“Maggie dear,” she said with some sympathy. “Oh, my.”
Maggie straightened, having no idea what just happened. She had not been unwell, had not the slightest rumble in her belly all morning. With an embarrassed grimace toward Glenna, she could only murmur, “Apologies, Mistress. I’m not sure how...why—”
Glenna took her hand, squeezing her fingers around Maggie’s, bringing her uncomfortable gaze to her own concerned one. “Had you not felt ill?”
“Not at all,” Maggie replied. “A bit nervous, mayhap. My first day at Berriedale.”
“But certainly not enough to have caused that,” Glenna surmised, throwing a glance at the mess in the dirt.
“I am so sorry. I will clean that—”
“You will do no such thing,” Glenna returned with a frown. She sighed then. “When did you last menstruate, lass?”
Perplexed, Maggie showed a frown of her own. She glanced around, happy there was none to witness this unseemly conversation in the light of day, in the open bailey. Shaking her head, she tried to recall, and said to the mistress, “I suppose when we first arrived in Carlisle.”
Glenna’s eyes widened, frightening Maggie, who was beginning to have an inkling why Glenna had asked so personal a question. “Goodness, lass! That must have been months ago.”
Maggie nodded, her lips trembling. Disjointedly, she tried to deny what might be true. “But then—Blackhouse...and the cell—” she said, glancing up with a mixture of despair. “Surely, only anxiety...has wrought its absence.”
The mistress made a face, allowing this might be possible. Squeezing Maggie’s hand, she said, “While that is wholly conceivable, we must brace ourselves for the probability that it is not the case.”
This withered Maggie, whose legs seemed to buckle under her. Glenna yanked at her hand as Maggie sank. But it wasn’t enough to keep her upright.
“Whoa!” She heard called just as she was secured by hands stronger than Glenna’s. She recognized Iain’s voice and while she froze at his touch, she hadn’t the strength to resist it, her wits and vigor being sapped by the idea Glenna had so regrettably planted.
With a lightness that Maggie vaguely assumed was manufactured, Glenna rushed out with a laugh, “The poor dear apparently has no stomach for the preparation of our favorite salmon.”
“I’m fine,” Maggie said, the weakness of her voice fashioned from a staggering fear and disbelief. Slowly she straightened, willing her legs to hold her. She pushed Iain’s hand away from her arm.
He, too, must have come from the kitchen, the door still ajar behind him. Maggie was not unmoved by the concern darkening his features but insisted, “I really am all right.” She pressed her hand to her belly and tried, as Glenna had, to make light of it. “How silly of me.”
Glenna assisted with a collaborator’s grin. “How swift and brutal was Rabbie’s swinging hatchet.”
“Aye,” mumbled Maggie, removing her gaze from Iain’s.
Seemingly satisfied with their suggestion for Maggie’s upset, Iain said, “C’mon then, lass. We’ll take some greater fresh air down at the beach.”
Wide eyes greeted this suggestion.
Glenna was quick to object. “Nay, son. The lass should rest a bit, get her humors restored.”
In good cheer, which Maggie thought was falsely increased, he gainsaid the mistress. “No better way to correct humors than salt air in your lungs and sand between your toes.” When it appeared his mother might argue yet more, Iain laughed and stepped away, beckoning Maggie to him. “You’ll get her back in no time at all.”
Maggie sent an anxious glance to Glenna, hoping for yet more assistance so that she didn’t have to go with him. But his mother only nodded, her mouth pinched with some whiff of an expression that Maggie read as saying, pretend all is well.
“I’d come to collect you,” Iain said, when she walked toward him without any eagerness, “thought you might want to discover the beach.”
“That was very kind of you to consider me,” Maggie allowed sincerely, “but I shouldn’t like to be gone too long.” At Iain’s questioning look, she added, “I’ve barely been at your mother’s side an hour and truly wanted to learn what I might to be helpful.”
“Plenty of time for that, lass.”
They walked toward the far end of the curtained wall, the end opposite the main gates from which they had come upon Berriedale yesterday. Here, at the northeast side of the castle, there was only a man-sized door in the wall, which stood half open. Iain pushed it further open and led Maggie through.
The sea was the first thing Maggie saw, no less fascinated with the sight of it now than she had been yesterday. Sunlight danced in the waves, glistening so bright as to render all the water in a shimmery summer haze. The ground here, outside the wall, was mostly rock, even and spattered here and there with bits of green growing things. Iain closed the gate behind them and walked straight forward, toward the cliff.
“Bit of a dip here,” he said, leaping forward, down a drop of three or four feet.
The cliff here was not as steep as the northwest side, which faced the river. Here the ground gave way to a gentle decline of sea grass and thistle that meandered down to the beach. Iain stood below, on a well-worn path of sand and stone, offering his hand as Maggie meant to navigate her way down. She declined his help, with what she thought was a politely given, “I’m fine,” and carefully picked her way through the rocks and dunes. She stopped at one point, to consider the vista, surveying the land and the sea, and the beach itself so far below. ’Twas not a large or grand beach, but a triangle plot of sand at the bottom of this hill that possibly measured in both width and length the exact dimensions of the bailey above.
Several people and two small boats were visible below. Maggie recognized Archie’s dark head of hair and beard; saw him assisting several others, hoisting the boat up onto the beach, as if they’d just come ashore. They descended, Iain well ahead of her now. Maggie could not deny that she was enthralled by the sea and the sound and the salty air. The wind whipped up her hair and even the hem of her blue and borrowed kirtle, but she knew there was wonder and solace and joy to be had here, even with so many people below.
It was indeed Archie with the boat, though Maggie recognized no other man. They’d shoved it far up into the sand, almost to the bottom of the hill.
“Were you fishing?” Maggie asked when she stood beside Archie. She had to lift her voice over the small, but noisily crashing waves.
If Archie were surprised to see her, he gave no indication. He shook his head, and included Iain in his answer, as if giving a report. “Nae, lass. Just out and about, but there was naught to see.” To Iain, he said, “I’ll get up top with the lads.” He followed the five other men from the boat as they climbed the hill to the keep.
Maggie watched them for a moment, taking note of how easily the younger lads scampered up the hill. Turning back to the sea, she moved forward, giving some thought to Iain’s earlier words, about toes in the sand. She glanced down, pressing the hem of her gown near to her legs, showing her slippered and hosed feet. ’Twould be too much trouble, she supposed, and likely unseemly, to remove the hose and shoes. Perhaps if she’d been alone....
“Aye, go on, lass.”
Lifting her gaze showed Iain perched in the sand several yards away, doing just as she contemplated. But then, he had only his leather boots to remove, appeared to wear no hose.
“We dispense with the formality of hose so often for just this purpose,” he advised.
She couldn’t—wouldn’t—she knew.
He rose and swiped at his bottom, sending sand skirting away, and gave her a funny look.
“Lass, you must let go of everything you ken,” he said. “Berriedale is easy and different. We work hard. We play hard. We don’t hold with too much convention that interferes with either.”
She might have stayed. She wouldn’t have abandoned herself as he had, but she might have enjoyed watching him. She stil
l couldn’t quite believe that he was Iain McEwen and that he’d come for her and that she was with him now, and that he was as beautiful as she had never allowed herself to forget. She might have stayed, but for the resurgence of her curdling belly. Dread flooded her features while his boyish abandon vanished instantly at her sudden upset. Maggie began to back away from him, breathing heavily through her mouth, fearing she might hurl right in front of him.
“Maggie?”
Shaking her head, still moving away from him, she mumbled an apology and turned and began to march swiftly toward the hill that would see her back to the keep. Any hope that she might contain the illness until she was alone in her chambers was slim. She had no idea that walking swiftly through sand was such a chore.
Of course, Iain McEwen would not let that be that. She whimpered when she heard him call her name, his voice carrying over the sound of the tide. Please don’t follow me.
But he did, catching her arm—not harshly with any recrimination for her hasty and unexplained departure, but with concern, for her ashen pallor and need to be away. Still, Maggie jerked out of his grasp.
“Oh, please,” she begged when he bolted in front of her then and stopped her forward progress.
He wouldn’t let her pass, shifted left or right as she tried to move around him. “Maggie, what is wrong?” His beautiful blue eyes were dark and etched with concern. And that was when she lost control of her roiling belly and heaved its contents outward once again.
Iain’s jaw gaped, glancing down first at his breeches, which had borne the brunt of the assault, and then back to Maggie.
Her mortification was complete, then. She glanced up at him, her face colored and twisted with abject humiliation, but just for a moment before she vomited yet again. This time, she managed to turn away, falling into the sand, making more of a mess at his feet.
The wind had done some dastardly things to her hair while she’d been out, and she made to gather the loose and flowing strands out of the way near her shoulder. Another wave of nausea overtook her, and Maggie pressed her hands into the cool sand instead, balancing herself above the chamber pot she’d just made beneath her face.
Tears dribbled down her cheeks when she felt Iain’s hands, collecting her bothersome hair, holding it out of the way. He must have gathered it into one hand as he then placed the other on her back, rubbing softly up and down. Instinctively, she curved her back away from his hand and it was removed.
It was several minutes before Maggie was relatively sure she would heave no more. Straightening so that she sat up, she glanced up at Iain, who now crouched at her side, still holding the thick mass of her hair.
“I-I think your mother might be right,” she said miserably.
He frowned. “About what?”
She didn’t want to see his reaction and yet could not look away. “That I might...might be with child.”
To his credit, his eyes widened only briefly before he reined in any further reaction. And yet his jaw was tight when he said, “Bound to happen, I imagine. Marriage has a way of doing that.”
Closing her eyes, Maggie concentrated on the bare sound of the wind, the feel of it against her flushed cheeks. She curled her fingers further into the sand, discovering that beneath the dry and sloppy top layer, the sand was cool and compact beneath. She heard a bird caw close by, listened to the crash of the small waves upon the shore—concentrated on anything that was not her predicament, not her woeful life.
“It’ll be fine, Maggie,” he said. He’d lowered his voice, his tone giving some hint of an attempt to convince himself as well.
Nodding, she opened her eyes, taking only another spare moment to decide that her belly might have settled now, rubbing her hand along it.
Good God, a babe.
Despite the horror of her few months as Kenneth Sutherland’s wife, she felt as if she were naught but a child herself yet. A frightened, hopeless child bereft of family or support or love.
Maggie turned her gaze again to Iain.
Tears gathered in her eyes—perhaps her overwrought emotions of the last few days were now explained. “You must send me back to Blackhouse,” she guessed, her heart dropping.
He frowned at her, his blue eyes flashing in the morning sun. “Send you back.”
Maggie could not decipher if he’d repeated the words as a statement or as a question.
“You cannot have a Sutherland child living here at Berriedale.” His frown deepened and she rushed out, “And if he knew...if Kenneth knew, he’d not stop until the babe was claimed. Returned to him.”
Blowing out a sigh, Iain explained, “You’ll no’ ever be returned to Blackhouse, lass. You’ll no’ ever be returned to Sutherland—child or no.”
While that offered her some relief, even as she wasn’t quite sure Iain McEwen would be able to keep that promise, Maggie was just now beginning to understand the severity and full detriment of her condition. All her future choices were diminished now. Whether she might have stayed here at Berriedale or have gone on to St. Edmund’s as had been her original intent months ago, everything was changed. Neither of these choices seemed a viable option now. Either one might have suited her....
But for a child. She would not be allowed to take her child with her to the cloister, but then wasn’t sure she could imagine giving up her own flesh and blood, no matter that his father was a monster. She also could not conceive that a Sutherland child would know peace or find love at Berriedale, despite how kindly these people had thus far been to her. She was, once again, at the mercy of fate. And fate, she’d decided months ago, had no love for her.
“He will come for me,” she predicted, “and he will learn of the child.” And there will be no escape.
“Aye, he might,” Iain concurred. “But he’ll no live to see any child raised, Maggie. He’s bound to die, and by my hand. The reasons outweigh rationale. He betrayed our own true king; he has visited unimaginable crimes upon the people of Caithness, and no’ least of all for what he’s done to you.”
As afraid as she was of Kenneth, she admitted, “I-I would not want his blood on your hands...not for me.” She hadn’t the heart or the energy to tell him he would never emerge the victor, if he were ever to come up against Kenneth Sutherland. He could never hope to outwit, survive, or overcome such malevolence as was her husband.
Iain’s lip curled. “Then I’ll do it for Robert Bruce or for the monks near Wick or the poor bastards near Helmsdale. Dinna matter for whom, the man will die.”
“The monks?” She frowned at him.
Iain stared at her until a dawning of understanding overtook her features, her mouth opening, her eyes widening. She clapped her hand over her mouth and shook her head in horror, having some recollection of the tales of the one named Alpin from her time with the McEwens during the storm.
“’Tis true,” Iain assured her while she blanched.
“I am wed to the devil.”
Iain tilted his head and showed a measured amount of sympathy. “But you ken that already, aye?”
Maggie nodded.
GLENNA PUT MAGGIE TO rights the next morning. Or, as right as she could, in a stern and motherly fashion.
“Now that’s enough of that, Maggie Bryce,” said the woman while they met in the hall after the morning meal. Maggie had arrived late, not at all hungry, having another bout of illness upon waking.
She’d just revealed to the woman who—what—exactly her husband was, and how she couldn’t bear to bring a child into the world who might have any of his father’s tendencies, any of his evilness.
“Children aren’t born that way, of course,” Glenna said. “They are made into monsters by the people and circumstances that surround them.” She shook her head. “I am not about to listen to many months of you whining about a monster growing inside you.”
Taken aback by Glenna’s harshness, her complete lack of empathy, Maggie made to argue in defense of her fears. Glenna would have none of it.
The older
woman held up her index finger at Maggie. “I mean it. Never saw an easy pregnancy when it was shrouded in doom. You’re here. You’re safe. Your child will never know his father. Let’s move on.”
And that was that, Maggie guessed.
“How is your needlework, Maggie?”
Maggie blinked, a bit befuddled by the complete change of subject and wondering about the purpose of such a question. “If, mistress, by needlework, you mean trifling compositions upon fine linen that might never serve any purpose but to amuse a lady, then consider mine poor. If you refer to mending, I have passable capabilities.”
Glenna smiled. “Passable will do. Since you’ve no stomach to be of any help in the kitchens, I thought you might take over some of the mending. ’Tis only household items, and some personal wardrobe pieces that need attention.”
Thrilled to be given some occupation, Maggie eagerly accepted.
They spent the next few hours in Glenna’s solar, a private chamber on the second floor near the bedchambers. The room was not used very often, Maggie thought, taking note of the dust covered furniture and the dampness, which suggested it saw few fires. But the chairs were comfortable, padded with tapestry covered cushions, and the light was good, this window facing the spot where the river washed into the sea, being larger and wider than most of the thin openings in the stone throughout the keep.
At Glenna’s urging, Maggie explained how she came to be betrothed to Kenneth Sutherland, that her father was one of the larger landholders, that he surely saw more benefit from the union than she had.
“But isn’t that the way of it?” Glenna suggested, her hands nimble and efficient upon the table linen she worked on, the previously shaggy hem of one corner completely unnoticed now under its mistress’s ministrations. “Men make all the decisions, direct every aspect of our lives as if we are not persons, all with the same hearts and minds and eyes and ears.”
This raised Maggie’s gaze from kitchen aprons she’d been tasked with mending. “Were you sold in marriage then as well?”
The Truth of Her Heart (Highlander Heroes Book 5) Page 17