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Chapter Six

Chapter Six

The court erupted in chaos. Elizabeth gave an agonized cry and burst into tears. Brian unsheathed his sword and dove for Morgan. Alex caught his brother around the waist before he could reach the stairs. Swords and dirks cleared sheaths with a steady hiss. The MacDonnell elder took advantage of the confusion to creep back into his clan’s fold. Dougal stroked his beard, his eyes impassive as the hall teetered on the brink of war.

For the first time, Sabrina understood the wrenching betrayal Morgan must have felt when he believed her father had deceived him. Her papa could have cut her no deeper had he plunged a dirk into her heart. At least Angus’s wound was fatal. She had been given a life sentence.

Morgan sank back in the chair, his hearty laughter dying to a chuckle. He grinned stupidly at Sabrina, making her wonder for an instant what it might feel like to fight for this man instead of against him. For years she’d tried in vain to wring a smile from his surly countenance. But only the prospect of being bound to her in unholy wedlock was enough to awaken his latent good humor. A devilish twinkle lit his eyes, forcing a shiver of reaction through her. Her worst nightmare was coming true. If her father had his way, she would be completely at Morgan’s mercy.

And she knew from past experience that he had none.

Sunlight flashed on an ax hefted by a MacDonnell with even fewer teeth than Pugsley. Dougal leapt to the dais and roared, “Enough! Restrain your men, Morgan. They can ill afford a battle pitched in the midst of Cameron lands.”

Morgan subdued his clansmen with a choked command.

Dougal turned to him. “I believe we’d both prefer to continue this discussion in private.”

“Don’t do it, Morgan! ’Tis a trap!” one of his men cried out.

“Aye, and a canny one at that,” Morgan said, his gaze almost admiring as he assessed Dougal. “Ranald, take the men and await me on the hill. I’ll send word.”

His clansmen hovered on the brink of rebellion, but when they saw the Cameron’s own men rising to leave, they obeyed. Sabrina saw a slender figure shrouded in a tattered plaid hang back for a moment before limping after the others. Enid rose and tried to tiptoe away, her terror of conflict even stronger than her devotion to her cousin.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Sabrina said, jerking her back by the box pleats of her skirt. “You’ll not abandon me too.”

After a hissed exchange with Dougal, Elizabeth joined them, wrapping a protective arm around her daughter. Brian and Alex stood near the dais, Alex simmering and Brian shooting looks of open fury at Morgan.

Sabrina was not immune to the frank glances of sympathy her kin gave her as they filed past. She was the one condemned by this court to life with a man who despised her.

Pride infused her spine. She lifted her head to find her father standing in front of her. She fixed her gaze on the sapphire brooch pinning his jabot at his throat, unable to look at the face she had loved so well and so long.

“’Twould be best if you left us alone, daughter,” he said gently. “Morgan and I have affairs to discuss.”

She locked her chin to keep it from quivering. “Since I am part and parcel of those affairs, I choose to remain.”

“Does that suit you, Morgan?” Dougal asked.

Morgan lifted his shoulders in an expansive shrug. “As long as she is prepared to hear what I have to say.”

He jumped down from the dais and paced before the benches, his long, restless strides betraying the fury rumbling beneath his humor. “What makes you think I’d care to be saddled with your brat, Cameron?”

Dougal steepled his fingers under his chin. “You find her beautiful, don’t you? I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

For the second time that day, Sabrina wanted to dive beneath the bench. Morgan turned on his heel. He had obviously expected fluent political arguments. Dougal’s candor disarmed him.

He cast Sabrina a look as provocative as it was insulting. Her skin heated beneath a lazy assessment that swept from the tiny silver buckles that adorned her slippers to the crown of her head. “The lass might be a pleasant enough diversion for an afternoon. But not for a lifetime.”

Brian growled. “Why you son of a—” Alex caught his brother’s hand before it could reach his sword hilt.

Dougal refused to rise to Morgan’s baiting. “Your clan will not survive a war.”

“And war is what they’ll get if I don’t wed your daughter? Are you so eager to be shed of the lass? Can’t you foist her off on one of her more desperate Cameron cousins?”

Sabrina shook off her mother’s embrace and jumped to her feet, trembling with rage. “I’ll have you know, Morgan MacDonnell, I’ve been fending off proposals since I was thirteen. But unlike the MacDonnells, we Camerons frown on wedding our cousins.” She sat, then popped back up. “Or our sisters!”

Her mother drew her down. Morgan and her father returned to their discussion as if she had not spoken, infuriating her further.

“The Grants and the Chisholms have been breathing down your neck for months, lad,” Dougal said. “If you’re to preserve what your ancestors built, you need an ally. A powerful ally. With Sabrina as your wife, you’ll have one. Me.”

Morgan turned his back on them all, his fists clenched as if he were waging some private war that had little to do with clans or allies. He finally swung around, giving Sabrina a dark look. “Verra well.” Sarcasm laced his words. “My bride and I will leave Cameron tonight.”

“That you will not,” Dougal said. “You will spend your first night as man and wife beneath my roof.”

Morgan arched a mocking eyebrow. “Why? The better to hear her screams?”

Brian’s sword cleared its sheath, but Sabrina pushed past him before he could wield it. “Pardon me. May I interrupt you gentlemen for a word with my betrothed?”

Dougal and Morgan exchanged a look, unexpected allies at that moment. They had expected female hysteria. Sabrina’s icy dignity plainly unnerved them both.

Her father nodded and stepped back, leaving her to face Morgan alone. He stared down his nose at her, legs akimbo, hands locked at the small of his back.

Sabrina tipped her head back to look him in the eye, giving him the full effect of her regal sniff. “Make your decision with care, Morgan MacDonnell.” She mimicked her mother’s flawless British diction without realizing it. “For I swear I will not give you an afternoon’s pleasure. I’ll not give you even a moment’s pleasure.”

He rocked back on his heels. “I expected no more from a spoiled shrew. Why do you think I asked for the chickens?”

“If you marry me, you’ll wish you’d got them.”

Morgan could not resist baiting her just as he’d done as a boy. He leaned down until his nose almost touched hers and gave her an infuriating grin. “I already do.”

Sabrina resisted the urge to plant her fist square in the middle of his smug face. The fragile truce they had forged in the solar lay scattered at her feet like the shards of her pride. She snapped her skirts around and marched from the hall, knowing in her heart that she had already made one fatal mistake.

She should never have stopped hating Morgan MacDonnell.

Dougal longed to press his palms over his ears.

Between Enid’s blubbering and the rhythmic sniffling of the maids laboring over Sabrina’s wedding gown, he wished himself anywhere else in the world. He would have gladly faced a legion of MacDonnells, all armed and roaring for his blood, before spending another moment in this solar of hysterical women.

But worse than the keening of the servants, most of whom had adored his daughter from birth, was his wife’s accusing, dry-eyed stare. It impaled him to his place by the window, challenging him to stay and witness the havoc he had wreaked. Elizabeth’s graceful hands flew, jabbing a needle through a thick slab of leather as if she wished it were his heart.

With her usual aplomb she had thrown the entire household into the frantic preparations for the wedding to be held that night, as if hoping mindless bustle might stave off panic. Even Enid had been swaddled in an apron and handed a bowl of vegetables to chop. Dougal doubted they would require salting. Enid’s tears were running in a steady stream down her quivering chin and into the bowl.

Elizabeth rose from the settee to snap off a fresh volley of commands. “Aggie, run and fetch a sharp pair of shears.” She peered into the bowl braced between Enid’s ample knees. “Good heavens, child, those aren’t mushrooms. They’re toadstools. Fish them out or we’ll have another dead MacDonnell on our hands tonight.”

Enid obeyed with a fresh wail. The fragile legs of the Turkish ottoman teetered beneath her weight.

Elizabeth paused before the shimmering blue confection that had once been her own wedding dress. “Careful, girls. I won’t tolerate a single water spot on that satin.” She jerked a lace handkerchief from her bodice, held it to the pinkened nose of a dimpled young maid, and snapped, “Blow!”

Dougal gritted his teeth. The maids were handling the pearl-studded satin as if it were a burial shroud.

The door flew open. It was not Aggie returning from her errand, but Sabrina, her eyes brimming with tears. Dougal saw his own dread mirrored in their sapphire depths. Enid’s wails died to sniffles. The maids’ trembling fingers dropped stitches, unraveling the work they’d done.

She flung herself across the solar and clutched his ruffled shirtfront. “Papa, you must relent. You cannot force me to marry such a hateful man. You heard him. He despises me. He despises us all. Why, he’d as soon wed Pugsley as me!”

Dougal gently caught her wrists. “I have no choice, lass. Perhaps someday you’ll understand.”

She turned away from him. “I shall never understand.”

He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Aye, my princess, there will come a day when you shall.”

Sabrina pulled away from him and ran to Elizabeth. “Please, Mama, surely you can soften his heart. He would do anything for you.”

Elizabeth cupped her daughter’s cheek in her palm. “I’ve already tried, darling. His mind is set.”

Sabrina slowly turned, her eyes overflowing with mute entreaty. She walked toward him—the man who had carried her on his shoulders through the village, who had tickled her cheek with his beard until she squealed with laughter, who had devoted his life to granting her smallest wish—and dropped to her knees at his feet. Dougal wondered if the others could hear the crack of his heart breaking.

She bowed her head. A solitary tear splashed on his buckled shoe. “If you do this thing, you’ll have your peace, Papa. But you’ll doom me to a life of battle.”

Sabrina was the only one who didn’t see his hand reach toward the softness of her hair, then veer away. He yearned to make her understand, to tell her of the hopes and dreams he’d cherished in his heart for years, but he knew that some truths were better discovered in their own time. “I am as bound by the laws of the court as any other man. I swore to abide by them, and as my daughter ’tis your duty to do the same.” His voice softened. “Go now and prepare to make your vows.”

She rose and walked to the door. As she faced him, a current as palpable as lightning flashed between their eyes of identical color. “How will I ever forgive you for this?”

Even after she was gone, her helpless question hung like a torn thread in the air. Enid broke into fresh sobs, flung her apron over her face, and fled the solar, trailing vegetables in her wake. The maids politely withdrew. Dougal sank against the windowsill, rubbing his aching temples.

Elizabeth’s eyes blazed a cold fire. “How dare you speak of duty to that child? ’Twas your idea to wed her to that heathen, and no one else’s. Tell me—have you nursed this plot in your cunning brain since they were but children? How will she survive life with a man who detests her?”

“Morgan does not detest her,” he said wearily. “You know it as well as I.”

“But does he know it? And will he destroy her before he discovers it? Sabrina is like the rarest rose—sweet-natured, gentle, docile. We’ve never taught her to fight for herself.”

A wistful smile touched his lips. “She was doing an able job of it this morning.”

Elizabeth swept up her scraps of leather. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to prepare your lamb for the sacrifice. You swore you wouldn’t shed the blood of your sons, but you seem only too eager to shed the blood of your daughter.” She wrenched his betrothal ring from her finger and hurled it at him. “Give that to your precious Morgan as well. ’Tis your duty. ”

The door slammed behind her, rattling a miniature family portrait from the wall.

Dougal toyed with the ring, stroking the beveled planes of the glowing ruby. “Ah, Morgan, if my wee princess is half as docile as her mama, ’twill take far more than a ring to bind her.”

Sabrina and Enid lifted their tear-streaked faces to find Elizabeth standing in the doorway of her daughter’s bedchamber.

She nodded to Enid. “’Tis best you go now, dear. I must speak to your cousin alone.”

Still gripping her bowl of wilting vegetables, Enid stepped outside the door, only to have it slammed behind her. It seemed an eternity before her aunt emerged to stalk off down the corridor without another word for her.

Enid crept back into the room. Sabrina sat on the edge of the bed, eyes glazed and mouth ajar. She had gone stark white, her cheeks robbed of the roses that usually bloomed there.

Enid set aside the bowl and passed a hand over her cousin’s line of vision. Sabrina didn’t even blink.

Truly frightened now, Enid gave Sabrina’s shoulder a harsh shake. “Cousin! What is it? What did she say to you?”

Sabrina blinked. Her voice was barely audible. “She told me what I could expect from the marriage bed.”

“Oh, is that all?” Enid plopped down on the bed, then remembering herself, affected a look of wide-eyed horror. “Is it so dreadful?”

Sabrina shuddered. “Horrible!” Her eyes finally focused. She cupped a hand around Enid’s ear and whispered into it.

Enid gave a satisfying gasp. “No! She must have been jesting. He couldn’t possibly put…that”—her voice rose to an excited squeak— “there. ”

Sabrina nodded solemnly, then whispered something else.

“Oh, dear Lord!” Enid felt her eyes roll back in her head at the thought. Sabrina fished in Enid’s pocket, pulled out the bottle of hartshorn, and waved it under Enid’s nose. Enid fanned herself with her hand, hiding her dreamy smile. “Imagine doing that with such a strapping…male…animal.”

Shaking off her shock, Sabrina jumped down from the bed to pace. “Oh, that’s only the beginning. It gets worse. Much worse. Perhaps I should kill myself. After I’m dead, they can lay me out in the drawing room in my wedding gown. Papa can kiss my wan, cold cheek if he dares.”

Fresh tears sprang to Enid’s eyes at the vision of her noble cousin meeting such an ignoble end. “Perhaps Morgan’s not the monster you imagine. Might some part of him not be amenable to taking a wife?”

“No doubt. And thanks to Mama, I now know exactly which part.”

Her burst of energy spent, Sabrina dragged herself back to the bed and sank down beside Enid. “I swore I wouldn’t give him a moment’s pleasure, but it seems a man will seek his pleasure how he chooses and a woman’s will means nothing. Even before Morgan believed the Camerons murdered his father, he despised me. What’s to stop him from slaking all of his rage on me? What if he decides to make me pay for all the Cameron crimes against his family, both real and imagined?”

Enid saw Morgan’s face in her mind—stern, forbidding, beautiful even at its most mocking. She shivered. “How you must hate him!”

Sabrina bowed her head. “Would to God that I could.”

It was not her cousin’s lack of tears that rent Enid’s heart, but her quiet despair. She touched Sabrina’s hair. It was soft and thick and so much more lovely than her own wispy blond strands.

Sabrina was the brave one. She had been Enid’s friend from their very first meeting. Shamed at being banished from London, Enid had been sniveling in her bedchamber when a fat, hairy spider had cornered her on the bed. It had been Sabrina who calmly scooped up the puzzled little fellow and escorted him to the window before drying Enid’s hysterical tears. Frustration now swelled in her. Even if there was something she could do to help Sabrina, she knew she would lack the courage.

Helplessly she patted Sabrina’s shoulder, forgetting the bowl of vegetables, which tumbled to the rug. A plump toadstool bounced across Enid’s foot.

As she bent to pick it up, her pale eyes narrowed with a fierce determination Sabrina wouldn’t have recognized. “Perhaps your Morgan will find his taste for revenge more bitter than he expects.”

Morgan stumbled over the stoop, biting off a blasphemy that caused every head in the candlelit kirk to swivel in his direction. Ranald stepped on his heels. Morgan threw back his shoulders, tacitly warning every Cameron who had come to witness this farce of a wedding that their first chuckle at this MacDonnell’s expense would be their last.

It was a miracle he could walk at all with the damnable leather flaps cinched to his feet. He had no need of sandals! His own soles had been toughened to callused hide by traipsing over heath and hills, stones and briers, all his life. Had his future mother-in-law not braved the derision of his men to deliver them, he would have given in to his temptation to fling them into the baptismal font.

He should have known his men were up to no good that afternoon when they’d lapsed into stunned silence. They’d been teasing him mercilessly ever since he’d laundered both himself and his plaid in the icy waters of a rushing burn.

He had parried their taunts as he hung the plaid over a tree branch to dry.

“Och, Morgan’s near as pretty as Ranald when he’s clean, ain’t he? He’ll make a bonny bride for the Cameron wench.”

“Careful, lad, that staff twixt yer legs’ll shrink if ye get it wet.”

“Is that what happened to yours, Fergus?” he replied pleasantly before swinging around to face his tormentors, hands on hips, naked, dripping, and exhibiting bold evidence that Fergus was a shameless liar.

Only it wasn’t Fergus standing at the crest of the hill, but Elizabeth Cameron, a basket hanging over one arm and a maidservant cowering behind her. The mistress of Cameron Manor neither blinked nor blushed at the sight of him.

Morgan barely had time to yank the cold, wet plaid around his hips before a pair of sandals slapped him in the chest.

“I cannot find any shoes in the village to fit those slabs of beef you call feet, but I’ll not stand by and watch my only daughter wed a barefoot savage.”

With those words, she had turned on her heel and marched back toward the manor, regally oblivious of the whistles, applause, and appreciative hoots that followed her.

Morgan’s ears burned at the memory. He wondered if Sabrina had inherited her mother’s talent for making him look like a bloody fool.

He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He hadn’t set foot in a kirk since his last summer at Cameron. Its atmosphere of hushed reverence unnerved him.

Ranald echoed his thoughts. “Too bloody quiet in here,” he whispered. “Should have brought me pipes.”

“Shhh,” Morgan hissed. “Take off your bonnet.”

Ranald jerked off the jaunty hat and crumpled it against his chest, eyeing the narrow stained-glass windows as if he expected Jesus and his apostles to stage an ambush. Morgan had wisely left the rest of his clansmen to the casks of ale Dougal had provided. With Angus dead, Ranald was the closest thing he had to true family, and it had been Morgan’s choice to have Ranald by his side to witness the vows.

An unexpected pang of loneliness touched him. He missed his da’s canny wit and tart tongue. His men cared for nothing but revelry, their chief concern being where their next flagon of ale would come from. At least if Angus were still alive, Morgan would have had someone to discuss his decision with. But if Angus were alive, Morgan wouldn’t be traversing this seemingly endless aisle to the altar.

Dougal Cameron stood at the end of that aisle, his bearded face as serene as an angel’s. Morgan bit back a growl, torn between suspicion and uncertainty. Was this marriage only a clever ploy to divert attention from Dougal’s complicity in Angus’s murder? But a father would have to be mad to entrust his daughter into the keeping of a man who would have the legal power to exact the cruelest sort of retribution with no fear of reprisal. And Dougal Cameron was no madman.

His men might be willing to condemn Dougal and gleefully anticipate the revenge Morgan would wreak on the Cameron’s fragile daughter, but Morgan found too many flaws in that theory for his satisfaction.

Dougal had also spared them an audience, inviting only his immediate family. As Morgan drew nearer, a blotchy-eyed blond woman crushing a bouquet of wilted flowers stepped aside to reveal his waiting bride.

Suddenly panicked, Morgan froze in his tracks, provoking another stumble and grunt from Ranald. A bride . What in God’s name was he supposed to do with a bride? His men had given him ample suggestions in the past few hours, none of which bore repeating in the house of the Lord. But not one of those men would appreciate the sacrifice he was about to make. Uniting with Clan Cameron in this unholy alliance would buy them both peace and the time they needed to build Clan MacDonnell to its former glory.

Sweat broke out on his brow. Dougal should have left him to rot in the dungeon. His life was surely over now, severed not by chains of iron, but of matrimony.

The irony did not escape him. Unlike most of his clansmen, he’d always taken great care where he spilled his seed, lest his freedom be curtailed or his life be ended by an outraged papa waving a musket. Now, due to Dougal’s twisted idea of fair compensation, he was being sentenced for a crime he had not committed. Yet.

Fighting the urge to flee, he strode boldly down the aisle. Let no man say Morgan MacDonnell was afraid, especially not of some dainty scrap of a girl. As he approached the altar, Sabrina glowered at him fiercely. It puzzled him until he realized she was only mirroring his own scowl. A cloud of blue satin enveloped her, the color of the sky over the heath on a spring day.

The minister commanded them both to kneel. Morgan stood stiffly at attention. A MacDonnell knelt before no man. Not even a man of God. Sabrina bobbed, then straightened when she realized Morgan had made no move to obey. They glared at each other, neither willing to be the first to bend the knee. The minister rolled his eyes heavenward as if seeking some divine assistance.

It was not God, but Dougal who laid a firm hand on both their shoulders and drove them down.

“Would you join hands? Please?” the minister added, a cajoling note creeping into his tone.

Morgan had spent half his life holding this girl at arm’s length. Her unbound hair hid her expression as he lifted her hands in his own. A chaplet of autumn roses crowned her brow. Their haunting fragrance stirred far more than just Morgan’s senses.

As the minister rambled on above them, Morgan studied Sabrina’s hands. They were cool and smooth in his callused embrace, so delicate he feared he might break them out of sheer clumsiness. An image rose unbidden to his mind—those same hands stroking, gliding, dancing like velvet wings against his heated flesh.

She recited her vows, her voice prim and passionless. As her generous lips compressed to a thin line, Morgan felt a twinge of regret. If at their first meeting he had scooped her up, dried her baby tears, and accepted her extended hand of friendship, this day might be a day of celebration for both Cameron and MacDonnell. Instead, he had chosen to make her hate him. And judging by her grim expression, he had met with rousing success.

But perhaps it wasn’t too late to woo her, he thought. Wouldn’t tenderness be his most effective weapon, since it was the last thing she would expect from him? He was already congratulating himself on his shrewdness, when the minister asked him to recite his vows.

Morgan stumbled over the unfamiliar words, then chilled in fresh horror when he was asked to bind their oaths with a ring. He had no ring to give.

“Here you are, lad,” Dougal whispered, pressing the Cameron betrothal ring into his hand. “It belongs to you now.”

The heavy gold weighted Morgan’s palm. He stared down at it, the symbol of everything he hated. It was gaudy, ostentatious, and valuable enough to feed his entire clan for a year. The ruby gleamed like a fat drop of blood. MacDonnell blood shed over the centuries by the Camerons. His first impulse was to throw it right back in Dougal’s smug face.

But Sabrina was already holding out her slender finger. A fierce surge of possessiveness seized him. Tenderly or not, tonight it would be Cameron blood shed as he gave her something more binding than any oath or lump of gold. He shoved the ring on her waiting finger more roughly than he intended.

They stood, and the minister gave him leave to kiss his bride.

Morgan was tempted to laugh. Sabrina had squinched her eyes shut and wrinkled her face in such dread that it was obvious she expected a punishing assault to brand her as MacDonnell booty before her family and God.

’Twould be as good a time as any to test the keenness of his weapons, Morgan decided. Ignoring her brothers’ baleful glares, he framed Sabrina’s face in his hands and gently laid his lips on hers. Caught off guard, they parted at his coaxing. He flicked his tongue against hers in a subtle promise of pleasures to come. As he drew back, the misty wonder reflected on her face made him feel as if he’d just transformed from ogre to prince before her very eyes.

Like La Belle au Bois Dormante stirred by her first kiss in one of her mother’s favorite nursery tales, Sabrina awoke from the numbing spell of her father’s betrayal to find herself wed to a towering heathen who smelled of sunlight and pine. She stared dumbly at the bone bodkin that secured his plaid.

“What is it, lass?” he bent to whisper. “Have you never seen a bodkin before?”

“Is that a human bone?” She ran her fingertip across it.

Morgan’s lips touched her hair, snuggling deep to find her ear. His burr deepened. “Aye. Belonged to me first wife, it did. Terribly curious, the lass was. Always pokin’ her wee fingers where they didna belong.”

Sabrina snatched her hand back, curling it into a protective fist before she realized Morgan’s eyes were twinkling with suppressed laughter. The unfamiliar weight of the Cameron betrothal ring cut into her flesh.

Then they were torn apart, Sabrina to endure her mother’s tearful embrace and Morgan to accept the grudging congratulations of Alex and Brian. Dougal stood back, beaming in paternal pride.

Ranald took advantage of the chaos to bend Enid over his arm and kiss her wildly. Morgan suspected the poor girl was near swooning, for she didn’t seem to be struggling at all. He snatched a handful of his cousin’s kilt and heaved him toward the door, leaving the dazed blond gasping for air.

“Eh! What’s the bloody rush? I haven’t kissed the bride yet!” Ranald protested.

“Nor will you,” Morgan snapped. “Not in my lifetime.” He hastened after Ranald, believing there might still be a chance of escaping this barbaric ritual with a scrap of his pride intact.

His hopes died as the minister stepped into his path and shoved a quill pen into his hand. He was steered toward the leather-bound register lying open on the altar.

“There you go, lad. Sign your name and ’twill all be official.”

Sabrina wiggled out of her mother’s hug to find Morgan standing motionless before the altar, a pen gripped like the haft of an ax in his fist. A dull flush suffused his throat.

She had seen that flush before. One rainy summer afternoon when Brian had thrust The Iliad at him and insisted it was his turn to read. She had quickly piped up, protesting that her brother had skipped her. But the damage had been done. Morgan had knocked the book away before striding from the solar, never to return except to skulk in the shadows, where he believed no one could see him. But Sabrina had seen. And remembered.

Shoving the startled minister out of her path, she rushed to her husband’s side and bestowed an impish grin on him. “It’s too late to change your mind now. You’re stuck with me.”

Beneath the guise of patting his hand, she rearranged his fingers around the pen, dipped it in the ink, and guided his fist in the motion of writing his name. Then she pried the pen from his stiff fingers and signed her name below his with a flourish.

Still scowling, Morgan bent to examine the clumsy loops and elegant spirals that encompassed their names. Sabrina scattered a handful of sand across the signatures before his nose could collide with the fresh ink. Her chaplet of roses tilted, sliding over one eye.

Morgan slowly straightened. Acutely aware of the curious stares of the others, Sabrina kept her smile bright and braced herself for the damning rejection that had always greeted her shy attempts to befriend him.

He cocked his head to the side, studying her from beneath his sandy lashes before reaching down and gently righting the chaplet of flowers. A stray petal caught on his fingertip. The severe line of his lips never wavered, but one brilliant green eye closed and then opened in silent regard, sending Sabrina’s mind reeling.

God in heaven, help her! she prayed. Morgan MacDonnell had winked at her.

Morgan’s wink was only the beginning of Sabrina’s torment.

She lay flat on her back in the strange bed, the thick quilts drawn up to her chin. The canopy vibrated in time with her shivers as she awaited the arrival of her bridegroom. Outside the closed door, Pugsley whined a mournful refrain. Undoubtedly horrified at the prospect of her daughter’s virginal bed being defiled by Morgan’s overwhelming maleness, her mother had tucked them at the far end of the east wing. Morgan had made his earlier boast in vain. From there, no one would hear her scream.

All his boyhood cruelties had paled in comparison to the diabolical kindness he had shown her that night. Her first bittersweet taste of perdition had come when he had pulled out her chair at the supper table. She had sat slowly, fully expecting to go tumbling when he whisked it away at the last second. Instead, he had smoothed her napkin over her lap and polished her silverware on his plaid before pronouncing it fit for her bonny lips.

He pilfered choice morsels of mutton and grouse from her brothers’ plates for her. He dabbed imaginary droplets of wine from her chin. He was even polite to Enid, coaxing a wan smile from her by praising the stewed mushrooms she shyly pressed on him.

Finally, when he had leaned over and innocently inquired if she might care for a lick of his sausage, Sabrina’s frayed nerves had snapped. Overturning the goblet he had so graciously refilled, she had jumped up and fled the table, ignoring his cry of concern.

He had even given her ample time to prepare for his arrival in their bedchamber. But Sabrina knew she could prepare for a lifetime and never be truly ready for the big, dangerous stranger who was now her husband. The minutes ticked away, measured by the hollow thump of her heart. Her toes twitched beneath the blankets. When Morgan came, she would calmly and coolly suggest they discuss the terms of this marriage, a marriage they had both agreed would be devoid of the pleasures and intimacies usually shared by wedded couples. She frowned. He had agreed, hadn’t he?

Against her will her mind dwelled on the things her mother had spoken of earlier. She could hardly believe that a minister of god had given Morgan the right to work those dark and mysterious acts on her body. Images flitted past. Brazen. Masterful. Shocking. But even more disturbing was the tender magic her mother had suggested she cast on Morgan. Spells to soften his temper, to bend him to her will. Charms she might weave around that big, intractable body of his with her hands, her legs…her mouth. Sabrina fanned herself with the blankets, then jumped from the bed as if her shameful thoughts had ignited it.

She drew open the window; a rush of cool wind soothed her burning brow. Autumn was fast fleeing, shoved aside by the relentless hand of winter. The MacDonnells were reveling again. From this side of the manor she had to strain to hear their merriment, but then the wind shifted, carrying on its wings a drunken voice braying in song—

Aye, me son, ’tis no trick to satisfy the wenches! Toss up her bonny skirts, me lad, an’ give her all ten—

Sabrina slammed the window and raced for the bed, once again chilled to the marrow. She jerked the blanket over her head in a vain attempt to drown out the deafening thud of the footsteps approaching the door. After several minutes she realized it was only her heart pounding in her ears.

She peeked out from beneath the blanket. Even Pugsley had ceased his vigil. The rumble of his untroubled snores drifted through the door. She collapsed against the pillows, exhaustion seeping through her body like a drug. As her lids drifted down, one last thought pierced her consciousness.

Perhaps Morgan wasn’t coming.

Perhaps he was out making merry with his clansmen, toasting his final cruel jest at Sabrina Cameron’s expense. She knew she should be relieved, but instead she hugged herself, hoping sleep would dull the peculiar ache in her heart. Her chin had just nudged her chest, when the door crashed open.

Her husband filled the width and breadth of its frame.

He slammed the door in Pugsley’s puzzled face and lurched across the chamber. His arm came up in one fluid motion. Before Sabrina even saw the claymore in his hand, its lethal point was pressed against the hollow of her throat.

“Disrobe, you treacherous witch,” he snarled. “I’m goin’ to make you my wife tonight or bloody well die in the tryin’.”

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