CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Reade had never experiencedsuch fury, such frustration, such a sense of betrayal in his life. Camden’s death had evoked aching sorrow and fury at the Campbells, but this sense of betrayal, of having someone he’d grown to care for, come to lo—
Nay. He’d not say that. He would not admit to himself that Blair somehow shoved past his defenses and found a place in his heart.
But she had done that very thing. Seeing her hesitant smile instead of a scowl, her steadfast nature, her tight curves and lush russet waves, even how she held her head high when everything seemed stacked against her and how she gave up her body to him, trusting him to build her desire into an ecstatic passion — all this had burst through his initial aversion at their arrangement and made him lo—
Nay. He might feel it, but he’d never acknowledge that feeling. Especially now when she had done the worst by betraying his desire for her and the trust they had been building by plotting with the Gordons.
Thewhyquestion niggled at the back of his mind, yet he gave it no weight. Reade could guess at what she and the Gordons hoped to accomplish, and that was enough to earn his ire and treat her like the treasonous spy that she was.
At first, when he saw the bruise on her face and the man in tattered Gordon plaid running away like the coward he was, Reade’s first instinct was to chase the man and kill him for laying a hand on his wife. But that nagging suspicion rose hard and fast in his head, and he reacted to her meeting with a Gordon before he realized what he was doing.
He had been right about her spying ways all along, and that knowledge chewed at the inside of his chest, gnawing at it until his heart was left in shreds.
He had been right the entire time.
And hehatedit.
The rain steadily increased, shedding the lovely spring mist of earlier and becoming sharp drops against his skin. He should have covered them with his plaid, but he wanted the rain to pound upon them, upon her, strike her as her behavior struck deep in his chest.
They were shivering and soaked through to the skin by the time he rode through the gate. The ashen clouds obscured what remained of the setting sun, so it was near dark when they entered the courtyard. Flint rushed out to meet him. His eyes glanced at Blair, preparing to offer her assistance, but a grumble from Reade made him drop his gaze and focus on reining in the horse.
Reade whipped his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. Instead of helping Blair off the horse so she might walk into the keep, Reade grabbed her hips and flung her over his shoulder. She squeaked out her protest and landed like a sack against his back.
“Reade, what —”
He started marching in silence, jostling her into silence. She stiffened against his backside when she noticed he wasn’t carrying her to the main courtyard door of the keep.
Nay, he wasn’t going to let her sleep in his chambers, in his bed, by his side again. He cut to the side of the tower to a warped wooden door tucked into the stone. He shouldered the door open with this free arm and a narrow set of stairs immediately descended from the door into darkness, like the stairway to the mouth of Hell itself.
Blair squirmed under his arm that held her in place. “Reade, please. Reade, nay!”
He ignored her protests and strode down the stairs. Dim light filtered through window slits set at the ground level, high up in this musty stone dungeon. Grabbing the keys off a peg at the base of the steps, he continued to the first thick door, which screeched and scraped against the stone as he opened it. He bent forward, spilling Blair onto the hard floor. She tumbled onto the stones and popped up into a sitting position, her blue eyes wide in a mix of confusion and fear.
And, it seemed, a sense of betrayal.
Unearned sense of betrayal, in Reade’s opinion.
“Ye can rot here for all I care,” he said, punctuating his words by spitting at her feet. A wad of spittle landed by her dirty skirts, and she recoiled from the offending, slobbering insult.
He tried to ignore how forlorn she looked, how her eyes, wider than wide, begged him not to do this to her. How the image of her locked in his dungeon pained his heart more than the thought of her betrayal.
“Reade?” she tried to appeal to him once more.
He pursed his lips, then slammed the door shut on her beautiful, confused face.
And slammed it on the love his oddly formed marriage had given him.
News of Reade’s arrivalwith Blair and what he did with her reached the main hall before he did. Instead of finding his own chambers and changing out of his sodden clothes, he faced his mother, whose crossed arms and furrowed brow told him everything he needed to know what she thought of his actions with Blair.
“What have ye done?” Sorcha roared in a voice far too loud for her tiny body.
Reade shifted from one foot to another. Suddenly, his decision to ignore Blair’s pleas and throw her in the dungeon did not seem to be a sound one. If his mother knew, then his father did as well. And if she was confronting him, then she was doing it with the blessing of Seamus.
“Mother, I did what we should have from the beginning,” he argued, trying to defend his actions.
His mother then did something she hadn’t done in years. She reached up on her toes and grabbed the ear of her strong, warrior son as though he were no more than a wee bairn. He gasped as a sharp pain tore at the side of his head, one he readily recalled from childhood.
