Chapter 20
Marin spoke freely under Bran’s encouragement, without the emotion pinching painfully at her throat.
“Leila had been up through most of the night, and the other girls were abed with illness. I tried to appeal to my father to rise once more and he…he began to sob.” She fisted her hand at the memory.
“To see so great a man crumble beneath his heartache, to know I was doing all in my power, and for it to still not be enough…”
Her eyes went warm and she knew she was losing the fight against her tears.
“It was more than I could bear. My heart was shattered, and I had nothing left to give.” She sniffled and fixed her gaze on the floor.
“After I left my father's room, I went outside where it was cool and quiet. I meant only to go for a walk, but as soon as I left the castle grounds, I started to run.” She closed her eyes and could feel the cold air on her hot cheeks again, the incredible liberation.
“It felt so exhilarating, like my body was finally alive. By the time I stopped, it was dark.”
She blinked her eyes open and kept her gaze averted, too ashamed of her next words to look at him. “I didn't care. I didn't want to go back. Everyone would need me, pull at me, drain me of what precious little I had left.”
It had been on that lone winter night, with fat snowflakes drifting around her like the fluff of wool bits on sheering day, that she had finally given in to the pain of her mother's loss.
Her heart had cracked open and she had curled herself around its intensity, letting it suck the sobs from her throat and spill them out into the frosted air.
She did not say as much to Bran. Such a private moment need not be shared, especially when she had confessed so much already.
“They found me later, laying in the snow.” Marin relaxed her clenched hand and looked down at the creased lines of her palm.
“They said I was near death. I didn't notice, not when my entire being had become so hollow and numb.” She shrugged as if it were nothing.
But it wasn't nothing. It'd been the single darkest day of her entire existence. When she’d failed.
Worse.
When she'd given up.
“Ye told everyone ye'd been taken,” Bran said.
She nodded. “The truth was far too painful to say aloud. I couldn't tell everyone I had been…” Her voice caught. “That I'd been such a coward.”
“Marin.” His voice was a soothing purr and he finally released her shoulders, cupping her face now instead.
“Ye werena a coward. Ye were a lass who was given the weight of the world. Ye took on more than any lass should have to, and the proof of yer efforts is apparent today in everything ye do. I noticed it even the first day.”
She looked up and found him staring at her with heart-breaking sincerity.
“Everyone needs someone to need,” he said, using her own words. “And ye dinna have anyone.”
A hot tear spilled down her cheek. His thumb followed its path and wiped it away.
At that moment, her husband understood her perhaps far better than anyone else in the whole of her life ever had. It crashed down on her and left her eyes welling. Not trusting herself to speak, she pursed her lips to staunch the ache in her throat and nodded.
He pulled her to him, those strong arms of his securing her in an embrace of compassion and protection that left her heart nearly crying out in gratitude.
He pressed a kiss to her brow. “Let me be the one ye can need, aye?” he murmured against her hair.
She scrunched her eyes tightly against the scratchy fabric of his reiver's doublet to keep the tears at bay, and instead breathed in the spicy, sandalwood scent of him, of her husband.
A man who not only understood her but gave her something she had been too long missing in her life. Comfort. Strength.
She wanted to stay there for a lifetime, cradled in his arms, secured to the reassuring solidness of his body. Not alone, but with a true partner who would guard her back the way he had during the battle when they'd reclaimed her sisters.
Marin pushed her face into Bran's doublet, wanting to be closer still.
Her breath exhaled against the wool and spread heat against her cheeks and nose.
His hand ran in slow circles over her back.
Though the caress was meant to be one of soothing, she could not help the languid pulse beginning to thrum between her thighs any more than she could still her memories from the night before.
The powerful stroke of his body into hers, the straining groans as he reined in his lust to be gentle for her benefit. The way he'd licked his fingers…
She tilted her face upward, eager to be claimed by him once more, so the hurt of her past might burn away in the flames of passion.
Bran’s palm slid up to cup the base of her neck as his mouth lowered to hers.
Her need had been unspoken, but he had answered the call.
He’d been there for her as she’d known he would be.
Her sorrow was the tinder to their lust, and it ignited them both with a white-hot intensity neither could deny. Their hands moved over one another's bodies, their mouths panting and breathlessly kissing.
Bran's deft fingers found the peak of her breast, which he teased as his lips moved down her throat. He tugged at the top of her gown.
She wanted this, and yet a voice of piety nipped through the pleasure.
Marin gasped and folded her arms over her chest to stop him. “The sun is up.”
He gathered up her long skirt in eager handfuls. “Aye, and I'll be better able to see all of yer beauty.”
His fingertips skimmed over the backs of her thighs and up to the base of her bottom. Her body hummed in response and her sex grew damp with need. He kissed her and drew his tongue over her lower lip.
“It's a sin to do this with the sun up,” she protested between kisses. “And on a Friday for that matter.”
He pulled back and stared at her, his brown eyes dark and shining with want of her.
“If we go by the church's rules, it willna be until Monday evening when we might have one another again.” His fingertips curled around her bottom, so his fingertips were wonderfully close to her sex.
He lifted a brow and swept a single finger between her legs.
Marin's knees went weak and threatened to drop out from beneath her. Bran pulled his hand away, evidence of her need glistening on his fingertips. She swallowed.
“Can ye wait that long, wife?” He pulled her closer to him and her heart pounded erratically. “I intend to show ye many ways of pleasure and can assure ye, no' any of them are sanctioned by the church.”
Her nipples prickled into hard points and a breathy moan was all she could produce by way of a reply. A knock sounded at the door, startling her nerves and making her jump.
Bran released her gown and the silk fell heavily into place.
He put his finger into his mouth, the one he'd touched her with, and gave her a look that shot straight to her core.
Marin's knees buckled this time, but she managed to set her hand to the solid desk and brace herself.
Bran's mouth curled in an arrogant smile. One she wanted to kiss off his face.
He backed to a respectful distance and bade their intruder to enter.
Drake strode into the room and nodded courteously to Marin. “Good morrow, my lady. Pardon the intrusion.” His gaze met Bran's. “’Tis the Grahams.”
Marin stepped forward, shedding aside the desire of moments before as the soldier in her came to attention. “Are they rallying?” she asked.
Drake cast her a regretful look. “They are here.”
Bran stood at the battlements and regarded the large group of reivers dotting the grounds below, like vultures waiting for death.
Their ponies moved on anxious legs beneath them, anticipating a battle.
Not that attacking the castle would win them any victory.
It would be difficult for the men on horseback to overtake the castle.
But not impossible.
Bran had proven as much himself when he took the castle by threatening Cat. It simply depended on how determined the Grahams were willing to be, how vicious.
“There's more than two score of them.” Marin rested her hand atop the depressed crenellation of the wall and tapped her forefinger against the stone in thought. “Why do they stay when they know they cannot defeat us? Do they mean to intimidate?”
Bran narrowed his eyes against the cutting wind and leveled his stare at a single man on a dark hobbler. “That is exactly why they stay.”
“They are assessing us,” she stated.
He grunted in agreement.
“What can we assess of them?” she queried. “Aside from evidence of their brashness, of course.”
Bran had not wanted Marin to join him on the battlements, especially without her chainmail.
He'd almost put his concerns to voice when the ferocity lit her eyes as Drake gave them information on the Grahams. She knew Werrick Castle better than perhaps anyone else, certainly better than him.
Mayhap even more than the earl himself. Bran would do well to remember what a valuable treasure she truly was.
And yet seeing her facing the armed men below in naught but a silk gown, with her hair secured beneath a delicate gilded caul, left him with the driving need to stand in front of her. For all he knew, their wedding night had resulted in a babe.
The possibility jolted through him like lightning.
His child could be seeded in her flat belly at that very moment.
Marin frowned at him. “Why do you stare at me so?”
“What if ye are with child?”
She laughed. “I’m sure you haven’t cause for concern.”
He could not pull his gaze from her stomach. “Ye could be. It can take only one time.”
Marin smirked. “Fire arrows upon them.” She turned from the reivers with bored disinterest. “Have them scatter like vermin when met with a light.”
“My exact thoughts, Wife.” He caught her wrist and kept her from leaving.
She turned back to face him. Before she could protest at his behavior, he eased a hand around her narrow waist and pulled her toward him. His mouth came down on hers, his tongue grazing playfully against her own.
She drew in a sharp breath and her knees gave gently.
Bran broke off the kiss as abruptly as he'd started it and gazed down at his wife. Her mouth was soft, her eyes bright with desire already. “I dinna care the time of day or the day of the week, Marin. No' even God himself could stop me from having ye now that ye're my wife.”
“Bran…” She caught his face between her hands and pressed a kiss to his mouth with equal passion.
He wanted nothing more at that moment than to sweep her into his arms and carry her to their bed chamber. But the bloody Grahams still needed to be tended to.
He broke off the kiss again, this time with greater regret. Manning a castle was apparently not all pleasantries, but a lot of responsibility. “We have to handle this first. And then…”
Marin's mouth was red from the force of their kisses and now curled into a knowing smile. “And then…”
Shouting came from the archway of the main door leading to the battlements from the castle, where Marin's three younger blonde sisters all emerged. They were clad in chainmail, their hair flying like wild gold banners behind them, their weapons drawn and ready.
“Archers,” Marin called out.
Bran smirked down at her. “I believe that's my job.”
“Mayhap you should have called it faster.” She gave him a coy look and pulled away from him.
His blood burned hotter in his veins. God's teeth, but he had a feisty wife.
“Ye heard yer lady,” he called out, still not taking his eyes from Marin. “Fire upon them and get these bastards from our walls.”
Cat took the lead in front of the archers, her young voice calling out with confident authority.
The men obeyed her orders, taking their aim and releasing when she gave the call.
A volley of arrows sailed over the side of the castle, and the men who had been immobile now darted in various directions to avoid the attack.
Vermin scattering, indeed.
Drake appeared beside Bran and regarded Marin as she met with her sisters several paces away. “Forgive me,” Drake said privately to Bran. “But I dinna like the young ladies being on the battlements.”
“I confess I dinna like it myself,” Bran answered, chagrined. “But nor do I think we can easily make them leave.”
Drake's mouth twitched in a failed attempt to suppress a smile. “Do I have yer permission then to see to their safety?”
Bran nodded and glanced over the wall as a third shower of arrows rained down on the reivers below. Few remained, most likely ones who were injured.
“Enough,” he called.
The archers lowered their bows and Cat surveyed the grounds below with a satisfied grin.
“Keep an eye on the wall,” Bran instructed Drake. “Double the guards. Make it look as though we have more men than we do in case they send another party like this one. And, aye, see to the lasses to ensure they are no’ injured.”
Drake gave a single nod, ever the ready soldier. Ever the obedient one. Aye, the lad was a good man to have at Bran's side.
“And once it appears the Grahams have cleared the area, have a second runner sent to Kerr and inform him of the Graham attack.” Bran scanned the empty horizon. “I dinna know how this will end, but I want it over with. And I want to know that Ena is safe.”
Drake nodded again. “I willna let ye down.”
And he wouldn’t, Bran had no doubt of that. What he did question, however, was how quickly Kerr would heed his call and come to take the bloody castle. Werrick Castle was defensible, but the Grahams were a determined lot, and soon Bran might need all the help he could muster.