“You made me pregnant.”
Conall cursed loudly.
He was defeated.
Chapter Thirteen
The snow was melting.
Evelyn sat upon the low stool midway between the fire pit and the open door, bent over her growing belly and the bucket between her feet. She scrubbed at her and Conall’s meager excuses for extra clothing while Sebastian the crow perched on one of the pen walls, as if he, too, was enjoying the view of the outdoors.
The bird’s wing was healed by the way he flapped about the hut, and Evelyn suspected ’twould be safe enough to turn the bird out of doors soon. Then Sebastian would be once again free to glide regally through the forest. In the meantime, the crow would continue to irritate Conall.
Evelyn grinned as her cold, stiff fingers wrung the last drops of water from MacKerrick’s sleeveless léine. She would have to shut the door when her husband, Alinor, and Bonnie returned to the hut—Conall would be none too pleased that it stood open now. But each occupant of the small cottage was itching for the larger freedom of spring, mayhap Evelyn most of all. In the four months since discovering she was with child, the weather had improved incrementally so that, although ’twas still cold, some days the breeze no longer took your breath, and the snow outside was soft and loose and slick with melt water. The wood ran like a waterfall, the snow sliding from tree boughs like wet, heavy waves, spinning the rare sunlight into iridescent sheets of gold.
Yea, they were all anxious to be about in kinder weather, stretch their legs—whether two or four—and let the wind stir the stuffy lethargy from their heads. But Conall had taken the two “lassies” alone, ordering Evelyn to remain at the hut while he checked the traps, lest the grays be about.
She smiled gently. He was so protective of her and the babe.
Evelyn stood with the wet, heavy tangle of clothes and began shaking each piece out and tossing it over a rafter. She hoped Alinor was better behaved upon their return. For days now, the wolf had pestered them all nearly to insanity, herding poor Bonnie and nipping at her rump, taunting Sebastian on his perch to make him stumble, overturning Whiskers’s bowl from the shelf, digging frantically in the earth of the pens. Alinor wanted to be let out, then she wanted back in immediately. She wanted to wrestle and roughhouse with Conall; she chased Evelyn’s skirts and generally put herself underfoot.
When Alinor was outdoors, the wolf ran the clearing in a circuit, sniffing, sniffing the air madly, sometimes whining, before she was—oft times, physically—forced back inside the hut. Evelyn hoped that Conall would make good on his promise to give the wolf a good run this afternoon so that Alinor would return to her usual, calm self.
Her chore completed, Evelyn scooped Sebastian from the pen wall and stood in the doorway of the hut, cradling and stroking the bird atop her overturned bowl of a belly. They should be returning soon—dusk was perhaps only a pair of hours away.
“What is taking them so long, eh, boy?” Evelyn murmured to the bird. He turned his slick head to look at her in his sideways manner.
“Bay.”
“Yea, yea—baby. I know.” Evelyn shook her head and sighed. Sebastian was in sore need of an expansion in his vocabulary. She paused as a mad idea seized her.
“Sebastian.” Evelyn jostled the bird gently and then exaggerated her lips. “Ma-ma.”
The bird looked around wildly with it’s glossy yellow eye.
“Mama,” she repeated. “SayMama.”
“Be!”
“Nay—Mama.”
“Bay!”
“Ma—”
“Bay-bee!”
“Oh, never mind.” Evelyn felt foolish for trying, but thoughts of the child growing inside her had stirred a curiosity about her future role as a mother. She wondered what it would be like when she and Conall moved to the MacKerrick town and became three. Her emotions rose and fell it seemed hourly, and Evelyn fluctuated between picturing a bloody nightmare of illness and hunger and death, to envisioning a large, comfortable sod home where the three of them lived happily in the midst of a welcoming people.
She sighed.
Who would have ever thought that Evelyn would have fallen in love with Conall MacKerrick? Caring and capable and jocular—he and Evelyn could talk about nothing in particular for hours, which they frequently did. And he still desired her misshapen body, making love to her often and well.
If she could survive the birth of this child, Evelyn thought she would have everything she’d ever desired.
Just then, movement on the fringe of the wood caught her eye and Conall stepped from the trees, Bonnie’s tether trailing after the sheep. The pair crossed the clearing and Evelyn leaned out the doorway slightly for sign of the big-boned black wolf. But Conall and Bonnie were nearly to the hut now and Alinor had still not emerged.
Conall’s face was lined and weary, his breeches and léine wet to his hips. Bonnie cried out and ran toward Evelyn.
