Submit To The Warrior

By Tatiana March

Central Kansas, 1883

Chicago lawyer Blake Barlow has tracked his runaway wife all the way to the middle of nowhere. If she wants a divorce, he'll grant her one – as soon as she tells him why she left.

Clara Johnson is angry. Blake betrayed her mere weeks after exchanging vows – but when he rides up to her family farm, it's to get her signature, not to beg for forgiveness.

Clara and Blake agree their brief marriage was an impulsive mistake–but that doesn't stop the passion between them from flaring as hot as ever...

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781460894576

Tatiana March

Tatiana March writes contemporary and historical romance, as well as romantic suspense. In her spare time, Tatiana enjoys hiking and camping, particularly in Arizona where some of her historical novels are set. Tatiana lives in Buckinghamshire in the UK.

Book preview

Chapter One

Scotland, Early 1541

Fury twisted inside Stefan Navarro as he stared at his king. ‘You are offering me a bride who is married to another man?’

‘Lady Morag is married now, but I expect her to be a widow after you finish your siege of Stenholm Castle.’ King James dipped the quill in the inkwell and scrawled his signature on the parchment in front of him. ‘I’ll give you a letter approving your betrothal to her. You can insert the date when you know her husband is dead. Do your duty, and the lands will be yours.’

‘If I kill the laird, I get to marry his wife?’

The king leaned back behind the walnut desk. He called to the knights standing guard outside his private rooms at Holyrood Palace to alert them that his guest was about to leave. Then he turned to Stefan. ‘You want a wife who can bring you lands. Although women are allowed to inherit under the laws of Scotland, most noblemen sire sons, who take precedence. I don’t have an unmarried woman with estates to offer you.’

‘And you want Stenholm dead,’ Stefan said bluntly.

The king gave a grim nod. ‘Last month alone, three messengers rode from Stenholm Castle to King Henry’s court. I believe the laird is plotting against me with the English.’

Stefan hid his unease at the news. Suspicious of mind, distrustful of the nobles, the king had more than once condemned an innocent man. ‘You could be mistaken.’

King James folded the parchment and threw it across the desk. ‘I don’t care to find out. I want him dead, but I don’t want his vassals in an uproar if he hangs for treason. He must perish in battle, with the honour due to a laird.’

The doors swung open, and four sentries stepped out to flank the exit, broadswords clanking at their sides.

‘Go,’ the king ordered. ‘Send a message to me as soon as the deed is done.’

Holding on to his anger, Stefan reached down to collect the letter. He didn’t need to ask if the king meant Stenholm’s death, or his marriage to the widow. The king wasn’t interested in his wedding festivities, only in removing the threat of a traitor.

Stefan shrugged his shoulders. Best to accept life as it was. The bastard son of a Scottish mother and a Spanish father, he’d grown up with hatred. Blood and guts had carved him a position of power in Scotland. The King’s Arrow. People said King James dispatched him when he wanted to shoot an enemy through the heart, although in truth the name owed its origin to the pair of crossed arrows that decorated his battle standard.

Stefan didn’t mind that he had been ordered to deliver death. Killing was a way of life for a soldier, and he did it well. Only this time he wished the king had sent someone else to lay siege to Stenholm Castle.

Slaughtering a woman’s first husband was not a good way to start a marriage.

* * *

Lady Morag knelt before the altar at Stenholm Castle. Her lips moved in a soundless Paternoster, her fourteenth since she’d sunk to the polished flagstones without the benefit of a cushion to ease the strain on her knees.

Something crashed into the castle wall. The chapel windows rattled. Around her, shards of breaking glass rained to the floor. Lady Morag pinched her eyes shut, but a tear escaped to roll down her cheek. Was it the leaded window that depicted Madonna and the child, or the one of Christ with the crown of thorns? She didn’t want to look, couldn’t bear to see the destruction that the month-long siege had brought to the few things she held dear in life.

‘God, please,’ she prayed. ‘Let me be the target of a well-aimed arrow. Let the roof cave in and crush me. Let me leave this world of suffering and ascend to heaven.’

A hand fell upon her shoulder, drawing a cry of alarm to her lips.

‘It is only me, milady.’

She stole a quick glance behind her and saw the tall frame of Brother Thomas.

The chaplain leaned down, his weathered face lined with concern. His bony fingers clasped her shoulder through the thick velvet of her gown. ‘‘Do not despair,’ he said, his tone reassuring. ‘Life can’t get any worse, can it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Morag replied. ‘Will the castle fall?’

‘Aye. It’s only a matter of time.’

‘In which case, I must see to practical things.’ She scrambled to her feet.

‘Practical things?’ asked the monk.

‘Pack what I can carry with me, assuming the invaders will let us live.’

‘Milady! Milady!’ William dashed in with the long, loping strides of an adolescent, the locks of sandy hair flapping about his shoulders.

Morag’s heart clenched. She had found him hiding in the stables like a frightened animal when she first arrived after her marriage to the laird three years ago. She had tried to build a place of safety for the boy, had sacrificed her pride, sometimes her dignity, to earn him opportunities that would let him flourish.

And now, all her efforts would be wasted. Another tear coursed down her cheek. A gust of freezing wind blew in through the open chapel doors, chilling the wet trail on her face, and she knew that the castle keep had been breached.

‘He is dead, milady.’ William blurted out the words, his voice frantic. ‘I saw him fall. An arrow pierced through the visor on his helm. He roared out with pain, and then he tumbled down from the castle wall.’ The boy stopped to draw a breath. ‘The laird is dead and on his way to hell.’

‘Dead?’ Morag whispered. Her mind was too numb for any other reaction but a quick glance at Brother Thomas, to discourage the chaplain from disciplining the boy for the blasphemy.

The monk’s throat moved as he swallowed, and then he said, ‘Let us pray.’

The three of them knelt side by side—a man of cloth, a wife, and a boy