Conall moved toward the pens and saw that Eve had incarcerated both Alinor and Bonnie together in the one enclosure that still boasted a working gate. The two unlikely roommates were curled up with one another on the pine boughs, Alinor panting nervously. Conall dragged the carcass to the other, open, pen and dropped its legs with a grunt. Indoors, the animal appeared larger than what it had seemed in the clearing.
Eve appeared at the pen’s opening, a coil of hemp rope and Ronan’s ancient wooden gambrel in her hands. She offered them to Conall, all the while trying not to look directly at the dead deer.
“My thanks, lass,” Conall said, mildly surprised at her initiative.
She stepped around the deer as Conall bent to attach the gambrel by driving the pointed ends into the space between bone and tendon on the animal’s rear legs. He paused, looked over his shoulder at Eve, who faced away from him and leaned over the rickety half wall separating the two pens. Conall couldn’t help but note the swell of her buttocks under her worn gown, or the raised bones of her spine at her neckline as she bent to speak softly to the animals. Eve needed to eat, and eat she would. But the wet part of this necessary business would likely be more than her delicate sensibilities could tolerate.
“Eve,” he called gently, “would that you take yourself to the other end of the cottage, lass. I must open—”
“I know what you must do, MacKerrick,” she said sharply, cutting off his warning and straightening from the low wall. She turned and her eyes went to the beam across the ceiling. “I’ll help you raise it and then start the water. Is your blade sharp or shall I take up the whetstone?”
Conall didn’t know whether to be pleased or offended and so he just nodded dumbly. He picked up the end of the rope and tossed it over the beam. Eve stepped to his side and together they heaved the deer into the air in a series of short bursts.
Conall tied the rope to an anchor set deep into the thick wall and they both stepped away, the creaking rope slashing the air diagonally between them. They stared at each other.
“’Tis a fine animal, MacKerrick,” Eve said solemnly. “Huzzah. Well done.”
Conall felt a grin lighten his face. “I am sorry for…for kissin’ you and all. Earlier.” He could not believe a man of his age could still feel such heat in his cheeks like some stripling lad. “I’ll nae—”
“Don’t,” Eve said suddenly, her eyes going nervous and shifty and her fingers strangling each other as she twisted her hands.
Conall raised his eyebrows. “Doona?”
Eve rolled her lips inward, chewed on them for a moment. Her eyes found Conall’s for only an instant before flitting away again.
“MacKerrick, I—” She blew out a breath. “I have a question to ask you, but before you say nay out of hand, would that you give your answer a bit of thought.”
Conall’s stomach clenched. She was going to ask him to leave. Or ask him to take her to the Buchanan town. Either one had logical reasoning to it, from Eve Buchanan’s point of view, certainly. But his answer to either would be—had to be—nae.
He could not let her go. Could not, and didn’t want to.
“Go on, then,” Conall said warily, nodding.
Eve took a deep breath and then met his gaze squarely.
“MacKerrick, will you marry me?”
“Will I—” MacKerrick stopped and shook his head as if to clear it. “Say again, lass?”
Evelyn’s face felt as if it would melt from her skull and her stomach lurched sickly. Of course he would make her repeat it.
“’Tis most improper for us to carry on like this,” she said stiffly, hoping the hasty reasoning she’d concocted in her head would still sound plausible when proposed aloud to the highlander. “You’ve already said that journeying to the Buchanan village—”
“Town,” MacKerrick corrected vaguely.
“Town—I beg your pardon—is impossible because of the weather, correct?”
MacKerrick nodded. “A death sentence, for certain. And the grays…”
“Exactly,” Evelyn said quickly, thankful for the suggestion. “So travel to the Buchanan village is impossible in the foreseeable future.”
“Town,” MacKerrick corrected again. “But impossible, aye.”
“And…” Evelyn swallowed and tried to regain her train of thought. She’d little time to tidy her speech in her mind, but ’twas more sorely difficult to maintain her focus with MacKerrick’s amber eyes pinned so intently to her, as if he could sense her desperation, was feeding off it.
She forged on. “And we’ve already been together, alone, for far too long. Your brother knows someone else is residing with you at the hut. What will he think when he discovers it is I, a woman? And both of us unmarried?”
“Well, ah…” MacKerrick stuttered. “He’d likely think the very worst, is what. Mayhap if you didna look as you do…although you canna help the way you look, of course,” he rushed. “Naught you can do about it.”
