His Judas Bride

Chapter 7

"Mother of God, Callm. No. Stop it."

In so far as something could stop him in his tracks, Meg's forward rush did.

"Ye are no' putting that thing at her door?"

Obviously he was. He didn't see anyone else, did he? It was just such a pity Meg hated Dug as much as Dug hated her. It was why even the possibility of a bed by the blazing fire made the recalcitrant b***h dig holes in the flagstones. The damned dead weight she could be when the mood took her. Dug that was. Not Meg. Although Meg could be both too.

"What?"

Meg widened her eyes. "Ye promised me. Ye swore there would be none of this."

A tight knot formed in Callm's gut. When they had agreed not around Fallon he prayed Meg hadn't meant the whiskey. The neat slug. All right, the quarter jug-full actually, he'd just downed. Not his first choice right now. But the first? Hell, not exactly an option, was it?

He shrugged. At all costs he needed to hide that thought from Meg. She got wind of it and he'd never get the tail-end of it. "None of what?"

"This. I don't understand. What is this about?"

"Hell. Do you want to know something?" Keeping his voice low, he tightened his grip on Dug's shaggy neck. The cur was half Irish wolfhound and whole awkward. "I've no damned idea. But I'm bringing Dug in out the cold anyway."

"Callm. Please."

"What? You never said I couldn't have her in here."

He cursed the fact he sounded more exasperated than a drunk man who'd kicked over a full whiskey barrel.Meg took care of everything for him. The house he didn't live in. The daughter the years had ticked by with him absent. Fallon was five. Would he be hunting down cattle thieves and raiders, paying lightning visits to her when she was ten? Fifteen? When she had a man, children of her own? It looked that way, which was why he wished he could tamp his annoyance with the only other person in the world who mattered to him.

"Look, you don't actually think I did anything to her, do you, Sis?"

"Ye looked."

"There's no damned law against that in this glen, so far as I know. The turd now will do more than—"

"So did she."

He cursed the abrupt way his spine straightened so he trod on Dug's tail. "Jesus, Dug, will you just get your damned tail out of there if you don't want me standing on it? Get over there. Go on. Now."

He bent his head. She hadn't looked at him. Unless it was with cold contempt. Those eyes of her were dead as the damned deer he'd wagered Wee Murdie for—the one he'd now no chance of eating, when he was hungry enough to eat the herd.

"Well, just suppose she did. Aren't you forgetting one teeny, tiny thing?"

"Morven?"

He slanted her an irritated glance. As if he wanted to remember. He'd come upon the gray gelding first, standing motionless in the glade behind the summer shielings. It was the exact spot he'd first set eyes on Morven five years previously. Then he'd come upon her. He'd hoped what he was looking at wasn't what it was.

"Morven was five years ago, Callm."

Not as if he'd exactly forgotten. What that day had done to him.

"I don't like blondes."

It wasn't a lie. But even before he yanked this particular one out the snow she'd tumbled into and set her over his shoulder and the vagrant fire became an inferno, he knew he was making the mistake of his life.

Crushed rose petals. That was what she smelled of. Very pretty. Swimming all the way into his senses. It didn't help that beneath it, something beautifully warm and musky lingered.

But the worst of it was the way his body tightened so he'd struggled to keep walking. It was the first time he'd held a woman in five years and found no ghost of Morven haunting his arms as she'd last been there. When he'd held her and told her it would be all right. Knowing damn fine it wouldn't.

His gut twisted so hard he could barely breathe at the thought. That after what the McGurkies had done to Morven, all they had done to her, he should be the one to damn well affront her memory by finding Kara McGurkie attractive.

Meg let her hand linger on his shoulder. "Well, just sometimes snow is white."

"This is one time when it's black."

As if he didn'tknow what color the snow was here. He just didn't want Meg knowing the real reason there had been no woman for five years. How he'd given up on it, when before Morven died, before he knew her even, it had been physically impossible for him do without a woman for five hours, let alone five years. He didn't want anyone knowing.

He shrugged. "I've been against this damned marriage from the start. Have you any idea the slap in the face it is?"

"I know the tinker chief sued ye for peace."

"I'd have sooner kept fighting. All the Brotherhood men would."

"Well, of course, ye formed them. But Fallon needs ye here. Not—look, Lochalpin needs the peace this marriage will bring. We all do."

"Peace?"

"Hopefully. In time anyway. I don't see why not."

"Peace? Don't bank on it. That damned baggage through there would start a war all on her own."

Meg arched her eyebrows. "And that's why ye've brought that thing in here, is it?"

He walked to the wooden table in the middle of the hall. What they'd agreed about the drink didn't matter. He was having a slug of whiskey and he was having it now. Fallon was asleep. It was nothing to do with Meg.

"I don't trust her."

"Callm."

"She's dressed like a tuppenny w***e under that cloak." He hated the indignant way his voice burst from him. So long as Meg thought it was simply him being awkward though, it could burst any way it wanted.

"Looking were ye?"

He fingered the edge of the silver quaich, then he sloshed another nip of whiskey into it. "No. I wasn't looking."

"Well?"

"What's she damn well dressed like that for?"

"Be honest. Is it the dress that worries you? Or its affect on yourself?"

If someone had told him a few hours ago that it would, he'd have laughed in their face. He knew exactly what was required of him. But five years was a hell of a long time to be without a woman. And he cursed his damned turd of a brother for not meeting her himself.

Maybe he didn't trust her. He trusted himself less. But he wasn't telling Meg. All he had to do was get through one night here.

And that was why, purely and simply, he was setting Dug outside her door.

Not to keep Miss High-and-Mighty in her chamber.

To keep himself out.