She shrugged, looking away. “I don’t know. Something felt different.”
Eoin swore inwardly, glad she couldn’t see the guilt on his face. He hadn’t even realized what he was doing until he pulled out at the last second. He couldn’t believe he’d actually had the presence of mind to do so. But he knew it was the right thing. As much as he would like to leave her with his child, he knew it wouldn’t be fair to her, knowing he might not survive to see it born.
But he knew that wasn’t what she was alluding to. He reached up to cup her chin and turn her face to his. “I haven’t looked at another woman since the day I met you, Maggie. There is, and has been, only you.”
She held his gaze and must have been satisfied by what she saw there because she switched the subject. “You look different.”
Unconsciously, he rubbed his jaw which hadn’t seen a razor in weeks. He knew he looked like hell—he’d been through it to get to her. “I didn’t exactly have time to wash up after I saw you.”
The girl he’d first met wouldn’t have been able to resist teasing him about his eagerness and uncharacteristic public display, but she ignored it. “How did you arrive? I didn’t see a boat down by the dock.”
He hadn’t wanted to draw that much attention to his presence. The ship and men who’d sailed with him were waiting in an inlet on the west side of Kerrera. MacLeod had come through for him, all right: he’d arranged to have the best seafarer in Scotland bring Eoin home. Without MacSorley’s skills, Eoin would probably be dead—either from the English who’d chased them halfway around Ireland or from the storm that at first almost capsized them, and then forced them to take shelter on a small island for nearly two days until it passed.
The few days that he’d hoped for had been whittled down to less than twenty-four hours. How was he going to make her understand in under a day?
“I came in on the other side of the isle.” Hoping to cut off more questions, he asked, “Is that where you were? Down at the dock? My mother said you go to Oban a few times a week to help the nuns at the convent?”
She stared at him as if trying to gauge whether there was something behind the question. There wasn’t—except maybe curiosity.
“If you want to know what I’ve been doing for five months, Eoin—five months—just ask me. Because that is exactly what I want to know from you.”
Eoin swore. Damn Bruce to hell for making him agree to that vow!
He would tell her what he could. She would learn part of the truth soon enough, when news of the coronation spread. “I will do my best to answer your questions, and I know we have much to talk about, but let me bathe and eat something first.”
He also knew that his father, brothers, and Fin would be anxious for a report. When the call to battle came from Bruce, they would answer.
He could tell she wanted to argue, but she took pity on him. He must look more beaten up by the past few days than he realized. “Now that you are home, I suppose there is time. But I will expect answers.”
He didn’t know what he was looking forward to less: telling her he was leaving again or telling her why.
12
IT WAS SOromantic—although I thought my mother was going to faint right there, she turned so red.” Tilda giggled beside her on the bench. Margaret knew she belonged in the middle of thehie burdenext to her husband, but she’d taken her usual seat below the high table beside Tilda instead. She thought it would be easier to sit next to someone she could talk to rather than someone she couldn’t. His mother and father were only too happy to accept her offer to have their son to themselves, without their regrettable daughter-in-law in the way.
But for once Margaret wasn’t in the mood for Tilda’s cheerful chatter. She was too anxious about the coming conversation, and her husband’s attempt to explain the inexplicable. She needed answers. But more important, she needed him to prove to her that she hadn’t made the biggest mistake in her life.
She glanced down the table, and was glad to see that after the bath, shave, and meal, the dark circles under his eyes and the lines of weariness etched on his face had faded. But there was still something different about him—other than the added bulk and what looked to be one or two new scars on his face. He looked harder somehow. Fiercer. Darker. Even more intense than she remembered. Different from the man she’d married.
Tilda hadn’t noticed her unusual quietness. She shook her pretty golden brown head. She had the same coloring as Eoin and Neil. The two other siblings, Marjory and Donald, were darker like their mother. “I’ve never seen Eoin do anything like that,” she said. “I knew he must love you very much. He would have to turn his head away from the battlefield or one of those boring old folios for more than a few minutes. I hope one day I will marry a man that will take one look at me and carry me up to the bedchamber.” She sighed dramatically. “You are so lucky.”
Lucky? Margaret was lucky she wasn’t drinking her sweet wine (the syrupy wernage was a suitable lady’s beverage) or it might have been “uncouthly” spattered all over the pretty linen tablecloth. She mumbled something intelligible in response, which must have satisfied Tilda, because she resumed her soliloquy on the “romantic” events of earlier.
Margaret wished she could see it the same way as Tilda. But to her, the frenzied lovemaking had seemed more a cry of desperation and a release of pent-up emotion and pain than a romantic expression of love.
She would never deny the passion she felt for him, but lust wasn’t romance. Romance wasn’t sharing a bed, it was sharing a life. It was trusting someone. Having someone to share your thoughts. Knowing that the person lying next to you would do anything for you because you would do the same for them.
It wasn’t disappearing for five months without explanation. It wasn’t being kept in the dark. And it wasn’t being left alone and miserable among people who thought you weren’t good enough or smart enough for the “brilliant” young warrior with such a promising future.
Perhaps some of that misery showed on her face. Eoin caught her eye, said something to his father, and stood. Lady Rignach looked in her direction, and for once Margaret thought she detected sympathy.
She discovered why a short while later. Margaret sat on the edge of the bed, while the man she’d given her heart to stood before her and stomped all over it.
He calmly explained that he’d been at Lochmaben in Dumfries with the Earl of Carrick and turned her world upside down.
“But you said you were doing something for your father.”
“I was,” he said. “Am. Bruce is the rightful king of Scotland. My father believes that as much as I do.”
