Page 84 of My Warrior
“For these nicks? I’ve lost more blood shaving. Lady, if the day ever comes that I’m defeated, I assure you it won’t be at the hands of a runty Scots sprite.”
She let the insult go, but his boast gave her pause, and she remembered Stephen’s words:He must love you well. A man wouldhaveto love a woman to let her wound him like that.“Are you saying youletme wound you?”
He shrugged.
She searched his eyes as if she wondered at his sanity. “Why?”
“To distract Owen. While he was drooling over the sight of his wee Scots champion quelling the undefeated Wolf, my men were able to steal into the castle.”
“Blackhaugh?”
He grinned. “Is secure.”
Cambria gasped. Could it possibly be true? She’d thought never to walk the parapet of Blackhaugh again, and now… Her eyes softened in gratitude. The Wolf had said he would hold the castle for her clan. He’d already made good on his promise.
Only one black shadow yet hung to mar the glorious triumph.
“What of…Owen?” She whispered the question, fearing that uttering his name might summon him.
“Dead.” Holden’s voice was flat, ominous, final. He left no room for questions, and Cambria wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answers anyway. She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as if to ward off Owen’s chill shade.
When she looked up at Holden again, his eyes had grown very serious, their gray-green depths as foreboding as the North Sea. He struggled for words.
“Did Owen…” he asked. “Did he touch…” Holden shut his eyes for a moment, and then searched her face, unable to finish the question. Her expression closed before his eyes. He wanted to curse, but didn’t. She’d obviously read his meaning, but she didn’t want to answer him. “Tell me,” he coaxed.
“Do you suspect I am ‘spoiled goods’?” she asked carefully. “Is that what you want to know?”
“Cambria,” he said in a hushed voice, “it was never my intent to hurt you.” He clenched his jaw, and his voice cracked. “But when I saw you up there in the claws of that beast, I would have sold my soul to have you returned safely to me. All those things I said, I said only to protect you.”
“Aye,” she admitted, lowering her eyes. “I know.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”
She turned aside and gazed thoughtfully off into the dense nest of trees. “What if I told you,” she murmured, “that Owen had forced himself upon me, that I may now carry his babe?”
Holden swallowed the acid rising in his gorge. The picture of Owen pawing his precious Cambria was too awful to bear, but he’d already considered that possibility.
He answered raggedly. “The child would be half yours. I would care for it as my own.”
“And me? Would you still share my bed?”
He nodded solemnly and whispered, “I’d want to take you back so completely it would wash away any memory of that bastard.”
He’d spoken more vehemently than he’d intended, yet Cambria’s eyes gentled as she cocked them up at him.
“What if I told you instead,” she said evenly, “that I fought him at every turn, bit and scratched and scorned him until he beat me and called me witch and couldn’t even think of bedding me?”
He looked sharply at her, searching her battered face for the truth. It was there, in the stubborn tilt of her chin, the flashing defiance of her eyes, the set of her jaw.
“ThatI would sooner believe,” he admitted, letting out a grateful rush of air. “You’re wont to be a thistle under a man’s saddle.” His relief soured, however, as he saw again how that thistle had been trod underfoot. “Ah, Cam.”
Words couldn’t serve to tell her how he felt. He moved forward, wrapping one arm about her neck, placing his hand gingerly upon her face, removing all doubt from her with a kiss.
Cambria gave a small moan. He was crushing her bruised lips, and his hand upon her jaw pained her, but she welcomed his embrace. The stubble of his chin was rough on her face, his skin warm and alive against hers. She had no strength to answer his ardor, but neither did she resist his arms, and it was a long while before she could speak around the lump in her throat.
“When I thought I’d slain you…” she began.
“Shh,” he soothed, stroking her cheek with the back of his finger. “Hell, Cambria, when I discovered that devil’s spawn had sent you for his champion, that he wanted me to…kill…” The words stuck in his throat.
