The Bride & the Beast Read online

  Bernard swept Izzy a gallant bow. “Never let it be said that I could refuse a lady with an ax. Come, Gwendolyn.” He tucked her icy hand in the crook of his arm. “It seems you’re to become my bride.”

  Gwendolyn and Bernard were married at the manor less than an hour later. Unwilling to miss a moment of the spectacle, the villagers crowded into the smoky kitchen, taking turns gawking at their chieftain and his sullen bride. Never before had there been so many heartfelt tears shed at a Highland wedding.

  “It was supposed to be my wedding!” Kitty wailed, staining the silk of Tupper’s frock coat with her tears.

  “He was supposed to be my husband!” Glynnis whined, honking into her lace handkerchief.

  “It’s not fair! Why does Gwennie have all the luck?” Nessa sobbed, sniffing frantically to keep her own nose from turning an unsightly red. Suddenly her eyes brightened. “He may have a wife, but he’ll still have need of a mistress, won’t he?”

  Tears of paternal pride kept fogging up Reverend Throckmorton’s spectacles while Marsali’s sallow baby sent up a howl that drowned out most of the vows. Even the stoic Izzy, who had planted herself firmly behind the groom just in case he decided to bolt, was seen lowering her ax long enough to dab a sentimental tear from her cheek.

  Only the bride remained dry-eyed as she repeated the words that would bind her to Bernard MacCullough for as long as they both should live. Someone had plucked the halo of roses from Kitty’s curls and placed it on Gwendolyn’s head, from where it kept sliding down over one glowering eye.

  The ceremony had to be interrupted twice—once when Lachlan caught Auld Tavis sneaking out to the side yard to try and dig up the gold, and again when Gwendolyn’s father climbed out of his bed for the second time that night and wandered into the room wearing nothing but a plumed bonnet and a vacant smile.

  Someone had had enough foresight to send for the carriage that was supposed to take Kitty and Tupper to Edinburgh, and it was into that carriage that Gwendolyn was bundled after Bernard had brushed her lips with a chaste kiss and promised to worship her with his body. He sank into the velvet-upholstered seat opposite her, giving the door a sharp rap to signal the driver.

  As the carriage rolled into motion, the villagers sent up a rousing cheer. The joy on their faces made it plain that they believed their debt to their laird had finally been paid in full, leaving them free to get on with the business of living.

  As the carriage creaked its way up the cliff path, Gwendolyn’s anger slowly gave way to apprehension. She stole a look at Bernard, finding it hard to believe that he was now her husband. Before, he could only steal what he wanted from her, but now she belonged to him body and soul.

  Yet this man seemed more of a stranger to her than the faceless creature who had once slipped into her bedchamber. Fighting shyness, she gazed out the opposite window. But the moonlight sifting through the shadows only reminded her how many hours of darkness were left before the dawn.

  Bernard must have noticed her faint shiver. Tugging the pin from the MacCullough badge, he drew off his plaid and wrapped it around her shoulders. He had clung tightly to her hand while they exchanged their vows, but now that they were alone, he seemed almost reluctant to touch her.

  As he settled back in the seat, Gwendolyn said, “Congratulations, M’lord Dragon. It appears you’ll have your virgin sacrifice after all.”

  He returned to gazing out the window, his profile as stony as the landscape. “You should never offer a man anything you don’t want him to take. Especially—”

  “—a man like you? “ Gwendolyn finished softly.

  Before he could agree with her, Castle Weyrcraig loomed out of the darkness.

  The carriage drew up before the gates, and a footman came running out to throw open the door. As Bernard escorted her to the castle, Gwendolyn remembered that stormy night when he had carried her through this very courtyard in his arms. And now she was returning to this place not as his captive, but as his bride.

  A man garbed all in black greeted them at the door. “Good evening, sir. Shall I have Cook prepare a late supper for you and your…”—he peered down his long patrician nose at Gwendolyn, his hesitation betraying volumes—”lady? “

  Bernard shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, Jenkins. I want you and the rest of the servants gone. Take the longboats and spend the night on the ship.”

  “But, sir,” the man protested, plainly scandalized by the suggestion that he abandon his duty, “what if you should require something during the night? “

  Bernard rested a possessive hand against the small of Gwendolyn’s back. “I can assure you that I’m more than capable of providing my lady with whatever she needs.”

  His words sent a dark shiver down Gwendolyn’s spine. At least before there had been Tupper. Now she would be utterly at the mercy of a man who had already confessed that he had none. Before the servant could hasten to obey his instructions, Bernard was gently, but firmly, guiding her toward the stairs.

  The main staircase was no longer littered with fallen stones and draped in shadows, but swept clean and lit by two rows of flickering candles set in iron sconces. The splintered railing of the gallery had been replaced by sturdy mahogany carved with fanciful scrollwork. Gwendolyn expected to find such cozy touches everywhere they went, but as they started up the winding stairs that led to the tower, a blast of chill wind whipped right through Bernard’s plaid. The scattered rubble made it plain that no workman’s hand had been allowed to alter the desolate chaos of the stairwell.

  They rounded the first turn, bringing Gwendolyn face-to-face with the jagged hole in the north wall. Civilization might be slowly reclaiming the rest of the castle, but here the night still reigned in all of its wild and tempestuous beauty.

  The stars were strewn across the brooding sky like glittering shards of ice. The waves crashed against the rocks at the foot of the cliff, churning the sea into a bubbling cauldron.

  Bernard’s hand tensed, and for one dizzying moment Gwendolyn actually believed he might hurl her over that precipice to punish her for her father’s betrayal. Then his arm stole around her waist, drawing her back from the brink. Closing her eyes, she sank against him.

  “Watch your step,” he murmured, urging her past the chasm.

  The panel door at the top of the stairs creaked open at his touch. Moonlight streamed through the bars of the grate, casting a hazy glow over the half-melted tapers and rumpled bedclothes.

  The trunk in the corner sat open, spilling out an array of lace and ribbons. Manderly’s The Triumph of Rational Thinking was still sprawled on the floor. Everything was exactly as Gwendolyn had left it.

  “So did you save all of this for me,” she asked, “or were you hoping the villagers would leave another virgin on your doorstep?”

  Bernard leaned against the panel, folding his arms over his chest. “I was rather hoping for a strumpet this time. Virgins are too damn much trouble.”

  “Speaking of strumpets,” she said, drifting over to the trunk to finger a length of ribbon, “I would have thought you’d have returned these gowns to whichever one of your light-o’-loves they once belonged to.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” He paused, his mouth tightening. “They belonged to my mother.”

  The ribbon slipped through Gwendolyn’s fingers. She smoothed the pleated taffeta skirt of her gown.

  “My mother was a practical soul without a vain bone in her body, but my father delighted in surprising her with the most beautiful bolts of fabric Paris and London had to offer.” Bernard picked up the book and leafed through its gilt-edged pages. “The books were his. He always hoped I’d take more of an interest in them, but I was too busy hunting and hawking. I fancied myself a warrior, not a scholar.”

  “He was very proud of you, you know.”

  Bernard tossed the book on the table. “ I didn’t prove myself to be much of a warrior the night Cumberland took the castle.”

  “You stay
ed alive, didn’t you?”

  “Only because one of Cumberland’s officers was a cunning bastard with a hatred for all things Scots and an unnatural appetite for pretty young boys.”

  For a moment, Gwendolyn couldn’t even draw breath. “He didn’t… ?”

  “He wanted to. Oh, it was subtle at first—a ribald jest here, a threat there, a casual touch. Until the day he cornered me in the woods on the march to Edinburgh.” Bernard inclined his head, his face shadowed by an old shame. “He held me down. Tried to put his fat, filthy hands on me.”

  “What did you do? “

  He lifted his head, meeting her fierce gaze with one of his own. “I killed him. I gutted him with his own knife. When it was done, I stood over him, my hands dripping with his blood, and I felt nothing—no shame, no remorse, no regret.”

  If he had thought to disgust her, he had failed. Gwendolyn felt nothing but a savage gladness that the man was dead.

  “They would have executed me, but they decided it would be more fitting to let the Royal Navy break my spirit. When they took me aboard the ship in Edinburgh, the captain had me locked in the hold, in one of the compartments that had once been used to transport slaves. It was no bigger than a grave, and they gave me just enough bread and water to keep me alive long after I began praying to die.”

  Gwendolyn closed her eyes, trying not to imagine that proud, bright-eyed boy, who had spent his entire childhood roaming the mountains and moors, locked away in the darkness, choking on the stench of his own filth.

  “How did you keep from going mad? “

  He shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t. By the time we reached England, I was little more than an animal, unrecognizable even to myself. When we docked, they dragged me out of the hold and threw me at the feet of a Royal Navy admiral. At first I thought he was like the other one. So I lunged at him. If I hadn’t been so weak, I might have succeeded in tearing out his throat with my teeth. He could have had me hanged for that, but instead he ordered that every man on that ship be stripped to the waist and given twenty lashes for so sorely abusing a child.” He shook his head. “All I could think was ‘How dare the bastard call me a child?’ “

  Gwendolyn bit back a tremulous smile.

  “Admiral Grayson was a decent sort for an Englishman, rather stern, but not unkind. His wife had died before she could bear him a son, so he took an interest in me. When I was old enough he purchased a commission for me, and when I left the navy he prevailed upon his well-heeled friends to invest in my shipping business. I had always planned to return to Ballybliss someday, but I felt it only fair to wait until after his death.”

  For the first time, Gwendolyn could understand Bernard’s loyalty to a people who were supposed to have been his sworn enemies. She could understand why he had learned to talk like them, to dress like them, and to fight at their side.

  As she drifted toward him, the plaid slipped from her shoulders to the floor. He watched her approach through wary eyes, but made no move to stop her, not even when she reached up to touch her fingertips to his cheek. She had once searched his features for some terrible disfigurement, but now she realized the scars she had been seeking weren’t on his face, but his soul.

  “My poor Dragon,” she murmured, stroking the curve of his jaw. “They treated you like a beast, so you had no choice but to become one.”

  He caught her wrist in his unyielding grip. “Damn it, Gwendolyn, I don’t want your pity!”

  “Then what do you want from me? “ she implored, tilting her face to his.

  “This,” he whispered hoarsely, shifting his hungry gaze from her eyes to her lips. “I want this.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  BERNARD BROUGHT HIS MOUTH down on hers. His tongue was hard and hungry as it pressed into her, licking to life a searing flame of desire. Gwendolyn twined her fingers through his hair, the sweet, hot flicker of her tongue inviting him to work his dark magic, even if there be nothing left of her when he was done but a smoldering heap of ashes. She should have been afraid, but this place, this night, this man had cast a spell upon her, banishing all of her fears and inhibitions.

  She sighed as his lips abandoned hers, but that sigh deepened into a moan of pleasure when they blazed a scorching trail from the corner of her mouth to the softness of her cheek.

  “God, I love your dimples,” he muttered. “And I intend to taste every one of them before this night is done.”

  He pressed his lips to the vulnerable hollow at the base of her throat. Nuzzling his way past her pounding pulse, he captured her earlobe between his teeth, then sent his tongue swirling through the wildly sensitive shell of her ear.

  Gwendolyn gasped, unprepared for the sharp explosion of longing in her womb. Bernard caught the helpless sound in his mouth, muffling it with a groan of his own. She had believed he meant to feast on her, but she was the one being sated, by every hungry stroke of his tongue, every greedy brush of his fingertips against her skin. She was so lost in his kiss that she wasn’t even aware that his deft hands had unfastened her bodice and bared her to the waist until she felt the cool night air caress her naked breasts.

  Before she could shield the generous globes with her hands, Bernard had covered them with his own. He filled his palms with her, then caught her throbbing nipples between forefinger and thumb, gently teasing and tugging until a mewling sob of pleasure escaped her.

  “I can’t believe you don’t know how beautiful you are,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re so soft, so sweet, so round in all the places a man most wants to touch.”

  As if to prove his point, he slid his hands from her breasts to her bottom, urging her hips against him. He lavished her mouth with kisses as he rocked against her, the rigid length straining against the front of his kilt seeking an even deeper softness.

  Gwendolyn gasped as that exquisite friction ignited a fresh spark, one so wild and so hot it threatened to incinerate her where she stood. Sliding her hands beneath his shirt, she feathered her fingers against the taut plane of his abdomen. His heated skin quivered at her touch.

  “If your fingers stray so much as an inch lower,” he said through clenched teeth, “this wedding night will be over before it’s begun.”

  Gwendolyn slid her hand upward, stroking the lightly furred muscles of his chest. “I’ve waited over half my life for this night. I want it to last forever.”

  “Then I’ll do all I can to stop the dawn from coming.”

  As Bernard gathered the voluminous sacque gown and slipped it over her head, she closed her eyes, thankful that there were no corsets or petticoats to hinder him. He gently urged her drawers down her legs until there was nothing left for her to do but step out of them and stand before him, as naked as a newborn babe.

  He gazed down at her, the glint of appreciation in his eye so keen that she thought he might lift his kilt and take her right there against the door.

  Instead, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. After spending most of her life with her feet planted firmly on the ground, Gwendolyn found it a heady thrill to be lifted like that.

  Bernard followed her down to the feather mattress. His weight should have crushed her, yet she welcomed the possessive thrust of his tongue, the hot and heavy fullness of his manhood pressing against her belly.

  When he leaned away from her to drag off his shirt and unwrap his kilt, she quivered in anticipation of his return. Bars of moonlight fell across the bed, making her his captive once more. They bathed her in a lambent glow, but left him in darkness.

  She could only imagine how she must appear to him—sprawled naked across the satin sheets like one of those wanton, voluptuous demigoddesses who gazed down upon them from the mural above. Although his eyes were in shadow, she could feel his gaze upon her, making her flesh tingle.

  When he spoke, every trace of his years in England had been banished from his lilting burr. “This was my room when I was a lad, you know. I spent many a sleepless hour lying on my back, gazing up at that acc
ursed mural. I used to dream that one of those goddesses would come tumbling out of the heavens and into my arms.” His breathing was audible in the darkness. “And now she has.”

  A flush crept up Gwendolyn’s throat and her breasts began to tighten and ache, as if begging for some small morsel of attention. It was sweet torture, knowing he would touch her, but not knowing when or where.

  A shiver of yearning rocked her as he lowered his head and touched the very tip of his tongue to one of her throbbing nipples. She arched against him, her fingernails scoring the sheets as the gentle tug of his teeth and lips coaxed a surge of molten nectar from between her thighs.

  Before she could catch her breath, he was pressing a reverent kiss to the dimple at the inner curve of one knee. His beard-roughened cheek tickled her calf, but his lips were moist and warm. As his mouth began to drift higher, urging her thighs apart, she began to tremble.

  He ran his hands over the virgin cream of her belly. “There’s no need to be afraid, my bonny angel. I’m not a beast tonight. I’m simply a man who wants nothing more in this world than to make love to his bride.”

  His bride.

  Gwendolyn had almost forgotten that such sinfully delicious delights could actually be sanctioned by God. Which was why she wasn’t prepared for the shock of Bernard’s big, warm hands curling around her bottom, lifting and spreading her to accept the sweetest and most unholy of kisses.

  She clutched at the rough silk of his hair as unspeakable pleasure curled through her. Gazing up at the goddesses in the mural through dazed eyes, she wondered if they’d ever known such forbidden ecstasy. Persephone gazed back at her with knowing eyes. Psyche’s flushed cheeks and parted lips were a mirror of her own.

  Then Bernard shattered both her and the heavens with nothing more than the artful flick of his tongue. She was still shuddering with tremors of raw bliss when his mouth closed over hers, feeding her the ambrosia of her own desire.