by Lucy Monroe
Audrey’s heart ached for her friend even as her brain spun with ways to help the baroness.
Shona nodded her head vigorously while the wolf frowned his displeasure.
Though Audrey had hoped the Faol warrior would wait to make his claim, she was not entirely surprised he had moved to establish his place in Shona’s life so quickly.
According to Audrey’s dear departed mother, the mating bond for a Chrechte was so strong as to be undeniable. Otherwise her mum had said, she would never would have allowed herself to become a married man’s lehman.
Her position as such had gone against the teaching of their race, or so Audrey’s mother had insisted. She’d shared little enough of them with her children. Both Audrey and Thomas were almost wholly ignorant of their people’s ways.
Audrey’s current stupefaction lay in the fact Shona had welcomed this man…any man, really…into her bed. A human, she was not driven by the instincts of an animal sharing her nature toward their mate.
At least, that was what Audrey had always believed. She’d never noted her father being particularly weak with longing toward her mother or abundant in caring toward the children the English Chrechte had born him.
“Water can be brought to your chamber,” Caelis said grumpily to Shona, ignoring Audrey altogether.
“Nay,” Audrey immediately denied, refusing to be intimidated by the huge Chrechte. She would protect Shona’s reputation even if the baroness was not currently up to the task herself. “My mistress will have a bath in the loch.”
Shona could wash off the scent of this man’s seed at the very least. Though it was unlikely she would be able to remove it entirely.
The humans would be unaware of Shona’s nighttime visitor, but the wolves would know Caelis had staked some sort of claim.
Audrey smiled at Shona, trying to give the other woman a message of her own unwavering support. “Lady Abigail told me of one nearby that is used by the clanswomen.”
She was not worried about finding the loch. Her wolf’s senses would lead Audrey to the water easily enough.
“You aren’t bathing outside these walls with naught but this Englishwoman to guard you,” Caelis pronounced.
Though the wolf had not left his mark on Shona’s neck, his air of possession was as strong as if he had.
Shona shrugged, doing her best to hide her discomfort at climbing from the bed as naked as the day she’d come into this world, but climb from it she did and Audrey could have cheered. “Then you may accompany us as our protector.”
Audrey frowned. She was not sure that was a good idea at all.
The warrior opened his mouth to argue and then shut it again without uttering a word. Maybe he realized what an easy victory he had just won from the stubborn Shona.
Audrey was not so sanguine. “We traveled all the way from England without need of your guard. Your presence is hardly needed for our morning constitutional in the Sinclair’s loch.”
“You would risk your lady’s safety?” he asked, addressing Audrey for the first time.
“There is no risk.”
“You are naïve if you believe that.”
She’d been accused of such more than once. It never made her smile. “I am not so naïve as to believe you have her best interests at heart.”
“That is not your judgment to make.”
“You think not?”
“Enough.” Shona had pulled on her shift and a wrapper, the one Lady Abigail had offered the day before.
Audrey had been surprised Shona had decided to dress the night before instead of using it. Though maybe she had not seen it?
“I have already told Caelis he can accompany us as guard, Audrey. I will expect Thomas to as well. You know that had I a choice these past sennights, I would not have left my children’s protection to our small band.”
Audrey could not deny it and guilt assailed her. “I know it.”
Caelis waved at Audrey imperiously. “Wait in the hall for us to join you.”
“I will not.” He may have compromised the other woman’s virtue beyond redemption, but no further damage would be done to Shona’s reputation or innocence this morn.
“Do not speak to her that way,” Shona said sharply before either Audrey or Caelis could talk further. “She is my friend, not my servant and if you expect to be in our company you will treat Audrey with the respect due her.”
Shock upon shock, the grouchy warrior inclined his head toward Audrey. “Pardon my offense. Will you please wait in the hall?”
“No.”
He glared.
She crossed her arms and frowned right back.
“I am not going to ravish her…again.” The devilment in his eyes said more was coming. “At least, not at this moment.”
The loud sound of a hard smack against flesh came only a second before his wince of pain. He looked over his shoulder at Shona. “What was that for?”
Her dear sweet Shona, who had not a violent bone in her delicate human body, or so Audrey had always thought—her one dire threat to the dead baron aside—hauled back and punched Caelis right in the jaw. “I am no doxy to be spoken about thus. If your words were true last night, then I am something of far greater import to you. Don’t you ever make light of the privileges I’ve given you against my better judgment. You’ve done that once and near destroyed my life and that of our son in the bargain. I’ll not stand for it again. Do you hear me?”
“I believe Sir Percival has heard you clear back in England,” Thomas said from the doorway, Marjory and Eadan standing by his side watching the exchange with wide-eyed startlement.
“Mama, you hit the nice man. It’s not nice to hit. You said so,” Marjory censured her mother.
Another time, Audrey would have found the exchange diverting. At present, she worried for what Shona might say in response.
Shona, clearly beyond reason or caution gave such a venomous glare to the warrior, Caelis should be very glad there were no such thing as snake shifters. “He is not a nice man. He is an arrogant, tell-all, useless MacLeod soldier!”
Marjory and Eadan stared at their mother as if she had grown enough heads to become the Hydra of mythology. Audrey did not blame them. They had never seen their mother upset like this.
Not even when she was burying her father and terrified for the very life of her son.
Caelis had been slightly amused through it all, including the surprisingly well placed hit to his jaw, but when Shona called him useless, he winced, his expression turning so bleak Audrey almost pitied him.
“Mama!” Marjory remonstrated, regaining her sense and showing none of her usual timidity.
Though admittedly that side of her nature rarely ruled between Marjory and her mother, the child knowing without doubt how very much the former Scotswoman adored her.
Shona spun to face Marjory. “Why do you think he’s so nice?” she asked with undisguised bewilderment.
Marjory shrugged. She pulled away from Thomas to cross the room and stand near Caelis, who sat on the bed, the lower half of his body covered by the bedding.
The child took the big warrior’s hand with her tiny one. “I don’t know, Mama. But I know it. He’s nice. Not like Percy. You should not hit him.”
Shona’s eyes shown with wetness, but she conjured a smile for her daughter. “I am glad you find him so. Perhaps one day your mama will as well.”
“You have to, Mum.” The desperation in Eadan’s tone was hard to hear. “Or we can’t be a family.”
The hopeless expression that crossed Shona’s features said she wasn’t as certain of that fact as her son was. For her part, Audrey wasn’t either.
If Caelis pressed the matter, Shona would have little to say about it. Particularly after she had allowed him into her bed again.
Audrey shook her head at her friend’s predicament. She knew not how to fix it. “Come, we will all bathe in the loch.”
“Do we have to?” Eadan and Thomas both asked at the same time.
/> Audrey felt a much-welcomed laugh bubble up inside of her. Her brother was still such a youth at times.
Shona answered for her with a firm, “Yes.”
Caelis went to stand and Shona moved with speed Audrey had not known humans capable. “What are you doing?” Shona demanded.
“Coming to the lake with you.”
“You cannot rise naked from the bed in front of Audrey and the children.” Presumably Shona left Thomas off the list because modesty between warriors was nearly nonexistent.
Particularly among the Highlanders, where those of a more barbaric disposition still went into battle with nothing more than the paints of war marking their faces and bodies.
“Why not? You did,” he pointed out in a reasonable tone that Audrey did not believe for a second.
He was not daft, no matter how he might pretend.
“That is different.”
“Aye, but when I asked her to leave, you became very angry with me.”
“You didn’t ask, you ordered.”
He shrugged, showing that to him they were one and the same.
“I do not remember you being such an annoying man.”
“That is to be expected. Six years ago, you did not consider me useless, either.”
Chapter 8
Listen to your beast’s instincts. It will not lead you astray like the words of a wily man.
—FAOL PROVERB
It was Shona’s turn to wince, though Audrey was happy to see the baroness made no apology for her earlier words.
She simply grabbed his plaid from where it had been tossed on the floor and threw it at Caelis. “Cover yourself decently.”
“Mum?”
“Yes, Eadan?” Shona responded, sounding harried.
“You do not believe Da is a nice man? Truly?”
Shona stopped her agitated picking up of clothing around the room. She’d managed to don her shift and the borrowed wrapper before the children and Thomas’s arrival, but the rest of her dress, to be donned after they bathed, was in her arms.
Shona looked at her son, clearly wishing for a way out of answering his question honestly. “There was a time I thought he was very kind.”
“But not now?” Eadan pressed.
“He has proven to be ruthless on an important occasion.”
Which was no doubt how Shona had ended up pregnant and alone in England, Audrey thought.
“Sometimes a man has to be ruthless for the sake of his family,” Eadan said, quoting his recently deceased grandfather.
Audrey knew that Shona was not overfond of that particular sentiment, though she rarely gainsaid her father on anything.
“In this case, it was for his own sake and not that of his family. We were left to fend for ourselves,” Shona said with grudging honesty.
The honesty did not surprise Audrey. Despite protecting her children from the trials of the world surrounding them as much as she was able, Shona did not make it a habit to lie to either Eadan or Marjory.
Audrey could not understand the flash of triumph in Caelis eyes until he said, “So you admit you are my family,” as he buckled the leather kirtle holding his kilt into place.
Instead of focusing on the fact that Shona so evidently did not trust him, he claimed victory in her wording. Audrey could see now that Shona would have to be most cautious in her dealings with this wily Faol.
Clearly chagrined, Shona deliberately turned away from Caelis, facing her son fully. “You’ve had many dreams about him, you said.”
“Yes, Mum.”
“And in your dreams, what kind of man was he?”
That was the Shona Audrey knew and admired so. A woman who respected her children even when others said the same should be rarely seen and never heard.
“He is a good man in my dreams, Mum. He watches over us and protects us from Percival and other bad men who would do us harm.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
Eadan nodded. “I think he’s sorry, Mum. For whatever he did before.”
Shona’s features hardened. “Time will tell, Eadan.”
“Grandda used to say that, too.”
“Aye, he did.” Grief washed over the baroness’s features briefly. “He was a good man.”
Eadan nodded, though he did not say anything more. He’d loved his grandfather, but even the young boy had noted how the old man had treated his grandchildren much differently than his only daughter.
Shona’s father’s love for her had been tempered by his disappointment in her the entire time Audrey knew the stubborn Scot.
“You didn’t tell your mother about your dreams,” Audrey said, to take both the boy and the woman’s minds away from where they now dwelled.
Eadan shrugged. “She didn’t believe in them.”
“I am sorry.” Shona cast a sidelong glance at the warrior who had come to stand much too close to her for propriety’s sake. “I have come to realize there are many things I believed impossible that are, in fact, truth.”
Had Caelis told Shona of his Faol nature? Audrey didn’t think so, not the way Shona responded the same as ever to her and Thomas. Besides, wouldn’t the wolf wait until he was sure of the human woman’s allegiance before risking exposure?
Having grown up without a pack, there was much about the Chrechte way of life that Audrey and Thomas did not know, but one thing their mother had been most adamant about.
To tell their secret was to betray all their brethren as well as themselves.
* * *
On the way to the loch, Eadan yelled excitedly. “Look! An eagle.”
Caelis’s gaze flicked upward and a scowl came over his features. Then he did something entirely unexpected for such a serious warrior.
He yelled at the eagle as if scolding a naughty child. “Get you gone!”
Even more amazingly, the eagle screeched as if in defiant response. Then the bird swooped down from the sky, much to both Marjory’s and Eadan’s delight, the tip of one majestic wing brushing the top of Audrey’s head before the noble bird soared back to its position high in the sky above them.
Shona’s friend looked dazed. “What a beautiful bird.”
“I’m sure he would be pleased to hear you say so,” Caelis said with a snort.
Shona could not understand her warrior’s attitude.
Neither, apparently, could Audrey, who shook her head. “Do not be daft. Even a regal bird like that one does not have the reason to appreciate my admiration.”
“You would be surprised,” Caelis replied cryptically.
The eagle followed them to the water, taking up a circular pattern in the sky above the loch.
“You’d best keep your eyes off my mate,” Caelis said loudly.
And rather nonsensically, to Shona’s way of thinking. “He’s a bird. I’m far more concerned about you keeping your back turned.”
Caelis opened his mouth and she just knew he was going to say something about having seen all there was to see already.
The warning look she gave him must have worked, because the shape-changer’s mouth snapped shut and he turned his back so she and Audrey could ready the children and undress for bathing.
“I’m too old to bathe with the women,” Eadan announced, stepping out of his mother’s reach.
Shona was charmed. She could not help it. She was a mother and this sign of furthering independence from her son despite the upsets in his life brought a genuine smile to her lips.
“He’s right,” Caelis agreed, adding that Eadan was of an age to begin his training.
Shona wasn’t so enamored of that particular claim, but her former beloved was being insistent. He pointed out that though Marjory was merely three years, she was already learning how to stitch.
Where he came by this knowledge, Shona could not help but wonder. Apparently the time she had spent sleeping the day before had been a productive one for him in his quest to get to know the children he was so adamant he wanted to claim.
“That is a
ridiculous comparison,” Shona argued.
Audrey added, “Thomas did not begin training until he was twelve.”
“And I was never trained completely.” Thomas’s unhappiness with the haphazard way his father had handled his upbringing before ejecting him and Audrey from his home was in the young man’s voice.
He looked at Caelis with admiration and some envy.
“You did right by my son, teaching him how to ride and to pay attention to the knowledge of the world his senses give him.”
Thomas turned bright red and the admiration transformed to full-blown hero worship.
Between the way Thomas looked at Caelis and Eadan’s attitude, there was no question that both Shona’s son and young friend were completely beguiled by the tough warrior.
Since she found his attentiveness toward Eadan and gruff kindness toward Thomas a bit beguiling herself, she could hardly complain about that fact.
She gave in about the segregated bathing without another word, helping Marjory into the water and playing swimming games with her daughter to get her used to the cold temperatures.
Her gaze slid to the men as Audrey took Marjory, so she did not miss when Caelis took Eadan up onto his shoulders. Shona’s heart squeezed in her chest.
The baron had not been a kind or demonstrative man and had no interest in helping Eadan, or Thomas for that matter, to learn anything.
Thinking about the great turns her life had taken in less than a day, she did her best to wash the scent of lovemaking from her skin while Audrey washed Marjory’s hair. Shona was no longer so certain she wanted to deny his claim on her, but she had no desire whatsoever to have their activities the night before announced to all and sundry.
Not by him, as he’d done with Audrey and not by her scent, no matter how much his wolf might want that.
“Here, use this.” Audrey handed Shona the bar of lavender soap they’d brought with them from England.
Shona took the soap, wondering if Audrey had noticed the scent of lovemaking in the bedchamber that morning. “Thank you.”
Nothing else was said while the two women washed each other’s hair. Marjory played in the shallow water nearby with a small duck Thomas had carved for her.