by Lucy Monroe
“He will kill me,” she said, giving voice to her worst fear.
Sir Reuben’s shoulders drew back and his pride settled on him like a mantle. “I would not allow it if I thought there was even a remote chance of such a thing.”
“You cannot know.”
“I can. There is a far more likely outcome.”
She doubted him but felt far too disheartened to argue the point. “Why?”
“Why did I allow it?”
She nodded the tiniest bit.
“Your sister found happiness with her highland laird; perhaps you will, too.”
Abigail could not make all the words come. She finally managed to say, “Hates.”
“Your mother has heard he hates the English, but Emily said in her letters that he was now allied with her husband. He cannot be that filled with hatred, or he would not have allied himself with a man married to an Englishwoman.”
Abigail just stared at Sir Reuben, tears burning tracks down her temples.
“You have hidden your affliction from the keep, surely you will be able to do so in his castle.”
She shook her head vehemently, pain rolling through her at the movement. But it was impossible. She knew the keep and its people. It would be different somewhere else. Much, much too hard.
Sir Reuben caressed her cheek and smiled sadly. “Perhaps he will find out, but if he does, do you not think he will find it more convenient to return you to your closest family, rather than send you all the way back to England?”
For the first time since reading the king’s missive, a tiny glimmer of hope came to light in Abigail’s heart. Was it possible this situation would reunite her with Emily after all?
Sir Reuben must have read the hope in her eyes because he nodded. “I considered all the possibilities before I allowed your mother to petition the king for redress on what she saw as a grievous offense, that of her stepdaughter being married to the wrong laird.”
Abigail shook her head again, bringing on another wave of pain in her shoulders. But it was a lie. Her mother was full of them.
“Whatever her true reasons, this was the only way you could leave her influence forever. Had you gone as a guest to the Highlands, she could have called you home at any time. I love your mother, but I know she has a vindictive streak.”
Abigail’s tears had been drying, but at the reminder of the hatred her mother had for her, they spilled over her eyelids once again.
Sir Reuben brushed them away with his thumbs. “Here now. It will be all right. If you wish me to tell the laird the truth of your affliction, I will.”
She stared at him, her tears drying in her absolute shock.
“I give you my word.”
Her stepfather was a hard man, a man she had never gone to for comfort or solace, but one thing she knew: he kept his word.
Anna arrived at the door then, clucking and looking as upset as she had the time her own little granddaughter had fallen too close to the cooking fire and burned herself.
“Think about what I have said. We are to leave for the border tomorrow. You can give me your answer once you have looked in the eyes of the man you are intended to marry.”
The words stunned Abigail all over again. Only the most besotted parent took their child’s opinion into account when arranging marriage. It was a boon she could not have expected, for she was not cherished at all.
Sir Reuben’s offer was beyond a boon even; it might be enough to give her the courage to face what the journey tomorrow would bring.
“Thank you,” she whispered, forcing sound she could not hear, only feel in her throat.
His face twisted in a grimace. “I owe you far more, child.”
Then he left Abigail to Anna’s ministrations.
The trip to the MacDonald holding took two days.
Abigail had spent both days in pain and avoiding looking at or responding to her mother in any way.
Ever since her fall from grace, she had hoped to again earn her mother’s approval and love. She now knew that to be more a fairy tale than any of those Anna had told her and Emily about werewolves in the Scottish Highlands. It would never happen.
And she would not care.
Her mother did not love her, but Emily still did. Her stepsister had never stopped caring for her. Abigail intended to be reunited with the only family that mattered to her. Somehow. Some way. She would see Emily again, and Abigail would tell the other woman how important her devotion had been.
She now knew Emily had truly saved her life, in more ways than one.
It was easy to ignore her mother in the journey as fear and pain vied for Abigail’s attention. She could not think about her future without great trepidation mitigated only somewhat by her hope.
And while Anna had treated Abigail’s injuries with an herbal mixture better than anything the leech could have achieved, no herbs could remove all the discomfort from Abigail’s many bruises. The maid Sir Reuben had insisted travel with her had helped Abigail apply the concoction each night and morning, leaving her smelling strongly of rosemary and witch hazel. Not an unpleasant fragrance, she consoled herself.
It was late afternoon of the second day when they reached the MacDonald keep. It was nothing like her stepfather’s home. There was no moat, no tower, just a house about four times the size of the surrounding cottages and a timber fence that would burn all too easily in battle.
Nevertheless, the people seemed unworried by the presence of an English baron and his complement of soldiers.
The MacDonald plaid was a deep red-orange and forest green. Abigail searched for a different set of colors, trying to identify her intended husband or one of his people. Only there was no other clan present. No other plaid than the one they had first seen after coming onto MacDonald land.
An old man and two burly but young warriors approached their entourage as Sir Reuben pulled his horse to a halt outside the keep. “Welcome to MacDonald’s holding,” he said in careful English.
Abigail slipped into her well-practiced method of reading lips, watching first the Scotsman speak and then Sir Reuben.
Sir Reuben swung down off his horse, followed by the most senior soldier and two others. The rest remained mounted. “You are the laird?”
“Nay, he is out hunting with the Sinclair.”
Her stepfather was clearly taken aback. “My daughter’s intended is out hunting?”
“Aye.”
“And your laird went with him?”
From the look on the old man’s face, something in the way Sir Reuben spoke alarmed him. “Ye dinna gainsay the Sinclair, my lord.”
“Perhaps he wanted to provide the meat for the wedding feast himself?” Sir Reuben asked.
The old man nodded his head quickly. “Aye, I’m sure that was it.”
“I see.” Sir Reuben looked around him. “Your laird has made arrangements for our comfort?”
The MacDonald man pointed to a cottage separate from the others and near another building. “Aye. The cottage yonder, near the chapel, is clean and ready for your occupation.”
“And my soldiers?”
“Are they not accustomed to sleeping outside like a Scottish warrior?” the old man asked, a wicked twinkle in his eye.
Abigail found herself almost smiling.
“We have tents for them to pitch around the cottage. I can provide for all my people in a civilized fashion,” her stepfather said with what she was sure was arrogance. It was in his eyes and the way he held himself.
Sir Reuben was a powerful lord, which was why his only sanction upon sending a miserly number of soldiers as tithe to his king when he had a bevy of them had been the loss of a daughter.
Abigail knew her mother was speaking as well because the old man’s eyes strayed in Sybil’s direction a couple of times, though he did not seem to ever speak directly to her as he and her stepfather worked out arrangements for where to pitch the soldier’s tents.
For once Abigail was grateful she could not hear
. She could not be forced to listen to her mother’s words and she chose not to watch Sybil’s lips.
The decision to pitch the tents for the English soldiers on the west side of the cottage, farthest from the keep, made little difference to Abigail.
She wanted a chance to see the man she had been commanded to wed, the laird she had to deceive about her affliction.
At least until they reached the Highlands.
Later that night, Abigail willed herself to sleep as she lay in the small bed in the corner of the cottage. Only it was to no avail. Her mind was whirling with questions and possibilities.
Why had her intended groom been out hunting when she and her family had arrived? Surely he had known the date of their arrival; it had been dictated by him through his king to hers.
He had yet to return to the keep, having missed the evening meal.
Was this his way of showing his unhappiness with the prospect of marriage to an Englishwoman? Was he delivering a slap at her stepfather’s consequence? His dislike of the English was no secret, but he had agreed to the marriage and all the stipulations surrounding it.
Stipulations that scared the tiredness right out of Abigail and filled her with worry on top of the apprehensions already plaguing her. His king had required the marriage be consummated before they left the Lowlands. Abigail had no idea why Scotland’s sovereign would demand such a thing, but the prospect leant additional discomfort to a situation that already had the power to terrify her completely.
None of those fears were soothed in any way by the fact that she had yet to even see her groom from a distance.
When she looked into his eyes, would she see cruelty? Hatred to rival her mother’s? Would he recognize her affliction despite her best efforts to hide it?
Tonight’s dinner had been a trial unlike anything she had experienced since first losing her hearing. It was hard enough to keep track of several people speaking at once; the unfamiliar surroundings only made it worse. She had received help from an unexpected source. Sir Reuben had done his best to help Abigail maintain the threads of the conversations happening around her.
None of the MacDonald clan spoke directly to her. She got the impression this was out of respect to the Sinclair laird.
Even without being directly involved in discussions, she had made several mistakes because she had not realized she was being spoken to.
The old warrior who had filled the laird’s position as host had believed Abigail’s faulty Gaelic to be the cause, when in fact, Abigail understood and spoke Gaelic quite well now. As convenient as the excuse, how long would it serve to cover the fact she simply didn’t always know when someone was speaking to her?
And what would Talorc, Laird of the Sinclair, do when he found out?
Emily had made it clear in her first letter that she and Talorc had not suited at all. Abigail’s older sister had written that the man hated the English. He had not wanted what he called a Sassenach bride under any circumstances. He must be seething with fury over the second order from his king to that effect.
Would that work in Abigail’s favor or against her? Certainly, if she wanted a powerful Scottish laird for a husband as her younger sister Jolenta seemed to, the knowledge that Talorc of the Sinclairs despised the English would wound her hopes. But Abigail had given up hope of ever having her own family when her blood kin rejected her because of her affliction. No man, be he Scottish barbarian or English knight would want a wife cursed by deafness.
The possibility that Talorc’s dislike of the English, and naturally subsequent desire to be rid of her, would be great enough for him to see her deception as a gift rather than an offense over which he would declare war, was her one slim hope.
Sir Reuben seemed unconcerned with the idea Laird Sinclair might declare war over such a thing. However, from what Emily had said in her letters regarding the pride of the Highlanders and Talorc especially, Abigail had her doubts. In addition, if Talorc was as hard a man as Emily had implied in her letters, he might very well exact a personal revenge from a deceptive bride.
The prospect terrified her almost as much as her first lucid moments after her world had gone silent.
At this moment, there were altogether too many prospects to cause her concern, and Abigail envied her maid the oblivion of sleep. She craved escape from her thoughts, but not enough to wish she’d joined her parents. Sybil and Sir Reuben were in the keep, along with the soldiers on duty and those that had not chosen an early night.
Abigail had not been invited to join them, and she had not requested to do so. Supper had been difficult enough with her struggle to read unfamiliar lips and features. Added to that had been the nerve-racking condition of being the center of all eyes, a condition she had no experience with.
Abigail was used to being ignored among her stepfather’s people. Only here, she was the future wife of a powerful Highland laird obviously respected and admired by the MacDonald clan—and perhaps even a little feared. Everyone had stared at her, and she felt their judgment even if she could not hear the whispers going on around her.
Sadly, none of her experiences since reaching Scotland had served to quiet the anxiety screaming inside her soundless world.
The dirt floor of the cottage vibrated. Emily had taught Abigail that she had to use her other senses to compensate for her lack of hearing. Otherwise, she would be found out and become an outcast even in her family’s own keep. She had learned to “hear” a great deal through what she felt around her. Dropping her hand to the floor, she let it settle against the compacted earth. The vibrations were in no way subtle and indicated a party of warhorses riding past the cottage. Her soon-to-be groom and the MacDonald laird must have returned.
They had certainly taken their time about it. It was full dark, and the two lairds had missed the evening meal by more than two hours.
Careful not to wake the sleeping maid, Abigail climbed from her bed. She could not miss this opportunity to get a glimpse of the Sinclair laird.
She snuck quietly to the cottage window facing the front, but when she pulled back the covering, she saw no horses or men. She hurried across the one-room dwelling and pulled the covering aside on the window facing the chapel.
The nearly full, waxing moon illuminated a large group of warriors. Nine men in all. Five were on huge warhorses and held themselves with greater confidence than the others. Or perhaps it was simply that they exuded dominance over everything around them. They were all big men, though two were near giants. They all wore a plaid different from the MacDonalds, though the colors were hard to distinguish at this distance in the moonlight.
The Sinclairs. They had to be.
The four remaining men wore the MacDonald plaid. Watching the interplay among them, it was easy to determine who the MacDonald laird was.
The Sinclairs were not so uncomplicated to read. The other four warriors, including the MacDonald laird, deferred to all five of the Sinclairs in subtle but unmistakable ways. At least they were evident to a woman who had spent as much time deciphering the language of body movement as Abigail.
And while it was clear someone among the Sinclairs had given the order to dismount, she could not tell who had done it. The giant with hair the color of a raven that brushed his shoulders, or the one with light-colored hair that glowed almost silver in the moonlight?
Neither wore a shirt with their plaid, which she had been told was common when a Scottish warrior hunted or fought in battle. At least among the Highlanders. The MacDonalds all wore shirts, even if they still displayed their naked legs with a total lack of civilized modesty. Abigail had spent so much time blushing over that Gaelic wardrobe idiosyncrasy, she was sure her cheeks were tinged a permanent pink.
The raven-haired man had an intricate, dark tattoo circling his left bicep. She had heard there were tribes in the Highlands that practiced the barbaric custom of permanently marking their skin with blue ink, but it had never occurred to her that the Sinclairs might be one of them. The dark swirls
moved as the warrior’s muscles bunched when he swung down from his horse.
She experienced the most perplexing desire to follow those lines of dark ink with her fingertips. The urge shocked her to her very core. Abigail was far more innocent than her younger sister, Jolenta, who had spent several months every year for the last four at Court. Jolenta had boasted of flirting with numerous men in attendance.
She had told Abigail that she had gone so far as to allow a few of those men to kiss her. When Abigail had expressed dismay at such wanton behavior, Jolenta had merely laughed.
Since her sister was rarely willing to spend time in Abigail’s company, she did not plague Jolenta about it further. Only she had wondered if her sister’s forward ways had been the reason Jolenta had returned early this year from Court.
Unlike her wayward, if courageous sister, Abigail rarely spoke to the opposite sex. She had never touched a man or even wanted to. She had been touched for the first time in memory by a male when her stepfather carried her to her chambers after her mother beat her.
The truth was she hardly ever made physical contact with anyone.
To want to reach out and caress someone was a feeling so new and disturbing it benumbed her thoughts as well as her person for several seconds.
As she grappled with this unexpected sensation, the raven-haired man turned so she could see his face. Abigail’s breath seized in her chest. A day’s growth of beard outlined a strong jaw and firmly set lips on the most handsome face she had ever seen.
And the most frightening.
Because she knew with inexplicable certainty that this was the man she was to marry. Power surrounded him like a mist that would never dissipate. No one but he could be leader of the Sinclairs.
He turned his head, and she would have sworn he looked directly at her, if it were possible. It was as if he knew she was watching him, but that could not be. The urge to duck fully behind the curtain was strong, but she was still feeling the paralyzing effects of her desire to touch him. And surely he could not see her in the dark of the cottage?