“The babe?!” Duncan sprang to his feet, not caring about his nakedness, or that their bed now stood in full view everyone in the great hall.
“Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” he roared, shoving his hands through his hair.
“Bluidy hell! ’Tis too soon!” he bellowed, a wounded beast, dread like none he’d ever known sluicing through him in great, cold waves. “Mother of God, preserve-”
“Of a mercy, husband, becalm yourself.” Shaking her head, Linnet smiled.
A reassuring smile meant for him, and every MacKenzie who now gaped at them. Men grog-eyed from sleep, the same terror stamped on their startled faces as he knew stood on his.
“Duncan, please. Everyone is staring,” she said, clutching the bedcovers to her swollen breasts. “You’ve roused them all with your blustering, and to no purpose. The babe will not come for some weeks yet.”
“And it is awake they aught be!” Whirling around, Duncan planted fisted hands against his hips and glowered at any who dared to meet his stare.
Glared at the lot of them until their snickers reminded him of his unclothed state.
Until the portent of his lady wife’s words sifted past the thick cords of alarm twisting ‘round his innards, tying his gut in knots and bows.
The babe will not come for weeks.
Cool bliss on his fired nerves.
Soothing balm to ease his fear of losing her, and their bairn.
The first she’d managed to carry this long.
Heaving a great sigh, he raked every gawker in his hall with a fierce stare. “This bed is here for one purpose only,” he called out, his deep voice rising to the vaulted ceiling. “You are gathered round it for the same reason: to alert me if my lady attempts to leave it, or stop her folly if I am away.”
He cast a warning look over his shoulder.
At her.
He’d deal with her repeated attempts to defy him later, after the safe delivery of the healthy bairn she insisted they’d be blessed with.
His bug-eyed men would taste his wrath now. “Lest you wish to wear sackcloth and dine on naught but soot and ash the rest of your days, hunker back down on your pallets or wherever else you choose to rest your heads and ignore what happens in or near this bed, lest my lady seeks to escape its confines.”
Folding his arms, he waited until their grumbles, grunts, and rustlings found an end, then turned back to confront his misty-eyed wife.
If the babe wasn’t the reason for her tears, he had a good idea who was.
The only other person with as big a heart – assofta heart – as Linnet herself.
“So, sweeting...” He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, and took her hand in his.
“So?” She looked at him, swiped at her cheek.
“What is with the great lout?” he began, concern for his friend almost as laming as his fear for her and the babe had been. “Have you had a vision?”
“I have,” she admitted, nodding.
“Has something happened to him?”
Linnet shook her head, her heart too full for words.
Duncan frowned. “Your sister, then?” He smoothed the hair back from her brow, the tender gesture belying his fierce expression. “Is she in danger?”
“Only of losing her heart,” Linnet told him, her joy at the knowledge almost overwhelming her. “Our dear Sir Marmaduke has already lost his,” she added, a tear leaking from the corner of one eye.
Duncan glanced to the side.
