He’d hastily eaten a slice in the kitchen, Gabriel ravenous from the morning’s rigorous labors, though he hadn’t allowed himself anything more. Not while Magdalene was going hungry, mayhap even feeling ill from lack of food—och, he couldn’t bear to think of it!
Why hadn’t Donella or Euna come to him and let him know that she hadn’t eaten for two days? He blamed himself for that, too, no doubt having given them the impression that he didn’t care a whit if Magdalene starved herself or not.
Heaving a disgusted sigh, Gabriel glanced at the storage room he had abandoned last week as his sleeping quarters.
Nor had he allowed Rhona or Keira to visit Magdalene, though his nieces had besieged him with requests to do just that every day.
He had failed altogether at his earlier resolve to try and reach her with patience—funny, that Clovis had echoed the same sentiment that Gabriel vowed now not to abandon, no matter what Magdalene might do.
She wasn’t mad after all, just pretending to be. To protect herself. To do what she could to survive, Gabriel remembering suddenly the sunny sound of her laughter when she was a girl—but that had been before Debora’s death.
He couldn’t blame Magdalene at all for the ruse she’d played for so long and so well, and he prayed that one day—not too far from now!—she might laugh as she had before when life hadn’t appeared so treacherous and threatening.
Gabriel stopped at the door, swearing under his breath.
He hadn’t forgotten about the family curse for one moment, though he pushed the danger to the back of his mind for now. He wanted to have hope for himself and Magdalene—and mayhap the curse had only been a terrible coincidence that had taken the lives of his grandmother, his mother, and Malcolm’s wife. It was possible, wasn’t it? Their deaths had been tragic accidents that could have happened to anyone.
His grandmother Alyce breaking her neck when she tripped and fell down the stairs.
His mother, Philesta, drowning in the lough during a swim.
Anna, Malcolm’s poor wife, suffering the most gruesome death of all when her gown had caught fire in the kitchen.
“Enough, man,” Gabriel rebuked himself, not wanting to think any more of death and dying. Not when he’d received the most astounding news he could have imagined from Clovis, though he had seen the keenness in Magdalene’s eyes, too.
So had Finlay, who had commented upon it. Mayhap within another few days, Gabriel would have come to the same conclusion as Clovis…especially after seeing Magdalene’s tears in the great hall, though he’d had no idea what could have upset her.
“No doubt something you did,” Gabriel said under his breath, raising his hand to knock upon the door. Yet all that was changed now. He would be gentle and patient and kind—
“Aagh! She just kicked me, Donella! Look out,look out!”
Chapter 12
“What the devil…?” At the piercing sound of a scream and something crashing to the floor, Gabriel pounded upon the door, the damned thing bolted on the inside because of his command. “Euna! Donella! Open the door at once!”
He heard a scuffling, grunts, and then another shriek, and someone fumbling wildly with the bolt as if in desperation. Then the door was thrown open, Euna’s round face a bright red and her chest heaving.
“She’s gone mad, Laird—aye, even madder than before! Ah, God, look! She’s got Donella by the hair on the floor!”
Gabriel did look, Magdalene and Donella wrestling with each other in a blur of arms and legs near the bed. He had never seen such a sight, and oddly, he almost felt like laughing to see his petite wife besting Tam’s stout sister—until Magdalene yanked so hard upon a fistful of hair that Donella shrieked in pain.
“Get her off me! Euna! Laird MacLachlan—help me!”
He did, rushing forward to pull Magdalene flailing and kicking off the flushed maidservant while Euna burst into tears.
“She’s a horror, Laird—aye, we were only trying tae spoon some porridge into her mouth! She knocked the tray tae the floor and then jumped out of bed and kicked me! Then Donella grabbed her tae try and calm her down, but look at my poor sister!”
Donella was a mess, Gabriel had to admit, but it was nothing to Magdalene, who struggled like a crazed thing in his arms.
Except she wasn’t crazed, though she certainly looked the part from her tousled hair and her face as flushed as Tam’s sisters’. To his surprise, he felt laughter welling again—God help him, he wanted to roar with elation.
Magdalene wasn’t mad!His beautiful wild-eyed wife wasn’t mad! She glared at him with such fury, her eyes sparking fire, that it dampened his euphoria, though he couldn’t help chuckling.
“Easy, wife, the poor women were only trying tae feed you, not torture you.”
She grew so still in his arms of a sudden, staring at him as if he might have gone mad, that Gabriel loosened his hold on her—much to his regret when she wriggled out of his grasp and whirled around to kick him in the knee.
He grunted, more taken by surprise than pain, but it was the defiant beauty standing with her fists clenched in front of him that took his breath away.
