His Judas Bride Read Free Page B

mount, Satan, up the snowbank, Snosh spurred his gray alongside.
    “Aye, Callm.” Wee Murdie’s mare cantered up behind. “Anyone would think you had the appointment with Father Andrew. No’ her and Monsieur Turd.”
    Callm couldn’t even force a grin at the nickname. What the hell was there to grin at after all? He dug his heels in harder and shifted his weight to give Satan his head. The stallion was a powerful leader cresting the rise without any urging from him. But he just…didn’t care.
    He should hate Lady Kara. Damned McGurkie that she was. Seeing her in that dress and thinking of her in the hands of the turd was his worst nightmare in months. It should have been a dream come true. How the hell could he forget how his life had changed in the blink of a spring afternoon?
    He’d noticed, of course. He’d have had to be blind not to. The hordes of McGurkies had swept in from the sea. On their way from Ireland, they said. Had they also said to set up house on the McDunnaghs’ doorstep—no damned intention of getting off it either—maybe his father would have done something then. Although even then the McDunnaghs didn’t have the numbers to fight back. And despite Ewen’s antics, they still didn’t.
    It had been hard when raiding parties started ravaging the Dunalpin meadows. Until that afternoon, he’d still thought the life of a chief’s older son would be his one day though, despite the fact Lochalpin, where deer roamed and linnets soared, was a jewel worth plundering. All it had taken was one afternoon.
    Snosh’s gray lurched forward, plowing through the heavy layer of snow, the movements clumsy as Satan’s were smooth. “Big Tam’ll no’ run away with the deer.”
    The last of his worries.
    “Aye.” Wee Murdie gathered his reins in one hand and tried sweeping a strand of sodden hair back from his mouth. “It’ll soon be on the spit.”
    Although it was almost impossible to hear in the wind barreling across the rise, carrying the sound of man and animal away with it, Callm could still make out Snosh’s chuckle. “Aye. And so will she.”
    Cursing, Callm reined Satan’s pace.All right. It was like this. The thing, the damnable thing, was that Morven had been a virgin on their wedding night and so ignorant it had been a cruelty to persist. So, naturally, when he thought of brides, how the hell couldn’t he help but imagine virgins, cowering in terror, in dresses buttoned up to their chins.
    He certainly didn’t think of women in daringly cut gowns of ruby red silk, with pretty golden curls whipping down their backs, offering themselves to him, bold as a brass chimney-plate, asking to be stoked.
    What the hell was a woman so beautiful doing dressed like a tuppeny whore? Did she think it that necessary to entice Ewen? That damned turd would shag a tree. The bastard would shag the whole damn forest.
    But maybe that was the whole idea?
    Edinburgh. It was where she’d been for the last God knew how many years, learning—plainly how to argue with him like that.So keen to get into Lochalpin she practically shoved her tits in his face. Then, when he finally decided to let her, digging her fancy heels in.
    He dragged a long frosted breath in a bid to cool the sweat that lathered him. He would like to say that was just like a woman. Edinburgh manners? Edinburgh dresses? Or what? But that damned army she had with her? No. No woman had ever put her hand in her cloak and nearly drawn on him either.
    He glowered over his shoulder through the spinning snowflakes. It was the first time he’d done so since they’d set off and he wished he hadn’t. That damned dress and what he wouldn’t mind doing to her in it.
    That damned dress or the thought of what he’d like to do to her in it, when she wasn’t even showing the damned dress—not a scrap, not a ribbon of it, when he hadn’t had a thought like that for five damned years—that made instinct scream, she was up to something.
    Now she lagged