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

hoped she found a restful night’s sleep soon.
    “So I’m to spend the day with you, am I?” she said, but even the contempt in her voice emerged as little more than weariness.
    “Aye. I would ask you a few questions, hear about you, about Langmore. You may ask questions as you wish.”
    She stared into a cup of goat’s milk. “You know all that is important. I grew up here in Langmore. I was wed here. ’Tis a fine castle built near a hundred years past, but she stands strong. I have no doubt ’tis why you English beasts want it.”
    Kieran chose not to comment on that gibe now. ’Twould only lead to an argument that would sap her of more energy.
    “What do you enjoy, Jana?”
    “Enjoy?” She frowned, clearly surprised by such a question. “Do my interests matter?”
    Aye, they did. His parents had failed at marriage so badly because they shared naught but a son. Since Drake and his lovely wife, Averyl, both shared a love of books, Kieran thought to find a wife with whom he could share something. Such might cut down on the death and mayhem.
    Mayhap…and mayhap not.
    “I have been far too busy readying for this birth of late to be concerned with interests.”
    “What of your interests before your marriage?” he prompted.
    Her faded mouth thinned into a pressed line. “I am tired and recall little before I wed. Now my only interest is in birthing a healthy babe, as Geralt would have wished.”
    When Kieran saw a glossy sheen of unshed tears in her eyes, he nodded. “You will make him proud.”
    “Not if I take an enemy as my husband. I want no part of this absurdity.”
    “So you’ve said. I want no part of marriage, either, but—”
    “You did not lose the one you loved a mere two months past,” she said, rising from the bench as her voice rose in volume. “You will not have to look at your innocent babe and try to explain why he has no father. You will not have to tell him that the English killed his father but his mother married one of the butcher’s kind anyway!”
    Tears began down Jana’s face, and she crumpled back to the bench in a sobbing heap.
    Kieran flinched as she wailed beside him and rested her face in her hands. Her noisy tears echoed in the great hall, disturbing even the resting hounds. Frowning, he stared at the grieving woman. Her pain was no pretense, and he found himself shifting in his seat with discomfort.
    “They k-killed him! And for doing naught m-more than what he believed was right. Freedom… ’Twas all he sought. W-why did he have to die to gain something he had been born with?”
    Kieran had no answer for that. That was simply war. Some won. Others lost—and paid the ultimate price. Always he had accepted thus.
    Today, watching Jana shake her own body—and her babe’s—with the force of her tears, he felt…tense.
    “Jana,” he said softly. “Your Geralt did what he thought right, true. But he defied the law—”
    “English law!” she cut in angrily, lifting her head from the table.
    Misery had turned her cheeks pink, her nose red, and her eyes puffy. Grief sat stiffly in each line of her oval face, in each inch of her downturned mouth.
    For once, Kieran knew not what to say.
    “Why should the English make laws for Ireland? They rape our land and our women. They kill our men, then expect obedience.” She laughed bitterly. “Why should we give it?”
    Though Kieran knew Jana believed such, she could not see the truth: war, by its nature, decreed that those who fell would be subjugated by those who conquered. ’Twas no right or wrong in that. It simply was.
    Still, he could not help an unwelcome pang of sympathy for her loss and that of her babe. He had grown to manhood without much of his own father. He knew how great that loss could be.
    “Shhh, good lady. You will upset the babe.” He reached out to place a soothing hand upon her own.
    She yanked it away. “Touch me not, you swine! And be assured that if you are so foolish as to force me to wife, I