“Can we not keep this a secret between the three of us?” Isla pleaded. “Margaret, you will not tell anyone of this, will you? No one need know, and then I may wed Andrew, and we could pretend that this was the result of my union with him!” Her voice was rising hysterically, her pitch growing ever more frenzied and desperate.
“Brodie is right,” Margaret said, dejected. “I can keep such a secret, pretend that I saw nothing…but in telling such a lie to your father, you would be in a race against time, and you would surely lose. I have known many girls who have borne children, and their bodies always betray them to those who would know what signs to look for. Your father would surely recognize such signs, as his own wife exhibited them three times over.”
“Not only that,” Brodie added, “but to ask Margaret to be dishonest to Seamus would be unfair to her. If your father learned she was a party to this, she could lose her position here.”
Margaret could not help but admire him for saying so. Here he was, discovered in another woman’s bedchamber, and still, he was showing her kindness and consideration.
Why can he not be mine?the maid thought, so frustrated that she could cry.Isla does not even want Brodie, and still, she gets to have him! How dreadfully unfair!
Such thoughts were strange to Margaret, who cared for others so deeply that she cared little for her own happiness or needs by comparison. She was ashamed of them, but she could not deny that they existed within her.
“There must be another way,” Isla insisted tremulously. “There must...there must!”
“There is not,” Brodie replied. “I must go to Seamus at once and pledge to make you my bride. That’s what a man does.”
