Stolen Vows Read online

  “I ken, MacRae, tis nae how either of us would have wished for this visit to conclude,” Laird Cameron sighed. “It weighs heavily on my heart.” He spared a sad smile for his niece, and Isla felt like she wanted to crawl under the table. “But young men are susceptible to temptation when tis laid in their path.” Isla could hear the grinding of Roan’s teeth beside her and shivered. “At least ye have been willing to try and rectify yer transgression in the only manner open to ye. I believe ye ken what will happen if any harm comes to my niece -”

  Isla listened as her uncle continued to talk, softly condemning Roan for a sin that was not his. She tuned out after a while, and hoped that Roan was able to do the same.

  She dipped her head to her uncle and aunt as they left the formal chamber, and then Roan took her arm and led her after them. They rounded a corner and then he waited for her to guide him out of the public rooms to the privacy of her chambers.

  Isla didn’t know how she expected to put off the inevitable any longer, but a part of her was still hoping for some miracle - that her father or brothers would intervene and let her go to her own bed, alone, in peace - but she didn’t belong to them now.

  She walked as slowly as she possibly could to her room, painfully aware of the insistent pressure of Roan’s hand on her arm. She wondered if he was going to snap when they were properly alone. Would she close the door and find herself shut in with a dangerous warrior?

  “Here,” she mumbled quietly, stopping and nodding toward the door of her chamber.

  Roan didn’t say anything, so she stepped inside. She felt his hand leave her arm as he turned and closed the door, trapping them both inside. Isla drew a shaky breath.

  She waited for Roan to speak. Somehow not hearing him say anything was worse than if he’d immediately started yelling.

  Eventually, Isla turned around to face her husband. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. It was impossible to speak - to think - with Roan staring at her so closely. He looked like he was trying to piece together a puzzle that wouldn’t quite fit, and getting angrier about it by the second.

  “Well now, I think ye owe me an explanation, dinna ye, Isla?” he breathed quietly.

  Isla didn’t understand why a tremor shivered through her body at the sound of her name on his lips, but it did. She licked her lips and tried to formulate an answer. She’d had more than a day to think of an excuse. Why had she waited until now?

  “Well?” Roan pressed, his voice sharper than before. He walked across to the window and leaned back against the sill. “Explain.”

  “Tavish told everyone that ye’d compromised my honor,” she finally blurted, her cheeks blazing.

  Roan snorted. “That much I ken. That much I even understand,” he growled. “What I dinna understand is why ye dinna set anyone straight.”

  “I tried!” Isla lied.

  A spark of fury flashed in Roan’s eyes. In less than a breath, he had crossed the room and gripped her shoulders. “I told ye what I think of liars!” he roared, tossing her away from him and onto the bed. “Ye might have lied to everyone else, but by God yer going to tell me the truth!”

  Isla hit the mattress and curled in on herself, tensing her entire body as she drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them tight. She struggled mightily against the tears brimming behind her eyes.

  “Dinna cry!” Roan barked, which only served as the final push to release Isla’s tears. There was a moment of complete stillness, and then Roan’s hands were on her again, pulling her back up to face him. Isla shrieked at the touch, but Roan didn’t let go. “Tell me why ye did it?” he demanded roughly, shaking her again.

  “I - I was scared!” she answered.

  It took her a full minute to realize that she wasn’t being shaken any more.

  Isla looked at Roan’s face. There was a great wealth of anger still boiling beneath the surface of his eyes. Isla could see it there, but he was managing to restrain it.

  “Scared of what?” Roan asked.

  He was staring hard. Once again, he looked like he was trying to decipher some unfathomable problem. Isla found it too difficult to meet his gaze, and so she dipped her head, looking instead at Roan’s broad chest as she bit her lip and considered her answer.

  “Isla?” he pressed. There was a sliver of gentleness in Roan’s voice now. It was the barest hint, but it was still there, and it made Isla’s heart ache. “What were ye scared of?” He lessened his hold a little more, although she was not freed completely. “Isla, talk to me.”

  “Tavish,” she croaked.

  “Tavish?” Roan repeated. He didn’t know many members of the Cameron clan, but if he had to make an educated guess then he thought he could probably work out who this ‘Tavish’ was and what he might have done.

  “Tavish MacEantach,” Isla said, her voice very small and frightened. “He is my - he was my fiancé. The man ye found me with the other night.”

  “The man who did this?” Roan asked, still frowning, and then to Isla’s absolute amazement he let go of her arm and brushed the backs of his fingers gently against her bruised face.

  “Aye,” she admitted. Her skin tingled where he’d touched her.

  “And worse?” he grunted.

  Isla wasn’t entirely certain what he meant, but she nodded her head anyway; as far as she was concerned Tavish had done much, much worse than strike her across the face. A growl lodged in Roan’s throat.

  “Yer brothers? They ken?” he asked harshly.

  Isla shook her head. She thought of what Tavish had said the morning she’d run away. “He would have convinced them twas my fault. He’s so good at twisting things, and getting what he wants.”

  “He dinna get ye,” Roan said, with what almost looked like pride, but in a blink it was gone. “They would have believed ye, Isla,” he said with a sigh. She started to shake her head, but Roan continued. “Tis obvious how much they love ye -”

  “But the disgrace,” Isla blurted, and Roan fell momentarily silent, and then stared at her with piercing eyes that seemed to see straight into her soul.

  “Well, what makes ye think ye’ll be any better off with me?”

  It was a question, but also a challenge and Isla didn’t know how to answer. Why had she chosen to bind her fate to the MacRae instead of Tavish? Because he’d saved her? Because she felt something for him that she couldn’t explain? Or simply because he was her only option?

  “I dinna ken,” she whispered honestly. She shook her head. “Everything seemed to just spiral out of control so quickly.”

  “Aye, lass, it did that.” Roan sighed heavily. He let Isla slip from his arms and wandered back to the window.

  I’m sorry, was on the tip of Isla’s tongue, but she couldn’t push the words out past her teeth. She watched Roan instead. He braced one arm against the wall as he looked out over the castle grounds and he dragged the other through his dark, wavy hair. They were unfamiliar little gestures, but they were strangely comforting.

  Every move Roan made hinted at the power coiled in his muscles, just waiting to be released. At the same time there was an air of great control about him. There was also an underlying gentleness that intrigued Isla.

  “Are we really going back to Erchlochy Castle?” she asked, the name of the MacRae stronghold slipping uneasily off her tongue.

  Roan didn’t turn, but he did answer. “Of course,” he murmured. “Ye do ken that we have to, Isla?”

  She nodded. “I ken, I just -” she broke off. She couldn’t complain. She didn’t have a right to complain. “I suppose I should start packing then.”

  Roan gave a stern, silent nod. “Call for one of the kitchen lads as well,” he instructed. “I’d like to have a bath.”

  ..ooOOoo..

  Roan gave a loud groan of relief as he sank his bruised and aching muscles into the steaming water of the tin bath. Fortunately, Isla’s bedroom had a screen portioning off a small space that housed a washstand and chamberpot, and which afforded Roan s
ome privacy. Ordinarily, he would bathe in front of the fire where it was warm, but he decided to be a gentleman and risk a chill instead of scandalizing his new wife.

  He was still finding it difficult to believe that this was all real - that he was a married man.

  Roan picked up a sliver of soap that he’d found in the washstand and began to lather it between his hands, deciding he would feel more human when he was clean. He was distracted as he washed. His hands dragged mechanically over the lean lines of his body, but his mind was firmly in the other room with his wife.

  He was beginning to figure out Isla’s character. She wasn’t vindictive and he didn’t believe that she was deliberately manipulative by nature. Roan was starting to understand that she’d been trapped and scared. Unfortunately for him, she had seen him as her only means of escape. Of course, that didn’t help him figure out what he was meant to do now.

  He’d always known he would take a wife, but it had been the in the same sort of way that he knew he’d one day have children - there had been a distance attached to the knowledge. He hadn’t imagined marrying for love, but he had thought there would be a level of mutual attraction and understanding.

  Isla was attractive, at least, but she was also a Cameron. Besides, he doubted that a woman who’d been raped and abused would make a willing bedfellow.

  Roan pulled himself out of the tub, and reached for something to drape around his waist. He sighed with irritation when he realized that his clothes had been taken away for washing.

  “Isla?” he called wearily, wondering why everything had to be so complicated. “Ye would nae happen to have some clean clothes for me, would ye?”

  He didn’t really think that the answer would be “yes”. He did expect some sort of reply, however. When he was met with nothing but silence he peeked around the screen.

  There was no one there. Roan couldn’t account for the way his heart lurched. His first fear was that Isla had run away again, just as she had been doing the day they’d met, but that didn’t make sense. She was safe from Tavish and he didn’t think that she’d run from him. Roan’s second thought was even worse than the first. Could her former fiancé have snatched Isla from the room while he was bathing?

  Roan was just scouring the room for something to cover himself with before launching a search, when the door from the corridor opened and Isla returned. She was pushing a trunk and had an assortment of men’s clothing draped over her arms.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Roan barked, more harshly than he’d intended, wondering why he’d been worried in the first place, and unsettled by the rush of relief he felt knowing she was safe.

  “I was just -” Isla began, but then she looked up, and froze. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head.

  Roan felt a throb pulse to life in his groin. He couldn’t remember ever being in this position before. In the past, whenever he was naked in front of a woman, she was naked too.

  He felt exposed. He was exposed, but there was something thrilling in Isla’s gaze as it flickered over his body. She seemed powerless to look away, and Roan couldn’t help but feel a swell of satisfaction as her eyes remained transfixed on his body.

  “I was just -” Isla stammered again.

  She sounded breathless, which stroked Roan’s pride even more. He wasn’t ready to take Isla into his bed, not after what she’d done, but he would need to one day if he was to father a child, and he didn’t see that it had to be an unpleasant experience.

  He glanced pointedly at the clothes she was carrying and Isla finally seemed to pull herself together.

  “I went to fetch these,” she said in a rush thrusting the garments in his direction, her eyes growing ever wider as he walked closer to take them from her.

  He started to thank her, but then scowled at the garment she was offering him. “Is that the Cameron tartan?” he sneered.

  “I’m sorry!” she gasped. She did look flushed, Roan decided, daring to lean just a little closer to judge the effect it had. She babbled some hardly coherent apology and Roan had to turn away to hide a smile.

  “I’ll just change then,” he murmured softly, retreating back behind the screen.

  ..ooOOoo..

  Isla sat down on the trunk and tried to compose herself. She didn’t think there was a word to describe how Roan had looked. If there was, then she certainly didn’t know it.

  He had been all hard lines and sculpted sinew, bulging muscle and raw power. Isla shivered when she thought about how the beads of water that dripped from his head to his shoulders had then run down into the dark spattering of hair on his chest.

  She should have been appalled, terrified even, but she hadn’t been, and she couldn’t understand why not. Roan had seemed, to her most feminine core, to be male perfection personified. It hadn’t mattered that his poor skin was bruised and broken; he was still magnificent.

  She had been shocked by her desire to reach out and touch him. Isla burned scarlet as she remembered what else she’d thought of doing – of pressing her lips to his skin and lapping up every droplet of water with her tongue. She couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten such a wicked idea! She didn’t know what the heavy, aching throb in the pit of her stomach meant either.

  Isla felt restless and compelled to move. So she stood up, trying her hardest to forget what she’d just seen, and began to pack for her new life as a MacRae. Her aunt had offered her the use of one of the maids to help, but Isla wanted to pack everything herself. It felt right somehow.

  She was sorting through her winter wardrobe when she felt the prickly sensation of someone watching her. Roan. Did she dare turn around and look at him? She was humiliated to feel the heat already rising to her face.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said from across the room.

  He didn’t sound sorry, Isla noted. He sounded thoughtful, but not sorry.

  That was when a belated hint of fear kicked in. She didn’t know if it was naivety or denial that had kept her from thinking about her wedding night, but now she was thinking about it, and with as much trepidation as curiosity.

  Roan’s body suddenly became threatening. Isla remembered how it had felt to be pinned beneath Tavish, and this time there could be no hope of getting away, they was no hope of ever escaping the new cage that she’d crafted for herself.

  “Isla?” Roan pressed when she didn’t speak.

  “Tis fine,” she said quickly.

  “I assume the Laird will allow us a wagon?” Roan asked, after a brief pause. He glanced around at everything that Isla was packing.

  “I assume so,” she murmured, purposefully keeping her distance. If Roan noticed, he didn’t comment.

  “I should go and speak to him,” he frowned. “Am I permitted to do so?”

  Isla finally turned around to face her husband.

  “Yer permitted to do as ye wish now, I’m sure.”

  Roan looked at her oddly. “I’ll be back later,” he murmured before leaving his wife to her own devices.

  Isla hadn’t anticipated how much later ‘later’ would be. It took a few hours to finish her packing and send the trunks down to be loaded, but there was still no sign of Roan. She waited for as long as she could, and then ate supper alone.

  Maybe he had already abandoned her. Who could blame him? And what did it matter, really. Isla had been a fool to believe that trapping Roan into marriage would solve her problems. She had done nothing but create a fresh batch of trouble.

  Isla sighed deeply, and stared into the flickering fire, trying to find something to be positive about - she supposed, if he had really gone, that she would escape the duty of her wedding night, at least.

  She was still sitting there, watching the flames, when the bedroom door opened.

  “Ye came back?” she blurted without thinking, staring in surprise at her husband. She had all but given him up for gone at this point.

  “Aye, I came back to my bonnie wee wife,” he said, his voice unreadable as he reached for an apple
from the fruit bowl. His ‘bonnie wee wife’ blushed crimson.

  “Where did ye go?” Isla asked. Roan took a bite of his apple and regarded her careful.

  “I needed some time to think, and I thought ye might like some privacy,” he said with a careless shrug.

  “Oh. And what did ye -”

  “Ye should get some rest, we’ve got a long road to travel tomorrow,” Roan interrupted firmly. “Go to bed, Isla.”

  Bed? Isla felt her stomach flutter. This was it then. She would finally understand what it was to know a man. She was in the process of resigning herself to the idea when she looked up, surprised to see that Roan had just sat down in the chair opposite her.