“I was never your wife,” Evelyn said quietly, amazed that she could still speak. “You were married to a woman who never existed.”
MacKerrick made to move toward the shelf where his plaid and pack hung innocently. Alinor growled and her hackles rose higher.
“Nay!” Evelyn said sharply, then lowered her voice when he stopped. “You’ll take naught from this hut—you’ve taken enough already, sir.”
MacKerrick stared at her for what seemed like an eternity.
Alinor took a menacing step forward, lowered her head, and bared her teeth once more.
Conall MacKerrick turned and departed through the open doorway into the misty fog of evening, and was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
Conall fought his way through the underbrush, having strayed from the trail that led to the MacKerrick town, but not caring. Old, brittle brambles slashed at his arms, chest, and thighs through his thin clothing, but he could not feel the scores of tears on his skin for the searing pain in his gut. Fiery and roiling, he knew ’twould paralyze him if he paused to catch his breath, and so he charged forward, recklessly grabbing great handfuls of spiny vines and ripping them out of his way.
Damned. They were…damned, now.
The curse would finish them and ’twould be the fault of none but Conall. But the danger was so much bigger now, so much more was at stake.
Mayhap if he moved faster…
His breath roared in and out of him as he spied a break in the choking brush and the stingy trail beyond it. Conall threw himself from the thickness of the tangle with a roar, stumbling onto the mired path. He began to run through the sucking mud. Night was swiftly falling, like the spreading wings of the midnight crow.
He needed Duncan. He needed—his mother, aye! Lana would know. She would understand and forgive him and…
And what?
Conall didn’t know. But he was being called home, mayhap for the last time. He paid no heed to the tears on his face, save for running faster to dry their bitter wetness.
Evelyn did not bother barring the door. MacKerrick would not return and even if he did, Evelyn felt she would keep her word and let Alinor tear him limb from long, lanky limb.
She backed up a step to again lower herself onto the edge of the box bed, Alinor nosing under her palm, once more the docile companion. From the far end of the hut, Bonnie bleated pitifully, her tether caught on a board.
He’s left his sheep,Evelyn thought to herself in odd, quiet concern.Poor Bonnie. She’s sad.
“Just a moment, Bonnie,” Evelyn called faintly. “I only need to…”
What? Weep? Rest? Scream? Evelyn didn’t know, save that she could not command her body to rise from the bed. The bed she and MacKerrick had shared for the past several months. Where she had taken his seed and given her heart.
God, how she’d loved him.
And he had done the very thing that could destroy her. She lost herself in the horrifying future left to her: black loneliness, death, blood…
Evelyn did not know how long she sat in the loud silence, but when she came aware with a start, the hut was gloomy pitch.
Something must be wrong. She must be ill. Perhaps the strain of her and MacKerrick’s parting row had been too much, done unseen harm, for she felt an odd, deliberate plucking in her lower abdomen that she’d never felt before.
Still beneath her hand, Alinor turned her muzzle toward Evelyn, her ears pricking up. Evelyn brought her other palm to rest gingerly on her belly and held her breath, waited.
There it was again! A sort of punching of her insides; a tumbling, a lurch. Painless, but she felt it both inside and out and for a moment, icy-hot fear drenched her.
Then Alinor whined softly.
“It’s moving,” Evelyn whispered, realizing, looking down at her hand. Evelyn had felt the faint flutterings of the babe for several weeks now, but never like this. Not this strongly or insistently, as if he was adamantly stating his presence.
“It’s really…alive.” She swallowed. “Hallow, babe.”
And then she did weep, great wailing sobs of joy and pain and fear. This babe was a living being inside her, created in the deepest snows of the highland winter by a man and woman brought together by lies. And now he lay, turning innocently in Evelyn’s body, blessedly unaware that his father had abandoned him, that his mother was completely alone and frightened.
