The Bride & the Beast Page 16

  “There’s no need for you to defend me, m’laird,” she said. “I’m not yours and I never will be.”

  Leaving the echo of her voice hanging in the stunned silence, Gwendolyn shoved her way through the crowd and out the gate, seeking to get as far away from him as her determined strides could carry her.

  Gwendolyn sat on a rock, watching the tide come in. The waves were more subdued here, whispering instead of roaring. The chill spray misted her skin, but she was too numb to care. She wasn’t even sure how she had ended up on this lonely stretch of beach. As soon as she had left the courtyard, she had broken into a run, only to realize that she had nowhere to run to. The village was as foreign to her as the castle had once been. She didn’t seem to belong anywhere anymore.

  So she had veered away from the main road and followed a winding footpath around the castle and down the cliff. Once she’d reached the rocky strip of sand, she had walked for a long time, trying to escape the shadow of the castle.

  It was no longer a dragon’s lair, but simply a crumbling ruin. Soon the gray light of dawn would creep over its burned-out chambers and shattered towers, ruthlessly exposing their ugliness. The night would be over, giving Gwendolyn no choice but to awaken from the beautiful dream she’d been living for the past fortnight.

  She was gazing up at the cold and uncaring moon when she heard a soft footfall behind her. “You still haven’t learned how to properly thank someone for rescuing you, have you?”

  Gwendolyn rose and slowly turned to find Bernard MacCullough standing barefoot in the sand a few feet away. The wind tugged at his shirt and ruffled his dark hair.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t just let the villagers burn me,” she replied. “Then you’d have been spared all of this awkwardness.”

  “I would have never left you at their mercy in the first place, but I didn’t want you to find out this way. When I began to fear that they might actually do you more harm than I could, I came back for you.”

  “So you returned from the dead just for me? I suppose I should be flattered. When were you planning on telling me who you really were? “ Heat rose unbidden to her cheeks. “After I took you into my bed? “

  He shook his head helplessly. “There were times when I ached to tell you. The first time I kissed you. The night of the storm… when you described the villagers carrying my body down the hill… when you cried for me.”

  “Those were just a few of the many tears I’ve wasted on you over the years. But you already know that, don’t you? Because I poured my heart out to you. And you had the audacity to just stand there and listen while I babbled on and on about what a kind and noble boy you were and how much I’d always adored you.” She turned her face away, sick with self-contempt. “How ridiculous you must have found me!”

  “I’ve never found you ridiculous,” Bernard said, daring to draw nearer. “All I could think was how disappointed you would be if you were to meet the man that boy had become.” He reached to tilt her face toward him, but she jerked away. “ I don’t understand. You act as if you’re more afraid of me than when you believed I was a stranger.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she lied. “I just can’t bear to have you touch me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you let me fall in love with a man who never even existed. And you’re not him!” Gwendolyn backed into the surf as all the hurt she’d been holding inside came spilling out. “You’re not the Dragon! You smell like him and you sound like him, but you’re not him, and I can’t bear knowing that you’re here and he’s gone forever!”

  Refusing to let him see her shed another tear for him, she dashed toward the cliffs, leaving him standing all alone in the moonlight.

  Bernard stood with one foot on the rock Gwendolyn had abandoned, watching the sky melt from lavender to pink. He was reluctant to leave this place, knowing it might be the last time he would ever feel so close to her. He’d never once begged the English for mercy or his life, but as he had watched Gwendolyn flee from him, he had been a breath away from calling out her name. From imploring her not to go.

  The Dragon would have gone after her. He would have stormed the village if need be and made her his captive again. He would have carried her back to the tower and made love to her until she couldn’t remember her own name, much less his.

  But Gwendolyn no longer believed in dragons. And it was her faith in him that had made the Dragon real. Without that faith, he was nothing but a heartless charlatan who had tricked an innocent woman into falling in love with an illusion.

  The sun slipped over the horizon, striking the water with dazzling force. Once he would have shied away from the light, but now he welcomed its blinding rays.

  His nights of hiding in the shadows were done. He’d spent fifteen long years denying his heritage. The time had come for Bernard MacCullough to reclaim what was rightfully his from those who had stolen it from him.

  His clansmen were waiting to welcome home their long-lost son, and he had no intention of disappointing them. He might not be able to have the woman he wanted, but he would be damned if he would leave this place before getting what he’d come for.

  The truth.

  Chapter Nineteen

  HOPE HAD RETURNED to Ballybliss.

  The village’s twisting streets bustled with activity, their denizens rushing to and fro with an enthusiasm they’d never shown when seeking to appease the Dragon’s appetites. Wagons loaded with lumber and goods rumbled their way up the cliff road to the castle almost hourly. The villagers no longer gave their gifts grudgingly, but with an almost pathetic eagerness, wrapping their humble offerings in faded hair ribbons and bits of string hoarded from Christmas mornings long past.

  The lights that flickered in the windows of Weyrcraig after dark belonged not to ghosts, but to workmen willing to labor deep into the night to restore the castle’s halls to their former glory. As word of Ballybliss’s change in fortunes spread throughout the Highlands, many of the clansmen who had deserted the village years ago began to return. The streets rang with joyful cries as fathers embraced sons they hadn’t seen in over a decade and mothers tearfully welcomed grandchildren they had never met.

  For the first time in nearly fifteen years, Ballybliss was escaping the shadow of its past. And all because the prince of Clan MacCullough had come home to claim his kingdom.

  As Gwendolyn hurried home from the market one morning, she stole a furtive glance at Castle Weyrcraig, wishing she could so easily escape the shadow it had cast over her life. Although more than two months had passed since she had last laid eyes on its master, she could sense him as surely as she had sensed him in the darkness of her bedchamber. Waiting. Watching. Biding his time.

  He had proved his patience in the past two months by dropping all reference to the thousand pounds he had previously sought with such tenacity. Instead of cursing the Dragon’s wiles, the villagers now chuckled over the cleverness of their young master, pretending not to care that his joke had been at their expense. Foolish and full of hope, they even dared to believe that he had forgiven them their terrible sin. Only Gwendolyn knew him well enough to suspect that his forbearance was nothing more than the calm before the tempest.

  Ross was lounging on the steps of the village tavern. Before Gwendolyn could cross the street to avoid him, he sprang to his feet and swept her a bow. “And a good day to ye, Miss Wilder. Ye’re lookin’ right bonny on this fine summer mornin’.”

  Had it not been for his eager expression, Gwendolyn might have suspected him of mocking her. Since returning to the village, she’d worn nothing but drab woolen gowns with dingy aprons that did little to flatter her figure. She kept her hair wound into a rigid knot and secured in a homespun snood. Her head might ache and her eyes feel slightly crossed, but at least she didn’t have to imagine the Dragon sifting his fingers through its unbound softness.

  “Why, thank you, Ross. How very kind of you to notice,” she replied with acid sweetness, deliberately stepping
on his foot as she passed.

  His pained grunt was still hanging in the air when his cousin Marsali emerged from the apothecary to thrust her squirming baby into Gwendolyn’s face. “Have ye seen my wee angel lately, Miss Wilder? She’s bloomin’ into quite a beauty.”

  Gwendolyn drew a handkerchief from one of her packages and rubbed a smudge of dirt from the child’s sallow cheek. “I do believe she’s the very image of her mama.”

  Dodging the baby’s bubble of spittle only succeeded in bringing her face-to-face with Ross’s mother, who dropped into a curtsy so low her knees creaked and popped when she tried to rise. “And how would that dear father o’ yers be, child? “ she inquired with a simpering smile. “Verra well, I hope.” After Gwendolyn had passed, she leaned over to one of her cronies and said in a whisper loud enough to wake the dead, “A pity the lass is taken. I always said she’d make a fine match for one o’ my lads.”

  Gwendolyn hastened her steps, torn between shuddering and laughing. The villagers refused to believe that she wasn’t their laird’s mistress. Her stony silence on the subject of what had transpired between her and her captor during the fortnight she’d been missing only fueled their speculation. She couldn’t leave the manor without one of them bowing and scraping at her feet, seeking to atone for the dark mischief they’d done her in the past. As amusing as their fawning was, it galled her that they believed she had ever belonged to Bernard MacCullough. Or that he might still care what became of her.

  She sighed with relief when the back gate of the manor finally clanked shut behind her.

  “Gwennie?”

  “Aye, Papa, I’m right here.” Gwendolyn rested her packages on the stoop, then hurried over to the side yard, where her father reclined in a chair beneath the dappled shade of an apple tree.

  Kneeling beside him, she tucked the woolen lap robe around his wasted legs. He’d lost so much weight in the past few weeks that it hurt her eyes just to look at him. His ribs threatened to poke through the fragile parchment covering his chest, while his eyes seemed to sink deeper into their sockets with each passing day. It had been no strain at all for Izzy to heft him in her powerful arms and carry him outside. On warm summer days like this one, he liked to sit overlooking the stones that marked her mother’s grave. It seemed to give him comfort, almost as if he could sense the presence of his beloved wife.

  He clawed at Gwendolyn’s arm, the faded blue of his eyes glistening with alarm. “I had a dream, child. I dreamt he came back for me.”

  “Oh, Papa,” she said, shaking her head. “How many times do I have to tell you that Cumberland is far away from here? He’ll never hurt you again.”

  “Not Cumberland. The Dragon! He’s come back, hasn’t he? To destroy us all.”

  A knot of mingled grief and fear tightened Gwendolyn’s throat. “The Dragon’s gone for good, Papa. He’ll not trouble any of us again.”

  “But if he comes back, ye’ll keep me safe from him, won’t you, lass?” He squeezed her hand until she winced.

  “Aye, Papa, I’ll keep you safe. I swear it,” she assured him, giving his wispy head a kiss.

  He beamed up at her. “I knew I could count on ye. Ye’ve always been my good girl, haven’t ye? “

  He would never know that she was really a wicked girl full of sinful passions and shameful yearnings. A good girl would have been thankful that she hadn’t succumbed to the Dragon’s seductive wiles, but Gwendolyn sometimes awoke in the night, her cheeks wet with tears and her body burning with regret. Believing that she was back in the Dragon’s lair, she would jerk into a sitting position and search the darkness for his shadow, only to be brought back to reality by the even whisper of Kitty’s breathing.

  Gwendolyn was almost relieved when Izzy emerged from the kitchen, carrying a basket of sopping-wet garments. If she could work herself into a state of exhaustion, she might be able to fall into a dreamless sleep tonight. Leaving her father dozing in the side yard, she began to string the clothes over the rope that stretched from the manor to the stone wall surrounding it.

  Izzy had just shambled back into the kitchen with the packages when Glynnis and Nessa came sashaying out the rear door. Gwendolyn nearly groaned aloud. Her sisters were even nosier than the villagers. Each time she refused to answer one of their pointed questions about her time with the Dragon, they would pout and sulk for hours.

  Warily watching their approach, Gwendolyn fished a biscuit out of her apron pocket and took a bite of it. Nessa and Glynnis exchanged a telling glance. They had both noticed Gwendolyn’s healthy appetite since her return, although the timely arrival of her monthly courses had squelched any speculation that she might be breeding.

  “You should have come with us, Gwennie,” Nessa sang out. “Another one of the MacCullough’s ships loaded with goods arrived from Edinburgh only this morning. We got to watch from the bluff while some of those burly young sailors of his rowed the whole lot over to the castle.”

  Glynnis clasped a hand to her breast. “I’ve never seen such beautiful things—gilded chimneypieces, fanlights of stained glass, settees upholstered in watered silk. Our laird must have truly impeccable taste.”

  “And not an ounce of thrift,” Gwendolyn retorted, trying not to think of the absurdly extravagant bed the two of them had never shared.

  Glynnis shrugged. “And why should he be thrifty when he owns an entire shipping fleet? One of his footmen told me that the Crown even knighted him for valor after he rescued some admiral or dignitary from the clutches of the French at Louisbourg.”

  “It was fortunate for the English that they decided to impress him into the Royal Navy instead of killing him,” Gwendolyn said dryly. “But I do find it odd that we never heard about any of these heroic exploits of his.”

  “Ah, but that’s because he was calling himself by another name,” Nessa explained. “Bernard Grayson. Apparently, no one in England even knew he was a Scot.”

  Gwendolyn shook her head, draping one of her own homely dresses over the rope. “I’ll never understand how he could have ended up fighting for the very country that destroyed his father.” That was only one of the many things she would never understand about Bernard MacCullough.

  Stealing a sidelong glance at Gwendolyn, Nessa nudged Glynnis. “Maisie’s mother heard from one of the washerwomen that he was something of a scoundrel as well. Although he was welcome in some of the finest drawing rooms in London after he retired from the navy, she claims he spent most of his nights prowling through the gambling halls and bordellos.”

  Thinking how ridiculous her shy kisses and clumsy caresses must have seemed to a man of his experience, Gwendolyn gave one of Nessa’s shifts a savage twist.

  “Those days are most likely over now.” Glynnis dragged the toe of her slipper in the dirt in an attempt to look nonchalant. “Since he’s accumulated a fortune of his own and returned to claim his inheritance, ‘twill be only a matter of time before he’ll come looking for a wife.”

  “He’d best make haste if he hopes to catch you between husbands,” Gwendolyn said, slinging a sopping-wet towel over the line and barely missing Glynnis’s nose. “Then again, he might have enough silver in his pockets for your tastes, but not enough in his hair. You wouldn’t want to marry a man who could outlive you, would you?”

  “You can be his wife if you want, Glynnis,” Nessa trilled. “For I have every intention of becoming his mistress.”

  As her sisters collapsed in a fit of girlish giggles, Gwendolyn groped in her apron for more biscuits. She was choking down the last of them when the garden gate clanked shut.

  When she saw the man standing in the shadow of the wall, her heart did an odd little flip. But as he stepped from shadow to sunlight, she realized that it was simply Tupper, garbed in a sober black frock coat and knee breeches.

  “Good day, ladies.” He spared a polite bow for both of her sisters before turning his earnest brown eyes on Gwendolyn. “I was wondering if I might have a word with you, Miss Wilder. Alone.”
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  “Why, certainly, Mr. Tuppingham,” she replied, taking her cue from his stilted formality. Although he had been a frequent visitor to the manor in the past few weeks, he always seemed to make some excuse to leave whenever she appeared. She supposed he still felt guilty for his part in her abduction.

  Glynnis and Nessa grudgingly took their leave, casting Tupper curious glances over their shoulders. They still couldn’t quite believe that their baby sister had managed to snare such an exotic admirer.

  Tupper drew off his hat and passed it from hand to hand, avoiding Gwendolyn’s eyes. “I hope you’ll forgive me for burdening you with this, but I didn’t know who else to turn to. If Catriona’s father were…” He hesitated, obviously at a loss.

  “Sane?” Gwendolyn provided.

  Tupper nodded gratefully. “If Catriona’s father were sane, I would have gone to him. I realize you’re not even her eldest sister, but you seem to be the one with the most…”

  “Sense?” she offered when he hesitated again.

  “Precisely! So it is with great trepidation that I find myself in the incredibly awkward position of standing before you today to beg for Catriona’s… C-Catriona’s…”

  Sensing that he was about to lapse into a full-blown stammer, Gwendolyn suggested, “ Foot? “

  He gave her a reproachful glance. “I should say not. It’s her hand I seek, in holy matrimony.” Looking taken aback by his own boldness, he lowered his eyes and began to wring the brim of his hat in his hands. “Of course, I shouldn’t blame you if you don’t find me worthy of her.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’d always hoped Kitty would marry a kidnapper’s henchman.”

  Tupper looked so crestfallen that Gwendolyn immediately regretted her teasing. She gently pried the hat from his hands and smoothed out the brim before handing it back. Gazing up into his soulful brown eyes, she said, “Whatever I may think of your choice of companions, I can’t deny that you’ll make my sister a fine husband. Just when do the two of you plan to wed? “