The Bride and the Brute - Excerpt

The Bride and the Brute - Chapter Two

 You can download the full novella of The Bride and the Brute for FREE on Smashwords.com

Chapter Two

Reese faced Jayce’s startled expression with a heart of stone.  It wasn’t that she was ugly.  He had seen far, far less pleasant faces to gaze upon.  It wasn’t her tiny body.  Her shape was indeed quite curvy and could very well make the stoutest of men desire to protect and shelter her.

It was that she was a liar.  He shook her slender wrist.  His anger was fierce, his emotion lashing the air around them like a storm wind.  “Why did you lie to your father?” he demanded.  He squeezed her wrist tightly as he gazed into her innocent blue eyes.  Innocent.  He scowled at the thought.  She was anything but.  No innocent could lie that easily, could make her false expressions so believable.

He could see confusion and apprehension in those large sapphire eyes.  But no fear.  Reese scowled.  No fear? he thought.  Men greater than she have trembled before my wrath.

She parted her lips and they moved.  It was a moment before he realized she was speaking.  “You are my husband,” she said simply.

Husband.  The word sent tremors of horror and anger up his spine.  He tossed her arm aside and whirled, moving for the door.

“Wait!”  Her voice sounded desperate.

He halted, straightening his shoulders.

“I-- Have I done something to displease you?” she asked.

Reese whirled on her, his fists clenched tight, his eyes wide in absolute disbelief.  “Displease me?” he echoed, hotly.  “Yes!  You married me!”  With that, he stormed from the room, leaving her completely alone.

He didn’t care if she fled the castle.  He didn’t care if he never saw her again.  This entire marriage was a farce.  He didn’t care for the woman.  He didn’t love her.  And he had vowed long ago he would not marry unless he loved the girl.

His father had married his mother for her lands; not an uncommon union, but one empty of affection or devotion... or love.  His father had married for fields of wheat, rolling hills, and cattle pastures.  There had been no love between his parents.  And Reese had seen the terrible consequences of that.

All his life he heard pieces of the servants’ gossip, whisperings of his mother’s infidelity.  He hadn’t believed it.  Didn’t want to believe it.  Any of it.

But when he was eight years old he witnessed something that forever left a scar on his heart.

He had been walking through the castle’s halls when he saw his mother in a dark alcove, laughing quietly.  He heard the whispering of a man’s low voice coming from the darkness and assumed it was his father.  He started to run toward them, to tell them about the grand adventure he had exploring the guards’ barracks, but then stopped abruptly as he saw his mother step from the alcove.  She adjusted her dress, her hand resting casually on the chest of a man, a man who was not his father.

Reese’s jaw and fists clenched at the bitter memory.  The pain had long since receded, but the anger was still fresh in his mind.  After that, stories circulated throughout the castle of her liaison with a baron.  Rumor had it there had been a wandering gypsy amongst her numerous lovers as well.

He had been too ashamed to mention any of this to his father.  But his father eventually discovered his mother’s treachery.  Reese had been eleven years old when he had awoken to shouts and screams.  He had raced from his room to find his mother, half-dressed, standing in the middle of the hallway.  His father faced another man, a man clad only in leggings, their laces untied.  Reese shook his head, remembering the disgust in his father’s eyes as he turned to look at his wife.  Then, his father turned his back on her and challenged the man to a duel.  Reese remembered feeling a surge of pride for his father as he confronted the bastard who had bedded his wife under his very nose.

But his pride was very short-lived.  His father died the next day on the field of honor.  An honorless man.

Their mother had tried to raise Reese and his sister, Nicole, but she was not very good at it.  Reese wanted nothing to do with her anyway, and he and Nicole ended up looking after each other.  Their mother died in childbirth eight months after their father’s death, leaving them a brother to raise as well as themselves.

At the age of twelve, Reese had become lord of the castle.

He had planned to take his time and find a woman he could love, a woman who could love him, a woman he was destined to marry.  Not this.

As he stormed down the hallway, servants paused in their tasks to glance in his direction and shake their heads.  Reese greeted their sympathetic looks with a guttural growl.  He paused only long enough to snarl at one of the servants, “Have James sent to me.”

He entered his den, slamming the door shut on prying eyes.  He prowled the room for a moment, thinking of his sister.  He slapped his palms on the ledge of the window, looking out over the darkening skies toward Lord Cullen’s lands.  So help Cullen if Nicole was not returned safely.  He would storm Cullen’s castle himself and find his sister.

Reese shook his head in disgust.  Forced into marriage.

A loveless marriage.  The thought made him sick.  But he would not risk the life of his sister.  Not for all the threats on the earth.  Cullen had repeatedly petitioned him to marry his daughter, Jayce.  After three refusals, Reese had put the matter out of his mind.  A mistake he realized only too late.

Nicole vanished from the castle grounds a few days after his final refusal.

A missive arrived shortly after Nicole’s disappearance, announcing that Lord Cullen would have Reese marry his daughter, or the health of Nicole would be at stake.

Why would a father do that to his daughter?  Reese didn’t know, and he didn’t care.  The deed was done.  Nicole was his primary worry.

Suddenly, a knock sounded at the door.  Reese granted entrance, and a slim, elderly man entered the room.  His haughty demeanor gave him the aura of nobility instead of the head castle servant he was.  He wore a stylish sleeveless doublet of grayish purple and a white shirt beneath that.  His leggings were black, and his leather shoes curled at the toes.

“James,” Reese ordered the man, “have Rogue saddled.  I’m riding out to the borders to see if I can see my sister coming.”

“I suppose you’ll sleep out there, too?” James wondered in a disdainful, sarcastic voice.

Reese would take that arrogance only from James.  The man had been with him since he was a child.  He respected James.  And liked him immensely.  “If I knew the road they were taking.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, sir,” James said.

“That never stopped you before, why should it now?”

James’s eyebrow rose slightly.  “Your wife awaits you in your chambers.”

Reese’s eyes narrowed.  “I don’t have a wife.”

James bowed contemptuously.  “As you wish, m’lord,” he answered stiffly, and departed the room.

As soon as Nicole is home safely, I will right this entire fiasco, Reese vowed silently.  He picked up the note he had begun earlier and scanned the words, nodding in satisfaction.

 You can download the full novella of The Bride and the Brute for FREE on Smashwords.com