His Rebel Bride (Brothers in Arms Book 3) by Shayla Black, Shelley Bradley Read Free Book Online

was a truly lovely creature with golden curls and honey skin, and silent. Mayhap she might prove blessedly biddable.
    Then his gaze slid toward Brighid. She possessed Fiona’s golden curls, but they appeared brighter on her pink-cheeked face. He supposed her to be about twelve, give or take a year. Her face showed promise of the beauty she would be. Aye, she was young, but assuredly tamable. Thus far, she had been the most pleasant of the O’Shea sisters.
    Finally, he looked to devious Maeve. There was little avoiding it. Her red hair, streaked with bits of her sisters’ gold, lit up like a blaze beneath the afternoon sky.
    He guessed her younger than Jana but older than Fiona, which placed her somewhere about twenty, he surmised. Long past the time to take a husband. He frowned. How could it be that such a beauty had no husband? Were all the men in Ireland more addled than he thought?
    Maeve cleared her throat. Her face revealed little, except that her shock over his announcement was hidden away.
    “I do not wish to disappoint you, my lord, but your choices of a bride are limited,” she said, not sounding disappointed in the least. In fact, her mouth turned up in a ghost of a smug smile. “As you noticed, Jana expects a child any day.”
    “Where is her husband?”
    “Dead,” Maeve spat out in a hissed syllable. “Geralt was executed by the last earl of Kildare.”
    Kieran absorbed that bit of unfortunate news with a nod. No wonder the O’Sheas had given him such a dangerous welcome. Still, he had no doubt this husband of Jana’s had been brewing rebellion—and had known the penalties for such.
    “Aye,” said the pregnant woman as she rose to her feet. “My babe will never know his father, thanks to you and your king. He’s very nearly an orphan before he is even born, you English scum. Don’t think I’ll be marryin’ the likes of you. I’d plant a blade in your back first.”
    Jana’s face was flushed with anger, and Kieran actually acknowledged that she had once been very pretty, before grief and difficulties of pregnancy. As a wife, she would be trying, though he believed he could keep her from stabbing the life out of him. And ’twas clear she could breed. If she could prove beneficial to his post here, his wife she would be. Though he knew wedding a woman already with child would mean a longer wait until he could return to his life as a mercenary.
    “And I am promised to another.”
    Kieran heard those words, and heard them in Maeve’s voice.
    A surge of denial slid through him as he whipped his gaze back to the flame-headed O’Shea.
    “You are promised?”
    Her gaze looked cool and smug as she nodded. “I became betrothed November last.”
    Kieran vowed no such wedding would take place, at least not until he had decided which O’Shea sister to take to wife. Matters of the state would come before the matters of Maeve’s heart. He would choose her if it suited him, betrothal be damned.
    “And when is this propitious occasion to be?” he asked, wondering at a rise of his anger.
    “She and Quaid will wed when he is freed by the English in Dublin,” blurted Brighid.
    Frowning, Kieran remembered Maeve’s earlier words. “Did you not say Quaid would be at the mercy of the hangman’s noose soon?”
    Maeve’s wide red mouth pursed with a frown. “He did naught wrong.”
    Kieran raised a brow at her. Did she really believe that, or did she merely see rebellion against the English as right?
    “That leaves me and Fiona, my lord,” offered Brighid.
    A quick glance at the two fair-headed sisters revealed Fiona trying to hide her grimace with a false smile, and Brighid’s mouth turned up in a hopeful grin. He nearly smiled at the absurdity of it.
    “I will wed you, my lord,” Brighid offered. “For then I could learn of men and women and how babies are made…”
    Babies? Brighid was little more than a child herself. ’Twould be some while before he would think her grown enough to take to