Free Shana Abe by The Truelove Bride Page A

horse on the journey.
    “But what of the curse?” he asked, still mild.
    “Oh, the curse.” Avalon dismissed it with her tone. “Surely you don’t believe in such fantasy, my lord.”
    “It doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not. Everyone else does.”
    “No,” she said.
    “Aye,” he replied, with the beginnings of that chilling smile. “You have the look, Avalon. You meet the requirements. My people will not be content until they have you in the family again.”
    “It is naught but superstition!” she cried, forgetting herself. “You cannot be guided by the fears of a hundred-year-old story! There is no curse!”
    He moved like the wind, knocking her hand away, making the dirk fall to the leaves.
    “It is just a story,” she said to the circle, wanting to convince all of them, including herself.
    Marcus took her arm, turned to his men. “Let’s go.”

    O ne hundred years ago …
    The tale always began that way, and Marcus wondered how it could always be that same number of years when he himself had been hearing the story for at least the past thirty.
    One hundred years ago there lived a laird and his lady, and she was the fairest lady to ever grace the lands. Her hair was light as moonlight, her eyes were the color of the rarest heather flowers, her brows black as jet.
    Lady Avalon sat quietly now in the saddle before him, only her hands had been bound again with a soft strap of cloth torn from a blanket. Whether or not her eyes were really the color of heather flowers Marcus couldn’t say, because she kept them cast away from him, kept them fixed on the horizon, searching for something he could not see.
    The laird loved his lady fair and she him, both of them ruling just and right over their clan. It was the days of riches for them, of long summers and gentle winters, when the mountains still sang their songs at night and the deer were plump and plentiful. Each day was a jewel in the mind of God, and the Clan Kincardine was the most blessed of all people.
    Into this peace came an evil faerie, who had watched the laird’s lady for such a time until he fell into envy. He wanted her for himself, her moonlight and heather and jet, and set about to win her, using magic and gold and gossamer promises.
    But she would not be won. Her heart was true to her laird.
    Marcus found himself focusing on every part of Avalon that touched his body, the softness of her lines pressed to him in the confines of the saddle, the heat ofher stomach against the arm he had wrapped around her waist. She smelled of apples and flowers. She had tasted of spice.
    He wondered briefly if she was naive enough to be in love with her oafish cousin. She had seemed to accept his hasty plan to wed her without protest, even knowing the disgrace it would bring upon her, the war that might ensue.
    But she was a woman. He had no idea why women did anything.
    One day our lady went off wool gathering to the glen. She was so gentle that the thorns would bend back from the branches of the brambles, allowing her to harvest their treasured wool without harm.
    But the faerie came upon her, and he had lost patience with his wooing. He took her honor there in the glen and broke her true heart until she died on the spot, weeping for her love.
    The laird found her in the grass and knew what had happened.
    Understand how much he loved her. Understand how great was his loss, for then and there he abandoned his faith and called on the devil to avenge the wrong done his lady.
    The day had favored them by turning cloudy and dark, making their movement through the woods more obscure, turning them all into mere extensions of the shadows.
    Lady Avalon was trying to resist falling asleep, Marcus noted. Her head would sink lower and lower, then jerk back up, only to repeat the process.
    He thought about the offer she had made back in the circle of his men. She had told him she would give him everything he desired if he let her go. But if he let hergo, he would