Page 74 of My Warrior
CHAPTER 15
A faint breeze blew in the window of Blackhaugh’s tower, lifting tendrils of Cambria’s hair about her battered face. Bracing her back against the rough stone, she shivered in her torn shift despite the warmth of the day. She cursed herself for the stubborn pride that kept her from eating the food Owen brought, pride that had gained her nothing but weakness.
Not that strength would serve her much. Her hands were bound in iron above her head, and all of her attempts to free herself had earned her only pain each time the shackles bit into her injured wrists. Long ago she’d given up trying to work the heavy ring over her head loose from the wall.
She wondered what game Owen played, what was happening beyond the tower walls.
Without preamble, the door the chamber flew open, banging back against the wall. Owen entered briskly, his unkempt hair hanging down over his eyes like a frayed tapestry, and limped past her to the window. As he peered below, his face was transformed by an ugly grin, and he rubbed his hands together like a hungry fly. Cambria could only muse at the source of his exuberance.
With the blissful sigh of a lizard spotting a bug, Owen approached her. Almost lovingly, he caressed her cheek. Her flesh crawled. The shackles pinning her wrists to the wall afforded her no room to strike him, and he’d bound her legs with heavy chains yesterday after she’d landed a healthy kick to his belly. Still she managed to whip her head around in time to bite into the meaty part of his palm, hard enough to draw blood.
He yelped in pain and drew back his mangled hand. With the back of his other fist, he cracked her hard across the cheek, splintering her vision in an explosion of sparks. She slumped weakly against the wall, stifling a moan.
It wasn’t the first bruise she’d earned since her unfortunate arrival at Blackhaugh. Curse her luck, she’d walked straight into a trap. The shame of it was almost worse than the beating she’d endured at Owen’s hands.
They’d all been waiting for her—Robbie, Graham, Jamie, the remnants of the Gavin rebels—and they’d already imprisoned her loyal clansmen. God only knew what they’d done with Garth.
It had taken six men to subdue and haul Guy and Myles off to the dungeon while Cambria awaited her fate.
Angry and foolhardy, she’d spit on Owen, showing no fear of the bastard, despite Robbie’s anxious warnings. And both she and the Gavin rebels had paid for her audacity. With a dagger at their laird’s throat, Robbie and his men, still Gavins at heart, had no choice but to surrender to Owen’s will. He’d locked them all up and carted her off to the tower.
By the time the brute tired of using his fists, there wasn’t an inch of her that didn’t ache. The taste of blood was still heavy in her mouth.
But she hadn’t surrendered. Even now, half-conscious, her belly empty and fresh blood trickling down her cheek, she refused to cower before him.
Owen sucked at his wounded hand and spit the salty blood onto the rushes. He’d had almost all he could bear of Lady Cambria de Ware and her unflappable insolence. She was surely the offspring of the devil and a she-cat, with her raking claws and dagger-sharp teeth. It was hard to believe at one time he’d wanted to poke his piece in her. He thought less often of bedding her now, prickly as she was, and more of torturing the Wolf with her slow murder. If he couldn’t bring the bitch to her knees, he’d at least see de Ware humbled before him.
With a decisive grunt, he reached for an urn of water on the table. He flung its contents at the wench to jar her from her stupor.
Cambria sucked in a startled breath as the water slapped her face. She sniffled and choked as it burned high inside her nose, making her eyes tear.
“Wake up, wench!” Owen snarled from above her, a peculiar grimace of both loathing and arousal on his face. “Your lord husband has arrived.”
Cambria came fully alert at his words. Holden! Relief and dread warred within her, churning her stomach. Had he come alone? Would he fall into the same trap she had? She had to warn him. She opened her mouth to scream, but her cry ended in a gurgle when Owen’s strangling fingers closed about her throat.
His breath reeked of onions. “Scream,” he hissed, “and I’ll slay every one of your clan—men, women, and children.”
Dark spots floated before her eyes before he released her. She sagged against the stones, gasping for air.
Not that, she thought, anything but that. He could take Blackhaugh. He could beat her into oblivion. But to touch her clan… Fear became a waking nightmare, worse than any to ever invade her slumber. She saw them in her mind’s eye, her ancestors, her family, thousands of Gavins—men, women, and children, specters cursed and wandering the earth for all eternity, blaming her with their ghostly eyes, moaning her name.
She couldn’t let it come to pass, couldn’t let this monster destroy the Gavins. She was her father’s daughter. She was the laird. She had to protect her clan.
Even if to remain silent was to betray her husband.
“Cooperate,” Owen mused, “and maybe I’ll spare your life, take you on as my own personal servant.”
Owen glanced down at her and clucked his tongue. He doubted that. The wench was a mess, a dripping, bruised, swollen-faced, tangle-haired mess. Still, that didn’t stop his ballocks from bulging in his trews at the idea of swiving her before the high and mighty Holden de Ware, just for spite.
He exhaled a contented breath. Fate had smiled on Owen the Bastard at last. The wench’s timely arrival at Blackhaugh couldn’t have been more perfect if it had been served up on a gold platter. She’d been practically alone, the Wolf nowhere in sight. She’d ridden through the front gates and straight into Owen’s hands.
Now she was about to become the perfect hostage.
“Come, let us greet your noble hero, shall we?” he sneered. He picked up the shackle key from the table, swinging it tauntingly before her. “I’ll loose you now, but there will be a dagger at your throat,” he cautioned. “I suggest you move with care. I’d hate to damage the Wolf’s precious bitch…too soon.”
Snickering, he carefully freed her from the wall ring, leaving her hands in the shackles. With the blade pressed close against her throat, he prodded her up, and she shuffled awkwardly over to the window.
Cambria peered down anxiously, faint with hunger, fainter at the sight of her husband, who looked to her like a bright angel with the sun sparkling on his chain mail and flashing off of the helm in the crook of his arm. Now that he was here, all the horrors of the past days knotted in her throat, threatening to burst forth in sobs of relief.
