Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 32223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
And of course, what I told Iona is true. The Campbells are clamoring for war, chiefly amongst them Darcy and her poisonous father, Lord Miller Campbell. Darcy is a harpy, to be sure, but her father just might be worse—a scorned, half-broke lord who once tried to poison an entire dinner banquet thrown for a dozen other lords visiting his castle, all in some terribly thought-out attempt to take their lands. He failed, had land, coin, and titles stripped of him, and has been ostracized ever since.
My marrying Darcy all those years ago was a charity he didn’t deserve, and a curse I sure as the devil didn’t.
That move, unlike this one, was purely political. My people had been hit with a devastating plague of the land which destroyed all of the crops grown for the coming winter that year. I’d paid for food from other lords out of my own purse, and I was happy to do so. But then, in another act of divine smiting, or bad luck, or whatever you want to call it, the winter of the same year had been brutal, with ice and hail laying waste to almost every township and village under my banner. Again, my vaults were opened, and I paid, gladly so, for the rebuilding.
When spring brought news of another lord rumbling to come take my lands in our weakened state, suddenly, Lord Campbell was there with an offer I quite literally could not refuse: marry his Darcy, and he’d provide both funds and men at arms towards my needs.
And so, I married her—her, the most wretched, spiteful, ill-tempered woman I’ve ever even heard of. Miraculously, mere days after the wedding, the warring lord from afar ceased his rumblings and called off his troops. And in a move I should have seen coming a mile away, Lord Campbell suddenly was “unable” to supply either gold or men. The men I didn’t need anymore, of course, though I suspected and still do that the rumblings of war were created by him anyways. The gold at that point I didn’t even want from a man like that. We made do, and slowly but surely, my vaults were filled again.
But Darcy remained, for years as my “wife.”
Needless to say, we never consummated our marriage. Not once, in the almost ten years she lurked in my halls. We kept separate quarters. We dined at different tables. We were rarely in the same room, for God’s sake. Living with that woman was like living in dark dream. Except, there was one small mercy of goodness that came with her.
Iona.
Her daughter from a previous marriage to a man she never spoke of, and who I’d never even heard of. Iona became the sister my own Catriona never had, and a joy the halls of my castle hadn’t seen in a very, very long time. Bright, charming, mischievous, and full of laughter.
And then, she grew up.
Gods did she grow up.
It was like it happened overnight. She was a girl one day—a girl who made me laugh and smile and nothing more. And then the next day, she was a woman—a woman who held my gaze like the sun. And suddenly, I was blinded.
And that is why all of this, however necessary, is wrong. It’s why I know damn well it’s not just a political move. And it isn’t just wrong because of what people may say about my marring a girl her age at my age, or the history there with Campbell name and with Darcy. No, this is wrong because of what Iona does to me.
What she makes me feel.
It’s wrong because since that day when she was suddenly a woman, my eyes have lingered longer than they ought to. I’ve watched her—watched her—for longer than I should have been. My pulse has quickened faster than it has any business doing with her. And my dreams have been filled with her—consumed by her, for years.
It’s wrong because Iona Campbell makes me hard.
She’s my ex’s daughter. She’s my daughter’s best friend. And now, she’ll be my bride.
A forbidden bride, and all mine.
Chapter 3
Iona
When I wake, for a moment, I wonder if it’s all been a dream—one more in a long and storied history of dreams involving Lachlan McDougall. Certainly, a change from the usual purely carnal sins ones, but still, a dream none-the-less, right?
Wrong.
It only takes a moment of being awake to know how real last night was, and the full weight of it all settles over me as I tug the blankets up to my chin. Lachlan McDougall asked me to be his wife. No, not asked. Told me. He told me I was to be his wife. Decreed it. And somehow, even if that’s more wrong, it sizzles across my skin, making me squeeze my thighs tight together beneath the covers. I squirm in my bed, heat creeping over me in places that I know are sinful.