Conall tried not to think about what he promised Eve. He would protect her with his life, aye, but not against the one thing she most feared.
Conall prayed that his seed had taken.
Evelyn was at last able to stem her tears after several moments and reluctantly pull away from MacKerrick. It had felt good to be held while she’d cried, a luxury she’d not been afforded in a long, long while.
“Thank you,” she said, swiping at her face with Minerva’s cloak whilst trying to remain covered. She looked about her, trying to locate her slippers—she needed them quickly to finish what she’d started before MacKerrick’s touching speech.
“Not at all, lass,” the highlander replied lightly. “Now, shall we eat?”
“In but a moment,” Evelyn said while she crossed to the box bed and tossed the blanket about. Where were they? She had no desire to cut her feet if she could not find them, but one must do what one must do.
“MacKerrick, have you seen my slippers?”
“Aye. And ’tis sorry-looking they are.”
Evelyn had dropped to her knees at the bedside and now gave him a wry look over her shoulder.
He grinned at her while ladling thick stew into a wooden bowl. “You took them off by the stool. Do you have a need to go outdoors?”
“Yea, but—” She looked beneath the stool and found them. Eve slipped the thin—and admittedly sorry-looking—shoes on her feet, then stood.
“I’ll accompany you.” MacKerrick set the bowl aside, then snatched it back as Alinor rushed over to investigate its contents. “Och, this one’s nae for you, Alinor. Back!” The wolf whined once and lay down immediately, her head between her paws and her ears flat.
Evelyn smiled at her girl’s fine manners and crossed the floor to the animal pens. She reached down into the murky shadows and dug out a handful of hard, cold soil from the floor, then hurried back to the upper part of the hut. Ignoring MacKerrick’s raised brow, Evelyn tossed the dirt into the bucket containing the bits of the broken mug.
She hoped she could remember the words.
Gathering up the folds of Minerva’s cloak, and hoping more than a little that it would give the rhyme more significance, Evelyn looked down into the bucket as she stepped inside it carefully, swaying to regain her balance on cramped feet.
MacKerrick laughed. “Eve, I said I’d take you—you doona have to use the bucket.”
“Shh!” she hissed at him and then muttered quietly aloud,“Down and out, cleanse the spout, set me free for the next lout. Down and out, cleanse—”
“Eve, what are you doing?” MacKerrick asked uneasily.
“—me free for the next lout.”Evelyn paused and glanced over her shoulder. “I overheard the kitchen maids talking about this once. I never dreamed I would have need of it and, in truth, I don’t know if it works, but…” She shrugged, then turned her eyes back to her feet in the bucket.“Down and out, cleanse the spout, set me free for the next lout. Down and—”
MacKerrick had moved closer to her side, his head cocked, listening. He interrupted her again, his voice level and calm. “Explain to me, if you would, lass. Fully.”
Evelyn sighed. She would be finished by now if he would only let her be.
“One of the kitchen maids at my father’s home had a reputation for being rather…generouswith her favors. When another maid inquired as to how she’d avoided…‘being caught,’ is how I believe she put it, the loose maid said that you must take an empty bucket and fill it with pieces of broken pottery and soil. Then you stand in the bucket and say ‘Down and out, cleanse the spout, set me free for the next lout’ thirteen times.” MacKerrick’s mouth hung open, and she felt her cheeks pinkening. “I know, ’tis silly, but—”
Evelyn looked back to her feet and sighed again. “Now I’ve lost count and will have to start over. I hope saying it more than thirteen times doesn’t mean it shan’t work.Down and out—”
MacKerrick jerked her completely off her feet in the next instant, the bucket toppling and spilling its dubious contents across the flagstones.
“MacKerrick, stop! I wasn’t finished!”
“Aye, you’ve finished,” he growled, swinging her around behind him and setting her on her feet. He kicked the dirt and shards back into the overturned bucket and then snatched it from the floor. “And you’ll nae be bustin’ any more of me crockery forthissuperstitious nonsense.” He shook the bucket at her as he crossed to the door. He lifted the bar, swung the door wide, and hurled the old wooden vessel into the night. Then he spat through the doorway for good measure.
MacKerrick turned to her, one long arm held toward the opening in polite, exaggerated invitation. “Do you have a need?”
Evelyn’s cheeks warmed and she straightened her spine. She’d had no idea how superstitious about superstition her new husband was. He and Minerva Buchanan would have got on not at all.
She clutched the old witch’s cloak about her protectively and, breezing past him, she said, “I’ll want that bucket returned to me, sir.”
“When Hell becomes an icy loch,” she heard him mutter as he followed close on her heels.
