“I thought so! Let me tell ye that Stephen Montgomery isn’t used to being snubbed by any woman, and if he does decide to marry ye after the way ye’ve carried on with Chatworth, ye should consider yerself fortunate.”
“Fortunate!” Bronwyn managed to gasp. It was all she could say. Another word from Morag and she just might wring that scrawny little neck. “Come, Rab,” she commanded and left the room.
She hurried down the stairs to the garden below. It had already grown dark, and the moon shone brightly over the trees and hedges. She walked along the paths for quite some time before she finally sat down on a stone bench in front of a low wall. How she wanted to go home! She wanted to get away from these foreigners, out of these foreign clothes, away from foreign men who looked at her only as a prize of war.
Suddenly Rab stood and gave a low growl of warning.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
The man stepped forward. “Stephen Montgomery,” he said quietly. He looked larger in the moonlight, towering over her. “May I sit with you?”
“Why not? What say do I have in any matter concerning the English?”
Stephen sat beside her and watched as she controlled Rab with a single hand gesture. He leaned back against the wall, his long legs stretched before him. Bronwyn moved closer to the edge of the bench, away from him. “You’ll fall if you move any farther.”
She stiffened. “Say what you want and have done with it.”
“I have nothing to say,” he said easily.
“You certainly seemed to have ‘nothing’ to say to Morag.”
He smiled, the moonlight showing his even, white teeth. “The woman tried to get me drunk.”
“And did she succeed?”
“You don’t grow up with three brothers and not learn how to drink.”
“You merely drank and had no conversation?”
Stephen was silent for a moment. “Why are you so hostile to me?”
She stood quickly. “Did you expect me to welcome you with open arms? I stood in my wedding gown for six hours waiting for you to come. I have seen my entire family slaughtered by the English yet I am told I must marry one. Then I am disregarded as if I did not exist. And now you make no apology to me but ask why I am hostile.”
She turned away and started back toward the house.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her around to look at him. She wasn’t used to a man so much taller than her. “If I offered you an apology, would you accept it?” His voice was quiet, deep, as liquid silver as the moonlight. It was the first time he’d ever touched her or even been so close. He took her wrists, ran his hands up her arms, gripping her flesh beneath the silk and velvet.
“King Henry only wants peace,” he said. “He thinks that if he puts an Englishman in the midst of the Scots, they’ll see we aren’t so bad.”
Bronwyn looked up at him. Her heart was pounding quite hard. She wanted to get away from him, but her body wouldn’t obey her. “Your vanity is alarming. Judging from your lack of manners, my Scots would see the English as worse than they feared.”
Stephen laughed softly, but it was obvious his mind was not on her words. He moved his left hand to touch her throat.
Bronwyn tried to jerk from his grip. “Unhand me! You have no right to paw me…or to laugh at me.”
Stephen made no effort to release her. “You’re a delicious thing. I can only think that had I not missed our wedding, I could take you upstairs to my chamber this very moment. Perhaps you’d like to forget the day of waiting for our wedding and go with me now?”
She gasped in horror, causing Rab to growl menacingly at Stephen. She twisted sharply away from the hands that held her. Rab stepped between his mistress and the man who touched her. “How dare you?” she said between clenched teeth. “Be grateful I do not turn Rab onto you for that insult.”
Stephen laughed in astonishment. “The dog values its life.” He took a step closer and Rab growled louder.
“Don’t come any closer,” Bronwyn warned.
Stephen looked at
her in puzzlement. He put his hands up in a pleading gesture. “Bronwyn, I didn’t mean to insult you. I—”
“Lady Bronwyn, may I help you?” Roger Chatworth asked, stepping from the shadows of the hedges.