Wager with a Warrior - Emma Prince Page 0,56
brazier, where the last of the night’s embers were dying. He could feel her gaze upon him like a caress as he worked to stoke the fire to a blaze, cutting the cold and darkness in the chamber.
When he turned and stalked back to the bed, she boldly swept his naked form with fascinated eyes. God, how he wanted to pounce on her, pin her to the bed and ravish her once more. But tending to the fire had given him a moment of clarity that he could not so easily shuck away.
What he needed to say wasn’t going to be pleasant, but they couldn’t pretend that the outside world had ceased to exist much longer.
He eased back into the bed, drawing the coverlet over his nakedness.
“Birdie.”
She must have sensed the shift in the air around them, or the weight in his tone, for she reluctantly met his gaze.
“Aye?”
Gregor ran his thumb over her cheek to soften his words. “I am leaving in the morning.”
A groove appeared between her brows, but she didn’t lift her chin or flatten her mouth the way she did when she was preparing to dig in her heels. They both knew this was coming.
Still, her voice was pinched when she whispered, “So soon?”
“I cannae stay to watch ye become engaged to another.” He forced out a snort, trying to ease the pain in her eyes. “Cormack might no’ survive it, and then ye’d be at war with the Gunns all over again.”
She huffed, but the moment of mirth evaporated just as quickly as it had arrived.
“Where will ye go?”
“I dinnae ken,” he admitted. “The Caithness Games are long over. Mayhap I’ll go to the isles and try to drum up support for the fight against Balliol.”
“Ye’ll resume yer challenge, then?”
He rolled one shoulder to ease the tension there. “What else can I do? Fighting is all I’m good for. It’s my only advantage. I might as well use it.”
“That isnae true.”
Gregor didn’t want to frighten her. Nor did he wish to delve into his dark memories. But he needed her to understand this about him.
He sat up, pinning her with his gaze. “Remember what I said about my father? How he came after my mother, and then me when I’d try to protect her?”
Her eyes tightened. “Aye.”
“He was the biggest, strongest man imaginable. And no’ just because I viewed him through a bairn’s eyes. He was by far the largest man in our village—and the most skilled warrior, too. None in the village dared cross him, especially no’ when he was in his cups.”
He let out a slow breath. “They all kenned what happened in our home, what he was doing to my mother and me. Yet none would intercede. They were all too afraid of him. So they closed their eyes to our cuts and bruises, and plugged their ears to our screams and cries at night.”
“That is terrible,” Birdie whispered.
“I used to beg him to stop,” he murmured. “I would wail and plead, and cling to his arms, trying to hold him back. But he would just toss me aside as if I were naught more than a rag doll. Or if I’d succeeded in distracting him from my ma, he’d turn on me.”
His helpless cries and his mother’s screams for him to stay back rang hollowly in his ears even now.
“He only ever stopped,” Gregor ground out, “when I was strong enough to make him.”
Birdie drew back into her shoulders at the steely edge that had entered Gregor’s voice.
“What does that mean?”
“I grew from a lad to a man practically overnight. When I was four and ten, I shot up like a well-watered weed. By the time I was five and ten, I rivaled him in height. He was still stronger than I was, but when he was in his cups, he was slow and careless.”
Memories flickered behind his eyes, drawing him back to the terrifying incident that had changed the course of Gregor’s life.
“One night, he came at my ma for some imaginary slight, just like always. Only this time, he couldnae get through me. He pounded me nigh to a pulp, but for every three sloppy blows he got in on me, I’d land one true. My last punch knocked him back on his arse and broke his nose.”
Gregor grunted mirthlessly. “I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. For the first time, he stared at me with fear. I doubt he’d been afraid of anyone since he was a