Lucy Monroe - Warrior's Moon

She thought Thomas’s wording odd, saying what instead of who to Caelis, but she did not mention it. Would prefer not to acknowledge the mortifying truth at all.

Mayhap he considered Caelis every bit the monster the baron’s son was. For six years, Shona had certainly believed that—or at least convinced herself she did.

Regardless of her weakness and past indiscretions, Thomas’s youthful eagerness and firm loyalty touched her.

“Thank you, Thomas.” She reached for his arm.

But Caelis’s hand was there, his body pushing the younger man aside just as he’d done to Niall earlier. “He will not thank you if I have to challenge him over rights.”

Thomas blanched. For the second time in mere minutes, Shona was filled with fury by this man. “You’ll do no such thing! You have no rights to me. You repudiated them when you abandoned me six years ago.”

“’Twas your family that left the clan, not me.”

She stopped, pulling poor Audrey to a halt beside her so Shona could glare up at the man. “Do not even attempt to pretend it was the other way around. I listened to your lies once, but they will never dictate my life again.”

He winced as if her words had wounded, though she knew it was not possible. “Make no mistake: whatever my errors in the past, I will challenge this young one if he tries again to come between me and my mate.”

He spoke of her like an animal, and she wished they were. Animals did not abandon those they chose as mates, but this very human man had undeniably deserted her.

If Caelis had cared at all, he would not have disavowed Shona before her own father.

Choking emotion surged up inside her at the memory and she felt the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. She blinked furiously, adamant they would not fall.

Caelis swore, looking pained, if she could believe it.

She wouldn’t. “I’m not your mate. I’m not your wife. I’m not even your former betrothed.” The banns had never been called. “I am nothing to you.”

Without another word, he took her hand and slid a far too gentle hand for a man who kept threatening others around her waist. She was too tired to continue fighting his help.

He took so much of her weight she was barely walking as they continued up the path.

After several steps in silence, he said quietly, “In that, Shona, you are very wrong. You are not only the mother of my child, you are mine . And I will convince you of that truth. In time.”

“I will never be yours again!” Where the energy or will to shout came from, she could not say, but her voice carried with it all the desperation and conviction she felt in that moment.

Marjory turned back to look at Shona from where she walked hand in hand with Guaire. “Why are you yelling at the nice man, Mummy?”

Nice man? Had her daughter lost her mind? Marjory didn’t like strangers and now she’d decided Caelis, the man who said he would have killed her father if he wasn’t already dead, was a nice man .

Perhaps Shona’s sanity wasn’t as intact as she’d convinced herself. Mayhap this was all some truly bizarre nightmare and she would wake soon.

She could but hope.

Considering the grandeur of the keep’s size and strength of defense, the actual keep itself was rather sparse. None of the ostentation Shona’s dead husband, the Baron of Heronshire, had been so fond of in evidence at all.

The great hall could easily accommodate a large gathering of the clan, but the silk wall hangings so common in an English baron’s home to denote his wealth and stature were conspicuously absent. No superfluous pieces of furniture graced the cavernous room, either.

The long tables and benches that served the laird and his warriors were plain wood; no special carvings, even on his chair.

Though there was no doubt where the laird and his lady sat, for those two were the only actual chairs at the tables in the hall. There was a grouping of other chairs near the main fireplace, though, which had cushions in the clan’s colors. She had no doubt, however, that the cushions were for comfort rather than show.

The lovely blond woman had a parchment of accounts in front of her that Guaire frowned at upon entrance. “I thought we were going to go over those together, Lady Abigail.”

“I’d hoped to save you some time, Guaire.”

The man looked pained and Niall laughed. “You know he’ll feel the need to go over them himself regardless.”

The Lady Abigail smiled, mischief glinting in her light brown eyes. “You think so?”

“You do like to tease, my lady,” Guaire said with some exasperation.

“Mama, you shouldn’t tease,” a young boy said from beside the laird. “You get ever so disappointed when I tease Drost.”

“That is because you have not yet learned when not to push so far that your brother resorts to tears or violence, Brian,” Abigail said with a musical laugh.

Shona had heard rumors that the Sinclair lady was afflicted with deafness, but this woman appeared to hear as well as the next person.

“I don’t like him to tease me even if he learns that,” the boy who must be Drost said from the other side of his father.

Brian seemed keenly interested in the sword his father was sharpening, while his brother, who looked too much like him not to be his twin, carefully drew with charcoal on a clay tablet.

Eadan marched up to the table and pointed to himself. “I am Eadan. You are Drost.” He pointed to the boy handing his father a cloth for wiping the oil from his sword’s blade. “And you are Brian.” He pointed at the other child. “I heard you say so.”

Her son was so intelligent, Shona often marveled at how quickly he grasped the world around him.

Both boys looked impressed. Drost observed neutrally, “You aren’t wearing clan colors.”

“Your clothes are funny,” Brian added with a clear opinion.

Abigail gasped and looked ready to jump in, but Eadan didn’t give her the chance.

“They’re English,” he said with a shrug.

Brian frowned. “We don’t like the English.”

This time, Abigail jumped to her feet and spun to face her son, a fierce expression on her face. “ I am English.”

“You used to be English,” the laird, who had remained silent thus far, inserted. “However.” He fixed his son with a stare that would have intimidated Shona now , much less when she’d been a small child. “You know very well we do not hate all the English.”

Abigail’s huff of offense just made her husband shrug, as if to say that was the best she could hope for. It was clearly an old argument.

“You’ll like me, and my sister,” Eadan said with false bravado, pulling Marjory to his side.

The tremble of worry in Eadan’s voice made Shona want to wrap him in her arms to take that fear away, and Marjory, too. Who stood with wide eyes and thumb tucked firmly between her teeth.

But Shona knew this was only the beginning of what they might face in their flight to safety.

The Highlanders were not known for their kind disposition to the English.

Taking a fortifying breath, she curtsied to the laird and his lady. “I am Lady Shona, widow to the second Baron of Heronshire. This is my companion and friend Audrey and her brother, Thomas.”

She deliberately left their father’s name unspoken as neither wished to acknowledge a man who had sold them into service though his own wealth clearly precluded the need to do so.