Warrior's Moon

Chapter 8

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.

At one point, the eagle swooped down again, this time touching Audrey’s bare shoulder with the tip of his wing. She laughed and shooed the bird of prey as she might a rabbit in the carrot patch.

Caelis growled, the sound quite menacing, though he had not turned around. So, she could not understand how he’d known of the Eagle’s brief visit. She put both from her mind as she and Audrey rinsed away the soap and sand from the bottom of the loch they’d used to get their hair clean.

“I was surprised to find Caelis in your bed this morn,” Audrey said tentatively as she and Shona wrung the water from their hair. Her tone invited confidences without an ounce of judgment.

Nevertheless, a flush of shame warmed Shona’s skin despite the chill of the loch’s water. “He was standing guard outside my door when I woke and went searching for the children.”

Which didn’t begin to explain how the man had ended up in her bed. She couldn’t explain that to herself, either, or the fact she’d wanted him to stay after they’d shared their bodies and their passions.

“I should have remained with you last night, but Marjory wanted the comfort of my presence.” Audrey’s voice was laced with heavy regret and self-censure.

“My virtue is not your responsibility,” Shona stated, finding it painful to acknowledge how very thoroughly she’d allowed her virtue to be imperiled.

“You are a virtuous woman.” Audrey said, as if she knew exactly what Shona was thinking. “Whatever happened in the wee hours did not change that.”

“You know ’tis not the way the rest of the world thinks.”

“The rest of the world can go hang,” Audrey said with more malice than Shona had ever heard in her young friend’s voice. “You are the only one who treated Thomas and I like we mattered. You trust your children with us, but just as important, your hand has been open in friendship from the first day we came to the barony.”

“I understood what it meant to be treated as less.” Shona’s pregnancy had made her less in her parents’ eyes.

And despite how pleasing he found her feminine form, her deceased husband had believed himself superior by dint of English birth and the very basic difference that he was a man and she a woman. He also never allowed her to forget that she’d not come to his bed a virgin.

She’d once reminded him that she would not have come to his bed at all if she had been one. That had precipitated one of the few times he’d beaten her.

“Did you give into Caelis because you did not believe you had a choice?” Audrey asked in a quiet undertone with a quick glance at the warrior’s imposing back.

Shona knew the sister of her heart was not asking about the true mate bond. How could she be? Audrey was still innocent to the strange world Shona had learned of only the night before.

No, Audrey wanted to know if Caelis had forced the issue. And Shona could understand why the other woman might ask such a thing.

Whatever he might be, the man who had rejected her and now proclaimed his desire to keep her was no rapist. “No.”

“You are certain?” Audrey met Shona’s gaze, her own blue one so very earnest.

“I am certain.” Shona almost wished she could answer in the affirmative. It was so clear Audrey could conceive of no other reason for Shona’s rash behavior. “He did not force himself on me.”

Audrey sighed, the relief clear in her gaze, even if the confusion had not diminished. “I am glad.”

Shona looked to where her daughter continued to play, oblivious to the adults’ discussion.

Then Audrey’s head snapped up and she looked over at the men standing with their backs to the bathing females. Shona’s gaze followed her friend’s and she saw that Caelis’s stance had grown rigid, anger coming off him in waves.

Had Thomas said something to offend the giant warrior?

She’d thought her friend more intelligent than that. From the side of his face that she could see, Thomas on the other hand, appeared almost appalled by something.

Eadan was playing in the bushes, pretending to hunt and ignoring them all.

Or so Shona hoped. With the way her son heard things she’d thought it impossible for him to, she did not want him overlistening to this conversation.

Then it struck her. Caelis had heard Audrey’s questions and was mortally offended. He should have heard Shona’s answers as well then. So, why was he angry?

Was his manly pride that offended Audrey would even ask? Did he think Shona had not been strenuous enough in her denials?

Whatever his reasoning, the shape-changer would have to come to terms with the fact that both Audrey and Thomas were protective of Shona. As she was of them.

They were family, if not by birth.

Audrey looked away from Caelis and back to Shona. “I do not understand.” Again, there was no censure in her voice, just bewilderment.

Unfortunately, Shona could not help her friend comprehend something she found so difficult to understand herself. “I cannot explain it.”

Her friend probably found the truth no more palatable than Shona did.

“He hurt you grievously, left you with child.”

“He did not know.”

“How could that be?”

“It is not so difficult.”

Audrey did not look convinced. “You gave him the gift of your innocence.”

“You are so sure? Perhaps I was a strumpet, sharing my body here, there and everywhere,” Shona replied bitterly, remembering some of her mother’s more cruel words.

Audrey laughed, the sound carrying across the crisp still air above the lake. “You are no more strumpet than I.”

“You are still innocent.”

“So are you, of wrongdoing.”

“Oh no; I gave myself to him. We were not even betrothed.” Though she’d believed that was just a formality, had believed his promises of a future.

“You loved him.”

“More than I ever want to love any man ever again.”

Audrey nodded. “My mother loved my father and it brought her nothing but pain.”

“Your father is a stupid and selfish man, entirely too vain.” Anyone who would sell his own children into indenture merely to be rid of their presence didn’t deserve the gift of fatherhood.

The man was a lesser baron, but a noble with extensive land holdings nonetheless. He’d had no need for the coin Henry had paid him for the privilege of bringing Audrey and Thomas into his household as higher-ranking servants.

Later, when laughter and splashing sounded across the lake as Caelis and Thomas played in the water with Eadan, Shona thought perhaps some men should get a second chance at fatherhood.

“He has not laughed like that since well before your father passed,” Audrey remarked as she plaited Marjory’s hair.

“Eadan has always enjoyed the company of his Uncle Thomas.” Henry had been very annoyed when Shona had bestowed the honorary titles of uncle and aunt on Thomas and Audrey.

His insistence they were mere servants had only spurred Shona on to continue with the practice.

Audrey just shook her head.

“Oh, fine. You wish me to admit that Eadan is clearly in alt being with his father?”

“Refusing to admit it would not make it any less true.”

“I know.” Shona sighed as she finished tying off her own loose braid, letting it rest over her left breast.

The braid would not tame her curls completely, but helped them remain manageable. Henry had always said her hair was her glory and insisted she wore it down with only a thin gold circlet on her head.

It had been fashionable, but not practical. Not that the old man had cared if Marjory’s baby fists got tangled in the long red tresses, or flour from the kitchens inevitably ended up decorating the ends when she made bread.

He’d told her his cook could see to the needs of the keep, but the man had been a miser in areas not easily discerned by his knights or guests. He’d refused to provide enough kitchen help to feed the mouths living in his walls.

Of course Shona had stepped in to help. Particularly since her own mother had been cook until her death.

“You’ve got that look again.”

“What look is that?” Shona asked Audrey.

“Sadness.”

There was no point in denying the truth. “I was thinking of my mother.”

“She was a good woman, but not half so kind as her daughter.” It was a sweet sentiment, though not entirely true.

Before Shona’s disgrace, her mother had shown her daughter, and the others around them, a great deal of kindness.

Her husband losing his position as seneschal for the MacLeod, their move to England (a land her mother had hated) and then discovering her daughter carried a child out of wedlock had all taken a great toll on the older Scotswoman.

She said none of this to Audrey though, the topic of her life before England one Shona had always been loath to discuss. While the very reason for that habit now played in the water with their son, she found it difficult to break regardless.

The men left the water, taking Eadan behind a stand of bushes to preserve the women’s modesty as they dressed.

Her son came out of the foliage dressed in a child-size kilt of the MacLeod colors. Shona did not know where Caelis had come by the small plaid, but it gave her no joy to see her son dressed thus. In truth, the silent claim by the big warrior sent a skirl of fear shivering down her spine.

In that moment, Eadan looked wholly like Caelis’s child, with nothing to indicate an English baroness was his mother at all.

She opened her mouth to protest, but was interrupted by Marjory tugging at the skirt of Shona’s heavy green velvet gown. “Mama?”

“Yes, love?”

“I don’t want to ride a horse today.”

Audrey and Shona shared a commiserating look.

In all truth, Shona knew not what the day would hold, but at the very least she thought the generosity of the Sinclair laird might extend to another night’s lodging. “We will stay here for today.”

“Promise?” Marjory asked with such hope Shona had to hide a wince.

Her poor daughter was tired of the adventure of travel. Eadan as well, no doubt. Neither child was used to spending so many hours confined from play, much less to a saddle.

And while sleeping on the ground under the stars had been an adventure the first couple of nights, it soon grew less charming, even for the wee ones. But Shona had had no choice other than to set the grueling pace she had done.

They had needed to put as much distance as possible between themselves and any soldiers Percival might have sent after them.

“Can we live here, do you think?” Marjory asked artlessly.

“I’m sorry sweeting, but our family is on Balmoral Island.”

“You’re still set on traveling there?” Caelis asked, reproof in his tone.

“My plans are not set.” And that was all she would give the big warrior. “You are ready to return to the keep?”

Though clearly they were. Thomas was once again dressed in his English garb and Caelis had re-donned his plaid, his hair still dripping rivulets of water down his chest and back. Having done no better a job at drying, Eadan stood between the two men looking like a miniature version of the Chrechte warrior.

“I would not mind staying here for a bit,” Thomas said, sounding every bit as hopeful as the children. “The Sinclair said I could train with his Chrechte, his elite soldiers.”

Shona did not miss Thomas’s attempt to explain the Chrechte away as elite soldiers. Just as others in her former clan had done when she’d lived among them, but after last night, Shona knew exactly what Chrechte were.

Elite soldiers they might be, but ’twas because they shared their nature with a beast.

She stared at Thomas, the young man who had come to live in her home when he was still a gangly boy of fourteen. She’d been only a few years older but felt decades wiser in the ways of the world.

This boy was to train with the Chrechte. That could only mean one thing.

“You have a wolf as well,” she whispered, barely able to get the words past the tightness in her throat.

For if Thomas, honorary uncle to her children and close as a brother to Shona, was a shape-changer—that meant her dearest friend, the true sister of her heart, Audrey was as well.

And all these years, neither had said a thing.