“Aye, but you are foolish to think either of us has any choice in the matter,” he said, his growing anger more refined than hers but no less visible in his eyes as he spoke. “If Hereford wants to drag you back to Kirkland Park, he can. He can marry you to any man he chooses, and you will have no say. The fact that he even allowed Tucker to raise you speaks to something inside him at least.”
“Aye, it speaks to his greed.” She stepped away. “I am trying to give you an honorable exit.”
He silenced her with a look. “Where is the honor in divorce, Rose? And there can be no consideration of an annulment. When we leave Jedburgh tomorrow, there can be no question in anyone’s mind as to my claim on you. You will be wedded and bedded well and good. My wife in full.”
She could feel the heat rise in her cheeks. “But this is only a game to my father? Is it to you as well? Check and checkmate?”
He came to his feet and she fell back a step and bumped the bench. Her melodrama might have been amusing coming from another, but she truly did believe something inside her would perish if she wed him. Shewasfrightened, just as he said. Not of him, but of what she perceived of her future as his wife. She did not wish to marry him. She was not standing before him under any pretense of nobility. She stood before him with the intentto bargain her way out of an intolerable situation.
“Please ... do not touch me. I do not think I can bear any more of this.”
When he felt her trembling, he silently cursed. He used his arm to pull her to him. “I am not the ogre you wish me to be in this.” He tilted her chin, then held her to him and some intangible part of him flowed into her. “Where else do you have to go, lass? I will no’ treat ye unkindly. You have my word on that.”
She sniffled and leaned her face against his sleeve, forgetting that he was Scots sometimes. “The word of an outlaw?” she asked.
He sensed more than felt his smile. “The word of a border lord, Lady Roselyn.”
“A privateer.”
“A Scots.”
They both laughed for this brought them back to her first morning at Stonehaven, familiar camaraderie. Then tension of a different sort returned to fill the void.
He put his hands on her shoulders. “I have learned that what is spoken in a moment of heated passion holds more truth than that which is spoken deliberately and with calm. We can agree that ours is not an optimum marriage. But it will begin with a modicum of honesty between us.”
He lifted his gaze to a point over her shoulder and she saw two men standing at the door. Rose backed away through a circle of sconce light. She was a wreath in the darkness no longer able to hide. And suddenly she did not want to.
Ruark watched Rose turn on her heel, the wordless action indicative of the uncertainty in her heart, and as she left the chapel, Ruark realized what these last few weeks had cost her in pride and in the loss of her independenceforever and the total betrayal of those she loved. Yet, when she had looked up into his face, he had seen the unwavering trust and commitment to him in her eyes.
Ruark understood her reticence. He understood her feeling of helplessness spilled from her erroneous perception of his own reasons for marrying her. He allowed that she had a right to own those feelings.
What she did not know—what she did not understand—was that no one could have forced him to wed. No threat or bribe would have been large enough to sway him had he notwantedher.
He leaned his head against his hands, resting the weight of his thoughts in his palms, before he pulled out the special license he held in his shirt, the license he had gotten in Hawick weeks ago. He had received special dispensation to wed her from the authorities there.
He even owned to the nefarious fact that his intent to wed her was not one born from anynoblesse obligehe might possess, which he did not. His purpose had been born from vengeance pure and simple and the unwillingness never to lose a fight.Check and checkmate, as Rose had told him. Just as it had been the first night he had taken Rose in the glade.
He had not thought of her feelings. Nay he had been driven to have her.
And when Ruark had learned from Rose that Hereford knew of her existence, he had set this day in action. He’d even made a contingency plan for theBlack Dragon.
Check and checkmate.
He could read Hereford’s black soul because in many ways they were the same. Ruark was not nice. He was not kind. Or gentle. Especially to a man who would abuse a twelve-year-old boy.
Ruark had not come to be known as theBlack Dragonbecause he hosted teas and picnics on the deck of his ship. He may not have been chasing the East Indiaman that fateful day she crossed paths with Hereford’s ship but hewasguilty of piracy on the high seas.
And then something had happened to him that afternoon Rose had come to him in the chapel. He knew instinctively what battle did to a soul, and he’d seen the pain in her eyes. He remembered it himself at seventeen. He had taken her to the lodge because he had wanted her. And then he had tried to do something unselfish. He had wanted to find a way to set her free. Truly he had.
Ruark didn’t know how long he was alone in the chapel. One minute. Five. He sat back, crossed one hand over the other in his lap, and his gaze fell on the ring where he sensed the low hum in his body. Pulling his thoughts.
A week ago, when he’d left Stonehaven, he thought he’d been prepared for this day. But when he had seen Rose in the hall facing her father, he knew he was not.
He had not been braced against the slam of his emotions, or the realization that he was trapped by an emotion he had sedulously avoided for thirteen years and had fancied himself immune to. Even less prepared for the violence of his own reaction to it, all the while, as he was working over in his mind how he was going to manage to save Jamie if he took Rose.
And then Hereford had granted him his greatest desire in a move so spectacularly executed that he could not have planned it any better had it been more premeditated.
Tell me that she is not equal to any bride worthy of your title,Tucker had said when Ruark entered the chapel.
