“I love it here,” he said.“You know that, aye?”
Her face blossomed into a pleased smile, as sunny as the primroses blooming in the glen.
“The fresh air,” he said, stepping close to caress her cheek.“The peaceful woods.”He wound a lock of her beautiful chestnut hair around his callused finger.“Sparrow song.Morning dew.”He tugged gently on her curl, bringing her close.“Sleeping when we’re weary,” he murmured.“Waking whene’er we wish.”He lowered his gaze to her delectable lips.“Trysting when the mood…”
He never finished the thought.
Carenza finished it for him.
Chapter 27
Summer filled the glen with meadowsweet and bluebells.
Still Sister Eve didn’t return.
Twice, against Carenza’s wishes, Hew had risked a visit to the village alehouse late at night, heavily cloaked and stooped to hide his size.Yet he’d learned nothing about the king’s disposition or the status of the laird of Dunlop or what anyone imagined had become of that Rivenloch warrior with the axe.
Carenza wasn’t surprised.The men who exchanged gossip at a village alehouse were more likely to discuss the cost of bread and which neighbor was cheating on his wife than Scottish politics and nobles’ marriages.
But she didn’t mind.They’d transformed the byre into a home.
Meanwhile, summer ripened slowly into autumn.
The thistles in the glen flourished and faded.Bilberries and blackberries swelled and sweetened.Squirrels and hedgepigs and foxes had litters of young.Woodland birds retired their songs and muted their colors.And the trees changed out of their green gowns into shades of gold and scarlet that fluttered off like butterflies in the blustery wind.
Carenza’s body ripened as well.
At first, it was no great inconvenience.
While Hew worked from dawn to dusk, cutting peat for their cook fires, gathering berries, fishing, and fetching foodstuffs and linens, she could still care for the hens and prepare the daily pottage and oatcakes.
But now she was simply unwieldy.She could no longer see her feet.Where in summer she might have skipped across the glen to gather bunches of wild garlic, the mere thought of trudging across the wet grass to admire the last persistent purple thistle was exhausting.And she was always hot, despite the cool autumn weather.
This morn, however, when she waddled out the door, there was a strange stillness in the air and a chill that made her wrap her plaid tighter around her round belly.
Hew was already outside, scowling at the sky.
“It feels like snow,” she said.
He grunted.
“’Tis early yet,” she remarked.
Nonetheless, the clouds were thick and bluish-gray, and itdidfeel like they might begin sifting snowflakes onto the earth at any moment.
He turned then to look at her.And she saw his unspoken fear.
It was the same fear that had lurked in the back of her mind for weeks.The one she’d kept cloaked in denial.The one they hadn’t spoken about.
She could see now it was too late.The weather had turned.They’d never make it through the snow.
By her estimation, she would birth the bairn in a few fortnights.And if the snow started falling now, it could indicate a harsh winter where it might not melt until spring.
She’d foolishly hoped Sister Eve would return within the next fortnight with the approved document, to relieve them of their fugitive status and allow them to return home.
It had been her quiet wish to have their child at Dunlop—in the castle, on her feather bed, surrounded by the ladies of the clan—while Hew and her father drank ale and paced the great hall.She’d imagined presenting the bairn to her father.Dreamed of showing off the laird’s heir to the people of Dunlop.
Now that wouldn’t happen.
