Warrior's Moon (14 page)

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.

“W
olf? I don’t know what you mean.” Thomas was
such a poor liar, Shona had to wonder at his and Audrey’s ability to keep their secret all these years.

“Stop your fabrications. Caelis told me. He
showed
me,” she emphasized, so they would not think there was any room for doubt.

“You showed her?” Thomas asked, clearly shocked to the core. “But you are male and it is not the full moon.”

“We gain control of our change once we have engaged in certain acts,” Caelis said with a significant look at the children.

Shona had no idea what he meant, but Thomas seemed to understand just fine because he nodded and then turned bright red.

“You are a white wolf, are you not?” Caelis asked.

Thomas nodded his head doubtfully.

Caelis looked to Audrey, who gave a more confident affirmative. “Then you should have control of the change already. It is the way of your wolf. Others are not so lucky.”

“I can prevent it at the full moon,” Thomas said. “Mother taught us.”

“If you can prevent the change, you can initiate it as well.”

“I can?” Thomas asked, his eyes shining with delight at the thought.

“Aye.”

“Will you show me how?”

Caelis gave a short nod of his head in affirmative.

Thomas’s eyes glowed with such hero worship, in other circumstances it would have brought a smile to Shona’s features. But numbness was taking over emotions battered by one too many blows.

“Did you know about Eadan?” Shona asked Audrey, her voice strained.

Though she felt distanced from the pain of yet another betrayal slicing at her heart and the way it manifested itself.

Audrey’s face crumpled and Shona had her answer.

Not only were they both Chrechte, but they’d known her son was one as well.

For five years, Audrey and Thomas had known Shona’s most shameful secret.

They had always been aware that her husband was not father to her son, and yet they’d kept their own mystery without a hint to the truth.

They’d kept
her
son’s true nature from her. “How? How did you know?”

Was it something about the way her son smelled to them? He was always talking about being able to smell her sadness or a lie when she tried to protect him from the truth.

“Your father—”

“My father knew?” Shona cried, cut to the very quick of her being. “How? Why?”

She looked accusingly at Caelis. “You told him when you did not tell me?”

“No. I know not how your father came to know our secret, but ’twas not through me.”

She did not understand the look of concern on Caelis’s features. Though naught made much sense at the moment. The two people he had been certain would never knowingly deceive her had done nothing but for five years.

Revelation after revelation unfurled in her beleaguered brain. Her dearest and most trusted friends had proven beyond doubt that they did not trust
her.
Further, they were not so trustworthy. They had lied to her, hidden her son’s nature from her.

’Twas that fact that was most difficult to accept. Well, almost.

The fact that her father had known was as devastating but not so hard to fathom. He had proven his lack of regard for her happiness too consistently for her to continue to pretend even in her deepest heart that he had loved her, despite his harsh judgment of her actions.

He’d known of Caelis’s nature, though she did not know how. If she believed Caelis’s claim he did not tell her father of the wolf nature, then her da must have found out some other way.

As former seneschal to the clan, however, her da would have been privy to secrets others were not. The how was far less important than the result though.

Her own father had known her son’s lineage and what it meant, and he’d not thought her worthy of knowing as well.

Had thought she deserved the fate he arranged for her, marriage to a man of an age to be her own grandfather?

“He knew…” She could barely comprehend the level of betrayal pounding on her already beleaguered heart like the blacksmith’s anvil. “If he knew of the Chrechte, then he knew what my pregnancy signified. He knew I was your true mate and yet he forced me into marriage with the baron.”