But at the center of it all, silence.
Reaching for his wine, Craeg searched for something to say. “How was yer passage from Ulva?”
“Smooth.” Isla’s voice was barely audible. She pushed a piece of roast venison around her trencher. “The weather was fair.”
“Good. That’s … good.”Good?God’s teeth, couldn’t he do better than that?
More excruciating silence followed.
Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Do ye enjoy riding?”
“I suppose,” She wouldn’t look at him. “When required.”
“How do ye like spending yer time then?”
“I work at my loom often,” she replied softly. “And help my mother in our garden.”
The mention of a garden reminded him, traitorously, of Hazel. “Ye are fond of plants then?”
She nodded, giving him nothing.
The conversation died yet again. Craeg took another gulp of wine, wishing he could be anywhere else.
Glancing at Isla’s profile, he noticed the tension in her jaw. She was nervous, aye. But there was something else in the rigid set of her shoulders.
Wariness. Fear, even.
“Isla—” he started.
“Neither of us wants this,” she blurted out, before pressing her lips together as if shocked by her own boldness.
Craeg stilled. “What?”
She shook her head quickly, her cheeks flushing. “Forgive me.”
“No … speak yer mind. Please.”
But she’d already retreated into herself, her gaze dropping to her trencher. “It’s nothing. I misspoke.”
6: THE DELIVERY
“SHE SHOULD HAVE been honest with me, Duncan.” Hazel set down the wheelbarrow and grabbed her pitchfork. She then stabbed it into the soiled straw. “I had the right to know.” A few yards away, her donkey had picked up a twist of rope in his mouth and was swinging it around. He was a playful beast and didn’t mind her.
Hazel muttered a curse. Just as well Duncan couldn’t understand her, since her lament was always the same.
She couldn’t let this go.
“I know so little about myrealmother,” she continued, stabbing at the straw once more and lifting a forkful into the wheelbarrow. “She robbed me of her.”
Her eyes prickled then, as she imagined Rhona Maclean. Not for the first time, shame quickened her breathing.
Something occurred to her then, and she stilled in her work. “Maybe Ma blamed me for her sister’s death,” she whispered. “Maybe she sought to punish me for it … that’s why she never told me.” Nausea washed over her then. Blaming herself was pointless, yet every time she thought about her birth mother, it was difficult not to feel some culpability.
Duncan snorted, dragging Hazel back to the present. “Look at me,” she muttered. “Blethering on to a donkey.”
In response, Duncan dropped the twist of rope before picking it up once more and flinging it across the yard.
Hazel huffed a sigh. “We should make a trip into Lochbuie, I suppose … we’re nearly out of oats now.”
