If You Dare - Cole Kresley. Страница 7

"Now that you've come, you've shown yourself to be the epitome of all I've heard."

He waved her on with his cast.

She crossed her arms over her chest and took a breath. "Violence surrounds you, as shown by your beating, but also by the gashes on your fingers. I'd wondered how you could receive such a peculiar injury, then concluded you'd cut them on someone's teeth when you hit him in the face."

Court nodded, extremely impressed. That was exactly what had happened. He nearly smiled remembering the satisfaction of splitting the Spaniard's lips, of the blood he'd spat for at least an hour afterward….

"You have a history of it as demonstrated by the scars covering you. I'd heard that your people live in bands—"

"Clans," he grated. "They're called clans."

She shrugged. "And that these clans fight with each other constantly because you are a bloodthirsty people more concerned with warring than with culture or refinement." He noticed she'd begun pressing one finger after another against her crossed arms as she ticked off points. "You are mannerless. Your halfhearted gratitude to me for saving your life bespeaks a sense of entitlement—"

"It bespeaks lack of practice in being beholden."

She raised her eyebrows in an expression that said if he continued to talk, she would cease. "You look like a blackguard. Except when you are angry. Then you look like a brute that could readily kill me. Your insulting me that first day was hurtful and uncalled for. I've heard it's that way with your people—a complete lack of delicacy. There's little thought behind your eyes…."

"I've heard enough," he snapped when she appeared to be just gathering steam. Many held these misimpressions, and he and his men played on them with the stories they spread, but to hear them voiced back to him by an Andorran?…Scots were a thousand times prouder and more accomplished than these medieval crag-of-a-country people cut off from the changing world.

She blinked as if taken aback by his seething tone, then turned to walk out, tossing over her shoulder, "Indeed, your vocation may be the least of your failings."

Damn it, I wasn't finished talking to you….

Though the movement pained him, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. She gave a startled cry, snatching her hand from his. It flew to her mouth, but he still heard her hiss in Catalan, "Bestia," before she dashed out the doorway.

Court knew Catalan fairly well, and he definitely knew the word for beast; he'd been called it the first day his cadre had arrived and had heard it in whispers daily thereafter.

She had to try the key several times before getting it into the lock. He'd shaken her. Unfortunately, Court knew he looked like a beast. He'd studied his reflection this morning, imagining how this woman might see him.

And winced.

The vessels in both eyes had exploded, so the whites were red. The right side of his face was still mottled black and blue, and his normally squared jaw looked even more so with the swelling and with a week's worth of beard highlighting it. She was highborn to her toes—she'd probably never seen a man in this condition before.

Just now, when she'd peered at him as she might at something on the bottom of her boot, he'd felt like a barbarian, like the animal she'd called him. He was beginning to despise her condescending tone and her sharp looks of disgust, even as he struggled to comprehend why he could possibly mind enough to be bothered by either.

Today had been the first time Annalia had faced the Scot with the definite knowledge that he was a mercenary.

Before Vitale had confirmed her fears, she'd hoped MacCarrick wasn't a killer for hire because she'd felt some small, minute—piddling, really—spark of curiosity about the intractable man. But no longer.

During their meeting this afternoon, she had focused on the injuries still marring his face, reminding herself that it didn't matter if he and Pascal had had a falling-out—the evidence of their history was glaring. MacCarrick's every day here was a risk and it was one she refused to take to help a boorish, pawing mercenary like him. As soon as he was able, she'd demand he leave her home….

"Mademoiselle," Vitale called from the doorway behind her, interrupting her thoughts.

How long had she been ambling mindlessly through the house? She turned, dismayed to see the sun setting behind him.

When Vitale met her, he was crushing his hat in his hands. "The boy from the village has brought a letter for you."

"Is it from Aleix?" she asked, heart in her throat.

"It is not. But it might contain information about Master Llorente."

As he pulled it from his vest pocket, she murmured absently, "Please get the boy a nice dinner and a soft bed." No reason under heaven excused bad manners.

"I've already seen to it." He handed over the letter, his face drawn.

She nodded and turned for the study, walking with a stiff spine and unhurried steps, but once Vitale was out of sight, she sprinted down the hallway, sliding on the rugs. Tripping inside the room, heart thudding, she nearly ripped open the paper before she got there.

Impertinent Vitale followed her in, which meant he'd heard her running, but she couldn't be bothered with that now. Her brother hadn't written in weeks, and waiting for word had been unbearable. He was the only family left to her since her father's death, and Aleix had been more of a father than Llorente had ever been prepared to be.

She didn't care what men said—waiting for someone to return from battle had to be much, much worse than the battle itself.

Her nerves were taut.

At the old oak desk, she shoved back the leather chair and lit a candle, chasing away the growing darkness. Then, letter opener in hand, she flipped over the missive.

The room spun. She stared blankly at the sender's name—General Reynaldo Pascal.

Instead of tearing it open, she now cut it slowly. She had to scan parts of it several times because her hands shook so wildly—and because she could scarcely believe the content.

"What does it say?" Vitale asked anxiously.

By the time she reached Pascal's arrogant signature, bile had risen in her throat. Her hands went limp, and the letter fluttered to the top of the desk, nearly catching the candle flame. In a daze, she sank into the chair.

Vitale snatched up the letter as if to read, even though he'd refused to learn how to. "Tell me what it says!"

She hardly recognized her own deadened voice when she related, "Pascal defeated Aleix's men more than a week ago, capturing them all. Aleix is imprisoned, his life in the general's hands. There is only one thing that can convince Pascal to spare him."

Vitale sat back into the oversized chair opposite her, looking very small and weary. "He wanted to wed you before. Is he demanding to now?"

She nodded. "I just don't understand how he found out who I am." When Pascal had asked for her hand, she'd feared he'd discovered she was the last female descendant of the House of Castile, but Aleix had assured her the general had probably become infatuated after he'd seen her at a village festival. Now, looking back, she realized Aleix had always known and had tried to spare her worry. In the back of her mind she wondered what else he had spared her….

"Maybe some of the villagers remember when your mother came here, and they told Pascal."

She nodded, lost in thought. Her mother, Elisabet Tristan, had been banished from Castile, Spain, to the mountain cage of Andorra, married sight unseen to Llorente, the wealthiest count there. Elisabet, the daughter of a princess, had been given to the much older man and exiled into a land that might as well have been an island, so isolated was it. Because she'd let passion guide her.

It ultimately destroyed her as well.

"Mademoiselle?"