Now you’re condemned to a life of drudgery.But Morven never seemed to see it that way.
I mashed the pennyroyal, while she dusted the kist in the corner. “Eamon did smell the herb and thought it mint. What other excuse could I have made?”
Morven paused in her dusting. “Some sense of smell ’e’s got, then. It’s not mint, I’ll tell ye that much, though I’d swear I had smelled it someplace before.”
“I am sure you have. Mairi Grieve used pennyroyal for women who needed their courses restored or found themselves in the family way.”
“’Tis usually the same thing, if only they would admit it. Christians. Bah!” She paused, resting the broom against her hip. “Wait, now. Is there something ye’re not telling me, lass?” She scooted close, sticking her nose all but in my face. “I dunna smell any man upon ye. Not one what’s been in ye, leastwise.”
“Morven!” It erupted from me so loudly, Eamon groaned in his sleep upstairs.
“’Tis not for me,” I whispered. “Glenna the Baker’s Daughter did meet with a lover in the woods.”
“Ahh.” Morven did not resume her sweeping. “Ye’ve more nerve than I gave ye credit for, gel. Living in the house of Eamon Grieve and following the trade of Mairi.” She shook her head. “Ye’re not a trickster. How long do you think ye can keep this hid?”
I stared at the mashed pennyroyal, my cheeks flaring into warmth. Morven was right, of course. I was in far over my head. If Eamon found me out, my fate could be worse than Glenna Baker’s. At least she might take refuge in the kirk if need be. “’Tis only the once. Glenna is in desperate need.”
Morven snorted. “And the father? Seems he ought to be looking after Glenna and not you.”
I swallowed hard. “He is an elf lord.”
At this she chuckled. “So she says, eh? No better than she should be—not that there’s anything wrong with that, ’cept to Christian eyes. But these lasses are quick to blame it on a one of us.”
“I met him.”
Morven cocked her head.
It spilled out of me. “At Carterhaugh today. When I was gathering the pennyroyal. He had... hair. And... eyes.” I could not call to mind what sort of hair and eyes, so simply finished, “He was the handsomest man I had ever seen.”
“And here I thought ye’d set your sights on the lusty shepherd lad.”
My cheeks warmed all the way to my ears. “I have not. I would not know how to set my sights on anyone.” It is meant to be natural, I think, to mortals and fae as much as the little beasts in the forest. But I’d never had the time to learn.
Morven put a hand on her hip and waved the broom coquettishly, leaning forward as if to show me her bosom. “Why, good morrow, kind sir. I seem to have lost my ring in the haystack. Would ye help me look?” She wrapped her arms around herself, puckering her lips and making smacking noises.
I laughed despite myself.
“And after.” Morven spread her legs wide, rocking her hips back and forth, then dropped to her knees on the floor. She bounced up and down, making surprisingly human sounds of pleasure.
I could barely speak from laughter. “Stop! Eamon would have my head!”
Morven grunted. “Where’d ye think I learned it from? He and Mairi did have eight bairns.”
Now I felt vaguely ill.
“Imagine me trying that with the shepherd,” I said, “much less with the Amadan Dubh.”
But it was not hard to imagine doing it with Thomas Shepherd. My breath quickened and my belly fluttered as I envisioned tumbling beneath the moon at twilight, hearty enough to make the earth sing.
Morven had frozen in place. Beneath her shaggy hair, she looked white as milk. “Ye did not say the Amadan Dubh were the father of yer friend’s bairn.”
“I am saying it now.” I could not understand how drastically her manner had changed, from bawdy and joking to abject fear in mere moments.
Morven shook her head frantically. “Ye stay away from the Dark Fool. He were no friend to Mairi Grieve, nor, as rumor has it, to Queen Una herself. Too soft on humans, he said she was; held them higher in esteem than the Unseelie fae, her own blood. Nor was he the only one.”
“I am half-human.” I thought of the disdain with which the Fool had treated me, except when he had not. And yet there he went seducing Glenna Baker. How much sense did that make?
“Keep out of his business, any way ye can.”
