Sunlight seeped through the windows and into the bridal chamber. Birds perched on the windowsill and cheeped softly. Sorcha shouldn’t have been awake; she’d been busy far into the night. But pure joy brought her to consciousness, and she lay with her eyes closed, savoring this blissful shining moment.
She loved Arnou.
Last night she had declared her intention to make him her consort, and the light of day had only strengthened her determination. She hoped her decision didn’t cause Grandmamma to collapse and die, although that seemed unlikely. Grandmamma was made of stern stuff, and she’d consider such a death a major defeat. Sorcha could almost guarantee that Grandmamma would stay alive to plague her and nag Arnou.
Poor man. He’d have to learn to act like a prince. But he already had the traits she required: generosity, kindness, and, most of all, honesty.
She opened her eyes. Stretching, she worked the aches from her body. She could wait no longer to gaze on the face of her beloved.
He lay quietly. He must be still asleep.
Gingerly she rolled to face him.
The rag that had covered his eye the whole time she’d known him had disappeared.
Seeing his whole face made him look…different. In fact—she propped herself up on her elbow and stared down at him—his eye looked fine. Not scarred and certainly intact. She thought—no, she knew—he’d said his eye socket was empty.
It most definitely wasn’t, because he was awake and looking at her. In fact, the eye was brown and looked as if it functioned quite well. He stared at her with it—with both his eyes—as if he were waiting for something.
Maybe that was because he looked…
She sat all the way up. When she put some distance between them, he looked familiar. Not Arnou-familiar, but out-of-her-past-familiar. But that was impossible. No man of her age out of her past could possibly be—
She gasped so loud the birds, affronted, took wing and flew away.
“No.” She snatched the sheet and held it to her chest. No, it couldn’t be Rainger. Someone had mentioned him yesterday. Now her mind was playing tricks on her.
Slowly he sat up. “Sorcha?”
It sounded like Rainger. She hadn’t noticed that before. How could she not have noticed that before?
“No.” Her side of the bed was against the wall, so she scuttled backward toward the foot. The sheet was tucked in; she abandoned it as unnecessary.
“Sorcha, sweetheart.” That man extended a hand to coax her back.
She looked at the fingers, the palm; they had far too many calluses for a prince. That had to be the hand of a sailor.
She scrambled naked over the footboard. Her feet touched the cold floor. She lunged for the nearest jacket, threw it over her shoulders.
The arms hung over her hands. The hem hung over her thighs. This wasn’t her jacket.
She didn’t want his.
That man rose off the bed. He was very tall, very broad-shouldered, with bulging muscles in his arms and thighs—and he sported a long, sleek, thick erection. Last night his overwhelming strength and masculinity had created a rush of anticipation and excitement.
Now he scared her. Enraged her.
Because he didn’t look like Arnou. He looked like Rainger.
But it couldn’t be. This man had a scar on his chest. When he leaned over to pick up his breeches, she saw marks on his back. A sailor’s life was notorious for brutality and beatings.
So were a prisoner’s.
The pain and rage almost made her double up in agony.
It was…dear God, it was true. That man…the man she believed in, the man she’d declared she loved, the man she trusted…“You. You are Rainger!” It was not a compliment.
It was an accusation.
“You recognize me at last.” He bowed and smiled, a courtly bow made ludicrous by his nakedness and a smile as intimate as a whisper.
She wanted to slap his smirking face. “Put on your breeches,” she hissed.
Her venom seemed to surprise him. “Sorcha, it’s all right. We’re married.”
“No, we’re not.” In a panic to get out of here, she searched for the clothing the women had left her. “I didn’t marry you. I married a man who was kind and honorable and protective and generous and trustworthy.”
“That was me.”
“No. Believe me. It was not.” She found the clothing: a fine chemise, an old-fashioned skirt and shirt of pale blue wool, petticoats, a dark blue ankle-length cloak, warm black hose, a straw bonnet. Wedding gifts from the village. The best they could collect from women honored to bestow their cast-offs.
Beside them was another outfit: black trousers, a black jacket, a white shirt, underdrawers, a collar, and cuffs. The villagers had been equally generous with Rainger.
For the first time, he looked a little irritated. “Don’t pretend you don’t understand that Arnou and I are the same person.”
“Of course I understand.” She discarded the jacket. “I understand everything now.”
He looked at her naked body. Looked with the beginnings of desire and the remnants of passion.
She hated it. Hated him with all the fervor of a woman betrayed.
As hard as she could, she threw the jacket in his face.
He caught it, tossed it over a chair, and watched her as hungrily as a slinking wolf after its dinner.
An apt description for Rainger.
Snatching up the chemise, she pulled it over her head. She donned the petticoats and tied them around her waist with such a firm tug she hurt herself. “Despite the huge fool I’ve made of myself, I am accounted to have a good mind. But I suppose that’s compared to other women, isn’t it? It certainly isn’t as clever as your mind. Or perhaps it would be better if I said—it’s not as treacherous as your mind. It’s not as sneaky and slimy and…does everyone downstairs know who we are?” Remembering the children yesterday, the flowers, the joy with which the village celebrated their wedding, she realized the absurdity of the question.
“They are very happy for us, their sovereigns.” He donned his breeches as if resigned to momentary celibacy.
She scrubbed her hands over her hot cheeks. Mortified. She was so mortified. In the eyes of everyone in this dear little village, she was not their queen. She was a fool.
Get dressed. She had to get dressed and out of here before she lost her temper and leaped at him.
She stepped into the gown. The buttons ran up the back, and she twisted to fasten them. She got the top. The bottom. The middle gaped. She knew it gaped. But she wasn’t going to ask him to help her.
Because the more she thought about the events that had brought her to this moment, the worse her humiliation. And her anguish. “Dear God, you’re the one who set the fire at the convent. You burned my sisters’ letters.”
“It’s all right,” he said in a soothing tone. “I have others.”
“What?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly. She stopped chasing the buttons and glared at him. “What did you say?”
“I have letters for you from Clarice and Amy. They’re in my saddlebags. Just a minute, let me get them.” He started toward his bags.
She launched herself at him. She grabbed at his back, spun him around, and took the front of his shirt in her fists. “My sisters? You’ve seen my sisters?”
He looked taken aback by her assault. Not hurt, but taken aback. “Yes, and I’m pleased to tell you they’re in the bloom of good health. They’re married to good men—”
“My sisters are married?” Clarice was married? Amy, her baby sister Amy, was married?
“And by now Clarice has a baby.”
“Clarice was expecting?” Clarice was a mother. Sorcha was an aunt. And she hadn’t been there for the birth. She hadn’t held her sister’s hand or soothed her pain.
“Clarice married a Scottish nobleman, Robert MacKenzie, earl of Hepburn by name. Amy married an English nobleman, Jermyn Edmondson, marquess of Northcliff by name. I’ve met them both.” Rainger sounded so calm and earnest, as if he thought that would reassure her. “And you may be assured your sisters have made honorable matches.”
“Unlike me.” She backed away from him.
“You’re very angry, much angrier than I expected, but you don’t understand.” He followed her. “Let me fasten your buttons while I explain—”
“I don’t want you to fasten my buttons, and I understand perfectly well. You knew how distraught I was about losing my last contact with Clarice and Amy. In fact, you destroyed that contact.” The cloak. She wanted her cloak. She wanted as many layers of clothing between her and Rainger as she could have. She wanted miles between them. Years between them. “But according to you, that was immaterial, for you had in your possession more correspondence, correspondence that could easily be a replacement for the letters which I had read, reread, held close to my heart, and were my most cherished possessions in the loneliness of my exile in a convent?”
“I knew your sorrow was temporary. I knew once I let you discover my identity, I would give them to you.”
Right now, scratching his eyes out sounded like good sense to Sorcha. “You dare. You let me ride for days through the wilds of Scotland, where I could have frozen or fallen in a gorge or been killed by robbers or assassins, and you say it’s acceptable that you didn’t give them to me?” She swirled the cape, setting an illusionary boundary he would be smart not to cross. She pulled the collar close across her shoulders. “You were in the dungeon for too long if you can make that logic work for you.”
He took a long breath as if trying to gather patience.
He had the guts to act as if he needed patience.
“I was in the dungeon for a very long time, but believe me, Sorcha, the hardship there made me a different man. All the things you said about the old Rainger were true. I was feckless, selfish, ungrateful, and unkind. I take full responsibility for the loss of my country and I will do everything to make it up to my people. These people.” He waved a hand toward the taproom below.
“Are you trying to tell me you’re better now? You have lied to me, deceived me in every way, made me think I saved myself from an assassin…” She paused.
He nodded in confirmation, nodded as if she should appreciate him riding to her aid.
“You encouraged me to think I could take care of myself when I so obviously can’t.” She pointed a finger at him when a thought occurred to her. “You fixed the horse trading, didn’t you? Somehow you made MacMurtrae pay the fair price.”
“Well, yes.” Rainger had the acumen to look slightly abashed at that. Slightly. “I couldn’t allow him to cheat us.”
“You have made a fool of me every step of the way, and in your warped mind I’m supposed to be grateful that your hardship in the dungeon made you a different man?” His audacity took her breath away. “It certainly did, and one I do not welcome or want.”
He ignored her rejection.
Because he thought ignoring it would make it go away? Perhaps. But more likely because he believed himself to be totally justified in his perfidious charade.
“You insufferable snake. You ghastly hound.” This was the problem with living in castles and convents. She didn’t know hurtful-enough names. Out of the depths of her mind, she pulled the worst she knew. “You cad!”
The worst she knew wasn’t good enough. He did no more than blink at her vocabulary. “I didn’t make a fool of you on purpose. The deception was necessary because I didn’t know the direction of your mind about returning to Beaumontagne and fulfilling your promise to marry me.”
“So you lied to me and kept my sisters’ letters a secret?” Shoes. She needed shoes to walk out of here. “How does this make sense?”
“Let me explain.”
“Do.” She could scarcely grind the word from between her clenched teeth.
“Your grandmother told me I had to find her lost granddaughters and when I married one, she would give me an army to defeat Count duBelle and win back my country. By the time I found first Clarice and then Amy, they had already met their future husbands and in fact were”—he waved a hand at the bed and essayed a smile—“fluffing the sheets with their men.”
Did Rainger really think he was funny? Or charming?
“So I knew finding you was my last chance. When I did, I thought it best to assure myself of your affections by—”
“Lying to me?” She snatched up the hose and her boots and sat in a chair.
“By not being the man you despised so heartily.”
She paused while pulling on her hose and shot him a scathing glance. “Did it never occur to you that whether or not I despised you, I would still do my duty to my country?”
“I thought it would be easier for you to do that duty if you felt affection for me.”
“And you created that affection by pretending to be a simple but noble man.” She tied her garters, then had to loosen them for fear she’d cut off the circulation to her feet.
“I’m not simple, I admit that. Arnou is less intelligent than me.” He bobbed his head in artful imitation of the role he’d played for so many weeks. “But no one could have guarded you on your trip across Scotland with more dedication.”
“I would have to say you are simple. Possibly even moronic.” Her poor, worn boots were dry, warm, and polished. She shoved her feet inside and laced them with the same vigor she’d shown for her petticoats and her garters. “You’ve just told me you deceived me and married me only because I was your last chance to win your kingdom, and you’ve protected me because if I die, your chance to be king dies with me.”
Rainger walked over, looked down at her as if that proved his superior position, and said, “You asked for the truth.”
She leaned back, folded her arms over her chest, and looked up at him with as much insolent confidence as she could muster. “Because it makes everything that came before a lie. Arnou protected me and married me for me. For the first time in my life, someone was kind, was dedicated, to me. Not to my position as princess. Not to what I could do for him. Not to honor tradition or to make a profit. Now I’m the half-wit, for believing that I’m pretty or lovable or worth dying for. You are simple for believing I will ever forgive you.”
His face grew cold and still and in his lethal gaze she caught a glimpse of his true self—a ruthless prince who would stop at nothing, sacrifice everything, for his vengeance and his position. “Last night you swore you would make me your consort. You swore you’d fight your grandmother and your prime minister for me. You swore you loved me.”
“I swore I loved Arnou.” She clenched her fist. “Arnou is dead.” And she mourned him. God, how she mourned him!
Jumping to her feet, she shoved Rainger aside. She picked up his leather saddlebags, usually so hefty and cumbersome she could scarcely lift them, and shook the contents onto the floor. A coil of rope, a pistol and shot, a corked bottle, and a blanket spilled out onto the floor.
And two sealed letters.
“Don’t. Wait. The saddlebags are too heavy.” Rainger rushed up her side. “Let me—”
She slammed her elbow into his sternum.
He doubled over with a gasp.
“The ladies at Madam’s told me how to do a few other things besides blow the hornpipe—a pleasure you’ll never enjoy, at least not from my talented lips.” She picked up the letters. She looked at her sisters’ dear, familiar handwriting. Her eyes filled with tears, making her realize how precarious was her hold on her poise. “But now that you’ve trapped me, secured your position and your army, and ensured your crown, I’m sure there’ll be other women ready and willing to perform that service. Don’t let any misplaced loyalty to our wedding vows stop you.” She stalked toward the doorway. “But, of course, a vow made for expediency need not be kept. Kings have been proving that for generations. And that, you bastard, is why there are revolutions.” She slammed the door behind her.
Rainger rubbed his breastbone and tried to catch his breath. As exit lines went, that was impressive—but he’d sworn he would allow no man to speak to him with such contempt ever again, and certainly not the woman he’d made his wife. Certainly not the wife he’d courted, caressed, and kissed.
She wasn’t going to get away with this.
He stalked to the door, flung it open—and heard Sorcha running down the stairs, sobbing as if her heart had broken.
Quietly he shut the door.
He rubbed his eyes. Both his eyes.
That conversation hadn’t gone quite as well as he had hoped.
But damn, she did look good in a dress.