As though she’d just been burned by hot coals, Laoghaire recoiled from him. Galen then watched as that enticingly plump bottom lip curled in a deprecating sneer.
“Such a farewell would not adequately convey my sentiments,” Laoghaire remarked, glaring defiantly at him as she spoke.
Christ God! I willtame this shrew if it’s the last thing I do,Galen inwardly vowed while he grabbed Laoghaire by the upper arms and forcefully hauled her against his chest. Not giving her a chance to resist, he enwrapped her in a chain mail embrace . . . just before he lowered his head and clamped his mouth onto hers. To ensure that she didn’t jerk free of him, he braced her jaw between his fingers.
The kiss that followed was hard and fierce; and because they were the recipient of many curious stares, all too brief. Once he did pull away, Galen took several backward steps, instinctively moving out of the range of his wife’s fist.
A tense silence ensued as Laoghaire stared at him with a bewildered look on her face. Then, very slowly, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I told ye last night that I did not want ye to kiss me,” she hissed at him.
“You are my wife and I will use you as I like. When I like and wherever I like.”
At hearing that, the color leeched from Laoghaire’s face. “That was the first time that a man’s lips touched mine and . . . and I liked it not!”
Before Galen could stop her, Laoghaire spun on her heel and stormed toward the keep.
Annoyed, he tugged his coif over his head. His squire then wordlessly handed him a nasal helmet. With a muttered oath, he jammed it onto his head before swinging himself into the saddle.
“I have never met my match in joust, duel or battle,” Galen muttered under his breath.
Until now.
’Tis obvious that Angus and the Highland creature loathe one another.
As Dame Winifred Guibourg stood at the partially opened window of the earl’s bedchamber, having just observed the heated exchange in the bailey below, she thought it more than passing strange that two newlyweds—so recently come from their marriage bed—would treat one another with such hostility.
Only moments ago she’d come to the bedchamber to retrieve the wedding sheets, but had been halted in her task when she glimpsed the marital spat. While she could not hear what Angus and his bride said to one another, she could seethat there was no love lost between them.
With a snicker, she closed the shutter and made her way over to the bed . . . only to gasp aloud when she realized there was onlyoneindented bed pillow upon it. Indeed, the second pillow did not appear to have been used at all.
“Mother of God,” she rasped on an indrawn breath as she rushed over to the mattress. “Can it possibly be true?”
Grasping hold of the coverlet, she yanked it off the mattress and flung it aside. At seeing that there were no telltale blood splotches on the pristine white bed sheet, she nearly laughed aloud, so great was her glee. To verify her suspicions, Winifred ran a hand over the sheet and confirmed that the camlet was completely dry. She then bent over the middle of the bed and put her nose to the sheet, inhaling deeply.
“There’s been no loveplay in this bed,” she sniggered.
But why was the marriage not consummated?The earl was in his prime, and rumor had it that he was a lusty man who engaged in bedsport with some frequency. And since she’d assisted the Highland giant in dressing for the wedding ceremony, she knew that Angus’s bride was not in her flowers; which would have been the only acceptable impediment to consummating their vows.
Certain that something dire had hindered the earl from rutting on his new bride, Winifred smiled with delight.
Because she and her daughter were both widowed—and dependent upon the charity of others—she had contrived to have Melisande betrothed to the old earl’s only heir, Sir Galen de Ogilvy. Over the course of nearly thirty years, the old earl had gone through three wives, one of whom was her own sister, with no natural-born child to show for it. Given that abysmal accounting, she’d come to believe that Hugh de Ogilvy’s seed was too weak to germinate, and that the earldom would eventually pass to Sir Galen.
But all of her well-laid plans went awry when the meddling king ordered a marriage that should never have taken place.
While her daughter Melisande had abandoned all hope of becoming the countess of Angus, Winifred knew that it was not uncommon for a husband to rid himself of an unwanted wife. Particularly if the woman spurned the marriage duty and refused to let her spouse bed her. If that happened, all a man had to do was draw up alibellum repudii, a document of repudiation, in which he formally severed the marriage contract.
“’Tis not a rare thing for a man to do,” she murmured, the flame of hope having suddenly been relit.
And if fortune smiles upon me and Melisande, that flame will fan into a bright conflagration.
CHAPTER SIX
“I like it not,” Laoghaire murmured as she peered through the lancet window at the bailey below.
Needing to escape the bustle of the castle, she’d come to the lady’s bower for a much needed respite. Furnished with a table, several chests, a comfortable chair, and decorated with a triptych of tapestries depicting the hunt of a white hart, the bower was intended for her private use. As such, it was where she was supposed to spend her time engaged in embroidery or playing one of the musical instruments that were scattered about the room.
Such pursuits, however, held no appeal.
Bereft, Laoghaire returned her gaze to the castle’s inner courtyard. She yearned for the tangy smell of salt and fish and the screech of sea birds. In her mind’s eye, she could see the craggy mountains of her beloved Skye, with its shimmering lochs of blue and untamed moorland. She well recalled how the clouds would roll in from the west and swathe the entire isle in a faery mist. Having lived the whole of her life there, she knew every hill, every burn, every lichen-covered boulder and field of heather. Not simply the land of her birth, Skye had always been hercomrich, her sanctuary.
