Page 1 of The Beast's Bride
Chapter One
The Beauty and the Beast
Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Early summer, 1346 AD
“Ye will NOTwed me then?”
“I’m glad to see yer ears aren’t full of porridge, Dughall MacLean. Aye, ye heard me right.”
The young man—broad and muscular with a shock of peat-brown hair—glared at Lady Rhona MacLeod. Dughall folded his thick arms across his chest, staring her down.
Rhona lifted her chin and held his gaze steadily.
“So ye think ye are too good for the likes of me?” A storm gathered in his eyes as he spoke.
Despite her brave front, nervousness fluttered up from the pit of Rhona’s belly. They stood alone in the gardens that lay south of the castle’s curtain wall. Rhona was unarmed, and her father’s men waited some distance away at the entrance to the gardens. She didn’t have her sisters at her side either; their presence always made her bolder.
At her back, Rhona could feel the weight of Dunvegan Castle silently watching over them. The dove-grey fortress rose sheer from perpendicular edges of rock to the north, its massive battlements stark against the windswept sky.
In contrast to the barren moorland and craggy peaks that surrounded it, the garden was a small, sheltered spot. It was a softer world, although Rhona now regretted agreeing to take a walk with Dughall there. It was too private; a canopy of green and beds of herbs and flowers surrounded the pair.
Rhona forced herself not to shrink back from her angry suitor. Instead, she watched him, waiting for his temper to cool.
Dughall took a threatening step toward her, closing the distance between them. “A rare, fiery beauty, ye are, Rhona,” he growled, “but I would tame ye.”
Annoyance flared within Rhona at his presumption, making her forget her fear. “And that’s why we wouldn’t be suited,” she countered, her tone sharpening. “Ye should find yerself a biddable wife.”
He moved closer still. “Ye’d be biddable.” He lowered his voice. “Once I were through with ye.”
Rhona clenched her jaw. “Don’t threaten me.”
His face twisted—Dughall’s pleasantly handsome features turning ugly in an instant. Rhona shifted back from him, but he grasped her arm. “Ye need to learn yer place. Ye are a spoilt, haughty bitch, but I still want ye. And one day … I’ll have ye.”
Heart thumping, Rhona attempted to wrench her arm free. However, he held her in an iron grip. “Unhand me,” she snarled, fear turning her savage.
He grinned, his dark blue eyes narrowing. “Or what?”
Rhona hissed out a breath. “Let me go.”
“Beg … and I might.”
“What are ye doing, Dughall?”
A man’s voice—low and powerful—interrupted them. Rhona twisted her head to see a huge warrior, with a fur mantle about his broad shoulders, striding toward them.
Relief flooded through Rhona at the sight of Taran MacKinnon. Yet even so, the warrior’s formidable appearance struck her. He was a terrifying sight. Taran wore a heavy mail shirt under his mantle. His dark-blond hair was cropped short, a severe style that did nothing to soften his presence, and a rough stubble covered his strong jaw. He wore a grim expression, yet it was not that which drew Rhona’s eye but the scars marring his face.
They were impossible to ignore.
One cut vertically from his forehead, missing his eye and scoring his right cheek. The other slashed sideways across his left cheek. The scars were disfiguring, and despite that Taran had served her father for a few years now, Rhona found it difficult not to stare. The cold look in his ice-blue eyes, the hard set of his mouth, warned that he was not a man to be messed with.
Her father kept this warrior at his side for a reason.
Dughall snorted, his gaze tracking Taran’s arrival. But his grip on Rhona’s arm released, and he moved away from her.
“The Beast of Dunvegan nears,” he sneered. “Yer father’s faithful hound.”
