Bride of the Beast by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read Free Book Online

Linnet," Lady Caterine said, the agitation humming in her voice at stark contrast to the haunted look in her eyes.
    A goddess of ice. Beautiful, proud, and mightily agitated.
    She drew a deep breath, her annoyance palpable. "What I must tell you has naught to do with her either."
    Marmaduke leaned back against the merlon and folded his arms. "Then speak your heart. I am listening."
    "My heart, sir, has even less to do with it." She looked sharply at him, escaping tendrils of her hair dancing on the night wind. "See you, there has been an error. My sister was duped. I did not send for you. My companion did. Lady Rhona. My dearest friend and worst enemy."
    "Your worst enemy?" Marmaduke lifted a brow, noted the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, the shadows beneath them. "I think not, my lady. I doubt she deceived you with ill intent."
    "She stirs mischief without thinking of the consequences."
    Heeding an irresistible urge to be near her, Marmaduke pushed away from the merlon and went to stand before her. "And are the consequences so unpalatable? For truth, I have been here but a few hours and can already see you are in grave need."
    She cleared her throat. "I did not want a champion, nor am I desirous of a... man."
    "And now your friend has plunged you onto a forcing-ground where you must suffer both."
    She nodded, a flash of anger sparking in her beautiful eyes. But she said nothing. She simply stared at him, her chin lifted in clear objection to everything he was and had hoped to do for her. With her.
    Hoping the dark hid the muscle jerking in his jaw, Marmaduke fought the overpowering urge to lower his mouth to hers and silence her objections with a kiss. A fierce and claiming one.
    "Lady Caterine, 'tis well I know I am not a man to turn heads and steal hearts," he said at last, the words coming from the devils that rode his back and not his own true self. A self still handsome and unmarred. "But scarred or nay, English or not, error or otherwise, your sister asked me to champion you and I shall," his true self said. "I gave the lady Linnet my word. Denying her would be as impossible as not drawing breath."
    "Aye, impossible," Caterine agreed, the sheer futility of her situation as annoying as the inscrutable look on her unwanted champion's face. She peered at him, willing him to say the words she'd hoped to hear when she informed him he'd come in error.
    Summoned in a wild scheme spun by her meddlesome friend.
    But rather than announce his swift departure, he watched her with an unbelievably vexing air of imperturbability and baldly informed her he intended to champion her whether she wanted him to or not.
    Worse, t hank s to Rhona's underhanded machinations, she had little course but to accept his help.
    His leaving would only hurl her into more troubling waters.
    "Lady, I desired to speak to you privily because I must inform you there is one request your sister made upon me which I cannot fulfill," he said then, his rich-timbred voice mellifluous as a bard's.
    Spoiled only by its trace of Englishry. Caterine arched a brow, taking refuge from the lure of his oddly soothing voice in a studied veneer of indifference. "And what request of Linnet's might that be?"
    "My shoulders are good and wide, Lady Caterine. Well able to bear any burdens troubling you," he said, more disturbed by her chilly reception than he cared to admit. "Any and all burdens save one. I will not pose as your husband." An indefinable expression crossed her face, and before it could blossom into something he'd rather not see, Marmaduke clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing the narrow breadth of the wall-walk, his gaze fixed on the far horizon.
    Anywhere but on her face.
    Anything but risk seeing her horror when he proposed a true marriage.
    "Four well-blooded warriors came with me," he said, hoping only he heard the slight quaver in his voice. "We bring you full use of our sword arms and our steadfast protection."
    He stopped before her