The Marriage Bargain
Penulis
Gallina Brindamour
Jumlah dibaca
498K
Bab
79
Forced into a marriage meant to secure an alliance, Celia Montgomery has never known tenderness. Cast aside by her own family and treated as little more than a bargaining piece, she dreams of freedom—of a life where she is wanted, not used. But when she is sent to wed a rival laird, her hopes of escape fade into a future she never chose.
Brian Armstrong never imagined himself a husband. Duty, not desire, binds him to the bride he left behind. But when danger threatens his lands, he returns to claim the woman who is his by law—only to find a gentle, spirited wife who flinches at shadows and begs for her freedom.
What begins as obligation shifts the moment Brian sees the truth in Celia’s eyes: the loneliness she hides, the strength she doesn’t know she has, and the quiet courage that stirs something fierce in him.
But the keep holds secrets.
And someone wants Celia gone.
As threats close in and her life hangs in the balance, Brian becomes the one man she can trust. And Celia, who has never known safety, finds herself drawn to the husband she once feared.
Bound by danger and slowly entwined by affection, Celia and Brian must decide whether their marriage is merely an alliance…
or the beginning of a love powerful enough to rewrite both their destinies.
Chapter 1: Prologue
The storm broke over Montgomery Manor with a fury that rattled the bones of the house. Rain hammered the roof and lashed against the tall windows of the great hall. Thunder rolled across the hills, deep enough to tremble through the stone floor beneath Finella’s bare feet.
Each flash of lightning turned the marble columns white for a heartbeat, then plunged them back into shadow. Finella stood near the center of the hall, soaked through and trembling. Her gown clung to her skin.
Water dripped from the ends of her dark hair and slid cold down the back of her neck. Her wrist ached where Charles had gripped her too hard only moments before, dragging her inside from the rain with fury burning in his eyes.
Across the hall, Charles Montgomery stood like a man carved from storm and spite. His riding coat was wet, his boots muddy, his face flushed with rage. Rainwater dripped from the brim of his hat onto the stones between them.
But his eyes were what frightened her most. Not wild. Certain.
“You brought him here,” he said. Finella’s breath caught. Charles stepped closer. “Into my house. Onto my land. Into my bed.”
The words struck harder than any blow. Behind him, Alaric Croft stepped from the shadow near the doors. Finella’s heart lurched. “No,” she whispered.
He should not have followed. He should not have come. But he was there, rain-soaked and pale beneath the torchlight, his dark hair plastered to his brow.
His eyes moved to Finella first, full of fear for her, not himself. That was what nearly broke her.
Charles saw it. His mouth twisted. “There,” he said softly. “There it is.”
Alaric lifted both hands slowly, not in surrender, but to show he carried no drawn weapon. “Let her go, Charles.”
Charles laughed. The sound was low and ugly. “You command me in my own hall?”
“I ask you not to harm her.”
“She is my wife.”
“She is a woman,” Alaric said. “Not a possession.”
Charles moved so quickly Finella barely saw the first blow. His fist struck Alaric across the jaw, snapping his head to the side. Alaric staggered, caught himself against one of the columns, and straightened again.
Finella cried out and rushed forward. Charles caught her by the arm and yanked her back hard enough to tear the sleeve of her gown. Pain flashed through her shoulder. “You’ve shamed me,” he said against her ear. “You’ve made me a fool before my own house.”
Alaric wiped blood from his mouth. “She loved before she feared you. That is what you cannot bear.”
Charles’s face darkened. For one terrible moment, Finella thought he would kill Alaric there, beneath the watching columns and the storm-split sky.
Instead, Charles shoved her toward the nearest settle. She struck the wood and fell to her knees. “Take him from my sight,” Charles ordered the guards waiting near the doors.
“No!” Finella screamed.
Alaric fought them. Of course he did. But there were too many, and Charles watched with cold satisfaction as his men dragged Alaric backward into the storm. Alaric’s eyes stayed on Finella until the doors swallowed him.
The hall fell silent except for rain and Finella’s broken breathing. Charles turned to her. His rage had cooled into something worse. Something deliberate. “You are with child.”
Finella went still. The words emptied the room of air.
Charles crossed the hall slowly and stopped before her. His boots left muddy prints on the stone. “Is it his?”
Finella’s hand went to her stomach before she could stop herself. Charles saw. His face tightened.
She tried to speak, but no words came. He struck her. The blow threw her sideways against the settle. Pain burst across her cheek, sharp and bright. She tasted blood.
Charles crouched in front of her and caught her chin in his hand. “You will leave,” he said quietly. “You will take that bastard far from here. And when you return, you will give me sons.”
Tears burned her eyes, but Finella did not let them fall. “And if I refuse?”
His smile was thin and empty. “Then I will bury you beside him.”
Her blood turned cold. Alaric. Charles leaned closer. “Do you think I do not know where he will run? Do you think I do not know where lovers hide when they mistake secrecy for safety?”
Finella’s heart began to pound. Charles released her and rose. “You have three days,” he said. “Pray you use them wisely.”
Then he left her there on the cold floor, rain still striking the windows like thrown stones.
***
For three days, Finella’s chamber became her prison. The door remained guarded. The shutters were latched from the outside. Candles burned down to stubs while she paced the room, one hand over the life growing beneath her heart, the other pressed to her bruised cheek.
No word came from Alaric. No servant would meet her eyes. On the third night, when the guards changed and the corridor fell briefly quiet, Finella took parchment from her writing desk with shaking hands.
She wrote by the light of a single candle.
Alaric,
He knows enough to hate us, but not enough to take the child from me yet. I cannot remain here. I cannot let this baby be raised beneath Charles’s cruelty, nor let him claim what was born of love and fear and the only tenderness I have ever known.
Meet me at dusk in the birch grove. If you still live, come for me. If there is any mercy left in this world, come quickly. I cannot go alone.
Yours always,
Finella
Tears blurred the ink. She sealed the letter with trembling fingers and pressed it into the hands of the only maid who still dared look at her with pity. “Please,” Finella whispered. “See that he gets it.”
The girl nodded, terrified. Finella waited.
***
Dusk came bruised and cold, the sky still heavy with the memory of storm. She stood at her shuttered window, unable to leave, listening for any sign that the guard outside her door had moved. He had not.
The birch grove lay beyond the manor walls, pale and ghostly in the fading light. Alaric came. Finella saw him from the narrow crack between the shutters. He moved beneath the silver-white trees with his cloak drawn close, breath fogging in the air, one hand pressed to his side as though still hurting from the beating.
He looked toward the manor again and again. Waiting. For her.
Finella pressed both hands to the window frame. “Alaric,” she breathed.
But the grove stirred behind him. Charles stepped from the shadows. Finella froze. No sound left her.
Alaric turned too late. The blade flashed once in the twilight. Finella’s scream tore through the chamber, but the walls kept it prisoner.
Alaric fell to his knees among the fallen birch leaves. He lifted his head toward the manor, toward her window, as if somehow he knew she was there. Then Charles struck again.
Finella sank to the floor, one hand clamped over her mouth. Outside, beneath the pale trees, Charles knelt beside Alaric’s body. He leaned close, speaking words Finella could not hear.
Then he dragged him deeper into the grove, away from sight, leaving a dark smear across the leaves. Something inside Finella broke that night.
But the child beneath her heart moved. A small flutter. A reminder. Not everything had died beneath the birches.
***
Weeks later, Finella was sent away. Not publicly. Not with ceremony. Charles did not need the household asking questions about a wife’s bruises or a pregnancy he refused to name.
He sent her north under the care of an old midwife and two silent guards, to a gray stone cottage near the salt-washed shore. There, the sea became her witness.
Its waves battered the rocks below the cottage day and night. Gulls cried over the cliffs. Wind worried at the shutters until the whole little house seemed to breathe with loneliness.
Finella waited for her child. She waited through sickness, through fear, through long nights when Alaric’s face returned in dreams and Charles’s threat returned with dawn. Then, one bitter morning beneath a pale winter sky, labor took her.
The midwife worked by candlelight while the sea roared beyond the walls. Pain seized Finella in merciless waves, but she clung to the bedpost and refused to let go. She had lost too much already. She would not lose this child too.
Near dawn, a baby’s cry filled the cottage. A daughter. Dark-haired. Small. Furious with life.
Finella gathered her into her arms and wept. Not because the grief had lessened. Because hope had survived it.
She looked down at the child’s tiny face, at the dark lashes resting against flushed cheeks, at the little mouth opening in another indignant cry. “You are here,” Finella whispered. “You are here.”
The door opened before noon. Charles stood on the threshold. The midwife stiffened. Finella clutched the baby closer, every part of her body aching, weak, and still ready to fight.
Charles’s gaze moved to the child. Only briefly. Long enough to see what Finella already knew. Alaric’s eyes.
Charles’s mouth tightened. “She is not mine.” Finella said nothing. “I will not claim her,” he said.
The words should have destroyed her. Instead, they became a shield. Charles looked toward the sea beyond the window, already bored by the infant he had chosen to hate before she had drawn breath.
“Keep her for now,” he said. “But if you return to Montgomery Manor, you will remember what you owe me. Sons, Finella. Legitimate sons. Or I will take even her from you.”
The threat landed softly. That made it worse. Then he turned and left, slamming the door behind him.
Finella looked down at her daughter. The baby had gone quiet, one tiny fist curled against Finella’s chest as if holding on. “You are not his,” Finella whispered. “You are not his cruelty. You are not his shame. You are not the punishment he wants you to be.”
The baby stirred. Finella pressed a kiss to her dark hair. “Celia,” she whispered. The name had come to her months before, in the worst of her grief, when she had needed something beautiful to survive on. Heaven’s gift.
A life born from love and loss, but belonging to neither cruelty nor death.
Days later, when Finella was strong enough to stand, she wrapped Celia in wool and returned to the birch grove. The trees stood silver beneath a pale morning sky. Frost clung to the grass.
The earth beneath one old birch had settled into a low mound, half hidden by leaves. Finella knelt there with her daughter in her arms.
“I have a daughter,” she whispered. The wind moved gently through the branches. “She has your eyes.”
Celia slept against her heart, warm and breathing, her tiny face tucked beneath Finella’s chin. Finella closed her eyes.
Charles still waited. Montgomery Manor still stood. The future still held fear.
But in her arms, Celia breathed. And for that one fragile morning beneath the birches, hope did too.
