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“But what if he—”
“He willnae.”
“Ye cannae ken that.”
“Aileen.” Freya took the girl by the shoulders and turned her gently toward the door, the one that led through to Skye’s chamber. “If I scream, ye may fetch whoever ye like. Until then, go.”
The maid went. Slowly. Looking back twice. The door closed behind her with a click that sounded exactly like a lock, even if it was not one.
“A handfasting?” Freya whispered to no one in particular. She couldn’t believe it. “A real handfasting.”
“Aye, and with a real priest too, me Lady. Everything was above board, I promise ye.”
“That doesnae make me feel better!” she cried.
She couldn’t believe it. She had actually married this man with a real priest presiding over the ceremony.
“Heaven help me, I married a stranger,” she whispered.
The Wolf chuckled. He seemed to find all of this amusing, every single part of it, much to her annoyance. Could he take anything seriously, or was he incapable?
“Me name’s Evander, by the way.”
Freya bit back a whimper. “I married a stranger named Evander. How could I do such a thing?”
The smirk did not fade from Evander’s face. In fact, it seemed to grow wider.
She repeated his name over and over in her head. It did fit him. It fit him quite well. His voice was low and rough, and she felt it in the pit of her stomach.
But she didn’t want to think about all of that.
How could she have married a man she had only conversed with for a few hours? It couldn’t be possible.
The damned whisky!
The whisky was to blame. If she hadn’t drunk all that whisky with him, she never would’ve married him in that inn. She was sure of it.
She’d have been a good deal more sure if she hadn’t been the one to suggest the handfasting.
She could hear herself laughing over the fiddle and telling him to dance with her. She had held her hand out to him across the table as if she were a woman with nothing to lose. But in this marriage, she had everything to lose.
With a sigh, Freya pressed her fingers to her eyes.
It didn’t matter. Drunk was drunk, and whether it took one glass or ten, she had still made those vows in front of a priest.
6
“Imarried a stranger named Evander.”
She said it the way a woman might spit a barb at someone she was angry with. And to be honest, Freya was clearly angry with him.
She had been shaking with rage until her memory finally started to come back to her. Both hands pressed to her cheeks, eyes gone wide, staring at some point past his shoulder as if the full horror of his name were only now written on the wall behind him.
Evander had not laughed in front of a woman in years. He was fairly sure he’d forgotten how. But something was happening at the corner of his mouth that he couldn’t seem to govern, and he covered it with a cough.
She glared at him for that too.
He’d expected tears, perhaps. Or fainting. That was what any rational woman would have done when she woke married to the Wolf. He’d assumed as much, as one assumes a dropped stone would fall.
