THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

her. Grasping the man’s hand, Beth stared, mouth agape, into the steel blue eyes of her rescuer.
      “Duncan?”
    The Laird of Blackstone looked about the confines of the fractured coach. Seeing only one woman alive, one who looked nothing like the bride he’d been told to expect, he cursed. He shoved the dead women aside and pulled up on the crying woman’s hand. The Bruce would pay with his life for this.
    As he lifted her through the door, lightening flashed. Its light bounced off the rubies in the ring she wore on her left hand. Sudden, overwhelming relief flooded him. It was his betrothal ring. Thank God! ‘Twas of no account that the abbess had gilded the lily—-hell, the woman was apparently blind—for his bride lived.
    Before he could set her on the ground, her hands flew to his face. Her cold fingers fluttered across his cheeks for an instant before her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
    “Oh, Duncan! I’ve never...” She stopped and he followed her gaze. Her eyes grew wide as they took in the carnage he and his men had wrought.
    “Duncan...?”
    What followed, he could only guess at. Before he could ask her to repeat herself, she turned ashen and promptly fainted.
    “Well, ye did it again. Will ye never learn?” Angus, his second in command, asked as he peered over his shoulder. “One look at ye and yer softer-than-puddin’ bride faints.” His best friend’s gaze shifted, as did his own, from the woman’s face to her outlandish clothing. “And what on earth is she wearing?”
    Duncan had no idea, but she’d been living on the continent and their ways were strange. Perhaps his intended had dressed as a man thinking it safer. Her odd leggings would make for an easier, faster ride home, in any event. She could ride astride on the way to their wedding.
    ~#~
     
    Beth opened her eyes, this time in Blackstone’s great hall, standing in Duncan’s fierce embrace. Without a word, he spun her toward the small man with his back to the fire. Fire? Why was there a fire? She’d yet to have the flues cleaned.
    She blinked, trying to understand why the fat little man in brown was in her home and what he now mumbled about. He said something to Duncan in Gael, and her ghost growled something in return. Head still spinning, she pushed on Duncan’s arm, but his grip only tightened.
    She ran a dry tongue over her chapped lips and again tasted salt. “Please let go.”
    Duncan responded by issuing another order to the concerned looking man before her. The room continued to list so she tried focusing on the large wooden crucifix on the little man’s chest.
    What in hell is going on?
    Frowning, the brown-cloaked man continued mumbling and Duncan answered. Pity clouded the little man’s eyes when he placed her hand in Duncan’s. He finally addressed her. When he asked, “Doth thou pledge thy troth?” Beth’s heart tripped with understanding.
    Stunned, she tried to pull her hand from her ghost’s grasp. She slurred, “I can’t think, let alone...” and the world went black.
    “She has swooned,” Father Given sputtered as if everyone in the hall were blind. “We must stop the ceremony.”
    Duncan, his right arm fully occupied with his faint bride, reached out with his left arm and grabbed the priest’s frock. He hissed feeling the stitches in his wounded shoulder tear open. “Priest, we will continue. She consented, said ‘Aye Katherine LeBeau’ before swooning and I’ve witnesses aplenty who’ll willingly attest to it.” He glanced over his shoulder to his clansmen standing around the room. To the man they all nodded. Duncan again faced the priest. “I dinna rescue her just an hour ago—killing seven men in the doing—to have ye now deny her wish to wed. ‘Tis not her fault the poor wee lass was attacked by the Bruce’s men.” He leveled a glare at the priest then shook him for good measure. “Continue!”
    Duncan had to make Katherine LeBeau Demont his bride before sunset. He had no choice.
    Their regent, the Duke of Albany, was determined to control Katherine’s dowered lands through Duncan’s loyalty. The man had made it abundantly clear this distant niece of his was to be Duncan’s bride by this date or Duncan would lose all his holdings, no doubt, to the Bruce.
    Just the thought of his clan—-ever loyal to him—being turned out upon this brutal land without food or shelter, without his strong arm to protect them, was intolerable. He shook the priest again. “Do we