His Judas Bride by Shehanne Moore Page B

either. Why, only the other day he’d defended her.
    She hardly needed to have been a fly on her father’s castle wall to know what would have been said when Kendrick and the others trailed back to Glen Gurkie without her. She put nothing past the old bastard. What if he’d determined to do this without her? She needed to get out of here.
    It was hard, when the wind suddenly picked up though to see her way. And it was impossible when it nearly ripped her cloak from her shoulders and frost bit through her gloves, to stand upright. Never mind see through the maelstrom of snowflakes, whizzing everywhere. Her hood. Her throat. Her boots. Real leather, her father had said. Clearly the old bastard had been off there, or her toes were things she would feel. Everything was soaking, so cold against her skin making it hard to stop shivering.
    She would stop to shelter if need be. For all she disdained the fact Ewen McDunnagh had made the former and the latter was harder than it was to keep upright, she had biscuit bread and chicken. It was more than she’d had in her father’s dungeon all the years. Then of course there was the whiskey.
    What Ewen McDunnagh would say when he found it was gone from his chamber—well, he was probably more likely to miss that than her, so it was probably as well she would not be there to suffer his wrath.
    She staggered on, her feet sinking at each step.
    “Y-you’ll see, Arland. I won’t let you d-d-down.” She was ashamed hearing herself stammer, talk such nonsense too, but it was so cold, she needed something to preserve her mind, make sure each stumbling foot went down. And it wasn’t as if anyone could hear, which was probably as well. Serenne and the other women in particular. “Mammy’s coming. You r-r-remember that she said she w-would? She’s coming b-back for you. Y-you can walk beside me if you like. Take m-my hand.”
    Losing things a bit wasn’t she? But as if to belie her certainty about staggering forward instead of trying to find shelter, she was aware of another noise being carried on the wind whistling through the branches.
    One that was a little too defined, a little too steady to be anything so natural as the wind rattling or her lungs wheezing as she fought her way to her next step in this ghostly world. A noise that didn’t just sound like clip, clop, clop . A noise that was clip , clop , clop .
    Dear God, someone was out here in the forest besides herself. She must hide. She couldn’t afford to be seen. Although her teeth chattered and frozen blobs beaded her eyelashes, she must run. What if it was a shepherd and he wanted to rescue her? Or worse?
    Smothering a curse, Kara yanked her foot out the snowbank it had sunk in. The noise was closer and what was worse, coming her way. Clop . Clop . Clip . A shepherd wouldn’t very well be riding a horse, would he? Unless it was a very rich shepherd who had somehow managed to mislay all in his sheep in the forest.
    “Son of a whore.”
    She almost leaped out her skin. Oh God. The Wolf. Why must it be the Wolf? On that bloody great stallion of his. The one man in the world who was insane enough to be out here in the middle of the night. And not just insane.
    She froze. So did the only part of her that had been warm until now, her marrow. Mammy would not be coming home quite yet.
    But perhaps she hadn’t been seen? Perhaps he swore like that at someone else? It might even be if she huddled into the cloak for long enough with her head down, what was left of her fingers trying to clench the fabric in this howling snowstorm, he wouldn’t know it was her. Could she pass for some wandering peasant girl? Shepherdess? Maid? Crone of this glen even? Anything was worth a try. Her back was to him after all.
    “Princess, is that you?”
    She grimaced. Dying of shock was hardly an option. As if God would be so merciful when God never was.
    Yet might she not also be deaf and mute? Stumble through the snow to her croft? A few steps