by Lucy Monroe
It was the same fur they had made love on six years ago. Tracing her finger over the lines of the symbols, she tried to fathom what it meant that he had this fur with him at the Sinclair holding.
The tension in the body beside her told her that Caelis had woken up.
She looked up at his long-beloved face. “This is the same fur.”
He did not ask the same as what; he simply inclined his head in agreement. “It is.”
“How?”
“I use it as my bedroll, always.”
“Even when you are going to another holding to bring back Uven’s daughter?” Though the proof was covering her with delightful warmth.
“Even then.”
“But why?”
“It is our mating fur.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Chrechte tradition is that special furs are prepared for the joining of a Faol and his mate.”
“But you did not make me your mate.”
“Oh, I did. Our bond was formed when you gave your body to me.”
“You really thought I would stay and that Uven would change his heart.”
“Aye.”
“You were stupid.”
“Aye.”
She smiled. “I love you.”
“You said so last night.”
“I thought you might like hearing it this morning, too.”
“I do.”
“Good.” Even if he did not love her, so long as he did not take her love for granted, she could find contentment with him.
She was certain of it.
She had lived with worse and could feel only gratitude her past would never be her present.
Chapter 21
Raise a Chrechte child with knowledge of the sacred laws and he will grow into a man of honor.
—CHRECHTE SACRED LAW, FROM THE ANCIENT SCROLLS
Shona was delighted to find Audrey waiting in the great hall with Thomas, the children and Vegar when she and Caelis came down to break their fast.
The daughter who had been so shy when they left England was ensconced contentedly on Vegar’s lap, talking to the rag doll Shona had made her when Marjory was a baby. She lifted the doll to Vegar and said something that Shona could not hear.
But it caused Vegar to look uncomfortable, and that brought a bit of a smile to Shona’s face. She was shocked beyond believing when the dour warrior kissed the doll on its raggedy mop of a head and pretended to feed it.
Audrey laughed lightly and Thomas said something, but Vegar did not seem annoyed.
Or as unirritated as the man had ever seemed in their brief acquaintance.
“I am glad to see our children and their Uncle Vegar getting along so well,” Caelis said with a smile in his voice.
Shona stopped in their progress toward the main table and stared up at him. “Uncle?”
“He is mate to your heart-sister. That would make him uncle, but he is also the closest I have to a brother.”
“What about Darren?” she asked, naming Caelis’s younger brother.
Sadness and anger emanated off of Caelis. “He died much like Jon did, on an assignment for Uven for which Darren had neither the experience nor training.”
“Is that when you began to question Uven’s ways?”
“I began to doubt our laird’s omniscience when you left our clan.”
Shona accepted the claim without comment, starting forward again. She noted that the warriors they passed were careful not to brush against her.
“You marked me with your scent again, didn’t you?” she asked across the mating bond.
A rich chuckle sounded in her head though his face remained impassive. “Most of these soldiers are human and have no idea you wear my scent.”
“Why are they so careful not to touch me then?”
“Because I am a formidable warrior and anyone looking at us recognizes you are mine.”
“I don’t even wear the MacLeod colors, much less a sign proclaiming me yours.” She still wore her English clothes, but Caelis walked so close, there could be no doubt they were connected in some way.
“I am all the sign these men need.”
“Arrogant,” she said aloud as they reached the table.
This time, his laughter was out loud and for some reason both the Sinclair and Vegar joined in. Thomas smiled, too, like he was holding back mirth.
She glared at them all, but turned a smile on Abigail and Audrey. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Abigail’s smile was kind. “You look well rested.”
“I am. Thank you.” She looked Audrey over critically. “You slept last night.” Shona was glad. She’d been worried her friend might lay awake in nervous anticipation of the mating ceremony to come.
“I did.” Audrey gave a look toward Vegar that was not difficult to interpret.
Audrey might well still be a virgin, but she was no longer wholly untouched. Shona was deeply grateful the experience had so obviously been a positive one.
She could almost look with favor upon the cantankerous Éan warrior because of it.
“Are you still angry with Da?” Eadan asked as Caelis helped Shona to sit before joining her on the long bench.
“No, sweeting. I am not.”
“Daddy says no puddings every night,” Marjory announced unhappily.
“You are sweet enough to do just fine without dessert every night.”
Marjory sighed, but nodded. “I likes it here better than home, anyways.”
“That is good, because this is our home now.”
“Here?” Marjory asked with a dubious look around the great hall.
Caelis leaned across the table and tugged Marjory’s braid. “Nay, mo breagha. Our home is to the south. Your mama meant Scotland.”
“Isn’t England in the south?” Eadan asked.
Marjory’s eyes narrowed. “I do not want to ride horses for days and days and days anymore.”
“The ride to the MacLeod holding is not so long as to England,” Caelis promised.
It was long enough, and he would learn that children Marjory’s age did not make a discernable distinction between a couple of days shy of a single sennight and two full weeks. Anything over a day was going to earn her disfavor.
“We are going to the island,” Eadan said to his sister. “We’ll have to ride horses for that.”
“How did you know about that?” Shona asked.
Had her son had another of his dreams?
“You said so. Our family is on the island.” Eadan looked at her as if he was worried she’d forgotten.
Shona found herself laughing. “I did say so. You are right.”
“We will leave for Balmoral Island tomorrow morn,” Caelis informed the Sinclair laird.
“We will go with you,” a big, dangerous-looking man who sat beside the laird’s daughter Ciara said.
Ciara looked at her husband with question. “I thought we were not making our monthly trip to the island until the new moon.”
“I have a mind to get to know Vegar’s English mate and the woman who would tame the MacLeod.”
“He is not laird yet,” Shona pointed out, but ’twas clear these fierce warriors saw Caelis’s place in the clan as foreordained.
“You doubt he will be?” the dark-haired warrior asked.
“Nay.”
The man nodded his approval of her agreement.
Ciara made a very unladylike sound of amusement. “Lady Heronshire, this is my husband, Eirik.”
“He is prince of the Éan,” Caelis said to Shona in her head.
Shona stood enough to give a half curtsy to the Chrechte royal. “It is an honor to meet you.”
The prince’s eyes narrowed. “There is no mockery in your scent.”
“Nor should there be.”
Eirik’s gaze flicked to Caelis. “The mating link has formed already?”
“It began six years ago,” Caelis affirmed.
Eirik’s nod was both approving and thoughtf
ul this time. “Ciara said your former laird kept you from your true mate.”
“My own idiocy and misplaced loyalty did that.”
Shona had wanted nothing more than for the man to admit his culpability, but she did not enjoy the self-recrimination in his tone in the least little bit.
Patting his thigh, she said, “We have found our way back to each other and that is what matters.”
“I think certain members of the MacLeod will see things differently.”
Confusion washed over Shona. Was the prince warning of the opposition she would face returning to her former clan as the mate of a Faol?
“He is speaking of the Chrechte among the clan. A true mate is sacred and the fact that Uven withheld you from me gives me unquestionable right to challenge him as pack leader and laird.”
Casting a sidelong glance at the man she’d promised to marry, Shona considered his words. “My return to the Highlands was fortuitous, it would seem.”
“Aye, fortuitous indeed,” Prince Eirik agreed.
Ciara nodded, her expression the peaceful one Shona identified with spiritual counselors who truly sought to bring those who followed them closer to their Creator. “It is imperative that Uven be deposed as laird over the MacLeod and we thought we had found the answer in Caelis.”
“But?” Shona prompted, having heard the hesitation in the celi di’s voice.
“While the Scottish king will not involve himself in a clan matter so long as the one challenging for right to lead is a MacLeod, garnering the support of the clan is another thing entirely. Uven’s betrayal of Caelis and the proof of that betrayal found in both you and your children will be enough to sway most.”
“Both children?” Shona asked Caelis.
“The very fact that mo breagha does not carry my blood is an affront to our bond that can be laid squarely at Uven’s door.”
“What did you say, Da?” Marjory asked in her child’s mixture of English and Gaelic.
“I said you are my daughter.”
Marjory beamed up at the big warrior. “You are my da.”
“Aye.”
“My da, too,” Eadan claimed firmly.
“Absolutely,” Shona answered at the same time as Caelis said, “Aye,” in his deep warrior’s voice.
Happy with their agreement, Eadan went back to his food. Marjory, who ate small bites provided by Vegar, continued to play with her doll, once again content to ignore the adults around her.
Audrey had turned pensive as they talked and Shona grew worried.
“Is aught wrong, dear friend?” she asked in a side whisper.
Audrey looked at Shona and then Vegar and back to Shona. “What will become of us?”
Shona did not understand the question. Did Audrey mean her and Thomas? The Sinclair had promised to train Thomas in the ways of the Chrechte and Audrey was now married to Vegar.
Sudden melancholy overcame Shona as what these realities actually meant to her. Was she to lose the rest of her family as she had lost first her mother and then more recently her father?
“Caelis,” Shona said through their mating link, not sure what she expected her mate to do to help.
But the thought of losing both Audrey and Thomas was untenable.
“We will travel to Balmoral Island with them,” Vegar said to Audrey. “Afterward, I will go with Caelis to challenge Uven. I am to be his second.”
Audrey’s expression showed as much relief as Shona felt. They were not to be separated.
* * *
Despite her earlier words on the subject, Marjory was surprisingly content to get on a horse with Caelis so they could make the journey to the sacred caves for Audrey and Vegar’s mating ceremony. Her daughter resisted riding with Shona at all, however, and made something of a production of switching between Caelis’s and Vegar’s mounts.
Both warriors were infinitely patient, making sure that Eadan felt as welcome as his younger sister. The five-year-old spent as much time with the warriors on their mounts as on his own horse. And somehow, both men remained vigilant to surrounding dangers, even though the contingent riding toward the caves was large.
Thomas accompanied them, of course, as did the laird and his entire family, even the new babe. A full company of Chrechte soldiers surrounded them, including four wearing the MacLeod colors, ensuring that Audrey’s mating ceremony would be better attended than any wedding she might have had back in England.
Pleased for her friend, Shona was nevertheless confused.
She understood Prince Eirik and Ciara coming. Apparently as Vegar’s prince and celi di of the Faol, both would play part in the ceremony.
Neither Vegar, nor Audrey, however, was a member of the Sinclair clan. While Vegar was clearly welcome in the Sinclair keep, he had not sworn fealty to its laird.
So why had the man and his family come? For the Sinclair to take his small children—Chrechte or not—from the keep, even on his own land, was to put them at risk.
Shona would have asked Audrey if she knew the reasoning behind such unexpected witnesses to her mating ceremony, but the younger woman was clearly lost in her own muddle of nerves and bemusement.
“You have worn a most perplexed expression the past hour,” Ciara noted as her mare drew alongside Shona’s.
“I have lived the past six years in England, I know, but still I cannot make sense in my mind of your family’s attendance to this mating ceremony.”
“We will also be performing a welcome-to-life ceremony for my baby sister. In ancient times, they were done for all children born of Chrechte blood, but we have lost many of our old ways. We are seeking to renew them now that our sacred stone has been returned to us.”
“Oh.” That made a great deal more sense to Shona. “Would it not be better to wait until the babe was older?”
“Possibly, but my dreams have told me that the stone must be returned to the sacred caves on MacLeod lands. Father prefers to have the ceremony before we take the stone off his lands.”
Shona did not understand the whole import of the sacred stones, but she knew they had special meaning to both the Éan and the Faol.
“Did you not just bring the Faol’s sacred stone back to these caves?” Shona asked, more confused than ever.
“Yes, but now both sacred stones, the Clach Gealach Gra and the Faolchú Chridhe must be united in the chamber of the celi di.”
“The Éan’s stone is to be moved as well?”
“Aye. Anya-Gra will send her successor to live among the MacLeod and serve as celi di for the Éan from there.”
“Who is Anya-Gra?”
“Eirik’s grandmother.”
“That would make her queen of the Éan?” Shona asked.
“No,” Ciara answered, adding to Shona’s muddied thoughts. “She gave up her claim to rule in order to serve as celi di, just as Eirik’s sister, Sabrine, gave up hers in order to become a protector of the clan.”
“Isn’t she married to the laird of the Donegal now?” Shona tried to remember the things Caelis had revealed to her about his world thus far.
“She is, but before that she was a warrior.”
The thought of a female warrior was surprisingly pleasant to Shona. “Why doesn’t Eirik live with her clan?”
“As prince of his people, he does not officially belong to any clan, though he wears the Sinclair colors on occasion.”
Shona had noticed that the man wore a leather kilt rather than a plaid. “As your mate, he chooses to live with your family?”
“He chose the Sinclair clan before we met. It was destiny.” Ciara smiled. “He and my father have a rapport that makes it possible for a prince to live in the same keep as a very stubborn laird.”
“That is good.” Privately, Shona could not imagine it.
The Sinclair did not strike her as an easy man to live in the vicinity of, even if you were willing to swear fealty and submission.
“We spend a great deal of time traveling to the other clans where Éan have made t
heir homes,” Ciara said as if reading Shona’s mind. “It helps.”
“Ah.”
Ciara smiled. “Yes, ah.”
“You do not mind traveling so much?”
“I miss my family, naturally, but we do not have children, so it is not a great difficulty. I enjoy the relationships I have built in each of the clans over the last year. And I have as much a responsibility to them as celi di to the Faol as Eirik has as prince of the Éan.”
There had been a shadow in Ciara’s voice when she mentioned children. “You have not conceived, but you and Prince Eirik are sacred mates, are you not?”
“We are.” Ciara grimaced. “I do not know if I will ever have the good fortune to bear a child. The celi di who mentors me in my visions does not think so.”
“But why?”
“There is a cost to the calling I have been given.” Ciara put on a bright smile Shona did not quite believe. “Sabrine has already provided the next generation for the Éan’s royal line.”
“But you crave motherhood.”
Ciara looked startled at Shona’s perception. “I thought I did a fair job of hiding that fact.”
“You do not wear your desire on your sleeve, but I am a mother and I know the sparkle of that dream.”
“Not all dreams may come to pass.”
“This one will.” Shona was certain of it. “You may never give birth, but you will be a mother.”
Ciara’s stared at her for a long moment before her entire face transformed with a stupefied kind of wonder. “That is what she meant. When the time is right, Eirik and I will adopt. Just as my parents claimed me for their own when I was without family.”
Shona did not ask who Ciara referred to as she. Even a fully human woman could put two and two together to reach four. The celi di was talking about the ancient Chrechte woman she saw in her visions.
“Thank you for revealing the nature of my mentor’s words. She is sometimes obscure.”
“My mother could be that way.” Memories of her mother before and after Shona’s unexpected pregnancy assailed her.
Circumstances had changed so much for both of them. Shona was the first to admit that it had not been easy on her mother to make a new life in England, where she was cook in the house her daughter had been named baroness.