smile transformed him into a colder, darker kind of handsome, the sort of man a sensible woman would flee, if she had not already been married to him before an audience and a terrified priest.
At that moment, the cathedral doors burst inward.
Screams tore through the church. Men in black surged through the entrance like a spill of night, bearing weapons.
For one stunned heartbeat, no one seemed to understand that violence had entered the house of God.
Then the first man fell near the doors, with blood dark against the rushes, and the whole church broke.
People scattered. Women screamed. Steel rang against steel. Colin seized her hand and dragged her sideways just as something hissed through the air where she had stood. A dagger struck the wooden rail behind them.
Elspeth stared at it.
“That was meant fer—”
“Me,” Colin said.
He pulled her behind him. The three men who had stood as witnesses were already fighting.
The polished one had drawn his blade with lethal grace.
The iron-built man struck like a breaking door.
The wolfish one moved so quickly Elspeth could hardly follow him, his sword flashing through the grey light.
Colin shoved her toward the side aisle.
“Run.”
She gathered her skirts and ran. The gown, which had been an insult before, now became an enemy. Silk tangled around her legs. The embroidered hem caught beneath her shoe. She stumbled once, regained herself, and heard Colin curse behind her with admirable restraint.
Another attacker appeared ahead. Colin’s arm shot around her waist, hauling her back against him as his sword came up.
He pushed her behind him, met the man’s attack, and dispatched him with a brutal efficiency that made Elspeth’s stomach twist. Then, his eyes swept over her as if counting every breath.
“We have tae keep moving.”
He took her hand again, and Elspeth ran. They reached a side passage where the noise of the nave became muffled but no less dreadful. Her slipper skidded on the worn floor. The cursed gown twisted about her legs once more.
“I cannae—”
Before she could finish, Colin turned, swept her up into his arms, and continued running.
Elspeth gasped. “Put me down!”
“Nay.”
“If we survive this, I shall hate ye with great dedication.”
“Ye may begin now if it helps.”
It was intolerable. It was also, most inconveniently, effective.
Held against him, Elspeth could feel the violent strength of his body and the hard beat of his heart where her hand had landed against his chest. She wanted to be outraged by the indignity of being carried, a bride stolen from a raided church.
The yard beyond the cathedral had become chaos. A body lay half in shadow beside the wall. Elspeth forced herself not to look closely. Colin set her on her feet only when they reached the horses.
“Up,” he commanded.
“I can mount without—”
He put his hands at her waist and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. Elspeth landed sideways upon the saddle with a most unladylike gasp.
“Hold the reins.”
“I ken how tae sit a horse.”
“Then dae it quickly.”
An attacker lunged from the side. Colin turned at once, placing himself between the man and the horse.
The attacker’s blade glanced across Colin’s hand, drawing blood.
Elspeth’s anger faltered. He had taken the cut because he had kept his body between danger and her.
The attacker fell a heartbeat later. Colin flexed his bleeding hand as though it were an inconvenience.
Elspeth stared. “Ye are hurt.”
He glanced at the wound. “I have been worse.”
“What an inspiring standard for domestic happiness.”
His eyes flicked up to hers. For one impossible moment, amid smoke and screams and the ruin of the morning, she thought he might smile again. Then a woman cried out from the cathedral steps. Elspeth turned sharply.
Her mother stood near the doorway, half-hidden by fleeing bodies, with one hand pressed to the stone as if she could not keep herself upright. Elspeth’s heart tore toward her.
“Maither!”
Her head lifted. Their eyes met.
Elspeth tried to slide from the horse. “I am nae leaving her.”
Colin swung up behind her in one fluid movement. “Nay.”
His arm came around her waist, hard as iron. With his wounded hand he seized the reins.
“Me maither isnae safe!”
“Neither are ye.”
“I dinnae care!”
“I dae.”
The words struck strangely. There was no tenderness in them, no confession of concern. They were said with cold finality, as if her survival were now a fact under his command.
Elspeth twisted against him, desperate, furious and terrified. “If ye take me from her, I will never fergive ye.”
Colin’s body went still behind her for the briefest instant. Then he drove his heels into the horse. The animal leapt forward.
Elspeth cried out, reaching back toward the cathedral as distance opened between her and the woman who had looked at her with heartbreak and no power to save her.
The last thing she saw was her mother’s pale face in the crowd.
Then Colin’s arm tightened around her, the horse thundered into the street, and St Andrews began to vanish beneath flying hooves.
Elspeth didn’t know whether she had been rescued or stolen. She knew only that the man who now held her against him was her husband, her enemy, her only protection, and perhaps the first man she had ever truly wanted to kill.