Glenna grinned, which crinkled the scar on her cheek. “Aye, sold. I wouldn’t have chosen Ilagan McEwen of my own accord. But then, wasn’t I simply the luckiest of persons, to have been loved by that man. My, but he was easy on the eyes.”
Maggie grinned with wistfulness, at Glenna’s soft tone. Mayhap the son took after his father, easy on the eyes and having women imagining themselves lucky if they were to be loved by him.
Apparently happy to reminisce, Glenna added, “He saw past my face and my leg and...just loved me. Oh, and he was very good at it.”
Possibly it was impolite, but Maggie was curious and asked, “How did you...did you have an accident?”
“I had a drunken wretch as a suitor,” Glenna answered, her tone suddenly acidic. “who thought to take some liberties one day inside my father’s stables. We fought, he struck me, and I fell and struck the corner of the stall” –she pointed to her cheek—“that’s this, and then my leg was impaled on the iron prong of the pitchfork. That scar is not so ghastly, but the injury must have done some damage inside that I never was able to walk smoothly again.”
“But how awful,” Maggie said. “What happened to that man?”
Glenna shrugged. “Nothing, I suppose. He was the son of the local gentry. My father made a complaint, but I don’t think anything was ever done about it.”
“But then you met your husband,” Maggie said, urging her to share more.
“I cried for days when my father told me he’d betrothed me to some man I’d never met.” Glenna rolled her eyes. “So much unfounded worry, what a waste. I’d been so afraid the man would take one look at me and denounce the entire affair. He did not, of course. Instead, he told me I was beautiful.” She laughed, sounding much younger than her years. “I thought, good heavens, this man must really need to marry, must really need the land and sheep that came with me.” Her entire posture softened with her memories. “We married, of course, and honest to God, there was never a day that he lived that I didn’t feel beautiful.”
“How long ago did your husband—”
“Too long,” Glenna answered sharply, as if she bore yet some resentment that he’d died at all. “Iain was not yet a man, that Duncan and Artair managed Berriedale for many years.” She was quiet for a wee bit, staring blindly at the fabric and thread in her hands. “I love my son, but honestly, Maggie, it’s a bittersweet thing, him so like his father. Seems everyday I am reminded of what I no longer have.”
“But how lovely,” Maggie supposed, “to have loved, to have been loved so wonderfully.”
Another grin, a happy one, despite the subject matter, answered this. “Of course, you are right. Only that it makes the loss of him that much more powerful.” With a pointed look at Maggie, she said, “Be glad you’ve no mourning to accompany your removal from your husband.” And then she shrugged. “I survived that—the bounder’s attack on me, the loss of Ilagan—and everything before and all that came after, none of which is insignificant. And you will, too, Maggie Bryce.”
Chapter Fifteen
IAIN MCEWEN WAS A VERY busy man, Maggie realized. Despite what he had said to her on her first day at Berriedale, that he worked hard and played hard, she saw little of the latter. But then, she saw so little of Iain.
Weeks went by and while Maggie was pleased to have been so well received at the McEwen keep, and while she enjoyed tremendously Glenna’s company, she wondered at Iain’s noticeable absence. He’d sought her out that first day, had taken her with him that she might enjoy a bit of leisure at the beach.
Then he’d learned that she was with child.
And he’d not requested her company since.
So, while she was pleased beyond measure to have escaped Kenneth Sutherland and the dungeon of Blackhouse, she considered that she only lived with different kinds of despair. First, despite the time that had passed, she could not completely abandon the fearful notion that her husband would find her, that her freedom was to be short-lived and that his retribution would be gruesome. Next, she had yet to fully accept that she carried a child. True, she’d not bled in many months and she knew, she understood that undoubtedly a life grew inside her, but she had yet to comprehend—had yet to fully allow for any reflection—what this meant to her and for her. She was not in denial, she convinced herself, she just wasn’t ready to acknowledge it completely. Regularly, she decided that she would think more upon it tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
She didn’t blame Iain McEwen one bit for avoiding her. This was the height of irony, of course, that she’d clung so feverishly to the image of him over the past several months, that she’d made fine use of her memory of him to protect her own sanity. And now she was with him, he’d come to save her, and she found herself in no way interested in knowing him again, so afraid of what he might want of her.
Actually, it was not only her he seemed to avoid. He was gone regularly from the keep, training during daylight hours with large portions of his army. The training field was located outside the keep, which meant the castle and yard, during the day, were mostly quiet and empty. Sometimes, Iain and several others, which mostly included Duncan and Archie, went off for days, “scouting”, Glenna had told her with a shrug that suggested either she really didn’t understand what they were about or that scouting was all Maggie needed to know.
Maggie continued to assist with the mending, but pretty soon, her regular attention to this—as she had no other occupation—meant that the work was all done. Still sometimes plagued by morning sickness, she was not yet allowed to return to the kitchens. But she was eager to help in other ways and offered as much, so that one day when the bulk of the McEwen army had been gone for more than a day and a night, she was tasked with assisting Edda, the occasional kitchen girl, with the delivery of all the saved bone and antlers of the castle down to Edgar, the boneworker in the village. Just outside the doors to the kitchen of Berriedale sat a wooden, lidded box, where bones and antlers and horn, removed from the slaughtered dinner meats, were stored and removed down to Edgar as needed, when the box was filled.
“He’s clever—more clever than any of the other local lads,” Edda was saying. “He’s no’ as handsome, of course, that would be the twin or Eideard or even Simon who are handsomest. But I think he’s going to speak to my da’ soon.”
They been walking and talking for the past ten minutes, or rather Edda had been doing all the chattering, telling Maggie all about her budding romance with the soldier, William.
“But do you like him?” Maggie asked. As of yet, the girl had imparted only that he was a soldier, and likely earned more coin than any of the village laborers, and apparently he was ‘clever’, but hadn’t given any hint of his character, or if this was even a consideration. “Is he nice?”
“I guess.” Edda said with a shrug, answering many questions Maggie might have had.
Though several years younger, Edda was taller and broader than Maggie that she struggled not at all with the smelly and lumpy drawstring burlap bag. She held the pulled strings at her shoulder, the weight of the bag bumping against her back with each jaunty step. She seemed not to mind that her loose blonde hair was draped over the bloodstained bag. She talked almost non-stop, prattled really, while Maggie struggled with her bag, trying not to touch any parts of it to herself, hoping the odor did not upset her stomach, which had been very kind to her today. At some point, she gave up and simply dragged the weighty bag along the sheep path, quite pleased then that this put the odor behind her as well.
“What do you and William do?” Maggie wondered, trying to learn more about both Edda and the lad. “How does he court you?”
Another shrug preceded her answer of, “I watch him when he’s training. And,” she said pointedly, drawing Maggie’s gaze with her drawn out tone, “we meet down by Loch Liddel some nights.”
Maggie gasped. “At night? What for?” Edda’s giant smirk and the saucy turn of her one shoulder answered for her. Maggie resisted rolling her eyes. “Have you and Wi
lliam talked about wedding?”
Another smirk. “We’re so often too busy for much talking.”
Maggie kept her gaze on the path and kept her opinions to herself. She liked Edda; the girl was friendly and worked hard inside the keep. She wasn’t going to be the one who disillusioned her. And what did she know? Maybe Edda was only trying to impress her with her worldliness, by suggesting what she had. Mayhap the lad was truly keen on her.
“And do your parents know that you meet him at night?”
“Och, no! My da’ would kill me. And that’d be after he killed William.”
For the life of her, Maggie couldn’t remember where this bit of advice came from, but she had thought about it over the years, and thought now to share it with Edda, hoping it made some dent in that over-confidence, which seemed sorely misplaced in this circumstance.
“I’d always heard that nothing right or good should ever need to be hidden.”
They continued to walk, moving just to the top of the hill, that the village appeared below them. Edda had turned though, away from the charming view to frown at Maggie, her thick dark brows lowering over her pretty eyes. Maggie glanced up at her just as Edda made her eyes skinny with some deliberation about Maggie’s words. Shrugging, hoping to lessen the impact just a bit, Maggie gave the impression that it was only something that she’d heard, that maybe it didn’t need to be taken as gospel.
The village below was laid out in a half-moon shape, with several roads of thatched cottages dissecting across. At one end was the largest building, what Maggie suspected was the tithe barn, and at the far west side sat what looked like a small church with a square, fenced yard beside it. Several of the homes showed attached outbuildings, likely workrooms of the potter or the boneworker or the tanner.
Beyond was a meadow, dotted now with fluffy white sheep, and in the distance, far off to the east and fringed by several copses of trees, was a pear-shaped loch—possibly the place of Edda and William’s trysts—the blue water shiny and reflective under the midday sun. Every other bit of land visible from this vantage point was a field, plowed or fallow or blooming. The cottages were spaced generously that no one cottage sat atop the next. Three of them were built into the bottom of the hill on which they stood. Edda pointed directly below to those houses and down they went, Maggie still lugging the burlap on the ground behind her.
They strode between two cottages and turned around the front of the largest one, which put them immediately in front of a tall and narrow shed. Inside was a man, younger than Maggie would have suspected the boneworker to be, but large, possibly wider and taller than even Iain McEwen.
“Aye, Edgar,” Edda called out, swinging her bag down onto the ground next to a table in the middle of the shed.
He turned to them, taking up so much space inside his workroom. Edgar the boneworker was quite handsome, with thick auburn hair and soft brown eyes. A gentle giant, Maggie thought instantly, having no idea if he were in fact gentle, only that he looked as if he might be.
He nodded and set his gaze with some curiosity onto Maggie, moving forward, away from the gloom of the rear of the shed.
She deposited her haul as well and bid the man a good day, also announcing, “We’re to request a half dozen drinking horns and an equal number of handles to be given to the smithy for spoon making.”
Edda winked at the silent boneworker. “And we’d no’ refuse a fine cloak pin, if you were of a mind to make a lass feel pretty.”
His gaze stayed with Maggie. “Aye, I might be.” His voice fit him perfectly, the words given slowly and deeply.
“That’s Maggie Bryce,” Edda said, following his gaze. She picked up a piece of bone on his work table and turned it over in her hands, as if she had some interest in the chunk. “She’s the one from the Sutherland’s Blackhouse.”
He nodded again and began to open one of the bags.
Maggie glanced around. His work shed was not much more than three walls of shelving, packed with bones in various shapes and sizes and antlers, stacked and tangled all about one section. In the middle of the dim shed was the table, the top covered in dust and shavings, and tools and half-worked projects.
When she turned back to Edgar, he’d emptied some of the bag and then upended the whole thing, shaking it until all the bone and horn fell to the ground. “Do others give or trade bone with you? Or do you mostly collect it yourself?” Maggie wondered.
“Only the castle sends down bone,” he answered. “I’ll scavenge the woods for more if I run short—that might only happen in the winter, but rarely.”
“What needs to be done to those pieces”—she pointed to the bags they’d delivered—“to get them to look like those?” She moved her finger to the shelves, where all the pieces were clean and dry.
“If I need them immediately, I’d boil them clean,” Edgar answered. “Mostly though, I just bury them, let nature—ground and bugs—do all the work.”
“Oh.”
Maggie wondered if she and Edda might depart now, their task completed. Instead, Edda appeared to be in no hurry, content to investigate his wares, handling one piece and then another.
As the boneworker did not seem to mind their company or Maggie’s questions, she pointed to a strange tool upon the table, which seemed to be made of metal and bone. “What is that?”
IAIN REINED IN AT THE top of the lane, dismounting smoothly and tying off his steed at the corner post of Soerlie McEchrine’s front walk. His business with the man was quickly forgotten, however, when he spied Maggie Bryce a few houses down, standing just at the corner of the bonemaker’s shed. Curious as to her industry within the village, and specifically with Edgar, he ambled slowly toward her. Coming from further down the lane, he was afforded a view of only a bare portion of her profile, his gaze initially captured by her bright and shiny hair. The head of the giant, Edgar, was bent down toward Maggie as he showed her the wood plane, describing how it worked, turning the tool over to let her see the iron sole underneath.
Maggie tapped her finger on the tool when Edgar turned it upright. “What is this made of?”
“Aye, that’s horn, Maggie Bryce,” answered Edgar, his voice as deep as Maggie’s was soft. “We have others made of wood themselves—beech or yew, maybe—and some made of bone, too, but those dinna keep so well.”
“Horn? An antler?”
Patiently, Edgar explained, “Nae, lass. The antler belongs to deer, the red or the roe deer. Horn, see, comes from the sheep or the cattle, and we’ve got plenty of them, aye?”
“I see.” And Maggie picked up another tool from the table. “What is this one?”
Edgar took that tool from her hand and identified and explained the purpose of the awl. He towered over her to such a degree that she appeared only a child next to the boneworker.
Iain brushed aside the dislike that had surfaced when he’d heard Edgar refer to her as he sometimes did, as Maggie Bryce. He brushed aside as well how completely at ease with the man Maggie appeared; the mammoth man did not intimidate her, it seemed. She stood very close to him, tipping her head up to him, listening intently.
It had only been a few weeks since they’d recovered her from Blackhouse, but Iain had yet to see so much of Maggie Bryce of the winter caves. When first they’d met during that storm, and after her initial fright, he’d been captivated by how blithe and enchanting she’d been, how engaging and merry. In retrospect, he’d thought it quite absurd that a person should have been so lighthearted in the midst of an escape from a future she did not wish.
That girl was gone. He thought that possibly none of her remained, that all of her must have been obliterated by Kenneth Sutherland. He hadn’t spent too much time in her company of late, save for suppers when he was home, where she’d somehow managed to assume a different seat than the one she’d originally taken next to him. She now sat on the other side of Archie at mealtimes, content it seemed to keep company with him and Donal on her far side. But it had not escaped his notice that she
was different now, a subdued lass who offered only rare smiles that never quite reached her eyes. There was a quietness about her presently that any who had met Maggie Bryce before she’d wed might find sorrowful.
He hung back now, not entirely sure that any intrusion from him would be received as welcome, certainly when he’d avoided her for the past few weeks.
It actually hadn’t been intentional, not at first. He’d been called down to Stonehaven to meet with Gregor Kincaid and Jamie MacKenna, for a wee covert discussion about gathering more troops for Bruce’s army. When he’d returned, and since, as now, he felt some unease, not sure how to approach her, what he might say. His mother had told him that she had yet to accept the pregnancy as either possible or agreeable, that she didn’t want to even talk about it. And he was not impervious to the fact that on the very few occasions that he’d made any contact with her since bringing her to Berriedale—taking her hand, touching her with only the intent to direct her or reassure—she’d flinched or bristled. Like the thinnest glass she was at those times, fragile and likely to crack with even the smallest bit of pressure.
Contrarily, just being in her presence—even this creature, who was but a shadow of the Maggie Bryce he’d known so briefly—put him in mind of what he’d discovered right quick last winter, that he didn’t know how to be around her without craving some small and pitiful contact with her. But Jesu, that was the last thing the lass needed now.
He debated backing away, getting about his business, but Edda stepped outside the work shed, noticing his presence. She squeaked and asked, without an actual greeting, “The army is returned then?”
“Aye,” he said.
This turned Maggie Bryce and Edgar toward him.
Edda’s cheeks pinkened. She nearly bounced on her toes. “Maggie, you can see yourself back to the keep?” And without waiting an answer, she was off, around the shack and back up the hill.
Iain and Edgar exchanged nods as greetings while Maggie Bryce only stared at him, her green eyes showing no expression from under the shadow of Edgar’s large frame.
The Truth of Her Heart (Highlander Heroes Book 5) Page 18