by Lucy Monroe
“Had I worried about the like as a younger woman, many of my hardest choices would not have been forced on me.” She pressed against his chest to push him away, knowing the additional touch was risky.
And indeed, her hands wanted to stay pressed against hot skin over strong muscle and a plaid worn to softness. She could not give in to such weakness and forced her hands to drop to her sides again when her attempt had no effect on the big man.
Instead, Caelis reacted to her attempt to free herself by pulling her closer. “I can explain.”
“Explain?” At first she could not comprehend what he could be talking about.
And then it came to her. He thought he could explain six years ago? There was no explanation for that kind of betrayal.
She shook her head vehemently, her emotion threatening to overwhelm the calm she clung to. “Nothing you say could ever undo what you have done, what I have had to endure these past six years.”
A spasm of regret crossed his face, but it was quickly followed by the obstinacy she’d once found comforting. “You will still listen to what I have to say.”
“I’ll do that,” she said with bite. “Exactly when the Highland clans bow to England’s king.”
She could not imagine in her worst nightmares that day coming and neither could Caelis, she knew.
He scowled when he got her meaning. “Mo toilichte,” he whispered as if the words themselves had the power to heal the breach between them. “There were things you did not know, could not know then.”
“I’m no more your happiness, than you are my warrior.” She shook her head, trying again to step away. “Please. Let me go.”
Perhaps he realized the cost to her to plead with him, or mayhap he simply decided he had held her long enough, but hands so large they covered her shoulders completely dropped and she was able to step away.
“Whatever talking you seek to do will have to wait until the English lady has spoken to our laird.” Niall’s tone left no room for argument.
Surprisingly, Caelis did not make one. He simply nodded. “I will accompany you to the keep.”
The reminder that their discussion had been overheard by others, many of whom could not fail to note the resemblance between Caelis and his near–mirror image son, brought the heat of embarrassment crawling up Shona’s neck. She should be used to it by now, but the sting of humiliation still pricked deeply.
Caelis looked down at her, dark brows drawn down over his blue gaze. “Are you well?”
To answer truthfully was not a luxury Shona could afford, so she merely nodded and indicated they should begin their trek to the keep.
Niall did exactly that, leading them all onto the narrow path, her son’s hand still firmly held in his big warrior’s paw. So tired and stiff from day after day of riding that her limbs did not want to work, Shona trudged behind.
Shona stumbled. Her exhaustion—mixed with the near dreamlike state of the fact she’d come face-to-face with Caelis again after six years and all that had come between—making her clumsy.
Audrey took one hand, giving Shona a reassuring smile, and Thomas offered his arm.
The growl from behind them should have made the young Englishman drop his proffered arm. It certainly sent chills down Shona’s spine.
But Thomas just scowled over her shoulder at the big warrior who had taken up position behind them. “I know what you are, and you forfeited your rights to her. I will offer my friend assistance and if she will take it, I will give it to her.”
Shona felt a prick of humiliation to realize her friends did indeed realize this man was the father to her eldest child, not the man she had called husband for a little over five years.
She thought Thomas’s wording odd, saying what instead of who to Caelis, but she did not mention it. Would prefer not to acknowledge the mortifying truth at all.
Mayhap he considered Caelis every bit the monster the baron’s son was. For six years, Shona had certainly believed that—or at least convinced herself she did.
Regardless of her weakness and past indiscretions, Thomas’s youthful eagerness and firm loyalty touched her.
“Thank you, Thomas.” She reached for his arm.
But Caelis’s hand was there, his body pushing the younger man aside just as he’d done to Niall earlier. “He will not thank you if I have to challenge him over rights.”
Thomas blanched. For the second time in mere minutes, Shona was filled with fury by this man. “You’ll do no such thing! You have no rights to me. You repudiated them when you abandoned me six years ago.”
“’Twas your family that left the clan, not me.”
She stopped, pulling poor Audrey to a halt beside her so Shona could glare up at the man. “Do not even attempt to pretend it was the other way around. I listened to your lies once, but they will never dictate my life again.”
He winced as if her words had wounded, though she knew it was not possible. “Make no mistake: whatever my errors in the past, I will challenge this young one if he tries again to come between me and my mate.”
He spoke of her like an animal, and she wished they were. Animals did not abandon those they chose as mates, but this very human man had undeniably deserted her.
If Caelis had cared at all, he would not have disavowed Shona before her own father.
Choking emotion surged up inside her at the memory and she felt the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. She blinked furiously, adamant they would not fall.
Caelis swore, looking pained, if she could believe it.
She wouldn’t. “I’m not your mate. I’m not your wife. I’m not even your former betrothed.” The banns had never been called. “I am nothing to you.”
Without another word, he took her hand and slid a far too gentle hand for a man who kept threatening others around her waist. She was too tired to continue fighting his help.
He took so much of her weight she was barely walking as they continued up the path.
After several steps in silence, he said quietly, “In that, Shona, you are very wrong. You are not only the mother of my child, you are mine. And I will convince you of that truth. In time.”
“I will never be yours again!” Where the energy or will to shout came from, she could not say, but her voice carried with it all the desperation and conviction she felt in that moment.
Marjory turned back to look at Shona from where she walked hand in hand with Guaire. “Why are you yelling at the nice man, Mummy?”
Nice man? Had her daughter lost her mind? Marjory didn’t like strangers and now she’d decided Caelis, the man who said he would have killed her father if he wasn’t already dead, was a nice man.
Perhaps Shona’s sanity wasn’t as intact as she’d convinced herself. Mayhap this was all some truly bizarre nightmare and she would wake soon.
She could but hope.
Chapter 3
Sacred mating supersedes all claims among the Chrechte, including that of pack leader, celi di and parental authority.
—CHRECHTE SACRED LAW, FROM THE ORAL TRADITIONS
Considering the grandeur of the keep’s size and strength of defense, the actual keep itself was rather sparse. None of the ostentation Shona’s dead husband, the Baron of Heronshire, had been so fond of in evidence at all.
The great hall could easily accommodate a large gathering of the clan, but the silk wall hangings so common in an English baron’s home to denote his wealth and stature were conspicuously absent. No superfluous pieces of furniture graced the cavernous room, either.
The long tables and benches that served the laird and his warriors were plain wood; no special carvings, even on his chair.
Though there was no doubt where the laird and his lady sat, for those two were the only actual chairs at the tables in the hall. There was a grouping of other chairs near the main fireplace, though, which had cushions in the clan’s colors. She had no doubt, however, that the cushions were for comfort rather than show.
The lovely blond woman h
ad a parchment of accounts in front of her that Guaire frowned at upon entrance. “I thought we were going to go over those together, Lady Abigail.”
“I’d hoped to save you some time, Guaire.”
The man looked pained and Niall laughed. “You know he’ll feel the need to go over them himself regardless.”
The Lady Abigail smiled, mischief glinting in her light brown eyes. “You think so?”
“You do like to tease, my lady,” Guaire said with some exasperation.
“Mama, you shouldn’t tease,” a young boy said from beside the laird. “You get ever so disappointed when I tease Drost.”
“That is because you have not yet learned when not to push so far that your brother resorts to tears or violence, Brian,” Abigail said with a musical laugh.
Shona had heard rumors that the Sinclair lady was afflicted with deafness, but this woman appeared to hear as well as the next person.
“I don’t like him to tease me even if he learns that,” the boy who must be Drost said from the other side of his father.
Brian seemed keenly interested in the sword his father was sharpening, while his brother, who looked too much like him not to be his twin, carefully drew with charcoal on a clay tablet.
Eadan marched up to the table and pointed to himself. “I am Eadan. You are Drost.” He pointed to the boy handing his father a cloth for wiping the oil from his sword’s blade. “And you are Brian.” He pointed at the other child. “I heard you say so.”
Her son was so intelligent, Shona often marveled at how quickly he grasped the world around him.
Both boys looked impressed. Drost observed neutrally, “You aren’t wearing clan colors.”
“Your clothes are funny,” Brian added with a clear opinion.
Abigail gasped and looked ready to jump in, but Eadan didn’t give her the chance.
“They’re English,” he said with a shrug.
Brian frowned. “We don’t like the English.”
This time, Abigail jumped to her feet and spun to face her son, a fierce expression on her face. “I am English.”
“You used to be English,” the laird, who had remained silent thus far, inserted. “However.” He fixed his son with a stare that would have intimidated Shona now, much less when she’d been a small child. “You know very well we do not hate all the English.”
Abigail’s huff of offense just made her husband shrug, as if to say that was the best she could hope for. It was clearly an old argument.
“You’ll like me, and my sister,” Eadan said with false bravado, pulling Marjory to his side.
The tremble of worry in Eadan’s voice made Shona want to wrap him in her arms to take that fear away, and Marjory, too. Who stood with wide eyes and thumb tucked firmly between her teeth.
But Shona knew this was only the beginning of what they might face in their flight to safety.
The Highlanders were not known for their kind disposition to the English.
Taking a fortifying breath, she curtsied to the laird and his lady. “I am Lady Shona, widow to the second Baron of Heronshire. This is my companion and friend Audrey and her brother, Thomas.”
She deliberately left their father’s name unspoken as neither wished to acknowledge a man who had sold them into service though his own wealth clearly precluded the need to do so.
She indicated her children. “My son has seen fit to introduce himself, and this is my daughter, Marjory.”
Shona straightened, doing her best to hide both fatigue and trepidation, unsurprised when Caelis pulled her back to his side.
He had kept hold of Shona through the trek up the path and into the great hall. He’d managed to maintain his nearness even as they approached the Sinclair laird, clearly intent on giving every sort of wrong impression.
Before either the laird or his lady could reply, Niall said to Eadan with far more assurance than her son had shown, “Of course they will like you, laddie. You’re a good Scottish boy at heart.”
Shona didn’t begrudge the Highland warrior his lack of manners, not when it had been in aid of comforting her child.
“I am?” Eadan asked.
The laird had been looking with thoughtful interest at her son. The Sinclair’s gaze slid to Caelis, then back to Eadan again. When the light of understanding dawned, Shona could not miss it.
Again, she felt the heat of embarrassment steal into her cheeks. She had never thought to be faced with Caelis again, much less have their past exposed so inexorably to anyone who cared to look at him in the same vicinity as his son.
“You are, just as your mother is a fine Scottish lass,” Guaire answered for Niall.
Shona sent him a look of gratitude, which he replied to with a warm smile. No condemnation there; not like in her own parents’ eyes until first her mother had breathed her last breath two years past, and then Shona’s father so recently.
Neither had ever forgiven Shona for shaming them the way she’d done. At least they had not taken their unhappiness with her out on Eadan. His grandparents had loved him well.
Though both had made it clear they thought the baron’s willingness to raise Eadan as his own son fully compensated for any deficiencies he showed as a father.
Eadan nodded, as if settling something inside his head as he often did. “That’s all right then. I’m Scottish. We can be friends.”
“You don’t speak like the English,” Drost said in the language of his mother’s people, perhaps to prove that like Eadan…he could.
“Mum says me and Marjory must speak both the language of the Gael and Angle. My lord did not like it, but even when he beat Mum, she would not stop talking to us in the way of her people.”
Caelis growled, his anger pulsing around them like thunder in the sky. “He beat you?”
“It is of no consequence.” Her husband had not been the worst of men, but neither had he been the best.
He’d only struck her a few times, and had always been kinder after. Not that he ever apologized.
But then, he hadn’t thought he was in the wrong.
“It is a good thing your mother has returned to the Highlands then. No one will be allowed to beat her here.” The laird’s voice carried absolute authority.
“And me?” Eadan asked with a frown and a telling glance down at his sister. “Will anyone be allowed to beat me?”
“The baron beat you?” Niall asked, his tone even, but the expression in his eyes chilling.
Eadan looked away. “One time, but Mum screamed at him. She said she’d gut him in his sleep if he did it again. I wasn’t supposed to hear. They thought I was sleeping on my stomach, on account of my back and butt hurt too much. But I couldn’t sleep. I was crying quiet like.”
“And he did not take the switch to you again?” Guaire prompted.
Shona just wanted the earth to open and swallow her whole. If the cost to keep her son safe was her pride, she would gladly pay it, but that did not mean each strip at the flesh of her spirit did not hurt.
“No. He blustered some. Said she could not speak to him that way, but he never done it again. He threatened once, but I told him my real father was a giant warrior and he would come and kill my lord dead. He believed me.”
“Your real father?” Laird Sinclair asked carefully.
Suddenly Eadan went silent, sending a stricken look to his mother.
She stared at him, completely at a loss as to what to say. She’d never told Eadan that Henry wasn’t his father, though she’d been tempted a time or two.
Even Henry’s odious son, Percival, had not known that Eadan was not his blood kin. He might have guessed as Eadan grew older and the only resemblance between him and the baron had been the dark color of hair the older man was reputed to have when he was younger.
Caelis finally released her.
She refused to acknowledge the abandonment that washed over her, but in that moment she felt more vulnerable than she had since leaving Scotland pregnant by a man who had categorically rejec
ted her.
Audrey stepped forward to slide her arm around Shona’s waist. “All will be well, dear friend.”
Shona simply shook her head. How could it possibly? The greatest fear she had not even prepared herself to feel now stared her in the face with the ferocity of a ravening beast.
In her desperation to save her son’s life, Shona now risked losing him to the father who had denied even the chance of his conception.
The same man who even now dropped to one knee in front of their son. “No one will be angry at you for the truth, do you ken me, Eadan?”
The boy nodded.
“You said real father. Why is that?”
“You know,” Eadan said in a fierce whisper they all heard.
Cold chills washed over Shona as her breath turned shallow. Her son knew Caelis was his father? How could he?
It was impossible. Not only untenable to believe her son knew Henry had not been his father, but that Eadan would have somehow divined that Caelis was, thoroughly flummoxed her.
“Aye. I do know,” Caelis said, exhibiting none of the disbelief plaguing Shona, wonder and warm affection shining in his blue eyes. “And my heart rejoices in this knowledge, but I am needing you to tell me how you came to know of it.”
“Oh. Do you like me, then? You think I’m a fine Scottish laddie?”
The broken sound that came out of Shona made Caelis tense, but he did not turn away from their son. “I do,” he promised with absolute solemnity.
“You want a little boy. In the dreams you cry for me, wishing I was with you.”
“Dreams?”
“The real dreams. The ones that come true.”
“Do you have other real dreams?” Caelis asked.
Eadan looked to Shona, asking for permission to speak.
She nodded her head. She knew about the real dreams. Or thought she did, but he’d only ever told her about two. And Shona had always wondered if the dreams had been more wishful thinking and imagination on her son’s part than anything else.
She’d always considered his dream about her daughter and the pond fortuitous, not prophetic.