“A good man,” Eve argued. “We would have never suited each other. I simply discovered it before he did.”
“Why’s that?” Conall asked, waiting for a lady’s speech of love and honor and courtly manners.
“Because I don’t want children.”
The bottom dropped out of Conall’s stomach and he was so stunned that he said the first thing that came to his mind.
“Surely you doona mean that, Eve.”
“I most surely do,” she said briskly, crossing the floor and taking the mug from him. She drank the whole of it and then moved to the urn to pour more. “’Tis why I joined the order—I knew I could remain childless.”
Conall’s hastily constructed plan began to creak and sway. The very thing he needed most from this woman was the one thing she was not willing to give.
“But…why, lass?”
“Why? Why, indeed. Not every woman wishes to have children, MacKerrick,” she snapped. She seemed to pause and collect herself. “Childbirth is a terrible wager. I saw it end not in joy, but tragedy, more oft than not during my time at the priory. My own mother died while giving birth to me. I would not wish that on a child of my own blood.”
Conall did not know what to say as thoughts of Nonna and their bairn sprang into his mind. He knew all too well the tragedy that could result from a birthing. But he had never thought about it from a child’s point of view. ’Twas a heavy burden for a young heart to carry—knowing your birth caused the death of your mother. And he wondered if his daughter would have come to feel the same guilt had she survived and Nonna perished.
He pushed the vision of a dark-haired little girl—playing, laughing,alive—from his mind.
But at least Conall now suspected ’twas merely fear that persuaded Eve in her choice, not an aversion to mothering. He watched her ladle a bowl of stew for herself and noted how she smiled gently at the great black wolf lying nearby. Alinor’s tail thumped the dirt happily, and Conall marveled at the ways of this strange Buchanan woman who could tame the wildest of creatures.
She will make a fine mother, Conall thought.
Chapter Six
The storm relented the next morning, leaving the clearing around the hut in the vale and the wood beyond encased in a shroud of fresh white. Evelyn felt vastly improved upon waking—alone, this time, thankfully—although she noticed with ornery temper that she was much colder without the highlander’s solid form lying next to her.
Sinful girl.
MacKerrick was already up and about, digging out the small corral for the sheep before moving the animal to it, setting Alinor loose to her morning constitution, and gathering up the two new traps he’d constructed. He left the hut only after Evelyn too had ventured out into the frigid morning, and after a polite inquiry to her health and a respectful request that she remain in the hut until his return.
Evelyn took the time alone to wash her face and hands, rinse out her mouth, and straighten the few items on the hut’s stingy shelf. That done, she picked up discarded bits of nothing from the flagstones in the uppermost part of the hut, then threw out the top layer of soiled pine boughs from the pens.
She looked around the empty cottage. Straightened a corner of the wool blanket on the bed.
She combed and plaited her hair.
She made a fresh urn of tea.
She waited for MacKerrick to return.
It put her in somewhat of a foul humor to realize that, after only a pair of days with another’s company, she now rather disliked being alone in the small house. It wasn’t as if she and MacKerrick had become fast companions, but ’twas comforting to have someonenotto talk to, if she so desired.
She heard Alinor’s high-pitched yelps from outside and, grateful for any task, Evelyn crossed the hut and opened the door to peek outside.
The wolf was running in crazed half-circles around the little pen where MacKerrick’s sheep was interred, kicking up plumes of snow and then flopping down and panting for only a moment before running the circuit again, yelping and jumping. The sheep mirrored the wolf’s antics, trotting the length of the enclosure, turning gracefully, and waiting for Alinor to continue.
“Having a bit of sport, are you?” Evelyn called to them. Alinor looked up at the sound of Evelyn’s voice and gave a single, sharp bark. The sheep also stopped to look at her expectantly.
“Oh, I think not,” Evelyn chuckled.
Alinor took a few running lopes toward her, barked again, and bowed low over her forelegs, her rump swaying eagerly.
Play.
The sheep bleated a mimic of the command.
