The Highlander’s Surrender Read online

  Brochan ignored the latter. This wasn’t a pissing contest to see who had more leverage. “He willna care. My brother has sided with the English and commands a vast army only steps from Stirling. He’s got the power to undo everything we’ve all worked for.”

  “And how is a marriage between ye and my sister going to change that?”

  Brochan gritted his teeth, not wanting to share his history but finding it necessary to at least divulge a few pieces. “John is my twin, but only by a stroke of luck was he brought screaming into this world first. The details are no’ important, what is important is that it was decreed we each rule our own parcels of Lamont land, but whoever fathered an heir first would in fact inherit the chiefdom and all the land.”

  John had been doing his damndest to beat the odds, but his first wife had died only months after they wed, and just recently his second had passed from some malady that afflicted nearly a quarter of those at his keep.

  Montgomery shook his head. “I still dinna understand what that has to do with my sister.”

  “If I get her with child before my brother weds again and begets an heir, then his army becomes my army, and since I am allied with the Bruce, I will see that Stirling remains in Scottish hands, versus my brother who is happy to capture the kingdom for Longshanks.”

  Montgomery muttered something under his breath that sounded very much like, so she’s to be a broodmare.

  “’Tis a woman’s lot in life, is it no’?” Brochan asked. “As ’tis my lot to protect them.”

  Jamie shook his head as if he were speaking to an imbecile. “Ye’ve a lot to learn.”

  Bloody hell, the man was irritating. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Only that perhaps ’tis no’ my sister who needs to be broken in.”

  Brochan let out a low growl, his hands fisted at his side. “Ye’re trying my patience.”

  “I promised my sister that she could choose her next husband. After what she went through with that last bastard, she deserves that much. This is no’ what I would have chosen for her. Ye are no’ who I would have chosen.”

  Brochan bristled at the insult. If he weren’t in such a hurry to leave and, if he didn’t want to disobey his king, he’d draw his sword here and now. “Marriage is not something we deserve, but ’tis our duty.”

  Jamie cocked his head, frowning. “Have ye no’ desired anyone else?”

  What kind of a question was that? “I’m a man, am I no’?”

  Montgomery shook his head. “Ye mistake me. I dinna mean desires of the flesh, but of the heart.”

  Brochan scowled. “I have no time for such foolery. I’ve been fighting to maintain what is mine since the day I was born. That is what I know. That is what I desire. Wedding your sister is merely a means to an end.”

  “Could ye no’ have found that end with someone else?”

  “Nay.”

  “Why her? Whose decision was it? Yours or the Bruce’s?”

  “Mine.”

  “Did ye just pick her name out of a basket full of women?”

  “Nay. I knew her to be a widow. I’ve no’ time for blushing virgins.” This was only partially true. The king had in fact given him a choice of three brides, two of which were virgins.

  Montgomery took a step toward him, anger making his face flush nearly purple. The man wanted to beat him. And quite frankly, Brochan would welcome it. And yet, he grimaced, recognizing in himself some of the brute that Montgomery must be seeing.

  Aye, he spoke the truth; he didn’t want to deal with a woman who might be scared on their wedding night, and every night thereafter. He hadn’t lied when he said he wasn’t the coddling type. He was a warrior. Brutal on the battlefield and hard everywhere else.

  But he also didn’t want to make any new enemies, which was exactly what he was doing.

  Brochan cleared his throat. “I dinna mean any offense.”

  “Well, ye damn well failed in delivery,” Montgomery growled.

  “Aye, and for that I offer ye an apology.” He was not one who often doled out his apologies, and from the shocked expression on Montgomery’s face, it was clear the man hadn’t been expecting it. “I’ve no excuse for it.”

  The man blinked a few times, assessing Brochan. Perhaps in a different light, he could only hope.

  Montgomery cleared his throat. “I accept your apology, but I warn ye, if I hear one word from my sister that she suffers at your hand, I will bring the might of my army down on your head, and I’ll make certain the Bruce is all right with it.”

  Brochan nodded, understanding that as a brother Montgomery would be well within his right to do so. “Despite the impression ye might have of me, I’m no’ an abuser of women. I never have been, and I never will be. Your sister will be well cared for and can spend her days at her leisure. I only require that she provide me with heirs. Ye canna say that is less than what she had before.”

  “Nay.” Jamie seemed reluctant in his answer.

  “And ye canna say it is worse than what she would have had with Mackinnon,” Brochan added. “If it is love that she requires, I will allow her to love me.”

  Montgomery narrowed his eyes, shaking his head slightly. “I imagine ye’d be just the sort of man who would.”

  Brochan was aware that Montgomery was goading him into something, but he refused to play along.

  “Enough talk, Montgomery. Bring the lass to me. I’ll be leaving within the hour.”

  2

  Ceana couldn’t have been anymore mortified than if she’d discovered herself standing as naked as the day she was born in the center of the list field during a joust.

  She pressed her hand to the cool stone of the stairwell wall and hoped it would help her stand up right. Hoped the solidness would give her balance and strength. It didn’t. The weight of her woolen gown suddenly pulled her shoulders forward, and her slippers could have been secured to the stone steps with mortar.

  This time when her knees started to buckle, her brother wasn’t there to catch her. She sat heavily on the stairs, her skirts bunching up around her, and a wash of air fluttering the hair at her nape.

  She was too stunned for tears. Too angry to breathe. Her hands trembled.

  How dare this man come into her home and say such things? Demand such things of her? Of her family? And with the king’s blessing… Why did this feel so much like a siege?

  Immediately her mind whirled back to her wedding night with her first husband—the monster. A burning sensation rose up in her throat. The pain and brutality of that night had never left her. Each subsequent dispensing of her wifely duties never got better, only worse. The fact that she was able to recover and willingly give her herself and Gabriel a chance at all was a testament to the human heart. Gabriel had been kind enough that she was certain he would be gentle in all ways. His kisses had been tender and warm. Being in his arms had given her hope.

  And now, the only thing that surrounded her heart was coldness, a chilling fear. As if all the hope she’d had for a future full of happiness had been sucked out of her body and tossed into the fire.

  This man was proving himself to be just as much of a brute as her first husband. How could she be expected to go through with the marriage? The very idea made it hard to even want to stand back up. From the sound of it, he was the type of man who would find her crouching on the stairs and drag her to the kirk by her ankles while she scratched and clawed her way toward anything she could grip onto.

  Why did a woman’s lot in life have to be so… not her own? Why could she not take control of her own fate and future? But what could she do? Ceana stared up at the stones overhead, following the pattern as it weaved back and forth.

  She could run away. Right now. Sneak out the servant’s entrance and make her way to the stables. Steal her brother’s horse, bribe one of the men to open the postern gate for her so she wasn’t seen by anyone and ride away. Far away. Maybe all the way to the coast. Escape to France or Spain and start a new life. She could be a lady’s maid or a tavern wench. Anything would be better than being this man’s wife.

  Ceana shuddered and bit her lower lip to suppress the sob that made her want to scream aloud in frustration—oh, how very unladylike that would be. Her brother’s voice carried through her thoughts, bringing her back to the present and the one fact she was forgetting in all these grand plans.

  The marriage was ordered by Robert the Bruce… There was no getting out of it. If the future king had been the one to demand it, by going against it and him, she’d not only be putting herself in danger, but her brother too.

  It didn’t matter that the man in the great hall had apologized to her brother for his abrupt and rude behavior, or that he’d said she could live a life of leisure, which had to be a lie. He was probably only saying those things to placate Jamie so that her brother would let her leave with him.

  Ceana dragged in a ragged breath and pushed her hands through her hair, snagging her finger in the woven locks, having forgotten that she’d had her hair plaited.

  With a frustrated sigh, she fixed her hair and then forced herself to stand. She couldn’t run away. Instead, she needed to face this, and she would fight back.

  If the bastard thought he could push her around, then he had better prepare for war, because she wasn’t going to bow down to another man. She refused to cower when her husband entered a room, and she would only bear a child if she loved that child’s father. Which meant, if he forced himself on her, she’d better figure out how to prevent herself from getting with child.

  She curled her hands into fists. She’d bludgeon him if he did. Steal his dirk and slit his throat.

  Aye, she was no longer going to be a victim.

  Such proclamations were easier said than done, she knew, but this time, this time she wasn’t going to be the meek woman she’d been before. Ceana was made of stronger stuff than that. Wasn’t she?

  She hoped so.

  Ceana lifted herself up and smoothed her sweaty palms down the length of her skirts. She drew in a ragged breath through her teeth. She could do this. One step at a time. That was all it required of her right now. Just to move. To not remain rooted here on the steps, hiding, allowing her future to be decided for her.

  Taking each stair carefully, Ceana descended until both of her feet were planted at the base. With shoulders squared and chin held high, she marched with as much purpose as she could muster into the great hall to confront her new enemy. She rounded the corner, and the world tilted as the expansive great hall came into view and a dizziness with it, the familiar hung tapestries, stag heads and lanterns with wax dripping down in dried rivulets blurred around her.

  There he was, standing in the center of the great hall, taking up a great deal of space.

  The sight of him took her breath.

  He wore a plaid of muted blues and greens, a crisp white shirt that should have been dirty given his travel. He was unusually tall with freshly shaven features chiseled from stone, and his head was topped with a shock of wild ginger hair that made him look as though he’d been raised in the forest by nymphs. Startlingly blue-green eyes landed on her, a color she’d never seen before, like the sea and the earth collided in his gaze. His mouth was flattened into a firm line, but even the severity of his frown didn’t take away from the sensual shape of his lips.

  And she hated that she noticed that.

  The warrior studied her just as closely as she studied him, his heated gaze sweeping from the top of her red curls down to the tips of her slippers that peeked from beneath her gown. She felt warm from his regard, embarrassed and curious, and more than a wee bit irritated.

  He wasn’t supposed to be… handsome. Drat it all, but handsome didn’t even truly describe him. He was strikingly good-looking. Unfairly so. But handsome didn’t make a man good, now did it?

  Though her throat felt tight, Ceana forced herself to speak in her haughtiest tone. “Well, then, let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  Jamie stared at her in shocked horror, but a flicker of amusement flashed on the stranger’s face, and he turned more fully toward her, as though she suddenly interested him.

  “Eager, are we?” His thick brogue came out in an enticing drawl that felt almost like a caress on her skin.

  This was madness. She needed to stop thinking of him as good-looking and his voice as being… exciting. He was an arse, and that much she needed at the forefront of her mind.

  “No’ in the slightest,” she countered, with a confident toss of her head. “But I see no point in putting off the inevitable. Dinna mistake my willingness to wed for happiness at doing so.”

  Ceana kept her gaze steady on the warrior, refusing to look at anyone else, afraid that doing so would cause her to lose her nerve. Afraid that he would see her looking away as weakness.

  “Ceana,” her brother warned.

  “’Tis all right,” her unwanted betrothed said. “I’m intrigued by a lady who would speak her mind.”

  Intrigued? Ceana found herself speechless at that, so she frowned instead.

  Suddenly, her mind whirled back to the other man she’d promised to spend her life with not an hour before. Where was Gabriel? Would she see him as they rode off? Or would he have already left the castle, too furious to remain behind? That thought made her throat go dry.

  “I dinna seek to intrigue ye,” she finally managed to say.

  “Then what do ye seek?”

  Good heavens, Ceana found herself once more without words. Only one other man had ever asked her that—and it was Gabriel. This was extremely unfair. From the moment she’d entered the great hall, the man she’d heard speak so gruffly about her person and her fate seemed to have disappeared. This man was almost… charming, dare she put that word to him?

  Nay! It seemed like blasphemy to even think of him in such terms.

  Ceana was spared from having to answer when the Montgomery priest scurried into the room.

  “Father,” her brother said, “Laird Lamont has arrived to wed Lady Ceana.”

  Laird Lamont… She surreptitiously observed, afraid if she took her gaze off of him that he might pounce, which reminded her of prey being hunted. The priest eyed them both skeptically, but then gave a curt nod. Everyone assembled into place, Laird Lamont taking her hand in his. His grip was strong, but not painful, and his calloused palm rested warmly against her own. And despite how much she tried to keep herself still, her hands trembled, and to his credit, he said not one word about it, but held her hand and even brushed his thumb reassuringly over the delicate bone of her thumb.

  She muttered the words she was supposed to, barely present for the ceremony, thinking only of the end, where she’d have to put her lips on his. But Laird Lamont took all the thinking out of it, when he swiftly brushed his mouth on hers and then was gone.

  It was barely a kiss at all, and she was grateful for it, finally able to breathe out the air she’d been holding inside.

  The moment they were announced as husband and wife, Laird Lamont stepped away from her, giving instructions to his men.

  Ceana stood alone in the center of the great hall, the place she’d called home since her birth, and watched Jamie’s face crumble. Hands on his hips, he hung his head low, hiding anymore of his feelings from her. Above stairs in the lady’s chamber, his wife, Lorna, was lying in for the birth of their first child. It was an effort to tear her gaze away from her brother’s dejected form, instead casting her sight on the tapestries and table runners their mother had embroidered, the only reminders left of her in the castle.

  Her other brother, Malcolm, wasn’t present, having gone off to serve with William Wallace. Would she ever see him again? When he returned home, what would he think of her having been married off again?

  Ceana’s gaze slid longingly over the walls of her youth, taking in the woven tapestries depicting hunts, then to the weapons of her ancestors that hung on the walls, and to the place before the hearth where she’d lounged as a child listening to her f ather’s tall tales.

  She’d sat between her brothers and their wee sister, Matilda, on Jamie’s lap as they’d listened, completely wrapped up in a story that was quite embellished but no less told with love and absorbed by equally adoring ears.

  Matilda too, was wed and gone, living high in the north where winters made ice castles from the stones.

  Ceana’s throat felt dry, and she gripped her hands tightly together in front of her to keep from shaking. Surrounded by all these people, she’d never felt more alone in her life. The bravado she’d had earlier also seemed to have dissipated, leaving her an empty shell.

  She was married. Again.

  And not to the man she loved. Och, but it felt like someone had hold of her heart and was squeezing as hard as they could.

  Feeling eyes on her back, she turned, hoping it was Gabriel, but the only man watching was her new husband. Whatever he was thinking was masked by an expression of indifference, but his eyes… they bore into her.

  Ceana’s face burned with embarrassment at the way her heart fell from its lofty place of hope. Who was she kidding? Gabriel had to be furious. He wouldn’t want to watch her be given away to someone else. He was another person she’d likely never see again. If it had been her in his position, she would be halfway back to Mackinnon lands by now, swearing off Ceana as a traitor.

  That really wasn’t fair. She wasn’t a traitor, and she wouldn’t have deemed him one either.

  Jamie startled her with a soft hand on her elbow. She turned to face her brother, glad to see the devastation she’d witnessed in his expression replaced by brotherly affection.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, tugging her into his arms. “If there was any way I could have gone against this union, I hope ye know I would have.”

  She pressed her head to his chest, trying to pull some strength from him. “We must all do our duty, even at the risk of our own hearts.” The words were the right ones to say, even if she didn’t feel them. Her brother needed to hear it, to believe that she was going to be well in the end.