“Did you love Ian Douglas so much then?” he asked her pointedly.
“I respected my husband, and aye, I had come to love him,” Cicely said, a trifle annoyed. She shifted in her chair by the fire, for herbelly was large now, and finding a comfortable position sitting or lying was hard.
“It is said when love is tepid and then lost it grows disproportionately,” Kier remarked wickedly. He had grown bored with her attempts to be a tortured widow. He had no doubt that she had indeed come to respect his cousin, and had even become genuinely fond of Ian. But she had not been deeply, passionately in love.
“How can you say such a vile thing to me?” Cicely raged at him.
“Because it is true,” Kier told her.
“IlovedIan!” Cicely insisted.
“And one day you’ll love another,” he told her.
“I shallneverlove again!” she declared dramatically.
Kier laughed aloud. “Aye, you will, madam,” he said. “I am told my cousin trussed you up like a piglet going to market, and rode you into the borders. Hardly an auspicious beginning for a love match.”
“He had to steal me.” Cicely found herself defending Ian, although it had been a rather horrible beginning. “The Gordons wouldn’t let any man but their own near me.”
“If I had wanted to court you, madam, and were being chased away by another who sought to have you, I would have found a way,” he said.
“Indeed?And how would you have courted me beneath the nose of the Gordons?” she demanded of him.
“I would have crept into your bedchamber at night, madam. And when you protested my boldness I should have wooed you with sweet kisses and ardent caresses until you finally agreed to be my wife. I would have made you fall in love with me, and no Gordon or king could have prevented our marriage,” he told her.
“Ian loved me,” Cicely said. “He loved me enough to brave the wrath of the king in order to have me. It cost him my dower, but he loved me nonetheless.” Kier Douglas’s audacious words had enveloped her body in a rush of heat. The child had stirred restlessly within her womb. Had she blushed? She couldn’t tell, for she washot all over, and Cicely didn’t dare put her hands to her face lest he realize his words had affected her in any way but with righteous indignation.
“Aye, he did,” Kier admitted. “It was the talk of the border, how the Douglas of Glengorm had lost his wits over a pretty English girl.” And then to his surprise, Cicely turned the table on him.
“Do you enjoy taunting me, my lord? And to what purpose?” she asked him sweetly. “I am sure there are better things you could be doing now. Are the accounts up-to-date? My father always kept his accounts carefully. Of course, since Ian got rid of a serving woman named Bethia there has been no stealing from our stores. It has made the keeping of our accounts much easier.”
“The accounts are up-to-date,” he told her stiffly.
“And can you tell me how many lambs have been born so far? Ewes are such silly creatures, dropping their lambs in the dead of winter,” Cicely noted. “But, of course, we must still keep a scrupulous accounting, mustn’t we?”
“There have been fifteen lambs born so far, two sets of twins among them,” Kier said, suddenly amused. This was a new side of Cicely revealed. She was a spirited lass. Would she be as spirited in his bed when he married her? He hoped so, for he enjoyed a passionate partner. It gave a certain piquancy to bedsport.
“Very good, my lord. Then life progresses as it should,” Cicely approved.
He sparred with her regularly after that afternoon, and after a few weeks he realized that she was no longer pulling a mournful face all day long. In fact, her lighter attitude reflected itself in the servants’ attitudes. Ian Douglas would not be forgotten, but at least he had been put to rest now, and they could all get on with their lives.
March came, and now the anxious waiting for Cicely’s child began in earnest. A week passed. Then two and three. The snows were disappearing from the hillsides. The ice was gone from the loch, wherebut a month ago the men from the village had joined with Kier in games of curling, sweeping a round of granite down the ice to a goal called a house. Now blue water sparkled where those goals had once been. There were already early daffodils blooming in a sunny spot near the kitchen door.
And then one morning Cicely announced that she believed her child was coming. “I have been in pain all night,” she told Mab. “Go and fetch Agnes the midwife, and Mary Douglas for me.”
Tam heard his mistress’s words and immediately ran from the hall. When he returned some minutes later he was accompanied by two women.
Mary Douglas instantly took charge. “Put a clean, heavy cloth upon the high board,” she ordered Una.
Agnes went at once to Cicely. “How do you feel, my lady?” she asked the girl anxiously.
“Like I am being torn apart,” Cicely told her. “You must help me, for the only child I have ever seen born was Ben Duff’s heir.”
“There, there, my lady, ’tis a natural event in a woman’s life,” Agnes said, “and this bairn is so eagerly anticipated.” She began to walk with Cicely up and down the hall.
And while she did Mary Douglas saw the flat high board covered with clean cloth, and the Glengorm cradle brought, along with swaddling cloths, a pile of cloths, and a cauldron of water set to boil over the hearth.
The day wore on. Cicely alternated until midafternoon between walking back and forth and sitting by the fire. She was parched, but they would allow her only tiny sips of watered wine to slake her thirst. But finally the manservants were ordered from the hall. Cicely was helped up onto the high board, which would now serve as a birthing table. Mary Douglas stood at her head, propping up her shoulders as Agnes peered between the laboring woman’s outspread thighs, nodding. Finally the midwife looked up.
