Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

At the adoring melody of Morgan’s name on another woman’s lips, Sabrina had snapped awake. The rumpled creature in her husband’s bed did not cling to false modesty. She didn’t even trouble to pull the sheet up over her naked breasts. An unexpected burst of starch infused Sabrina’s veins. She stiffened, sliding from Morgan’s arms like a wooden plank.

His jaw worked as if in time to his thoughts, but Morgan was a man of action, not words. He strode to the bed, wrapped a sheet around the intruder, and guided her toward the door without so much as an if-you-please.

The statuesque blonde dragged her feet as she stumbled past Sabrina. “Who the bloody hell is she?”

Feeling short, damp, and bedraggled, Sabrina tried not to wither beneath the woman’s hostility.

Morgan deposited her in the corridor. “My wife,” he replied, closing the door gently but firmly in the woman’s dumbfounded face.

Without turning around, he leaned against the door, weight braced on his splayed palms, one knee cocked forward. Silence crackled between them, louder than the fitful sputter of the fire.

Sabrina applauded lightly. “Gracefully done. Brian would have admired your technique. You tossed her out as if she weren’t any more consequence than a cooled bed warmer.”

“She’s not.”

“You owe her no explanation?”

“I explained.” He swung around to face her, crossing his arms in a stance that might have been warning or challenge. “Shall I call her back? I’m a bit weary, but the day hasn’t yet arrived when I can’t handle the both of you.”

Sabrina ignored the heat rising in her cheeks. Morgan seemed determined to miss no opportunity to remind her of the kind of man she had wed. “I couldn’t help but notice a family resemblance. Who is she? Your paramour? Your cousin?” She paused for an insulting beat. “Your sister?”

“Alwyn is Ranald’s cousin.”

“But I thought Ranald was your cousin.” When Morgan’s own brow clouded with confusion, Sabrina pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Oh, never mind. I’m too exhausted to untangle the twisted branches of the MacDonnell family tree. I suppose you’re fortunate to know who your mother was.”

When she opened her eyes, she was alarmed to find Morgan stalking toward her. He backed her toward the hearth, firing off each word like a pistol ball. “I haven’t slept in over thirty-six hours, lass, and it’s beginnin’ to tell on my judgment. So unless you’re willin’ to expand my family tree right here and now, I’ve no wish to discuss it with you.”

Morgan’s temper exuded more heat than the brooding fire. As Sabrina tipped her head back to meet his gaze, all the fears she’d forgotten while cradled in his arms came flooding back. The MacDonnells were notorious for three traits—their savagery, their voracious carnal appetites, and their hatred of the Camerons. She feared she was about to learn about all three at the merciless hands of this disgruntled giant.

His arm came up, casting a shadow over her face. She shrank against the warm stones, biting back a flinch. In her entire life no one had dared to strike her. Not even when she deserved it. But having been warned that the MacDonnells despised any show of weakness, she pressed her eyes shut and prayed she could keep from crying when that big hand descended.

A chunk of peat hissed on the flames. Warm fingers sought her cheek, easing back her hood and freeing the wavy tumble of her hair. Sabrina opened her eyes to find Morgan gazing down at her, his eyes shadowed as if she had struck him a mortal blow out of pure cruelty.

“I’ve taught you well, haven’t I, lass?”

Sabrina couldn’t tell if the note of wry contempt in his voice was for her or for him. She inclined her head, ashamed that he had read her fears so easily. He turned away from her, his steps weighted by weariness.

She hugged back a shiver. In Morgan’s absence, the fire was a poor shield to ward off the misery and chill she’d been fighting all day.

As if oblivious of her presence, Morgan drew the bodkin from his plaid and began to painstakingly unravel its drapes and pleats. Sabrina was riveted by his unselfconscious display. He shrugged the plaid from his shoulders. Firelight licked at the rugged slabs of sinew and muscle in his chest. Tendrils of heat danced down Sabrina’s spine, chasing away her chill. The tartan unfolded over his taut abdomen and she caught herself holding her breath like a child on Christmas morning, eager to see what new treasures might be revealed.

But when without warning the plaid spilled into a pool at his feet, Sabrina got more than she’d wished for. Much more.

As Morgan padded nude to the bed, she stared so hard at the wall that her eyes crossed with the effort. The bed creaked beneath his weight. His satisfied groan made the hair on her nape tingle.

“Aren’t you comin’ to bed, lass?”

“No,” she said hastily, scrambling for any excuse not to prostrate herself on the altar of that magnificent male animal. “I won’t sleep there. Not on the same bedclothes as your…that…woman.”

Hr grunted. “Suit yourself.”

She dared a peek over her shoulder. As if it were of no import to him where she slept, Morgan had rolled away from her, dragging the ragged quilt over his nakedness.

She stood for a long time, half hoping he would comment upon her wounded sniffs. Her knees started to ache, so she drew off her pelisse and made a tidy nest of it on the stone floor, balling the hood beneath her head as a pillow. She was lying on her back, watching the unfamiliar shadows writhe on the ceiling and wondering if that might be a rat scratching outside the door, when Morgan’s quiet voice pierced the silence.

“You’ve no need to flinch from me. I’ll not lay a hand on you, Sabrina Cameron.”

“Sabrina MacDonnell,” she whispered to the darkness, but Morgan’s soft snores were her only reply.

Sabrina awoke the next morning to watery sunlight and the distant drone of bees. Hundred of bees. Thousands of bees. All clamoring for a taste of her tender flesh. Her fingers plucked at the nubbed fabric of the quilt. A nasal wail assailed her ears.

Not bees. Bagpipes.

Nothing had changed, she thought. She was nestled in her cozy bed, waiting for her mother to bring her morning chocolate. Morgan was entombed beneath her, his life hanging by the tenuous thread of her father’s mercy. She opened her eyes. Her elegant half-tester was gone. The murky recesses of a stone ceiling loomed high above her, reminding her that she was now the one entombed at Morgan’s mercy.

She sat up. Her pelisse lay trampled on the dusty floor. Morgan must have carried her to the bed before he arose that morning.

Pugsley trotted into the chamber and jumped on the bed, his mud-caked paws leaving tiny footprints.

“You’re looking quite pleased with yourself,” she exclaimed as he dropped his offering into her lap. She held the grimy cylinder up to the light. It was a bone. A bone that looked suspiciously and alarmingly human. “Probably belonged to Morgan’s last wife,” she muttered.

Leaving Pugsley to gum his treasure, she climbed down from the high bed, wincing as her pinched toes hit the floor. She had never slept in her shoes before. The nearest window was a gaping hole in the stone shielded by warped glass. As she drew aside the drapes, the rotted silk shattered in her hands.

Far below, the woods parted to reveal a grassy knoll where the MacDonnells had gathered to bid their chieftain a final farewell. As Augus’s body was lowered into the shallow cairn, Sabrina’s gaze unerringly found his son in their midst. Morgan’s shoulders were unyielding even in grief. The last bittersweet skirl of the pipes trembled on the wind. Sabrina shivered at the melancholy sound. Eve might be rough and crude, but she could make the bagpipes weep with a skill that would have been the envy of any music master from London to Edinburgh.

The MacDonnells slowly dispersed, leaving Morgan alone. He didn’t follow their path back to the castle, but mounted Pookah and melted into the dusky gloom of the forest.

A stab of grief tore through Sabrina’s heart. She was Morgan’s wife now. She should be at his side. But he did not need her, she reminded herself. He had made it painfully clear that there was only one reason a man like Morgan needed a woman at all.

She shoved open a window on the opposite side of the chamber. Wind battered her, stinging her eyes and tearing her hair away from her face to reveal the raw magnificence of the view. Snowy mountains adorned the cloudswept horizon like a pearl-studded crown. Jagged cliffs hugged the mountainside in a sheer drop to the heath below. A narrow road snaked along their edge. Sabrina shuddered, thankful that she had slept through the nightmare of Morgan’s high-strung mount prancing along that narrow ribbon of stone and dirt.

Her hands clenched on the stone in nameless longing, responding to the untapped wildness that beat in her heart. Morgan must have found the gently rolling hills and rock-enclosed pastures of Cameron unbearably tame. She imagined him growing up here, surrounded by impenetrable forest and unscalable cliffs. Was it any wonder his heart was no less unbreachable?

Sighing, she turned back to the bed. Its cozy invitation was spoiled by a lurid image of Morgan entangled in Alwyn’s sun-bronzed arms.

Fueled by indignation, she stripped the musty quilt from the thin tick and hurled it out the window. It billowed down to sink into the dank, bracken-choked moat without a trace. She tossed the bone after the bedclothes, grabbing Pugsley before he could hurtle himself out the window after it.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Yours is the friendliest face I’m likely to see today.”

His tongue laved her nose. She noted that someone had already pried the paste gems from his collar. Her trunks were probably meeting the same fate, being meticulously unpacked by Morgan’s clanswomen. She shuddered to imagine the busty Alwyn squeezing herself into one of her own delicate corsets. On the heels of that came another shudder, this one prompted by both horror and guilt.

Enid !

Good Lord, how could she have abandoned her cousin to those lusty barbarians! The poor dear was probably cowering under some cobweb-festooned bed, praying for deliverance. Or death.

Without bothering to straighten her rumpled clothes, Sabrina dropped Pugsley on the bed and shot out of the chamber at a dead run.

···

Sabrina careened around a blind corner, slamming her toes into a pile of rubble. She hopped up and down, massaging her throbbing foot, then raced on, refusing to squander precious seconds when her cousin’s virtue might hang in the balance. The jagged windows cut at irregular intervals puzzled her until she realized they weren’t windows at all, but holes torn in the mortar by enemy fire.

After passing Morgan’s chamber twice more, she heaved a sigh of relief to find a broad staircase winding into the belly of the castle. She ran down the stairs, flying past a handsome woman garbed in Swiss-dotted muslin.

“Good morning, love. You’d best do something with that hair. Aunt Elizabeth would have fits if she knew you’d gone to bed without braiding it.”

Sabrina teetered on the edge of a crumbling step, then pivoted on her heel. “Enid?”

Her cousin was picking her way over a fallen rafter. A white lace cap perched on her bobbing ringlets.

“Enid! Where do you think you’re off to?” Sabrina cried.

Sabrina recognized the straw basket draped over Enid’s arm as containing the food her mother had packed for their journey. “Ranald and I are dining outside this morning. He’s promised to show me some sights I’ve never seen before.”

“I dare say he has,” Sabrina muttered. “Do you think it wise to go off alone with him? You’ve known him for less than a day.”

“Oh, pooh! Ranald is like a cuddly little bear cub. He wouldn’t harm a flea.”

“But I was hoping the two of us might—”

A wheedling burr floated up the stairs. “Oh, Enid? Where’s me plump sweet pumpkin? Yer furry bearkins is hungry and waitin’!”

Sabrina laid a hand over her churning stomach, thankful she hadn’t eaten yet.

“I’m coming, dear,” Enid called. With her eyes sparkling and her cheeks glowing like polished apples, Sabrina realized her cousin was almost pretty. “I’ll find you as soon as I return,” she promised Sabrina. “I’ll tell you all about Ranald and you can tell me about Morgan.”

That shouldn’t take long, Sabrina thought grimly.

She sank down on the steps and watched her cousin teeter off on her narrow heels. Loneliness gripped her. Even Enid didn’t need her anymore.

Her stomach began to rumble with genuine hunger. Knowing it would do her no good to sit on the dusty steps feeling sorry for herself all day, Sabrina rose to seek the kitchens, absently working her hair into a knot at her nape as she walked.

After passing through a deserted hall, she pressed her palm to the first door she found. As it swung inward, a burst of harsh masculine laughter assailed her.

“He’ll tire o’ the Cameron whore soon eno’, I’ll wager. It won’t take a man like Morgan long to wear out what’s betwixt those frail thighs.”

A dark shiver crawled over Sabrina’s skin.

A raspy voice said, “Aye, and when he sickens o’ her mewlin’, he’ll toss his scraps to us. I, for one, will be ready and waitin’.”

“Ye were born ready, Fergus. What makes ye think they’ll be anythin’ left o’ the lass when he’s through with her?”

“Cedric speaks the truth. Ye know what the women say about him. Bullheaded and—”

Sabrina gently pulled the door shut before she could discover what her husband’s lovers thought of his prowess. She flinched as another wave of black laughter crashed like thunder against her skull. Despite her most valiant attempts at optimism, her day seemed destined to go from bad to worse.

Stiffening her spine, she marched away from the door, unwilling to face the niggling fear that Morgan truly hated her enough to use her, then toss her to that pack of rabid wolves.

An arched corridor led her through a buttery into a poorly lit cavern that must serve as the kitchen. Milky sunlight trickled through arrow slits set high on the wall. Sabrina hesitated in the shadows, her hands knotted even tighter than her stomach to discover women draped over the tables and benches in various states of slovenly undress.

There was no bustle of activity here as there had been in the Cameron kitchens, no mouth-watering scents of pork frying or porridge bubbling. The twin hearths gaped like toothless mouths, their ashes dark and cold.

There was no sign of Eve, but Sabrina had no difficulty recognizing the woman Morgan had cast out of his chamber the previous night. Alwyn straddled a scarred bench as if it were a bucking stallion. A tangle of golden hair hung well past her buttocks.

“Saw the wee bitch myself, I did.” Alwyn snapped a bite out of a shriveled green apple. “A haughty thing. Ugly too. Pale as milk with thick, dark brows that looked like slugs.” Sabrina absently traced the arch of one eyebrow with her fingertip. “I felt nothin’ but pity for me Morgan. Left alone all night with that pathetic bag o’ bones.”

An old woman cackled, revealing a mouthful of rotted teeth. “Maybe he put the pillow o’er her face ’afor he did the dirty deed. I ’spect a Cameron bitch is the same as any other when the candle’s blown out.”

The other women giggled, but Alwyn took another ruthless swipe at the apple, her gray eyes hardened to smoky flints. “I’d like to put a pillow o’er her face. One less Cameron would do this world proud.”

Golden juice trickled down her chin and Sabrina’s stomach betrayed her. Its fearful rumbling drew Alwyn’s gaze like a magnet. The woman’s sulky lips thinned to a malevolent smirk, but instead of pointing out Sabrina to her cronies, she simply flexed one of her long, shapely legs, revealing the wicked-looking dirk strapped beneath her gown. Sabrina was transfixed by the throaty venom of her voice.

“The Cameron wench may be a lady, but me Morgan needs a woman who can give as good as she gets. A lady won’t be able to handle a man like him.” She looked Sabrina dead in the eye. “He’ll tear her apart.”

Sabrina retreated into the shadows of the buttery. She was beginning to understand why her mother had always warned her against eavesdropping. At Castle MacDonnell, it was less a matter of manners than survival.

Whirling around, she darted blindly down the nearest passage, feeling her way along the rough stone when the sheen in her eyes blinded her. The hollow ache in her gut was worse than hunger. She wandered the deserted catacombs for what seemed like centuries until she passed beneath a fluted arch and turned down a corridor that ended in a massive stone wall.

A dead end. A passage to nowhere. Just as her feelings for Morgan had always been.

But a glimmer at the far end of the corridor drew her forward. The wind moaned through a row of shattered windows, stirring rotted tapestries that looked as if they’d been shredded by giant claws.

Sabrina found herself face-to-face with her own reflection in a full-length wall mirror framed by tarnished bronze. A jagged crack severed her head from her throat. Mesmerized by the stranger peering back at her, she slowly unwound her hair, letting it fall in a dark cloud around her face. The warped glass distorted her features just as the past week had distorted her life. It was as if she’d tumbled into some nightmarish realm where everything she’d been taught to believe was only cruel illusion.

Her fingers sought the familiar arch of her brows, the slant of her nose, the trembling fullness of her lower lip. She’d never considered herself vain. She’d never had to be. Her beauty, like her wealth and the love of her family, had simply been a fact of life, as indisputable as the rich sable of her hair or the pearly evenness of her teeth. All her life, people had told her she was pretty.

But what if they had lied? What if they’d told her only what she wanted to hear? Had they been laughing behind her back, or, worse yet, pitying her? Only one person had ever remained untouched by her beauty.

Morgan .

Her vision clouded. Her dark hair and blue eyes shifted into the dear and familiar image of her papa, his expression as bereft as it had been in the moment she had denied him her farewell kiss.

The harsh whisper tore from her lips. “Oh, Papa. Why have you done this to me?”

But even as she condemned him, she pressed her palm to the mirror, seeking the prickly warmth of his beard but finding only the stark betrayal of cold glass.

Sometimes Morgan felt that Pookah was the only freedom he had ever tasted. The horse picked its way through the ferny bracken, docile beneath his control. Only on Pookah could Morgan escape the constant demands, whining, and clamoring of his clan.

He’d been sixteen when he had wrested the stallion from the drunken son of a wealthy laird who had been beating the horse into insensibility. After being given a taste of his own riding crop, the arrogant whelp had been only too eager to yield the horse to Morgan. He had saved his pride by proclaiming the horse stolen by one of those “thieving MacDonnells.” The outraged laird had hanged the next MacDonnell caught poaching on his land—a lad of twelve.

Pookah still bore the scars of his first master’s abuse, both outwardly and in the fierceness of his disposition. Morgan sometimes felt they were brothers beneath the skin.

Leaving the horse to root in the sparse grass, Morgan dismounted and entered a stone crofter’s cottage nestled in a glade. The thatch-roofed cottage was a quaint reminder of a time when the MacDonnells still had sheep and the crofters to tend them. Morgan often came here to think when he could no longer bear the crushing weight of the castle.

He cocked back a chair and propped his feet on the windowsill. His father’s body now slumbered eternally beneath a blanket of stones.

Morgan knew in his heart that Angus had never loved him for who he was but for what he could do. The old man had taken great glee in provoking fights so Morgan could prove his worth with his fists. It was Angus’s mercenary games that had made Dougal Cameron’s affection so intolerable all those years ago. How could Morgan accept a regard not bought at the price of his own sweat and blood? Now Angus’s murderer had gone free, leaving Sabrina Cameron to pay the price for his treachery.

He let the chair thump down. Damn the Camerons anyway! Even when he should be mourning his father, all he could see was Sabrina’s face at the moment she believed he would strike her. Didn’t the wee fool know he could kill her with a single blow?

Morgan had never struck a woman, no matter how sorely tempted. He had learned long ago not to use his strength recklessly—at seventeen, while standing, chest heaving and blood streaming from his broken nose, over the crumpled corpse of a clansman who had been his friend. His father had provoked the good-natured brawl, then taunted Morgan’s rival into an enraged frenzy. Alarmed at the bloodlust gleaming in his friend’s eyes, Morgan had sought to end the bout before one of them was maimed. But the single blow designed to do so had ended his clansman’s life instead.

Angus had rushed forward to slap him on the back in congratulations. For the first time, Morgan had knocked his father’s hand away and towered over him, fists clenched in rage. The flare of fear in Angus’s eyes had sent Morgan reeling through the crowd to find a quiet place where he could relieve the churning of his stomach and his mind.

An uneven footfall struck the dirt floor behind him. Morgan didn’t turn around. Only one person would dare invade his sanctuary.

“Are you sorry to see him go, Eve?” he said softly.

“We both know he would’ve been dead before the first snowfall. But, aye, it galls me to know a Cameron blade cut him down. I hope ye’ll make that worthless wench o’ theirs pay.”

“Why? It wasn’t her hand that wielded the blade.”

“It might as well have been. I know her sort. She’s poison, like any other fancy lady. Cloudin’ a man’s mind with soft talk and sweet perfumes.”

Morgan swung around to face the stony jut of Eve’s jaw. “I’ve already killed one woman just by bein’ born. I’ve no intention of killin’ another. Shall I butcher the sheep Dougal gave me as well? And the chickens? Have they no other worth than vengeance?”

Steel clashed between their eyes before Eve dropped her gaze. The two of them had always shared respect, if not tenderness. A bond of intelligence ran between them, deeper than blood, stronger than even the strangling chains of clanship. They had long ago joined in unspoken agreement to do whatever it took to keep the faltering flame of Clan MacDonnell burning.

Eve tossed her braid over her shoulder and drew a chair around to straddle it. “Verra well, lad. If ye won’t kill the lass, then do somethin’ else for me own peace o’ mind.”

Morgan repeated the promise he had given Elizabeth Cameron, fully aware of the irony. “Anythin’ to please a lady.”

“Put yer babe in her.”

Morgan rose and paced to the barren hearth. He braced his hands on the crudely hewn stones. It had taken iron control to resist doing just that when he’d found Sabrina curled on her pelisse that morning. Had it not been for the smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes and the arm she’d slipped so trustingly around his neck when he’d lifted her to the bed, they would have been waiting to bury his father while he buried his seed in his wife.

A wheedling note sneaked into Eve’s tone. “I know what care ye’ve taken, lad. Ye’re the only man ’round these parts without a passel o’ green-eyed bastards trottin’ on yer heels. But what if Dougal changes his mind? What if he claims ye stole his daughter and brings the redcoats down on our heads?”

“Let him come. He’ll not take back what’s mine.”

Eve limped over and slapped him on the back, reminding him eerily of his father. “That’s the spirit, boy. Swear ye’ll put yer brand on the lassie before ’tis too late.”

Eve was tall for a woman. Tall even for a MacDonnell. Her hot breath stung the back of his neck. He swung around to face her. “I’ll see to the matter in my own time. With no interference from you or any of my kin.”

Eve stepped aside to let him pass, a lifetime of battling Angus teaching her when to retreat.

“Oh, and, Eve?” he added. “I might meet with more success if you’d kindly keep Alwyn out of my wife’s bed.”

She crinkled her nose in a moment of rare mischief. “I just wanted to remind ye what ye’d be missin’ by sleepin’ with the enemy, lad. Shall I tell Alwyn ye’ll be comin’ to her from now on?”

“No.” He strode to the door, offering no further explanation.

“Morgan? Ye won’t disappoint yer da, will ye?”

He threw a humorless smile over his shoulder. “I never have, have I?”

Sabrina buried her nose deeper in The Pilgrim’s Progress in a vain attempt to ignore the rumbling of her stomach. Its next rabid growl sent Pugsley whining into the corner.

She tossed down the book, wearying of the long-suffering Hopeful and Faithful when her own burdens seemed so unfair. She felt more like Christian in the Valley of Humiliation, forced to fight the giant devil Apollyon, whose body was covered with shining scales of pride. She rose to pace, fighting back a wave of lightheadedness.

She’d been barricaded alone since her first disastrous foray into enemy territory. She had found her way back to the chamber to discover her trunks piled neatly in the floor with no sign of being pillaged.

She’d passed the rest of the day stubbornly devoting herself to the tasks that had always given her pleasure: reading, sewing, writing a letter to her mother full of false cheer and humorous anecdotes about her new family. She had sanded and sealed it before realizing it made no mention of the two men who haunted her thoughts.

A rosewater sponge bath and a fresh gown had helped stave off melancholy, but now the shadows of gloaming were creeping over the windowsill. Her spirits fell with the darkness.

She lit six of the expensive wax candles her mother had packed, scattering their light across the gloom. She was being shamefully wasteful, but frugality seemed less urgent than holding the encroaching shadows at bay. Juniper scented the air, the fresh, pungent aroma reminding her of Morgan.

A rush of anger rendered the crisp fragrance more bitter than sweet. For all Morgan cared, she might have starved by now. She swept across the room, startled by how heady the anger made her feel. It flooded her veins, shoving aside her trepidation with a mocking jeer.

Her slippered footsteps drummed to the cant of her mother’s teachings. A true lady must never show her anger. A true lady must turn the other cheek. A true lady should starve politely in her chamber without inconveniencing anyone else in the household, least of all her husband.

Morgan could carve it on her headstone after he tossed her skeletal body into its rocky cairn. Sabrina Cameron MacDonnell—A True Lady . But since Morgan couldn’t write, she supposed she’d be deprived of even that modest tribute.

Pugsley cocked his head to the side as she marched past. She would have sworn she saw a gleam of hunger in his beady little eyes.

“Don’t fret, Pugsley. You’ll have my bones to gnaw on soon enough.”

She snatched a hand mirror from a trunk she’d upended to serve as a dressing table, half expecting to see a sunken skull peering back at her. Her reflection differed greatly from the one that had greeted her that morning. A tidy coronet of braids graced her brow. Bright spots of anger stained her cheeks. The dark wings of her eyebrows were drawn into a forbidding line.

She slammed the mirror down. She was a Cameron, by God! She’d be bloody well damned if she was going to let those barefoot savages hold her prisoner in her own chamber! It was far past time they learned that MacDonnell had a new mistress.

Storming to the door, she threw it open…then sneaked her head out and peered both ways before tiptoeing into the corridor.

Sabrina was sidling toward the stairs when a sharp cry, half smothered, stilled her feet. Frowning at its familiar cadence, she crept toward the nearest closed door. The sounds of muted scuffling drifted into the corridor. She pressed her ear to the door. A low moan pierced the silence. A cold sweat broke out over Sabrina’s skin as she recognized it as the same terrified keening Enid had made when cornered by the spider at Cameron.

Someone was hurting her cousin.

Sabrina shoved at the door. It was bolted from within.

Her frantic fists pounded the wood, but at that moment something within the room began banging in rhythm, drowning her out. An agonized groan was followed by a hellish caterwauling that made the hair on Sabrina’s nape writhe in horror. Dear God, they weren’t just hurting her cousin! They were killing her! It was all her fault for turning Enid loose in this nest of vipers. They wouldn’t care that she was an innocent Belmont. They would see her only as another Cameron, deserving of their tortures.

She beat madly at the door. Tears streamed from her eyes, blinding her. When her throat went raw from screaming, she shoved her knuckles between her lips, tasting blood, and eyed the unyielding oak.

Morgan. Morgan was the only one who could help her.

Lifting her skirts, she tore down the stairs, screaming her husband’s name. Her lungs ached as if they would burst as she shot through the archway leading to the hall and into a dank cloud of peat smoke and unwashed men.

They reeked of stale sweat and malt whisky. Her empty stomach spun. She shoved her way through them, calling for Morgan.

She stumbled. One of the men caught her by the arm to steady her and shoved his face into hers, giving her a toothless leer. “Och, lass, if Morgan ain’t around, won’t I do?”

The anger she’d nursed earlier infused her. She whipped her arm out of his grip with surprising strength. Ignoring the smirks and catcalls, she fought her way through their ranks. They were practically drooling at the unexpected bounty of discovering a hysterical Cameron in their midst. A wave of relief surged through her when she finally broke out of the throng, but it faded quickly as she realized there was still no sign of Morgan.

The jeers and hoots subsided to mocking silence.

Sabrina could feel dozens of green and gray eyes boring into her back, all sharpened by predatory amusement. Alwyn chose that moment to detach herself from a sniggering circle of women. She sauntered forward to plant herself in Sabrina’s path.

She stared down her aquiline nose at Sabrina. A triumphant smile curved her lips. “What ails ye, lass? I never had no trouble keepin’ Morgan in my bed.”

Sabrina didn’t see the massive iron-banded doors at the end of the hall swing open. All she saw was red.

Alwyn’s smile vanished as Sabrina curled both fists in the bodice of her filthy gown and drove her back until she slammed into a wall.

The MacDonnell women gaped as Sabrina Cameron, a true lady born and bred, jerked Alwyn’s face down to hers and snarled, “I’ve had just about enough of your sass, you ill-mannered strumpet! Where the bloody hell is my husband?”

A masculine voice, rich with suppressed laughter, cut through the shocked silence. “Turn around, lass. He’s right behind you.”