Never Love a Highlander (McCabe Trilogy #3)(14)

She took a step back and lowered her sword.

“Get out of my sight. You sicken me.”

Her father’s lip curled into a grimace of distaste. “You were always a sore disappointment, Rionna. You play at being a man and yet you’re neither a man nor a woman.”

“Go to hell,” she whispered.

He turned and stalked away, leaving her standing, shivering in the cold.

Slowly she turned back toward the loch and walked closer to the water’s edge. Today the water was dark and ominous. The wind whipped along the surface, boiling the water into waves that beat at the shoreline.

Her face throbbed. Her father had never struck her. She had always feared him but for another reason entirely. In truth she’d avoided him when at all possible, and until she became a valuable pawn, her father had ignored her as well.

She stared sightlessly over the water, and for the first time since this whole mess began, felt a wave of despair slide over her shoulders, weighing her down.

What did she know about being a wife?

She glanced down at her attire as shame tightened her cheeks and swelled in her chest. Caelen McCabe had managed to do what no other person had ever managed. He’d made her ashamed of who she was, and it infuriated her.

She rubbed her hands together and then tucked them under the hem of her tunic. She hadn’t donned gloves—an oversight. She’d been in too big a hurry to leave the keep and the walls closing in around her.

But even the brisk wind and the biting chill couldn’t drive her back toward the warmth of indoors. Back to her future with a man as cold as the mist blowing off the loch.

“Rionna, you shouldn’t be out in the cold.”

She stiffened but didn’t turn around as her husband’s terse reprimand reached her.

“You’ll take ill.”

He came to stand beside her and stared over the loch in the direction of her gaze.

“Have you come to make your apology?” she asked as she glanced sideways at him.

He jerked in surprise and turned to stare at her, eyebrow raised. “Apologize for what?”

“If you have to ask, ’tis not a sincere apology you’ll issue.”

He snorted. “I’ll not apologize for kissing you.”

She flushed. “It wasn’t the kissing I was referring to, but you had no right to do something so intimate in front of others.”

“You’re my wife. I’ll do as I like,” he said lazily.

“You humiliated me,” she said in a tight voice. “Not once but twice this morn.”

“You humiliated yourself, Rionna. You have no discipline. No restraint.”

She whirled on him, her fist balled. Oh, she’d love to hit him. But she’d only bounce off and probably break her hand in the process.

She opened her mouth to let him have it, when his expression stopped her.

It was positively murderous.

His eyes went flat, and his jaw twitched.

His roar nearly flattened her. “Who struck you?”

Her hand flew to her cheek, and she took a step back. But he was having none of that. He pushed forward and reached up to pull her hand down. With his other hand he touched a finger to the still sore spot.

“Who dared raise their hand to you?”

She swallowed and dropped her gaze. “ ’Tis not of import.”

“The hell it’s not. Tell me and I’ll kill the bastard.”

When she finally dared to lift her gaze back to his, the terrible rage in his eyes puzzled her. He was furious.

“Did your father do this?”

Her lips parted in surprise and his lips tightened.

“I’ll kill him this time,” Caelen muttered.

“Nay! He isn’t worth your anger. He won’t touch me again.”

“Damn right he won’t.”

“I took care of the matter. I don’t need your protection.”

Caelen gripped her shoulders. “No one touches what is mine. No one does harm to one of my own. You may not think you need my protection, but by all that’s holy, you’ll have it. You may be used to going your own way, Rionna, but that’s done with now. You and I have a responsibility to our clans.”

“Responsibility. And what is my responsibility, husband? So far I only see that you wish me to dress and act feminine, never gainsay you, and pretend I’m a witless ninny in front of others.”

His eyes narrowed. “Your responsibility is to be loyal to me first and foremost. You’re to be a credit to your clan and mine. You’ll give me heirs. Do that and you’ll find I’m an easy man to get along with.”

“You want someone I’m not,” she whispered in a fierce voice tinged with tears. “You want a woman I cannot be.”

“Do not engage me in a battle of wills, wife. You’ll only suffer for it.”

“Why does it have to be a battle? Why can you not accept me the way I am? Why must I change while you go on as before?”

His nostrils flared and he dropped his hands from her shoulders. For a moment he turned away from her and stood, legs apart as he stared over the water. When he glanced back at her, anger and impatience simmered in his eyes.

“Think you that nothing changes for me? I’m married, Rionna. I had no wish to be married. I certainly didn’t prepare for it and certainly not so soon. I’m a warrior. Fighting is what I do. I see to the protection of my clan. Now I’m to be uprooted and must go away from my clan and bind myself to another. I’m expected to lead a people I’ve never met, who won’t trust me any more than I’ll trust them. On top of that, Duncan Cameron wants my brother dead. He wants Mairin for himself, and now Isabel’s life has been in danger since the moment she was set in her mother’s womb.