Curse of the Celts by Clara O'Connor (most romantic novels .TXT) 📕

out. He unwound his arms and went over to my blankets for I was now wrapped in his. I lay there dry-eyed, listening to the wind and rain hammer down until the first rays of dawn broke through.

“Where have you been?” Devyn’s angry snarl alerted me to Marcus’s return as the grey dawn light entered through the open door with him.

Marcus pulled his sopping wet hood down and unwrapped the scarf from the lower half of his face to reveal a taunting smirk. “What business is it of yours?”

Devyn’s glance over at me was more revealing than it needed to be. Marcus followed his gaze and immediately realised something had happened. Whatever he read in my face was presumably the cause of the flash of guilt that crossed his before he squared his shoulders and stuck out his jaw.

“No fun, is it?” he threw at me pugnaciously. He didn’t care that his actions of the previous night had made their presence felt here in the barn. Rage flooded through me. He knew what he had done to me and how bad things were between Devyn and me and he didn’t care. Two short steps had me face to face with him, and the next thing I knew he was looking back at me with a shocked expression and the palm of my hand stung from its contact with his smug, handsome face.

“No fun,” I replied belatedly.

The resounding silence was punctuated by the sound of the door crashing as Devyn exited the barn. There wasn’t room for three of us in here right now. I felt like the air had been punched out of my lungs as I watched my red handprint light up Marcus’s face.

I winced as I met Marcus’s gaze, expecting to find anger there, but the look in his eyes was one of loneliness. The rage seeped out of me. What he had done was ugly, but he was in pain.

“I’m…” Was I sorry? What he had done was unforgivable, no matter how understandable. “I shouldn’t have… It’s just all so messed up.”

I felt dreadful. Marcus had needed to blow off some steam. Who was I to be so bloody self-righteous? He had been on the receiving end of me being with Devyn. Marcus had every right to be mad at me. He put his hand on mine in acknowledgement of my apology before pulling away to start putting his pack together.

“Where did you go?” I asked softly. Whatever the answer, Devyn was unlikely to approve, so I kept my voice low.

“There’s a village a mile or so back that we passed yesterday. I went to the inn there.”

I nodded, absorbing the risk he had taken when he stormed out of here last night. Scratch Devyn being unlikely to approve; he would be livid if he knew what Marcus had done. There was a reason we weren’t sleeping in soft beds every night. I swallowed my annoyance at Marcus’s selfishness, reminding myself that I’d had months to get used to the idea of leaving the city for the wilderness. Marcus had only faced the inevitability of this new life a couple of weeks ago.

“You can’t just go off on your own like that.” What had he been thinking? We were only a few days out of Oxford. Whoever was chasing us was unlikely to be on foot. “Anyone could have taken you, and we wouldn’t have known.”

“You’d have figured it out sooner or later,” Marcus replied, indicating his arm. The distance we could get from one another had extended back to the levels we had been used to in Londinium but that was all. Who knew what would happen? If anyone had tried to take him, there was only so far that distance would stretch before I would start to suffer. The cursed handfast cuffs.

“An inn?” I lowered my voice despite being reasonably certain Devyn wasn’t within earshot. It was one thing for Marcus to wander off in a huff; it was another for him to engage with the locals. Devyn did all our talking on the rare occasions when we had to interact with anyone so we wouldn’t give away how very strange to these lands we were. “What were you thinking?”

Marcus raised an eyebrow at me. “It’s okay for you and him to get up to whatever you feel like. It’s the first time I’ve ever been with someone who wasn’t faking it. Unlike some, I never betrayed my match. I’ve never been with anyone but you. And you were only with me because of the handfast and because Devyn told you to.” I stilled in my packing but couldn’t raise my head and face him, even though I could feel him looking directly at me. Marcus had been on the receiving end of my emotions whenever I tangled with the Briton who drove me crazy, emotions that he had never inspired in me. What little chemistry had surfaced between us had been engineered by the handfast and was a pale imitation of what I had with Devyn.

Something that Marcus must realise now. If he had found something of his own with some local girl, who was I to begrudge him? “Didn’t she notice that you aren’t a Briton?”

“I told her I was from Kent, a Shadower looking to trade anything I could find. Besides, we didn’t do much talking.” He winked.

“So I noticed,” I said sourly. He might think it was fun but I had never intentionally set out to hurt him with the effects of the handfast. Could he say the same?

Marcus raised his eyebrows, probably wondering what exactly his actions had incited back at camp. My face burned. Let him wonder. Toad. All I needed to complete my humiliation was for Marcus to know what had happened last night.

“Well, if you’re finished regaling Cass with tales of your tomcatting, we’ll get moving, shall we?” Devyn sneered, having caught the end of our conversation.

Marcus’s head whipped up and he turned to face