Page 46 of Bound By Deception

Mirren had admired Torran from afar for many moons, but this wasn’t the first contact she’d longed for. And after whatshe’d just endured, the handmaid wouldn’t want to go near any enforcer again.

Torran stepped forward. “This way,” he said, his tone gentle, as if he were speaking to a wounded animal. Mirren’s gaze flickered up. Her face was swollen and tear-stained, her eyes red from weeping, and she barely focused on the man before her. Instead, she gave a mute nod.

Bree steered the lass gently to the right, toward the doorway. She intended to go with them. Mirren was fragile at present; she needed her.

“Not you, wife,” mac Brochan barked. “Stay where you are.”

Bree cut him a sharp look. However, the thunderous expression on his face made her think twice about arguing with him. Swallowing her quickening anger, she dropped her arm from around her maid’s shoulders and let her go.

Still hugging herself, as if fearing she’d crumble into pieces if she didn’t, Mirren shuffled forward.

Torran followed her out of the meeting chamber.

An icy silence descended once husband and wife were alone. Meanwhile, Skaal sat at her master’s side, her golden gaze fixed upon Bree.

The fae hound's baleful stare was even more unnerving than usual.

Eventually, the chief-enforcer spoke. “Please tell me, Fia,” he said then, with exaggerated slowness. “How a Maid of Albia learns to fight like an assassin?”

Bree started to sweat. Ancestors help her, she had to talk fast, or the game would be up. “I had a tutor … at the House of Maids,” she began, her mind churning to come up with a convincing lie. “An ex-mercenary, who taught us how to use our fists … and blades … to defend ourselves.”

Mac Brochan folded heavily muscled arms over his broad chest. “I was told nothing of this.”

“It’s new … Mother Gelda decided that those Maids who wished to could learn to fight.”

The chief-enforcer’s gaze narrowed. “A wife does not need such skills.”

“Perhaps not,” Bree replied, forcing herself to hold his eye, “but the world is changing. Relations with the Shee worsen by the year, and there is unrest among our people too. Danger is everywhere, and Mother Gelda wishes us to be strong as well as trained in womanly arts.” She raised her chin then, warming to her subject. “Wives must often travel throughout the realm … must look after themselves when their husbands are away.” Mac Brochan scowled at this, but she pressed on. “If I hadn’t intervened,boththose animals would have raped Mirren.”

“Enforcers aren’t to be messed with.” Mac Brochan stepped forward, looming over her. “They could have killed you.”

His voice was flat and harsh, and yet something in the chief-enforcer’s gaze made Bree still. Maybe she had pierced his armor after all.

“You were worried for my safety?” she asked softly, seizing the moment.

His stare drilled into her. “You are my wife,” he replied, each word falling like a hammer blow. “I paid a lot of coin for you, and I won’t see it wasted.”

Bree flinched, even as her anger quickened once more.Mercenary prick.

“What are you going to do to them?” she demanded, lifting her chin in challenge.

“Their crime cannot be pardoned. They will be executed at dusk … I shall wield the blade myself.”

Bree’s mouth compressed.Good.

Underneath her satisfaction though, surprise flickered. Before coming here, she’d thought of the Marav as savages who couldn’t care less if a woman was raped. But the chief-enforcer’s response revealed that some did.

Mac Brochan stepped back. His gaze then swept down, from the crown of her head to her sandaled feet. There was no lust in his eyes though, just a cool assessment. “I’ll admit, you are full of surprises, wife,” he murmured. “Who would have thought a soft-looking woman could hold her own against two of my enforcers?” His mouth tugged into a humorless smile then. “I think it’s time I tested your skills myself.”

Bree frowned, not catching his meaning.

Her husband motioned to the doorway. “Come on, we’re going to the training yard.”

Bree followed mac Brochan into the yard behind the broch. Ringed by a high lichen-encrusted wall and lined by barracks, it wasn’t an area she’d visited yet.

And the moment she stepped beyond the passageway that led from the main yard, she realized why.

It was a male domain.

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