Gwyneth’s silky skirt contrasted with Brenna’s own shabby, faded wool one. More proof of their father’s love toward his favored daughter. She tamped down the ache in her chest. If only she could have won even half as much of his love. Her father had taken all of her beautiful clothing away years ago. As a nun, she would have to give them up anyway, but her chest still ached from the memory.
Gwyneth plucked the falling headdress and veil from her blond hair and set it on Brenna’s head. The veil was a thick material sewed with tiny pearls. The heavy frame that fashioned the hat into a butterfly shape felt awkward and foreign.
“We are nigh the same height, and if we cover your red hair, he will not suspect,” Gwyneth said.
Brenna snorted. The elaborate hat looked bizarre against her simple clothing. Save for the height, she and Gwyneth looked naught alike. Especially not since she’d hacked off her thigh length curls. Gwyneth’s hair, when loose, was a mass of shimmering gold that hung past her hips; her own was a close cropped mess.
Reaching up, Brenna touched the scar on her cheek that ran from her ear to the bridge of her nose and lifted a strand of her copper hair. ’Twas shorter than l’occhio del diavolo and not nearly as symmetrical.
“Surely Montgomery has heard you are the fairest lady in all of England,” Brenna said to Gwyneth.
Gwyneth shot her a sympathetic look, but did not deny the charge. Both of them knew Gwyneth’s beauty was a possession most prized by their father—’twas the thing that would catch the eye of a wealthy man so he would have more gold to pump into his cause of ridding England’s throne of its king.
“I am sorry about your hair,” Gwyneth said gently. “I truly appreciate your sacrifice to save me from Lord Brice. It was so brave of you to shear it and pretend you were me so I could be rid of him.”
Brave? Bloody hell. All she’d had to do was introduce herself as Gwyneth. Without her long beauteous locks to soften her features, her face had frightened him into running like the very devil chased him. As if she was plagued. No man wanted a scarred, ugly, shorn woman as wife. Another reason her father should have allowed her to enter the convent. Silently, she cursed his stubbornness. Why did he have to be so obstinate?
“What’s done is done,” Brenna said, refusing to allow herself to dwell on her missing locks. What need did an artist and a nun have for vanity?
Gwyneth reached up and patted Brenna’s short curls. “But I know you miss your hair. I’ve seen you tug at the strands.”
Adele rapped her cane again, causing the terrier to run around in tight circles. “There is no time to talk of hair! Get dressed, Brenna. Use the veil to cover your scar—there is enough fabric to obscure your face. I swear, I’d kill Montgomery myself, but for this lame foot of mine. I do not look enough like Gwyneth to pass, and only a bride will be able to get close enough to slay him.”
Before Brenna could open her mouth to insist that she did not look like the beauteous Gwyneth either, Gwyneth scrambled from her wedding gown and held it out. “You have pretended to be me before; you can do it again.”
Clad only in her shift, Gwyneth reminded Brenna of a specter. A specter of her past.
Brenna had a new life awaiting her in Italy. Glancing at the open door, she thought of her satchel beneath the bed.
“Oh, curse it all to the devil. This battle is not my concern,” she said. She needed to leave. She could not spend her life rescuing her sister from one suitor or the next. “Marry the man and he’ll set Father free. With your looks, you’ll be able to bend him to your will.”
At that moment, thunderous footsteps clamored up the stairs of the tower.
The chamber door banged open.
The three sisters gasped. The dogs barked, and St. Paul bolted beneath the bed.
The largest pair of men Brenna had ever seen stepped inside the room. They were fully clad in chain mail and armor and seemed to be at least seven feet in height.
One had eyes so blue they glowed like the coals of hell beneath his full-face helm. He carried a large broadsword. The other held a crossbow at the ready. They seemed to scrutinize the bed, the trunks, the table-desk, and the paintings before gazing intently at Brenna and her sisters.
Gwyneth, still in her shift, tried to hide behind Brenna and Adele.
The mastiff barked wildly, rearing upward. Adele held him by the collar, bracing her booted feet against the floor. Her hennin bobbed. The terrier leapt into the window embrasure seat and growled low.
“Call him off,” the crossbow-man commanded, swinging his weapon around to the mastiff. He was a tall, dangerous looking brute with a missing finger.
Gwyneth grasped Brenna’s hand in a clammy grip.
With a few whispered words, Adele calmed Panthos. Duncan tucked his tail and bolted beneath the bed with St. Paul.
“I am here to collect my bride. Which of you is she?” the man with the wicked blue eyes asked. He swung around to Gwyneth, seeming to take in her sunshine-like beauty.
Chain mail clinked as he reached for her, more beast than man. Huge hands. Brawny shoulders. An arrogant masculine presence. Bloody hell.
He was worse even than Lord Brice.
He’d eat her sister alive.
Gwyneth gave Brenna a look of pleading desperation as the man’s brutish hand touched the pristine linen of her shift. Her pulse fluttered in her neck.
With one last glance at the satchel under the bed, Brenna stepped forward, pushed Gwyneth firmly behind herself, and faced off the monster. She could not leave her sister to be raped and ravished by this fiend. Her skill with a knife would have to be enough.
She said a silent prayer of thanksgiving that Gwyneth had shoved the veil on her head so that her scar was partially hidden and the man would not see her unevenly chopped locks.
“I am your bride, my lord. Just give me a moment to change into my wedding gown.” And hide the dagger.
Chapter Two
He would have revenge.
Through the eye slits in his helmet, James of Montgomery glowered at the hostile crowd gathered near the steps of the chapel for the wedding. Lecrow, the lord of this keep and the bastard who had ambushed him this morn, knelt between two guards, tied in place by ropes. He was a squirrelly, gray-bearded man with fanatical eyes. James vowed silently to see the man beaten and made a public example of in the streets of London.
“Easier to keep guard inside,” he said to his men as he flung open the church doors and led them into the darkened sanctuary. His position as an earl allowed him to be married near the altar instead of on the outer steps. He latched his hand firmly around his wife-to-be’s wrist and dragged her in his wake.
“Bring her father to the front to witness the ceremony,” he barked at the two men holding Lecrow.
His duty was to bring peace to the region and he intended to crush the fight out of the old man by showing him that despite his little ambush,
