“You are most welcome, Duncan,” Eve said and squeezed his forearm as she leaned up to kiss his cheek. “The weeks will seem too long.”
Conall’s blood boiled.
Duncan flushed scarlet before moving a step away. He looked to each sleepy animal strewn about the hut in various positions of sloth.
“Miss Alinor, Miss Bonnie, good night. Robert, I would have fair enjoyed you in a nice pastry, but good night to you, you lucky bugger.” Duncan saluted the shelf. “Whiskers, good night.” Then he spun in a blur to put himself eye to eye with Eve’s crow, and point a bony finger close to his beak.
“Sebastian, you shit on me head in the night, and I’ll have your other wing, ken?”
The crow squawked as if offended and then flapped himself to the far end of the pen.
“Good night, Dunc,” Conall laughed, all jealousy evaporated. How he loved his brother.
“Good night, good night.” Duncan waved grumpily and moved into the shadows with a bony swagger.
Conall at last stepped to Eve’s side and took her in his arms. She smiled up at him and Conall was glad ’twas not the same smile she’d given Duncan. This one was sweet, aye, but full of private thoughts and feminine desire.
“You must be exhausted, lass,” Conall said in a low voice before kissing her crown. After being up all night worrying over Alinor, then hosting Duncan all day, Conall was surprised Eve remained upright.
“I am rather weary,” she admitted. “But not very sleepy.” Her palms brushed down his back to clasp his buttocks. Conall was pleasantly shocked and greatly aroused.
“’Tis a shame we have company,” she whispered on tiptoe.
Conall leaned down. “I’ll throw him out in the snow.” And he meant it, especially when Duncan’s voice called from the blackness of the lower end of the hut.
“If yer nae sleepy, missus, have Conall tell you about the knot he wears ’round his neck!”
Eve turned inquisitive eyes to Conall’s collarbone and then to his face. “There’s a story behind this? I thought ’twas only…I don’t know—adornment.” She reached up, as if she would take the knot between her fingers.
Conall covered it with his fist before she could lay hand to it and tried to ignore the hurt look in her eyes. “’Tis a lengthy tale, Eve. Too long for this late hour. You need your rest.”
Eve frowned as she stared at Conall’s fist. He could not seem to release the knot for her gaze. ’Twas too painful, too private, still. For one final night, he wanted to hold the bittersweet memories greedily to himself.
“I’ll tell you on the morrow,” he promised her. And he meant that, too.
Chapter Fifteen
Evelyn could not help the pinch of sadness she felt when she woke the next morning to find that Duncan had indeed taken his leave at dawn. She had so enjoyed the company of her newly acquired brother-in-law. Something about the smaller MacKerrick brother’s personality comforted and delighted Evelyn thoroughly and she very much looked forward to seeing him again.
At her new home—the MacKerrick town. Where she and Conall would raise their child.
If she survived the birthing.
Evelyn raised her eyes from the cooking crock as Conall came through the door, wet from the rain falling in misty sheets outside. She could see the thick stew of fog swirling in the little bowl of their clearing before he shut the door.
He carried two buckets of water from a nearby stream—the snow had all but disappeared in the rain—and set them at Evelyn’s side near the fire.
“We’re in for a soaking,” he said, leaving the buckets on the bumpy flagstones. “The stream is rising, and fast—more rain to our north and west.”
Evelyn sighed, her melancholy settling on her even heavier than before. And Conall seemed as preoccupied and prickly this morn as she. If ’twas not deep snow trapping them all in the hut, ’twas rain, which would turn the little clearing around them into a bog. Evelyn dreaded the sticky mud that would be dragged into the cottage on the hooves, pads, and soles of many feet.
At least Alinor seemed recovered from her wanderlust. The wolf showed little interest in pestering the hut’s occupants or of running wild to the wood again. But she was the only one, it seemed, without the desire to break free from the cramped dwelling. Evelyn longed for sunshine and green grass. For a long, leisurely stroll in which she could stretch her stiff muscles, free of smothering peat smoke.
The idea of such reckless freedom reminded her of the task she’d set herself to this day. She gave the stew one last stir before rapping the long-handled spoon on the edge of the crock and replacing the lid. She rose with a groan—she was growing bigger by the hour, it seemed—and moved to the pen to gather up the crow from his perch.
“I would test Sebastian’s wing today,” she announced to Conall, carefully stretching the bird’s appendage to its full, inky length. “He seems strong enough now.”
“Glory to God,” Conall muttered, rolling his eyes. He’d grabbed the whetstone from the shelf and was sharpening the blade of his dagger. “That damned bird has given me nightmares, perched upon our bed all night, staring at me whilst I sleep.” He threw a black frown at Sebastian. “Good riddance to you, you noisy bugger.”
