Magdalene didn’t know what to do, or what to say, and she couldn’t have paused to answer them if she’d wanted to for the maidservants guiding her right past the girls.
“Keira, we’ll talk of it later,” came Gabriel’s weary voice behind Magdalene. “She needs time tae herself tae eat and rest. Come and give me a hug, aye, Rhona, too.”
With delighted squeals, the two girls raced toward Gabriel, Magdalene twisting around to see him drop to one knee and envelop them in a warm embrace.
Gabriel had two daughters? He had never said a word about it to her during the journey, or that he must have been married before and then widowed, but then again, he’d barely uttered anything to her at all other than terse commands. And why would he have cause to share such details with a mad wife anyway?
“Come, child, no dawdling,” said one of the women with a brusque, no-nonsense manner that filled Magdalene with dread, while the other clucked her tongue in full agreement.
Her captors, clearly. Her jailers. Was she being led to the top of one of those four towers, where they would lock her up and throw away the key? Was there no mercy left in heaven to have prevented such a fate to befall her?
“Oh, Seoras, why?” Magdalene said plaintively under her breath, the sound of the two girls laughing gaily like a mocking echo behind her.Why?
Chapter 6
Gabriel stared into the massive fireplace stacked with logs, but he felt little warmth from the crackling flames.
He felt cold inside, cold and disgusted with himself.
How could he have treated Magdalene so roughly that she had cringed at the prospect of his touch like a frightened mouse? He had been suffering such discomfort from a healing shoulder wound after nearly four days spent in the saddle that he’d lost sight of his own strength in his dealings with her.
A shoulder wound not earned in battle, but on the training field with his own men after the proxy marriage that had bound him for life to Magdalene. He had roared for his captains to join him with only one thought on his mind: To exhaust himself with swordplay until he couldn’t think any more about the accursed bargain he’d been forced to strike with Seoras to save his own people.
Aye, he had grown exhausted…and careless, not dodging in time when Cameron had lunged at him and pierced his shoulder, but thankfully not to the bone. Yet it pained him all the same, especially when he was overtired—and by God, he’d never known such weariness as he felt now with his new bride under his roof.
Watching those stocky maidservants haul Magdalene away had cut him as much to the quick—yet what else was he to do?
He had anticipated their service might be necessary to help keep her from harming herself and mayhap others, not from any ill intent on her part but because she was so wild! The past two days since they had left the convent had proved to him that she would need constant supervision, his poor, wretched lunatic wife.
Gabriel muttered an oath and took a draught of ale while the healer, a scrawny fellow with a thin beaked nose, finished applying a soothing liniment to his right shoulder.
“Well, Laird, your wound is healed, so it must be the muscle underneath that still plagues you.”
“Truly, Clovis? Tell me something I didna already know or else we’re done here. How long do you judge before the rest will heal? A week? Mayhap longer?”
Gabriel had spoken with sharp impatience, but Clovis only shrugged his narrow shoulders as if not daunted at all.
“Aye, a week…if you take care not tae use that arm overmuch. And no training.”
“No training?” Incredulous, Gabriel scowled at the man, but again, Clovis merely shrugged.
“If you train with your men…then two weeks. The choice is yours, Laird. Will there be aught else?”
Gabriel shook his head and took another draught before setting the tankard on the floor, and then stood with a low groan to slip a clean tunic over his head.
Meanwhile the healer made short work of packing up his bandages and bottles of remedies into a reed basket and then hastened away.
That left Gabriel alone in the great hall, which suited his darkening mood. He wound his breacan like a mantle around his shoulders, grimacing at the twinge of pain, and then retook his seat in one of the carved chairs arranged before the fireplace.
The men that had accompanied him to the convent near Dumbarton had retired to their quarters for much needed rest after a quick meal of rabbit stew, his four trusted captains to their private chambers on the keep’s second floor while the rest to a bunkhouse. Not a one would have wanted to be around him right now anyway, and he didn’t blame them.
He wasn’t a man normally plagued by sullen emotion, but in this instance, he would indulge himself.
And why not? Hadn’t it been enough to inherit a castle woefully in need of repair? Tenants and servants close to starving? Two nieces who’d lost both parents at such a tender age? And now a wife more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen but with no more sense about her than a willful child?
Sputtering embers drew Gabriel’s gaze once more to the fire, and he wondered how much trouble Magdalene had given her two attendants.
Tam’s spinster sisters, actually, Donella and Euna, his steward’s entire family a portly lot. Donella was the eldest of the three, with wispy brown hair and a dark mole on her chin, while Euna looked much like her younger brother with pale blue eyes and a round moon face—all of them having served the MacLachlans devotedly for years.
