Highland Surrender Read Free Page B

pallor, her arm twisted about at an unnatural angle, seeped into Fiona’s mind like a fume. How long had that assault taken? Twenty minutes could be an eternity.
    Bess helped Fiona remove the blue gown, quickly replacing it with a linen shift embroidered at the neck with tiny seed pearls, and all the while muttering awkward encouragements in her gravelly voice. Tonight her words grated rather than comforted.
    This room had been Fiona’s since she’d left the nursery. In that bed, she had wept a child’s tears of grief over her mother’s death, but also giggled under the covers with Marg, playing silly games, hiding from the cold, and from their brothers. With Margaret, she had told stories and held her little sister throughnightmares and illness. In this room, she had lived her life and dreamed of a future. But never had those dreams looked anything like this.
    The bed loomed large, a trap baited with pillows and velvet. The stone walls of the chamber bent in at a sinister angle, shrinking the room. It would feel smaller still when her enemy husband came through the door. Fiona plucked a hairbrush from her table, anxious for a task. She ran the brush from scalp to tip, pulling roughly at the curls and snarls, relishing the pain for the distraction it offered.
    Bess moved toward the bed, pulling the coverlet down and plumping the pillows, just as she had done so many nights before. The old nurse rubbed her hands down the front of her tunic.
    “Fiona, you’ve saved souls this day. Nothing can bring back the ones we’ve lost, Lord bless them, but you should be a mite proud of your sacrifice.”
    Vulnerability sprang forth at the maid’s words of kindness. But she could not let that weakness in. She must face this night, and every night forevermore, with the strength of ten Sinclairs. She’d show them all she was the warrior they sought her to be.
    “Thank you, Bess. You may leave me now.”
    “Are you certain? I could stay until your husband arrives.”
    Fiona shook her head. “No.”
    The nurse nodded and kissed her charge’s smooth cheek. “God keep you, Fiona.” And then she was gone.
    Alone, Fiona paced, to the window, to the fireplace. Anywhere but near the bed. He’d come soon, expecting her to be in it, but she’d not sit there like some marzipan upon a plate. She pulled a silk shawl from a bench where Bess had left it, and wrapped it around her shoulders. ’Twas more for protection than warmth, as if the thin fabric were her mother’s safe embrace. Fiona staredinto the fireplace and saw Cedric dancing with the devil amid the flames.
    A log crumbled, sending flecks of fire upon the hearth. She jumped like a cat at the noise and then jumped again as the latch rattled in the door.
    It opened and Myles appeared, stopping short at the sight of her. After a pause, he stepped inside the chamber and shut the door, securing the lock.
    “You need not lock it. Where would I go?” She strove to keep her voice bland, untainted by the fear pulsing in her temples.
    He looked her over, his intense eyes a darker green in the firelight. “Even if you left, I have men on watch outside the door.”
    “To keep me in?”
    “No, to keep your brothers’ men out. You Sinclairs have a cunning nature and a will to see me dead.”
    “If you believe that, why agree to this alliance? Surely the king would free you, had you but asked.”
    Myles’s chuckle was without humor. He crossed the room to where a jug of wine and cups sat on a table. “The king does not grant favors lightly. Or keep promises. If he did, I’d be in France right now instead of the godforsaken Highlands.” He splashed wine into two cups.
    Fiona bridled at his insult. “My sympathies for all you’ve suffered.”
    His shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. “There is no pretending either of us would have chosen this end, Fiona. You are not the only marionette dancing at the end of James’s strings.”
    He held out a cup of wine toward her.
    “Is it